Unblinking

by Lenzo, Lisa;

  ⊙

  On that night we watched the playoffs, after we saw Jay walking down Woodward, Mel pulled the car alongside him, and I rolled down my window. I was going to say something jokey like, “Hey, blood, where do you think you’re going?” But he stepped over to us quickly, without saying a word, and remembering how I had almost slunk off myself, I ended up keeping quiet.

  Jay got into the back seat with his eyes averted. I faced forward and gazed out the windshield, and we headed back toward my house. To our right were the suburbs; to our left was Detroit. Directly under us was The Mile, cutting between the two sides like a knife, and at the same time holding them together, joining us like a spine. I didn’t say a word to Jay or to Mel as we rolled over that road. Because what could I say? Other than what I’m saying now. Mel sighed and tapped her fingernails on the steering wheel. Jay shuffled his shiny boots. The heater blowing warm air was the only other sound in the car.

  Up in the Air

  Last night I sang a new song, a you-done-me-wrong I learned from Fat Stan, this old bandmate of mine, and Claudine thinks I stared directly at her during the song’s unloving refrain. If that had been all, she might have let it slide. But then, during my first break, a woman who’d had a few drinks leaned over the left wheel of my wheelchair and trailed her fingers across my chest, while Claudine, with our little girl on her hip, stood at my other side. I introduced Claudine to that woman I didn’t know: “This is one of my fans—this is my wife.” Claudine looked like she wanted to spit. The woman continued to stroke my chest. If I’d pulled back on my wheel rims, she’d have fallen across my legs; if I’d pushed forward, I’d have run over her foot. “Oh! I’m so sorry you’re married,” she said, and then she leaned in even closer, lips aiming for my face. “Well,” I told her, grinning like an idiot, “I kind of like being married.” She murmured, “That’s too bad,” and kissed the side of my head.

  After the show, lying in bed in our camper, Claudine said, “For the rest of my life, I’m going to have this picture of that woman’s slitty eyes and her slutty lips and you smirking like a jackass and saying you ‘kind of’ like being married.”

  I wanted to explain that I’d forget that woman by tomorrow if Claudine would. I wanted to convince my wife beyond a doubt of my love for her, but I couldn’t figure out how to say it right then without sounding corny or false. Suddenly the incident seemed as absurd to me as when it was happening, so I said, “Claude, if you forget about being jealous, don’t you think the whole thing was kind of funny?”

  Claudine clamped her lips and turned her back to me.

  ⊙

  Ten hours later, in the middle of Iowa cornfields, Claude looked up from One Hundred Years of Solitude and called me a conceited airhead and an uncaring jerk. I glanced in the rearview to check if Lucy had heard. She’d fallen asleep in her car seat, her binky clutched in her little fist.

  “Do you wish you were single again?” Claudine asked, turning in the shotgun seat and frowning at me. “Well, don’t let me stop you,” she said before I could answer. “You can drop us off when we get to Illinois.”

  “What would you do in Illinois?” I asked, to pretend that her anger wasn’t bothering me and because I was curious. Claudine doesn’t know anybody in Illinois—we’re both from Detroit—and she doesn’t make friends as easily as I do. “The same thing I’d do in any other damn state,” Claudine said. “Get a real job, instead of following you all over the country. I’d stay at home and make dinner every night.”

  “You’d run out of things to serve,” I said. Claudine’s basically a breakfast cook.

  “People work around those kinds of things,” Claudine said.

  “They work around these kinds of things, too,” I pointed out.

  “If they think it’s worth it,” Claudine said. Then, lifting her long legs and bending them at the knee, she pressed her feet to the dashboard and found her place in One Hundred Years of Solitude, which she’d downloaded from the Internet from a list of great books. Claude’s read about five so far, parts of them out loud to me. I like hearing the stories, and I love listening to her voice. Mainly because it’s hers, but also because she reads like an actor. But Claude was keeping this particular book and her voice to herself while I steered through Iowa’s cornfields—she looked like she planned on not saying a word for the next five hundred miles. Her luscious hair rolled in waves over her shoulders, but she was wearing overalls, which I don’t like because the hardware reminds me of armor and the bib is just one more layer between me and her breasts. If she had on a sleeveless shirt, I could at least get a sideways peek, but she had the air-conditioner on, and sticking out from under the bib and straps was a sweater as thick as chain mail.

  I switched the camper to cruise, took my right hand from the hand controls, and laid it on Claude’s shoulder. No response. I slipped my fingers under her hair and gripped the nape of her neck.

  “You only want me when I’m angry at you,” Claudine said.

  “Otherwise I wouldn’t want you very often,” I teased.

  Claudine wrenched away from me, smacking her feet on the floor. “How do you expect me to feel? After you said you’d leave me if you had to, looking me right in my face?”

  It took me a minute to catch on. “You mean in that song by Fat Stan?” I asked. “I didn’t say that, Claude, I sang it. To a whole bar full of people.”

  “You were looking right at me! You said, ‘That’s what I’ll do’—you’d leave. And then you kept looking at me and you said it again.”

  “I sang it,” I said.

  “There’s no difference between singing and saying when you’re staring like that.”

  “Claude, I wasn’t looking at you! I couldn’t see anyone in the audience last night, it was totally dark! And I would never look at you and sing I’d leave you, even if I was thinking that, which I wasn’t.”

  Claude went back to reading, or pretending to read.

  ⊙

  Five hours later, I was sitting in the Blues Jam Café in Champaign, Illinois, waiting for the evening to wear on to showtime, wondering if my marriage was over as I watched Claudine build three-story towers out of a dozen cream thimbles. Lucy was falling asleep on my lap. With her cute little head nestled in the crook of my arm and her toddler-sized All Stars braced against my wheelchair, we looked like the perfect subject for a human-interest story—one of those pieces that hardly mentions my music and gets placed in the “Style” or “Life” rather than the “Entertainment” section of the paper, next to advice columns and recipes and photos of homeless dogs. It would be great if, just once, a journalist would consider me a musician first, and not focus on my disability. But I’m not holding my breath.

  I shifted Lucy and tried again to spot the woman I suspected was a reporter. She had disappeared from the dining room. I tried to see into the bar, but it was too dark. I looked at Claudine again, but she still wasn’t looking at me.

  The last time she got this mad, over a year ago, I truly had gone too far with a fan. Josie, this old girlfriend of mine, showed up on a night Claude had gone to bed early. During the break after my second set, Josie and I went outside for a stroll behind the bar, and when I spun around to start back, her hands found my fly. I could have stopped her, but I did not. As she knew from our high school days, with a lot of stimulation that one part of my lower body still works.

  A few days later Claude found Josie’s number on a scrap of paper, and then Claude was the one who left me: walked off in between sets, in the middle of the night, in the middle of Missouri. Took a bus back to Detroit and lived with her mother for three months. We might not have got back together at all if Claude hadn’t been pregnant with Lucy.

  For the past year and a half, since that one act of adultery, I’ve been faithful to Claude. Fans have shaken my hands, patted my shoulders, and given me hugs, but none of their lips have touched any part of me again, not counting that one kiss last night.

  Claudine set an empty cream
thimble on top of the tower she was building.

  “I feel like I’m sitting in a black hole,” I said.

  Claudine narrowed her eyes, picking up another cream thimble. She didn’t answer.

  “Beam me up, Scotty,” I said, gripping my wheel rim with my left hand and squeezing little Lucy with my right.

  “Get it out of your system now,” Claudine said, “or you’re going to look like a fool in front of that reporter.”

  “So that was a reporter I saw! Claudine, I asked you not to.”

  Claudine balanced yet another cream thimble on the foil lid of another. “When you stop encouraging groupies,” she said, “I’ll stop calling reporters.”

  “I don’t encourage them,” I protested.

  “At the very least,” she said, “you accommodate them.”

  “They’re my fans, Claude. I can’t act like I hate them.” Just then I noticed the reporter approaching, appearing out of the bar and walking toward us. I waved at her to cover my alarm. My movement disturbed Lucy, who was balanced at the edge of sleep, and she shouted, “Daddy, stop!” and gave my belly a hard kick. I only felt the vibration, as if she’d kicked me through a wall of pillows, but I snapped at her anyway.

  “You stop,” I said. “I’m not going to play any pigeon music tonight unless you go to sleep right this minute.” Lucy hurriedly closed her eyes. “Showtime,” I warned Claudine, hoping she would act like everything was fine.

  “I don’t feel like performing,” Claude said.

  Ah, crap, I thought, and looked up into the reporter’s face. “Have a seat,” I said, pulling out a chair, no doubt surprising her with my effortless reach—I’m six three, and my arms are long. “I’m Mason Hilliard,” I said, “and these are my loyal-est fans, though not always by choice: Lucille, my daughter, and Claudine, my wife.”

  The reporter laughed, sounding nervous. Then she introduced herself and said, “It’s so nice to meet you . . . and your family.” She had pale skin, rusty hair, and big, green eyes. Also a pimple on her chin that she must have recently tried to fix—the spot was red and wounded looking.

  A fast-moving waitress stopped at our table. The reporter, whose name I’d already forgotten, didn’t want anything. “And how are you folks doing?” the waitress asked.

  I hate it when they ask that when things are going badly. “Fine,” I said. “We’re all set for the moment, I think . . .” I looked at Claudine, but she was still messing around with all her little cream containers. The waitress hurried away, and I turned to the reporter.

  She asked me a few basic questions: my age (twenty-eight), Lucille’s age (eighteen months), who my influences are. Then I told her about my second CD plus the new stuff I’m working on—a jazzier kind of blues that’s both ethereal and down to earth, etcetera, etcetera. I paused, and as I watched the reporter scrawling in her notebook, I wondered how many facts would end up slightly altered or completely wrong. A few years back, a reporter put me down as a high school dropout, when the truth is I graduated with honors, though a year late; and a couple months ago, another one wrote me up as an amputee, though I’m not missing so much as a toe. Both of those mistakes had come out of interviews that had gone very well. I’d answered the questions articulately, I’d thought, and added what I wanted to say, and Claudine had been at her best—witty and cheerful and charming.

  “So, we’re near the end of our summer tour,” I volunteered, smoothing Lucy’s hair. I could feel by her weight that she’d fallen fast asleep. I added pigeon music to my plans for the evening.

  “And what’s next on your agenda?” the reporter asked.

  “Our fall and winter tour,” I said. “We’ve got one more week of summer, then we’ll head right into fall and winter.”

  “It was his idea to divide things up into seasons,” Claude said. “Gives him an illusion of change or order or something.” I’d been hoping that Claude would keep quiet. “But fall and winter are really no different than summer or spring. There are more festivals in the summer, and at any time of year we add and drop a handful of bars, but basically we just keep circling.”

  I moved my water glass and coffee cup aside, then lifted my jacket from the back of my wheelchair and spread it out on the table. “There,” I said. “How’s that for a little bed?”

  With her long lashes shutting me out, Claudine pushed up from her chair and gathered Lucille from me. As soon as Claudine had started to rise, I’d changed my mind about giving up Lucy. I’d felt a pureness flowing from her body, giving me strength. As Claudine eased her from my arms, Lucy sighed and clung to my chest. Claudine continued to gather her up, breaking Lucille’s hold, and my little girl murmured, “Daddy,” and tried to clutch me in her sleep. I wanted so badly to take her back. Instead I turned my attention to the reporter, who was observing my shoulders, which people tend to stare at, surprised by how broad and muscular they are—I use my arms more than most people do, and I also work out. I lifted my chin and tried to smile, to let the reporter know I was ready for another question.

  “This might sound like a dumb question,” she said. “But I was wondering . . . does your . . . handicap . . . interfere with your performance in any way?”

  I laced my fingers together with exaggerated gracefulness and placed my hands before me on the table. “No,” I said, “not at all. In fact, you could say that my disability has improved my ability to perform.”

  “You could say it,” Claudine said.

  “Not across the board,” I continued, as if Claude hadn’t spoken. “For instance, I only have control of my body from my T12 vertebra up. So, if I were playing a piano, I might try to reach too far and fall off the bench.” I smiled a little so the reporter would know I was trying to be funny.

  “He’s not very good at what he calls ‘lunging,’” Claudine said matter-of-factly, “on a piano bench or elsewhere.”

  I jerked in surprise and stared at my wife, though I’d just told myself that the best thing to do was ignore her. I knew she’d uttered such a slur against my manhood thinking only I would catch her meaning. Which didn’t mean I was going to let it go. “But I have perfect control of my hands and my mouth,” I said to the reporter. “An able-bodied man can’t hold a candle. Because of my improved abilities, certain other abilities aren’t missed.”

  “Still,” Claudine said, “I can’t help wondering how he performed before he fell out of that tree.”

  The reporter leaned closer. “Falling out of a tree,” she said, her green eyes glittering, “Is that how you—”

  “Injured my spinal cord? Yes,” I said. “But it looks better in print if you simply say that I sustained my injury in a climbing accident.”

  “He wasn’t climbing,” Claudine said. “He was standing on a tree branch, high on marijuana, and he tried to fly, and he landed on his head.”

  I took hold of the table edge without realizing I was going to, and without any idea of what I planned to do next. I felt stupid sitting there gripping a table edge as if I was thinking of pushing the table over. Finally I said, “I think I’ll go get ready for my show.”

  Claudine turned away with a little I-don’t-care flip of her head that made my heart ache. I glanced down at my left wheel and then at my right one to see if I had room to maneuver, then pushed the empty chair of the table behind me out of my way. The reporter rose from her chair and said, “Excuse me, but could I ask . . .”

  I manipulated my wheelchair to face her, and she stopped speaking. Up until that moment, the reporter had seen only my muscled arms and chest and my pleasant, even good-looking face. She looked down at my atrophied legs as if she’d stumbled upon the remains of a corpse. I knew that the fear and distaste glittering in her green eyes was instinctive, that it was impersonal, but I hated her for it anyway. My fingertips, I thought, are more adept than your whole body. “You had another question?” I said.

  The reporter fixed her gaze on my left shoulder and smiled crookedly. “I was going to ask,” she said, “if you
r being in a wheelchair has any relationship to the fact that you play the blues.”

  I glanced from the reporter’s pasted-on smile to Claudine’s unfocused eyes, which were still not meeting mine, even though we’d shot each other looks over this question every other time it was asked. “Actually, no,” I replied evenly. We’d learned to leave it at that. But this time I added, “My wife provides me with all the inspiration and motivation I need.” Claudine glanced at me with hurt, angry surprise and looked away. I tried to ignore the tightness in my throat and chest. “If you want to know the truth,” I said to the reporter, “I got into the blues when I was thirteen, which was years before I met Claudine, and also before I fell out of that tree.” I stuck out my hand. “Nice to have met you. And sorry we screwed up the interview.”

  The reporter protested unintelligibly. She looked embarrassed, and as if she couldn’t wait to get away. I doubted she’d stay to hear even my first set, and so she’d keep her distorted opinion of me.

  I maneuvered my chair through the crowded dining room, finally making it to the front door and out. There I popped a wheelie and, balancing on my rear wheels, I lowered myself down the stairs one step at a time, though there was no handrail to grab if I lost control. Hell, I thought, feeling a smile crack my face, I’ve fallen farther than this.

  I wheeled up and down the length of the block. I took some deep breaths. The tightness in my lungs and throat began to ease.

  What really happened is way different than what Claudine told that reporter. Claude wasn’t even there—she didn’t know me then. And although several people saw me fall, I’m the only one who really knows what it was like—from when I started up the tree to when I hit the ground and everything in between.

  What happened was this:

  I’d smoked some weed with my brother and two of his friends and two girls on the drive out to Kent Lake. When we got there they lit another bowl, and I started up the scarred knobs of a tall pine. “Mace, you monkey, bring your butt back down here,” my brother called. He probably thought I was too doped to climb. “No crazy stuff this time,” he shouted up after me. I didn’t look down at him or answer.