Introduction

In the Hebrew mystical tradition, the Shekhinah is the dwelling-place of the Divine. It is considered by scholars to be a literal, physical presence that cannot be contained or described. It is said that when two or more are joined in prayer or divine purpose, the Shekhinah exists in the space between them. The early Vedas of Hinduism call this Agni, the primal leaping spark that powers the cosmos and brings heat, light and enlightenment. Science has many names for the Shekhinah, from weak and strong nuclear forces to quantum superstring vibrations. Poets call it mystical force of nature known as love.

The reason that Chapters 14 and 15 have been included at this stage is that they were the first ones to be written, for a challenge. Like a kaleidoscope, formed the shape of previous and future chapters, and lo, a novel was conceived. Read them now or wait until the chapters have caught up, just as you like.

That said, this was an albatross to write, and is still being written. It's the story of Grissom and Sara as they grew up, met, and changed each others' worlds. It's a tribute to several case histories of children who lived through unimaginable childhoods to become healthy, happy adults, and in some cases parents with healthy, happy kids of their own. It's also been an intense journey through the eyes of two characters I adore and admire, who had so many stories left untold...and an exercise in letting smut off my hard drive for the first time. A triple whammy.

There may be triggers in this story for those with memories of childhood domestic or sexual abuse. They'll be labelled in the chapter summaries. The last thing I want to do is spark a PTSD episode in anyone, although it's worth noting that the point of the whole novel is that recovery, while sometimes hellish, is absolutely worth every re-lived moment or setback.

As this is as much as a journey for me as the characters themselves, there may be chapter notes along the way. A sort of double-journal process, if you will. I'm blown away by the comments and conversations this story has sparked: never doubt that you are part of that process as well. As Edmund Locard so aptly stated, any interaction leaves some trace evidence behind on both elements. And the quantum physicists add: each thing is changed by the observation thereof.

Enjoy - and go hug the ones you love.

Addendum:

If this story should seem familiar to you, it was posted to several years ago, under a different handle. It still exists, with illustrations and linked-up table of contents, in its original livejournal site, sonnet_47(dot)livejournal(dot)com, as well as several other archives. It hasn't been pirated: it's only me!

Scribble on, maniacs.

Vancouver, BC
October 2011

Chapter One:
Gilbert Learns to Read

A lesson.

"Daddy, what's that?"

"Where are you pointing? Oh, Ceanothus. Common name, Frosty Blue Mountain Lilac. It's a young one, not even as tall as you. By next year, it'll be six inches taller."

"So will I."

"So you will. Can you say the Latin? Ceanothus."

"See an othus," Gilbert obliged, without a trace of baby lisp.

"Good lad."

Arthur ruffled the boy's summer-streaked curls, and smiled down at him, more than a little relieved. It was only recently that Gilbert had felt comfortable enough, walking through the University's Botanical Garden, to speak and ask questions. Frances had been right, as usual. The child was just shy, and needed to feel at home in his surroundings before opening up.

As a three-year-old college brat in a small faculty, Gilbert hadn't had the company of many children his own age to play with. He was used to being treated as a adult by his parents and their colleagues. An energetic only child, he thrived upon the constant interaction with his Professor-Gardener father and his mother, an artist, both of whom kept him busy from sunup to bedtime with games and lessons and conversation. Most other children bored him or looked askance at him, and adults spoke to him as if he were an infant. It wasn't surprising that the child squirmed silently in strange surroundings.

"Do you like it here?" Arthur asked, as they walked down the sunny path between well-spaced towering evergreens and shady fruit-bearing trees in the Botany school's experimental grove. There was no need to hold his hand. Gilbert had always resisted it, and had promised instead to remain close by.

"Yes."

A typical Gilbertian reply. Arthur continued: "What do you like best about it?"

Gilbert stopped and considered the question, tilting his head slightly and fingering his chin, just as Arthur did when faced with a poser. He screwed up his little face in thought.

"It's very quiet. And everything stays where it's supposed to."

"Well, trees grow so slowly we can't see it, but to our eyes, their roots keep them still in the ground. Only their leaves and branches move in the wind."

"Yes. So you always know where to find them. You could come back again and again and again, and they would still be there."

"Mostly right. Unless they had been moved, or had fallen in a storm. And if you came back in a hundred years, some of them might have grown old and fallen down."

"Daddy, if we come here in a hundred years, will we see the same trees?"

"Oh, not many of us live that long. But I think you can count on seeing these trees for a good sixty or seventy years, and some will outlive many generations after us. Like that Douglas Fir there. See him?"

"That's big."

"It takes three grown men to be able to hold hands around him. He's probably four or five hundred years old. He started growing hundreds of years before anyone thought of putting a University here."

Gilbert stopped. "How do you know?" he asked, his blue eyes, so like his fathers', flown wide.

"We know because people have written about it, and have taken pictures, but mostly because we know how to read the ages of trees."

"How do you do that?"

Dr. Arthur Grissom slipped easily back in to professorial mode.

"How about you come and see for yourself?"

Gilbert grinned and nodded vigorously. Arthur grinned back.

He took Gilbert into the long greenhouse-laboratory, steamy and verdant under the Californian September afternoon, and they counted rings on sample cross-sections, and measured saplings with brass calipers.

Teatime.

"Gib darling, would you take Mrs. Meaks her tea?"

Mama handed him one of the good sets, pure white bone china, gold-brushed, with blue Delphiniums painted on the saucer's rim. Gilbert took it from her in two hands, and turned to Mrs. Meaks, sitting in her chair on the other side of the thick Turkish rug from his mother, in the small front room.

With his eyes firmly fixed on the cup's brimming contents, he enjoyed the slight dizzying effect of the Turkish carpet pattern passing under his feet. The steaming, fragrant cup became the still point around which everything else moved. Mrs. Meaks was no more than a fuzzy yellow blur, and the other chattering ladies in the circle ceased to exist. Even the colours of the room seemed to thin into mistiness.

He stood still for a moment, and watched the tea in the eggshell-thin cup slosh and settle. How strange that something he carried would need more time to catch up with his stopping.

He was tempted to let go of the saucer and see if it would remain still in the air for a moment, in the opposite fashion of the tea needing time to stop moving, but he'd already done that once before and been scolded. He wasn't sure if he'd done something wrong, or done something naughty, but he knew better than to try again in front of his mother's friends.

He walked the last few paces.

"What a careful boy," Mrs. Meaks beamed as Gilbert arrived at her knee. "You didn't spill a drop. How old are you now, dear?"

Gilbert stood in front of her, as she sipped her tea, and regarded her silently.

"Gibbie?" Mama prompted. "Answer Mrs. Meaks."

He shivered with a sudden cold, and his tummy felt funny. He turned to look at Mama for a moment, and then back to Mrs. Meaks. Mrs. Meaks was all right, when she spoke to him alone, but when they were all sitting together, all the ladies, her voice turned high and silly, the way that some people talked to animals. He didn't like it. People's voices shouldn't change with each person they talked to. Even Mama's voice, usually calm and clear, sounded like a lady on the television during these tea afternoons.

By way of compromise, he held up three fingers, and cringed at the delighted chuckles from around the room.

He returned to his mother, and whispered in her ear, "Mama, they're all looking at me."

"Pardon, dear?"

"Can I go?"

"Oh, of course. Daddy's outside in the back yard with the gentlemen, or you could play in your room for a while."

Outside was exactly what he needed. It was getting hard to breathe. He nodded and trotted towards the doorway to the kitchen.

"Oh, Frannie, he's outgrowing you!" Mrs. Schumacher warned as he left, "Seeking out the company of the menfolk already."

"That's the time to plant cabbages..." Mrs. Rowley returned slyly.

The front room dissolved in laughter. Gilbert was already in the kitchen, and didn't see his mother carefully turn her head from side to side to listen, as the cacophony rang in her remaining good ear.

Painting.

"Mama, I'm hungry. Is it dinner yet?"

Frances set down her brush and pushed back the cuff of her smock to look at her watch. "Oh, Gibbie, I'm sorry. Yes, it's almost dinner time. What have you and Daddy been doing?"

"Digging."

"Really? And you so tidy! Have you washed already?"

Gilbert nodded, and pointed to her hands, wrinkling his nose.

Frances grinned and held up her hands. "Just these. That's why I always wear my smock, so the rest of me stays clean. What does it make you think of, this one?"

Gilbert had come to his mother's side and was considering the canvas on the standing easel. She had worked a series of dark sepia curves, stark edges against an autumn-gold background, like a rapid blinking glance at dancer's limbs in some modern choreography. Like most of her favourites, it had begun as an experiment, a little twist to a familiar opening exercise, and had taken an exciting turn. She must have been engrossed since coming upstairs after lunch, when Artie had kissed the back of her neck as she did the dishes, and said he could tell when she had an idea, and took over for her.

"What's that?"

"It's an idea. Not a real thing you can hold, but a picture of what an idea feels like. To me."

"No, I mean...the stuff."

"Oh, it's a new kind of paint. It's called acrylic. It's very colourful, isn't it? It's so different from watercolours." she gestured to a series of small, delicate still-lifes and landscapes lined up on the white shelves.

"It stays where you put it."

"How do you mean? You mean it comes in bottles instead of tubes?"

"No, on the canvas. It doesn't move and get lost. The other stuff does."

"You're right. Watercolour moves so quickly, and that's why a lot of people like it. You have to know how it works, and it's a skill to learn. You've seen me do all kinds of things to make it go where I want it to, haven't you?"

He had, from before his earliest memories. Mama mixing colours on her palette, adding small amounts of water, using masque or salt or blowing on wet edges to fix them. Sometimes she'd sit in the sun in the hottest part of the day, working quickly as the pigments dried in translucent layers almost as fast as she painted. Sometimes she let the colours drip and run into each other, studying them, learning how to make them bend to her will.

"I like this better," Gilbert pronounced, pointing at the acrylic piece. "It just stays there. It doesn't move around."

"You know," Frances said, spreading her arm to invite him onto her knee, "It's not so scary when things move around and get mixed up. It just takes time to get to know where they're going, and how they get there. You want to try?"

Gilbert shook his head, and then, shyly, nodded, climbing up.

"Just a little one, before dinner, then." She swiveled them around on her stool to a smaller table easel, which held a practice piece of rag paper already stretched and taped to a glass pane.

"What colour?"

He pointed to the Cadmium Blue wash.

"All right. Here we go." She took his hand and helped him dip and swirl the brush, and then trail it across the paper.

"It's dripping!"

"That's okay. Just watch where it goes. Now try red, quick-quick, before all the blue runs away. That's it, right underneath so it touches. See how they mix where they run together? See, as long as that's what you want it to do, that's exactly how you do it. If I wanted the red and the blue not to run together, I'd paint a line here - " she drew another red stroke, leaving a narrow dry strip below the blue, "- I'd do that. That's how it stays apart. Watercolour is a kind of paint that works best when you build it up in layers, so you have to know how each one works."

"That's hard," Gilbert wrinkled his nose again. Frances laughed.

"Yes, but give it time. You'll find it's worth it."

"Real things don't get mixed up," Gilbert said, somewhat witheringly.

Focus.

"For an hour?"

"I was watching him the whole time. He came to no harm."

"No, I believe you, but Artie, what three year old sits still that long, and lets himself get cold and cramped like that?"

"He was watching a colony of woodlice under one of the flagstones. I've spent hours watching things like that myself. And you know what it's like when you're lost in a painting. It's only natural."

"Yes, but...there's something...the way he doesn't even notice anything else when he's fixated. At least we know for certain it's not his hearing." she shook her head, making an effort not to let the sudden wave of misery show. Arthur was too good to her, his support unwavering, but if he knew how deep the worm of terror had gone...what if it should all become too much? What if Gilbert, too, became deaf? What if their son wasn't all right?

Arthur put his hands on her shoulders. "Darling, what's worrying you?"

"It's not just this. It's so many little things. We know he's a gifted child, but that often comes with a price. There's his shyness, that way he has of looking right through people, the way he talks when he finally does speak. And the mischief he gets into, it's not normal little-boy games. It's as if he gets a question in his head, and he can't think of anything else until it's settled. He's three."

Frances finally spoke the words they had both known for some time: "God knows I should be grateful for such a healthy, well-mannered and gifted son, but gifted or not, Gilbert's not like other boys."

Dr. Hunt.

"Mrs. Grissom, I can assure you Gilbert's behaviour does not arise from any medical or psychiatric process. Children, you see - especially bright fellows like Gilbert - children only reflect what they see around him. Whether you recognize it or not, or whether you care to admit it at this time, your concerns about your hearing, and your ability to communicate, have transferred to your son. No doubt you have already begun to communicate non-verbally in your own home, which is what Gilbert has taken to doing. Probably you have also some doubts about your ability to be a good wife and mother, if your hearing loss continues, which, you can imagine, would be impossible for a child to know how to react to."

Dr. Hunt leaned forward earnestly and continued: "Gilbert's a fine healthy child. You must be honest with yourself about your condition, and bring your family into your considerations. They will still need you, even if your hearing loss does become complete and permanent. You can still be a success as a wife and mother. Probably you are such a good manager, Mrs. Grissom, that they don't feel able to voice their concerns to you." He nodded, "That's it, of course. In your going on as though nothing is the matter, you have - without intent - shut them down from communicating about it, or with you."

Frances stared back at the young doctor, and gathered her camel coat more firmly around her.

"Doctor, how many children like Gilbert have you seen? Gifted children, who behave and speak as he does, who are inordinately sensitive and appear so focussed as to lose themselves in their thoughts."

"Now, Mrs. Grissom, I gather you are quite a talented artist yourself, but I'd beware of projecting your own artistic temperament onto your son. Allowing him to wallow in his feelings won't help him learn to articulate them. In answer to your question, I've met many bright children, and often they spend too much time thinking and not enough time being active, and playing with other children. He's a little young for baseball or soccer, or I should suggest he go in for sports. Perhaps his father can take him to the park more often. Give him time, and try to be open with your family about what you are going through. They will follow your example, and learn that it's all right to speak about it."

Hunt turned back to his desk, and scribbled on a writing tablet. "I don't want you to think I'm ignoring how terribly difficult this must be for you. I'm referring Gilbert to a Pediatric Development specialist in Los Angeles. He'll have seen many more children than I, and probably a few families in situations like yours. If there any answers I don't have, you can be sure Dr. O'Malley will have them."

Frances got up, keenly aware that the slightest expression of frustration or distaste would be communicated to O'Malley in advance of any appointment.

"Thank you, Dr. Hunt. I'm sure this must all seem like a silly waste of energy, but we are researching every avenue. We want only the best for Gilbert and our family."

"I'm sure you do, Mrs. Grissom, and you are doing a commendable job. I'll telephone as soon as I have your new X-ray results."

Dr. O'Malley.

"...and in the absence of proper mothering, the child becomes confused and distressed. I understand your wife, very clever woman by the way, is under a great deal of stress in regards to her own medical condition."

"Doctor, I assure you, Frances is an excellent mother, and Gilbert adores her. She's his constant companion during the day."

"Yes, I see that," O'Malley nodded and glanced down at his notes, spread out on the green leather desk. "She spends copious amounts of time teaching him, and encouraging him in his observations of the plants you grow at home. She also believes that he quickly grows bored, and will get up to mischief, if not stimulated intellectually at all times."

"Yes. He's a very bright child, and we intend to have him assessed once he is of an age to be tested, but in the meantime, he's more than capable of absorbing simple lessons. He's fairly desperate to read and write, and he's adding and subtracting in his head."

Arthur leaned forward and accepted a cigarette from the doctor's silver case. He lit it and sat back, waiting for O'Malley to do the same.

O'Malley nodded and blew a polite cloud of smoke to the side. "And it is just that sort of anxiety that I refer to now. Let us examine his daily emotional environment: the person with whom he spends the most time is under a great deal of pressure, and has doubts about her ability to communicate in future. She feels a certain urgency to transmit as much as possible to the child while she may. The child feels this expectation, and struggles to meet it, causing the very sort of anxiety symptoms you describe. In doing so, the two have formed a teacher-pupil relationship, that is far from the accepting, motherly atmosphere needed for the very young child to develop a proper sense of self-worth."

"Really, sir, I think Frances has her hands full to keep him from being too full of himself. He was like a self-sufficient little man from the beginning. If it weren't that we see his social awkwardness and his tendency to block out the world increasing rather than decreasing, we shouldn't be worried at all. In many ways he's a model child."

"As one would expect the son of a professor to be. Nevertheless, do you agree that Mrs. Grissom and Gilbert might both benefit from a change of company once in a while? I think it would be worthwhile to see whether increased playtime with other children, or perhaps even an afternoon a week under the care of neighbour's wife, might help them both."

"Actually, Frances plans to begin taking sign-language classes soon, and we are looking around for regular afternoon care already."

"That sounds like a good idea. I think you'll find that as Mrs. Grissom comes to terms with her own sad condition, that Gilbert will respond in kind."

Arthur took a slow inhale of his cigarette, and tried to look impassive. Why must every consultation about Gilbert come back to Frances? Was it merely a popular professional backlash against Dr. Jung's anti-Freudian break? Really, this O'Malley character was no different from the rest of them.

"Doctor, you realize that we don't think there's anything wrong with Gilbert - we are only concerned that he's, well, an odd little fellow, and if there are any ways we can help him fit in a little better with people, we want to find them, and before he starts school."

"Behaviour," O'Malley sat back and puffed contentedly, "is largely a matter of good parental conditioning. It's obvious Gilbert knows that you both love him very much, and seeks to please you. That's a better place to start than many parents come to me with. Let him know you expect him to just be happy, and that he needn't seek to impress you - and slow him down a little. He'll find it even harder if he's so far ahead of the other children when he begins school."

Dragonflies.

The dragonfly danced in the autumn breeze, and Gilbert danced with it. Not seeking to capture, but to be part of the dipping and swirling, the darkly glittering colours that leapt and plunged.

Beside him, Emilia Suarez' four year old daughter Melinda danced too, laughing and trying to keep up.

"You're too good at this!" she said, "How do you always know where he's going to go?"

"I just do!" said Gilbert, jumping up onto a wooden seat at the bottom of the garden, "Look, there he goes."

The dragonfly soared upwards and over the trees on an updraft. The two children flopped onto the garden seat, giggling and breathless, until two more dragonflies skimmed past. Melinda grabbed his hand and pulled him up again, and Frances noticed that Gilbert let her lead him up and down the garden for a minute or more before pulling away.

"Libélula!" cried Melinda.

"Dragonfly!" yelled Gilbert.

Watching the children from the wraparound porch, Frances and Emilia shared a smile.

"They'll be just fine," Emilia said, "Good for Melinda to have a little brother to practice, because - " she folded her hands in a brief but fervent prayer and grinned broadly.

Though the words sounded tinny and distant, Frances easily caught their meaning, and nodded. "I'm sure you're right," she said, "And you really don't mind having him here Tuesdays and Thursdays?"

"No, no problem. He's a good boy, your Gibbie. He's welcome, at least until 'Linda starts school, and that's a year or more. Plenty of time," Emilia replied, patting Frances' arm. "It'll all come right, you'll see. The Holy Virgin and her Son won't let you down. Didn't you say you could hear a little better last week?"

And this, thought Frances, was one of the hardest parts of a slow but growing disability: having to take hope away from others, especially those who sought only to help and be a comfort.

"It comes and goes," she said. "What's that saying? 'Pray to God, sailor, but row for the shore'."

"That's good," Emilia nodded approvingly. She hesitated, and went on, "You know, Frannie, don't mind my saying, but you can't let no chit-chat-chit-chat bother you. Anyone who knows you and Gibbie knows better. The rest of them - ffft!" she made a dismissive gesture.

Which certainly confirmed a few lingering suspicions, not the least of which was the gradual but firm separation of a few neighbourly connections, and one blatant show of embarrassed haste by a local mother who tugged her son along when he waved at Gilbert from across the street, on the way home from shopping.

"Mama, why did she do that?" Gilbert had asked. "Is she angry? That didn't look like an angry face."

"I don't know, dear," Frances had replied, "Sometimes grownups have a lot to think about, and they don't notice some of the little things they do."

"Even you?"

"Oh, yes."

"And Daddy?"

"All of us, darling," Frances smiled down at her son, and wished fervently that it was as easy to explain Gilbert to the world as it was to explain the world to Gilbert.

"That wasn't an angry face," Gilbert went on. "It was a sorry face. Did she do something wrong?"

"Let's hurry and see if we can finish dinner by the time Daddy comes home."

"Emilia, I'm so glad you're here." said Frances.

"Don't you worry," Emilia said staunchly. "And don't you listen to no stupid people with mean ideas."

Frances found this unwontedly hilarious. "I guess that's a mercy," she sputtered into her handkerchief, and Emilia, eyes dancing, covered her mouth and blushed brightly before joining in.

Sign Language.

"Daddy?"

"Mm hmm?"

"Why is Mama sad at me?"

Why indeed, thought Arthur. "Did Mama seem sad today?"

"Yes. She didn't hear me so I had to shout - and I'm not s'pposed to shout - but she didn't look angry. She looked sad."

Arthur set his book on the side table by the easy chair. Gilbert climbed into Arthur's lap and sat crosswise, looking earnestly into his father's face. It was their favourite way to have serious conversations.

"Well, you know Mama's left ear doesn't work at all anymore. And her right ear is getting worse. That would be hard for either of us to manage, don't you think?"

"Yes." Gilbert nodded. "But I'm not s'pposed to shout, right?"

If only the true impact of incipient total deafness were so simple as that, Arthur thought. Ignorant neighbours and ridiculous doctors and their need for gossip and finger-pointing blame notwithstanding. What about music - all the fast-moving, exhilarating conversations - listening to the ocean on picnic days, the rich liturgy and organ music of Sunday Mass, and the wind in the trees - even his and Gilbert's voices...

Thank God Frances had a few stalwart friends of her own, and her art to sustain her, emotionally and, increasingly, financially.

He hugged the child, and for once, Gilbert didn't squirm away, but hugged him back.

"We're going to have a lot of things to learn, you and I. Do you think we can help Mama learn to cope?"

Gilbert was curious. "How?"

"You know when you go to Mrs. Suarez' house, that's when Mama takes lessons in sign language? Like this?" he slowly spelled out 'A-R-T-H-U-R'. Gilbert nodded. "Well, that's a new way of talking that we're both going to learn, so we can talk to Mama, or anyone else who is deaf. With our hands and faces. Mama's going to carry around a pad of paper and a pencil in her purse, so she can write notes to people, but there will be times when you can sign to her quickly about things she needs to know."

"What things?"

"Well, if there's someone at the door. Or if someone's trying to call her from across a room or at the store. Mama can still hear a very little, but not enough to hear faraway or quiet things."

"I'm going to have to work on my writing," said Gilbert, frowning, and sounding so like his father that Arthur laughed.

"All in good time, son. But I can write down something for you to copy out whenever you think Mama needs to see it."

"What is it?"

"First let me show you the sign. Make a fist. Yes, just like that. Then straighten out your thumb, and then your pointer finger, and your little finger. There. Can you guess what it means?"

Gilbert looked at his hand, and then back up, shaking his head.

"It means, 'I love you'."

"Really?"

"Yep. See, there's the 'I', and the 'L' for love, and when you show it to her, that's the 'you' part. I bet Mama will need us both to tell her that a lot. Want me to write it down for you?"

"Yes!"

Arthur pulled open the drawer of the side table and picked out a small telephone pad. "You keep this in your room, and show her this when you think she needs it."

Gilbert nodded.

Arthur put his pen into Gilbert's hand, and guiding the child's fingers, wrote on the pad and spoke aloud: "I LOVE YOU".

Gilbert stared at it. "I know almost all of those!"

"I bet you do. And now you know what they say when you put them together like that."

"Can I go show her now?"

"Of course. Let's both go." he hoisted the child off his lap.

The Grissom men, big and small, walked to the kitchen, where Frances was putting the finishing touches on a roast chicken dinner. She turned around as she felt their footsteps and smiled.

"What are you two planning?" she asked, "You look like you've been up to no good."

"Mama, we want to tell you - "

It dawned on Gilbert that Mama was still smiling, but looking hard at his mouth, as he spoke. It was his first inkling that this was just the beginning of some major changes to their world.

He held up his hand and made the sign, just as Daddy had shown him, and then held up the pad. He looked over at his father to make sure he was doing it right, and so he was spared the complex jumble of emotions that flitted across his mother's face.

As it was, he only saw her laughing as she came and wrapped her arms around them both.