Blind Date

by Anders, Robyn

  "It's all right," she assured him.

  She took a last look at herself in the reflective glass in her mother's storm door and straightened her collar. Sometimes she thought she'd become a jock in rebellion against her mother's fussy perfectionism. Still, she wanted her mother's approval no matter how impossible she found it to achieve. Finally she rang the bell.

  Loud barking let her know that Kobe was on guard.

  "Amy, is that you? Just a minute."

  Her mother's shout barely penetrated over the dog's yapping.

  "When we moved out, she decided to adopt a dog," Amy explained.

  "Oh."

  "What? You don't like dogs?" Although she couldn't understand it, she knew some people didn't like cats. She'd never heard of anyone who wasn't crazy about dogs. After all, what was not to like?

  "I guess they're all right. I just wasn't raised with any kind of animal."

  "Well, I'm sure you'll get along with Kobe."

  The door opened and Kobe bounded to her.

  Her mother's sharp intake of breath caught Amy's attention.

  "Amy. Is this some kind of a joke?"

  Chapter 3

  Mark felt like he'd been kicked in the gut. "I'm Mark Barnes," he said. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Halprin. I certainly appreciate you including me in your family dinner tonight."

  Amy's mother said nothing. This wasn't off to an auspicious start. "I took the liberty of bringing a bottle of wine."

  Dead silence followed.

  Amy's arm had clenched when her mother had opened the door.

  "Mother, this is my friend Mark."

  "Oh, my God. This isn't a joke, is it?"

  Mark remembered the first time a ground unit had secured a radar fix on his bomber. Absolute panic had frozen his conscious movement. Only months of training had allowed him to act at all. In the mission debriefing, he'd seen how he rolled the aircraft, homed on the radar, and blasted it away. He'd never been able to remember any of it. If he'd been forced to talk then, he'd have sounded a lot like Amy's mother.

  "Won't you come in?" The words were torn out of her like pearls from an oyster, almost as if they would kill her.

  "Thank you, Mrs. Halprin," he said. He'd find a way to make this short. Too bad the cabby had peeled out so fast. Otherwise, he might just have called an end to whatever game Amy was playing. He couldn't imagine what she was thinking. Playing a joke on him was cold enough. Why torture her mother?

  "Call me Tillie."

  "Mother--"

  "Mark, why don't you sit down here in the living room? Amy, I could use your help in the kitchen."

  Suddenly deserted, Mark felt his way around the living room until he found a couch. He sat, folded his cane, and tried not to listen.

  He was sure Tillie meant to whisper. In her own way, the woman must be trying to protect him from the reality of his condition. Still, he didn't have to strain to hear every word.

  "Amy, what are you doing?"

  "Mother--"

  "Sure he's a nice-looking man. But have you thought about what your life would be like?"

  "I just met him last week. I think it's a little premature to be thinking about the rest of my life."

  "You're not getting any younger, Amy."

  Mark pulled his headset radio from his pocket, clipped it on and cranked up the volume. Some of the music on Public Radio was a little weird, but even that had to be better than listening to his shortcomings as a possible mate. It wouldn't have been so bad if Tillie hadn't been completely right.

  He leaned back into the overstuffed couch, closed his eyes, and relaxed to the sounds of African music.

  He actually thought he was getting the hang of the rhythms when a warm hand grasped his shoulder, shaking it.

  He had already seized it and was rolling in toward the clinch when he remembered where he was. Nobody was going to attack him here.

  He dropped the hand and fumbled for the radio dial, turned it the wrong way and blasted his ears, then managed to switch the thing off.

  "Can I get you anything to drink, Mark?" Tillie asked him.

  "If you have iced tea, that would be great."

  "Amy, there's tea in the refrigerator. Why don't you pour a glass for me as well?"

  He listened to the sound of Amy leaving and then the sound of a chair being dragged closer to him.

  "I understand that you and my daughter are just friends, Mr. Barnes."

  "Mark," he corrected her.

  "Very well. I understand that you and my daughter are just friends. Is that correct, Mark?"

  He shrugged his shoulders. He decided to go with as much of the truth as he could, while backing up what Amy must have told her mother. "We met the other day, had a cup of coffee together, then when I called to ask her out, she suggested I come here. I guess that constitutes being friends."

  "I'm sure you're a very nice boy--" Tillie began.

  "You're quite wrong there," he interrupted. "I'm not particularly nice and I certainly am not a boy."

  "At any rate, Amy is a very sensitive girl. She always wants to save the world, take care of the sick. That kind of thing. Just because she is willing to do things, though, doesn't mean that they're the right things for her. Doesn't mean that people should take advantage of her. If you understand what I'm getting at."

  You're not being very subtle, he wanted to tell her. I’m pretty sure I could follow even if you weren’t in my face about it.Still, he was the guest here. The rattle of glasses on a tray warned him that Amy had returned.

  "Mother, you promised you wouldn't give Mark a hard time," Amy said.

  "We were just talking," Tillie told her.

  "I'll bet. Do you like sugar?" she asked Mark.

  He shook his head. "No thanks." His blindness hadn't cured his sweet-tooth, exactly, but the day he'd spilled sugar all over his kitchen and suffered the invasion of the fire ants had broken him of the habit of using sugar in anything.

  "Mother?"

  "You know how I like it."

  "Three spoons full," Amy told her. "And one for me."

  Mark made a mental note to buy tea and sugar before inviting Amy over--if their relationship ever got that far.

  He couldn't really blame Tillie for wanting to protect Amy. He hadn't noticed that Amy had any particular tendencies toward martyrdom, but several of his friends from the hospital had met and married nurses with exactly that mentality. So it was possible.

  Still, he doubted Amy was interested in him out of pity. She hadn't given him even a small sign that she was interested at all.

  "Your tea, Mark, Mother," Amy told them.

  "Be careful of the coffee table," Tillie instructed Amy. "Here, use one of the coasters."

  Amy had set the glass down firmly enough that he could sense exactly where it had been. She was, he thought, already getting some sense of what spending time with a blind man could be like. Unfortunately, her mother moved the tea when she got the coaster, then put it down too softly for him to detect its exact location.

  He'd either have to ask them to hand him the drink, or search the coffee table for it, risking knocking it over. Neither alternative was attractive. He went without.

  "Amy tells me you're a lawyer, Mark. What kind of law do you practice?"

  Answering her question at least gave him an excuse not to start in on the iced tea. "I'm with the Merit Systems Protection Board," he told her. "It's a government agency that tries to make sure that government employees get hired and fired fairly."

  "Oh, you work for the government?"

  She made it sound only slightly better than torturing small animals.

  "It's my second career, really. I had intended to be a lifer in the air force, but I’m not exactly pilot material any more. Anyway, I got a late start in law school and the government is a great place for a lawyer to start. Because they don't get a lot of the top talent coming out of law school, you don't have to spend your first ten years in the library doing grunt work like you d
o in the big law firms." He chose to ignore Tillie's insinuation that a lawyer working for the government didn't really count.

  "I always thought being a lawyer meant spending a lot of time reading," Amy broke in. "Don't you find that difficult?"

  He nodded. Sometimes it seemed that he had to work twice as hard as anyone else in the office just to break even. Still, he managed to earn excellent evaluations every year. "There’s good technology now—I can scan and use optical character recognition for a lot of things. And I hire readers from SMU," he explained. "They help me track down anything that isn't electronic. Of course most of the case law and Board proceedings are computerized. My computer can translate text into spoken words."

  He answered Tillie's next few questions about exactly how much a government lawyer can make in general terms. He wasn't interested in entering a bidding war for her daughter's hand, nor in convincing Amy that she couldn't do better picking someone from the private sector. He was attracted to Amy, but the more he saw of Tillie, the less likely a long-term relationship appeared. Especially if Amy really was the type to take pity on him.

  Finally the oven timer went off and Tillie announced that dinner was ready.

  Maybe that meant the interrogation was over as well. Mark didn't think so.

  * * * *

  Mark's face showed how hard he was working to keep his composure. Frankly, Amy would have lost her temper long before, and had, several times, broken into her mother's inquisition and told her to mind her own business. Since Mark didn't back her up, her efforts were fruitless.

  She should have guessed her mother would take out her anxieties on poor Mark. Years before when Amy had gone out on a date with the school bad boy, her mother had grilled the kid until he'd turned green. To Amy's perpetual disillusionment, the kid had brought her home before ten o'clock. He'd also never asked her out again.

  Tillie hadn't changed in the years since then. Would she manage to drive away Mark too? Of course Amy wasn't certain she wanted to date Mark. Her mother's concerns about how his lack of sight would affect her life were valid. On the other hand, Amy couldn't care less how much money he made. A teacher at a private school like Ursuline wouldn't be counted as much of a catch in the financial department, and she didn't see why a man should be held to a higher standard.

  She wished that she'd had the nerve to stop at the door and listen when her mother had sent her after tea. She must have said something that rocked Mark on his heels and, from what she had seen of Mark, that would take some rocking.

  She reached for Mark's hand, helping him to his feet and guiding him to the dining room table.

  Her mother had set three places, one at the head of the table and the other two side by side.

  "Mark, I don't get men to join me for dinner often," Tillie said. "Why don't you sit at the head of the table?"

  Amy knew Tillie had set the table with the idea of sitting at the head herself and letting the two lovebirds nestle together. Now that Tillie saw that one of the birds was wounded, she didn't want to go through with that initial plan.

  "I'd be happy to," Mark rumbled before Amy could interject an excuse.

  Amy frowned at her mother for about the hundredth time that evening. At least Mark couldn't see her silent attempts to steer her mother in a different direction. Of course, he couldn't have missed how ineffective she had been.

  She still didn't know exactly how she felt about Mark. Her mother's interference only made it harder to know her own mind.

  From the short time she'd spent with him, she knew she and Mark could never have one of those platonic friendships she formed with most of the men she knew. Despite his blindness, he exuded a raw physical appeal that kept her stomach in knots and made her breasts ache. When he'd touched her face, and every time his body brushed against hers, she responded too completely to his touch. He was clearly aware of her as a woman. Although he was being the gentleman, she had felt both the tenderness and the desire when he'd touched her face, and she'd noticed the way he reacted when he swiped the cat hairs from his seat-and surreptitiously copped a feel.

  "Everything smells wonderful, Tillie," Mark said as Amy guided him into his chair.

  "I thought a turkey would be nice even if it isn't Thanksgiving," Tillie told him.

  Mark couldn't see the smile that Tillie bestowed on him. If he could have, Amy thought, he would be even more wary than he already looked.

  Why had she invited him here?

  Amy didn't want to admit it, but she tried not to lie to herself. She really had invited him because she wanted to teach her mother a lesson, not because she liked him or wanted to be with him.

  Mark was one of the few men who honestly seemed to like her and who, she felt certain, didn't simply see her as a tight body they could use and discard. Instead of welcoming that, treating him as a potential lover, she had used him. In comparison, what her mother was doing was far more honest and honorable.

  "Would you like some of the wine you brought with dinner, Mark?" Amy asked.

  "No thanks," he answered. "But don't let me stop you. I wonder, though, if you could help me find my iced tea. It seems to have escaped me."

  It had indeed. It sat untouched, perched at the corner of the coffee table where her mother had set it. Almost ready to fall off if touched by an errant gesture. Or a searching hand, she suddenly realized. Maybe her mother was as bad as her. Amy had mistreated Mark through carelessness. Her mother seemed to be making a conscious effort to drive him away.

  "I'll get it," she said.

  As she walked back to the living room, she mentally cringed, waiting for her mother to drop the next shoe. Still, when she did, the audacity of it blew Amy away.

  "I wonder if you'd be willing to carve, Mark? I've never been much good at it."

  The liar. She'd used her electric knife and carved turkey ever since Amy could remember. Amy grabbed Marks tea and headed back to the table.

  "Do you see this scar?" Mark asked her mother before Amy got back.

  He held out his hand, palm up.

  Amy had noticed the thick dark scar that ripped across his hand and wondered what had caused it.

  "Of course I see it. I'm not bl--"

  "Mother, if you say it, I promise I won't be back for Saturday dinner, ever."

  "What I meant to say is--"

  "That's all right," Mark interrupted. "I lost more than my sight when I tangled with that land mine. I almost lost three of my fingers. Fortunately, the doctors were able to save them." He gave Amy a rueful smile. "It was a close call. Now that I'm blind, I use my hands for even more than a sighted man would. I really don't want to risk them cutting the turkey. Not even for a turkey that smells as good as this one."

  "I'm sorry, Mark. I forgot about your handicap. Of course I'll carve."

  It took Amy a while to figure out the look her mother shot her. She wasn't gloating. Despite Tillie's horrible behavior tonight, she really didn't have a mean bone in her body. She would fight like a lioness to protect her children, even if they didn't want protecting, but Tillie would hardly gloat over a terrible injury like Mark had experienced. Still, Tillie seemed incapable of not calling attention to Mark's deficiencies as a mate. Clearly she thought she was protecting Amy and would pay any price, even the sacrifice of her cherished southern hospitality, to do what she thought needed doing.

  Her mother carved a generous portion of turkey breast for Mark, then passed the plate to her so Amy could fill it with mashed potatoes, peas, cornbread stuffing, and creamed onions.

  As she slid the plate to Mark, Amy looked into his eyes.

  He'd removed his sunglasses before coming to the table, but he might as well have left them on for all the emotion she saw.

  Mark reached for his knife and fork and placed the napkin in his lap.

  She almost cautioned him about starting, but he cocked his head as if listening for the sound of silver on china. Hearing nothing, he returned his cutlery to their places by his plate and sat, hands fo
lded in his lap.

  Her mother finished her carving and looked at the two of them.

  "Would you like to say grace, Mark?" her mother asked.

  Since her mother's first outburst, a mask of calm had descended over Mark's face. He appeared interested in what everyone said but seemed void of emotion. Now, for the first time in an hour, anger peeked through.

  With an obvious struggle, he forced it down and regained his calm. Still, fear shivered through Amy's body. He was too dangerous, too real, for the games her mother was playing and the games she'd played.

  "I appreciate the offer," he told her. "As I am a guest, I think it would be more appropriate if you were to speak any words in your own way."

  Her mother shot her another look.

  Finally Amy realized her mother's game. She should have realized that Tillie was far too good a hostess to insult a guest without some reason. Tillie wasn't trying to put Mark down. That was an incidental byproduct. She was trying to show Amy the differences between herself and Mark. All of them.

  The carving stunt was supposed to remind her of all the little things Mark couldn't do because of his blindness. The grace thing was to point to the religious differences between them. If her mother started talking about politics next, Amy figured she might scream.

  Tillie hurried through grace and took a bite of her dinner, then turned and waited until Mark had his mouth full.

  "Do you think the government should send soldiers everywhere in the world just to keep other people in line?" her mother asked him.

  Mark choked down a swallow. "That would be a pretty extreme view," he answered reasonably. "If you mean, do I believe there are some circumstances where U.S. interests are properly served by armed intervention, the answer is yes. Of course, no government, and certainly not a democratic government, has any right to stick its nose into other people's business just because it doesn't like the way they're behaving."

  Her mother knew that Amy was a pacifist and had to be expecting Mark to jump up and defend military intervention everywhere. Amy didn't think anyone could argue with his response. Being a lawyer, he'd probably been trained to defuse any verbal tricks like that.

  She smiled at her mother. Score one for the good guys.