Blind Sight (30 page)

“Well!” Nana says.

Nana squeezes Luke with the tops of her arms, because her gloves are dirty.

“Here you are. Safe and sound.”

“He’s taller,” Sara says. “Luke, your Nana was convinced that two men couldn’t possibly be eating properly and she’s been worrying all summer that you’ve been starving.”

“Historically, we are hunter-gatherers,” says Luke. “How are you, Nana?”

“I’ve taken Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians as my inspiration for August,” Nana says. “ ‘Aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands as we have charged you.’ ” Nana holds out her garden-gloved hands. “The Lord has blessed us with a glorious summer, but we’ve had such winds in the past three days and all my asters are in a terrible state.”

“I’ll get my bags inside and come help you.”

“Oh no, you visit with your mother and Nancy and I will set everything aright and join you later.”

Sara and Luke take the suitcases inside the house and up the stairs.

Luke has not—for a long time now—particularly noticed the colors of his room, the shapes of the furniture, the quality of light coming through the windows, etc. Or, for that matter, the front
of his house, the street he lives on, and most of Acton. All of these things look slightly different to Luke now. He asks himself if they are familiar without being recognizable, or recognizable without being familiar. He looks at the green curtains at his window, the green-and-brown blanket on his bed, the rug, the bookshelf, the reading lamp, the bike lock on the closet doorknob, the two framed posters on the wall: a photograph of Earth and another of deep space taken from the Hubble telescope. The smell is disorienting. Luke cannot smell anything but the way things smell after vacuuming. On his desk is a brown box, tied with a ribbon.

“What’s this?”

“A little gift for you,” Sara says. “Open it up.”

Luke opens the box. Inside is a piece of blown glass sculpted to look like a banyan tree, which Luke mistakes for a cauliflower.

“It’s a banyan tree,” Sara says.

“I know,” Luke says. “Wow. It’s great. Thank you.”

“I met an artist at the Vipassana retreat that makes these. And of course I thought of you. You remember the story in the Upanishads, when the father has the boy get the fruit of the banyan tree?”

Luke nods. In the story, the boy is instructed to break open the fruit, and then break open the seeds within it. Finally the boy has split the tiniest part that he can, and the father asks him what he sees. “Nothing,” says the boy, and the father tells him that this nothing cannot be seen with the naked eye, it is so small, but it is there, and it is the true essence of the banyan tree, without which the tree could not exist. “That is the Self,” the father says. “And you are that Self.”

“Thank you so much,” Luke says, again. “I love it.”

“I was thinking of how you have a lot to process right now, and how that might be like breaking open the seeds of the banyan tree.”

Luke’s jeans pocket buzzes, loudly, in the quiet room. He takes out his phone and reads a text from Mark.

Humphrey just took a dump the size of Ohio
.

Luke laughs. Sara smiles a question mark.

“He just … sent me something funny.”

“Is that the phone he gave you?”

“Yeah, he said I should keep it so we could talk and text and stuff without … you know, he doesn’t mind paying for the service.”

“He offered to pay for your college tuition,” Sara says, abruptly.

“Oh,” Luke says. “Oh yeah, he said something about that to me, but I didn’t really … I mean, I’m still going to try for a scholarship and everything. He just thought, with Rory and Pearl both at school, even with their scholarships, it must be a lot … for you, and he didn’t want me to …”

“Caroline has already told me that she and Louis would like to contribute to whatever you need.”

“Wow, that’s really nice. How IS Louis?”

Luke says this to make Sara laugh, but she doesn’t laugh. She jerks Luke’s new suitcase onto his bed with some force.

“I’ll help you unpack.”

“That’s okay. I’ve got it.”

“We can do it together.”

“No, I have your gift in there and it isn’t wrapped.”

Sara opens up the suitcase and pulls out the first item on top, which is the leather jacket Mark gave Luke.

“Well, I know this isn’t for me.” Sara holds it out. She looks down at the contents of the suitcase, fingers the suit jacket of Luke’s new suit, the stack of new T-shirts, the new shoes.

“Luke, what is all this?”

“People came to the house,” Luke takes the jacket away from Sara. He does not want her to see the label. “People give him stuff, and I got some too. It’s not a big deal. I wasn’t like, ‘Buy me clothes.’ It just sort of happened. I told him he didn’t have to.”

“I don’t understand. Were you planning on not showing me these things?”

“I just got here,” Luke points out. “I’ve been here for, like, two seconds.”

“I’d like to see all the things your father got you.”

Sara pulls out a long pale blue shawl.

“That’s your gift,” Luke tells her. “It’s made from hemp. He drove me all the way out to Venice Beach to this special store he looked up that sells natural products, just so I could find the right thing for you.”

“And did he buy this for me?” Sara asks. “Or did the store give it to him for free?”

The question hangs in the (unfamiliar, unrecognizable?) air of Luke’s room, for a moment.

“We bought it together. It’s from both of us,” Luke explains. “I would’ve gotten it myself but he said he wanted to help. He wanted to give you a thank-you gift, for letting me come.”

Luke steps forward and slams the suitcase lid shut. It’s made of a soft material, so it slams quietly. Luke tosses the leather jacket on top of it, crosses his arms, and looks at Sara.

Sara fingers the shawl.

“This,” she says, “is lovely. It’s perfect. I’m sorry if I intruded upon your privacy, Luke. I’ll let you unpack.”

She puts the shawl across her shoulders.

“What a wonderful gift. And my favorite color. This is very thoughtful and generous of you both.”

Luke wishes he had not slammed the suitcase.

“It looks good on you,” he says.

“Grrarggh,” Sara mock-growls, after a moment, shaking herself like a dog. “I’m full of emotions today. The biggest one is happiness at seeing you.”

She steps back and twirls.

“Well, I have my son’s favorite four-mushroom lasagna to get started on. So I better get chopping. You can settle in up here.”

“I’ll be down in a little bit.”

Sara leaves and Luke sits down on his bed next to his suitcase.

His phone rings. It is Pearl.

“You better get here quick,” Luke tells her. “The Lord smote Nana’s asters, Aunt Nancy thinks I should get a cape, and I’ve become an asshole. Conditions are tense.”

“Ah,” Pearl says. “Welcome home.”

Luke talks to Pearl for a few minutes. He knows he should go downstairs and help Sara with the lasagna. He opens his suitcase again. Sara’s ruffling has displaced the orderly folds Mark had organized. Luke looks around his room. He thinks that it might be some sort of evolutionary brain function that makes you stop really
seeing
familiar things and that this is because you need the brain space to notice new stuff—potential fight-or-flight situations—like, say, the appearance of stampeding mammoths on the savanna. Luke hangs the leather jacket in his closet, where there are no mammoths, and goes downstairs.

“Now, I haven’t seen the program your parent is on,” Nancy says to Luke at dinner that evening. “Have you seen it, Mother?”

“No,” Nana says. “I understand it’s very popular.”

“Is it one of these reality entertainments?” Nancy asks.

“It’s kind of a futuristic drama.” Luke explains the basic plot line of
The Last
.

“Right.” Nancy draws the “r” from the back of her throat and bites it off at the “t.” “One of those.”

Luke is already hearing himself replay this exchange to his father. Mark loves Aunt Nancy stories.

Conversation moves to local topics: Nancy’s new book, a raccoon that was spotted in the backyard, Aurora’s internship, a new acupuncturist at the Wellness Center. Luke, homesick now for dinner-table conversation less blandly familiar and a lasagna more recognizably delicious, imagines himself suddenly saying, “Jesus fucking Christ!” or “I had sex!” or even “Can we talk about how Aunt Nancy pretends she’s English?”

“Awesome lasagna,” Luke says to Sara.

After dinner, Luke calls Ivan, who tells him that tomorrow’s run
is at six a.m. Raj, Nick, Ethan, and a new guy, Matt, from track will be there.

“We’re doing a ten-K,” Ivan says. “You up for it?”

“Totally.”

“So your dad is super-famous, dude.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“He going to get you a car so you don’t have to drive that lame piece of junk?”

“You dare to insult Vlad?”

They exchange a few more jokes, and Ivan tells Luke about the training regimen he has been leading the team through all summer.

“You better bring it,” Ivan says. “You better not have gotten all soft. We’ve got a new chant before we run. No more praying. We all just go,
‘State, State, State.’
”

“Good,” Luke says. “I like that better.”

He hangs up the phone, decides against calling Amy, skirts the living room, where Sara is giving Aunt Nancy reflexology, and finds Nana on the stairs with her arms full of sheets.

“There’s my helper,” Nana says. “Let’s get these on your sisters’ beds. We’ve had quite a to-do over the rooms. Nancy doesn’t care for the attic room, she feels it’s too confining, so Sara is in there and Nancy has her room. The girls will have to share again.”

Aurora and Pearl had originally shared a bedroom. This had been fine, and then not fine, and battle lines had been drawn: literal lines, with Aurora roping off their room into yours/mine quadrants. When Aurora was granted the attic bedroom, Pearl’s sense of injustice at being denied the attic room for herself lasted even after she installed herself in the attic once Rory left for college. Various remnants of both sisters have now been reunited in their old room, haphazardly. Luke helps Nana with the fitted sheets, and then sets about sorting stuffed animals, books, and other historic girl paraphernalia to their correct places.

“It’s always the same.” Nana sits down on Pearl’s bed. “One girl
wants what the other has, or wants to be different. Not just different, but better. More.”

“Do you mean Rory and Pearl?” Luke asks. “Or Sara and Nancy?”

Nana swords this question away, lightly.

“I hope that you will be coming to Assembly with me on Sunday,” she says.

Luke arranges Aurora’s shells on her dresser, lining them up in an ascending scale according to size, which is not something Rory did. It’s what Luke did, when he was allowed past the barricades.

“Yes,” Luke says, absently. “Sure.”

In the morning, Luke bikes over to Fishers Park and meets the team in the parking lot. He exchanges the cross-country team greeting with everyone: two high fives followed by a double fist bump. Ivan gives Luke a one-armed hug.

“Good to have you back, Hollywood.”

“Okay, no way am I going to let any of you call me Hollywood,” Luke says. “That stops right here.”

“I saw the picture of you at the Dodgers game,” Raj comments. “Sweet.”

“Yeah, I saw that too,” Ethan says. “You know, a whole bunch of pictures come up if you Google ‘Luke’ and ‘Mark Franco.’ There’s, like, pictures of you going to
lunch
, dude.”

“Did photographers follow you around and stuff?”

“Not really,” Luke tells them. “I mean, sometimes people will see him on the street and pull cameras out.”

“Seriously,” Ethan says. “Everybody is talking about it.”

“Yeah, your dad going to visit?” Nick wants to know. “Because we could get mass turnout if he comes to a race.”

“We can use it as a recruitment tool,” Ivan says.

Ivan begins leading the team in warm-ups. It is already too hot to wear anything but shorts.

“You start eating meat?” Raj asks, looking at Luke. “You look … bigger.”

“I’m on steroids,” Luke says.

“C’mon,” Luke says, when no one laughs. “I started drinking protein shakes.”

While they stretch, Luke is asked more questions. They want to know what famous people he has met. They want to know if Luke knows what happens next on
The Last
. They want to know what kind of shakes Luke has been drinking. Luke tells a few anecdotes. He describes Mark as “actually a really mellow guy,” and does not realize that he is borrowing this phrase from Pete, the golf cart–driving assistant on
The Last
. He believes the team wants to be reassured that he is the same old Luke, and this makes him feel like he is producing an imitation of himself being natural, which makes him uncomfortable, rendering the imitation useless, as well as inaccurate.

Ethan says, “So I’m sorry, but it’s kinda weird, right, that you didn’t know who your dad was?”

Everyone falls silent and looks at the ground and Luke guesses that this is something that they have all been discussing.

“Well, not you, but your mom,” Ethan says. “I mean, she didn’t know, right? Or like, she knew but she didn’t know or something? I’m not saying that’s bad, I’m just saying that’s kinda weird, right?”

“It’s kinda weird,” Ivan says, looking at Ethan, “that
your
mom doesn’t know you are an idiot.”

“I didn’t mean …” Ethan turns to Luke. “You know I didn’t mean anything, right?”

“Here’s the deal,” Luke says, who has anticipated this moment. “They had a brief thing and he knew about me but he was really young and he couldn’t be a dad. Then he changed his name for acting. If Sara watched TV she would’ve known it was him, but she doesn’t. Once things were good for him, he got back in touch.”

“Yeahyeahyeah,” Ethan says, hastily. “Totally.”

Luke had planned this explanation but not the sharp and slightly
aggrieved way he has delivered it. In the silence now, he hears the echo of this, feels exposed. He dons self-deprecation, like camouflage.