Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

photography. So I sat on the end of the bed and looked around the room. I saw the camera on her desk, one that fits in your pocket, digital, I figured. It was sitting next to her computer. There were two closets, the door to the one closer to me ajar. Half the clothes seemed the size to fit a smallish twelve-year-old. The rest of the clothes must have been Sally’s, an odd collection of retro things that looked as if they’d been bought secondhand. There were sweaters folded on the shelf, shoes tossed in on the floor. A backpack had been thrown in the comer, and from the looks of it, it was full of books.
    Madison was wearing clothes that fit her this time, and I had the feeling that the beads wrapped around one wrist had been her mother’s necklace. There was a ring on her thumb, a plain silver band, and she was wearing a necklace, but I could only see part of the chain. Whatever it held was under Madison’s T-shirt. She wore a watch, too, like the one I wear when I swim. Like most of her things, this, too, was too big, the face almost comical against her thin arm, the band so loose the watch slid up or down her arm when she moved it, too big for her because it was most likely the watch Sally had left behind.
    “Do you want to go out for a walk?” I asked, forgetting that I’d decided to try to communicate without words. No matter, I thought. I always spoke to Dashiell, didn’t I? And surely, even though Madison didn’t speak, she understood what was being said to her.
    To my surprise, Madison responded. She jumped up and walked out of the room, Dashiell behind her, me bringing up the rear. That’s when I realized that I didn’t have a key to Leon’s apartment. If Madison didn’t either, we couldn’t leave because we wouldn’t be able to get back in. No way could I handle this one without words. But it turned out I didn’t have to. No sooner was I out in the dining area than Madison turned around and headed back to her room, closing the door before either Dashiell or I could follow her. A moment later I heard a hissing sound. And shortly afterwards, the odor of citrus seeped out into the hall, telling me that Madison was spraying her room with air freshener, her message loud and clear without a word spoken.
    Dashiell went into the kitchen, caught my eye and glanced up at the sink, so I found a bowl, filled it with cold water and set it down under the window for him. I hadn’t seen Madison communicate that way. I wondered how she indicated that she was hungry or what she wanted to eat for dinner, for example. I opened the refrigerator, not just because I was a snoop but to see the sort of care Madison was getting, though I was starting to have a pretty good idea. There was an open can of tuna in the refrigerator, a container of milk and one of orange juice, a carton of eggs, a bowl with wrinkled grapes in it, a package of American cheese, the kind where each slice is individually wrapped, peanut butter, jelly, butter and several packages that looked like they were from the deli section of the supermarket, perhaps sliced ham and turkey. There was a partial head of lettuce in the vegetable bin, probably for Emil/Emily, two kinds of soda, Coke and ginger ale, but no beer. The freezer was small and had only hamburger patties and some vanilla ice cream in it.
    I poked my head out into the hallway. Madison’s door was still closed. I picked up the kettle and filled it, putting it on the stove. Then I began to search for tea bags, finding some in a small canister on the counter. There were cookies in another one, sugar in a third. Waiting for the water to boil, I walked over to the bookshelves next to Leon’s desk.
    If the majority of the books had belonged to Sally, as Leon had said, she’d been not only a prolific reader but one with good taste. I didn’t know how much of this reflected assignments from her classes and how much reflected Sally’s own choices. I walked around the comer into the living room, scanning the shelves there as well, picking up books and seeing that Sally had underlined phrases, sentences and sometimes whole paragraphs. There were notes in the margins as well, sometimes questions. I wondered how Sally had had time to do anything else with all this reading.
    Leon had a stack of contact sheets on his desk. I picked up the top one and found myself looking at some familiar territory, Washington Square Park, the chess players, the homeless, a misguided citizen with a bag full of