It’s strange to think of members of a small town community being elusive; it’s nearly impossible, what with everyone living out of each other’s pockets and for news of each other’s strife. However, the Harrington’s managed it handily. Off on business, spontaneous jet-setting, family around the globe. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think they had something to hide. And if you were brave enough, you would ask the wide-eyed boy they left behind.
Martha Harrington, nee Nottingham, was born into a wealthy family in Europe. When she was born, her family had been sure she would die almost immediately. She was small, fragile, and prone to illness. She was born premature, and pride didn’t allow for a weak baby. So she was taken home. Home, where she contracted an illness that stole her hearing. Her family was furious, but only inwardly. To the world, they were doting, and sent Martha out to private schools that would teach her to sign, teach her to read lips, teach her to function in society. They sent Martha to America, and pretended they were martyrs falling on the sword of having a disabled child.
What wasn’t expected was for her to flourish. She loved her community, and at the age of eighteen became a masterful teacher for the younger students. She would have continued, had she not caught the eye of a baron of industry: RIchard Harrington. Their romance was whirlwind: he was fifteen years older, he had no idea she could not hear. He did not pay nearly enough attention to anything other than her family’s name and their sizable dowry. Anything to rid themselves of that wonderful, resourceful girl.
So, Martha was trapped. Pregnant by a man who was forced to remain chained to her by legality and narcissistic societal pressure. She made the most of it. She never considered herself lesser, and she thrived in her own right. She taught her boy to sign, to read lips. SHe would place headphones over his ears, playing Tchaikovsky or Bach or any other name she enjoyed the spelling of. She would take him into his bedroom, and sit on the floor with him, speaking to each other with only their hands and expressions. Her little boy continued to grow, and brought her music with bass she could feel, if not hear. Her husband left for longer periods of time. Life was bliss. She designed homes of the wealthy, and returned to a boy who loved her and her differences.
A man like Richard would not be ignored. He took Martha from her boy, her Stefano, who would never know Italian because the Nottinghams hadn’t contacted their little girl in all his fourteen years. Martha went on business trips, and stayed in the hotel. She went to luxurious parties, filled with people who applauded her resilience in the face of adversity as her husband soaked up the praise. She found him with other women, and was relieved she no longer had to fulfill that stipulation of marriage. Bliss felt like a lifetime ago.
Martha Harrington got sick again. Martha Harrington was in a hospital in the far-flung reaches of Europe, again. Hawkins was blissfully unaware that Martha Harrington was deaf. Martha Harrington died as she was born: small, fragile, sick.
Steve was not told his mother was sick. He was fresh off his first monster fight when his father came home, stoic, and told him to pack his bags for a funeral. He packed, got on the plane, and asked whose funeral they were attending. His mother’s. His father asked who he had fought. A bully. Don’t end up like your mother, Steve. Steve knew he would be lucky to be like his mother. But he stayed silent.
Richard Harrington bought a new house in New England. He told his son to maintain the house in Hawkins, to be sold and turned into a trust for him if he ever managed to amount to anything. Steve fought monsters again, fought Billy. He felt his hearing start to go. The brain is a delicate thing, he remembered his mother had told him so. Steve Harrington began to teach the Party to sign.
The Party was stumbling towards fluent by the summer of 1985. Steve was grateful to find himself surrounded by people with a thirst for knowledge, felt accepted for the first time in his life by people other than his mother. The language his mother taught him, passed on to his family in Hawkins. He had never even considered sharing this with Tommy and Carol. That should have been a sign, in retrospect. Martha would have loved Robin, Steve knew, so when she asked Steve began to teach her too. By the time they plunged into the Earth and found an army, Steve and Robin could speak without words. Steve missed his mother, in that bunker, as he felt the Russians box his ears and dull his senses. He missed her when his right ear stopped working, and more when Robin revealed her secret. Martha had told him that love, for anyone and between anyone, deserved to be cherished. He promised to make her proud, when he had failed so many times before. Her and Robin.
Robin was the only one who knew everything about Martha Harrington that Steve remembered. She brought him tapes, sheepish, after Steve told her metal and rock were the only music that Martha had truly enjoyed, in that liminal space of his childhood. They would sit at the counter of Family Video, in Steve’s living room, and finally on the floor by his bed. Headphones over their ears, tucked into a blanket fort, speaking with their hands. And Steve felt almost whole again.
Vecna could be defeated with music. The fear made Steve crush Robin’s hand in his, under the curious eyes of their newest addition. Steve could only just hear on his left. He was grateful every day for his eyes, for his hands, for the strength of his body. Steve battled the flying creatures of the Upside Down, wishing desperately for his bat. Yearning quietly for his hearing, but pushing it away. His mother had not seen herself as broken, so neither would he.
The Upside Down had a particular vibration, and Steve felt that buzz become a roar. He ran back to Dustin, to Eddie, and battered the creatures away from the boys until they fell from the sky seemingly of their own accord. Dustin signed that they were safe, Vecna’s dead, we have to get you and Eddie to a hospital.
At the hospital, they told Steve they could give him hearing aids, they could attempt an implant which could help. Steve said no, and watched Nancy bubble with anger at his idiocy. So Steve shattered the illusion of mystery surrounding his parents: his mother was deaf, Steve knew how to live just as he was.
Eddie already spoke with his hands, and watched Steve in fascination when he spoke with his. Eddie asked to learn, and Steve was happy to teach. A kinship, between mother and son, fully realized. Teaching Eddie took time, but Steve was patient. Their lessons were warm, bright, and reminded Steve of every good feeling he’d ever had. Steve shared snippets of his happiness with Eddie, and Eddie gobbled them up. Eddie was delighted when Steve shared his collection of metal, and looked at him softly when he explained their history.Eddie shared stories of his own, of a mother who had hidden away with him behind closed doors and taught him to sew, to draw, to embroil himself in fantasy when real life became dangerous.
Steve decided to go to school, and learn to teach properly. He aligned his plan with Robin’s, who had been inspired by his mother’s portfolios full of design. Her style was edgier, more of the time, but Steve knew his mother would have loved it. Richard Harrington, far away, signed away the house to Steve, and the money funded the beginning of their lives in Chicago. Steve asked, and Eddie followed.
Chicago was big, bustling, and easy to be lost in. The trio were not lost. They found community, deaf and queer, all around them. Steve found work in a coffee shop with rainbow flags hidden in the windows, and Robin followed. Eddie found work in a bakery down the road, then in a game store across the street, then was scouted by a customer for his artwork to a tattoo shop. School was easy for the first time in Steve’s life, and full of joy for the first time in Robin’s. Eddie’s art was lauded as incredible, timeless, and incredibly desired, if only in certain circles. But those circles were all liable to want ink, so Eddie was flush. Steve was fast accepted to a private school, and advocated for children to be allowed in on scholarship. Community was a necessity, not a privilege. Robin’s designs caught the eye of a feminist rocker, and her career took off with a boom. Her virginity was lost to that female rocker, too, as she loved to remind Steve.
They lived together, long past the time where it would have been possible to move apart. The children visited, Nancy and Jonathon, even Argyle, came by on occasion. Joyce and Hopper made the occasional visit, Joyce cooing over their success as only a mother can. It made Steve tear up, and he noticed it had the same effect on Eddie. He reached for his hand, met his eyes, and smiled.
Steve and Eddie began quietly, with soft touches, and fell together as easily as breathing. Robin moved in with her female rocker, Fiona, but their home was within walking distance of Steve and Eddie. Fiona learned to sign, with almost as much ease as her girlfriend. Steve thought of his mother, her warmth, her love, her joy over his happiness. He knew, as he and Eddie traded rings, that she was proud.