Close Encounters (15 page)

“So, Mr. Tucker, how are you?” The doctor briefly shook David's hand before sliding a stool toward himself. “You say you're having some visual disturbances?”

“Well, I don't know exactly how to characterize them,” he answered. “I mean, I see fine for the most part. But about a week ago I noticed that some things looked faded.”

“A general fading in color or clarity?”

“No…only certain, specific things.”

“Edges of things blurry?” He shone a penlight into one of David's eyes.

“No, very specific things, like…objects fading, but everything else around them remaining very clear.”

“Hmm, well, you tell me more, and I'll eliminate what you don't have, and hopefully we'll work together to find out what you do have, OK?” He smiled and went to his bench to pick up his tools.

“What's that for?” David asked as the doctor dabbed a stained chemical on a piece of paper

“I'm going to give you what we call the slit-lamp test. You've probably had this before.” The doctor touched the strip of orange paper to his eyes. “Now, I'm just placing a dye in your eye to help me see a little better what's going on. Then I'm going to shine a light there to see whether I can find any abnormalities. Now, when did you say your visual disturbances began?”

“Um, about a week ago.”

“Did anything peculiar happen around that time—any accidents or strange headaches or pains in the eye?”

“No…I mean, I've been a little stressed out lately, but no more than usual.”

“Do you ever get migraines?”

“No.”

“Have you experienced a lot of floaters lately? Sometimes when people experience an increase of floaters they may see areas of blurriness caused by the floater moving across the visual plane.”

“No, I haven't really noticed, but…the objects are very specific. There aren't areas, there are objects.”

“OK, everything looks good here.” The ophthalmologist swung the machine away and pushed another one in front of David. “Let's check out your tonometry.”

David sat his chin on the plastic chin rest and looked down the barrel of the machine while the ophthalmologist shot air into his eyeballs. David wondered whether the doctor was really listening or whether he was just going through his internal list of symptoms plaguing adult professionals. Perhaps he wasn't explaining it well enough.

“Well.” The doctor pushed the machine away and put his heels on the rung of his stool, clasping his hands in front of him. “Your eyes look very good, Mr. Tucker. I saw no evidence of abrasions, pressure changes, inherent defects, or tumors. Can you give me any more information about the problem you're having with your vision?”

“Well, it may have been more of a hallucination, I don't know. You see…I was at a meeting and it looked as if a coworker's hand was…transparent. Maybe I just need to get more sleep.”

“Could be.” He scratched his ear. “Fatigue can cause all sorts of visual disturbances, as I'm sure you're well aware. But there are a few other areas I would check out as well. I would go to your regular doctor and have a diabetes test, and you might want to consider making an appointment with a neurologist if your disturbances become more exaggerated and you've exhausted the possibility, so to speak, of fatigue or sleep deprivation.”

“OK, thanks.” David stood up wearily. He did not feel like going into work today. Maybe he would call in. But he couldn't. There was the chance that Bob might be back today, Bob who had been out sick much of the week. He needed to know—maybe Bob was fine and this trip to the ophthalmologist had been a complete waste. He drove to work, feeling sick and out of sorts. No one would understand what he was going through. Not that he would tell anyone. He didn't have any friends at work, unless one considered small talk and light, jocular camaraderie friendship. He certainly wouldn't tell his real friends. He couldn't remember the last time he talked to them about anything. Guys talked to their girlfriends or wives, and he if told anyone, he would tell Sara. But not yet. It was not that he didn't trust her; it was that voicing his fears, his confusion, would make them real, and right now this was not real. It was an annoyance, it was an inconvenience, but right now it was not real.

“Is Bob in today?” David asked the receptionist as he entered the building.

“I don't believe so. I can try his extension.”

“Don't bother.” David waved his hand distractedly. “I'll stop by his desk on the way up.”

In the elevator he stared at the smooth metal walls around him. Sometimes it seemed to him that everything was composed of these same walls, from the carpet in his office, which was a color he could not quite remember, to the walls, to the bodies that passed him in the hallway, bodies who said hi to him and to whom he replied. Yet it was not a haze that he was in; he was constantly thinking, thinking of new strategies, tinkering with old ones, streamlining packages and refinining their targets and stimulating their growth. He could wake up from a deep sleep and recite the day's plan, the week's plan, the year's plan, effortlessly. No, it was not haziness.

He walked over to Bob's cubicle. His computer and light were turned off. Although Bob was a sloppy man, his desk was impeccably neat, his post-it notes stacked carefully in his desk caddy, his pens arranged by color in a cup, his printed-out emails and notes dutifully organized in desktop folders. In fact, David mused, it was the desk of a man who did not have enough work to do. On the opposite wall were photographs of Bob's wife and presumably children, a look of contentment in their round, sanguine faces, contentment maintained by the sedentary American lifestyle and high-fat, high-starch food products. He picked up a pencil with the name of a school on it and twirled it absently in his hand, looking closely at Bob's photographs, one of him and his wife at what appeared to be some sort of cookout. He wore an obnoxiously loud Hawaiian shirt and a brimmed straw hat. But it wasn't Bob's wardrobe that caught David's attention. It was the fact that his right index finger, wrapped with the rest of his hand around the generous waist of his wife, was faded and missing. He untacked the photo to inspect it more closely, turning it over to read the date. The photo was taken last month.

“Bob's not here today, David.” One of Bob's reports stepped into Bob's cubicle. David quickly pinned up the photograph. “Isn't that a nice picture? It's from Bob and Annie's twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party.”

“Yeah, it's a nice picture.”

“He practically invited the whole company to his house for the barbecue. Did you go? I don't remember seeing you there”

“Umm, I was out of town for the weekend. Visiting relatives.” David vaguely remembered Bob passing out invitations to something last month, but he didn't bother to read it. “Do you know when he'll be back in?”

“I don't know—it's been a few days now. Must have the flu or something.”

“OK—thanks.” David squeezed past her and headed back up to his office, wondering where he might have stuffed that invitation, if he hadn't already thrown it out. There was a tip among management to prominently display invitations and company party notices on one's cubicle or door, even if one wasn't planning on attending, to foster community with all levels of associates. In his office he rummaged through his desk drawers, leaning over to pick up his ringing phone.

“How was your appointment, honey?” Sara asked.

“Um, it was OK,” he answered, leaving through a stack of company memos he had delegated to a trash folder. “He said everything looked OK.”

“He didn't think you should go to the optometrist to see whether you needed your prescription updated?”

“No. It's really not that kind of problem.”

“How long did you say this has been going on?”

“Maybe a week or so—two weeks, tops. I mean, he said it could be fatigue.”

“So do you have a follow-up appointment with…what's his name?”

“Dr…uh…” He fumbled through his wallet to find the ophthalmologist's card. “No, I don't. He suggested some other avenues to explore. I guess I'm going to wait and see.”

“What time are you coming home tonight?”

“I don't know.” His eyes came upon the invitation to Bob's anniversary barbecue, complete with address and directions, slightly crumpled in the corner of his desk drawer. “I might be late—I have to stop at a colleague's house to pick up some stuff—he's been out sick, and we really need the materials.”

“So…should I make dinner?”

“Umm…you can…if you want. If you don't want, I can just pick something up on the way home.”

“Is that a yes or no?”

“Ummm…no. Don't make it. Or make it if you want to for yourself, and I'll reheat mine when you get home. Or don't make, it and I'll pick myself something up. Or I can pick something up for both of us.”

“Don't bother. I'm going to my mother's house for dinner, then. You can pick something up for yourself.”

“Something wrong, Sara?”

“What are you doing? Are you doing something else while you're on the phone?”

“I was just picking up a piece of paper that fell off my desk. Why?”

“You just sound so distracted; you're always so distracted.”

“Well, when you call me at work, chances are you're catching me in the middle of something.” He tried to say it in the nicest way possible. “I mean, that's why they call it work, right?”

“Do you really want to know what's wrong?”

“Um…yes,” he answered, folding the invitation neatly into this wallet.

“What do you mean, um, yes? Did you have to think about it?”

“No…it's just that if you're going to tell me, I wish you would, because I've got to get to a meeting in a few minutes.”

“Forget it, then.”

“Well, tell me later, OK? When I come home. When you come home.”

“Whenever that will be, right? Are you getting home at seven or ten? Can you narrow it down some?”

“Probably by seven. How about you?”

“I don't know. I'll talk to you later.” With that, she hung up. David shook his head and dropped the phone back into the cradle.

He didn't need Sara upset at him on top of everything else—if she only understood that the urgency he placed on getting this matter resolved was directly proportional to the urgency that he wanted his life to return to normal, his life at work, his life with her. If he could resolve it without drawing her into his increasing torment, he would save her needless suffering and avoid exposing this fragile part of himself in the process. It reminded him of being a teenager, of being confused and small and insignificant, a person Sara did not know and he did not remember much these days.

After work he carefully followed the directions laid out on the invitation; they took him to a solid middle-class neighborhood full of modest ranchers and American-made cars. He pulled into a crowded driveway. What was he doing here? He could not believe it had really come to this.

He got out of the car and walked across the patchy lawn to the porch. An assortment of homey, country knick-knacks adorned the windows and door, and a rather ornamented sign with “The Fullers” on it rested above the mailbox. He knocked on the door and waited. He hadn't arrived with a script or a plan; conversely, his desperation had dragged him here well ahead of his brain.

“Can I help you?” The plump, serene-looking woman from the photograph stood in the doorway. She wore a silk-like blouse and black polyester slacks. He wondered whether she thought he was a Jehovah's Witness or something.

“Mrs. Fuller? I'm David Tucker, from your husband's work?”

“Is he expecting you?” she asked, a little suspiciously, her soft features hardening like clay. “He didn't mention anyone was coming to visit.”

“No…I heard Bob was sick, and I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I'd see how he was.”

“I'm sorry for being so rude.” She stepped away from the door to allow him entry. “I was a little surprised, like I said. Let me see if Bob is awake. Why don't you have a seat on the sofa?”

David sat down and waited. The table lamps gave the rooms a cozy glow, along with the smell of coffee and chicken a la king. In fact, it reminded him of his maternal grandmother's apartment, the smell of coffee brewing all day, bacon grease and organ meats, the bright lights of the kitchen pouring over his grandmother's every mole and wrinkle. She was a small woman of Czech descent who would say but little to him and when she did, it was in her native tongue. Her yellow-blue eyes would fill with the glaze of age, her face weighted with wrinkles. He did not think of her much these days. She seemed incongruous to his life and now it was if she hadn't existed. He tried to picture her ambling around this living room, but her mannerisms, the way she wore her hair, did not come to him.

“He'll be down in a minute.” Bob Fuller's wife interrupted his thoughts. “Would you like some coffee or something?”

“Umm, sure.” He straightened up on the sofa, interview-nervous, and checked his watch.

“David Tucker.” Bob's voice boomed from the doorway. He wore a slightly ill-fitting red tartan plaid role with a pair of sky-blue pajamas underneath. He shuffled over to an armchair opposite David and sat down, breathing heavily. David leaned over to catch a glimpse of Bob's right hand, but Bob rested it in his robe pocket. “What a surprise. I take it you have met my wife Barbara.”

“Um, yes.” David smiled and clasped his hands together. He felt strongly out of control, as if the center of power had shifted to Bob, who looked worse than David had ever seen him. Barbara Fuller came out and set a cup of coffee down in front of David.

“Would you like any cream or sugar?” She asked politely but not warmly.