Love and First Sight

by Josh Sundquist

  She’s silent, so I continue, “If you had just told me this one thing, I would’ve been able to understand. I would’ve understood why you thought no one liked you. I would’ve understood why you thought no one would want to date you. I obviously would’ve tried to convince you otherwise on all these things, but at least I would’ve known where you were coming from. These are terrible burdens you’ve had to carry all by yourself, Cecily. I was trying to be your friend. You know what friendship means? It means sharing the burden. You didn’t have to carry it all by yourself.”

  She still doesn’t answer.

  “Well?” I say.

  Finally she says, “When I first found out you were blind, it was kind of… refreshing to meet someone who didn’t look at me and see my birthmark first and foremost. You saw other parts of me instead. And I liked that. I just allowed myself to enjoy it. I couldn’t predict we would become this close. But after we kept hanging out, at a certain point, yeah, I felt like it had gone too far, that if I told you then, it would seem like I had taken advantage of your blindness by not telling you earlier.”

  When she says those words out loud, taken advantage of your blindness, I realize that’s the other piece of why I’m so offended. It’s not just knowing that she might have thought I was so shallow that I couldn’t handle it, it’s that she took advantage of my blindness because it happened to be more convenient. Why go through the trouble of telling the blind guy your most significant physical characteristic if you can simply allow him to stay ignorant? Why risk filling him in on what everyone else already knows when you can just leave him in the dark?

  Cecily says she believed I was different from everyone else. Well, I believed she was different, too. I believed she was the one person I could really trust. Like she might even be the one sighted person I could trust enough to be in a relationship with. But now she’s thrown that all away, crumpled it up, and stomped on it.

  I step out of the car and slam the door shut. I navigate back toward the school, hearing my cane click-click-click on the pavement as her car’s idling engine fades behind me. I blink. I’m not sure if I’m blinking back tears or if I’m just blinking because my eyes feel dry.

  As I walk, my mind races with questions. Do people have a duty to disclose what they look like to their blind friends? If you know someone who can’t see, is there some moral obligation to tell him about any flaws in your appearance early on? Like, Hey, I know we just met recently, but in case you ever start feeling attracted to me, you should know that for whatever reason, society wouldn’t say I’m beautiful?

  Because that’s all it is, right? Society or the media or whoever says people should look a certain way, and the more you deviate from that, the less beautiful you are.

  But there’s obviously something deeper going on with attraction, right? Something beyond just what society says is beautiful or not? Like, I was attracted to Cecily without ever having seen her clearly with my eyes. Because I know her. I know what she’s like inside. I know how she expresses herself and the way she loves to take photos and watch sunrises, and that’s what I’m attracted to.

  Or at least, I thought I knew her.

  The fact is, not saying what is true is the same as saying something untrue. It’s a lie of omission. Cecily considered telling me the truth about herself and then decided, no, she enjoyed having a friend who didn’t know what she looked like. She decided that exploiting my blindness was the best way to make me stick around, the best way to hold on to my companionship. Basically, she used my disability so she could feel better about herself.

  But what hurts even more is that she assumed if I knew, I would think less of her because of something she was born with. I mean, seriously? Me, a guy who was born blind? Did she really think I was that shallow?

  I liked Cecily. I really did. And if I’m being totally honest with myself, maybe someday I could’ve even loved her. But I don’t think you can have love without trust, and I don’t see how I could ever trust her again.

  CHAPTER 27

  I spend the weekend alone in my room, coming out only to partake in the absolute minimum levels of eating and bathroom use. I pace around, clenching and unclenching my fists, scratching random stickers with noisy aggression. Anger. Scratching. Pacing. Thoughts of Cecily, and how she withheld such a large part of herself from me when I was showing her everything. Indignation. Humiliation. More scratching. More pacing.

  On Saturday, I delete all the messages I’ve ever posted on her wall and defriend her on Facebook. Reaching under my bed, I pull out the box of photos Cecily gave me. I march the box downstairs and dump out its contents unceremoniously on top of the food scraps in the kitchen trash can.

  “What are you doing?” asks Mom suspiciously.

  “Nothing,” I say flatly.

  Not including the angry mutterings to myself, it’s the first time I’ve spoken all weekend.

  I realize Mom is now likely to examine the contents of the trash can, so I grab a jar of mayonnaise from the fridge and pour it on top of the photos. Mom can’t stand the smell of mayonnaise. That will keep her away.

  On Sunday afternoon, I flop across my bed listening to music. The melody reminds me of something about Cecily, I’m not even sure what, and all of a sudden, tears roll out of my eyes. Actual tears. Hot, salty beads of confusing emotions.

  At the same time I’m fuming at her, I also miss the warmth of her elbow in my hand and the scent of her body nearby as she guides me. I desperately want her in my life. But how can I be around someone who has made me so angry? Why would I want to be around someone like that? Does that make me crazy?

  The conflict rages on for a while, and eventually my thoughts turn to my semifunctional eyes. I can only hope the tears won’t hurt them. Now that I think about it, they have been hurting a little more than before. But I’m pretty sure that’s been going on for several days. The physical pain and emotional pain are starting to swirl together. The eye discomfort began well before this crying episode, so I don’t think the tears are doing any more damage. Other than the emotional kind. The damaged emotions that are now all that’s left of what was once a friendship—and maybe a little more—with Cecily.

  But as my tears start to dry up, salty on my face, they show me something interesting. Before this weekend, I always thought my vision was kind of perpetually blurry. Turns out it was just confusing. Not blurry. The lines were actually crisp and clean; I simply didn’t know what they meant. When I cry, the confusing-yet-clear world fogs over into an indecipherable mix of colors. That’s what blurry looks like.

  That’s pretty much what the next four weeks feel like: blurry. I float inside a dense cloud of stormy emotions. Sometimes frustration with my limited progress, sometimes joy at how many new things I’m able to see each day. Sometimes anger at Cecily, sometimes regret about losing her. Because yeah, we don’t talk anymore. It’s awkward for our friends, because they can’t hang out with both of us at the same time. An uneasy truce of joint friendship custody forms. She gets the friends Sunday, because I can’t really play Settlers anyway. I get them Saturday. And so forth. It’s weird. And sad.

  • • •

  Just like that, my first semester at a mainstream school is nearly over. There are two days of exams left before school lets out for winter break. After I finish on Monday, I wait for Mom to pick me up for my next therapy session with Dr. Bianchi. I’ve been going three times a week. Mom picks me up after school to drive me to the PU medical office building.

  “How were your exams today?” Mom asks.

  “Fine,” I say in a tone meant to convey as little emotional revelation as possible.

  “Did you see her?” she asks.

  “Who?” I respond, playing dumb. This is none of Mom’s business. If she really wants to know, she’ll have to draw it out of me.

  “Did you see Cecily?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, maintaining complete flatness in my voice for each one-word sentence.

  “And
?” she asks.

  To this I say nothing, because and isn’t even a question.

  “Well, how did it go?” she prods.

  “What?” I reply.

  “You and her. Was it, you know, uncomfortable?”

  “No,” I say. Which isn’t entirely true. It was uncomfortable being in class and knowing she was in the room. It was uncomfortable walking the halls without her. But we didn’t technically have any interaction, so there’s nothing to measure the awkwardness by. Not with Cecily, at least. But with my friends at lunch, yeah, pretty weird. But Mom didn’t ask about that, so I don’t elaborate.

  “Not at all?”

  I say nothing, a move meant to strongly suggest this conversation is over.

  Inside the medical office building, I make Mom stay in the car while I go in for the appointment. As usual.

  It’s been about six weeks since the second operation, so by now I’m pretty familiar with how these sessions go. There’s a lot of poking and prodding, a lot of metal gadgets that measure this or that, a lot of pinching my eyelids and lifting them off my eyes and shining a light underneath. It’s a dizzying spectacle of blinking lights and spinning colors, like a rave party with an opera soundtrack.

  “Any problems this week, Will?” asks Dr. Bianchi as a streak of bright white lab coat walks into the room.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary,” I say, assuming he is inquiring about my eyesight, not my personal life. “But I’m still having a lot of trouble with depth perception. Does that mean one of my eyes isn’t working? Because don’t you need both eyes to see depth?”

  “Ah, yes, the depth perception. Binocular cues—that’s what we call cues from using two eyes—do account for some of depth perception. But most of the cues are monocular, meaning they can be processed by a single eye.”

  “What are the monocular cues?” I ask.

  “When one object blocks the other, it tells us it is in front. When you know the actual size of the two objects, you can compare their distance by judging their relative size and knowing the smaller one is farther away. Also, color and brightness. There are many ways.”

  “So I just have to keep waiting?” I say, frustrated.

  “You must have patience, yes. But you must do more than simply wait. You should explore and see the new objects and places. Force your brain into unknown situations where it must comprehend the depth perception for you.”

  I don’t know where I could find these unknown situations to put myself in. I mean, I’ve never even been outside Kansas. I’ve only left Toano for blind school and camp. My day-to-day life simply doesn’t present me with many new stimuli. I mean, sure, technically everything I see is a “new” sight. But I already have route maps of school, my house, and my neighborhood in my head. So when I look at them now, I’m just connecting the objects I see with points along the paths I memorized back when I was blind. It’s not actually new or unknown terrain.

  “Let us now examine those eyes,” he says.

  We go through the usual routine. But there’s one particular measurement involving a cold metal caliper pushed into the edges of my eyeballs that he performs a few more times than he usually does.

  “Will, I am sorry to tell you this—I have some very bad news,” he says, stepping back from the examination table where I am sitting. “Have you been experiencing blurriness around the edges of your vision? Or any pain?”

  “My eyes have been feeling kind of uncomfortable lately, yes,” I offer.

  “As I feared.”

  “But I kind of had, uhhh, a relationship problem and did a lot of crying.”

  From his tone, I feel like it’s something serious, but I want to believe whatever problem he’s found is merely a side effect of the tears.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. But no, crying is not the problem. You have a buildup of fluid in your optical cavity. Very much fluid since I saw you last week,” he explains.

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “Most likely, it means your body is rejecting the donor tissue.”

  My heart skips a beat.

  “That sounds bad.”

  “Yes, I am afraid it is very bad.”

  “What will happen?” I ask.

  “If it continues, all the progress we made is lost,” he says, sympathy creeping into his voice.

  It feels like he slapped me in the face.

  “You mean I’ll go back to being blind?”

  He pauses. “Yes, this is what I mean.”

  I angle my head down toward the floor and run my fingers through my hair.

  “When that—I mean, if that happens, couldn’t you just do another transplant?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Such a transplant can be performed only once. The scar tissue from the operation makes further attempts impossible.”

  “Well, then—I mean, there must be—is there something you can do? To stop the fluid buildup?”

  “Yes, we’ll of course try our best to save your eyesight. The problem we have now is that your body identifies the new tissue in your eyes as foreign, so your own immune system tries to destroy it. This is the source of the fluid. I’m going to increase your dose of immunosuppressive drugs. But I must warn you, Will, this also puts you in danger. You must avoid contact with any person of illness, because with a compromised immune system, you are able to contract any contagious disease. You must avoid dirty or contaminated environments.

  “You must not fly on airplanes, because the pressure in the airplane cabin could cause an optical rupture. No contact sports, no sudden movements. Your situation is very fragile; you must exercise great caution.”

  “Got it,” I say, trying to sound more confident about my situation than I actually feel.

  He sets a hand on my shoulder. “I’m very sorry about all this, Will. I always have the greatest hopes for you.”

  “What are my chances?”

  “Not the best,” he says, avoiding a direct answer.

  “What would you say, though?” I ask. “Like a percentage?”

  “That you retain the eyesight?” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “From what I have seen today, my guess is fifty percent.”

  CHAPTER 28

  In the car on the way home, Mom can tell there’s a problem.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks as soon as I fasten my seat belt.

  “Nothing,” I say dryly.

  “Honey, did Dr. Bianchi say there was something wrong?” she asks worriedly.

  “No,” I lie.

  “Then why are you upset?”

  “I’m not upset,” I say, trying not to sound it.

  “You’re my son, Will,” she says a little more gently, like she’s trying to soothe me. “I can tell when you are upset.”

  She sounds like she’s talking to a little child, which just makes everything worse. “Fine,” I snap. “I’m upset. Can we go now?”

  We are still parked, and she doesn’t put the car in gear. Instead, she immediately asks, “Is it your eyes?”

  I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want her to know, because she’ll swoop into Dr. Bianchi’s office and ask him a ton of questions and demand he fix me, and it will just be humiliating.

  She presses again. “Will, tell me.”

  I don’t answer. Finally I feel the car start to accelerate, and we turn out of the parking lot.

  I turn my gaze out the window. I hear the sound of cars passing by, but the speeds are too fast for me to differentiate the shapes of the vehicles from the background of the road and passing buildings. What a joke that is. I want to take in the world, appreciate it all while I still can, but my eyesight just isn’t good enough. So instead I get a partial glimpse through a tiny crack in the wall between the blind and the sighted, and soon that crack will seal shut completely.

  Now it will be so much worse. Now I have an understanding of how much nuance I’ve been missing out on. I won’t return to blindness with a full appreciation of what it means
to see, but I will return with a full appreciation of what it means to be blind.

  Just a few weeks ago, in fact, it seemed like I held everything that I’ve ever wanted in the palms of my hands. My life was on track. My plans were coming together. I had fledgling eyesight, even possible romance. But now, just like that, I’ve lost both. I’m left holding the empty shells of my desires, and I have to tell you, it all really sucks. Where do I go from here?

  So I’m going to go back to being blind, but with a greater distrust of sighted people. How can a blind guy function without trusting others? Even with my wits and training, I still have to rely on the canes and GPS gadgets that other people make for me and sell to me, and on the occasional kindness of strangers when these things fail and I get lost.

  I think for a second about how I’m supposed to share a New Year’s resolution on the first day we’re back at school in January. Presumably the resolution is supposed to be something, like, optimistic. But at the moment I’m feeling pretty glass-half-empty.

  But hey, I’ve got a 50 percent chance, right? The flip of a coin. No reason not to at least try the meds.

  “We need to stop by the pharmacy and get these new prescriptions,” I tell Mom as we drive.

  I hold out the prescription, and she snatches it immediately, probably taking her eyes off the road to read every bit of information she can extract. I’m sure it’s a difficult task—based on what Dad always says about doctors’ handwriting, I’d guess Dr. Bianchi’s scribbling is about as legible to Mom as it would be to me.

  The traffic slows to a stop at an intersection, giving her time to decipher the instructions. She asks, “Why are your meds changing?”

  “Standard procedure after the operation,” I lie.

  “Hmmmmm,” she says as if she’s not sure she believes me.

  “Can we just go to the pharmacy?” I ask impatiently.

  “Of course, Will. It’s right up ahead.”

  • • •