Love in the Present Tense (17 page)

“No,” I said. “It's not. It's a cab.”

“Where's your new car?”

“It doesn't matter,” I said. “It never did matter.”

I gave the driver my address. Leonard sat with his face toward the window, as if he were looking out. As if he were able to see through the bandages and metal guards, and watch the familiar streets slip by.

“I'm sorry, Mitch,” he said.

“Don't be.”

“It was your new car.”

“It was nothing,” I said. “It didn't mean a fucking thing. I didn't even get it for myself. I got it to please Harry. Fuck Harry. Don't think another thing about it.”

“Good thing we got rid of the cuss jar,” he said.

LEONARD,
age
18:
ring around the moon

I squat on the edge of this familiar cliff a moment longer, and look off into the night. I might never get to again. Maybe this look will have to last me. I think about what I'll miss if I leave. Like Mitch. Only I'd never really leave Mitch.

I made him a promise. I promised him for real.

I look out across the ocean.

There's a ring around the moon tonight. I've seen this before. Seen it and had it described to me, when I couldn't see it. I know what it really is. Ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. But I like to think it's something more. Like God underlining what's really important. Like Pearl with a halo. Like my new destination.

The ring around the moon I remember best was the one I never got to see. I was at Mitch's house, recovering from my eye surgery.

I'd gotten so housebound that I begged him to take me for a walk.

I remember his hands on my elbow, and I remember the puff of Moon Pie's breathing as he padded along behind. And I remember being scared.

I always thought I trusted Mitch. Completely. And I did trust him, but maybe not completely. More than I trusted anybody else, but not completely. When the chips were down, really down, I was surprised to find it was pretty much just Pearl and me.

“Trust me,” he said.

“I do,” I said.

But then I'd stop dead. Make a damn liar out of myself.

“There's nothing in front of you,” he said.

So I'd take a step. But I kept picturing something in front of me. In front of my closed eyes I pictured an overhanging tree limb. A flying object, like a bird or a thrown rock. And my eyes felt so vulnerable. So I'd stop in my tracks. Throw an arm up to protect them.

“Should we go home?” Mitch asked.

“No,” I said. “No.”

I hadn't been outdoors for so long. And it was only this trust thing threatening to push me back into bed again. I hated bed. I'd been there for weeks. So I let Mitch hold my elbow and I walked right through that imagined tree limb, and sure enough it wasn't there. Just like Mitch said it wouldn't be.

I felt myself strangely in his hands, and I realized I had never been in anyone's hands before. Except with Pearl. By the time she died I was able to take care of my own fate and halfway save Mitch's ass in the bargain. I never really relied on him for much. I mean, material things, yes. I did. True. I'm not forgetting that he fed and clothed and supported me, and bought my glasses, and paid for my eye surgery with his brand-new car. It's just that in a deeper sense I felt I'd been on my own since age five.

I felt the air of that cool evening on my face, and I think it hit me then, for the first time, that the operation might not be a success. That I had better learn to trust Mitch if he said I was not about to slam into anything. Because this might not be a temporary situation. I could be taking his word for these things for the rest of my life.

It should have been a frightening thought, but I felt strangely settled. I felt a sense of peace, of knowing that I would live on and be all right either way.

We stopped in the little park near Mitch's house and sat down on a bench. Moon Pie came up in front of me and flipped my hand up into the air with his nose and I scratched behind his left ear. For some reason he likes to be scratched behind his left ear. Better than the right. Go figure.

“What's different about tonight?” I asked Mitch.

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. What's special tonight?”

“Nothing,” he said. “It's just like every other night.”

“No way. Wrong. No night is just like every other night. You're not looking close enough.”

“I'm looking as best I can,” he said. “Nothing's different.”

“If I could see,” I said, “I'd find something. You know I would.”

“Yeah,” Mitch said. “You probably would.”

“So look the way I would. Come on, Mitch. It'll be good for you.”

He was quiet for a full minute or two. Then he said, “There's a ring around the moon tonight.”

“Good,” I said. “That's a good start.”

“What causes that?” he asked. “Do you know?”

“Ice crystals in the upper atmosphere.”

“Oh.”

Then we were quiet another couple of minutes, and I was still scratching behind Moon Pie's left ear. I stopped for a second, but then he bumped my hand to get me to start again.

Mitch said, “I think I did you a great disservice by not wanting to talk about Pearl. You needed to talk about it. I should have encouraged that.”

“There was nothing to talk about,” I said. “She died. It's not like I didn't know where she was or anything.”

I could hear him take in breath. I felt the talk take a squirrelly, uncomfortable turn. A guarded turn. Like everything had all been just in its place until Mitch decided to shake it apart and make it go sideways.

“I know it's very hard to imagine that your mother could just leave you somewhere and disappear.”

“It sure would be,” I said. “Good thing I never had to think anything like that about Pearl.”

“So maybe it's easier to believe that she died.”

“She did die.”

“We have no way of knowing that, Leonard.”

“Sure we do,” I said. “When a person starts showing up somewhere without her body, you can be pretty damn sure she died.”

I think we talked some more about it, but it's hard to remember. I know Mitch talked more. It was like he had a dozen years' worth of stuff to get off his chest, and he seemed to be saying it just the way he had saved it up to say.

I wasn't sure how people did that. My thoughts changed all the time. I could never hold words in one place for so long.

Poor Mitch. What he thought Pearl had done was such a terrible thing. No wonder he was so worried.

I bet he didn't even believe that I could stay with him after I died.

I'm going to have to make a believer out of the poor guy.

I shudder slightly, not so much out of fear but out of excitement, wondering if this will be my moment. If this will be my chance.

I bring my attention back to the glider. And the cliff.

I untarp the glider, slip into the harness. Clip the harness in place.

Then I'm standing at the edge, in every possible sense of those words. Balancing the glider by the steering bar, feeling the wind lift it slightly. Already it feels like wings. Already it feels like
my
wings.

Moon Pie is bouncing around behind me, barking, the way he would if I were on the beach, about to walk into the surf. He can always sense when I'm about to go somewhere he can't follow. He hates moments like that.

I guess we all do.

I take three or four running steps. I don't jump, I just step. Then the ground falls away and I'm flying. Look at me, Moon Pie, I'm flying. Look at me, Mitch. No. Don't look at me. I forgot. This is something you wouldn't want to see.

I look down and see nothing but ocean. Black. I see the stream of moon reflected on the surface of the water, starting out at the horizon and pouring in like liquid light, like shiny liquid foil.

I feel the wind flapping in my shirt and rushing over my scalp and cooling my bare feet.

I look up and see that star. For some reason it looks brighter and shinier than any of the other stars. I feel like I can fly all the way out to it. Maybe even like it's asking me to.

So I turn away from the cliff, out to open ocean. And that's the direction I'm brave enough to fly.

MITCH,
age
37:
voluntary blindness

The night we finally broke down and talked about Pearl was our night outdoors, after Leonard's surgery.

Up until then I'd been caring for Leonard in bed.

That evening I came in to find him sitting up on the edge of the bed, looking restless. His bandages had come off several days before. He could see shapes, light and shadow, but not much more.

“What are you doing up?” I asked. “Shouldn't you lie down?”

“Why?” he said. “Why should I lie down? I'm not sick. I'm in perfect health. I just can't see.”

“I just thought you'd be more comfortable.”

“Try lying in bed for a few weeks when you're perfectly healthy,” he said. “And then tell me how you're most comfortable.”

I sat down with him on the edge of the bed. “What can I do for you, Leonard?” I asked, because clearly we had crossed a line, and my current level of care was no longer helping him enough.

“Take me for a walk,” he said.

So I did.

It took a long time to get him to trust me. But then just when I thought he never would, he did, and I was taken with this strange sensation that Leonard was allowing me to guide him in a way he never had before.

It was a weird moment, and I'm not entirely sure how to describe it. I suppose it was a bit like suddenly being cured of a handicap you'd never realized you had. Because I'd never been anyone's parent before, and how was I to know how it was supposed to feel? And, not knowing how it felt, how was I to notice it was missing?

But that night, suddenly there it was. That sensation of being the leader. Being trusted.

I'd never consciously recognized it before, but always in the past, even at age five, Leonard either walked abreast of me or, all too often, took the lead.

I must have gotten too much of a sense of my own power, because I chose that moment to try to talk about Pearl.

Leonard slipped right back into the leading role, and in just a matter of a few minutes I was feeling stupid for not believing that she had died and was still hanging around somewhere.

Maybe I wanted to believe Leonard's version of events, but it was hard. I guess I'm just not that much of an idealist. It's one of those things that sounds too good to be true. The love that can never be broken. The devotion that no power, no circumstance can pull apart.

The world was full of divorcing couples who swore they'd remain friends and now couldn't stand the sight of each other. The world was full of mothers who ditched their kids and ran.

That was the real world. Like it or not.

Leonard sat there quietly, listening to this interminable monologue on my part. All this stuff I'd been saving up for years. By that time it was all too rehearsed sounding. All full of guilt at having to teach reality. But he listened so patiently.

We were sitting on a park bench, and he was scratching behind Moon Pie's ear. Out of the corner of my eye I still saw that ghostly ring of light around the moon, and it made me sad that Leonard couldn't see it.

Ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. That's what he'd told me. And he was undoubtedly right. Why hadn't I known that? Why wasn't there anything I could teach him?

When I finally ran out of steam he said, “Poor Mitch. I'm so sorry you have to believe that.”

That was it. The sum total of his reaction. Empathy toward me for not seeing the world his way.

And the really crazy part of the whole deal is that it wasn't just Leonard. Suddenly I felt sorry for me, too.

In the morning I got out of bed and made a strange decision. I decided that, at least for that one day, I would be blind.

I climbed down out of my loft and looked around for something I could use as a blindfold. I ended up with a clean dishcloth, folded lengthwise. I tied it around my eyes and then stood in the kitchen, wondering what I was supposed to do next.

Normally I would make coffee, read the paper, check my e-mail, and do the crossword puzzle. Already things seemed seriously off-kilter. It resembled that life shock of the type that sets in when there's been a major disaster. Nothing proceeds as usual. No routine goes unchanged.

I climbed upstairs and went back to bed.

After an hour or so, the lack of coffee began to seem like an issue. So I decided I would have to make some. Also, Leonard would wake up soon, and he would want some kind of breakfast. Cereal, at least. I would have to get myself to the kitchen.

But, you know, those damn ladder steps were a lot easier to go up than down. In my current nonseeing state, I mean. The fear of falling claimed every ounce of my attention. I should have learned years ago how many steps there were. I should have been able to do them in my sleep. But I fished with my foot for the floor, as if it might bite me when I found it, or as if I'd fall to my death if I didn't find it right there where I expected it.

When I got down onto the living room floor, I better understood Leonard's troubles of the night before. As I moved through the room, I kept picturing my face slamming into something. Even though logic told me there was nothing at that level. Still I walked with my hands in front of my face for protection. And promptly barked my shin on the coffee table.

Around the time I stubbed my toe on the kitchen doorway, I decided that shoes would be a good idea. So I climbed back upstairs, slipped on my leather Top-Siders, and had to do the treacherous downstairs climb all over again.

I did eventually make my way into the kitchen, but I felt as if I'd just survived a crawl through enemy territory during wartime.

I found the coffeemaker by feel, but I couldn't remember where I'd left the filters. Seemed I put them in a different drawer or cupboard every day. I would have had to look for them, which I could not at that moment do. I knew the box would feel like any other box. I knew they could be anywhere. I was quick to give up.

I found the paper towels on their rack over the sink. Something I kept in the same place every day. And I used one as a filter.

I always kept the coffee in the freezer. I found it easily, because it was in a distinctively shaped bag, but the freezer was crowded, and a shower of frozen foods rained down all around me, including onto the arch of my foot. I tried not to yell because Leonard was, I hoped, still asleep. I tried to gather up everything I had dropped, but I wasn't sure how far things might have rolled. Then I smacked my forehead on the kitchen table and decided to just make the damn coffee and let everything thaw on the floor.

Making the coffee actually went pretty well. I just used my hands to feel the fullness of things, the edges of them. I used my finger in the pot to judge when the water level was right, then I poured it into the coffeemaker with one hand marking the opening. I was beginning to feel proud of myself.

I opened the cupboard to get down a mug and knocked about half a dozen glasses and china cups onto the kitchen floor, where they shattered all around me.

I heard a slight sound, a rustle in the kitchen doorway.

“Mitch?” Leonard said. “What the hell are you doing in here? Repelling an alien invasion?”

“Don't come in,” I said. “Don't come in if you're in your bare feet. There's broken glass.”

“Duh,” Leonard said. “I could have told you that from next door.”

We both stood in silence for a moment, assessing each other in whatever ways are left over when two people experience familiar company in blindness.

“What are you doing, Mitch?” he said again, quietly, and I felt chastised. Caught at something wrong. Ashamed. “Come here,” Leonard said.

I crunched over some broken glass and kicked aside what felt like a can of frozen orange juice.

When I got to the doorway, Leonard reached his hands out and touched the dishcloth on my face.

“Oh, Mitch,” he said and untied it in back, and pulled it away.

I blinked into the light. “I just wanted to see how hard things would be.”

“Oh, Mitch,” he said again. “Don't get me wrong, because you know I love you and all, but that's, like, the dumbest thing ever.”

I felt stung, and I could hear it in my own voice as I defended my idea. “Why? Why is it dumb?”

“Because you have eyes. If you didn't, you'd cope with that. You'd manage. But you do. So don't waste them.”

“I thought it would make me feel closer to you.”

“When did we feel closest, Mitch?”

“I don't know. When did we?” I had thoughts on the matter, but this was my chance to hear his.

“How about last night, when we were out walking? Because you could see and I couldn't. We fit together because of that. There's nothing wrong with having something I don't.”

“I just wanted to see the world through your eyes.”

“Or lack of same,” he said. “Voluntary blindness is never going to catch on. Believe me. Some things you don't do on purpose.”

“Want some cereal?” I asked. Probably anxious to change the subject.

“Sure. Thanks.”

“I'll bring it to you in bed. Let me just clean up this glass.”

“With your eyes open,” he said. “Or you'll cut yourself.”

After he left I stood in the kitchen and looked around.

It was more like a dozen cups and glasses, actually. China mugs lay on their sides with the handles broken off. A tray of skinless, boneless chicken breasts sat half wedged under the stove, and two frozen cranberry juice cans had rolled under the kitchen table.

I poured coffee into the only mug left unscathed in the cupboard. Poured in a slug of half-and-half and watched the grounds swirl in the cup.

Then I set about cleaning up the mess.

About three o'clock that afternoon Cahill came by with his kid, John Jr. JohnBoy we called him. On their way to Little League.

I know it's hard to believe, but eight years earlier Cahill had gone and married Hannah.

I know. Believe me, I know.

First of all, Cahill was the guy voted least likely to settle down, have a kid, and drive him to Little League. Second of all, I'd always thought Hannah adored me. And maybe she did. I don't know anymore.

I just know that I liked to think of her as a sort of safety net. Which means I'd been working without a net for eight years.

Maybe it's not easy being somebody's safety net. Maybe she just didn't adore me enough. Maybe I'd treated her badly just by thinking she might.

Leonard was sitting cross-legged in a chair by the window. He looked like the Buddha or something. He also looked like he was looking out. Maybe he was. He could see some by then but we tried not to discuss how much. Too much pressure. Too hard to explain. He had a haze of beard growing, silky though it was, and I had been debating over helping him shave.

JohnBoy made a straight line, right through the living room to Leonard.

“Hi, Doc,” he said as he breezed by, but it was clearly perfunctory. Leonard had all the pull. “Hi, Leonard.”

JohnBoy thought the sun rose and set on Leonard. Of course I'm not claiming he was wrong.

“Hey, JohnBoy,” Leonard said and reached out and ran a hand back and forth across John Jr.'s unruly hair.

“Can you see yet?”

“A little.”

“How much?”

“Some but not all.”

“What's it like?”

Leonard sighed. I knew it tired him to explain, but he didn't say so.

“It's like being in a dark room and just being able to see the very edges of things. Only it's not exactly dark. But that's about how much you get to see.”

“Is it terrible?”

“No,” he said.

“So it's okay?”

“Well. It's not something you'd choose for yourself.” Then Leonard turned his face in my direction. Looked right at me, though I'm not sure how much he saw. Gave me a little wry smile. “Right, Mitch?”

“Oh, shut up, Leonard,” I said.