Night Blindness (10 page)

I pictured her framed diplomas from Northwestern and UPenn on the wall. “I think she's probably a really good doctor,” I finally said.

My father started telling a story about driving from Philly to the Jersey shore with his brothers to get seafood when he was growing up. He'd been the second-youngest of nine boys in an Irish-Italian neighborhood in north Philly, where they never had enough of anything. “I got really lucky,” he liked telling people when they saw his wall of trophies. “The old man in the sky gave me the gift of playing ball, and it brought me every goddamn thing I ever wanted.” And then he'd beam like an eight-year-old. “Otherwise, I'd be pumping gas in Fishtown.” He was always tipping toll collectors and handing car wash attendants an extra ten. Whenever we ate out, he acted like he'd won the lottery, buying drinks for everyone, tipping the chef, leaving an extra hundred on the table.

The clams were divine, and the shrimp popped in my mouth. Seafood in Santa Fe was terrible, frozen and stale. Hadley always pretended he had food poisoning the next day and stayed in bed. While I ate, I watched the skinny piano player sitting on that old wooden bench, banging on the keyboard. He was hunched over and had awful hand position, but somehow he played beautifully.

Before we were halfway through our meals, my father ordered more food and reminded us that the first time I'd ever had lobster, I ate so much, I threw up. He and Ryder talked about the Colts and the Cowboys, and Jamie named the players she thought were handsome. I ate everything on my plate and stabbed at bits of Ryder's clams. I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten that much, and had felt so happy and relaxed.

“Come on.” Jamie tugged at my dad's hand. “I can't stand it when a good band plays a great song and I'm not dancing.” I watched them join other couples in front of the stage. In her Italian heels, Jamie was almost mouth-to-mouth with my father. An inch apart, gazing at each other like nothing else existed and the whole world was theirs, they started to dance. Jamie's fresh white skirt twirled. She was never tottery in heels, and my dad was still sure on his feet, smooth. I felt myself sinking into that feeling I used to have when I was little, that everything would be all right.

Ryder leaned into me. “Did any of that dancing rub off on you?”

“I can hold my own.” I was a sophomore when we went to his junior prom, convincing everyone we were just friends. Will had made it clear that I was off-limits to Ryder, that our dating would ruin the trio. But in that tight black sheath, with his hands on my hips, I hadn't cared if anyone knew.

“Prove it.”

I followed him to the edge of the grass, where a few teenagers were slow-dancing to fast music. We stood for a second facing each other. So what if I had paint stains on my jeans and my shirt was a little see-through? Now that we were away from Dale Novak, I felt prettier, smarter. I pushed my palms against his, and he spun me away, then tightened his grip and pulled me back. I had no idea what steps we were doing, but somehow I followed. Those early dance lessons Jamie had made me take had paid off. We jigged and spun as if we'd been dancing together for years. The song ended with our backs pressed together, our hands clasped, and we were both breathing hard. I could feel sweat running between my breasts, and I was sure my shirt was now completely see-through.

The band started a slow song that began with a piano solo. My back still to Ryder's, I watched the piano player close his eyes, his hands finding their way across the keys. “Mind if I cut in?” I heard my father ask. His face was red from exertion, and I was glad it was a slow song. He started the four-step waltz he'd taught me as a kid. I'd put my feet on his and he would dance me around the living room, saying “One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.” The teenagers around us held on to one another's waists. Doing a formal dance step with my dad felt old-fashioned and sweet.

“I love having you home again, Whobaby.” He'd told me this about twenty times a day in the week and a half that I'd been home, and it made me feel both happy and so guilty, I thought I might poison myself.

“And I love being here.” I stumbled and stepped on his toe. “Sorry. I'm not exactly good with the classics.”

“Aw, sweetheart, you're perfect.” He'd also said this a lot, but it was always tentative, as though he were afraid of jinxing it. As if one day, poof, I'd disappear back to the Southwest. He drew me to him, resting his cheek on the top of my head. “My good girl is home again.”

We danced around and around the grass while the waitstaff lit tiki lamps and the piano player closed his eyes and did another solo.

Jamie and Ryder twirled by as the song ended, and my dad reached for her. “Come on, good-lookin'. Let's show these kids how it's done.”

“How it's done?” Ryder asked, grabbing me around the waist, his fingers snaking under my shirt, gripping me as though I might disappear if he let go. “Jenny, I think we've been challenged.”

The four of us stood among other couples, waiting for the music to begin. “Put your hands on my shoulders.” He grabbed my hips, hard. “When I count to three, I want you to jump.”

The song was a Stray Cats cover with a fast rhythm. “Three.” He tossed me in the air. I had to put my legs around his waist to keep from falling. We spun once, and I slid through his grasp. I swung my feet to his left and then his right, and he hooted, and laughed out loud. The small of his back was sweating. His hand felt hard and sure on my spine. The tiki lights blurred, and I was breathlessly happy.

By the time the song was over, my father's silver-blond hair was windblown and he was laughing. “You won.” Ryder held out his hand and my dad shook it. “In your age group.” My dad snatched his hand back, but he was still laughing.

They had brought us strawberry shortcake while we were gone, or maybe my father had ordered it without our noticing. The strawberries tasted just picked and the cream was real and the cake underneath soft and moist from the fruit. “I always feel like a little girl when I eat strawberry shortcake,” Jamie said between mouthfuls. I couldn't believe she was eating it.

My father kissed her on the nose. It had gotten completely dark, but everything around us was golden-hued and bright under the torch-lit lamps. Above us were those same stars Ryder used to point out as we'd lie together on the football field the summer before my junior year—the harp in Lyra's constellation and the head of the bear in Ursa Major. I knew they were there, but I couldn't see them well anymore.

My dad was smiling at Jamie, and he had a little dab of strawberry on his chin. She was talking in her girlish voice about drinking too much Chardonnay and how she'd have to play hooky so we could see the seals at Clam Beach the next day.

For one stolen, fleeting moment, the guilt washed away. It was as though I'd entered a dream where Will's death wasn't my fault. There they were, my family: Ryder, my mom, and my dad. Will was missing, but his death was what it should have been, a sad, pure thing. I heard myself saying I would go to Clam Beach with them, and Ryder said he'd love to see Jamie in knee-high rubber boots.

The feeling stayed like the lingering taste of a really good dessert. But I knew about feelings like that; as much as I wanted to bottle them up for safekeeping, something always came along that was much stronger and would shatter them all to pieces.

 

9

I sat at the dining room table, rereading an article I'd found on meningiomas. All the websites said the same thing: “The recommended course of treatment is surgical resection, followed by radiation.” Ryder had seemed so sure in his office that doing radiation first was the right thing to do, but now I wondered. He'd told me to do my own research. And everything I'd read said to operate first.

“Whobaby, turn off that damn computer,” my dad yelled from the kitchen. “And come see what Luke's cooking up for us.” I bookmarked the page, closed the laptop, and hopped up.

In the kitchen, Luke was unloading green tea, krill oil, and kale from a reusable grocery bag. Other unfamiliar leafy greens and pinkish tofu were scattered on the counters. “You're not going to make us eat this, are you?” I pointed at a squishy mound of seitan.

“Luke's starting me on a macrobio-whatever diet tomorrow.” My dad pulled a cherry tomato from the vine and popped it in his mouth. “But tonight, we gorge ourselves on caviar.”

“Everyone's whispering about his tumor,” Luke said. “Might as well bring it out into the open and throw a party for it.”

My father put his arm around me. “And you, our youngest musical genius, will be our D.J.” He twirled me around the kitchen and dipped me to the floor. “We need theme songs,” he said when he let me go. “You know, ‘Gravedigger,' ‘The End.' Stuff like that.”

“Dad!” I turned to Luke. “Tell him he's not dying.”

“Don't forget ‘Funeral for a Friend.'” Luke unloaded chocolate-covered strawberries from Tatiana's, the same bakery that had delivered a cake in the shape of a football to Will's sixteenth-birthday party.

“Only you two would think this is funny.” I dug through a junk drawer for a pen and pad.

“Maybe you'll even get to meet Starflower,” my dad said. “Luke's new honey.” He whispered loudly, “She has purple hair and smells like patchouli.” He put a hunk of red cabbage on his head.

Luke batted away the vegetable. “She doesn't have purple hair, and she's not new; it's just that Jensen hasn't been home in a hundred years.” He winked at me. “Anyway, she's at a Tantric retreat.”

“A what?” Women moved in and out of Luke's life like water. They'd make an occasional appearance at dinner. It was only when the next one arrived that I'd realize the last one was gone.

“It's an ancient practice that concentrates on enhancing sexual experiences,” Luke told me.

I put my hands over my ears. “La la la,” I said loudly. “I can't hear you.”

“‘Don't Fear the Reaper.'” My father pointed to the pad. “Put that on there.”

After they took off for the liquor store and I heard the garage door close behind them, I looked at my playlist. “Late for the Sky,” Luke had added, and “Stairway to Heaven.” I felt so sad, I had to sit down on the kitchen floor. I stayed there for a long time, my dad's voice ringing in the room, the kitchen clock ticking on the wall.

Two hours later, I heard a car door close in the driveway. I was pulling lemons, Parmesan cheese, and garlic from the fridge, and my cell phone was ringing. “What are you up to?” I asked Nic when I answered my phone.

“Oh, nothing.” He sounded sad. “Trying to shake off the ache of missing you.” I thought of the sun coming in the skylights this time of day in the house. Since we'd moved in together, almost nine years before, we'd never gone this long without each other. “I feel like I've been ditched at the prom,” he told me.

“You didn't even go to your prom.”

He laughed. “I would have if you were my date.”

More people started arriving, and I heard Jamie's heels clicking down the hall.

“My parents are having a few people over.” I drizzled olive oil into a ramekin and listened to the party move into the living room. The doorbell chimed. “Are you going out to sushi without me?”

“Hell no,” he said. “And listen to Hadley go on about his upcoming tour? I frankly do not know who he is expecting to find in east bum fuck Latvia or Estonia.”

I'd forgotten all about Hadley's trip. “Oh, Hadley could find a good photographer in the Mongolian desert.” I could hear the plink of piano keys, and I knew he was sitting at that Steinway I never played.

“Who's coming over?” he asked.

“People I haven't seen for a thousand years.”

“How's your old man?”

“Well, he still has a brain tumor.”

“If you love me, you'll shoot me before I get old.”

That was so Nico. “I actually just read that brain tumors can happen at any age.” I could see Jamie through the arched doorway, holding court in the living room with Sid and his assistant coaches. I hadn't seen him since I'd been home. He'd been the defensive coordinator when Will played for Hamilton and had helped my dad start A Will to Live after the accident. All the players he coached and the kids at the foundation loved him because he was a great storyteller, talking quickly and with his hands. He was probably telling Jamie and the group how he'd discovered Springsteen as a scratchy-voiced kid singing in a bar in Asbury Park. Or maybe he'd moved on to how he'd invented fire, or the wheel. The doorbell rang again. “I gotta go. This place is a madhouse. I love you.”

In the foyer by the grandfather clock, I straightened the lone photo of Nic and me at our wedding. We were standing on a beach, my gauzy white dress and my hair blowing in the wind. I was barefoot, laughing, and Nic was holding an empty bottle of ouzo. I remembered that light-headed feeling, the shock of flying to Greece and getting married without telling anyone but Hadley, who'd driven us to the airport. The doorbell rang again.

Ryder was standing in the threshold in jeans and a lightweight sweater the same color as his eyes. I hadn't seen him since that night at the Seafood Shack.

“Someone told me there's a party here tonight.” He held out a bottle of wine.

I stepped toward him to take it, and he leaned in like he might kiss me. “Someone told me the same thing,” I said.

“Well, you can put your glad face on now.” He grinned. “I'm here.” I wanted to tell him I was happier than I should have been to see him, but I couldn't get the words out. He put both hands over his heart and staggered. I punched his arm. I was fifteen again, catching him watching me in my red bikini at Breakneck Lake, the week before he'd shown up at my house when he knew my parents and Will wouldn't be home.