by Dilloway, PT
He fumbled around until he found the seatbelt. He pulled it across his body, but couldn’t find where to plug it in. Lindsey took the seatbelt from him and he heard it click into place. “Thanks. It’s been a while since I was in a car.”
“It’s fine. Let me give you the grand tour, then. This is a 2003 Ford Explorer. The lease is up in about two months, so I’ll probably get something else. Anyway, it’s a maroon exterior with gray leather seats. There’re our two seats in the front, then one row of seats and a third row that can fold up for extra storage. Not that I use all that room.”
“Why do you have such a big car—SUV—then?”
“Oh, because everyone else has one. Because in theory they’re safer, unless they roll over. Mostly, it’s because a big girl like me needs a big car. Me getting out of a sedan looks like one of those clown cars in the circus.”
“That makes sense.”
“Actually, I think I need to see a shrink myself.” She laughed, but he noted a deadness to the sound. “Well, any other questions before we get rolling?”
“No.”
“Great. Now, I think the place to start looking for a gift for your lady friend is Wal-Mart. That’s a department store, like Kmart except with lower prices.”
“Oh.”
“They have all sorts of things: clothes, electronics, decorations, housewares, beauty supplies. Pretty much everything except cars.”
“Sounds like a good place to look.”
“They opened one on McAlbee Point about five years ago.”
“Really?” He thought of all the times he and Rodney Jackson had gone up to the point to watch the fishing boats come in. After he lost his sight, Max still went up there when he wanted to be alone. By middle school he’d heard about what the teenagers did on McAlbee Point at night and dreamed of taking Alicia Hauptmann up there. He would have asked her the night of her birthday party, if his parents had allowed him to go.
“On the left, in an old field, is where they’re going to put in a new assisted living center. That’s like apartments for old people. My mom moved into one of those outside Chicago a couple years before she died. They’re pretty nice. You’re still independent, but there’s help nearby if you need it. Not like a nursing home where they have to mush up your food. Max, is something wrong?”
“No, I was just thinking of how much things have changed.”
“Maybe we should go back. This might be too much for one day. We should go a little more slowly.”
“I’ll be fine. Let’s keep going.”
“You’re the boss. Where did your parents live on the island?”
“Our house was on Farnsworth Cove. Dad said we were lucky to get it when we did, because five years later the prices skyrocketed. Do you suppose it’s still there?”
“I don’t think so. There’s been a lot of building over there in the last couple years.”
He thought of the old house. It wasn’t much bigger than the cottage he’d built for Sarah. Before his parents moved in, the house had been rented out to tourists for the summer. After he lost his sight and was feeling his way around for the first time, he sometimes came upon initials carved into a floorboard or the back of a closet door. He always wondered how he’d missed those in his sighted days. Now it was gone, like his parents.
He wondered how many of the people he knew from his childhood still lived on the island. What had become of Rodney Jackson or Alicia Hauptmann? Did Rodney ever get to play linebacker for the Seahawks? Alicia, she was so good at math and science, maybe she’d won a Nobel Prize.
The car came to a stop and Lindsey turned off the engine. “We’re here,” she said. Max reached for his seatbelt and made sure to duck his head when he exited the SUV. “This place is always busy, so make sure you stay close. If you get lost, they’ll use you as slave labor.”
“Really?”
“No. Hold on a second and I’ll get a cart.” He leaned against the side of the Explorer and felt the sun on his face. What was Sarah doing right now? Was she happy? Was she in trouble? Maybe he could take the bus later to check on her.
He heard a rumbling of wheels like at the hospital and flattened himself against the Explorer, but it was only Lindsey. “Here, hold on to the edge of the shopping cart. That way we can stay together.” He did as instructed, gripping the plastic cart with his right hand while holding his cane in the left.
They proceeded slowly through the parking lot, stopping to let a car go past. The music coming from the car thumped with bass, but he couldn’t make out the words. “I’ll have to explain hip-hop and rap to you later,” Lindsey said.
As soon as they went through the doorway, Max heard voices coming from every direction. He heard a child crying, a couple arguing, and a trio of girls giggling. Then there were the sounds of beeping and plastic rustling from his right. He heard a voice coming through overhead speakers say, “Kathleen to register thirteen. Kathleen to register thirteen.”
He tightened his grip on the cart as they waded into the swirling hurricane of activity. “Are you all right?” Lindsey asked.
“I’ll be fine. This place is so busy.”
“Some days it seems all of the greater Seattle area shops here. So where do you want to go first?”
“How about clothes?”
“Sure, that’s straight ahead. What are you thinking of buying? Blouse, pants, skirt, dress, nightgown? How about some lingerie? I’m just kidding.”
“I guess a dress to start with.”
“Right. So what do you know about Sarah? How old is she? What size is she?”
He thought of Sarah lying on the couch of that terrible house, looking old and tired. No, he wasn’t here to buy clothes for her. He thought about the young, beautiful Sarah he’d left behind. “She’s about twenty-eight I guess. Five-nine, one hundred ten pounds, I think. I might be a little off.”
“All right, sounds like plus size and junior miss are out then. We’ll just make sure to keep a receipt.” They wound their way through racks of clothes, Lindsey describing them to Max as they went. “Those are blue jeans that are cut really low so most of your rear and midsection are showing. Those are a little too trashy for your girl, I think.”
“I suppose.”
“And those right here are T-shirts in various colors, some with numbers like a jersey or others with clever titles like “Princess” or “Goddess” on them in glitter.” Max thought of that pink T-shirt with “Sassy Bitch” displayed on the chest and how that shirt couldn’t cover her bloated stomach. He shivered and then violently shook his head.
“Here we go, some nice lightweight summer dresses. Sleeveless, probably would go down to the knees on Sarah. The kind of thing I could never wear. What do you think?”
He imagined Sarah in such a dress. Yes, something simple that would let her natural beauty come through. “Sounds good. What colors do they come in?”
“All sorts of colors. We got red, yellow, green, white, turquoise.” He imagined Sarah in each color and stopped at the last one. Turquoise like the ocean water in her first dream. He pictured her standing on the beach in that dress and smiled. “Max, are you all right?”
“That’s the one. The turquoise.”
“If you’re sure.” After Lindsey put the dress in the cart, Max reached out to feel the soft fabric. He imagined it warm from Sarah’s body and pressed against him as they kissed. Someday, if she woke up, maybe she could wear this.
They continued through the clothing section with Lindsey describing everything to him. She insisted they go through the men’s section as well so he could update his wardrobe. “This is a polo shirt, the kind the golfers wear. I think you’d look good in it. It would look even better with some Dockers.”
“Dockers?”
“Dress slacks. Chinos. They don’t wrinkle so you wouldn’t have to worry about ironing.”
“That would be helpful.”
“If you’re going to work for the church, though, you’ll need a suit. They don’t sell those here. W
e’d have to go to the mall for that.”
“The mall?”
“Just down the road. It’s even bigger and busier than this place.”
“Oh.” They walked through every department in the store. So much progress had been made in the last twenty years. His mother had refused to buy a microwave because of fears about radiation, but now they were so small and cheap that Lindsey said everyone used them. “I’m not sure what I’d do without one of those,” she said. Then there was the dizzying array of electronic entertainment devices: Playsation 2, XBox, GameCube, MP3 players, DVDs, home theater systems, plasma TVs. Lindsey said people could even play games on portable telephones now. He remembered after Christmas in first grade when Rodney’s parents gave him an Atari 2600. They’d been so excited to play Pong. Now Lindsey said the graphics were lifelike.
“It’s amazing,” he said.
Then she showed him a personal computer. “You can do all sorts of things with these. Type reports, spreadsheets, slide shows, and of course play games. Then there’s the Internet.”
“Internet?”
“It’s a computer network. You can talk with people from all over the world about anything. Mostly people use it for pornography, dating, and discussing Star Trek.” She laughed and then squeezed his arm. “I’m kidding. For our next session we can do a little browsing.”
She showed him a multitude of decorations for the home: candles, throw pillows, rugs, lamps, and even recliners. He imagined them all in Sarah’s cottage, but it was too small to hold everything. She needed a bigger house. A palace where she could spend her days in comfort and safety.
When they finished their tour of the store, they went to the check-out, where Max again heard the beeping and plastic rustling sounds from earlier. They shuffled forward a few steps at a time until they reached a counter that felt like the table in the banquet room of Holy Redeemer. “Kathleen, our cashier, is going to take our items, swipe them over a laser scanner and put them in a bag for us to take home,” Lindsey said. She took the dress from the cart and Max heard a beep followed by plastic rustling. Now he understood.
Max reached for his wallet. He wouldn’t have enough money to pay for everything. “Don’t worry about it,” Lindsey said. “Take a step back and I’ll swipe my credit card through the reader here.” She punched buttons and then he heard a tearing of paper. “That’s all there is to it.”
“Oh.”
Outside, she said, “When are you going to see Sarah again?”
“Tomorrow, I guess.”
Lindsey clucked her tongue. “We should have got some wrapping paper. Maybe Mrs. Garnett has some at Midway House.”
“I suppose.” After they put the groceries away and Max got back into the SUV, buckling himself in this time, he turned towards Lindsey. “Thank you for all your help.”
“It’s no problem. I’m always happy to help a patient.”
“Is this part of your usual treatment regimen?”
“To be honest, Max, I haven’t ever had a patient like you.”
“Oh.”
“Most patients around here are just neurotic upper-class types. They need someone to hold their hand and maybe a prescription of anti-depressants now and then. You’re the first patient of mine I think really needs me.”
Max didn’t know what to say. He’d never heard any of his other doctors talk this way. It’s just another trick, he told himself. He couldn’t take anything she said at face value. She was still a doctor.
She was right, though; he did need her. He needed her eyes and her knowledge to make Sarah’s world better. The trip to Wal-Mart had been a good start, but he needed more. He needed a better idea of how to build a house for Sarah.
“I know this sounds odd, but there’s something I’ve been wanting to see.” He cleared his throat and worked up the courage to make the request. “I haven’t really been inside a house in a long time and I thought that maybe someday, when I got out of Midway House, or someday if Sarah and I—” He stopped speaking, knowing he’d said too much.
“I see. You want to look at some houses. I know just the place.” She reached into her purse, taking out her portable phone to make a call.
Chapter 9
Max sat in a contemplative pose, leaning forward on his cane and closing his eyes as they headed for their destination. Lindsey studied the look of concentration on his face and again tried to imagine not being able to see. She’d slept with a nightlight until she was ten; being surrounded by darkness all the time would drive her to the mental asylum in a week.
When she was first told about Max’s case, she thought it would put her on the road to getting off Gull Island. The challenge of rehabilitating Max would draw the attention of her superiors and maybe even lead to an article in The New England Journal of Medicine with her byline attached. He certainly was the most interesting case she’d met in the two years since graduating from medical school. A blind man institutionalized for the last twenty years with obvious feelings of guilt over the deaths of his parents and a social anxiety disorder gave her more fertile ground for study than the run-of-the-mill teenagers with self-esteem issues, housewives with eating disorders, and men with midlife crises she saw at Gull Island Hospital.
The Explorer hit a bump, but Max absorbed the impact without flinching. He was so bound up emotionally after so much time in virtual seclusion that she wondered what had prompted Dr. Lee to release him. His recent inquisitiveness did give her some hope, though. Maybe she could reach him and pry him out of that comfortable little cocoon he’d spun for himself at Gull Island Psychiatric.
“We’re almost there,” she said.
“OK,” he said in his usual deadpan voice.
“It’s a lovely place. Part of this new development under construction on Finley Bluff. We should probably go back to the Wal-Mart for some fancier clothes to fit in.” On the outside she laughed, but inside she groaned. She always made jokes in uncomfortable situations. No matter how she analyzed it by herself and with colleagues, she couldn’t cure the self-defense mechanism she’d leaned on for fifteen years now. It had become too fused with her nervous system, like a parasite.
“You think so?”
“No, it’s fine. I was just kidding.”
“Oh.”
She stepped on the accelerator to power the SUV up the incline leading to Gullcrest Heights. Halfway up the unnamed drive she saw the rust-colored shingles and white eaves of the house rising in the Explorer’s windshield. Immediately she felt back at home in Oak Park. “We’re here,” she said.
“Great,” he said. She saw muscles twitch in his cheek as if he were trying to suppress a smile. She wondered if this trip meant more to him than he’d let on.
She turned into the driveway and made sure to stop well before the fragile glass-paned garage doors. Max unfastened his seatbelt and bounded down from the Explorer as though he’d been riding in it forever. He is a quick learner. Dr. Lee had noted on Max’s file how quickly he’d mastered the GED test, despite almost no formal education for eighteen years. But memorizing trigonometry formulas and learning to unbuckle a seatbelt were a lot easier than overcoming his psychological baggage.
She took his arm, taking note of how he flinched at her touch, and then led him up the sidewalk to the front steps. He reached out with his cane to tap the base of the front door. She thought at first he meant to knock on the door, but instead he ran his hand over the door and along the glass panes on either side with the same care as when he’d touched her face during their first session.
Her cheeks turned warm at the memory of his touch. His hands were so strong and yet so soft, like Dad’s. The entire time he’d run his fingers over her face, she had worried about a repressed Oedipal complex. After she went home that night, she realized he was the first man to touch her in three years.
“How big is it?” he asked her, shaking her back to reality.
“Two stories, four bedrooms. I forget how many square feet exactly. It’s almost as
big as the hospital.” She meant it as a joke, but recognized the bitterness in her voice. Gull Island Hospital couldn’t be too much bigger than this house. “Come on, let’s go inside.”
She lifted up a softball-sized rock next to the doorway, underneath which Audrey had said she’d left a key for them. Lindsey would have to drop by her house tonight to return the key, which meant another night of drinking expensive wine while Audrey complained about her nonexistent love life. As a psychiatrist, Lindsey was expected to have the magic solution to make Audrey irresistible. Drop fifty pounds, don’t use a paintbrush to put on your make-up, and wear a more supportive bra, Lindsey wanted to say. As if she had any room to talk. Every time she saw Audrey, she couldn’t help seeing what she would look like in fifteen years when she reached middle age. It was not much to look forward to. The things I do for a patient, she thought.
She held open the front door to usher him into the foyer. Max started to the left, towards the staircase and dining room, but Lindsey took his elbow, guiding him into the living room. Right away he began feeling the wallpaper with the same look of concentration he’d worn on the ride over. “It’s beige,” she said. He nodded and continued to move his hands along the wall.
Lindsey sat down on a white-and-blue-striped sofa and sighed. It was just as well that Audrey had been too busy to meet them here. She would never understand what Max was doing and would probably make some insensitive remark. Audrey had left her racist family in Georgia—her great-grandfather had founded the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan—but her racist family would never leave her. No one could escape their families, no matter how far they went, Lindsey knew from personal experience.
Max had reached a window by now and ran one of the drapes through his fingers. “What color are these?”
“Dark blue,” she said. He nodded and continued his exploration of the room. “Are you going to be all right here by yourself for a few minutes?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Good, I’m going upstairs to the little girl’s room.” She chugged upstairs and went down the hall to the master bathroom. The Jacuzzi tub, dual sinks, and marble counters all reminded her of the house in Oak Park.