The Case About Amy

11. Amy in Oz

Amy in Oz Robert Coultas was having second thoughts, and they were all doubts. His first thought had been one of those midnight lightning ideas that now seemed to be evanescing under the weight of day. How could he have thought that a deaf teenager could be the answer to his local Rotary International 's quest for "special" young people to bring into their international educational-cultural exchange program? Special was one thing, deaf was something else. Now he was on his way to an interview with a deaffamily, at which an interpreter would be present. The international exchange program required teenagers ofa special sort, those kids who had the acumen to adjust to an entirely new country, able to hurdle cultural and language barriers . How could a deafperson, however able, be expected to manage that? These gloomy thoughts assailed Coultas one chilly afternoon in November 1988, as he and his friend, Mike Rabasca, made their way west from Florham, New Jersey, toward Mountain Lakes on Interstate 80 in Coultas' white 1986 Audi. His big mistake, Coultas told himself unhappily , was listening to Elmer Rowley, a fine man and a splendid Rotarian but, also, this candidate's grandfather. Coultas told himselfhe never should have agreed to the interview. The truth was that generally wherever Amy went as an exchange student, there would be no interpreter. This deafgirl would be strictly on her own. Coultas' heart went out to her. He and his wife had had sixty young students from foreign lands living with them in the Rotary exchange program over the past twenty years, and although they CopyrighffJi2lJ11aferial Amy in Oz knew the joy this had brought them, they were also aware of the difficulties students faced in a strange land. An hour and a half after arriving at the Rowleys' house in Mountain Lakes, Coultas and Rabasca said their goodbyes to the family and walked back up the winding, wooden stairway to where they had parked their car. They opened the car doors, sat down, and looked at each other in frank, open disbelief. Then, realizing that they were both wearing the same expression , they broke into delighted laughs. "My God," Coultas expostulated to his friend, "what a kid!" The two parents had been most cordial and asked good, probing questions about where their daughter would be, with whom she would be staying , and how theywould know how she was doing. But Amywas far beyond what they could have imagined beforehand. In a one-on-one conversation, face-to-face, she understood them and they understood her. She conducted a conversation with them, charmed them with her brightness, and sold herself utterly, with a sense of humor that made it all feel right. Before the meeting, Coultas had it in mind that ifthis deafteen-age girl had any chance at all, it would be in one ofthe English-speaking countries in which the Rotary program was lodged: South Mrica, New Zealand, or Australia. His interest had quickened when it turned out that Amy had been living a distant love affair with Australia for some time. She definitely wanted to go there. She was sure she would love it and thrive on the opportunity . The two men listened, and Coultas began to think, It won't do to write letters over there or to anyone here about this kid. I will have to get on the phone to these people myself and let them hear how excited I am, how sure I am that this girl and the program were made for each other. For Amy, "Oz," as many Australians call their country, was a case of love at first sight. She had made up her mind not to expect anything of it, on the theory that this was a good way of fighting culture shock. But coming out on the jetway, feeling the hot wind blasting at her, that was something she couldn't have conjured up from the snows of Mountain Lakes in January . Amy took a sniffofthe spicy air and started smiling. Across the Melbourne Airport tarmac, she could see palm and pine trees growing side by side. Crazy, she thought happily, I'm in another world. As she walked over to the car park, she experienced a moment of panic. She had seen photographs of the people who were supposed to meet her, CopyrightJ'lJ1 Material Chapter 11 but no one there looked right...