Sleep With The Lights On

by Maggie Shayne

  Point is, I was too scared to take the bandages off myself. I don’t even know what I was scared of, exactly. That the transplant hadn’t worked and I would still be blind, maybe, or maybe that I would be able to see again and it would be terrible.

  I know, stupid, right? How can seeing be terrible? I guess it’s like anything else in the human psyche. When we don’t know what to expect we’re all alike: terrified. And frankly, I probably would have gotten over the fear and yanked the eye patches off myself if I’d had to wait very long for the doc to do it. But I didn’t. Just overnight.

  So I was sitting up in the bed, listening to the clock tick and my sister yap at me in an effort to try to distract me from my impatience. My breakfast tray was still there, wafting aromas that weren’t really bad but were making my stomach turn anyway. Amy was there. She was unusually quiet. Barracuda Woman was there via Skype, on a laptop beside my bed. The twins were at the mall. Sandra wisely thought maybe I’d like to see them for the first time with just us four.

  Mott hadn’t even shown up. Him and his idea that being blind was something to be proud of. Like we should have a freaking parade. Blind Pride. Fuck that. If I could see, I damned well wanted to.

  And there it was. My hopes were high. I hadn’t intended to let them climb up there, but they’d ascended to the point where they were making me dizzy. God, I was a glutton for punishment.

  And then there were the footsteps and the smells that told me Doc had finally arrived.

  “About time,” I said.

  “I said nine. It’s only 8:30.”

  “Left my braille watch home. Feels like noon of next year to me.” My voice was shaking. Why the hell was my voice was shaking?

  She came closer, moved right up next to the bed. Sandra was on the other side, and she slid a hand over mine, closing it tight, and said, “I’ll probably look like an old lady to you.” She was shaking, nervous and hopeful, and near tears.

  “Shit, I’ll probably look like an old lady to me. At least you had all morning to do hair and makeup. I’ve never smelled so much hairspray in my life.”

  She laughed softly. “It’s true, I did. Spent an hour and a half. It’s not every day your sister sees you for the first time in so long. God, I was what, sixteen?”

  Doc’s hands were at the back of my head, and she started unwrapping the gauze, layer by layer.

  “Don’t worry,” I told Sandra to lighten the mood. “I wasn’t expecting you to still be three feet tall and wearing bunny jammies. But you’d better have kept the dimples and curls. I’m probably a hag. It’s unfair.”

  “You’re beautiful, Rachel. You’ve always been beautiful.”

  “Yeah, that’s the ticket. Make me cry so I can’t see shit even with my new eyes.”

  I wasn’t even kidding. Really.

  “Don’t expect too much,” Doc said. “It’s going to be better than the last times, but still a little blurry for a couple of months. But it will improve. Every day it’ll improve.”

  “Thanks for the warning. Will you hurry up, already? What are you, rolling the gauze back up to reuse as you go along?”

  “You are such a bitch, Rachel,” Amy said. But she said it with love, and her voice was thick with tears already.

  The gauze was gone. I could feel it. Now there were just two thick pads over my eyes. Doc said, “Keep them closed until I tell you to open them, okay?”

  “You want me to wait longer? Yeah, what the hell, it’s only been twenty years.”

  She had her fingertips over the pads, just in case I got antsy, I guess. “Amy, can you get the lights? Sandra, the blinds? I want it dim in here for this.”

  They moved. The light switch snapped; blinds whispered shut.

  And then the pads were being peeled away. “Not yet, Rachel. Keep them closed. Just for a few more seconds.” Doc dabbed my eyes with something warm and wet. Then it moved away. “Okay.”

  Okay, I can open them now.

  No, I can’t do it.

  “Go ahead, Rachel. It’s all right. Open your eyes.”

  Just do it already. What are you gonna do, walk around with your eyes closed for the rest of your life?

  God, why is this so hard?

  I made myself do it. And you know, as much as you might think you can open your eyes slowly, you can’t. You really can’t. Try it, go ahead. There’s just no way. Eyes are either closed or open. Mine were closed.

  And then they were open.

  And it was dim, but...I could see. I couldn’t believe it. Had to double-check.

  Am I really seeing, or is this imagination?

  No, no, it was real. I could see people in the room. Yes, blurry, I guess, but consider what I had to compare it to. Women, three women, and I almost panicked, thinking I wouldn’t know who was who and would hurt their feelings.

  Duh, you knew who was who before, didn’t you?

  Right. Sandra’s on the left, holding my hand. I shifted my new eyes to her, and then I clapped my hand over my mouth and the tears started up. “I can see you,” I said behind my hand.

  She was smiling and shaking her head, and crying, too, bending to hug me, but I pushed her away. “No, no, I want to look at you.” And then I clasped her face in my hands and stared at it. Smooth porcelain skin, and blue blue eyes, and laugh lines. My big sister, all grown up. I stared at her until I saw the girl she’d been in her face, in her blue eyes. Her hair was still curly, and I thought it was still gold, but it was too dark to be sure.

  I turned from her to look at Amy by the foot of the bed. And I laughed and smeared tears off my cheeks with one hand, careful of my eyes. “You look just like I thought...only not as Goth and even cuter.” She was, short, a little more rounded than she wished she was, short dark perfectly straight hair parted deep on one side. I knew it was dark red—not auburn but burgundy; I’d heard her say so. But in the dimness it looked black.

  “I usually am more Goth, but I toned it down for this,” she said, grinning, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  And then I looked at Doc. And blinked. “You’re Asian?” I burst out.

  She broke into laughter, wiping tears from her cheeks.

  “Well, you could have told me! What the hell kind of Asian is named Fenway?”

  “A married one.”

  I looked at the laptop on the tray table beside the bed where BW was sobbing her eyes out from inside a little box on the screen. This must be the magical Skype I’d heard so much about. She had a predictable short, sleek silver hairstyle, but I couldn’t see her face, because she had dropped it into her hands and was bawling like the rest of us.

  “God, BW, look up will you?”

  She did. Man, she was a classic beauty, sculpted cheekbones, big brown eyes. And sharp. Even if they were weepy at the moment.

  She smiled at me. Her teeth were so white!

  “You’re gorgeous! You’re all gorgeous.” I couldn’t stop looking from one woman to the other. “God, everything is...brighter. Even in the dark.” Then I looked at Doc again. “Can’t I have a little more light?”

  Nodding, she went to the window and opened the blinds just a crack, and I could see even more. If it was blurry, I didn’t know it. Since, aside from twenty-year-old memories, I had only darkness to compare it to, and the teasing glimpses offered by transplants gone by, it seemed perfectly twenty-twenty to me.

  “This is amazing. Oh my God.” Please last, please last, please just fucking last this time. “When can I have full blasting sunlight?”

  “In a few days. Here.” She leaned over and slid a pair of tinted glasses on my face. “You need to wear these—these, not your designer ones—until further notice, okay?”

  I pulled them off and looked at them. “Oh, come on, these? Can’t I pick out a nicer pair? You know, something trendy, with spangles or—” I stopped and looked at Sandra, grinning like a loon ’cause I could still see her. “For all I know, these are trendy. Are they?”

  “Not in the least,” Sandra said. Then s
he leaned over and picked up the top of the tray table, revealing a mirror.

  And there I was, staring at myself. At me. Seeing me more clearly than I had in twenty years. It was so surreal my stomach twisted a little. “That’s me?” I leaned closer, tipping my head at various angles, touching my hair. “It’s like looking at a stranger.”

  “A beautiful stranger,” Sandra said.

  Amy added, “Yeah, but way more beautiful when you’re not in a hospital bed, post-op, no makeup, kind of pale and tired. Trust me, you look way better on your good days, hon.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off myself as I searched for the image I used to identify with, which I only now realized was a slightly older, slightly taller twelve-year-old. With boobs.

  “We’ll go shopping for prescription glasses in any style you want the minute you get out of here,” Sandra promised. “But you really need to listen to the doctor and put those back on for now.”

  I nodded but didn’t obey. “When do I get out of here?” I asked. Because I wanted to see everything.

  “Later today,” Doc said.

  I shook my head in amazement. Later today I was going to walk out of this hospital without a cane, without having to count my steps or listen for traffic. “I don’t see how life can get any better than this,” I said, sounding like one of my own books.

  Almost as soon as I said it, I wanted to snatch the words back. And not just because they made me gag. It didn’t pay to tempt fate like that. I mean, maybe life couldn’t get any better or maybe it could. What I knew for sure was that it could definitely get worse.

  And it was about to.

  ’Cause really, miracles are just fairy tales. And reality pretty much sucks.

  4

  Being able to see was so damn good, I almost started believing my own bull. I mean, really, you’ve gotta give me some leeway here. After being blind for twenty years, getting your sight back is a pretty big deal, and even the bitchiest of skeptical bitches would start to waver a little.

  We had agreed to keep my “miracle” quiet for a while, which was great. I just wanted to bask in seeing for a little while before going public with the whole thing.

  I had never seen my own house, and my first day home from the hospital all I wanted to do was walk through just looking at it, you know?

  I rode home in Sandra’s minivan. Jim had to work, but the twins were in the backseat, chattering all the way about how I would now be able to watch Misty’s soccer games, and Christy’s cheerleading routines, and ohmygod the school play was next month. It was hard to tune them out so I could gaze out the windows at the scenery, but I managed.

  We took the Whitney Point exit, left at the light and straight through the village, and I was taking it all in. The river, really wide and shallow, and pretty, the mix of nice and junky-looking businesses, the big brick school building that had probably been there for a century or so, minus the various additions. We took a right at the Mobil-slash-McDonald’s, and drove until the pavement ended and became the unpaved track that twined around the lake-sized reservoir. I lived beyond the backside of the dam, surrounded by state forest and the reservoir itself. I realized as Sandra drove just how far I had retreated from the world.

  Made sense, I guess. I was in the public eye in my work. I liked to hide my private life away. I mean, I wasn’t paparazzi-bait famous, but still, I was a total fraud. Privacy was important when you were running a scam as big as mine.

  When we rolled up to the gated driveway I sat there gaping. My house was like a fairy-tale cottage on crack. Steep peaks, curved clay shingles, some sections cobblestone, others rich maple wood. The windows were tall with red-stained shutters, and the front door was a like a slice from a giant redwood tree. My curving walkway was bordered in thick beds of mums...yellow, brown, red, orange. I got out of the minivan and stood there staring at them like a jackass until Sandra put her hand on my shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?” I looked past her at the tall, lean, pair of blonde cover models who were my twin nieces. My mental camera had totally malfunctioned on those two. I’d been picturing a pair of chubby twelve-year-olds with their mother’s dimples, I guess, even though I knew they were sixteen. Everyone looked way too serious and sappy-eyed. So I grinned, going for the kind I’d heard called shit-eating and said, “This is really fuckin’ cool.”

  They laughed. Great. Sappiness averted. We all went inside.

  Family party that first night. Amy, who I considered family, Sandra, the twins—still no Mott. And, of course, no Tommy. Sandra and the kids avoided mentioning his name, and when I did, the subject was gently, firmly changed. Sandra had been in touch with the police again. Still no news. Let’s focus on celebrating tonight. Tommy would want us to. End of subject.

  Eventually everyone went home. Well, everyone but Amy, who hung back, offering to help with the dishes. But I knew that wasn’t what she really wanted.

  So I washed, and she dried, and while I was thinking this china pattern really didn’t suit me at all and imagining how much fun I would have picking out something new, she finally got to the point.

  “So there are a couple of things...”

  I pulled the plug on the sink. “I could tell. What’s wrong, Amy? You never keep quiet for this long. You afraid I won’t need an assistant anymore now that I can see, because honestly—”

  “Pshhhhh. Are you kidding? You couldn’t get along without me if you had four sets of twenty-twenty eyes.”

  “Oh, you think so, do you?” I looked her up and down for effect. She wore short black boots with killer heels and silver buckles, a pair of black leggings under a skintight miniskirt, an off-the-shoulder top that looked like it had been caught in the gears of the washer and torn up a little, with a white cami underneath, and a silver necklace with a giant skull. “Your job is safe, kid, unless I find out you’ve been dressing me like that, in which case, you are so fired.”

  She smiled so big I got distracted by her teeth. Straight and white except for the incisors, which stuck out in front of the rest a little bit.

  “You could not even hope to pull this off,” she said with a look at her own getup.

  “Why would I want to?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “So, if you’re not worried about your job, then what’s up?”

  Her demeanor changed. I couldn’t put my finger on it until I stopped looking and started feeling again. Her body had shifted away from mine a little, and I sensed her shrinking into herself, not quite as open as before. She’s hiding something. Or wishing she could. But she knows she has to tell me, whatever it is.

  “Come on, Amy. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m dying to be alone in my house for a while. Just spill it, so you can leave already.”

  She did look at me then, and offered a crooked smile, more on the left than on the right. “I hope you never change,” she said. “You’re such a bitch. I just love you so much. So yeah, there’s one little thing.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You know how we talked a while back about getting you a service dog?”

  Okay, that was not what I’d expected. “Yeah?” I stretched out the word.

  “Well, we got all the stuff, and then we never got the dog. But we never got rid of the stuff.”

  “The stuff,” I repeated.

  She nodded, and now she was hopeful, opening up a little more, I felt it, and heard it in her voice. I could see it, too, in the lift of her dark, perfectly plucked eyebrows. Are my eyebrows that perfect? I have to go check.

  “Yeah, the dog bed, and the leashes, and the feeding bowls and dog toys, and—”

  “But, Amy, I don’t need a service dog now.”

  “I know. But I wanted a dog, anyway. I mean, I got into the idea when we were thinking about one for you. And then my friend Nikki told me about this one that really needed a home. Not a service dog, just a...just a dog.”

  I was starting to get a very worried feelin
g.

  “She’s kind of old, and her owner died, and none of the family wanted her and she was going to get sent to the shelter. I was gonna keep her myself, but my landlord won’t let me, and—”

  “But, Amy, I don’t need a dog.” Hadn’t I said that already?

  “Oh, come on, Rache. You’ve got all this room. The place is already fenced in. You can afford to hire someone to take care of her—hell, I’ll take care of her. For free. And she’s just such a great dog, and she’s so quiet you don’t even know she’s here.”

  Not you won’t even know she’s here, but you don’t even know...

  “Just meet her, okay?”

  I closed my eyes. “She’s in my house, isn’t she?”

  “Once I saw her, I just couldn’t say no. She’s in the garage.”

  Of course she was. It’s not like I had a fleet of cars taking up space in the attached three-car garage. Hey, there was a notion. I could buy a car now. Of course I’d need a license first, which would mean learning to drive. Who the hell would have the patience to teach me? Fuck them, I’d teach myself. Practice in the driveway.

  Amy took my hand. “Come on.”

  Right. The dog. The invader in my domain. I would nip this little scheme in the bud right now.

  Amy all but dragged me across the huge kitchen, enthusiastic now that she’d broken the news. It was stainless steel and white. In fact most of the rooms on this floor were white, and that was going to have to change. The place needed color. Or maybe I needed it. Splashes of brightness everywhere. Why waste eyesight on white? We stopped at the door that led directly into the garage, Amy opened it up and said, “Myrtle?”

  Myrtle? Is she fucking serious?

  Something moved in the shadows. There was a snuffling, a snorting and then, I’m pretty sure, a fart. Amy reached around and snapped on a light switch I hadn’t even known was there—note to self, find and memorize locations of light switches. And then it came shuffling and snuffling toward us, and my newborn eyes widened as this short, fat, squish-nose creature that did not really look much like any dog I’d ever seen waddled closer, not stopping until its head bumped my shin. And then it sniffed and looked up.