Night Blindness

by Susan Strecker

  “But what if—”

  He interrupted me. “But what if belief is as strong a medicine as science? People walk across red-hot coals and mothers, even yours”—he lifted my chin so I had to meet his eyes—“pick up cars to save their children. The human body is a goddamn miracle.”

  The rain had stopped, and a thin stream of sunlight came through the window and lit up the funky kitchen with its slate countertops and cupola.

  “Can I tell you something really awful?” I heard the shower running upstairs and thought how unlike Luke it was to be playing house with a woman. “I love having this time with my dad.”

  He laughed his deep baritone laugh. “Since when is that a bad thing?”

  “I’m here to take care of him. This was supposed to be hard.”

  “That’s God’s way of fucking with you. There’s beauty in the damnedest places. Come here, let me show you something.”

  “Are we going out?” I asked. “Because people might mistake me for Jimi Hendrix.”

  He laughed again. “Nah, just down the hall.”

  He led me to a small room off the den. Beads hung from the jamb and soft sax music was coming from overhead speakers. A couch sat across from an armchair, and bookshelves lined the walls. The Power of Now; When Things Fall Apart; Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. “My sanctuary,” he said. “Where I sit with people who need a little guidance.” I stood at the threshold. “You don’t need to stand there like you got called to the principal’s office.”

  I sat on the end of the couch. The woven Indian rug felt good under my bare feet. “This isn’t really my scene. God and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms.”

  He settled in the armchair. “Lovers’ quarrel?”

  The sound of the fountain next to me made me want to take a nap. “I’m waiting for Him to answer a few questions,” I said. “But I don’t even know who He is.”

  “Ah, what does it matter? Maybe He’s a white light or an essence; maybe He’s the sun. There’s some kind of force out there, and you might as well pray to it, because data proves prayer works.” He had the voice of a good teacher, kind, but not patronizing. “I bet He could handle your questions.”

  “I don’t think He wants to hear from me,” I told him. “You and my father think I’m some kind of angel, but—”

  “God doesn’t give a fuck. He still loves me, and you should have seen me and your daddy when we were young and had too much money. We did things you’d think God would have sacrificed us on a stone slab for—drove drunk, took other people’s prescription drugs, slept around with groupies, crashed our cars, stayed up until the sun rose, and then did it all again the next night. Anything to help us run away.”

  This surprised me. “What was my dad running from?”

  “Growing up poor. Both of us. It made us feel like we didn’t deserve the money and talent and luck.” I imagined my father and Luke snorting lines of cocaine off a hooker’s belly. “Your dad found Jamie, and then they had Will and you, so he quit screwing around. When I was messed up, I couldn’t play piano at all, so I quit because of that. It was simple. We found purposes greater than ourselves.”

  “So that’s what you preach to my parents to make them so…” I couldn’t think of the right word. “Okay with this.”

  “I don’t preach.” He reached out his big hand and patted my knee. “I help people reframe their beliefs, so life doesn’t feel so hard. The first thing is to know what you can and can’t control.”

  “Oh yeah?” His hands were so square and substantial; they’d picked me up and brushed me off as many times as my own parents’ had. “What can we control?”

  “Well, we can tell the truth.”

  The truth. Ever since I’d told Mandy about Will, I’d been thinking about telling my father, but the what ifs were hounding me. What if he hated me? What good would that do? “What if it’s too hard?”

  “Your mother used to say that.” He got up, lit a candle, and gently waved it like a wand. It smelled like jasmine.

  I leaned back on the couch. “What’d you do for her?”

  He secured the candle in a holder shaped like a half-moon. “I helped her learn how to comfort herself.” He sat down again. “She was finding comfort in all sorts of things before that.”

  “How do you know she’s not anymore?”

  “Rule number one,” he said, “in action. Can you control Jamie?”

  “Hardly.”

  He nodded. “Then don’t worry about it.”

  “It’s that simple?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Okay, I can’t control ‘Why us? Why my dad? Why Will?’ So I just shouldn’t think about it?”

  His mouth turned up like he was going to laugh, but he didn’t. “Horrible things happen. We can’t know why. And if our faith has to be tested to lead us to believe in something greater than ourselves, so be it.”

  I leaned back and let my eyes close. I thought of Will dying, my father in the hospital, Ryder loving someone else. “That’s so fucked-up.”

  “Can you control whether it’s fucked-up or not?”

  I didn’t say anything. I just thought about my dad standing in the kitchen the night before, drinking a glass of carrot juice. When he put it down, he’d had an orange mustache above his top lip, little boy–style. And I’d been afraid, sitting there across from him, that if I told him what had happened, all his innocence would drain out and he’d never look like a little boy again.

  * * *

  Luke dropped me at home. When I walked through the back door, Jamie was at the breakfast table in her satin robe, studying the pages of a fashion magazine. It was already past noon. “How did this girl get a job?” She held up an ad for Revlon lipstick, as though we hadn’t had a fight, which is exactly how she ended fights, just blowing through them as if they’d never happened. The model had one stilettoed foot resting on an ottoman, blowing out candles on a cake with wine-colored lips. The cake reminded me that Will’s birthday was the next week. Jamie had planned his parties herself, throwing him bashes at the carousel park down the street, waterskiing parties, beach bashes where Luke cooked lobster over a fire pit. I walked in and took the magazine, studying the underfed teenager before handing it back to her.

  “Cankles,” I said, although I probably could have touched my thumb and middle finger around her ankle.

  “Exactly,” she said. “I had the perfect girl for this ad, and they chose her.”

  I walked to the counter and put on some coffee. I was still wearing Starflower’s ugly purple sweatsuit, but Jamie hadn’t noticed. “Want some?” I held up the pot.

  “No, honey. Diuretics dry your skin.” The canary diamond on her hand flashed while she flipped the pages. I wondered if Julian had been intimidated by a piece of jewelry that cost as much as a car. Standing there holding a package of Starbucks dark roast, I blurted out, “Are you sleeping with someone again?”

  “Now this girl is flawless.” She held up an ad for mascara, as if she hadn’t heard me. A woman with blunt bangs and smoky eyes stared past the camera. “But Elite signed her before I had the chance.”

  “Just tell me who he is.” I dumped a scoop of coffee in the maker. “I won’t tell Dad.”

  She turned the pages like she was mad at them. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I put the measuring cup on the counter. “You’re always taking secret calls and running off on vague errands. What am I supposed to think?”

  She let out a long breath. “I love you, Jensen, but stay out of this. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then tell me.” I wanted to slap her.

  “You know what?” She got up and brought her teacup to the counter, putting it down so hard, I thought it might crack. “You’re living in the past. That was a very specific period in our lives. Your father and I needed time apart. Grief”—her eyes filled with sudden tears—“is not uniform. Everyone goes through it in their own way. I wanted to tal
k to Daddy about it, about Will. More than anything else, I wanted … I needed your father to help me live without Will. But he couldn’t. I needed to remember Will. And your father just wanted to shut down.” She looked past me at the slider. “Things are different now.” She turned back to the table and flipped the magazine closed.

  “Exactly how are things different? Now Daddy just goes along with whatever you feel like doing?”

  “Stop it.” She sat in her chair and glared at me. The veins in her neck stood out. “I’m the one who’s been here.” Her voice was low and furious. “The one who knew something was wrong, that he wasn’t the same. I’m the one who had to live with it. Trying to decide what to do. Not daring to call you because every time I did, it was as if we were some horrible burden on you.” I stood at the counter, not moving. “And now you suddenly decide to come home with your brains and your research, painting in the attic and playing piano with Luke and making me feel like an idiot for who I am.” She picked up the magazine but didn’t open it. “I have done the best I can.” She looked up at me. “I am not perfect. Show me one person in the world who knows how to act when their child dies.” She studied me with a hard glare. “I am the one who has been here day in and day out with your father, eating meals with him and brushing my teeth next to him, sleeping in a bed with him night after night, and I have loved that man the best I know how. So don’t you dare come here and make me feel bad for how I live. I was the one who was still here when he was ready to talk again. To live again. It was me, Jensen. Not you. You’re the one who left. You walked out on our family. Not me.”

  We stood in the kitchen with the hot, still air around us. I saw then the faint lines around her eyes, the draw on the sides of her mouth. I saw that my mother would also die someday. I thought of what Luke had said that day in her apartment. That maybe her seeking shelter somewhere else, with someone else, made it easier for both of my parents. And now, after listening to her talk, I realized my dad had hurt her, too. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She nodded curtly. And then she picked up her breakfast plate and set it in the sink. “Nic called from Greece early this morning,” she said in an entirely different voice. “Apparently, he couldn’t get you on your cell. He’s going to some remote island and isn’t sure when he’ll be able to call again.” She took her gardening gloves from the counter and opened the slider. I watched her walk out onto the deck. She closed the slider and stood with her back to me. She was past middle age, a woman who had worked hard and been married a long time. And I felt something I’d never really felt for Jamie. I felt respect.

  20

  After the rain, a heat wave hit, and even in my skimpy sundress and flip-flops, I felt as if I were going to melt. Hot air hung above the driveway and the low-tide marshes smelled like they were cooking. It was Friday night, and my parents were on a double date with Starflower and Luke. Mandy was in the darkroom. If my father hadn’t had a brain tumor, and Nic hadn’t gone to Greece, I’d be in Santa Fe, meeting him and Hadley at Hapa on the square for sushi. “Raw fish,” Hadley used to tell us, “should only be used for bait.” But we’d convinced him. And it had become a Friday-night ritual. When I called Hadley to say hey, he told me he was in Sedona at the opening of a fusion restaurant. “They just put ecstasy in my drink. Wish me luck.” I felt so far away from him, for a minute I wanted to cry.

  I waited for the garage door to open and then backed out. It would be dark soon, and I knew I shouldn’t be driving. But I hated being alone in the house. If I painted in the attic, sometimes I was okay, but lately it had been too hot to paint. Since the summer began, I’d started four more self-portraits and finished none. I took a left out of our road, then two rights toward New Haven. When my parents went out, I usually drove to Jamie’s brownstone and banged out music I hadn’t played in years. Those lessons with Luke were reminding me how to get my groove back.

  There were three ways I could get to Route 1 and avoid Hamilton. It was so hard to pass the school where Will, Ryder, and I had been inseparable. Lately, I’d been going by it anyway, as though testing myself. Now I found myself drawn to it, rolling down the sloping driveway, past the academic buildings, to the athletic fields. I could feel them, those steel bleachers, that empty field. Just as I was almost past the parking lot, Ryder’s ringtone sounded in my purse. It was the Velvet Underground song he used to sing to me when we were kids.

  I pulled over. “Hey,” I said.

  “Are you avoiding me?”

  “It’s not like you’ve been calling me.” I put the car in park, and the breeze coming through the window stopped. Sweat gathered between my breasts.

  “But you’re mad, aren’t you?”

  There was no point in bullshitting him. “I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.” I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.

  “Where are you?”

  “Hamilton Field.”

  He was quiet for a moment, then said, “I’ll be there in five.” He hung up.

  I watched the backlight on my cell go dark and then drove into the empty parking lot. I hadn’t seen Ryder since he’d stopped by during that Fourth of July picnic. Radiation had gotten back on track without any problems, and there’d been no reason to see him. Except I thought about him all the time and wondered why, if he’d been coming to my parents’ house for years, he hadn’t been stopping by since I’d been home.

  I surprised myself by getting out of the car and walking toward the football field. That familiar melancholy hit me sideways. I felt it settling in my solar plexus, making me vaguely sick. The field was dotted with dandelions and buttercups, and the yard lines were faded. I opened the little gate and walked in. Then I sat on the first bleacher and waited. I thought about how I’d finally told Mandy and wondered if Ryder had ever told anyone.

  It didn’t take him long. I heard his car crunching the gravel, his door slammed, and I turned and watched him come through the gate. He bent down and picked a buttercup. He was wearing a white T-shirt, and his short hair was damp. He sat next to me. He smelled good and clean. He held the flower under my chin. “Yup,” he said. He was tanner than the last time I’d seen him. “She likes butter.”

  “I love butter.” I took the flower from him, picked the petals off one by one. His arm was cool against mine. Neither of us said anything for a while. The tree frogs had started in, and two low-flying bats circled the field. “Are you engaged?” I asked. His flip-flops were leather; it was comforting to see him in something other than expensive loafers. “To Dale?”

  He took a breath in. “We were once.”

  I saw her car in your driveway, I wanted to say, her shoes in your living room. I had to imagine her in your bed. “She’s wearing a ring,” I said, remembering the one she’d had on at the library. A dog was barking frantically in the distance.

  “We’re dating again,” he said. “She wants to get married.”

  “You were with her before?” I thought of those red heels. “And then broke up?”

  He stared across the field at the tree line. “I cheated on her.”

  That shocked me. Even though girls had loved him, Ryder had been so loyal. “Who was it?”

  “Some girl at a conference.” He pulled at a fraying bit of leather on his flip-flop. “I was getting a name badge, and she was across the room. The place was packed. She had your same hair, and she was wearing a dress like you wear, sort of swingy at the bottom.” He shrugged. “And she had the same shoulder blades, a little too thin, muscular.” He was speaking in an odd monotone. “I’d thought I’d seen you a million times, but this time…” He ran his fingers through his hair. It was a tiny bit longer and curling with the humidity. “I got out of line. She was standing like you do, too, with her hip out, holding her hair up. And then she turned around.” He quit talking.

  I tore the petals off the flower. “And you were with her?”

  “She was just a girl in my bed in the morning.” He said it in that same dry, cold voice he used to tel
l us medical information.

  “How’d Dale find out?”

  “I told her.” He sounded surprised I had asked. “It was easier than pretending there wasn’t something missing.”

  “She took you back?”

  He nodded.

  “When?”

  “The first night you got here.” I remembered the tea he’d brought to the deck, our initials on the arm of the glider. “I operated on one of her patients last year, and she died that night. She had two little boys. Dale was a mess.”

  “What was wrong with her?”

  “She was just crying. Really sad—”

  “No,” I told him. “What happened to the mother?”

  I knew the answer before he said it, the way he turned to me but stared over my shoulder at the trees. “Brain tumor.”

  A siren sounded in the distance. I thought of my parents out with Luke and Starflower and tried to gauge which way the ambulance was headed. “Do you love her?” I asked.

  He reached down between the bleachers and picked a dead dandelion. “Not as much as I loved you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Loved?”

  “Stop it.” He tossed the weed onto the field. “You’re married.”

  The scoreboard said HAVE A GREA SUMMER; the t had fallen off. “Nic’s in Greece.” I said it so quietly, I didn’t know if he’d heard me. Lately, I’d had the strange feeling I’d invented Nic.

  “Without you?” His hands rested on the knees of his jeans. They seemed so mature, like someone’s father’s hands.

  “He’s house hunting. We’re supposed to move there.” Sprinklers went on in the field. I felt a fine spray mist my legs. It felt good. “We’ve been talking about it for years.” I pulled my hair off my neck.