Night Blindness (17 page)

I felt like a petulant child. “I'm okay, Uncle Luke.”

“I'm always here,” he said quietly. In a louder voice, he said, “Now, let's eat some chicken tagine and drink some wine.”

While Nic was getting the plates and glasses, I called Jamie. “I just got back to Daddy's room, and he's sleeping like a baby,” she said.

“
Back
to Daddy's room? Where were you?” I asked.

She ignored me. “Listen, Dr. Novak called, said your father might be able to go home tomorrow.”

“Great.” I had a clawing, claustrophobic feeling that I'd never get away from Dale. “When he wakes up, tell him I love him and that I'll see him in the morning.”

“Will do, sweetheart.”

“Thanks Mom.”

She said good-bye without making her usual huffing noise when I accidentally called her “Mom.”

*   *   *

Hours after Nic fell asleep, I lay next to him, watching the shadows the oak tree outside my bedroom window made on the wall. It was odd having him in my childhood room, especially since some nights I went to sleep feeling like I'd gone on some hallucinogenic trip to Santa Fe to be an artist's wife and now I was back in my own skin. But Nic's coming here had merged the two worlds in a disturbing way. And we had fucked it all right out of us: the hospital room, that almost fight in the bathroom, Ryder. We were good at being in bed. We knew well how to pleasure ourselves through each other. We barely talked during sex, but reverted to some place inside that held instinct and need, an ancient place I couldn't quite name, but it felt like an escape. Nic let me drop my history; he believed in the power of silence.

The first spring I knew him, when he'd sculpted me, I'd seen it there—plain as my mouth and eyebrows and cheeks—my grief, that guilt and shame. An almost belligerent look of solitude. He seemed to accept it without inquiry, married it, and never asked questions. Except what I was learning now was that Nic wasn't accepting it, like I had thought; he was denying it. He didn't care why I never brought up Connecticut. And the problem was, now I wanted to start talking.

 

15

When Nic and I came down to the kitchen the next morning, Luke had already brought my father home from the hospital, and Jamie had a pot of coffee brewing and was scrambling a dozen eggs. “You're just in time.” She wore a simple pink warm-up suit and hadn't brushed her hair. “I'm no Luke, but I think I did okay.” She scraped the eggs onto plates and set them at the breakfast bar with slices of rye toast.

“Thanks, Jamie.” We sat at the counter in front of a vase of flowers. I could read the card from where I sat. Sid and his wife. “Where's Daddy?”

“Went straight to bed,” Luke said, coming in from the living room.

“Dale wants him to rest,” Jamie said. “Now eat up.”

Thunderclouds moved across the windows while we ate, and by the time we'd cleared the breakfast dishes, the sky had darkened to the color of charcoal and rain splattered the windows.

“Challenge you to a game of Scrabble,” Luke said to me.

“Or we could watch my old Audrey Hepburn movies,” Jamie offered. For one fleeting moment, I wanted to see if the old-fashioned popcorn maker was still in the pantry, make a buttery bowl of fat and salt, and curl up with my mom.

“We can do both.” Luke poured another cup of coffee.

“I'm on Nic's team.” Jamie put her arm through Nic's.

“Former straight-A student and songwriter against sculptor and model agent.” Nic made a face. “We get a handicap advantage.”

Jamie's cell phone rang, and she lunged for it like only she could, fierce and quick, but still poised. “Well, hello there,” she said. “Hold on one second, my dear.” She eased open the slider, and I watched her step onto the deck in bare feet, pressing herself against the side of the house, ducking from the rain as she talked. The thick glass muffled her voice.

“Come on, kiddo.” Luke was watching me. “Let's get the board.”

I tried to keep my voice even. “What's with the secret call?”

Nic followed me to the living room. “Maybe she's starting a charity to donate all her shoes to the needy.” He massaged my neck while we walked.

I rolled my eyes. “Somehow, I don't think homeless people need four hundred pairs of stilettos.”

“No one needs stilettos.” Luke took the Scrabble board from the cupboard by the television. “But you ladies sure look good in them.” He walked on the balls of his feet to the coffee table, his hand on his hip, his dreads swooshing rhythmically.

I plopped down on the couch. “You pick the letters,” I told Luke. Nic sat next to me. “You'll have to choose for my mother.”

Jamie came in, droplets of rain on her velour sweatshirt, the color high on her cheeks. “Did I miss anything?” She sat next to Nic and squeezed his arm excitedly. “Are we winning yet?”

It was both soothing and aggravating, I thought as Luke scooped seven letters out of the canvas bag, how whenever I came home, almost everything stayed exactly the same.

By the time my dad appeared at the top of the stairs Friday night, he'd slept almost ten hours. His hair was messy and his eyes were bright from sleep. “It lives,” he announced. “And it's hungry.”

We all jumped up. We'd been drinking the last of the wine from dinner. “Welcome back, Daddy.” I gave him my arm and helped him down the stairs.

“You're just in time for some grilled tuna,” Luke said.

We crowded the kitchen table to watch him eat. “What the hell happened to me?” He licked a drop of lemon off his hand. “I feel like Rip van Winkle.”

I gave him a napkin. “You slept,” I said. “Something you should try more often.”

He glanced at me and stopped chewing. “What?” I asked.

He put down his fork and pushed back my hair. I felt his thumb on my cut. It had turned an ugly bluish yellow over the past few days. “What's with the stitches?” His tone was caught between worry and impatience. I thought of him running down the hall, searching for an imaginary dog. “Jensen?”

The table went quiet. Finally, Jamie said, “Really, Sterling” in her dreamy, careless way. “You've been asleep for a dog's year. Less talking, more eating.” Glancing at my mother, then back at me, he speared a grilled kiwi with his fork and popped it in his mouth. “That's my good man.” Jamie touched his face. She seemed so in love with him, it boggled my mind. “You need to get your strength back,” she said, and kissed him tenderly on the mouth.

“Nic,” my father said after he finished eating and we were sitting in the living room, drinking coffee. “It's good to see you.”

Nic was in the armchair by the piano, wearing a half-buttoned linen shirt, a turquoise ring on his thumb, his skin brown from the sun. He looked somehow wrong in our house.

“Jensen's been worried about you,” he told my dad. “And so have I.”

My dad studied the middle distance between them and nodded. “I'm sorry we've stolen her away.” He glanced at me. “Jamie says you're on your way to New York.”

“Gallery Lazelle is showing my work again,” he said. “The exhibit opens right after the Fourth.”

Suddenly, my dad got that happy little-boy look I knew too well. “The Fourth of July!” he said. “I almost forgot.” He loved Independence Day; it gave him a reason to buy illegal fireworks and set them off on Luke's boat. “What are we doing for the Fourth this year? I want to have a party.”

“Dad,” I groaned, and Luke said, “Here we go again.”

My father rubbed his hands together as if he were plotting. “Jensen, call Mandy and tell her to get her pretty self here for dinner on the Fourth. And invite Ryder, too. There'll be s'mores and fireworks for everyone!” I deliberately looked down, not letting Nic catch my eye at the mention of Ryder's name.

*   *   *

On Saturday night, Nic and I drove to Madison and had dinner with my parents at The Wharf. Afterwards, we left our shoes on the seawall and walked out to the sandbar. My parents held hands. Nic said the bright blue pieces of sea glass Jamie found reminded him of Greece. The night before, he'd asked again about moving there. And again I'd told him I couldn't even think about it while I was taking care of my dad.

While we sat on the breakwater to watch the sunset, my dad asked if I remembered him reading Saint-Exupery's
The Little Prince
when I was a kid. He kissed the top of Jamie's head. At odd times like these, the memory of those red pumps in Ryder's living room refused to leave me alone.

*   *   *

Luke showed up on the Fourth with coolers of lobsters, oysters, and shrimp. Behind him trailed a woman he introduced as Starflower. “Oh, honey.” She hugged me and touched my hair. “You're just as beautiful and ethereal as Luke said.” She had long black ringlets, a nose stud, and beads coiled around her neck. I liked her immediately.

Jamie was out somewhere doing one of her vague errands, but the rest of us took Luke's marching orders and shucked corn, sliced tomatoes, marinated steak, and unwrapped mozzarella.

“What else needs to be done?” I asked him.

He handed me four bottles of wine. “Go outside and put one on each corner of the table to keep that cloth down.”

Just as I was setting the last one on the farthest corner, I heard, “Sister, check out what I got for us tonight.” Mandy was coming across the yard with a big cardboard box in her arms.
FIREWORKS
was stamped across the side in block letters.

“Are those legal in Connecticut?” Nic came out the slider, holding a platter of chilled shrimp.

“Jesus,” Mandy said. “You haul contraband across state lines for your friends and this is the reception you get?” She cocked her hip. “Hi, Nic.”

He gave her a quick smile. “Hello, Mandy.” I watched him put the shrimp on the table. Mandy and Nic had never liked each other. It had been torture when she'd come out to Santa Fe. “You joining us for dinner?” he asked.

“Of course. I practically live here.” She was wearing white jeans and a loose silk top that made her look ravenously beautiful. “J.J.,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. “Philip has an extra ticket to his film premier, just for you. We're going to Paris.” But before I could answer, Starflower came out, holding a tray of oysters on the half shell, and I introduced her to Mandy, and then Luke came out with the lobster tips and made a huge deal over her, and my father arrived with bread and salad and hugged her until her feet came off the deck.

Jamie came home about a minute before we were going to eat. Although I'd left a message for Ryder, he hadn't shown up.

“Who's uncorking the wine?” Luke asked when we were seated around the picnic table. The wind lifted the edges of the cloth, and Mandy traded one of her sandals for a bottle of Chardonnay. Within seconds, she had opened it and was filling our glasses. She took off her other shoe and put her feet up on the railing. Her legs were tanned and seemed longer than when she'd left to photograph the polygamist hedgehogs. “To Sterling, my second daddy and everyone's hero.”

We ate to the music of silverware clinking on plates and tree frogs peeping their songs out back. I was facing the lawn, a sea of dark green in the fading light. My dad had taught me to catch butterflies out there with a net so soft, it wouldn't hurt their wings. Will had taught me to throw a football. Mandy had showed me how to smoke a cigarette, keeping it downwind so that my clothes wouldn't smell. And the summer I was sixteen, on a patchwork blanket tucked behind the side yard's stand of pine trees, Ryder had put his mouth between my legs and given me my first orgasm.

As if on cue, the slider opened and Ryder was standing there.

I wiped butter off my chin and started to get up, but Mandy put her hand on my knee.

Ryder grinned down at her. “Hey, kiddo.”

She had to stand on her tippy toes to hug him. “Hey, brother.” This is what Mandy had always called Ryder.

Jamie patted her lips with her napkin. “My goodness,” she said, turning in her seat. “I was worried you wouldn't come.”

I saw Nic studying his plate.

“I'm sorry I'm late. The hospital was busy tonight.” Ryder shifted from one foot to the other.

“Grab a chair from the kitchen,” Luke said to him. “There's plenty of food. You know me, always cooking for a crowd.”

My dad got up. “Let me get you one, old boy.”

Ryder followed my father inside. We all kept eating. No one spoke. We abandoned the discussion we'd been having about how sixteen networks were planning on televising Michael Jackson's funeral in a few days, but Farrah Fawcett, who'd died the same day, barely got a mention in the paper. I didn't look at Nic. Mandy sat down and pinched me under the table, I'd sent her the world's longest e-mail about driving to Ryder's house and seeing Dale's red shoes on his floor. And she'd written back two sentences:
Red heels don't mean squat. He's yours if you want him.
When Ryder and my dad came out with a simple wooden chair from the breakfast nook, Nic stood up and extended his hand. “Nico Ledakis, Jensen's husband.” His voice was crisp, free of his usual lazy drawl.

Ryder put the chair down. “Ryder Anderson. Sterling's surgeon.” I watched them shake. “You're a lucky man.” He wasn't smiling.

“No doubt.” I felt Nic put his hand on my back, a rare show of public affection.

“And this”—Luke held up his wineglass—“is Starflower.” Luke smiled at her as if he'd made her himself.

Ryder put out his hand. “Pleased to meet you.” She ignored it and kissed his cheek. “You're a real healer,” she said.

“Take it from Starflower,” Luke said, happily chomping on his salad. “She can see straight through a person.”

My father told Starflower he'd known Ryder since he was a little baseball player. “Reminded me of Nolan Ryan. Course his parents were intent on him becoming a doctor, and it's a good thing.”
Pediatrician,
I thought. He was supposed to work with kids.