Night Blindness

by Susan Strecker

The band started a slow song that began with a piano solo. My back still to Ryder’s, I watched the piano player close his eyes, his hands finding their way across the keys. “Mind if I cut in?” I heard my father ask. His face was red from exertion, and I was glad it was a slow song. He started the four-step waltz he’d taught me as a kid. I’d put my feet on his and he would dance me around the living room, saying “One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.” The teenagers around us held on to one another’s waists. Doing a formal dance step with my dad felt old-fashioned and sweet.

  “I love having you home again, Whobaby.” He’d told me this about twenty times a day in the week and a half that I’d been home, and it made me feel both happy and so guilty, I thought I might poison myself.

  “And I love being here.” I stumbled and stepped on his toe. “Sorry. I’m not exactly good with the classics.”

  “Aw, sweetheart, you’re perfect.” He’d also said this a lot, but it was always tentative, as though he were afraid of jinxing it. As if one day, poof, I’d disappear back to the Southwest. He drew me to him, resting his cheek on the top of my head. “My good girl is home again.”

  We danced around and around the grass while the waitstaff lit tiki lamps and the piano player closed his eyes and did another solo.

  Jamie and Ryder twirled by as the song ended, and my dad reached for her. “Come on, good-lookin’. Let’s show these kids how it’s done.”

  “How it’s done?” Ryder asked, grabbing me around the waist, his fingers snaking under my shirt, gripping me as though I might disappear if he let go. “Jenny, I think we’ve been challenged.”

  The four of us stood among other couples, waiting for the music to begin. “Put your hands on my shoulders.” He grabbed my hips, hard. “When I count to three, I want you to jump.”

  The song was a Stray Cats cover with a fast rhythm. “Three.” He tossed me in the air. I had to put my legs around his waist to keep from falling. We spun once, and I slid through his grasp. I swung my feet to his left and then his right, and he hooted, and laughed out loud. The small of his back was sweating. His hand felt hard and sure on my spine. The tiki lights blurred, and I was breathlessly happy.

  By the time the song was over, my father’s silver-blond hair was windblown and he was laughing. “You won.” Ryder held out his hand and my dad shook it. “In your age group.” My dad snatched his hand back, but he was still laughing.

  They had brought us strawberry shortcake while we were gone, or maybe my father had ordered it without our noticing. The strawberries tasted just picked and the cream was real and the cake underneath soft and moist from the fruit. “I always feel like a little girl when I eat strawberry shortcake,” Jamie said between mouthfuls. I couldn’t believe she was eating it.

  My father kissed her on the nose. It had gotten completely dark, but everything around us was golden-hued and bright under the torch-lit lamps. Above us were those same stars Ryder used to point out as we’d lie together on the football field the summer before my junior year—the harp in Lyra’s constellation and the head of the bear in Ursa Major. I knew they were there, but I couldn’t see them well anymore.

  My dad was smiling at Jamie, and he had a little dab of strawberry on his chin. She was talking in her girlish voice about drinking too much Chardonnay and how she’d have to play hooky so we could see the seals at Clam Beach the next day.

  For one stolen, fleeting moment, the guilt washed away. It was as though I’d entered a dream where Will’s death wasn’t my fault. There they were, my family: Ryder, my mom, and my dad. Will was missing, but his death was what it should have been, a sad, pure thing. I heard myself saying I would go to Clam Beach with them, and Ryder said he’d love to see Jamie in knee-high rubber boots.

  The feeling stayed like the lingering taste of a really good dessert. But I knew about feelings like that; as much as I wanted to bottle them up for safekeeping, something always came along that was much stronger and would shatter them all to pieces.

  9

  I sat at the dining room table, rereading an article I’d found on meningiomas. All the websites said the same thing: “The recommended course of treatment is surgical resection, followed by radiation.” Ryder had seemed so sure in his office that doing radiation first was the right thing to do, but now I wondered. He’d told me to do my own research. And everything I’d read said to operate first.

  “Whobaby, turn off that damn computer,” my dad yelled from the kitchen. “And come see what Luke’s cooking up for us.” I bookmarked the page, closed the laptop, and hopped up.

  In the kitchen, Luke was unloading green tea, krill oil, and kale from a reusable grocery bag. Other unfamiliar leafy greens and pinkish tofu were scattered on the counters. “You’re not going to make us eat this, are you?” I pointed at a squishy mound of seitan.

  “Luke’s starting me on a macrobio-whatever diet tomorrow.” My dad pulled a cherry tomato from the vine and popped it in his mouth. “But tonight, we gorge ourselves on caviar.”

  “Everyone’s whispering about his tumor,” Luke said. “Might as well bring it out into the open and throw a party for it.”

  My father put his arm around me. “And you, our youngest musical genius, will be our D.J.” He twirled me around the kitchen and dipped me to the floor. “We need theme songs,” he said when he let me go. “You know, ‘Gravedigger,’ ‘The End.’ Stuff like that.”

  “Dad!” I turned to Luke. “Tell him he’s not dying.”

  “Don’t forget ‘Funeral for a Friend.’” Luke unloaded chocolate-covered strawberries from Tatiana’s, the same bakery that had delivered a cake in the shape of a football to Will’s sixteenth-birthday party.

  “Only you two would think this is funny.” I dug through a junk drawer for a pen and pad.

  “Maybe you’ll even get to meet Starflower,” my dad said. “Luke’s new honey.” He whispered loudly, “She has purple hair and smells like patchouli.” He put a hunk of red cabbage on his head.

  Luke batted away the vegetable. “She doesn’t have purple hair, and she’s not new; it’s just that Jensen hasn’t been home in a hundred years.” He winked at me. “Anyway, she’s at a Tantric retreat.”

  “A what?” Women moved in and out of Luke’s life like water. They’d make an occasional appearance at dinner. It was only when the next one arrived that I’d realize the last one was gone.

  “It’s an ancient practice that concentrates on enhancing sexual experiences,” Luke told me.

  I put my hands over my ears. “La la la,” I said loudly. “I can’t hear you.”

  “‘Don’t Fear the Reaper.’” My father pointed to the pad. “Put that on there.”

  After they took off for the liquor store and I heard the garage door close behind them, I looked at my playlist. “Late for the Sky,” Luke had added, and “Stairway to Heaven.” I felt so sad, I had to sit down on the kitchen floor. I stayed there for a long time, my dad’s voice ringing in the room, the kitchen clock ticking on the wall.

  Two hours later, I heard a car door close in the driveway. I was pulling lemons, Parmesan cheese, and garlic from the fridge, and my cell phone was ringing. “What are you up to?” I asked Nic when I answered my phone.

  “Oh, nothing.” He sounded sad. “Trying to shake off the ache of missing you.” I thought of the sun coming in the skylights this time of day in the house. Since we’d moved in together, almost nine years before, we’d never gone this long without each other. “I feel like I’ve been ditched at the prom,” he told me.

  “You didn’t even go to your prom.”

  He laughed. “I would have if you were my date.”

  More people started arriving, and I heard Jamie’s heels clicking down the hall.

  “My parents are having a few people over.” I drizzled olive oil into a ramekin and listened to the party move into the living room. The doorbell chimed. “Are you going out to sushi without me?”

  “Hell no,” he said. “And listen to Hadley go on
about his upcoming tour? I frankly do not know who he is expecting to find in east bum fuck Latvia or Estonia.”

  I’d forgotten all about Hadley’s trip. “Oh, Hadley could find a good photographer in the Mongolian desert.” I could hear the plink of piano keys, and I knew he was sitting at that Steinway I never played.

  “Who’s coming over?” he asked.

  “People I haven’t seen for a thousand years.”

  “How’s your old man?”

  “Well, he still has a brain tumor.”

  “If you love me, you’ll shoot me before I get old.”

  That was so Nico. “I actually just read that brain tumors can happen at any age.” I could see Jamie through the arched doorway, holding court in the living room with Sid and his assistant coaches. I hadn’t seen him since I’d been home. He’d been the defensive coordinator when Will played for Hamilton and had helped my dad start A Will to Live after the accident. All the players he coached and the kids at the foundation loved him because he was a great storyteller, talking quickly and with his hands. He was probably telling Jamie and the group how he’d discovered Springsteen as a scratchy-voiced kid singing in a bar in Asbury Park. Or maybe he’d moved on to how he’d invented fire, or the wheel. The doorbell rang again. “I gotta go. This place is a madhouse. I love you.”

  In the foyer by the grandfather clock, I straightened the lone photo of Nic and me at our wedding. We were standing on a beach, my gauzy white dress and my hair blowing in the wind. I was barefoot, laughing, and Nic was holding an empty bottle of ouzo. I remembered that light-headed feeling, the shock of flying to Greece and getting married without telling anyone but Hadley, who’d driven us to the airport. The doorbell rang again.

  Ryder was standing in the threshold in jeans and a lightweight sweater the same color as his eyes. I hadn’t seen him since that night at the Seafood Shack.

  “Someone told me there’s a party here tonight.” He held out a bottle of wine.

  I stepped toward him to take it, and he leaned in like he might kiss me. “Someone told me the same thing,” I said.

  “Well, you can put your glad face on now.” He grinned. “I’m here.” I wanted to tell him I was happier than I should have been to see him, but I couldn’t get the words out. He put both hands over his heart and staggered. I punched his arm. I was fifteen again, catching him watching me in my red bikini at Breakneck Lake, the week before he’d shown up at my house when he knew my parents and Will wouldn’t be home.

  He half-punched me back. “You’ve got that look in your eye.”

  “Which one?” I tucked my hair behind my ear.

  He closed the door. “The one where you stick your tongue in the side of your mouth.” A strand of hair fell over my eyes, and when he pushed it back, my skin chilled. “And try not to say what you’re really thinking.”

  I was glad more people were arriving, because I didn’t know what to say. Sid’s wife came in and practically knocked me over, she was so happy to see me. Next came a slew of Jamie’s photographers, a handful of models, and the whole board of directors from A Will to Live. As I showed them the bar, I thought it strange how happy everyone was to be at a party for a guy with a brain tumor. It wasn’t something I’d celebrate, but that was my dad. He needed his friends to know he was okay. That he was going to beat this thing.

  By the time I saw Ryder again, he was in the living room, sandwiched between a couple of Jamie’s models, who’d probably found out he was a doctor and were trying to marry him.

  Around nine, Mandy came through the back door in skintight black jeans and a see-through button-down blouse. She could have been one of my mother’s runway girls. Some hot Latino guy was following her. “Antonio,” she said to him, “meet my very best sister, Jensen.” Mandy had an older brother and two younger sisters, but she always said that.

  He kissed my hand. “So lovely to meet you.” His accent was divine.

  “He owns the estancia in Uruguay where we did a bird-watching shoot,” she told me, and I had a flash of her, pregnant and happy, with little Antonios running around.

  “He’s very pretty,” I whispered when I hugged her. She smelled of champagne.

  “And very married,” she whispered back.

  Before I could say anything else, my father and Luke stormed the foyer, calling her name and bear-hugging her. Mandy screamed and jumped up and down and called them both “Daddy-O,” then explained to Antonio that it had been a million years since she’d seen them.

  “Antonio,” my dad said when she introduced him, “Usted es un hombre muy guapo.” Whatever that meant. Then he did some sort of flamenco dance.

  Luke clapped poor Antonio on the back and blatantly stared at his wedding ring. “No hablo español, my friend.” It was a lie; Luke spoke five languages, including Portuguese and Spanish. “But I think this translates: Don’t mess with our Mandy.”

  I tried to give them stern looks, but I had to excuse myself. Nicole, from two houses down, stumbled in behind her Afghan dog. They both had long noses and frizzy red hair. I was going to tell her we didn’t really want a dog inside, Jamie was allergic, but the house began to fill with people I barely remembered from the Colston Country Club and my father’s time at ESPN, Jamie’s makeup artists and scouts, people I hadn’t seen since Will’s funeral. My cheeks ached from smiling.

  Jamie was standing at the piano, touching Ed Kane’s shoulder. He was an old-time sportswriter for the New Haven Register and had been in the stands the night of Will’s accident. Behind her, Luke was playing “Red Red Wine.” Mandy lounged beside him, singing along, clearly a little drunk, Antonio nowhere in sight. I watched Jamie laugh, her hand on Ed’s arm. Still the same flirty Jamie, I thought.

  My dad came in from the kitchen, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Back off, Ed,” he yelled. “She’s mine.”

  Jamie turned, surprised, her high, sculpted cheekbones pink from too much wine. “Oh, honey, you know I am.” She blew my father a kiss, and when she caught me standing in the doorway, she called over. “Jensen, darling, I was just telling the boys how you play piano.” She came twirling over to me.

  Ryder had appeared, holding a beer, his short hair a little messy. He had the happy, glassy look of drink in his eyes that I remembered from when we were teenagers.

  “Jamie, you know I don’t play anymore,” I said. I’d taken a pair of earth-colored linen pants from her closet. They were cool on my skin, and I was glad I’d dressed up.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Ryder glanced at the piano, the way he used to stare at organic-chemistry problems. Maybe if he looked long enough, they’d make sense. “Why? You were so good. That’s all you ever wanted to do.”

  “You know why,” I told him quietly.

  Without music, the room grew quiet. Luke called out, “Come over here and give your father a song, baby girl.” My dad started clapping, and Ed Kane put his fingers to his lips and whistled. I could feel people gathering behind me. Luke had told me that one way or another he was going to get me to start playing again.

  I walked toward the piano. Luke surrendered his seat, and Mandy gave me a big kiss on the cheek. “Oh goodie,” she said. “Just like old times.”

  I sat on the padded bench. The room had gone quiet. Mandy set her elbows on the guide rail, her chin in her hands, and waited for me. I could feel people watching; all of them had known me as Sterling’s piano prodigy daughter. They were all expecting me to play. And why shouldn’t I? Why couldn’t I play again? The room felt still, as though someone had just died, or was about to. “If you wait much longer,” Mandy whispered, “someone is going to turn on that terrible playlist again.” I chewed my lip, trying to think of something I might remember. The piano used to be my religion. Now it felt as foreign as a lost language.

  Then I remembered, during our breaks from studying for finals sophomore year, Mandy and I used to sit on this same bench, and I’d play Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Got It Made” while she sang along. She’d just sc
ored highest on the PSATs, and I’d bested seven hundred other players to win the PianoArts North American Piano Competition and the chance to play with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, one of the best in the country. We had it made, and we knew it. “‘Got It Made,’” I said. She gave me a thumbs-up.

  As soon as she started singing, the chords came back to me. The music was stored in my hands. I looked down at them in amazement; they coordinated without my say-so, as if they’d been waiting, patiently, for this chance. I closed my eyes and felt myself fall into the rhythm as though gravity had given way and I was floating. The party disappeared, my father’s brain tumor, Ryder’s surprise when he found out I’d quit. The refrain melted an ache I wasn’t even aware I was holding on to. I vaguely heard the doorbell ringing, people cheering, Luke saying, quietly, behind me, “You got it going on, girl, that’s right,” and just when I was about to transition into Billy Joel’s “This Is the Time,” I felt a ripple of panic spread through the room, and I realized Mandy had stopped singing. I opened my eyes.

  A crowd had formed by the couch. In the spaces between the people, I could see my father sitting with his head between his knees, his hair disheveled, his feet pigeon-toed. Ryder was kneeling beside him. I pushed my way over. His eyes were filmy, and he was covered in a thin sheen of sweat.

  “I’m fine.” He was wiping his glasses on his shirt, his breath labored. “Just got a little nauseous.”

  I sat on the arm of the couch and took his hand; his fingers were cold, clammy. Ryder pulled a penlight from his pocket and flashed it in my dad’s eyes. Worry lines wrinkled Ryder’s forehead. He placed his fingers on my dad’s wrist. “Your pupils are dilating and your pulse is strong. Have you been eating?”

  My father’s voice was hoarse. “Sometimes I don’t feel like it.”

  I squeezed his hand, trying to recall if he’d finished his cereal and grapefruit that morning. “Dad, you need to tell someone when you don’t feel well.”

  “It’s okay, Jenny. Lack of appetite is normal.” Ryder stuck the flashlight back in his pocket. I tried to imagine Nic ever carrying a penlight.