Blind Sight

by Meg Howrey

  But things had been hectic since their return to Los Angeles. The Last had received seven Emmy nominations, including the one Mark had gotten for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. Kati had a list of appearance requests for Mark. Mark’s phone rang or buzzed every five minutes. Masses of congratulatory flowers were sent to the house and then carried away by Carmen. Mark and Luke were trying to keep the spirit of their trip to Hawaii up but they were no longer “the boys” and they both felt it. Still, every night when they said goodnight to each other, they now said, “Love you,” and this, Luke thought, was something they could both hold on to, and was something that could not be taken away by other people.

  This was Mark’s second Emmy nomination. He had lost the previous year, to the actor who played an unscrupulous detective on a crime show and who was also nominated again. Luke had never seen that show, but in his opinion Mark had been especially great on the second season of The Last and surely deserved to win. The flashback episodes had been very intense, and you had gotten to see James Knox before he became so hard and guarded, which showed Mark’s range. Kati thinks Mark’s main competition is the African American actor on the medical drama. Mark himself does not expect to win.

  “The show is too popular and too sci-fi,” he said. “You get less cred for sci-fi.”

  “But it’s good just to be nominated, right?” Luke asked.

  “If you’re really hungry,” Mark said, “you’re happy if someone gives you a cracker. For about five minutes. Then you want more crackers and you want them to put peanut butter on them and then you want the whole box and for it to be delivered to you and pretty soon you’re just always hungry no matter what. But yeah, it’s good just to be nominated. Up until you don’t win. Then it’s like, hey you lost and you wish you hadn’t even been nominated. If you win, though, then it’s something no one can ever take away.”

  The Emmy Awards show will take place after Luke is supposed to be back in Delaware. Mark had asked Luke if he would like to stay a little longer in Los Angeles, or come back, and go with him to the ceremony.

  “It’s kind of a long day, though,” Mark told him. “And not as much fun as you might think. I guess it’s sort of fun but it’s also like a really long popularity contest and I’ll have to be on the whole night. But if you have even the slightest interest, then stay. Or I’ll fly you back out. If you think your mom would be okay with it.”

  “Sara’s birthday is that weekend,” Luke said. “She’d probably be okay with it, but I think I’d rather save her understanding for something else. You know, like another trip out here.”

  “Like for Christmas, maybe? Or New Year’s?”

  “Yeah,” Luke said.

  “Wow,” Mark said. “I think I just looked forward to Christmas for the first time in about a decade. Shit. That would be so great.”

  “Maybe you should take Kati to the Emmys,” Luke had suggested later.

  “Kati’s probably already set it up for me to go with Aimee.”

  “Have you talked to her? Aimee, I mean?”

  “Here and there. She gets it. Well, I don’t know what she gets, but she gets it about the business. Those super-sexy-looking chicks are always really practical.”

  In the Green Room now, Kati puts her hand on Luke’s knee and shakes it.

  “You okay? Can I get you anything?”

  “I’m cool, thanks.”

  “Sorry about all this stuff we’re having to do.” Kati pulls out her phone. “But this is fun, right?”

  “It’s all fun,” Luke says, truthfully, as Kati moves into the hallway to make a call. “All this stuff”—which Kati also calls “visibility”—is important for his father’s career, and Luke likes being helpful. He also likes “visibility” when it includes, as it has today, riding in another limousine and meeting the rock band and the talk-show host and wearing a special pass around his neck on a cord.

  Luke’s own visibility is now an issue. A large picture of Luke and Mark at the Dodgers game was published in a weekly magazine, and there were several more photographs of them on the Internet. People in Delaware had seen these, and word had spread.

  Luke had left his Delaware cell phone behind in Los Angeles when he and Mark had gone to Illinois, since his sisters were now using the new one and Sara was at the ashram. There wasn’t a DSL line in Mark’s room at Bubbles’s house, and Mark and Luke had taken pleasure in “going off the grid” in Hawaii, with Mark only checking in with Kati twice a day by phone. So Luke had not looked at any of his messages until they got back. Luke had nine voicemails, thirty texts, and thirty-one messages on Facebook, some from people he didn’t even know.

  “Everybody is asking me if I knew,” Amy had written in an email. “But of course, I understand. I hope you trust me, though. I feel like things ended a little weirdly with us, and your friendship is really important to me. You’re coming back, right?! I really hope so. I miss you. I think about last year all the time, and all the amazing times we had together. Remember the night you took me to that Fellini movie? Still wondering what the plot was! Call me anytime. It’d be great to hear from you.”

  They had both missed the plot of La Strada, because just as the film was starting, Luke had put his arm around Amy and she had turned to him and they had started making out. They were in the back row, and the nearest people had been several rows ahead (the Fellini Retrospective at CinemaArts had not exactly drawn lines in Acton). Amy had been wearing a short skirt, although she had on tights underneath that. Blue tights. Luke’s hand had gone far enough up under Amy’s skirt to reach the waistband of those tights, although once there he had gone no further. Luke had thought it would be very Italian of him to remove Amy’s tights, but he knew from his sisters that the putting on of tights was a complicated business, with lots of hitching and wiggling. He had not thought that Amy would want to do that in a movie aisle.

  “People from home are Facebooking me,” Luke had told his father. “I told some people at school, my friends and stuff, that I was going to see my father, but I didn’t say who you were. But people are finding out now.”

  “You’ve been outed,” Mark said.

  “I guess, yeah,” Luke nodded.

  “So what do they want?” Mark asked.

  “I don’t know that they want anything,” Luke answered, although he knew this wasn’t true. He just wasn’t sure what it was that people wanted, specifically, yet.

  “Really? Well, let me tell you, now is not the time to make new friends. Just be careful. God, these things are a pain. Don’t answer anything from people you don’t know.”

  “So far,” Luke assured him, “it’s mostly people from school saying, ‘Hey, for real? Is that you? That’s your dad?’ ”

  “I guess people will be asking you a lot of questions,” Mark said. “Shit. Yeah, we should talk about that.”

  “Okay,” said Luke. “But you know I’m not going to say anything, right? About … you know. To anyone. Not to my sisters, or anyone.” What Luke really wanted to say to Mark was, “As you would not tell, so would I not tell, there is no difference between us.”

  “You and Sara met when you were young,” Luke continued, in a rush. “She didn’t know who you were because you changed your name. We just got back in touch. You’re awesome. I don’t know what happens next on The Last. That’s it. That’s the whole story. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “I trust you,” Mark said. “I totally trust you. It’s just … you know, right? It’s kind of … it’s a lot to ask of you. I know that. I know you would never mean to hurt me. I mean, I don’t think you would. It’s just. There’s sort of a lot at stake, for me, and—”

  “Dad,” said Luke. “Dad. I hate this. I don’t want you to worry about that at all. We don’t even have to talk about it because it’s never going to be an issue.”

  Mark had said okay to that. Luke wished they could flash forward to the end of their lives, just for a moment, so that his father could see how Luke never did tell.


  “We’re back with Mark Franco,” the host is now saying.

  “Kati,” Luke calls out to the hallway. “He’s on again.”

  Kati scurries back into the Green Room and sits down next to Luke. Her bare knee touches Luke’s bare knee. Luke can smell her shampoo. Luke moves his knee away.

  Luke looks at his father on the monitor. He appreciates that his father told a funny and not especially accurate version of their surfing lessons to this host. Sitting on a board in the ocean, looking at his father sitting on another board, waiting for a wave, smiling at each other, that story belonged only to them.

  Mark is talking again now, telling another funny story. The host is smiling, the audience is laughing, Kati is nodding her head. All too soon, Luke thinks, he will be going back to Delaware, and what will happen then? Luke tries to imagine himself telling funny half-true stories about his father to Sara, to his sisters, to kids at school. Luke cannot imagine this, not because he wants to tell the whole truth, but because he doesn’t want to tell anything at all.

  “Mine,” thinks Luke, looking at his father on the television. “Mine, mine, mine.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I seem to have a lot more stuff now than when I started out the summer. I have more to think about, yes, but I actually mean physical possessions. I may need another suitcase to get everything back. I think I saw one in the garage. I have only eighteen more days here in Los Angeles, and time, along with everything else, is getting crowded.

  Earlier in the week, Kati showed up at the house with this team of people, and they carried three racks of clothes into the living room, some in my dad’s size and some in mine. I don’t even know how Kati got my size. I wonder if she went into my room and looked at the labels of my clothes, or if that’s one of her assistant superpowers. Kati told me to make a pile of things I liked and so I did, thinking that it would lead to some sort of selection process, but everything I liked they let me keep. I don’t even know if my dad had to pay for it, or what. Now I have all this new stuff. My suit got tailored for me by a guy named Diamond. It’s pretty sharp. Even I can tell that it’s significantly nicer than the suit I came with. I’ve got it on right now because in another hour a limousine is coming to pick up me and my dad and Kati and take us all to the premiere of a movie. After that, we are going to the after-party. All of this seems to be the kind of stuff that people at home who are wondering about me imagine that I am doing and that is, in fact, what I seem to be doing.

  Today Sara called me. She’s back in Delaware from her retreat. Talking to her made me think about what I’ve been doing here a little differently. Sara has that effect. The conversation was good when we were talking about her retreat, and what she experienced, and what was going on with Aurora and Pearl, and how Nana is doing and all that, but when we started talking about me, things got a little awkward.

  “So,” Sara said. “It sounds like you are in a good place with your father.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “He’s been great.”

  “You didn’t say if Mark has anyone special in his life right now.”

  Here we entered into that weird infinitely regressive territory of: does she know/that I know/that she knows, etc.

  “Um … no,” I said. “He’s pretty busy with the show and everything. We did go to dinner with a girl he’s been seeing.”

  For all Sara knows, I thought, Mark has changed. Sara believes that people can change.

  “Oh?” is what Sara said.

  “You got my emails about going to Illinois and everything, right?” I said. “I knew you wouldn’t be reading them until after, but Dad wanted to keep you in the loop.”

  “Oh yes, of course I did,” Sara said. “I appreciate Mark keeping me in the loop. Nana and I are wondering if you’d like us to invite Mark’s mother here?”

  I tried to imagine a meeting between Bubbles and Nana. Bubbles and Sara. Bubbles and my sisters.

  “No, that’s okay,” I said. “Maybe at some point we’ll all meet, but you know, actually I was thinking that Dad might want to come to Delaware sometime next year. If that’s okay with you and Nana. Or maybe I’ll come out and see him again?”

  “Of course, Luke. He’s always welcome here. So tell me more. Give me a typical day in the Life of Luke.”

  “We’re busy right now,” I told her. “Because Dad got nominated for an Emmy for his show and so he has to do publicity stuff for that. So I go with him and kind of keep him company at these different events.”

  There was a little bit of silence on the other end, and then Sara said, “Yes, that certainly is a different world.”

  “It’s fun,” I said, firmly, because I wanted Sara to enter into the spirit of it more, even though she sounded like she was still in ashram-induced detachment mode. “Like, we’re going to this movie premiere today, and then to an after-party at a big restaurant.”

  “Pearl told me there are pictures of you on the Internet with Anthony,” Sara said. “Mark, I mean.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “There was something in a magazine too, I guess. Some kids at school saw it.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard all about that. I haven’t seen it.”

  “People take pictures of him all the time,” I explained. “You get that he’s kind of famous, right?”

  “I’m not entirely out of it,” she said. “I understand that.”

  “Well, I’m just saying,” I said. “I know it’s not like they have People magazine at the ashram. And it’s not like any of the New Brethren are surfing the web. I wasn’t sure what you and Nana know.”

  “What I’m interested in is finding out how you are,” Sara said. “I think it’s wonderful that Anthony feels he’s in a place now that he can welcome you into his life, and that you are having a good time. I’m a little … I’m a little concerned, honestly.”

  “About what?” I asked. “Exactly?”

  “Yes, well,” she said, after a moment. “You know I trust your judgment. I’m sure you won’t let Mark put you in a situation you’re not comfortable with.”

  “He wouldn’t do that,” I told her. “He’s always checking to make sure everything is okay with me.”

  “And what,” she asked, “is okay with Luke?”

  I could picture Sara’s face very clearly when she said that, because the voice she was using comes with a particular look: a stare, really, only she doesn’t seem to be staring at you but at some invisible midpoint between her and you that she’s substituted for you. It’s to this third person—who, coincidentally, shares your exact biology, history, and circumstances—that Sara will express a very measured disappointment or dissatisfaction. It’s to this person that Sara has said things like, “I’m wondering how you feel about letting others clean up after you?” or “I’m sure that you are sorry to be causing anyone worry with your lateness.” This third person, invisible though he may be, always gets the picture, so I made some noncommittal sound and waited for Sara to tell me whatever she needed to tell me.

  “What I’ve been hearing so far,” she said, “is a lot about Mark. What he thinks and what he does and what he wants, and it’s wonderful that you are sensitive to that, but I’m not hearing a lot of Luke. I’m not hearing about what Luke thinks or Luke feels. I’m just wondering where Luke is in this picture that you are creating.”

  “Maybe I’m not expressing myself well?” I said, because you can sometimes cut Sara’s “let’s try to go to a deeper level” gambits off at the pass with a little speak-for-speak deflection.

  “I know that you are not someone who easily falls under the influence of other people or other ways of life,” Sara said, getting to the point. “We all have people in our lives who are different from us, and we can participate in their lives without changing who we are.”

  “Why is everyone treating this like it’s all some kind of ordeal?” I asked, because now I was really annoyed.

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” she said.

  “I cal
led Nana when we were in Hawaii,” I said. “And I was like, ‘Nana, I’m in Hawaii, it’s so awesome,’ and she was like, ‘Luke, I will pray for a safe return journey for you.’ It was like I told her I was in Baghdad.”

  Sara laughed a little at that, but I wasn’t finished.

  “Listen,” I said, “I really appreciate that you trust I can get through this difficult time of having … you know … a really great time. If everything suddenly reveals itself to not be as totally cool and simple as it seems, and I’ve been corrupted and blinded without even knowing it, then I’ll figure it out somehow and you can be sure, at that point, that I will treat it with total love and compassion just like always.”

  There is a way of saying things where you can still get away with saying, “Oh, I was just joking,” if what you said upsets someone. Both my sisters have it mastered, but I think I might have erred on the side of being irretrievably sarcastic.

  “Okay, Luke, my only concern,” Sara started to say, and then stopped. I knew that we had probably reached the point now where Sara was going to let her point go. And that is what happened.

  “You know how Mother is,” Sara said at last. “She can’t hear of anyone getting on a plane without thinking it’s going to lead to disaster. I’m sorry, honey. You were wanting to tell me all this fun stuff. Pearl said you took surfing lessons and I could just picture you on a surfboard doing great and having the time of your life. I was smiling all day thinking about that.”

  We talked a little more and then we hung up and of course now I can’t help thinking, okay, where am I in this picture I’m creating?

  Luke goes into his bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror. Luke goes back into his bedroom, retrieves his phone, and returns to the bathroom. He holds the phone up next to his face, and takes a picture of his reflection in the mirror. Luke looks at the image he has captured of himself, which looks different in a number of ways from how Luke looked to himself while he was looking at himself.

  It is difficult to know what level of consciousness nonhuman animals experience. One test for this is to show an animal a mirror and see if it recognizes that the reflection is itself, and not some other animal. Nine animals consistently pass this test: bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, bottlenose dolphins, orcas, elephants, the European magpie, and humans. Animals that fail include chimpanzees, dogs and cats, and humans before the age of eighteen months.