Yesterday's News

bearings right, the button I was pushing belonged to 57 Costigan Street , but I couldn’t hear any chimes responding inside. I tried knocking; no one answered. Then I heard a vaguely familiar sound that I couldn’t immediately place. A whispery, intermittent ticking noise, like someone repeatedly thumbing along and through fifty pages of a book. It was coming from behind the house.
    Moving to the side yard, I noticed how similar the house was to Gail Fearey’s, the major difference being the condition of each. The exterior paint here was pale peach and appeared, if not fresh, at least not completely abandoned. Mrs. Meller maintained ivy and other vines along the sunny wall, with flowers planted in a pleasing pattern beneath them.
    As I turned the back comer, I could see an older, slight woman pushing a prehistoric hand mower, the thresher blades making that ticking sound. The yard was only about forty by fifty, which made the manual method seem quite rational. Her back to me, she advanced, retreated, and drove on, two or three feet at a time, waltzing to a silent tune.
    I said, “Mrs. Meller?”
    She quartered her progress, but only to cover a patch extending into a bed of violets. I crossed the yard, repeating her name. I was only a few steps from her when she spun around, a frightened look in her
    eyes.
    I quickly said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
    She held up her right hand in a stop sign, which had the desired effect on me. She cupped the hand to her ear, then two fingers to her lips in a shush gesture. Then she shook her head.
    Deaf, and mute. Approaching sixty, her face tapered to a delicate chin and was framed by graying hair in what used to be called a pixie cut.
    Mouthing the words in an exaggerated way, I said, “Do you read lips?”
    She held up her hand again, this time thumb and index finger an inch apart.
    “A little?”
    Mrs. Meller nodded.
    I produced my identification. She read it, looked up at me.
    “Jane Rust hired me before she died.”
    Mrs. Meller seemed baffled.
    “You didn’t know her?”
    Negative shake.
    “I think her death might have something to do with the death of your son, Dwight.”
    She crossed her arms and dropped her gaze. Gulping once hard, the woman made up her mind. She moved toward the back door, indicating I should follow.
    The inside of the house was as perfectly arranged and kept as the landscaping. We sat on a couch in her living room, she pointing first to a red bulb in a fixture mounted on the opposite wall. Pressing her thumb on an imaginary button in the air in front of her, she pointed next to a lamp, then opened and closed her fist like someone signaling “five” over and over.
    “When the doorbell is pushed, the red light flashes?”
    She nodded, smiling. Then her expression shifted. From the drawer in the end table she produced a large manila tablet like elementary school kids used when learning the alphabet. Mrs. Meller wrote quickly in capital letters, her syntax jumbled.
    “WHAT YOU WANT KNOW ME”
    Indicating the pad and then myself, I said, “Should I write my questions down for you?”
    She shook her head, gesturing toward me and my mouth, then her and the pad. I got it.
    As she stared intently at my lips, I said, “I know how the police said the incident happened. Do you believe them?”
    “DWIGHT AND ME POOR BUT HIM THIEF NO”
    “What do you think happened?”
    “POLICE LIE ME NO KNOW WHY”
    “Had Dwight ever been in trouble with the authorities before?”
    As I spoke the word authorities her eyes fluttered, confused.
    I said, “Trouble with the police before that night?” Shaking again, she wrote, “KIDS SCHOOL MAKE FUN ME DWIGHT MANY FIGHT”
    “Aside from fights at school, though, any... any crimes?”
    Dogmatically no.
    “What would he have been doing in that alley?” She seemed to bite back a memory. Then, “DWIGHT DEAF BUT TALK SOME THEN KIDS MAKE FUN GIRLS MAKE FUN”
    Mrs. Meller looked up at me, but I didn’t understand, and she could see it before I could say it. “DWIGHT GO THE STRIP FOR GIRLS”
    I paused, embarrassed for her and myself and for a boy I’d never met. His visits to The Strip weren’t varsity larks.
    “The newspapers had only a couple of stories about what happened. Did you ever have anyone look into it, like a lawyer, maybe?”
    “NO MONEY JUST ME”
    “You looked into it?”
    She seemed hurt, and I realized how my doubt must have appeared to her.
    She wrote, “BOOK YOU WAIT” and left