[17]
Daniel is learning how to live with one sighted eye, learning to cope with the peculiar flatness ofthe world, the odd augmentation of sound, the unnerving momentary losses ofbalance, the trepidation be-fore stairways, the sense ofplunging while merely stepping offa curb, and he is even learning to live with the pervasive feeling that there is something or someone just behind him, or just to the side ofhim, a threatening presence that is out ofrange ofhis reduced arc ofvision, and that this peripheral, punishing phantom is about to pounce, grab, push, stab, or shoot him.What he is still having particular trouble with is keep-ing the secret ofhis sudden infirmity.He wants to talk about it, he wants help, he wants a little credit for how well he’s coping;concealment is against his nature, and now he must add the arrival ofthis partial blind-ness to his stockpile ofsecrets.
Finally, however, Daniel submits to a series oftests, under the aegis of Bruce McFadden.First, Bruce conducts his own examinations, and then, finding nothing amiss, he sends Daniel toWindsor Imaging, for an MRI and then a CAT scan, and when all the results are in he sits with Daniel in his office to go over them.Among the other decorations in McFadden’s office—and it’s an eccentric old space, filled with angles and oddities—are framed black-and-white photographs ofsome ofhis favorite blind musicians:Ray Charles, StevieWonder, Roland Kirk, Al Hibler, Ivory Joe Hunter, BlindWillie McTell, the Five Blind Boys ofMississippiandthe Five Blind Boys ofAlabama, together in the same photo, which makes it an artifact ofunusual distinction, and the English jazz pianist George Shearing, the one white face in the lot.
“It’s the old joke,”Bruce says, tilted back in his Swedish orthopedic chair, with its childishly bright-blue upholstery and its brilliant chrome hardware,“the one that goes,‘I’ve got good news and bad news.’”His feet are on the desk, he has knit his fingers behind his neck.“But the good news is good enough, maybe you won’t even care about the bad.There’s nothing wrong with your eye, Daniel.The retina, the cornea, the optic nerve, everything’s shipshape.In fact, you’ve got the ocular vigor ofa teenager.You don’t even need glasses.”
“Except that I can’t see,”Daniel says.
”Yes, well, that’s the bad news,”Bruce says.“We’re going to have to explore the possibility that the origin ofyour difficulty is not physical.”
“Meaning?”Daniel asks, though an instant later the question answers itself.
“Your eye is fine.Your vision will most likely come back.After your life—”
“You think mylifehas made me blind?”
“I don’t know what’s made you blind, Daniel.All I can tell you is what the tests say.And they all say your eye is healthy.”
Daniel falls silent.He hears a sound, turns toward it.The branch ofa maple tree, its leaves large as hands, blows in the breeze, scraping against the outside ofthe window.
“Guilt’s a bitch,”Bruce says.He sits forward, folds his hands, he’s coming to the end ofthe time allotted.
“I don’t feel guilty.How could I? I’ve turned a blind eye to everything.”
Bruce smiles, he looks relieved.“It may turn out to be as simple as that,”he says.
“I’mjoking,Bruce.”Daniel’s chin juts forward, he widens his eyes.“Jesus.”
“I feel sorry for you, Daniel.I really do.You’re under a lot ofpressure.”
Daniel tries to smile, but then, failing that, he tries to compose himself into a sort ofmanly grimace, but even that will not hold.He feels his lips quiver and he feels the surge oftears.He takes a deep breath, covers his eyes.There are certain things he has not been able to say, not even to Iris.She, into whose consciousness he has wanted to pour himself since first meeting her, she turns out to be perhaps the last per-son to whom he can reveal the remorse he feels over Hampton, over Ruby, over Kate.She already has a broken man in her life.Every step he has taken into the light ofIris’s love seems to have ushered him along on an equal journey into, ifnot the heart ofdarkness, then, at least, the darkness ofthe heart.It is not what he had expected.What happened to the world opening wide, what happened to joy? How could the achieve-ment ofall that he has desired cast him into such withering isolation?
“I don’t think this needs to be said, Daniel,”Bruce says.“But nobody blames you.You realize that, don’t you?”
Daniel reaches across the desk and clasps Bruce’s hand.“Oh my God,”he says.“I can see! I can see!”
For a moment, Bruce looks confused, as ifhe is about to believe some kind ofmiracle has occurred.But then, he regains his composure.“Very funny,”he says.“Ha ha ha.”
Even with the appalling evidence ofHampton’s ruination an inch or two from her face, the reality ofwhat has befallen him, her, all ofthem, remains elusive to Iris.The waking dream ofeveryday life obscures his injury, there is so much else to do, so many people, so much work—dishes to be washed, clothes to be folded, tunes hummed, a minute goes by, ten, and the space in her mind labeled“Hampton”will, without her governance, be silently, unconsciously occupied by the familiar man to whom she once swore allegiance and then betrayed, that infuriating, belittling presence.
And the parade ofpeople who march in and out ofher house.It’s like Memorial Day.Here come the fire trucks, here comes the Little League, here come the Elks.Iris has kept a journal, meant at first to be a recepta-cle for her pain, for the remorse, the guilt she must share for what has happened to Hampton, and a place to map and describe the dark sea ofsex and happiness in which she is sometimes swimming, sometimes sailing, and sometimes sinking—but little ofthat ever makes it into the diary.It is crowded out, eclipsed, and then obliterated by a constantly expanding cast ofcharacters, the people who come in and out ofthe life ofthe house.
There are the doctors, the nurses, the medical technicians, all with names, all with stories, one has a limp, one is diabetic, one lost three fin-gers to frostbite in the peacetime PolishArmy, one smokes clove ciga-rettes, one is a Sufi, one sang backup for PaulaAbdul, each and every one ofthem stakes a separate claim on her attention.
And then:family.There are pages and pages in her journal about the comings and goings ofher family, and Hampton’s family.They have all risen to the occasion.Iris’s sister Carol is a constant presence.Ofthe first ninety days ofHampton’s convalescence—though that perhaps is the wrong word for it, convalescence implies a process, an end point, and Hampton’s global aphasia is permanent—Carol was living with them more than halfthe time.But not counting Carol, the first to arrive was Hampton’s mother, who descended into the hell ofJuniper Street in her dark-blue suit and wavy silver hair, wearing orange lipstick and a large diamond ring, and seemed to think that ifshe taught Hampton to speak once she can do it again.Then came Hampton’s brother James, who for all his hippy ways, his bewildering openness to spiritual margi-nalia, could do nothing useful;he sobbed and wailed, in a frenzy until fi-nally it fell to Iris to comfort him.Then arrived Hampton’s oldest brother, Jordan, a Congregationalist minister in Bethesda, gaunt, wid-owed, and remote, who, when Iris asked ifhe was going to pray over Hampton, looked at her as ifshe had asked ifhe handled snakes or rolled on the floor speaking in tongues.Next came her two favorite brothers, Louis and Raymond, in business together back home, getting rich selling BMWs (LouRay Motors) and speculating in real estate (Davenport De-velopment, Inc.).Then her father arrived, a month after the accident, as ifwaiting for the smoke to clear so he could set matters straight, strolling into the ruination likeYojimbo, somehow carrying with him the medical authority ofthe entire Richmond Memorial Hospital, where he had been head ofFood Services for thirty-eight years.Then Hampton’s old friends, the Morrison-Rosemonts, up fromAtlanta, and then more brothers, more sisters, his parents again, her parents again.She is run-ning a bed-and-breakfast for the genuinely concerned, throwing in lunch and dinner, too.All ofthem have different ideas, different needs, differ-ent dietary requirements.Some are helpful, some are pains in the ass, and all ofthem, each and every one ofthem, wants, finally, to know the same thing:Who has done this thing t
o Hampton?
“Oh, the man I love, the man I will sneak out ofhere to see as soon as the coast is clear, as soon as I hear you snoring behind the guest room door,”is what Iris does not say.“A friend ofmine named Daniel, it was an accident,”she also doesn’t say.“Ifyou need someone to blame, then blame me,”is likewise on the list ofunuttered things.But she can’t re-main silent, she can’t refuse to answer their very reasonable question, she cannot drum her fingers on the side ofher head and say“Da da da.”And so she tells the story again and again, drawing it out so it can seem she is not stinting on the details, beginning with the party at Eight Chimneys, the trouble between the Richmonds, the disappearance ofMarieThorne, the storm-wrecked woods, the flares, and on and on, and no matter which way she spins it the end is always the same—her silence mixes with the silence ofher listener, and the two silences combine in the air and create a kind ofHoly Ghost ofthe Unspoken, and that spirit looks down upon them and whispers:a white man did this to him.
It’s late at night, one day or another, Wednesday, Thursday, it doesn’t re-ally matter anymore.Daniel has fallen asleep in front oftheTV set, with his hands folded in his lap and his feet up on the coffee table.It is a shabby threadbare sort ofsleep, mixed in with the sounds ofthe movie he has been watching—The Guns of Navarone—as well as the still unfamiliar ru-minations ofhis house.His dream life is thin and discontinuous, just im-ages, moments, nothing quite memorable, it’s like reading the spines of the books in a vast secondhand shop.Here he is decanting a bottle ofred wine, trying to push a mower through wet grass, being driven to court byAnthony Quinn, and then Ruby appears, she looks overheated, as if she’s been running, she opens her mouth and instead ofwords or any hu-man sound there comes the chime ofa doorbell,dingdong dingdong…
Daniel awakens, his heart racing.He tries to get up but his legs are gran-ite.He grabs his trousers, pulls one leg offthe table and then the other, it feels as ifhe’s been left for dead on the side ofthe road.The ringing of the doorbell is continuing.“Just a second!”he cries out.
He doesn’t have the presence ofmind or the sense ofselfpreservation to ask who it is, he simply drags himself through the living room, passes beneath the little oval archway to the foyer, and opens the door to find Iris on his porch, wearing a sweater that is much too large for her—Hampton’s?—and dark glasses, though it is eleven at night.The air smells ofnight-blooming flowers.
“I need to see you,”she says.
He reaches for her, pulls her to him, and as he embraces her he feels a sickening twist ofintuition:Hampton has died.She nuzzles her face into the crook ofhis neck.He pulls away to get a better look at her.
“Are you all right?”he whispers.
”I just had to get out ofthere.”
“What’s going on? Has anything happened?”
“Hampton’s mother is there, and his sister, with her daughter, Christine, this skinny ten-year-old nervous wreck, scared ofher own shadow, constantly bursting into tears.They’re all nervous wrecks, and between them and the nurse there’s no room for me.I can’t pee without some-one knocking on the bathroom door.”
“How’s Hampton?”
“The same.Every day, the same.Except stronger.He takes walks, he eats, but the speech thing, you know.He can’t leave the house because he cannot speak.He has one word.Da-da.Da-da, da-da.It means yes, it means no, it means I’m hungry, I’m cold, it means whatever he wants.
And believe me, everyone is meant to understand that this da-da means he wants a soft-boiled egg and that da-da means he wants a back rub.”
Her voice is level, slightly hard, but her eyes show the injury, the pity, and the fury ofliving with a man who has been ruined.
“It feels really strange,”Daniel says.“You know.That I’ve never seen him.”
“How can you?What would you do?Walk in? Pay him a visit?”
“I don’t know.But it just seems strange.I feel I should.After all…”
“Well, it just can’t happen.”She is startled by the harshness in her tone.“Maybe sometime,”she adds.“Just not now.”
“I need to take responsibility,”Daniel says.
”I’m taking responsibility,”Iris says.“Every day.And that’s enough.
He doesn’t even know exactly what happened to him.He certainly doesn’t think it had anything to do with you.I would have to draw him a series ofcartoons, and he still probably wouldn’t understand.Come on.Please.I don’t want to talk about it.I need a break from all that.”
Brusquely, even roughly—he forgives and even enjoys the bullying haste ofit—she leads him to the bedroom, pushes his shoulders.He falls onto the bed and she swoops onto him in a fury ofneed.He tries to speak against the sorrowful pressure ofher kisses and their teeth click against each other.
He feels that she isn’t ready yet, but she wants him inside ofher now.
Her sudden intake ofbreath whistles through her clenched teeth.Her eyelids flutter and she presses her fingers into his back, urgently.She whispers the details and the extent ofher pleasure into his ear, and even as he feels the joy ofbeing with and within her, a thought presents itself: Why,he wonders,didn’t she let me make her ready before I entered her?Why didn’t she let me touch her, why did she want me to push my way in?It is a thought ofsurpassing pettiness—how could the man who once had longed so fer-vently for the chance to kiss the instep ofher foot now quibble over the details oflubrication? But even as he continues to make love to her, even as he feels the sweat pouring offofhim, even as he times his movements so as to bring her pleasure, to hear that stunned, despairing, and unde-fended little yell she makes, even as her grip tightens and he feels himself drawn into the inevitable engulfing swoon ofcoming, even now he cannot repress the memory ofthat sharp little intake ofbreath.The conclusion is inescapable:the forceful penetration is what she is used to, that is what she once had with Hampton, and this is what her body craves, this is what she hungers for, and—right now—this is what she requires.
Yet somehow, through force ofwill, and by doggedly obeying the commands ofhis own desire, he is able to stay with her, and now they lie next to each other, panting and relieved.In the dim light ofhis bedroom-in-exile (he cannot imagine making his life in this house;he occupies it like a fugitive),Iris dozes off, her legs pressed together, her arms at her side, like a child miming sleep.A gentle snore hovers above her lips.
Daniel props himself up on his elbow and gazes down at her.Her breasts are nearly flat against her, the nipples elongated and with a slight droop from two years ofnursing Nelson.Her belly gently swells with each breath.What ifhis child were growing in there?
Not wanting to disturb her sleep, and not trusting himself to keep from touching her, Daniel slips out ofbed and walks as softly as he can into the front room.Naked, he sits on the sofa, finds the remote control under a cushion, and turns on theTV.The Guns of Navaroneis no longer playing, and he flips through the channels looking for something that can hold his interest for ten or fifteen minutes, after which time he feels he ought to wake Iris.He settles on one ofthe all-news cable channels, where a black lawyer named Reginald McTeer is holding forth about the O.J.Simpson case.Daniel has often seen McTeer’s endlessly smiling, media-friendly face onTV.The program must have sent a crew to McTeer’s office because he is seated at a grand desk, with shelves oflaw books framing a view ofmidtown Manhattan behind him.recorded earlier todayflashes on the bottom ofthe screen.McTeer is a stocky man in a dark suit and his signature ten-gallon cowboy hat, bright white with a red satin band.A picture ofhis light-skinned wife and their three fair children is on his desk, as well as photographs ofMcTeer enjoying his expensive hobbies and vacations—on safari, in the cockpit ofhis Mooney, on horseback, and with various well-knowns from the worlds ofpolitics and entertainment.He speaks like a man comfortable with the sound ofhis own voice, with the exhorting enthusiasm ofa preacher, or a Cadillac salesman.
“You know, Jim, all the media’s going crazy because Mr.O.J.Simpson got himself a team offirst-rate
lawyers.Everyone’s going on about justice for sale.And I say:more power to him.This isAmerica, baby.
Everything’s for sale.You think the poor get the same medical care as the rich? Everything is for sale, top to bottom.What you’ve got to under-stand is that’s how the system works, that’s just what the man’s got to do.
InAmerica green trumps blackandwhite.”
McTeer smiles, and then suddenly theTV shows Jim Klein sitting in the cable station’s studio, watching McTeer on a large monitor.Klein, a silver-haired man in a blue blazer, once a newscaster for one ofthe net-works, and now nearing the end ofhis broadcast career, swivels in his chair and faces another large monitor.
It’s Kate, in Leyden, sitting on the sofa in the living room.Daniel stares at her image for several seconds, not even entirely believing it is actually her.She looks relaxed.Her legs are crossed, her delicate, patri-cian hands are folded onto her lap.She wears a white blouse, a strand of pearls.As she speaks, her name appears in writing on the bottom ofthe screen:kate ellisauthor and simpson expertnew york.
“You know, Jim, it’s very interesting,”Kate is saying,“and not without significance, that, for all his talk about the law and justice, and about the green and the white and the black, Mr.McTeer fails to mention that he was himself part ofthe original team oflawyers put together for Simpson’s defense.”As soon as she says this, the broadcast goes to a split-screen format and McTeer can be seen shaking his head, and waving his hand dismissively at the camera, clearly indicating that Kate’s comments are beneath contempt.
But Kate cannot see McTeer and she continues, undaunted, her cultured voice brimming with self-confidence.Daniel leans forward, his hands resting on his square, bare knees.She seems entirely herself, yet at the same time somehow perfect for television.It’s been months since he has seen her looking so relaxed.“Mr.McTeer was asked to be a part of O.J.’s DreamTeam and he declined.Why?Well, a statement Mr.McTeer made to the press last year should put his actions in a clear light.He said…”Kateglances at a little notebook she has left next to her on the sofa.With a lurch, Daniel recognizes it—it’s a little spiral notebook with a picture ofa whale on the cover, which he bought for her two summers ago on a weekend trip to Nantucket.“‘Life is too short, and life is too precious, and there are still things on earth that money can’t buy.’”
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