In the kitchen she opted for Scotch instead of tea, which suddenly seemed like a very good idea. We sat down at the table. Two policemen, she told me, had been waiting at Windy Hill. They had walked around the barn and the smaller building, looking for signs of entry. Inside the barn, the younger policeman had checked the windows again while she and the older one went round the horses.
Our kitchen overlooks the garden, and we seldom close the curtains. As she described how, outside Mercury’s stall, they had found a man’s glove lying on the floor, I watched the pale gleam of her face reflected in the dark window. “People drop gloves all the time,” I said.
She shook her head. “I fed him just before I locked up. I couldn’t have missed it. Someone broke in and visited his stall.” She set down her glass and reached for my hand. “I need you to promise something. Don’t tell anyone about this. I don’t want Hilary to move him.”
“Maybe she should,” I said. “He requires all this special care, and now some burglar is interested in him.”
“No!”
The single syllable was so piercing that I was again sure something terrible had happened. Had she cut her hand on her glass? Developed appendicitis? But before I could speak, she was pointing to the ceiling. We listened for the children. When no sound came from above, she went on, her voice steely. “There’s no need for her to move Mercury. We’ll make the stables safe. Promise me, Don.”
I promised, and she kissed me, but in bed she turned away.
THE PHRASE “DON’T TELL anyone” nearly always has a silent exception. In this case, I assumed it was Claudia. She and Viv were best friends; she owned the stables. Whether Viv had already decided not to tell her about the break-in, or whether circumstances conspired to make that choice, she herself scarcely knew. The police paid a follow-up visit the next morning and were gone by the time Claudia arrived. They recommended a new alarm, security lights, and grills at the windows, all of which Viv justified by reminding Claudia about the break-in at the farm stand. By the end of the following week the measures were in place. The bill was paid, again I learned only later, with Viv’s credit card—which is to say, by our joint account.
What I knew at the time was that our household was not running smoothly. Viv no longer walked the children to school but left first thing to ride Mercury; most afternoons she stayed late at the stables. At home she spent hours online, looking up things about horses: tack, nutrition, training, competitions. Trina missed a violin lesson, and we had to pay for it. Marcus missed a crucial swimming practice and wouldn’t speak to us for two days. I was irked by these errors, but I held my tongue. In the weeks following my father’s death Viv had carried the household uncomplainingly. My silence was rewarded when one night in early December she arrived home to find Marcus and his friend Luis making tacos.
“How are the horses?” Luis asked. “Marcus said maybe someday you’ll let me ride.” He smiled at her over the cheese grater.
“I didn’t know you liked horses,” said Viv.
“Yes, you did, Mom,” said Marcus. “Luis went to a ranch last summer. His whole family learned to ride.”
That night, when she joined me on the sofa, Viv said what a nice boy Luis was. I said he was, all credit to his mother, who worked two jobs and still helped with homework every night.
“So how can they afford to go to a ranch?” she asked.
In the last few months she had often accused me of not paying attention. Now I refrained from retaliating as I explained that Luis’s uncle managed a ranch in Wyoming. He had hired the mother to cook for his summer guests. I was turning back to my book when Viv spoke again.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, “you’re right about Greenfield. There are all these good things—smaller classes, terrific teachers—but Marcus’s friends are important. We can volunteer at the middle school. Get him extra tutoring.”
“It is what he wants,” I said, trying not to sound too eager. Luis, I thought, with his tacos and his interest in horses, had changed her mind.
10
PAINFULLY, ON PAGE AFTER page, I record my myopia. My wife was choosing a horse over our family, and what was I doing to lure her back? But I had my own distractions, some I was aware of, some not. On the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, Diane came to my office. The vision in her left eye was a little blurred. I checked the prescription and said that the eye had improved in the last couple of months. It sometimes happened when you first started wearing glasses.
“Will it keep improving?” she said.
“Maybe—eyes are unpredictable—but any further changes will probably be very small. You like science, don’t you?”
She nodded. “What’s the problem with Jack’s eyes? He wasn’t always blind, was he?”
“Jack?” I said.
“Mom’s friend, your friend.”
The week before, Jack had remarked that since he started carrying a cane, people often told him their secrets, but he found it hard to reciprocate. “All I can picture,” he said, “is me pouring out my heart, my listener yawning.” At the time I’d assumed he was rehearsing a new section of his book: how people treat the blind differently. Now I understood he’d been telling me that he too had his secrets. I hid my hurt from Diane behind a stuffy speech about patient confidentiality.
“Ask Jack,” I said. “I’m sure he’d be happy to explain his condition.”
“He tried, but it was hard to follow. He can’t draw a diagram.”
Something about her seriousness made me reach for my model eye. “This is the iris,” I said. “And the pupil.” I was pointing out the optic nerve when Merrie knocked at the door: my last appointment of the day was here. I thanked her and finished my explanation. “So we think we see with our eyes,” I said, “but really we see with our brains.”
Fifteen minutes later I emerged from the last appointment to find Merrie sitting on the edge of her desk. “If you want to give a biology lesson,” she said, “use the waiting room, or my office.”
“I didn’t realize Mr. Kearney was waiting.”
“Mr. Kearney’s not the point. You shouldn’t see children alone in your office, with the door closed, beyond the necessary appointment.”
How fast does sight travel? Diane had asked. As fast as Merrie’s meaning reached me. “Did Diane say something?”
“Only that it’s cool that the eye has a lens like her contact lens.”
“But something happened? Come on, Merrie, what are you really saying?”
Still frowning, she said that a teacher at her daughters’ school was in trouble. “Ginny’s taught there for ten years. Now she’s been accused of ‘inappropriate behavior.’ She was helping a girl with extra homework, and the two of them were alone in the classroom. There’s no way she can prove her innocence.”
“It sounds like that famous case in Edinburgh,” I said. “You seem very sure the girl is lying.”
“Lots of famous cases.” The girl had briefly been friends with her oldest daughter. Several times Merrie had caught her in a blatant lie. “She’s a little cat, but she made me realize you do have to be careful. Men are even more vulnerable than women.”
When I moved back to Boston, colleagues had warned me about the dangers of lawsuits. Be careful about apologizing, the head of surgery admonished. But I had not considered other kinds of danger. All day long I saw women alone, with no nurse or assistant. Now I promised to heed Merrie’s advice. We locked up, and I watched her stride away into the darkness. Then I phoned Drew to ask if he could babysit for an extra hour and Jack to ask if he’d like a drink. Both said yes.
The door of Jack’s apartment was ajar, and when I stepped inside, the air had a spicy fragrance. He was at the stove, stirring a saucepan of mulled wine; his building was having a party that evening.
“Diane came to my office,” I said.
He added a pinch of cinnamon to the wine. “She’s a smart cookie. Let’s give this a shot.”
He filled two mugs and led the way to t
he living room. “So what’s up? The air is vibrating. Are you mad that I’m going out with Hilary?”
“She just doesn’t seem your type.”
“The type to have a blind toy boy? Did you notice my new decor?” He waved his arm.
I had grown accustomed to the bare functionality of Jack’s apartment. Now I took in the pictures on the walls, the three new lamps. A wicker basket of papers sat on one table, a large bowl on another. As if following my gaze, he said, “She hasn’t just prettied up the place for my sighted friends. She’s made my life easier.”
“Brilliant.”
“Brilliant,” he mimicked. “What’s the matter, Donald? You’re worried about my morals? You think I don’t deserve Hilary?”
“If anything, she doesn’t deserve you. I just feel stupid that I never thought you might want a girlfriend.”
Jack smiled. “You, and everyone else,” he said. “Lo, the blind are not celibate. It’s nice to break a long dry spell, and nice to be with someone who treats me like a normal person. What do you think of the wine? Hilary says you don’t like her.”
I was startled to learn that they had discussed me, and startled that the feelings I thought so carefully concealed were apparent. I said I hardly knew her. “We didn’t get off on the best foot, but you like her, and so does Viv. Clearly I need to get on a different foot. The wine is good.”
“Maybe a splash more brandy. Why did you get off on the wrong foot?”
No point in saying that Hilary had struck me as shallow and flirtatious. Instead I said she seemed to disapprove of her daughter liking biology.
“Oh, that’s just Hil, wanting Diane to have more friends. And now”—he set down his mug—“you may ask the obvious question.”
“Why is she going out with a blind man?”
He clapped mockingly. “I’ll tell you my guilty secret. She didn’t know I was blind until after we’d slept together.”
“How could that be?” Even as I asked, I guessed the answer: his vivid eyes had misled her.
“When she introduced herself at Viv’s party, I assumed she knew. ‘My blind friend Jack’—isn’t that what everyone calls me? I gave her my card, and she phoned a couple of days later. I invited her over for a drink. With disgraceful speed, one thing led to another. Only afterward, when she asked if I needed help hanging pictures, did it dawn on me that she hadn’t a clue.”
“So what happened when you told her?”
“She said ‘Wow, my first blind guy.’ Then we went through chapter and verse. When did I lose my sight? Can I see anything? Is sex more or less intense? I answered as best I could and said she was welcome to get the hell out. I hadn’t meant to deceive her. She said she didn’t feel deceived, but she was hungry. We went out for Thai food. She told me stories about her job, and growing up in Ontario. I told her about my students and growing up in Gloucester. She walked me home, said she’d be in touch—maybe I could buy some condoms?—and drove away.”
I imagined Hilary’s light voice saying “condoms.”
Gleefully Jack described the pharmacist’s surprise. She too, apparently, had never realized that the blind have sex lives. But then he was home with his little purchases, waiting. After sixty-seven hours Hilary phoned to say she liked him but she didn’t know what she was up for. She hadn’t been with anyone since Diane’s father, and she didn’t want to be a person who wasn’t kind to cripples. He said he liked her too. Whatever happened, he wouldn’t play the cripple card. On that unsteady basis they were stumbling forward.
“Brilliant,” I said again.
“Come on, Donald. At first there was nothing to tell: I saw someone last night, and I may or may not see her again. It’s not as if Hilary is a friend of yours.”
“But”—I studied the wicker basket—“you are.” Three words I would never have said to a sighted person.
Jack seemed to understand what they cost me. “I am,” he said, “and I’m sorry I kept you in the dark. Believe me, I know what that’s like.”
Suddenly my resistance, my anger, whatever it was, disappeared. “Christ,” I said, “I’m being a dickhead.”
“Hurrah, he swore in American.” He clapped his hands again.
As I got ready to leave, I asked whether Viv knew about him and Hilary.
“Wouldn’t she have said something?”
“The way things are nowadays, who knows?”
I saw him register what I was telling him, but for once he did not press me. Instead he told me about Mercury, the Roman god, with his winged hat and winged shoes. Like the Greek god Hermes, he carried messages and guided souls down into the underworld, but he had many other duties.
“He’s a busy fellow,” Jack said. “He’s the god of eloquence, of commerce, and of travel, but he’s also the god of thieves and trickery. People used to paint his image on their doors, thinking that he would protect them from lesser thieves. And he carries a staff, a caduceus, with two serpents that people often confuse with your doctor’s staff.”
“Asclepius’s rod,” I said. “We only have one snake.” The idea of sharing anything with Mercury made me prickle.
I thanked him for the wine and left him to his party. Outside, the first snow of the winter had begun to fall. Tiny crystals glinted in my headlights as I drove home. In the kitchen Drew was teaching Trina, Marcus, and Nabokov to sing “Good King Wenceslas.”
11
THANKSGIVING HAD BEEN HARD, but it was only one day, an American day. Christmas had always been our family’s holiday. Every year had found us together, first in Scotland, then in the States, playing games, eating goose, hoping for peace on earth. Over the years Viv and I have invented our own modest traditions. On Christmas Eve we go to a carol service at Merrie’s church, she and her daughters sing in the choir, and after supper we read an abridged version of A Christmas Carol. On Christmas Day, unless the weather is appalling, we go for a walk before making dinner and playing games. At some point during the holidays we drive into Boston to skate on the Frog Pond, and my mother treats us to tea at a fancy hotel. I assumed we would continue these traditions, sadly marking my father’s absence. But then my sister announced she was staying in Nashville with a new beau. My mother, deep in her own romantic entanglements, was going to Philadelphia to meet Larry’s children. As we bent over Marcus and Trina’s advent calendars, exclaiming at each new picture, I could feel what Viv called my astronaut’s suit growing thicker by the day. She had first used the phrase in August, the evening we got back from the Cape. When I asked what she meant, she said, “You’re like a man in a space suit. Everything has to make its way through layers and layers to reach you.” I had nodded, startled that she understood me so well. But later, as I put the groceries away, it occurred to me that her image was only half right: my astronaut’s suit kept me aloof but it did not keep me safe: no oxygen, no water, no warmth.
On the solstice Steve thrashed me at tennis, and when I got home, Viv asked if we could invite Hilary and Diane for supper on Christmas Eve.
“We scarcely know them,” I said.
“You scarcely know them. Hilary’s become a good friend. It’s not like we exchange presents or anything.” She was, I recall, cleaning her riding boots.
“What about A Christmas Carol? The kids always complain, but they’d miss it.”
“She thought it sounded fun. And I’m sure Jack will enjoy it.”
She had, I realized, already issued the invitation. “When did she tell you about Jack?” I said.
“I don’t think there’s much to tell.” She rubbed a muddy heel. “She likes him, but she’s wary.” She dabbed some polish. “Who can blame her?”
She did not seem surprised that I knew about their relationship and had said nothing, so why should I be that she had done the same?
ON CHRISTMAS EVE I woke to the silvery light of new snow, Viv’s side of the bed empty as usual. In a few months I would be forty, and this was the first Christmas, save for one as a student in Edinburgh, when I had not
been in my parents’ company. Dear Robert, I thought, do you remember the year we had lots of snow at Christmas, and went sledging in the local park? Happily Marcus and Trina burst into the room, rescuing me. We spent the day in seasonal activities: baking Christmas cookies, making a snowman and a snow-woman, decorating the house. Viv, when she came home, was in a wonderful mood, teasing the children and taking even their most fanciful suggestions for decorating the tree seriously. Marcus made a boy diver for the top, and Trina made an elephant family, a baby, mother, and three aunts linked trunk to tail, which we hung in the lower branches. At the carol service I could hear our voices, separate and distinct, blending with the others.
Back at the house we had a fire going and dinner ready by the time Hilary, Diane, and Jack arrived. Hilary and Viv embraced warmly, and I did my best to follow suit. When everyone was seated at the table and the lasagna had been served and praised, Hilary said she’d met a woman who trained miniature horses to guide the blind.
“Wouldn’t that be cute, Jack?” she said. “You could go everywhere with a little horse.”
“How little?” said Trina. “Could it sit at the table?”
“I bet they make great guides,” said Viv. “They live a long time.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jack. “My housekeeping skills are already challenged. What if I had a horse to clean up after too? You know who I think would make a good guide? Nabokov. He could say things like, ‘Boring colleague to the left.’ His feathers are sticking up in a weird way.”
Trina said that he’d been pulling them out. I repeated my molting theory.
“But birds don’t molt in winter,” said Diane. “That’s when they need their feathers.”
“Maybe it’s a cry for help,” said Jack. “He must be lonely without Edward.”
Suddenly everyone at the table was looking at me reproachfully. I promised to take Nabokov to the vet as soon as possible, and offered seconds.
In the living room we settled ourselves around the fire with A Christmas Carol. I read, as my father had always done, Dickens’s epigraph—“I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book to raise the Ghost of an idea”—and we were off. Jack, with his braille version, was Scrooge, Diane and Trina enjoyed being pathetic orphans, I was the narrator, and Marcus and Viv shared the other parts. Hilary had volunteered to be the audience, and when we reached the last lines, she jumped to her feet, clapping and shouting, “Bravo. Encore.”
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