Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

by Sanford D. Greenberg

  We are at Logan Pass. The Continental Divide. Elevation: 2,033 meters. We are up against the mountainside. Clouds come up like out of a steaming pot. We cannot see twenty yards in front of us. Jimmy says it looks as if we are at the edge of the earth. We get out of the car. There is a thin stream curving across the floor of a valley. Arthur and I stand next to each other. We are at Bird Woman Falls. Mist comes out of our mouths.

  We stay a few days in Montana and fly to San Francisco. On our descent, we are all glued to the windows. The sun is setting.

  In the morning: August 31, 1982, a week and three days since we left Los Angeles. We are atop a hill, the city of San Francisco is below us. A trolley car passes to our left. We are listening to “Bridge Over Troubled Water” again. Arthur has always felt the violins held the last note too long.

  We get out of the car to look at the breakers. The water is churning below us. I hold Jimmy in my arms. We go over the Golden Gate Bridge. Its suspension lines look as if it is made not of steel cable but of simple rods of steel, rising up to meet the tip of the slopes. “Look at how the ocean just breathes up and down,” Arthur says. The land here is surf and brush and rocks.

  And then the trip is over. We have made a circle around the west. I have tried my hardest to show my boys that I am a regular father, they are regular boys, my friend is their friend and will be forever. I felt I needed to show them this sooner rather than later. Later, it might be too late.

  Kathryn gets a road trip all her own, except of course for Artie and me. She is wearing a white dress. It’s her fifth birthday. She’s sitting in the back seat of the car as we drive through New York. She’s quiet and doesn’t want to say anything. It doesn’t matter. This present is for me, not her.

  “Don’t you love to have a camera pointed at you?” Arthur asks her. “Whatever you do, it’s looking at you.”

  She smiles. She’s eating candy the way a little girl eats candy—delicately, with the tips of her fingers. She puts her leg up on the headrest in front of her.

  She’s wearing white knee-high socks.

  Arthur sings, “There’s no business, like show business.” His arms are crossed. He leans down into her. She smiles. All this is being filmed for posterity. Arthur says, “I’m one of those few people who realize that the camera is by definition an intimidating thing. There’s no way to have a real connection with a camera lens. You try to look into it like it’s a friend, but sooner or later you realize it’s just a piece of machinery. How do you look at a piece of machinery and have any kind of real expression?”

  Kathryn goes into a bag for another piece of candy. Arthur says she must be stuffed. She’s had one frozen yogurt, two hot dogs, one bag of M&Ms, an orange soda, some Diet Pepsi, a lollipop on the plane, an orange juice. She smiles at Arthur. She holds some bubble gum up to Arthur’s nose. He smells it. We discuss candy. Her lips are orange.

  “Sometimes,” I tell him, “at night I look down into Kathryn’s tummy and I can see all that she has eaten.”

  “Here is one of New York’s main hotels,” Arthur says. “The Plaza Hotel. It’s May 15, 1982. Saturday, 2:15. We are on earth.”

  “We can all sit in the carriage,” Kathryn says. She explains, pointing to a horse-drawn carriage, how it’s going to work and where everyone is going to sit. Arthur says that’s how we all used to travel. By carriage. On the front bench of the carriage beside us is the driver, who is wearing a white tuxedo. Kathryn sits on my lap. I hold her shoulders. We plan our trip through Central Park.

  “Here we are at the carousel,” Arthur says. “Is there a place to, as we say, park?” People bike by, hooting. It is a beautiful spring day. Arthur and I are wearing the same thing: blue shirts and khaki pants, our old standard undergraduate uniform. Kathryn walks ahead of us, on the grass. She’s not sure she wants to go on the carousel. Arthur wants a picture of the three of us, against a green fence. Kathryn doesn’t want to face the camera.

  “Artie, c’mon,” she says.

  While Arthur goes to get the tickets, Kathryn sits on the armrest of a bench. “Since you were born, I wanted to take you here,” I say. “Five years ago. Now it’s five years later.”

  Kathryn gets on a white horse on the inside of the carousel. I get on one, too. They rise up and go back down. She watches me intently. I touch her shoulder. She holds onto the reins. She has two gold barrettes in her hair. A bell rings, signaling the ride is over. We dismount and switch horses.

  Somewhere in the park, a band is playing “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Arthur and I sing along just as we did in college.

  Arthur says to Kathryn, “I see you’re wearing your Docksides. I see the sides of your Docksides. But where are the docks of your Docksides?” He kisses her. He blames her for this affection. She’s the cute one. Irresistible. He can’t help it.

  The horse leading our carriage towers above the cabs in front of us. Arthur points out the General Motors building, the FAO Schwarz building. Kathryn plays with her hair, as if she were just discovering it. People stare at us from the sidewalk.

  Kathryn doesn’t want to go to the park zoo. I say we’ll go, but not for too long. She eats more candy. This time a Hershey’s bar. Her fingers are completely covered with chocolate. Then her face is. She licks her fingers clean. She takes a napkin, licks it, and then smears it on her face. She giggles as she does this.

  Arthur talks to the people in the adjacent car. He asks them what language they’re speaking. They’re from Madagascar. They recognized him.

  Because we’re going to the zoo, Arthur sings, “At the Zoo.” From across the street, some kid says, “There’s what’s-his-name.”

  Kathryn wants another hot dog. And a grape soda. We go through the gates of the zoo. Kathryn asks that Artie hold the drink while I push her on the swings. But the swings are too crowded, so we go on the seesaw. Kathryn sits with Arthur. They plant themselves on the ground and loft me into the air. The seesaw bends from the weight of Arthur and me, two adults where no adult should be. But Kathryn, dear Kathryn, is the balance that keeps us even.

  17

  My Blindness Balance

  Sheet: Debits

  Assuming my blindness was a mistake set in motion by Dr. Mortson’s poor management and my own refusal to face facts, I cannot help but look back at the pros and cons of my life ever since. On this cosmic ledger, I’ll start with the cons, the torts, some of which I have already hinted at:

  I have not seen the faces of my children.

  I have not seen the faces of my grandchildren.

  I have banged myself up—cut my forehead and all parts of my body—too many times to count. I need serious medical attention about four times a year.

  I am no longer able to participate effectively in many of the activities I enjoyed while sighted, such as baseball and tennis, not to mention those I might have picked up subsequently. Sports were a big part of my life.

  I do not know what contemporary styles look like.

  I cannot read without the use of all sorts of complex technology, or my beloved human readers. (I never use braille—it’s too slow.) That means that I cannot quickly go to written reference material and search easily, although new text-to-speech technology has made some searches easier. At any rate, I must rely heavily on my memory, which, while good, is not perfect.

  I have to move too slowly for my taste, although everyone tells me I need to slow down.

  Visual artworks have to be described and explained to me.

  I am unaware of the expressions on people’s faces when we speak, so I cannot read those nonverbal cues so useful in business and social situations. Nor do I always know whether people are paying attention to me.

  Being in the company of a blind man often makes people uncomfortable.

  Mornings before Sue is awake are often the hardest time for me. I know the topography of my home well because we have lived in the same place for more than four decades. Nevertheless, the most basic things can all too easily go wrong. The h
ousekeeper lays out the soap and shampoo in the shower the day before, but if the soap slips out of my hand, I have to bend down, the pads of my fingers on the rough surface of the shower stall, probing for support while I grope for it. I do not have the luxury of a light grip on the bar of soap; I need to know that it will not fall again.

  I am tall. That helps me get ready in the morning because I am able to lean well over the sink when I shave, and that’s important. If I cut myself, the blood will spill into the sink. When I do cut myself, I may or may not be aware of it, but regardless, every day after I have finished shaving, I wash my face with very cold water to seal up any nicks or cuts. I make minor prayers for tiny nicks, hoping to avoid the more serious cuts. My life is full of minor prayers.

  I stand in my dressing room knowing that my suits are on one side, my wife’s things on the other. On my dresser lies everything I will need for the day—cash, wallet, keys, cell phones. My things are arranged in neat piles—for example, a stack of one-dollar bills, a stack of fives, and so on. I put each stack in a different pocket of my specially tailored Oxford suit, and then I use the bills for tipping doormen or stewards. My wallet is thin and neat, and I know, by touch, where each of my credit cards is.

  The wallet still smells like leather because I will not allow the wallet or anything else of mine to appear old or worn. Even my underwear. I am as sharp as a newly minted coin and have been since I went blind. This has become the caliber of my life. I am able to pull everyday personal articles out of places unseen—a magician’s trick. Imported goods and all kinds of swank contraband complete my disguise—British shoes and belts, lustrous ties (done in executive-suite half-Windsor knots), custom-made shirts in sharp colors and bespoke suits, linen handkerchiefs. I must stay at the edge and not slip back to that uncertain past—which is what being sloppy signifies for me. The psychological jargon would have it that “Greenberg is compensating.” Yes, Greenberg is compensating, and it works fine.

  If you were to see me in bright light, you would notice that on my forehead there are tiny lines—scars from my having run into walls, columns, corners. Similarly, there are scars on my elbows, shins, knees, and feet. These things are part of the cost of my decision to not “be blind.” Because I can afford it, I am able to have a plastic surgeon who will see me on short notice to stitch me up. (There is a different physician for weekend emergencies.) Small accidents require Band-Aids. In more serious accidents, I may split open a vein or artery. Blood will fall like a curtain, and I will need stitches. The doctor will talk casually with me in his office, and I, blood dried on my face and my lips and shirt, will chat, too, as if I were getting a haircut. These sessions are irritating—not because of the pain, to which I have become somewhat inured—but because I know that if I get stitches, I will have to wait at least a day to exercise, which I find annoying. It is also annoying that I will have to return to the doctor’s office to have the stitches removed.

  Aside from people in my company, others assist me during my day: my wife, an assistant, a driver, my two sisters, who now live near me.

  Since becoming blind, I have been very conscious of the need to be healthy and strong. As a result, I do a great deal of exercising, including aerobic training four days a week and strength training two days a week. In part, this regimen has to do with my insistence on looking sharp. But it all belongs to the determination not to be blind.

  If you were to see me in the hallway of the Watergate, you would not know that I am blind. My eyes look fairly normal, in spite of a half-dozen surgeries over the course of sixty years. Seeing me when I am eating, of course, you would know, as my hand searches around for the water glass, the bread basket, and the napkin. If I were to walk fast, you would definitely know. But I walk slowly, for my own safety.

  When Jerry Speyer gave the commencement speech at Columbia Business School in 2008, I realized that others had long been onto my game. He mentioned that I had “deftly adjusted” to my new life and then said, “Upon meeting someone for the first time, Sandy would extend his hand quickly, thereby avoiding having to search for the other person’s hand. He also wore a watch and glasses to make it easier for the rest of the world to bear the tragedy of his blindness.” Yes, sparing other people pain and embarrassment has been part of my game.

  You would think after all this time that when I take a walk with my wife, and she holds my arm, I wouldn’t care what other people think. But I do, a little. I don’t like thinking that others are taking pity, imagining the burden of our lives. The insecure part of me worries about that. I’d prefer that a stranger think simply that here is a nice, handsome couple, in the way they would call a 1950s couple handsome.

  Over the course of my lifetime, I have traveled alone many times, and it can be awkward. It is always interesting, shall I say, for me to try to use the bathroom on an airplane. The aisles are narrow; I bump into people, into their armrests. If the drink cart is in the aisle, flight attendants will sometimes get annoyed with me. Should I worry about turbulence? I don’t know because I can’t see other people’s faces. Sometimes that’s a good thing.

  When we land, a flight attendant has to help me off the plane. Then someone has to meet me at the gate, which is nearly impossible these days. I have to coordinate the entire affair ahead of time, which involves paperwork to get my driver through security. If I’m by myself at the hotel, I have to get myself to my room, find my toiletries kit in my suitcase, find my shaving gear, and so forth.

  One thing I have to do alone is use public men’s rooms. This involves its own set of delicate issues. In fact, going to the men’s room gives rise to the generalized apprehension constantly simmering just below my conscious thoughts.

  I often have to ask a stranger if he would be so kind as to show me to the men’s room, or show me out. When the stranger is silent, I have to wonder if he’s unsure what precisely I am asking of him. If I’m in a restaurant, I may turn left to go slowly down the hall, as directed. Am I about to enter the men’s or the women’s? I will slow down even more and turn up my hearing to a high sensitivity, straining to hear molecules bouncing off a ceramic urinal. I move as slowly as the formation of planets from a gathering of dust. And yet I fail all the time.

  People without sight have a special reverence for trust. I must trust people to lead me in places where I have never been. I must trust people to read written materials to me accurately and completely. I must trust accountants and business partners (and there have been betrayals in my life), as well as people who make change for me, especially with paper currency, and so on. Many are people I have encountered by chance, and so they surely cannot yet have earned my trust. It is all too frequently just not practical for me to wait around while someone earns my trust. Hence, that casual everyday term: blind trust. I am something of a Federal Reserve of trust, doling it out—sometimes reluctantly, often under pressure of circumstance—as if there is no end to it. Yet I admit my reliance on trust. The oft-repeated phrase of modern diplomacy “trust but verify” may sound wise at first blush, but it is actually an oxymoron. If you do the one, the other is negated.

  Then there are the everyday pleasures of life, or what should be pleasures. Sue and I like to go to movies every so often. A blind person going to a movie might seem to be a silly thing, and yet it is not. Steven Spielberg once said that movies are about music and the story, both of which are accessible to me. An excursion to see a movie is one of the small adventures of a handicapped life, and it means a lot, but the excursions don’t always turn out as hoped.

  I recall a particular movie Sue and I saw in a suburban Maryland theater. She drove. On the way, we talked about our children, of course—a normal thing for parents. Then we talked about what we had heard of the movie, the reviews and the word of mouth, and what other movies we had seen starring the actors in this movie. It was a big Holocaust movie, Schindler’s List, directed by none other than Steven Spielberg. He had provided me with valuable assistance at an important time in my life, pu
tting me in touch with players in the movie industry.

  Even though we got there early, the place was packed, which was not a surprise. A nervous high-school kid was in charge of things; he obviously had very clear instructions about when to let the ticket-holders standing in line into the theater. There were even police on hand to make sure there were no crowd issues.

  Standing in line with other middle-aged people, I heard talk about all the research that went into the production of the movie to try to make it as accurate as possible and about the tours the director took of the concentration camps and the team of scholars he put together. There was a tone of reverence.

  Finally, the nervous boy let everyone in. He reminded all of us that we needed to hang on to our ticket stubs because the show was sold out and there were a ton of people who wanted to see it.

  Forewarned, we filed into the theater. The lights, according to my wife, were low, a sort of amber color. The place was already crowded, so we had to make our way up to the middle of the theater. I stumbled on some steps and reached out for a banister. At first I hit it with my forearm, then rammed my shin into the step. Sue turned around. “Are you okay?” she asked, even though this kind of thing happens all the time. I said I was fine. I sensed that people saw this and took note.

  We usually try to sit somewhere in the back so we do not disturb other people. During a movie, Sue will lean into me, her hands cupped against my ear and say, “The man is wearing a black suit, like out of the forties,” or, “Okay, she’s wearing a red dress,” or, “He’s got a gun, you can’t really see it, but I bet he’s going to use it.” One might think that my wife’s having to color in the movie would be a burden to her. But I think she secretly likes it, and I sort of like it, too.

  On this occasion, as on many, Sue took my hand and led me into the row. Legs were pulled to the side, and some men stood to let us by. We found two seats together, the crowd surrounding us like a wool blanket.