Adam's Peak by Heather Burt Page A

Sri Lankan politics seems to have fizzled. Whistling along with Jim Reeves, he slides his chair away from the table and slips into the living room, where he drops to the floor in front of Zoë, who’s playing with a pile of
National Geographic
magazines.

    â€œWhatcha got there?” he says, signing “Zoë,” along with something Rudy doesn’t recognize.
    Zoë looks up and slaps the magazine on the floor in front of her. Adam blows a wave of hair out of his eyes.
    â€œCool picture,” he says. “That’s a woolly mammoth. It’s like an elephant, only it’s bigger and hairier. And those things coming out of its mouth are tusks.” He exaggerates the signs for “big” and “hairy” and fingerspells “tusks.” He starts to read from the magazine—“‘The woolly mammoth ranged over North America, Asia, and Europe during the Pleistocene. It was—’” then interrupts himself. “Hey, Zoë, can you imagine if they used one of these things instead of a regular elephant in the Kandy Perahera? Wouldn’t that be crazy?”
    Rudy hears his father clear his throat, and his own body tenses.
    â€œWhat are you expecting her to understand from all this?” Dad says, his voice deceptively mild. “Point to the picture and say ‘elephant.’”
    At the kitchen table Susie’s eyes again catch Rudy’s. Their father is the one member of the family who won’t sign.
    â€œI don’t want her to learn anything from this,” Adam says. “I just want her to know I’m interested in what she’s looking at.”
    Dad doesn’t answer. For a moment the only voice in the house is that of Jim Reeves, crooning the final verse of “Blue Christmas,” his velvet melody pocked with record crackles that have become part of the music itself. Then Zoë laughs as Adam swoops her up off the floor and steers her like an airplane, through the kitchen and down the hallway, past the trophy room and the dining room, across the entrance hall, and back into the living room, where he deposits her with a fading whistle next to the pile of toys beneath the Christmas tree.
    â€œNow, let’s see what we have to play with here,” he says. “Stuffed doll ... stuffed dog ... stuffed platypus ...” One by one, the toys fly over his shoulder. “Hey! Giant Lego! I believe this is from your Uncle Rudy. Hey, Uncle Rudy, wanna play Lego with me and Zoë?”
    Rudy shakes out his paper and turns to a new page. His brother’s invitation strikes him as a challenge.
    â€œUh, no thanks. You two go ahead.”
    He detects the shadow of disappointment that crosses Adam’s face, and briefly he regrets his answer. But his regret muddles withirritation, and as Adam dumps the tub of Lego out on the floor, Rudy stares hard at the page before him, unable to make himself concentrate. He decides to go out.
    Beside him Susie closes her book and begins straightening the clutter on the table.
    â€œMark and I are going to have a rest upstairs,” she says. “Adam, would you mind watching Zoë?”
    Outside, Rudy walks as far as the end of the driveway and leans back against the juniper tree stationed like a sentry at the corner of the lawn. The sky is low and grey; the air has that particular about-to-snow sharpness to it. He buries his hands in his pockets and inhales the cold. He doesn’t really plan to walk any farther.
    Stretching out to his left and right, Morgan Hill Road—
chemin de la Côte Morgan
, officially—is perfectly straight and, despite the name, flat. The snow on its front yards is still untrampled after the latest fall. Its houses, from the bricks of their living room levels to the aluminum siding strips of their bedroom levels, are ordered and straight. Most of them have their Christmas lights on, and these strings of lights, too, conform to the right-angle