Wherefore

Chapter 11

This can't be right. Grissom's mother is supposed to be little and sweet and grandmotherly. I had it all mapped out in my mind - I'd study ASL on my days off, so that when I met her I'd impress her with my ability to sign words like "pomegranate" and "perpendicular." She was supposed to accept me instantly as the daughter she'd never had.

Instead, this woman is peering at me with disdain. She's as tall as Grissom, with dark eyes (where'd his blue ones come from?) and a slim frame. And already, she hates me.

"Mother," Grissom says again, squeezing my hand, "I'd like to introduce-"

He's cut off as she begins to sign. I don't know a lot about ASL, but I'm pretty sure you're supposed to mouth the words as you sign them. But her lips are clamped shut, and her fingers are moving too fast for me to begin to understand what she's saying.

"Juliette asked us both to come," he replies. "She-"

She's signing again, her scowl deepening, and somehow I doubt she's saying she likes my suit.

"Mother, you always told me it was rude to sign in front of hearing people without using your mouth," he says firmly. "You're excluding Sara from this conversation."

The "No shit, Sherlock" look on her face needs no translation.

"Uh, Mrs. Grissom," I interject meekly. "It's such a pleasure to meet you. Your son has-"

"I'm not a Grissom," she corrects me, in the thick, muffled tones of the deaf. "I'm Maude Beaumont."

Grissom clears his throat. "Mother kept her maiden name," he explains softly.

"This is tactless, Gil," she says aloud, while signing. "I raised you better than this. You don't bring dates to funerals."

"Sara is a friend of Julie's. She was invited."

Maude rolls her eyes. "So Juliette just happens to have an identical twin who you're involved with?"

"Sara and I work together. She was the investigator who figured out who killed Josephine. That's how she and Julie met in the first place."

Her fingers start to fly, and at this point I may as well be invisible. They're signing to each other furiously, spoken words a thing of the past. I'm just mentally calculating how quickly Grissom will end... whatever it is we're doing... after this disaster.

"There you are!"

Grissom and I turn at the sound of Juliette's voice. When Ian catches sight of us, he grins widely, reaching chubby arms out toward me.

"He missed you," she laughs, as I take him out of her arms, kissing his cheek.

"I missed him back." He grabs a fistful of my hair and starts chewing on it.

Maude's watching our interaction in exactly the way that Grissom watches larvae. "Juliette, do you know-"

"Sara? Of course." Juliette is signing as she speaks, making me feel simultaneously grateful and inferior. "Ian and I lived with her all of last week. She was a great friend to us."

With this new bit of information, Maude's hostility wanes a bit. But there's still no warmth in her eyes when she looks at me.

"We should go," Grissom says at last. "Julie, again, I'm so sorry for your loss."

Taking Ian back from me, she nods with a smile. "And again, thank you both for all that you've done for us."

He turns to Maude somberly. "Mother, I... we'll see you Sunday."

She signs something back, and whatever it is, it doesn't make him happy. He shoves his hands in his pockets and marches back to the car. I have to hurry to catch up with him.

"Grissom?"

Unlocking the car doors, he gets in the driver's seat and leans his head back, eyes closed. I sit down beside him gingerly, waiting for him to speak.

Finally, he looks at me, his eyes filled with pain. "Look, Sara..."

"It's okay," I reply, smiling and willing myself not to cry. "I understand, really. She's your mother, and she doesn't approve of me-"

"She doesn't approve of me either, honey. Hasn't since I was in grammar school. When I was little, she was different. Patient, and doting. But then my father died, and I became more interested in science than in people, and she didn't quite know what to do with me. One time, a man she was dating wanted to meet me, and when they went into the backyard to find me, I was elbow-deep in dissecting a dead seagull. Afterwards, I couldn't sit down for a week." Grissom smiles ruefully, and I want to kiss him, to validate who he was and who he is.

But I don't, because I'm chicken. "How old were you when your dad died?"

"I was nine."

"So it was just you and your mom for most of your childhood."

He nods. "It was a quiet way to grow up."

"Isolating?" I don't receive an answer, but I didn't really expect one, either. "I'm sorry she's like this."

"It's fine," he says dismissively.

"It's not. She's your mother. She's supposed to love you unconditionally."

I have no idea what I said, but suddenly a huge grin is spreading across his face. "Sara... what time is it?"

"Uh, I don't know... around ten-thirty?"

He turns the key in the ignition, pulling out of the church parking lot and heading for the highway. "Perfect. If we hurry, we'll just make it."

I ask him at least five times where we're going, but he just drives faster. At five minutes to eleven, we pull up in front of a huge building, whose block-lettered sign reads "Marshall School for the Deaf." Immediately I'm on edge, thinking about my last time at this sort of place. But Grissom's practically dancing with excitement, so I just follow him as he strides in the front door.

The halls are empty and dim - which seems odd for a Friday morning, until he mentions that classes only run four days a week. Our footsteps seem unnaturally loud on the tile floor.

"Hopefully she's kept the same room," he mutters, turning a corner and climbing a flight of stairs. As we make our way down another long hallway, I can hear the faint sound of laughter. Grissom must hear it too, because he walks even faster. Another corner, and then he's peering in the window of a classroom door, beaming at the scene before us.

Three young children are working with finger paints at a long table, while a tiny old woman walks back and forth in front of them. She signs continuously, and the children struggle to keep painting while they watch her. She must be telling a joke, because they keep spontaneously breaking out in giggles. She dips a finger into a jar of paint, continuing to sign while the paint smears all over her fingers. The kids howl with laughter.

"That was always a hit," he whispers.

I motion inside. "Should we-"

"No, let them finish up," he says, looking a little wistful. "Their parents will be here any minute. On Fridays she's done at eleven."

Sure enough, two or three minutes later I hear footfalls on the stairs. Two women come around the bend, signing to each other. They step past us into the classroom, clapping their hands to get the children's attention.

"Hi, Mom!"

I'm startled when all three kids start talking a mile a minute, signing along with their words as the old woman tries to wipe their fingers clean.

"They're not deaf," I whisper to Grissom.

"Nope. One of the Rockefellers gave an endowed gift decades ago, after he married a widow who had a deaf child. So there's actually a fund for the school to provide free daycare to anyone in the Los Angeles area who qualifies as legally deaf." We both step back from the doorway as the first mother walks out with her two kids, then he continues. "After my dad died, Mother had to find a career. She enrolled in art history courses here, then took night classes at a local college. Eventually she found work in an art gallery in Venice."

"So you spent a lot of time in daycare?"

"Only until I was twelve," he says. He probably doesn't realize it, but he's begun signing along as he speaks. It reminds me of how Nick's drawl gets stronger when he talks about Texas. "But I'd grown attached to the school, and to my friend in there. So Mother used to drop me off here a lot, and I'd just wander around. It became a second home to me. And Mother didn't mind, since it got me out of her hair."

Each time he says "Mother," he spreads out his fingers as if making the number five and waggles them, while pressing his thumb to his chin. Not too shabby, Sidle, I grin to myself. You just learned your first ASL sign that's not a letter of the alphabet.

"Even in Vegas," he continues, "I sometimes end up back at that school for the deaf. Between that place and roller coasters, it can be my only way to decompress."

The last mother and child file out, and with a deep breath, Grissom steps into the classroom. The old woman doesn't notice us at first. She's busy wiping down the table with a damp sponge.

He leans forward and gently knocks on the table's surface. Looking up, the woman makes a strange strangled noise. With shaky steps, she reaches out for him, and he pulls her into a gentle hug, rocking her back and forth. When they finally pull apart, his eyes are moist.

"Sara," he says, signing along. "This is Amy."

He pauses briefly before signing her name, and I can make out the individual sign for it. He holds his fist to his chin, then keeps his thumb there as he spreads the rest of his fingers and waggles them. My throat suddenly feels very tight, as I realize he merged the signs for "A" and "mother."

When she catches the mention of my name, her eyes widen.

"Yes," he says bashfully in response. "That Sara."

In a flash, I have my arms full of a ninety-year-old woman. She pulls my head down so that she can kiss my temple, then releases me to start signing.

"She's glad to meet you," Grissom translates. "She says I talk about you all the time." He raises an eyebrow at her. "Not all the time."

Amy just ignores him, grabbing my hand and leading me over to a large metal cabinet. She pulls a key from her pocket and unlocks the cabinet, pointing to a large flat box. Grissom takes it out dutifully, setting it on the table.

Now this, this was what I wanted from his mother. Amy's pulling out childlike paintings of bugs, each of which is labeled "Gil" on the bottom right corner. She makes a low sound, handing me a stack of old photographs. Grissom leans over my shoulder curiously as I flip through them.

There's dozens of shots of him and Amy. Painting, playing checkers, even dancing. He has wild, curly hair and a mischievous grin, but I'd know those eyes anywhere. Toward the back of the stack, there's a photo of him and Maude. His shoulders are slightly slumped, and Maude looks annoyed.

"I have a copy of this one in my living room," he murmurs after I flip to the next picture. He's older here, in a cap and gown, and posing with a terribly proud-looking Amy. "It's right next to yours."

"Hmm?"

"It's next to that picture of you from last year's Christmas party."

Photos forgotten, I turn to meet his gaze. "You have a framed picture of me in your house?"

The flash of a camera goes off, and Amy scurries out the classroom door, clutching an old Canon to her chest.

"Where's she going?"

"She'll be back," he says easily. "So... what do you think of her?"

I place the photos on the table, folding my arms and smiling at him. "She's great, Grissom. But you didn't need me to tell you that."

"Nope," he agrees, looking around the room fondly.

"She doesn't speak aloud?"

He shakes his head. "I think she tried taking lessons once, but she never got the hang of it."

"Your mom speaks very well, I noticed."

"Mother was eight when she lost her hearing," he says. "At first, according to my grandmother, she still sounded like a hearing person. But over time, when you can't hear yourself talk, you start to develop that way of speaking that most deaf people have." He cocks his head. "And some hearing people, too."

"What do you mean?"

"I had to work with a speech pathologist when I was in middle school, because I pronounced so many words wrong. I'd spent most of my childhood around the deaf, and even with those speech classes, there were words I couldn't quite master."

"Like what?"

"Car," he says, embarrassed. "I've been told I sound Midwestern when I say it. It was somewhere between a deaf accent and a Californian accent, and it was the best I could manage."

Amy darts back into the room, moving rather quickly for a little old lady. She's holding out a worn day planner, pointing to tomorrow's date. Grissom and I peer down at the entry, where she's scrawled in "Lunch with Gil and Sara at Delmonico's, 12:30 p.m."

He just laughs. "She wrote it in pen. Can't really argue with that."

I catch her eye, grinning widely. "We'd love to."

With a pleased nod, she flips over to the notepad section of the planner, scrawling out a message. You're the only girl Gil's ever brought home to me, she writes.

"Okay, okay," he protests weakly. "Enough sharing. We've got to be on our way, and you've got your weekly bridge game to get to."

She signs to him then for a good thirty seconds, and I'm getting a taste of how lonely it must be to be deaf, to always be on the outside of spoken conversations. They continue their conversation a little longer, and I make myself useful by boxing Grissom's old paintings back up.

"Let's go," he nods to me, and after a couple more hugs, we're making our way back to the car.

After we're buckled in, I dare to ask him. "Why didn't you ever bring Juliette to meet Amy?"

He blinks, his eyes cloudy with emotions that I can't quite read. "I don't know," he says finally. "I guess it just never occurred to me."

The drive back to the hotel is silent.