Night Blindness

by Susan Strecker

  He glanced at me. “Is that what you want?”

  It’d been so long since anyone had asked me that. “No.” He nodded as though that were the most normal thing in the world.

  “Is it nice?” I asked. “Living in your parents’ house?”

  “Yeah, but sometimes I’m embarrassed as hell about it.” His voice was relaxed, and he grinned.

  “Why?”

  His shoulder brushed mine. “I don’t know. When they left, we rented it out for a while because I thought it was lame wanting to move back to Colston. But I couldn’t stand having someone else living in it. And then I got the job at Yale. But when I was renovating, I had this fucked-up feeling I was trying to redo something about my past.” He squinted at me.

  My breathing went screwy. He was so close, all I would have had to do was lean in and our lips would have touched. That was what I remembered most about him, how soft his lips were. “I want to see the inside of it.” The sprinklers stuttered and turned. I could feel the heat from him. Everything in me pulsed. I needed him to kiss me.

  “I don’t care if you’re married,” he said quietly. “I don’t give a shit about him.”

  I stared at the collar of his shirt, the curly hairs. Did losing Will fuck up your life? I wanted to ask. Do you even know who you are now? The sprinklers shut off, and the night went eerily quiet. Out in the field, again, was that circle of football players; I could see the ambulance, the stretcher, a younger Ryder running beside it. I didn’t want to feel guilty anymore.

  “It’s always been you.” His voice was almost a whisper.

  A breeze kicked up, and I saw now that thunderheads had gathered to the north. I pressed myself into him, put my head against his clean white shirt, and listened to his steady heartbeat. “We need to tell my parents,” I said. “We have to tell them about Will.”

  I felt his hand go up to my neck. It felt good. “Now?” How many times had he tried to get me to tell before I went to Andover? “Your dad still has a couple more weeks of radiation.” I felt his lips on my head. He touched my waist. It was crazy, how hard my heart was beating. “I don’t think we should do anything now that could set him back.” I could hear the doctor in his voice. I hated it.

  The wind picked up. I could feel other hot, sticky places where my sweat had dried. If I could only take off my clothes and lie in the grass with him, I thought. “My life hasn’t made sense since that night,” I whispered. I buried my face in his neck. He smelled like my childhood, like summer and hope. “I lost everything,” I told him. “And I want it back.”

  21

  My dad and I waited until the carousel closed for the night before walking the block to the park. I carried the picnic basket, heavy with sparkling water and crab salad sandwiches. Will would have been thirty-one today. Thirteen years of silently singing “Happy Birthday” to him, thirteen years of thinking about this place, of remembering the cherry red carousel horse and the smell of steamed lobster in the barbecue pit, waterskiing off Luke’s boat, setting off illegal fireworks.

  We walked across the parking lot. The blacktop had sprouted weeds, and beer cans littered the grass. My dad slipped through a break in the chain link, and I followed. We walked down the overgrown grassy slope to the beach. The horses watched us, mid-gallop, their eyes open, bits in their mouths. They seemed smaller than they had when we were kids, chipped and worn.

  On Will’s seventeenth birthday, I’d ridden the cherry red horse while Ryder watched me from the pier. Our plan had been for me to sneak out after the party ended, he’d be waiting for me, and we’d come back, climb the seventy-four stone steps to the lighthouse, and lay his sleeping bag down in the tower. But Will had wanted Ryder to stay and watch King Kong when we got home, and Ryder and I had sat there, separated by Will, who never fell asleep. Finally, I’d drifted off on the sectional with the mad thought that Will had known our plan, and ruined it.

  My dad spread out the checkerboard blanket. His hair had thinned a bit around the radiation site. “Do you come here every year?” I almost didn’t want to know.

  “Try to,” he said. He rested on his knees, the water lapping against the beach. “Last year, there were a bunch of kids horsing around.” He smoothed one of the blanket’s corners. “So I just stayed in the car.”

  I thought about being in Santa Fe with Nic, not telling him it was Will’s birthday. Not calling home. I watched the tide come in and retreat. The air had been still and thick like this that last year, and I could still see Will standing on the yellow horse’s back, going around on the carousel, balancing like a rodeo star while Jamie shrieked from the side. Later, he’d sung “Happy Birthday” to himself when Jamie brought out the cake, his arm around Ryder, a little drunk on Gosling’s and ginger beer. They’d been eating Life Savers like crazy, trying to hide it from our parents. He’d laid his head on Jamie’s shoulder after he’d blown the candles out. “If my wish comes true, I’m going big-time.”

  She knew he was drunk—she must have—but she just kissed him on the head. “Of course you are, sweetheart,” she’d said.

  I hadn’t wanted to come to the park, but my father told me Jamie couldn’t bear to be here, and I didn’t want him to be alone. He’d been acting odd lately, forgetting things, falling asleep at the dinner table, not being able to keep his head up when we watched movies at night.

  “The sunsets here are spectacular,” he said, shaking the sand off his flip-flops. But we’d come too late for the sunset, and the sky over the harbor was clouding over, already losing its deep magentas to dark violets and maroons. I looked out at the breakwater, where they said ships used to get tangled in the rocks before the lighthouse was built. “You’re a good girl, coming here with your old man.” He’d said that a bunch of times already, and it made me feel guiltier.

  “I always remember that lighthouse on his birthday,” I said.

  “And you send forget-me-nots to his grave.” He watched me dig a piece of conch shell out of the sand.

  “How’d you know?”

  He smiled. “I know my Jensen. Quiet about the good she does.”

  “He used to make tuba noises with these,” I said, holding up the half shell. “The whole ones.” I passed the piece to him, and he turned it around in his fingers.

  “He was good at stuff like that,” he said. “Remember the duck call he used to do?”

  “I hated that sound,” I said meanly. I could feel my father staring at me, and I pushed my feet into the sand, burying my toes. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m ugly. Sometimes I say ugly things.”

  He shook his head. “You’re not ugly.”

  Heat lightning lit up the rail around the lighthouse. “I am.” Thunder followed several seconds later. I could hear the belligerence in my voice, could feel the anger rising. “I’m not what you think.” I suddenly felt claustrophobic, being with my dad, who ignored that I’d fucked everything up, called me his “good girl” even though I’d hardly been home in thirteen years. Now with only one more week of radiation left, I’d be back in Santa Fe before we knew it, never having told him the truth.

  “Well,” he said, “if that old wives’ tale is true, we only have about ten minutes until the storm hits. What do you say we eat?”

  His shirt had a line of sweat down the middle. He reached over and opened the picnic basket.

  “You know the night Will died?” I dug my fingernails into my leg. “Remember that ER doctor kept asking if he’d had another accident after the game?” I felt a drop of rain on my neck.

  My dad took his glasses off and stuck the arm in his ear. “Sure, of course I remember.”

  “He did, Daddy.” A seagull called, a desperate sound.

  He blinked at me. “An accident?”

  I nodded.

  He paused, as if trying to remember the words. “What kind of accident?”

  I felt like I had when I used to get those awful fevers as a kid: My skin was hot, but my insides were cold. My voice came out as though I were talking
in a foreign language. “Will hit his head on the fireplace.” I said it very quickly. The words floated between us, vulgar and obscene. My father opened his mouth. I felt as though I were shrinking. “Will told Ryder not to date me, but we…” How could I explain it? How could I tell him I’d been about to have sex with Ryder, and that Will had come down and I’d pushed him so hard, he’d hit his head a second time? How could I say all that and not make it sordid and horrible? “Will came down, and Ryder and I were on the couch. We were … together; it was nothing bad. Will got mad, and he came at Ryder—”

  “Jensen.” My father laughed, a short, odd bark. “You’re not making sense.”

  I spoke quickly. “I didn’t tell you until now because I was scared; I was afraid you wouldn’t love me anymore.” I realized I was crying.

  He stared at me. His face had changed to carven stone. It was a look I’d seen before, but it had never, ever been directed at me. “Tell me what happened,” he said.

  The waves were bigger now, slamming against the beach. “That’s why I went to boarding school.” Another roll of thunder hit. “Because I couldn’t stand for you to see me after what I’d done.”

  “What”—his voice was rigid—“did you do?”

  I swallowed. I had to speak loudly because of the waves, because of the thunder. It was raining harder now and I felt it on the back of my neck, on my head. It occurred to me it had been raining the day I told Mandy, too, as though the sky were commiserating, crying. “When Will found Ryder and me on the couch, he hit Ryder. He was threatening him, so I pushed him, and then I pushed him again. I was mad; he—”

  But my father cut me off. “What happened to him? What happened to Will?”

  Oh Jesus. Why? Why had I started to tell him? I couldn’t stop now; the words were running all over themselves. “He stumbled backward. And his head hit the hearth. He wasn’t breathing, so we called nine one one and…” I told him I didn’t mean to; I must have said it a hundred times. “It was an accident,” I said. I was cold, shivering. “Will was so mad, he hit Ryder.” I realized I was blaming him. Blaming my dead brother. “Daddy,” I said. “Please … I didn’t mean it … I shouldn’t have told you.”

  But my dad did what I’d been hoping he wouldn’t do: He stood up. He walked backward a few steps, then stopped. “That must have been terrible for you.” His voice was choked, as though he were holding something back, an entire city. “Keeping this to yourself all this time.”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy.” I was still kneeling on the beach. “Please, I don’t know why I told you like this—”

  But his words ran right over me. “I’m glad you did.” And then he put his pointer finger up as though he was going to say one more thing, but he never did. He just turned and walked away, past the carousel, up the grassy slope, small and hunched, his blond hair windblown, his feet sinking into the damp sod.

  And then he found that little break in the chain-link fence and went through it, leaving me alone on the beach with that wet picnic basket and those horses in mid-flight, their eyes wide open.

  22

  “J.J. Why are you here?” Mandy rolled down the passenger window. She was wearing her hair in two long braids. Her T-shirt read TELL YOUR BOYFRIEND TO QUIT CALLING ME.

  I put the picnic basket in the back of her Touareg and got in the car, my arms crossed in front of me. I was shivering, but I didn’t feel cold. She pulled out. “Where am I taking you?”

  “I can’t go home,” I told her.

  “Okay.” She dragged the word out several syllables. She smelled like the silver iodide she used to emulsify film. “Let’s go to my place.”

  I glanced back at the lighthouse, blinking in the dark. Hours before, it had seemed cozy, welcoming; now it was a warning signal.

  “Is it your dad?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Is he okay?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “J.J., you’re scaring me.”

  But I told her I didn’t want to talk about it, and Mandy, being Mandy, just turned on the radio and let me sit there like a ghost in the car.

  At her apartment, she led me through the hallway, which was covered in African masks and Balinese art, and plopped me down on the overstuffed couch. I was shivering and couldn’t seem to do anything but stare at that row of little matryoshka dolls she’d brought home from Kaliningrad. Each figurine was smaller than the one before. I counted thirteen, an unlucky number. The last was half the size of my pinkie. I heard Mandy taking the glass top off the decanter at the antique tea caddy she called her bar. “Here.” She handed me a glass of something that might have been brandy. A tapestry hung against a back wall. She’d sent an identical one to me in Santa Fe after she’d been shooting okapi and white rhino in the Congo.

  She took a sip of the brandy. “What the hell is going on?”

  “I told him.”

  Her eyes widened. “Your dad?”

  I nodded.

  “Just now?” Her windows were open, and it smelled misty and wet. I could see the New Haven Green sprawled out below us. “What did he say?”

  I was completely numb. I couldn’t feel anything. I tried wriggling my toes. “He just”—I shrugged—“walked away.”

  “Jesus. What did you tell him? I mean…”

  “I told him Will came downstairs that night and found Ryder and me on the couch, and I pushed him, and he hit his head.” I wanted to tell him that I hadn’t hit Will that hard. That I didn’t think I was strong enough to knock him down. I couldn’t believe I’d told him on Will’s birthday. I couldn’t stop seeing him going through the chain link. “And then he left.”

  “J.J.” Mandy put her brandy glass on the table. “You’re ringing.”

  The Velvet Underground song was playing. Ryder. I held my phone, staring at it. “What if my dad went over to Ryder’s with a shotgun?”

  She grabbed the phone from me and pressed the green answer button. “Your dad is a Democrat.” She handed it to me. “He’s antifirearms.”

  I gulped the drink. It burned going down. “Hey, Ryder.” I tried to sound like I wasn’t falling apart.

  “Jenny.” His voice was tight. “You need to get to the hospital right now.”

  “The hospital?”

  Mandy scooted over to listen, and I held the phone between us. “Your dad’s had a seizure.” He had the same flat, slightly patronizing tone he used when I’d overheard him talking to patients, his Mr. Rogers voice. “And he’s unconscious.”

  Mandy was already shoving her feet in a pair of sandals. “I’ll drive.”

  When we got to her car, she put me into the passenger’s side. “I’m not drunk, Mand. I can do it.” But I slunk down in the seat and let her strap me in. “I never should have told him,” I said. She didn’t answer. She just patted my arm and shut the door. I watched her run to the driver’s side. I wanted to take it back, all of it.

  Mandy talked loudly and quickly as she drove, too fast, toward the hospital. “Listen, this didn’t happen because you told him. You know things like that don’t happen. You don’t have a seizure because you’re surprised. He probably—” But her voice became just noise, I couldn’t really hear the words. Restaurants zipped by, all-night gas stations, grocery stores. Luke was full of shit. There was no relief in telling the truth. I thought of my dad at the roller coaster that day, of his eyes rolling back. I wondered if he’d been alone after he left the beach.

  Stopped at the red light on Howard and York, Mandy banged the steering wheel. “Hurry up.” She honked at a group of kids crossing in front of the car; the girls had on bathing suit tops, and the boys’ shirts were untucked. They were laughing, walking in that careless way of people who have their whole lives ahead of them and nothing to regret. As soon as the last one got an inch past her bumper, Mandy pushed down on the gas and sped through the light.

  In the ER, she grabbed my hand and dragged me to a balding doctor who was reading a chart. “Sterling Reilly,” she said.


  The doctor closed the file and took off his rimless glasses. “Through the double doors, take a left.” He sized me up. “Room one thirteen.”

  Mandy pulled me down the hall and around the corner, and just as we got there, Dale came out of the room. “Jensen,” she said.

  “What happened? Is Ryder here?”

  “He got called away.” She was standing in front of the door like a linebacker, defending it. She glanced at Mandy.

  “She’s my best friend,” I said.

  Dale raised her eyebrows. “Why don’t you have a seat?” She nodded to a folding chair across the hall. I sat on the edge of it, and Dale stayed standing. Mandy hung back, reading a bulletin board.

  “What happened?” I asked. My clothes were sandy and dirty, and I was still shivering.

  “Your father is very sick. He’s lost consciousness.” She pushed her hair behind her ear. She was wearing ladybug earrings, which reminded me of a child’s jewelry box. “His temperature is almost a hundred and four, and your mother said the seizure lasted several minutes. We’re not sure what caused it.” I touched the fray of my jean shorts. I hated Jamie for being with him when I wasn’t. “Jenny,” she said.

  “It’s Jensen,” I told her.

  “But Ryder…”

  “He’s the only one.”

  “Okay, Jensen.” She seemed to draw up into herself. “Has he been acting strange lately?”

  “Define strange.” I felt cut off from myself. “Is it strange that he can’t think of words like yogurt and chair? And that he goes from sitting at the kitchen table, talking about our plans for the weekend, to crying uncontrollably for no reason?”

  “Aphasia is part of the disease. I’m talking about new symptoms. Anything you can tell me could help.”

  At dinner the night before, Luke had asked my dad to pass the tofu steaks, but he couldn’t make his fingers connect to the platter. “He’s been grabbing at the air, like he’s trying to catch something.”

  Her back stiffened. “How often?”

  I could tell by the tone of her voice that something was wrong. “I don’t know, a few times a day for the last three days.”