Night Blindness (21 page)

Ryder started to talk, but I cut him off again. “Will just fell down. And he was lying there, not moving, not breathing. Ryder did CPR and told me to call nine one one.”

My mother turned to us; her eyes were clear and her mouth was a thin, tight line. I thought she knew we were lying. She put her hand over the seat, and for a second, I thought she was going to slap me, but she patted Ryder's other hand, which was resting on her seat back. “Thank you,” she said to him, “thank you, darling.” She turned to my dad. “Sweetheart,” she said in that tone she used when she was trying to calm him down. “He'll be fine.”

My father flinched. “I was there when Chuck Hughes died during the Detroit-Chicago game in '71,” he said in a hard, distant voice. “A ten-fifty-four is a probable dead body.”

*   *   *

We left the car double-parked and stumbled into the ER. The same front-desk clerk from earlier in the night said Dr. Griffith was waiting for us. When we went through the double doors, a man with a thick beard was writing something on a clipboard. “Dr. Griffith?” my father asked. “Where's my son?” Will had talked on the way home from the hospital about the ER doc who'd looked him over after the game.

“Please, come into my office and have a seat,” Griffith told us. His southern accent surprised me, and he had the shifty eyes of someone who couldn't hold still. When he motioned to a bank of chairs against the wall, we all stayed standing. He cleared his throat; a thin scar the shape of a sickle ran from his right eyebrow to his ear. He put the clipboard down. “Your son wasn't breathing when the paramedics left your house.” I hated him then, the hardness in his eyes, how just three hours later, he'd apparently forgotten Will's name.

“Will,” my dad said. “His name is Will.”

Dr. Griffith picked up a box of tissues and offered them to my mom, but she didn't take one. He held the box like a shield. “We think it was a subdural hematoma.”

“What do you mean you
think
?” My father took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

“That would be consistent with a head injury. But we won't know for certain…”

My dad dropped his glasses. His movements were awkward, abrupt; he appeared not to be aware of what he was doing.

Jamie started toward the door. “I need to see my son,” she said, trying to push past Griffith. “Where is he?”

Griffith blocked her, and my father took her in his arms. “Let the doctor finish.”

I'd backed myself into the corner under a wall-mounted TV, as far away from everyone as I could get. Ryder stood dumbly in the center of the room, his shirt untucked, his belt on upside down.

Dr. Griffith cleared his throat. “A subdural hematoma occurs when there's a hard impact to a person's head.” He paused and looked at each of us. His eyes were the same color as Will's, a bright, piercing blue. “Basically, the brain bleeds into the dura, the protective wrapper that surrounds—”

My father slumped. “Just tell us how he is.”

I thought I was going to scream. Something was coming for me, something dark that didn't have a name.

“We did everything we could for Will.” The doctor's pager beeped. He reached for his belt and turned it off.

Jamie gripped my father's hand. “What's happened to him?” she said tightly. “What happened to my Will?”

“Mrs. Reilly.” Griffith sucked in his breath and blew it out as he spoke. “I am so sorry.”

“No.” She rocked back like she might lunge at him, but her legs gave. My dad caught her. I wondered how many people that doctor had seen collapsing, people whose lives had been normal, happy before they'd walked in. Gently, my dad helped her to a chair. I knew I should tell them that Will didn't collapse, that he'd smacked his head on the slate because I'd pushed him, but I didn't hit him that hard.

“But, but, we were just here. You said he was fine.” My mother's voice was accusing; my father was trying to help her sit. She was pointing at the doctor, her voice shrill and terrifying, “You said—”

Griffith's voice sounded tinny. “Will's neurological exam was normal. He shouldn't have had any complications.” He looked from my mom to my dad. “Are you sure he didn't hit his head again later on in the night?”

“He passed out.” I was surprised to hear my voice. “One second he was standing there and the next he was on the floor.” Every time I told that lie, it felt a little more like the truth. I could feel Ryder watching me.

I kept my eyes on Griffith, as steady as I could. I took in his beard, his scar. His pager beeped again. “That's what it said in the paramedics' report.” He pulled it off his belt and read the message, then slipped it in his pocket.

“But why didn't this hematoma show up on the MRI you did earlier?” my father asked.

Dr. Griffith's eyes jotted right; he moved from one leg to another, as if agitated. “All I can tell you is that the brain is a delicate organ. Sometimes a devastating injury can present as nothing at all.” I saw a thin line of sweat at his temple.

“Would an autopsy show what actually happened?” my father asked.

“You will not butcher my beautiful boy.” Jamie began to cry. Whenever I thought about this night, I knew this would be when the fissure between my parents began. Neither would know how to deal with the other's grief. My dad put his arm around her and tried to hold her up. But Jamie had gone stiff. “I forbid you to touch him,” she said.

We stood there, listening to her cry, and I thought back to the spring before, when I'd been on that back road heading home from the dugouts with Ryder, hearing that unmistakable thud and seeing the body in my headlights. I'd expected the doe to run into the woods, but she stayed still, watching her fawn. When I got out of the car, I realized she was making a sound I'd never heard before, a devastated bleating that made me wish I could speak her language. It was dark. I hadn't had time to swerve, or brake. When I bent down to see if the fawn was breathing, the doe came closer and hit my shoulder hard with her head. I fell back, startled. That deer stared at me with a dark look in her eyes until I got back in my car and drove away.

While Jamie cried, I thought about that deer and how I'd never called Animal Control, how I'd gotten in my in my car and left that doe, red from the taillights, retreating in the rearview mirror.

*   *   *

When I stopped talking, I was still sitting in Bottega, but I was in their posh bathroom. Mandy had given the clerk her credit card and, taking my hand, had led me to the ladies' room where I'd sat on the toilet seat and finished telling the story. She'd stood next to me without letting go of my hand. It was the first time I had ever said it aloud, and I was shaking hard.

Mandy sat down on the floor next to me. “Oh my God, J.J.” She was still holding my hand. “You poor thing.”

The clerk knocked on the door and asked if everything was okay. “We're fine,” Mandy called to him. And then she took me by the arm as though I were frail and old, and we went into the brightly lit store, where I watched her sign the receipt and take our bags.

Outside the sky had gone from a sallow blue to an angry gray. The air smelled like wet cement and hot oil. We sat on a bench to the left of the door. As cars passed us, I saw my warped face in their windows.

“That doesn't mean anything,” Mandy was saying in her quick, certain voice. “The doctor said he got a concussion when that Hopkins kid hit him.”

I felt like I was going to throw up. “No, Mand.” It was important that she get this. Now that I had finally told, she had to understand. I spoke slowly, as though talking to someone from another country. “The ER doctor asked us three times if Will hit his head after the game.” It had started to drizzle and my hair was wet, plastered to my forehead. “I couldn't tell them what happened.” I wiped it out of my eyes. “I just couldn't.”

That was the part of the story I hated most. I had lied. I hadn't lied as a child. “Her face is too goddamn honest,” my father used to tell his friends. “Will's the fiction teller.” After that night, though, I found lying easy. I'd lied to guys about my phone number, my name, told them I was available. I'd lied to my parents about my grades, about Nic, and I'd lied to Nic about my dreams.

A little girl crossed Chapel Street in a pink raincoat, holding a Barbie in one hand and her mother's fingers in the other. I had the hideous feeling a car was going to come around the corner and hit her while we sat there watching. “I told that doctor nothing happened.” I felt a raindrop hit my bare neck and slide down my back. “I have dreams that the emergency room doctor comes to our house and tells my parents the truth.” Everything was itchy, the band of my denim shorts, my underwear hem, the T-shirt, my hair down my back. “I could tell he didn't believe me.” It started to rain harder, but we just sat there. “Sometimes I think I see him. In the health food store in Santa Fe. Behind me at a red light. And since I've been home and back at Yale, I sometimes think he's going to come for me. He's going to show up on my parents' doorstep and tell them what I did. He must have figured it out by now.”

“J.J.,” Mandy said. The traffic sent up spray that almost hit our legs. “No matter what happened that night, it was an accident; you didn't do it on purpose.”

I stared at an open sewer hole down the street with bright orange sawhorses surrounding it. That it had been an accident hardly mattered. Mandy put her arm around me and laid her head on my shoulder. We watched the traffic pass. Customers went in and out of stores; I could feel their eyes on us. “Tell your parents,” she finally said. “You'll feel so much better.”

“I tried once to tell my mom.”

“Yeah, well, that's Jamie. Tell your dad.”

“He'll die hating me.”

“He's not dying.” Her mascara had left two black rims below her bottom lashes. “And he couldn't hate you if he tried.”

I watched people hurrying past, huddling under umbrellas, car wipers frantically beating back rain. My hands felt like deadweights at my sides. “You're the only person in the world who knows.”

“You never told Nic?” I could hear the surprise in her voice. I shook my head. “Oh, J.J.,” she whispered. “You poor, poor thing.”

I put my face in my hands and sobbed. I cried for Will and for my dad; I cried for everything I'd lost and would lose and for how different my life could have been, how different I wanted it to be. The rain came down harder, sideways, slanting rain that soaked our clothes through, but we didn't move, we just sat there, side by side on the bench, our new shoes in boxes at our feet, while I cried and cried.

 

18

After I told Mandy, I went around in a daze. I didn't know if I felt relief or if something inside had disconnected. My mirrors felt like windows looking out at a crowded street. I didn't see my reflection, just the image of someone who looked vaguely familiar, like a girl I used to know in grade school but whose name I had long since forgotten.

At odd moments, I felt as though I would open my mouth and tell my father what had happened, like when we were sitting at the drive-through prescription window downtown or at the grocery store buying asparagus. Things with Jamie felt even more strained. My urge to confess was constant, but she was off-limits. After she hadn't listened to me when I tried to tell her in high school, I couldn't do it now, and I was so angry at her for that.

In early August, I took Jamie to drop off her car at the dealership. On the way home, we stopped at her agency. It was three blocks from the hospital where I'd been taking my dad for radiation five days a week all summer and I hadn't been there once since I'd been home. The elevator doors opened, and as we got closer to the studio, I heard Piers, her photographer, pleading in his Italian accent with a model to look more desperate.

He was heroin-skinny as ever, black hair back in that same ponytail, camera around his neck, looking up at a six-foot teenager in a bathing suit. The overhead lights made the place feel like an oven. Covering the walls were black-and-white photos of all the girls Jamie and Piers had discovered. Four fans were blowing the model's blond hair everywhere. “Poutier.” Piers frowned, showing her what he meant. He just looked constipated. “I need hopeless.” The girl stuck out her bottom lip. He spun in a small circle and smiled when he saw me. “
Bella.
” He put his arm around my shoulders. “Just look like this one. Damaged and beautiful.” He released me and kissed Jamie on the cheek. “You take tiny break,” he said to the relieved girl. She studied me for a moment before disappearing into the break room.

Jamie handed Piers a portfolio. He tucked it under his arm and said to me, “It's been ages, darling, congratulations on your father's”—he searched for the word; he'd been in the United States thirty years, and he was still searching for words—“recovery.”

“He's not recovered, Piers,” I said. “He has a brain tumor.”

He put his hand over his mouth, and I felt bad for being mean. He'd always been kind, brought homemade taffy for Will and me when we were little and Jamie brought us to shoots. “Yes, but it is okay?” He tilted his head. “I thought—” Then he saw another model appear from the back. “Janel,” he called over his shoulder, “you are mine in T minus two.” He tapped his watch. “So, Ukraine's portfolio, it is perfect, no?” He looked at Jamie. “She's a gold mine.” He put his thumb and forefinger together to indicate money. “Okay.” He clapped his hands. “Ta.”

“My God, Jensen,” Jamie said while we were getting into the elevator. “Do you always have to be so full of doom and gloom? Weren't you listening when Ryder said the odds—”

“Are overwhelmingly in our favor.” I pushed the button for the ground floor. “There are still risks,” I told her. “I've been researching at the medical library, and there are a boatload of reasons not to relax about this.” What did she
think
I did all day?