by Mila Gray
I wonder for the millionth time whether I should tell Didi about the theory that my blindness is psychosomatic, but I’ve left it so long now I wonder if she’ll consider it a lie. I’m scared, too, of her reaction. I don’t want to ruin today. But then again, the voice in my head pipes up, maybe it’s only fair if I do have my day ruined. And I don’t want to live with the lie any longer. Before I can stop myself, I open my mouth.
‘Didi,’ I say.
She turns down the radio. ‘Yeah?’
‘I need to tell you something.’
She doesn’t say anything. Shit. I think about making something up, but I have to tell her. I can’t back down now. ‘The whole blindness thing. It’s, um . . . it’s not physical,’ I say. ‘It’s in my head.’
She doesn’t speak, but I feel the car start to slow as if she’s taken her foot off the accelerator. ‘I know,’ she finally says.
I turn to face her. She what?
‘My dad told me.’
‘He did?’
‘Yeah. He thought it would help for me to know. Don’t be mad.’
I don’t know what to think, but I do know that I feel relieved, not mad. If anything, she should be mad at me. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.’
‘It’s OK. I understand,’ she says, putting her hand on my thigh.
I press my head back into the headrest and let the know-ledge that she knew, and didn’t think worse of me for it, settle.
‘You’re going to get your sight back,’ she tells me, and the certainty in her voice buoys me for a moment. Until she lifts her hand away. I don’t know how to tell her that it’s never going to happen.
Didi
As I make the turn into the parking lot I feel a flurry of butterflies. I hope this is the right thing and that Walker won’t be mad at me. As I spot an empty space and turn into it, I catch sight of someone walking towards us and almost drive straight into the curb in shock. It’s like seeing Walker’s identical twin.
I switch off the engine and get out the car, telling Walker to stay put for a second.
‘Hi,’ I say, as Isaac, Walker’s brother, walks towards me.
It’s only now he’s right in front of me that I see the differences. He’s thinner than Walker, less built up, with longer, dishevelled hair, and he’s an inch or two shorter. But he’s every bit as good-looking.
‘You must be Didi,’ he says to me, smiling, holding out a hand.
I shake it. They have the same smile. The same dimple. Different-coloured eyes, though. ‘Hi,’ I say, still marvelling at the similarities.
‘Isaac?’
I turn. Walker has got himself out of the car and is facing in our direction, frowning in confusion.
I watch Isaac reel back in shock as he takes in Walker, whose gaze is not quite hitting us but landing somewhere over my shoulder. Isaac gathers himself. ‘Hey, bro,’ he says with a forced joviality and walks around the car towards him.
Walker scowls. Is he angry? I watch on tenterhooks. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Walker said the two of them no longer talked, but the fact is I think he needs his brother. He needs someone besides me and the other workers at the centre. Though watching the two of them now, I’m wondering if I’ve overstepped the mark. Isaac hesitates for a moment, then walks forward and throws his arms around his brother, pulling him into a hug that makes my throat tighten. For a few seconds Walker’s arms stay rigid at his sides, but then he softens, the frown vanishes, and he hugs his brother back with a fierceness that takes me by surprise and makes me think of all the times he’s held me the same way.
However Walker might appear on the outside – tough, brooding, distant – I know him well enough now to know that he needs this. He needs this contact with people, this connection. Sometimes it feels like he’s holding on to me as if I’m an anchor keeping him from being swept out to sea, and I know, watching him with Isaac now, that bringing them together was absolutely the right thing to do. Maybe between the two of us we can find a way to help him.
When I found Isaac on Facebook and contacted him, all I knew was that he and Walker hadn’t talked in a few years. Walker was vague about the details. I saw from his Facebook page that Isaac lived in Miami, and when I mentioned his name to my mom she said she’d heard of him, that he’s quite a well-known artist.
Looking at the two of them embracing, Isaac holding Walker by the tops of his arms and studying him hard before pulling him back in for a second hug, I see the Walker that could have been if he hadn’t gone into the marines.
Isaac is wearing skinny jeans rolled up at the ankle and a tight-fitting T-shirt. He’s a hipsterish version of Walker; I have to suppress a smile at the thought of Walker strolling through Brooklyn talking artisan beers or indie record labels. We’ve already joked about his beard making him look less like Osama bin Laden and more like a hipster, a joke that made him even more keen for me to shave him every day. Though possibly it wasn’t just the fear of looking that way that motivated him, but what tends to happen after I’ve finished shaving him.
‘I don’t get it,’ Walker says now, turning his head in roughly my direction.
‘We’re taking you out on Grandpa’s boat,’ Isaac says.
‘His boat?’
‘Yeah,’ Isaac says. ‘I bought it a few years ago.’
Walker shakes his head. ‘You did?’
‘Yeah. Just before he died.’
Walker frowns.
‘I was going to have someone sail it around to Miami, but never got round to it,’ Isaac explains. ‘Then this girlfriend of yours got in touch with me out of the blue last week and we hatched this plan.’
Walker’s eyebrow shoots up. Was it the word girlfriend? I didn’t call myself that – I just introduced myself to Isaac as Walker’s friend – but when Walker doesn’t say anything to set him straight, I feel a rush.
‘I can’t sail,’ Walker says, gesturing at his eyes. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m blind.’
‘Bullshit. You could sail blindfold even when we were kids. And besides, Didi and I are going with you. We’ll do all the hard stuff.’
‘Um,’ I say, raising my hand, ‘just so you know, I’ve never sailed before.’
Isaac raises his eyebrows at the both of us. ‘You make me fly all the way out here and then you both make excuses? I don’t think so. I’ve spent the last day getting the boat ready. Let’s go.’
I walk around the car and let Walker take my arm, noticing the little glances Isaac keeps throwing our way. He’s rattled by seeing his brother like this, and I can tell that Walker is uneasy too, thrown by Isaac’s presence and self-conscious about being blind.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask under my breath as we make our way down the jetty.
He nods, but a muscle by his eye twitches.
I take in the super yachts on either side of us and am relieved when we get to the end of the jetty and find a much more modest, yet no less impressive, wooden-hulled boat. It’s freshly varnished and looks well loved.
‘Chiara?’ I ask, reading the name written on the glossy painted side.
‘Our grandmother’s name,’ Isaac explains, jumping on board and holding out a hand for me. I take it and let him pull me onto the narrow deck.
He does the same for Walker, who steps on board carefully, feeling for the railing which Isaac helps him find.
We both sit down, Walker by the steering stick thing, and me trying to stay out of the way of Isaac who’s leaping all over the boat doing stuff with ropes.
‘Our grandfather met our grandmother in Italy during the war,’ he explains. ‘He was a GI, stationed over there in ’44. She was a translator for the allied forces.’
Isaac throws me a life jacket and then passes one to Walker. I fumble with mine, and Walker, even though he’s blind, deftly finds the nylon straps and helps me tighten them.
‘He said he fell in love with her the minute he heard her voice, and then he fell in love with her all over again when he saw her.’ H
e laughs. ‘She was pretty hot stuff, Grandma. But she was also married.’
‘Oh,’ I say, frowning at him, confused.
‘After the war,’ Walker carries on, picking up the story where Isaac’s left off, ‘Grandpa came back home, but he couldn’t get her out of his head. He only had her name – no address – but he went back to Italy on a mission to find her. It took him two months to track her down. She was living in Rome, working for the Red Cross, helping refugees find their families.’
‘But what about her husband?’ I ask as Isaac unties us from the jetty and gives an instruction to Walker, who takes the rope Isaac tosses into his lap and starts wrapping it around a metal hook.
‘He had died at the end of the war, somewhere on the Russian front. She was a widow.’
‘Happily for us,’ says Walker, ‘or we wouldn’t be here right now.’
‘They got married, moved back to America and lived happily ever after,’ Isaac says with a grin. ‘He said that she was the only good thing that came out of that war.’
‘That’s so romantic,’ I say as Isaac jumps down into the boat and starts the engine, steering us expertly out through the rows of boats towards the harbour entrance.
‘Didi’s a closet romantic,’ Walker laughs. ‘Actually, not so closet.’
I poke him in the ribs and he grins at me before turning his head towards the breeze and closing his eyes. I smile as I watch him.
‘They were married forty years, had five kids, our dad was the youngest,’ Isaac goes on. ‘After Grandma died he gave up the ghost. There was nothing physically wrong with him, but he died in his sleep six months later. Doc said it was a broken heart.’
‘That’s so sad.’
‘That’s the way it goes. Us Walkers, when we fall, we fall hard.’ He winks at me then nods at the rope by my side. ‘OK, you ready to sail?’ he asks.
‘Er . . .’
‘If you’re going to be part of this family, you need to learn to sail. That’s the deal.’
Part of the family? I glance at Walker. His eyes are still closed and he’s still smiling into the sun. I stand up.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘What do I have to do?’
Walker
I can hear Didi and Isaac talking, and the sound of their voices over the whip of the wind lulls me into a feeling as close to peace as I’ve experienced since that day.
I close my eyes and feel the sun on my face and taste the salt spray on my lips. I didn’t realize how much I missed this, how much I was craving it, and to tell the truth I’m finding it hard to process everything – the feel of the hull cutting with speed through the waves, the snap of the sail when Isaac turns us against the wind, the sound of the gulls calling far above us. It’s all I can do to sit still, legs dangling over the side, arms thrown over the rail, and just absorb it. This is exactly what I needed and I didn’t even know it. I thought I’d never be able to sail again and I’d had been forcing myself not to think about it, yet here I am, thanks to Didi.
The only downside to today is not being able to join in, though Isaac let me steer once we were out in open water. Now it’s Didi’s turn at the helm. A part of me is jealous that my brother’s the one getting to teach her, but I tamp it down. She did this for me. Somehow she found Isaac and plotted all this, and the thought astounds me. Miranda would never have done anything like this. Miranda didn’t even like boats. She used to moan about her hair going all frizzy with the salt air and getting seasick.
‘Woah!’ Didi yelps and suddenly comes crashing into me where I’m sitting at the prow of the boat. I put my arms out to catch her and she collapses down at my side, throwing her arm around my shoulders to steady herself.
‘Careful,’ I say. ‘I don’t want you going overboard.’
‘This is amazing,’ she says, leaning into me and kissing me on the cheek.
I nod, pulling her closer.
‘Are you happy?’ she asks.
I nod again. But the mention of happiness causes a stabbing feeling in my gut, like someone’s taken a piece of jagged glass and twisted it sharply into my side. The images of the boot, the twisted, smoking piece of shrapnel, Sanchez’s face streaked with blood, the flicker and blaze. It’s like a reflex action. Every time I think I might be happy, every time I let that spark of hope and possibility take hold inside me, the darkness comes along and snuffs it out, the screams in my head clamour louder and more insistently to be heard. It’s a sneak attack by my conscience, which keeps questioning my right to be happy, my right to enjoy moments like this one – face to the sun, girl at my side, laughter in my ear – when others are denied them.
‘Where are you?’
‘Huh?’ I turn to face Didi.
‘You went somewhere. I can tell by your expression.’
I force a smile. Nothing passes her by. ‘I’m here. Right here. With you,’ I tell her.
She doesn’t buy it, but her hand squeezes mine and she rests her head on my shoulder. I kiss the top of her head.
‘Why won’t you talk to me? I wish you’d let me in.’
I frown. She sighs.
‘So you don’t mind me calling Isaac and arranging this?’
I shake my head, my lips still pressed to her hair. ‘No.’
‘Because I know you guys fell out, so I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do,’ she says.
I don’t answer her.
‘He told me that he’d been wanting to visit you, but hadn’t known if you wanted him to. He said you hadn’t returned any of his calls.’
‘I haven’t returned anyone’s calls,’ I say. ‘My phone isn’t switched on.’
‘What happened between you guys?’ Didi asks. ‘You seem to get on so well.’
I turn my face into the wind. Where to begin?
‘It probably sounds stupid,’ I say with a sigh, because, truth be told, so much time has gone by that the details are fuzzy even to me now.
‘I want to hear it anyway,’ Didi says, brushing her hand through my hair.
I shrug. ‘He got kicked out of school, like I told you. He had a massive blow-out with my dad and left home. We didn’t hear from him for a couple of years. I was so mad at him. He was my older brother. We did everything together, and then – just like that – he was gone, leaving me to deal with the fallout.’
‘He told me. You know, I think he feels really bad about it.’
‘Yeah?’ I ask, frowning. Why can’t he tell me that himself?
‘So what happened?’ Didi asks.
‘One day he just showed up. I was in my senior year of high school, was due to start at the Naval Academy in the fall. He’d found out about it and came back to stage what I guess he thought was some kind of intervention. He turned up to my high-school graduation ceremony and told me I didn’t need to do it, that I could come live with him in Florida, go to college there.’
‘Why did he do that?’
I shrug. ‘Because I guess he felt like the fate he’d avoided had been dumped on me and that I was being pressured into it by my dad. Anyway, we argued. He left. I went to the Academy. We didn’t really speak after that. You know, different paths, different ideas . . . back then, anyway.’
‘But that’s OK. I mean, to have different ideas. You don’t need to fall out over it.’
What I haven’t told Didi is that Isaac turned up high as a kite to my graduation, walked onto the stage where the principal was giving his speech, grabbed the mic and gave his own speech, in which he called me a coward, accused me of falling for establishment propaganda and of throwing my life away for a cause I couldn’t possibly believe in, and then to top it all called Miranda a stuck-up East Coast princess and my dad Stalin. When the principal and another teacher tried to wrestle the microphone from him, he took a wild swing at them and ended up falling off the stage and landing in the lap of the principal’s wife.
Remembering it now, I actually smile to myself. At the time I was mortified, as were my parents. All it did was make me even more determined
not to let them down. Having one son embarrass them was enough. So his plan to rescue me backfired somewhat.
With the benefit of hindsight I can see that Isaac was only doing what he thought was best.
‘I like him,’ Didi says, nestling her head on my shoulder.
I laugh under my breath. Miranda hated him. She thought he was a loser because he wasn’t following the socio-economic pathway laid out for our peers, by which she meant he wasn’t going to Harvard Law or doing an MBA.
‘He reminds me of you,’ Didi says.
I raise an eyebrow. ‘Not too much, I hope.’
Suddenly a bolt of fear punches me right in the solar plexus. What if she sees Isaac as a non-faulty version of me?
Didi leans in closer and I feel her lips press just below my jaw. ‘There’s only one Walker boy I want,’ she whispers into my ear.
As always, she’s seen right through my fears and insecurities and addressed them without making me feel like an idiot. I turn my head and she kisses me, tugging on my bottom lip. Her words ring in my head. She wants me. She can’t possibly know how much I want her too.
‘Hey, you two lovebirds, stop canoodling. I need my first mate,’ Isaac yells, interrupting us.
‘That’s me!’ Didi says, jumping to her feet. I support her as she wobbles. She still hasn’t found her sea legs.
I listen as Isaac gives her instructions on what to do with the boom, and as Didi follows them I smile to myself. We’re at sea. And I have my brother and my girlfriend alongside me. And for this one moment there’s no past digging its claws into my back, there’s no future slamming its doors in my face, there’s just this.
Freedom.
Didi
Isaac takes in the centre with the same expression I’ve seen on Walker when José comes to tell him he has a psych appointment with my dad. His nostrils quiver and his lips purse. They really are uncannily alike, though Isaac is much quicker to smile and has a more frenetic, unbottled energy to him. I can’t help but wonder if Walker used to be the same, before what happened happened. Or was Walker always the quieter more thoughtful one of the two?
