Things Not Seen (3 page)

T
he good thing about February in Chicago is that no one thinks it's weird if you're all bundled up. When I get on the city bus headed toward campus, I'm just another person who doesn't want to freeze to death in the wind chill. The stocking cap, the turtleneck, the scarf around my face, the gloves, it all looks natural. Except maybe Dad's huge sunglasses. They make me look like Elwood from
The Blues Brothers
.

It's about a half-mile bus ride from home to the stop at Ellis and Fifty-seventh Street. Bouncing along, my heart is pounding so hard, I can hear it crinkling my eardrums. It probably isn't such a great idea to be going to the library. But I have to. I have to. I mean, what if I sit at home all day and watch TV, and then tomorrow, I wake up and I'm my regular self again? It would be like nothing happened, same old same old. So I'm going to the library to see what it's like. To be like this. At the library. As long as I get home before Dad does, no problem.

Looking out the window of the bus, I'm not sure if I'll be able to get into the library. It's the big one, the Regenstein Library. You have to show an ID at the entrance. If the person on duty wants to check my face against the picture on my lab school ID, things could get messy.

But I come here a lot, and I know the guy who's working at the security desk today. He's a college kid.

There's no line, and I hand him my card. “Hi, Walt. How's it going?”

He looks at my picture and runs the card under the scanner. He smiles and says, “Everything's good, Bobby. You out of school early today?”

I nod. “Yeah, working on a special project.”

He smiles and says, “Well, don't get too smart all at once, okay?”

I start to walk toward the elevators and Walt says, “Hey…”

I turn back, and he grins and says, “…nice shades.”

I know exactly where I'm going. The elevator takes me to the top floor. There's a men's room up on five, and I'm betting it's empty. It is. I shut myself into the stall against the wall and take off my clothes. I wrap everything in my coat. I look around and realize my little plan has a flaw: A public washroom does not offer a lot of places to hide a bundle of clothes. And they have to still be here when I get back.

Then I look up. The ceiling's like the one in my basement at home. It's not too high, and by standing on the toilet seat, I'm just tall enough to lift up a ceiling tile, push it to one side, and stick my bundle of stuff up there next to the light fixture. Then I pull the tile back in place.

Before I leave the washroom, I look into the mirror above the sinks. I have to make sure I don't look like I feel. Because I feel the way I am—which is totally naked. And I hope that at least for the next little while, I really do stay invisible.

Leaving my house, riding the bus, walking through the library—when I did all that I was wearing a full set of clothes. And my eyes told my brain that everything was normal. And I had no trouble walking or seeing my hand put quarters into the slot on the bus. That's because my hand was in a glove and my feet were in my shoes.

Now I'm lost in space again, like that first trip down to the kitchen at breakfast this morning. My hands and feet don't know how to obey me.

I take it slow, feeling all dizzy and disoriented. I make myself walk back and forth through one of the periodicals sections, stepping carefully around chairs and tables. My shadow is barely there, more like a ripple, sort of like the way light bends above a hot radiator. I try to reach out and touch the corner of an Arabian newsmagazine. I miss it by about three inches on the first try. It's like that coordination test where you have to shut your eyes and put your arm out straight and touch your pointer finger to the tip of your nose. Or like getting to the bathroom in the middle of the night without turning on a light and without running into your desk. It takes practice. And after about ten minutes, I'm getting a lot better. So I take a walk around the rest of the fifth floor.

I know I've been up here on the fifth floor once or twice before, but nothing looks the same. Everything is different. Except it's not. It's me. I'm what's different. I've never felt the carpet on the soles of my feet before, never felt the cold air rolling down off the windows along the north wall, never been even half this alert. It's like everything is under a bright light, and I'm worried that the handful of people scattered around at tables and computer terminals or reading newspapers in easy chairs can hear the pounding of my heart.

I end up back by the elevators. I'm steadier now, ready for places with more people, ready to do some serious exploring. I push the down button, then I remember—I'm not really here. The doors slide open, and nobody's inside. Still, it's probably not a good idea to get into a small room that could fill up. So I walk down the stairs to the fourth floor—slowly, hanging on to the handrail. I'm hoping that everyone is too busy to notice when the stairway door opens all by itself.

On four, students are all over the place. And I know why. Midterms. Same thing at the lab school library, I bet. But that's got nothing to do with me, not now. I'm having a little winter break. I just get to stroll through the beehive and watch the drones buzz from book to book, filling up their heads so they can dump them out into test booklets a week from now.

There's a girl using the online card catalog. She looks young, maybe a freshman. She taps on the keys, looks at the screen, frowns, shakes her head, and then taps some more. Bending over the keyboard, a long strand of brown hair keeps falling down into her eyes, and she keeps trying to hook it behind her left ear. She's having trouble with the computer.

I walk up right behind her and look over her shoulder at the screen. She keeps highlighting a book title, but she can't get the computer to go to the next screen. I know what to do. All she has to do is press F7. But she keeps hitting the escape key, and it takes her backward. I step closer, and I wait until she has the title highlighted again. It's a book called
Summerhill
. Then I lean forward, reach past her, take careful aim, and gently push the F7 key. The screen jumps ahead.

The girl does a double take. Then she gives a little shrug and pushes the print key.

I'm so pleased with my good deed that I don't think. Because if she's pushed the print button, then this girl's probably going to push something else. And she does.

The girl pushes her chair back, and one of the black plastic wheels rides right onto the big toe on my left foot.

I can't help it. I yell “Ahhh!” and push the chair forward.

The girl gives a sharp squeal and scoots her chair backward again, harder. It almost clips me a second time, but I limp over and stand near the wall—not too close, because I don't want my shape to show up as a blank space like my hand did on my desk this morning. It's hard to tell by just touching, but I think my big toenail is torn up.

Even a little squeal sounds loud in a library, and that brings four other students to see what's happening to the girl.

She can't explain. She turns bright red and says, “I guess I just scared myself.”

The other kids drift away, and the girl goes to get her printout. But when she comes back, she picks up her stuff in a hurry and moves to a different workstation over by the windows.

I feel my hands shaking, and my breathing is ragged. What if I had a real injury instead of a stubbed toe? Something serious? Like if I had a broken leg, and I'm in a heap in the stairwell, and I'm losing consciousness—what then? And I don't know the answer to that.

In a few minutes the pain in my toe dies down a little, so I head for the third floor, slowly and limping a little. And I'm more careful.

I know the third floor best. It's where they keep the recordings. They've got walls of vinyl LPs and the old 78 rpm records, even wax cylinders from the first Edison talking machines. It's where they keep a collection about Chicago's music. I did a term paper on the history of jazz in Chicago when I was in eighth grade. I had special permission to use the records, and the listening rooms too. They're like recording studios. No matter how loud you turn up the sound, it doesn't leak out. I even played my trumpet along with some of the records and no one came to tell me to shut up. That was one paper I didn't mind doing.

The third floor is even busier than the fourth. I move carefully, taking my time now. I glide by on my bare feet. I look, I listen. I'm out in public, but I am completely alone. There's action all around me. People are doing things and saying things, but it's like they're in a different dimension, like they're on a stage or a screen. And me? I'm just watching, an audience of one, watching secretly. I can't talk or sneeze or clear my throat. I can't pick up a newspaper or turn the pages of a book or switch on a CD player. It's like I'm a gnat. Fly around on my own, and no one notices me, no one could care less. But if the gnat decides to fly into someone's ear? That can be dangerous.

I'm glad my big toe is throbbing. It's a good reminder that the rules have changed.

Standing here looking at a photograph of Louis Armstrong, suddenly it's clear that I've learned what there is to learn about the library today. Which is, if you have to tiptoe around, and you can't touch anything, and you can't open a book or even whisper, then what's the point?

I hike the stairs back up to the fifth floor, and I don't even have to hold on to the railing. My feet know where they are now.

At the washroom door I stop and listen. All clear. Then I'm inside the toilet stall with the door locked. The ceiling tile slides easily to one side, and I've got my clothes bundle. Then—voices, deep voices. The washroom door hisses open. It's two men. The door shuts, and their voices get louder because once inside, they stop thinking about being in the library. They talk in a language I don't know, standing side by side against the far wall. They finish, wash their hands, turn on both electric dryers, and then leave. They never stop talking.

All this time I'm holding my breath. I don't know if they looked up to see the missing ceiling tile or not, and I don't care. All I know is they're gone and I'm not busted.

Less than two minutes later I am fully wrapped and coming out of the stairwell door on the ground floor. I'm not running, but when I glance at a wall clock, I feel like I should start. It's 3:25, and my dad could already be on his way home from work. I don't feel like explaining what I've been up to.

I don't have a book bag or anything, so I pass between the thief detectors and head for the exits at a slow trot.
Can I catch a bus, or do I have to run the half mile with a bad toe to get home in time to keep my dad from throwing a fit?
That's what I'm thinking, and by the time I actually reach the doors, I'm flying.

Just then, Walt calls out from the desk behind me, “So long, Bobby.”

Walt's a good guy, so I turn to give him a quick wave. Which isn't smart, because I'm moving too fast. There's a blur on my right side. It's another person headed out the same door I'm charging at.

There's no way to avoid the contact. It's a pretty solid hit, but neither of us falls down. Still, the girl's backpack drops to the floor and three cassettes go clattering onto the floor.

I'm scrambling for her stuff, and I feel like an idiot, and I'm saying, “Jeez!…Sorry. Are you okay? I'm really sorry. Here you go. I've got everything.” I tuck the cassettes back into her bag and straighten up.

Then I notice something else I should pick up, but for two seconds I'm frozen, locked with fear. Because it's my scarf down there on the floor. I scoop it up and glance around, and I'm glad because there's nobody else really looking at me.

But the girl is. She's looking at the very place where I'm uncovered, from my nose to my chin. As scared as I am, I can't help noticing how pretty she is. It's weird how she's smiling, and she's got this strange look in her eyes. And I'm waiting for the scream, and I'm ready to take off running, and I'm thinking,
Oh, man, I'm dead!

But the girl keeps smiling as she reaches out for the strap of her book bag. She says, “I've dropped something else—over there, maybe?”

And I look where she's pointing and I see it, about two feet away.

I put my scarf back on. Then I pick up the thing she dropped and hand it to her. And I know why my invisible face didn't make this girl scream.

Because what I hand her is a long, thin white cane.

This girl's blind.

H
ere, I'll get the door.”

I hold the door open for the girl. It's the least I can do after slamming her into the wall.

She says, “Thanks,” and smiles again, and I take a good look at her eyes. They're pale blue, but the color is strong. And now that I know she's blind, I can see that her eyes look that way, like windows with the shades pulled down. There are little white scars below both eyebrows, but nothing you'd notice, nothing to keep her from being pretty. She's a little shorter than I am, but I think maybe she's older. Her hair isn't very long, about to her chin. It's brown and straight, and it's cut on an angle so it grazes the jawline on both sides of her face.

You know how Hemingway writes? He couldn't write about this girl's face. Because he'd say something like, “It was a pretty face.” And that wouldn't be enough. This face needs someone like Dickens, or maybe Tolstoy. Someone who'd take a whole page and spend some time on her eyebrows and her cheeks, or maybe notice the shape of her mouth when she's concentrating on walking with her cane.

We go down the steps, and I can see she doesn't need much help getting around. At the bottom I want to sprint for the bus, but I say, “So, are you at the university?”

She shakes her head. “No. I just come here to study sometimes. I'm still in high school.”

“Yeah, me too. At the lab school.”

But all I can think about now is how late I am. So I say, “Well, I'm really sorry…you know, that I bumped into you. I've got to go…so, maybe I'll see you around.”

For half a second her face changes—something sharp and bitter—but right away she smiles again and says, “Sure, see you 'round.”

I'm half a block away, racing the bus to the next stop, before I figure it out—the way I'd said, “I'll see you around,” and the way she looked at me before she said it back. Because she can't see. Not me, not anybody. I guess I maybe hurt her feelings, or maybe she thinks I'm a jerk. But so what? “See you 'round. See you later.” Everybody says stuff like that.

After sprinting, the bus feels way too hot, but my big toe is happy that I don't have to run the whole way home. The bus goes past my house and starts to slow down for the stop at the corner.

Panic. It's a pure gut reaction because there's a gray Taurus in the driveway. Our car. Dad's already home, and I'm guessing he's already running around yelling my name, already calling Mom on her cell phone, already kicking his brain up into overdrive trying to figure out what to do because his new science project is missing.

My mouth tastes like copper, and my heart starts drumming, and when I get off the bus and start running, right away I'm thinking of all the ways I can sneak into the house. Maybe I can get in, strip off my clothes, and then make up some excuse why I didn't hear him calling—like maybe I was in the bathtub with my ears underwater, or maybe I had my Walkman turned up too loud. I'm on my fifth or six lie when I remember.

New rules. There are new rules.

So I just walk up the front steps, stomp across the porch, and use my key to open the door.

Dad's there to meet me. He looks bad. He still has his coat and gloves on. His face is the color of Wonder Bread, the skin stretched tight over his cheekbones.

“Bobby! Thank God! I didn't know what to think.” His voice is rough, almost hoarse, probably from yelling through the house. He's breathing hard. “I got home, and first I thought you were still asleep. And then I saw your coat was gone, but I couldn't imagine why you'd go anywhere, unless maybe things had gone back to normal and you'd gone to school or something. Scared the hell out of me! Thank God you're here!”

As he talks, I shed layers, tossing stuff onto the marble table below the big beveled mirror. Gloves, scarf, sunglasses, hat, coat. Just like at breakfast, I feel a surge of power from knowing that I can see his face, but he can't see mine.

I read his face as he talks. His eyes drinking in the
phenomenon
again. His eyes narrowing, his forehead wrinkling as he tries to see and comprehend. His mouth talks, but his eyes never stop hunting, looking for some hidden law of physics that could explain the missing head and hands that ought to be sticking out of my black turtleneck shirt.

And I see the struggle in his face. It's a battle between the physicist and the father. The father wins, and now he's angry.

“And most of all, I cannot be
lieve
you could do this, Robert! This is so completely
irresponsible
! I thought I made it very, very clear this morning that this has to be kept a
complete
secret. Don't you understand how
dangerous
it would be for you if anyone finds out about this? How can you
not
understand that?”

I don't say anything. I don't have to, so I don't.

“Well?” Dad's not so pale now. His face is getting nice and red. He takes a step closer and shouts, “Answer me, young man! What is the idea of running off like that?”

“Like what? Like what?” I shout back. “You mean like my parents ran off this morning? What did Mom say to you before you both left? Don't tell me, because I already know. She said, ‘Oh, don't worry, David. Sure, that was a big shock at breakfast, but let's remember, it's only Bobby. It's probably just another one of those
phases
that Bobby goes through. Probably not fatal. I think we can leave him here alone, don't you? He'll still be alive when we get home, don't you think?' And you, you probably just nodded your head because you didn't really hear her, because you were already thinking about your meeting, your big
meeting
at the lab. So then what do my
responsible
parents do? They make sure I'm asleep and they
leave
. Because so many
other
things are
really
important.”

I see the change in his face. I watch my words as they hit, piercing his eyes and ears and cheeks like porcupine quills.

As I finish, I'm so close that he's getting sprayed with invisible spit. Dad knows that my teeth must be showing, that I am as fierce as anything in any cage at the Brookfield Zoo. And that I am not in a cage, not now. I am out of the cage, and I am up close, and I am snarling.

I don't wait for his answer because I don't have to. There are new rules. I step around him. I trot up the front stairs and down the hall to my room, and I slam my door. And lock it.

And then I congratulate myself on the performance. I just want him to mind his own business.

After a big blowup, I usually read in my room for at least an hour. But I can't, not now. I'm too hungry. I didn't think to eat lunch before I went out, so I've been running all day on a few bites of eggs and a glass of juice.

I start to open my door, but then I stop. I pull off my clothes. If I have to be a spook, I'm going to get used to the feel of it. I'm going to get good at it.

I walk down the back stairs slowly. Some of the steps always squeak, and I avoid them. Alone in the kitchen, I pull out the mayo and some sliced turkey and Swiss cheese. I put everything on the counter without making a sound. Silence. That's part of what I have to learn. When I ease open a drawer and pick up a knife, the handle is hidden by my fingers. The floating blade moves where I tell it to.

The sandwich tastes fantastic, and the milk after it is even better. I start to pour a second glass when I hear Dad's voice.

I'm at the study door, then I glide into the room, my feet leaving tracks in the soft pile of the carpet. Dad has his back to me, still wearing his overcoat. He's talking to Mom.

“I know that, Em…. But you've got to cancel…. Right…. Yes, very upset…. Exactly…. No, not a clue, really. All we can do is be here and do whatever we can…. I know, but he really does need us, both of us…. Good. We can pick up something special on the way back, maybe some steaks…. Okay. I'm on my way. The north door, right?…See you soon.”

He hangs up and walks past me out into the living room, headed for the front door. I hurry out, go the other way, through the kitchen and up the back stairs.

“Hey, Bobby?” He's calling from the front hall.

I'm outside my door. “What?” I keep some anger in my voice.

“I've got to run over and pick up Mom. Then we'll be back and we can talk, and then maybe cook up some supper together, okay?”

“Whatever.”

“See you in about twenty minutes.”

“Yup.”

Then the front door opens and closes, and the car starts outside, and then it's quiet.

Back down in the kitchen I finish pouring my glass of milk, grab the Oreos from the pantry, and walk to the TV room. The couch is cold brown leather, so I wrap myself up in a fleece blanket before I sit down and punch the remote. It's
Gilligan's Island
on channel nine. On Gilligan's Island everything is safe and predictable. The Professor is being smart, and Gilligan is being stupid. It's so comforting. The cookies and milk have filled me up, and the fleece blanket is warm, and the couch is comfy.

I don't know why the Skipper has to talk so loud. He's practically shouting, and he's wearing a green sport coat. Because it's not the Skipper. I've been asleep for almost two hours!

“Good evening and welcome to the WGN News at Six. We have a breaking story from Juliette Connors and the WGN Chicago Road Crew, live at the scene. Juliette?”

The camera's not very steady, and my eyes are half open. The reporter is wearing a yellow parka with the hood down. She's trying not to squint into the bright lights. Her breath is a white cloud in the cold air.

Ten seconds. Ten seconds ago I was asleep, arguing with the Skipper and Mary Ann about what to have for dinner. Now I'm sitting up, staring. At the TV. I'm having…a hard time…breathing. The reporter keeps talking.

I'm having a hard time breathing because of the car. The Ford Taurus. On the TV. It's our car.