Blessing in Disguise

by Danielle Steel

  “At the very worst, you could go blind,” he said cautiously. “We’ll try not to let that happen.” His words hit her like a bomb. She was at risk for going blind and he called that luck? But at least she didn’t have the kind that couldn’t be treated.

  “What do the treatments entail?” She imagined painful surgery with patches on both eyes for months, like something in a bad movie, while she stumbled around her house.

  “Injections in your eyes.” He answered her question and she winced. It sounded ghastly to her, but blindness was unquestionably worse.

  “Painful?”

  “Uncomfortable. We use anesthetic drops to numb your cornea.” He used the medical word she hated most, “uncomfortable,” which was almost always a lie, a euphemism for unbearable agony he didn’t want her to know about in advance.

  “I’m an art consultant, Doctor, I can’t afford to go blind.”

  “We’ll do everything we can to improve the situation, for as long as we can. And you may never go blind. That’s at the far end of the spectrum. You asked me about the worst case. I don’t expect it to get to such an extreme degree if we deal with it now. You’ll have to be reliable about coming in for treatment.” She nodded. Obviously, she didn’t want to go blind, no matter how “uncomfortable” the treatments were.

  “I’m going to give you some drops I want you to use several times a day. Do you have anyone to help you administer them?” he asked kindly, and she shook her head.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You can manage it yourself. It’s just easier if someone helps.”

  “So is life,” she said cynically. “Things don’t always work out that way.” He glanced at her chart and saw that she had checked off “widowed.” She was an attractive woman and looked younger than her age, although there was something faintly austere about her, and she was visibly shocked by what he’d said. It was a hard diagnosis to hear. There was a strong chance she wouldn’t go blind, but it was always a possibility, and he didn’t want to lie to her about the seriousness of the disease.

  “Why don’t you make an appointment next week for your first treatment? I’d like to get started,” he told her, and she stood up out of the chair and felt like her legs were going to buckle under her.

  “Do I need glasses too?” She had forgotten all about them till then, in the face of what he’d said.

  “I’ll have them ready for you next week. You can pick frames on the way out, if you want to get them here.”

  “Thank you,” she said in a soft voice, and a moment later, she stood staring at the vitrine full of eyeglasses as her vision blurred with tears. She knew that going blind was not a sure thing, but even the remote possibility of it was terrifying. If she did, how would she take care of herself? She made an instant decision not to tell her children. They didn’t need to know about it yet, or maybe ever. She wanted to see how the treatment worked first. She didn’t like them knowing about her frailties. They had always seen her as a tower of strength they could rely on. The idea of being helpless or vulnerable was not the image she wanted her children to have of her. She had always thought that would be far down the road, not in the near future. She wanted to be strong and in good health until a great age, working until the end. And what would happen to her work if she went blind? What would she do if she could no longer see the art she selected for her clients? Her whole world had turned upside down in a matter of moments.

  She selected two of the eyeglass frames without even looking at them and handed them to the nurse. And five minutes later, she was back on the sidewalk, after making an appointment for the following week. She wanted to begin the injections quickly. She didn’t have a moment to lose.

  She felt as though she’d been in the doctor’s office for a week. She got jostled by people on the sidewalk and nearly stumbled when she stepped off the curb to hail a cab.

  “Steady,” she said out loud to herself as a yellow cab stopped and she got in and gave him her address. She was silent on the drive uptown, trying to absorb what had happened. It was five-fifteen, and half an hour later when she got home, she walked into her house and turned off the alarm. She didn’t have a minute to waste before the appointment with the new client. She tossed her coat on a hall chair and rushed upstairs to her office to lay out the files and catalogues on her desk and two art books. She was forcing herself to concentrate on the meeting and not what the doctor had said.

  William Casey, her new client, arrived five minutes early. She opened the door and offered him a drink when he came in. She directed him upstairs, and followed three minutes later with the scotch on the rocks he’d asked for. She set it down carefully on a table next to him, cautious not to miss the table, and paying close attention not to release the glass until she knew she’d set it down on the hard surface.

  Bill Casey was large, red-faced, overweight, expensively dressed, and somewhere in his mid-fifties, she guessed. There was an innocence about him as he asked for Isabelle’s advice. She began to show him the catalogues and art books she had set out, to give him an idea of the kind of artists she had in mind for him, and she wanted to know how he liked them. He loved everything she had marked with Post-its, and she explained patiently and clearly why the various works fit well together and would be the foundation for a cohesive collection. It was what she envisioned for both his home on Long Island, and the two-hundred-foot sailboat he kept in the Caribbean. He showed her photographs of the yacht and its interior. It was a magnificent sailboat he’d had built by Perini in Italy.

  He mentioned that he’d had lucky oil ventures in Oklahoma and Louisiana, and she admired and praised him for wanting to use some of it to buy important art. She liked working with him. He was so grateful for her help, and eager to learn.

  He stayed until seven-thirty, and she sent him home with the catalogues. If he was interested, there were two paintings she hoped to bid on for him in the next sale at Christie’s. She thought they would be the perfect cornerstone for his collection, and a great starting point. He agreed and said that he wanted to show his wife, but made it clear that the final choices would be his. His wife didn’t know anything about art, and neither did he, but Mrs. Casey found the whole project daunting, and was trusting him to create the collection with Isabelle’s advice.

  She came back to her office as soon as he left, sat down at her desk, and dropped her face in her hands. For a brief time she had almost forgotten what the doctor had told her, and it all came rushing back like a tape playing in her head as the word “blind” kept going round and round in her mind…blind…she couldn’t even imagine what it would be like and didn’t want to, as her shoulders shook and her whole body was seized with wracking sobs.

  The phone rang on her desk and she didn’t answer it. All she could think about now was that she might be going blind. When, if, how soon were questions there was no answer to…She had no idea how long it would take to lose her sight, if she did. She had never expected this in a million years…and then she remembered the word he’d used, “lucky” that they had caught it early, but she sure didn’t feel lucky now. She felt doomed as she continued to cry for several hours, and finally, feeling totally drained, she went to bed.

  Chapter Nine

  Bill Casey called her the next morning to say he wanted her to bid on the two paintings at Christie’s, to start his collection. His wife had liked them too, when he showed her the images. They established a maximum price she could bid up to. He sounded very excited, and she was happy for him. This was a major step, and a big investment.

  She called Christie’s afterward, to let them know she wanted to participate in the live bidding on the phone. She knew everyone in the department. And then she sat staring out the window for a long time, wondering how it would feel if one day she could no longer work. She couldn’t be an art consultant if she lost her sight. She couldn’t even imagine it. Forcing the thought from h
er mind, she went downstairs to the kitchen to make coffee, stumbled on a step, and almost fell. She caught herself just in time before she did, and felt shaken when she walked into the kitchen. Her hands were trembling when she sat down with her coffee.

  She wondered if she should hire an assistant. She had a woman who came in twice a month to update her books and send out bills for her, but she didn’t like having anyone underfoot, and hadn’t needed it. She considered waiting to hire someone if her vision began failing severely, and couldn’t decide whether it would be smarter to try to find someone now and break them in, so they would already know how she ran her business before her sight got any worse, or to wait. In some ways, the former option seemed more reasonable, but it made her feel vulnerable again which was the last thing she wanted to be, and even thinking about it made her feel queasy and filled her with dread.

  She called the employment agency at noon to see what they would suggest. She’d had girl Fridays from them occasionally for short-term projects, and they’d always sent good people. She described what she thought she needed, a business assistant to help her with research and client meetings, and they said they’d check their current listings.

  The woman at the agency called her back two hours later to say that she had a candidate for her, a woman who said she was knowledgeable about art and had worked at a gallery when she was younger. The agency faxed her CV to Isabelle, who read it carefully. There was nothing distinguished or exciting about her, but she seemed to have good solid business and computer skills, which would be useful. She was coming to try out the next day. Isabelle still didn’t like the idea of someone hanging around when she didn’t need her yet, and wasn’t sold on the idea.

  When Margaret Wimbledon showed up the next day, she looked prim and older than Isabelle expected. She was wearing high heels and a black suit, and Isabelle was in sneakers and jeans. She didn’t know what she’d expected an assistant to wear, but the woman seemed overdressed, with perfectly coiffed white hair. She didn’t smile when Isabelle explained her duties to her. She gave her some filing to do, a stack of bills to get ready for the accountant, and asked her to mark auction catalogues with tags for clients she’d bought paintings for. It was all she could think of to give her. Margaret had it all in good order before noon. She was definitely efficient, but had an air of disapproval about her, and her mouth was set in a thin line when Isabelle sat at her desk writing some letters and asked her to bring her a cup of tea.

  “I don’t do food service,” she said with an angry look.

  “Sorry,” Isabelle said, watching her retreat to the table where she was working. A cup of tea hadn’t seemed like a lot to ask, but it reminded her that she needed to define the job. For the moment, her notion of what she would need from an assistant was still vague.

  Margaret announced she was going out to lunch a few minutes later, and came back punctually in an hour, ready for her next assignment. Isabelle gave her some research to do. She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t like her. She wasn’t pleasant to have around, there was an aura of tension about her, and she made Isabelle uncomfortable. It seemed easier to do the work herself, but that was now, while she could still see.

  After Margaret did the research, Isabelle let her go at four o’clock.

  “Should I come back tomorrow?” she asked before she left.

  “I’ll call the agency and let them know,” Isabelle said vaguely, but the thought of having her around again depressed her. There had been no friendly exchange all day. She seemed more like a secretary for the director of a gallery or a CEO. It made Isabelle realize that she wanted someone more casual and flexible, who would say a pleasant word or two and wouldn’t balk at making a cup of tea. Margaret acted as though the entire job was beneath her, and her refusal to make tea made her seem inflexible, even hostile.

  Isabelle tried to explain it to the agency when she called them at five o’clock. She had been thinking about Margaret for the last hour, was unenthusiastic about her, and told them she wasn’t right for the job.

  “There’s nothing wrong with her, and she’s very efficient. I just don’t think I have enough work for her right now. I want to wing it for a while, with someone a little more adaptable while I figure out what I need.”

  The woman at the agency sounded pensive for a minute, as she riffled through some papers on her desk. “We signed a candidate up yesterday. He has no training or experience in art, but he has an interesting history as a kind of jack-of-all-trades, mostly in communications and sports. I wouldn’t have suggested him for you, but he may be more flexible than someone like Margaret, who wants a more high-level job. I don’t think she would have worked out.” She had already called to complain about the boring day she’d spent. She had expected Isabelle to be more high powered, and she wanted to be involved with clients, not just do research and filing. And as in any job, not every day would be exciting. “The man I’m referring to is Jack Bailey, he was on a sports radio show for several years, worked at a TV network as an assistant producer, also in sports. He has been a DJ and a sports announcer. He’s been in PR. Most of his jobs have been sports related, but his references say he’s great with people, very personable, can repair anything, which could come in handy. He worked in the office of a senator in Washington, doing special events, and traveled with him as a personal assistant during his campaign, and the senator gave him a glowing reference. He left because he has a sick sister in New York, and he takes care of her. He came in again this morning, and he presents very well. He’s looking for a job as a personal assistant. I didn’t know if you’d want a man.”

  “Either one.” But he had no work history at all that involved art. And she didn’t need a DJ or a sports announcer, and had no special events for him to plan.

  “I was going to send him to NBC to a producer who’s looking for a PA. I could send him to you first.”

  “He might be bored. I basically have clerical work right now, but he could sit in on client meetings with me. I’ve always done them one-on-one with the client, but if he’s willing, I can try him out. It’s not as exciting as working for a senator, to say the least.” She felt slightly foolish interviewing people who had had better jobs. She was thinking more of a young woman fresh out of college who didn’t have grandiose ideas, and wouldn’t get her back up over making a cup of tea. And if her sight became a serious problem, whoever she hired would have to help her with a multitude of things. She had recently noticed that working on her computer strained her eyes more than it used to, which was one of the reasons she had thought she needed new glasses.

  “Could you see him at ten o’clock tomorrow? I’m sending him to NBC at noon. I do think he’d be flexible, he’s got a varied background. He’s willing to travel, but needs advance notice, so he can make arrangements for his sister.”

  “How sick is she?” Isabelle inquired, concerned.

  “I think she has MS. He said she can manage on her own when he’s at work, and a neighbor looks in on her during the day, but he stays with her at night. He has no other encumbrances, no wife or kids, he volunteered that himself, since I can’t ask.” Isabelle wondered how old he was, but couldn’t ask that either. She’d have to guess from how he looked. “I’ll email you his CV, with his references.” She did so twenty minutes later, and it confirmed everything she had said. Isabelle noticed when he had graduated from the University of Washington, and calculated that he was about forty-six, which seemed a good age to be energetic, but not so immature he’d leave in a few months, and she saw that he’d stayed with the senator for five years, which in the current job market was a long time, and he’d only left the job in the last six months. She emailed the woman at the agency to tell her she’d see him at ten the next morning.

  And that night, she thought about her visit to the doctor again. The full impact of what he’d told her hadn’t sunk in yet, and she wanted to talk to her daughters, just to h
ear their voices, not tell them the bad news, but she didn’t want them to guess that she was upset. It was almost impossible to reach Theo, currently in India, helping to set up a hospital she was financing, and it was the middle of the night in Italy, so she couldn’t call Oona. It was hard to find a good time to call her anyway, she was always busy with Gregorio and the boys, cooking lunch or dinner, or overseeing the planting of some new garden on their farm. She never had time to talk for long.

  Isabelle missed both of them, and Xela was even harder to reach even though she lived in New York. She was either in meetings, on a conference call, or at the gym at six in the morning. Isabelle’s calls to her always went straight to voice mail since she never picked up, and sometimes it took Xela days to call her mother back. Her entire life and contact with the world was run by text.

  Isabelle finally fell asleep at four A.M., and could have called Oona by then, but she drifted off to sleep for four hours, and woke up at eight. She was showered and dressed in jeans and a sweater in time for the interview.

  Jack Bailey arrived on the dot of ten and rang the doorbell. Isabelle was startled when she saw him. He was very tall and she looked up into a well-lined face with a cleft chin. He had gray hair, and warm brown eyes. He smiled at the look on her face, his height always took people by surprise. He was just over six feet six, slim with broad shoulders and strong arms. She asked him to come in, and he followed her upstairs to the room she used as her office, which was partly a sitting room, where she met clients. He sat down in a big upholstered chair with his long legs stretched out ahead of him. He was wearing gray slacks and a blazer and she noticed that his shoes were shined, and thought he looked nice.

  “I don’t know anything about art,” he confessed immediately. “I’ve mostly worked in radio and sports TV. I had fun as a DJ for a couple of years, and I worked in PR, on male or sports oriented accounts, Nike, L.L.Bean, GQ, a fishing magazine we represented, and Road & Track. I’ve done just about everything on my jobs, including picking up dry cleaning and walking the dog for the senator.” He smiled at her. “Do you have pets?”