The toilet flushed. A second later, the faucet ran. I heard the lock snap back. And then after thirteen years, Ryder Anderson stepped out of my parents’ hall bathroom as if he’d walked out of that photograph from Breakneck Lake. “Ryder,” I said. But the sound was a whisper. I could feel my heartbeat in my throat. He held the door handle tightly. I could smell him from where I stood, fresh laundry and lemon, and I almost stepped forward, almost went to him. But something kept me from it. He’d always kept his hair on the long side, but it had been cut military short, and he was wearing a monogrammed oxford shirt. In my leather sandals and cutoffs, I felt underdressed, sloppy. We stared at each other. He was taller. His hair was darker. He was still beautiful.
“Jenny,” he said. His voice was low, surprisingly soft.
I wished I’d put on my silver earrings, wished at least I had on lipstick. There were snaffle bits on his loafers. I couldn’t remember him in shoes like that except for prom. He’d hardly ever worn shoes when we were kids. He straightened his cuff links. I saw us on our backs on the Hamilton School field, waiting for a shooting star so we could wish for the same thing. The grandfather clock started playing Whittington chimes. He wasn’t wearing a wedding band. Eleven strikes. He was so close, I could have reached out and touched his jaw. I thought of us riding double on his red ten-speed bike. He used to go no-handed while I screamed. He leaned away, against the closed door.
“It’s been a long time,” he said. “I—”
“There you are.” Jamie appeared at the top of the stairs. And it was as if I’d never left. Her dark hair was straightened and pulled back in a low ponytail; her baby-doll dress made her look even younger. “Honey,” she said in her singsong voice, “I thought I heard a car pull in.” She started down the stairs. Her eyes were the color of the sky before a thunderstorm, a wild blue that made men love her. “I was just reviewing the contracts Vogue sent for Brazil.” She hesitated, as if posing for a portrait, then kept coming with practiced elegance. “Was your flight delayed? You missed dinner,” she said, as if I hadn’t missed the last thirteen years of dinners. Cutting in front of Ryder, she drew me to her with her small, capable hands, and I braced myself for inspection. “Oh, darling.” I could smell the Parisian perfume Mandy and I used to put on our wrists when she wasn’t home. She sighed, backing up and studying me, and I felt that hope rise in me, that she would say something nice, that she would approve, but she said, “Santa Fe is still making an art hippie out of you.”
“Nic did that to me a long time ago,” I said quietly.
She ignored this. “At least that hot desert hasn’t ruined your beautiful skin.” She pressed the back of her hand to my cheek. “So.” She turned to Ryder. “You’ve seen our little girl, all grown up.”
“A sight for sore eyes.” He never quit looking at me.
“She’s so thin.” Jamie’s hand fluttered around my ribs. “If you don’t have to be skinny to make a living, for goodness sake, why don’t you eat? Artists’ models are so lucky they’re supposed to be voluptuous.” She patted my hand. “Right?” I nodded, not bothering to tell her that fat went out with the Pre-Raphaelites. “Come.” She put her perfectly manicured hand on my arm, leading me to the kitchen. “Luke made his famous coq au vin and saved a plate for you.” I felt Ryder follow us. And I wanted to turn around and look at him again. I couldn’t get his lips, that beautiful mouth, out of my mind.
The black granite counters were clean, and the dishes had been put away. A cast-iron skillet in the pot rack dripped onto the chopping block. Jamie opened the fridge. She looked so out of place in the kitchen. My dad or Luke did the cooking.
“Where’s Daddy?” I asked.
Ryder sat at the island. He seemed so relaxed, familiar with a house he hadn’t been to in over a decade.
“He and Luke drank a little too much bourbon. I put him to bed and sent Luke to the guest room.”
“Is it okay for him to drink alcohol?” I glanced at Ryder, but he was watching Jamie.
“Oh, honey, we don’t know what’s what yet.” She pulled out a casserole dish covered in aluminum foil.
“No thanks.” I hadn’t eaten since leaving for the airport that morning, but I wasn’t hungry.
She raised her eyebrows. There was the feeling that glass was breaking all around us. “Well, then.” She covered it back up. “Wine?” She pulled a bottle of white from the door. Ryder shook his head no, and even though I was dying for a drink, I did, too.
“All right.” She gave Ryder a pout.
I watched her pour herself a glass.
“What’s going on with Dad?”
Ryder started winding his watch. A fancy one—the kind advertised in men’s magazines—that he wouldn’t have been caught dead with in high school. I knew beneath that monogrammed oxford he had my father’s football jersey number tattooed on his biceps. He and Will had gotten them as soon as they’d turned sixteen, and I’d run my tongue around it more times than I could count. I wanted to reach under the sleeve and touch it now, to make sure it was really him.
“Oh, honey.” Jamie blew a few wispy hairs out of her eyes. “You always were one to face things head-on.” She picked up her wine and glanced at Ryder. He was still winding. “I think we should wait until tomorrow to talk about Daddy.” Her tone was the curt one she’d used to shut me up when I was younger. I didn’t know if I wanted to slap the drink out of her hand or cry.
“I’d rather hear it now,” I said, and then my cell phone rang—Nic’s custom ring. I’d waited for him to call on the way over in the cab, pressing my face to the glass and watching Colston pass, so lush compared to New Mexico. I’d seen the neighborhoods I’d played in and the beaches I’d swum at, Mandy’s house, Ryder’s.
“I have to take this.” The phone kept ringing while I walked across the kitchen. “I’ll just be a minute.” I could feel them watching me as I let myself out the back door and walked onto the deck. The crisp New England air ran straight through my flimsy rayon shirt. “Hey.” I dropped into the love-seat glider.
“Where are you?” Nic asked.
I thought of my mother and Ryder in the kitchen, looking out at me. A thin line of smoke drifted over from the neighbor’s chimney. It smelled like hickory; the same scent had been in the air the night Will died. “A quintessential fall day,” my dad had said that morning. “The perfect day to win a football game.”
“Home.” The yard was dark. “And I can’t talk long because I literally just walked in the door.” I didn’t dare look back at them. Instead, I studied the tilted goalposts my dad had built for Will. They were still there.
“I’m home,” Nic said. “You’re in country club kingdom. How was the flight?”
I hugged my knees, trying to keep warm. “It sucked.” The yard was bordered by gardens, already in bloom. Jamie, in her designer gloves and imported straw hat, had a green thumb. It looked nothing like our front yard in Santa Fe, which was full of dirt and cacti. “This poor lady in front of me had two screaming babies.”
“The only thing worse than one crying kid is two.”
I chewed on my lip and traced the letters carved into the cracked wood of the glider’s right arm. I was too tired to have the baby fight. I wanted one; he didn’t.
“How’s your dad?” he asked.
“He’s in bed.” On the left arm of the glider, Will had pared a line of X’s and O’s, football plays or maybe a love note. I never asked why Jamie hadn’t gotten mad at him for it. I’d caught hell for my graffiti. But he was Will, and I wasn’t. “Did you finish the falcon sculpture for Berlin?” I asked.
“It shipped out at five,” he said. “Whitney came in around three and helped me with the wings.” I heard him lighting a joint. I pictured Whitney on her back, arms spread like wings. “My usual inspiration got on a plane for preppyville.” He inhaled. “So,” he said, his voice tight with smoke, “are they running tests or—”
“I don’t know. We’re meeting with Ryder early tomorrow mornin
g,”
“Who is this Ryder person?” He exhaled.
I fingered a hole in my shorts. My skin went hot when I thought of Ryder stepping into the hallway minutes before. I wondered if Hadley had told Nic about him. During all our hours together at the gallery, I’d told Hadley everything about my life. He knew exactly who Ryder was to me. “He was Will’s friend.” A familiar numbing extended into my chest.
“And now he just happens to be your father’s doctor?”
“Odd, right?” I tried to keep my voice level. It was odd, so odd that I didn’t even know how to talk about it. A few years ago, I’d read in my high school alumni newsletter that Ryder was a neurosurgeon. I’d logged on to Nic’s Facebook account, looking for him, but none of the Ryder Andersons was him.
“Isn’t he young to be a brain surgeon?”
“Jamie says he graduated early from Harvard Medical and got hired by Yale right away.”
“And Jamie knows it all.” I heard the music go on. Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “So Begins the Task” filled the phone. I must learn to live without you now. “Get some sleep, sweet lady,” he said, his way of telling me we were done talking. “Call me tomorrow after the appointment.”
“Love you,” I said. And then I held my breath, waiting.
He said what he always did. “Right back at ya, sunshine.”
I put the phone on the armrest. I wasn’t sure I could get up and go back into the kitchen. I wished my dad were still awake; he’d know how to make it okay. I glanced up at the second floor. The light in my parents’ room was out. I wondered if my father was really sleeping, or if he was lying awake, worrying. I wanted to go up there and lie next to him. I thought maybe if I heard him breathing, if I felt him put his arm around me and say, “Whobaby, I thought you’d never come home,” that scared feeling might go away.
Jamie was wrong. I didn’t like to face things head-on. I was terrified of the answers to all those questions that had hounded me while I couldn’t sleep on the plane. Was the tumor malignant? When would they operate? Had Ryder thought about me over the years? In the middle of a modeling session, freezing my ass off in some studio, or weaving through the Sangres on my daily run, I would try to guess what Ryder was doing right at that moment, and if, maybe, he was thinking of me. But I knew after thirteen years, he probably wasn’t. I never mentioned him when I called, never asked my parents where he was, if they’d heard. And now I knew: He’d been right here all along.
Behind me, the slider opened, and I turned. “Jamie thought you might want these.” Ryder was standing in the doorway, the kitchen light flooding around him, holding a red chenille throw and a cup of tea. His posture was metal rod–straight, stiff, and he looked uncomfortable. He put the wrap around my shoulders and handed me the mug. The tea smelled like peppermint. The night Will died, one of the paramedics had been chewing mint gum. I remembered thinking he was trying to cover something up.
“Where is she?”
He put his hands in his pockets. “Reviewing the contract for Brazil.”
I blew on the drink. “Nothing for you?”
He checked his watch. “I’m on call. I’ve got to get back to the hospital soon.”
“Oh.” I could smell him again—springtime, starched shirts.
“Sorry for the ambush.” He looked out at the goalposts. “When your mom invited me for dinner”—he glanced at me—“I came because…” His voice trailed off. I watched his Adam’s apple move when he swallowed.
“Because what?” I set the tea over the graffiti on the glider.
“Because I thought you might be here.” He took his hands out of his pockets. They looked so strong. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell you I was coming.”
“You’re forgetting the three most important things about Jamie. One.” I held up my middle finger. We both laughed. “Don’t show up for dinner without wine.” I put up my index finger. “Two, tell her she’s beautiful even if she looks like death on a stick. Two and half, she never looks like death on a stick. And three.” I flicked up my ring finger and felt Ryder’s eyes on my wedding band. I quickly tucked my hand under my leg. “You never know what you’re going to get with her.”
His pager beeped, but he didn’t take it out of his pocket. “You look just the same,” he said. “Except your hair…”
I tugged at it. “Nic likes it long.” Why did I say that? “It needs cutting.”
“I heard you eloped.”
I nodded. My face was hot.
He jiggled change in his pocket. “Where?”
“Peloponnese, near Crete.” This was so awkward. “The orchids were in bloom.” I remembered how I hadn’t wanted to go. It was early 2002, and I’d been afraid of flying since 9/11, but Nic said getting over fears meant getting back on the horse. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“And now?” Ryder watched me.
Steam rose from my tea. I shrugged. “I don’t know.” How was I supposed to tell him about my marriage and my husband? As an undergraduate at UC, I’d sat for Nic—my first time ever modeling. His then studio assistant, whom, I found out later, he’d been sleeping with until he met me, said he’d pay me an enormous amount of money to pose. At dusk, light streaming into his third-floor studio, I’d stood naked in front of the visiting art professor everyone was talking about. Nic was thirty-two years old then, a rising star, fresh from the art scene in Berlin. While he worked, his eyes had been so intent on me, on every part of my body; I’d felt a pulsing need for him, like junkies feel the jones. I’d emerged from his studio a nine-foot angel made of rose Grecian marble. A month later, I dropped out of college to be with him in Santa Fe, but it felt wrong and awkward to tell Ryder all that. “And now is now.”
“Jamie said you’re modeling.”
“Just for artists.” I pretended to take a sip of my tea, but I couldn’t stand that smell. “Not for print, like her girls.” I tried to think of what to say about myself. I pose naked for men with chisels and hammers and paint bad self-portraits. “So,” I said. “A brain surgeon.” It came out sounding sarcastic.
He took the beeper out of his pocket. “That was the hospital,” he said. “I’d better go.”
Move, I told myself. Hug him. Make it right. But I didn’t.
“I guess I’ll see you at the appointment.” He picked up his hand in a sort of wave.
“Yeah.” I set my mug on top of two sets of initials on the armrest. “See you tomorrow.”
The slider closed behind him. I willed myself not to turn around, in case he was still there, watching me. But as I sat there with the goalposts moaning in the breeze, I could feel him next to me, like it was yesterday, his hot breath, his hands, his mouth on the soft part of my neck below my ear.
I picked up my mug and studied the ring of condensation around the carved heart. In the middle, the initials still read JR + RA. 4ever.
3
Hours later, sunlight dragged me from a dream. I woke with the warmth of sex between my thighs and the leaden feeling of guilt on my chest. The pale yellow walls, piano trophies, and signed play sheets reminded me where I was. The program from Adele Marcus at Symphony Hall still hung above my whitewashed dresser. Will and my mother had been home with strep, and I’d walked in my patent leathers through the starry night with my dad. “I want to be a famous pianist,” I’d told him. He smoothed my curls, frizzy with humidity. “Whobaby, you can be anything you want.”
I slipped on a pair of yoga pants and went downstairs to the dark kitchen, where I made a double espresso. A leather scrapbook was lying in the breakfast nook, and I brought it to the counter. Turning the worn black card stock, I saw my dad at twenty-one in his navy blue suit, blond buzz cut, and clean-shaven face. It was 1973, the year before he got drafted, and he was holding the Heisman trophy. He was the first running back ever to win the coveted award. I took a sip of espresso and turned the page. He was in a muddy uniform, hair wet with sweat, standing next to an NBC newscaster after he’d won his fourth Supe
r Bowl in 1980 with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He had a crooked smile, like he was trying not to laugh. Yellowed newspaper articles chronicled his tenure in the league. The last picture showed him with Chuck Noll the year he’d been named MVP and announced his retirement. When the Steelers finally won another Super Bowl in 2006, I told him I’d come home to celebrate. I never did. When they won it again last year, I didn’t even bother to say I’d come back. We both knew I wouldn’t.
Tucked in the back of the book was an article about Will being scouted by Notre Dame. His blond hair was curly in the picture, too long. Knowing the scout was coming, he’d promised Jamie he’d get a trim, but he’d overslept and missed the haircut. In the photo, he was wearing a Notre Dame sweatshirt I still had in Santa Fe. He died before his acceptance letter came. Thirteen years of living without him. Almost half my life spent missing him. He seemed about to come out of the picture, pinch the soft skin under my arm, and start singing Garcia’s “Jenny Jenkins.”
The week after he died, I’d had a constant pounding in my chest, as though my own heartbeat was taunting me. I’d wake in the morning, remembering with a stark, strange shock that he was gone. One evening, I’d had my hand on the refrigerator handle, although I hadn’t been eating, and Springsteen’s “Blinded by the Light” was playing. I was trying to remember who had covered it. Manfred Mann came to mind. Then suddenly I remembered Will was dead. The sun had gone down and the kitchen was dark. I couldn’t see the stainless steel in front of me. The edge of my vision went black. His death had come back in a physical rush, as though someone had hit me. I must have cried out, because Jamie came running, her high heels clicking across the wood floor. “I can’t see,” I told her. “I can’t see anything.”
“Come here, baby.” She smelled of expensive perfume and jewelry. It’s what got her through, I would think later, making everything beautiful on the outside, even when we were falling apart on the inside.
She wrapped me in a throw and sat me on the couch, then went to the bar and fixed a little glass of brandy for me and a big whiskey for her. The light was going down outside. My father was out with Luke somewhere. She put the snifter in my hand. She’d been giving me sips of brandy forever. If the French could give their children wine with dinner, she’d told me, then she could give me a little Rémy Martin when I was sick. I closed my eyes. I didn’t like being in the living room, so close to where it had happened. Don’t think of it, I kept telling myself. Don’t.
Night Blindness Page 2
