Blind Sight

by Meg Howrey

  Well, those aren’t the only options.

  TONY

  No. I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m a little nervous.

  KARA

  (kindly)

  It’s okay, Tony.

  TONY

  Let me start over.

  (He smiles)

  Congratulations!

  KARA

  (smiling too)

  Holy shit!

  They laugh, the tension broken a little bit.

  KARA

  Oh, Tony. I remember now. It was when you said …

  TONY

  Yeah. It was when I told you I was gay. I said, I’m gay, and you said, Oy vey.

  KARA

  I’m sorry about that. That was really insensitive of me.

  TONY

  Well, my timing was off.

  KARA

  I was just a little surprised.

  TONY

  Yeah, of course.

  KARA

  Because you know, you didn’t seem to have any trouble …

  TONY

  I’m twenty.

  KARA

  Even so.

  TONY

  And I was drunk.

  KARA

  Off two glasses of wine?

  TONY

  I hadn’t eaten much that day.

  KARA

  You don’t have to apologize.

  TONY

  I knew any straight guy would jump at the chance to have sex with you. It was like a fantasy that straight guys talk about. Guy goes over to fix a lady’s VCR … you know, it was sort of exciting.

  KARA

  I can see that.

  TONY

  It was a classic situation. I had tools in my hand.

  KARA

  You did?

  TONY

  Well, a pocket wrench.

  KARA

  Well, no wonder I thought you were straight.

  TONY

  I’ve done it with girls before.

  KARA

  I could tell.

  TONY

  You could?

  KARA

  Tony, I’m really just incredibly grateful to you. It’s important to me that you know that.

  TONY

  I didn’t want to be gay. I still don’t. I don’t want to be gay.

  KARA

  Tony, there is nothing wrong with being gay.

  TONY

  (sighing)

  Oy vey.

  Tony moves over to the cradle and looks down into it. It’s clear from his body language that he is conflicted—that he would like to pick up the baby in the cradle, and also that he is not sure he has the right to. Instead, he fingers the yellow cutouts of the mobile.

  TONY

  This is cute.

  KARA

  My daughter Aurora made it. She’s very intuitive. She could see the baby’s aura in the womb and she made those little drawings for me.

  Tony has no idea what Kara is talking about because he’s never really heard the word “aura” before and the only Aura he knows about is a bar on Avenue A that has hookah pipes in it and is a place people go to if they want to score some coke.

  TONY

  (poking a yellow cutout)

  Little peanuts.

  KARA

  (laughing)

  They aren’t little peanuts. It’s the shape of the fetus at seven months.

  TONY

  Oh.

  Pause.

  TONY (CONT’D)

  What’s his name?

  KARA

  Sky.

  TONY

  No, really.

  KARA

  Sky. That’s what I’m going to call him.

  TONY

  Really?

  KARA

  I thought it went with the names of my other two children. Aurora, Pearl, and Sky.

  TONY

  Wait a second.

  KARA

  What?

  TONY

  Is it Sky as in Skywalker?

  KARA blushes.

  TONY

  When I was here I put in a tape to test your VCR. Star Wars. And you said you hadn’t seen it, and I said you really should. And I accidentally left it here. You watched it, didn’t you? You’re naming him Sky after Luke Skywalker.

  KARA

  You were right. It’s a very good movie. I’m sorry I didn’t return it.

  TONY

  I guess that makes me Darth Vader.

  KARA

  Oh, no. Anyway I haven’t totally decided about Sky. It’s just an idea.

  Tony knows there is not much he can do for this baby, his son. He cannot even really take in the fact that this son is his. He has already thrown up three times this day. He feels sick and confused and he wants to do something, but he doesn’t know what. He feels that Kara is a good person, a caring person, and that she will love this baby. He also feels that she has hung yellow fetuses over his son’s head and what, really, is there to stop her from naming his son Han Solo? Or Yoda. Tony tries to think of something he can do. He wants desperately to do something.

  TONY

  What about Luke?

  KARA

  Luke?

  TONY

  It’s a nice name.

  KARA

  Yes. It is. I like that name.

  TONY

  If you give him a name like Sky, then he’s going to have to become the kind of person who would have a name like Sky.

  KARA

  Well, that wouldn’t be so bad. The sky is beautiful and open and free.

  TONY

  Not if you’re falling through it without a parachute.

  Pause.

  TONY (CONT’D)

  It’s just a thought. I know I don’t have a right to … you know, interfere or anything.

  KARA

  I can call him Luke. I can do that.

  Tony reaches down into the cradle and picks up LUKE. He holds him. Luke opens his eyes and looks at Tony. Tony holds his son and hopes with everything he has that he will meet this boy, his boy, again when his life isn’t so fucked up and weird and he isn’t living on baked beans. When he is something his son could look up to.

  FADE OUT.

  Luke sets the pages down in his desk. He picks them up, sets them down again. He picks them up, starts to reread them, sets them down. He stands up. Sits down. He accidentally knocks the pages to the floor. Luke’s physical actions mirror the activity of his neurons, which are spraying electrical charges like crazy, in all directions. Luke, mentally and physically rickety, looks for solid ground. He picks up the papers, makes a neat pile of them on his desk. Mark, he thinks, will want them back.

  Luke moves into the living room. He can see through the French doors that his father is sitting on the patio. Luke looks at the back of his father’s head.

  Luke opens up the French doors and steps outside. Mark, who is drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette, stands up hastily and faces Luke. Mark takes a swig of beer and nervously flicks his cigarette toward an ashtray on the table. Luke can see that there is already one stubbed-out cigarette in the ashtray.

  “Hey,” says Luke.

  “Hey,” says Mark.

  Luke thinks of speeds: 25 percent, 50 percent, 75 percent. Luke begins slowly. He does not want to hurt his father. He does not want to lose his father, the half of himself, the identically longer second toe, the possible WINNING slot at the bottom of a Plinko board.

  “When I told you that thing,” Luke says, “about what happened to me when I was reading the Bible? About how I realized that I think I’m basically physically unable to believe in God?”

  Mark nods.

  “Well, when I told you that,” Luke continues, “I wasn’t telling you because I feel like … like I want to start telling everyone that. I don’t tell people that. I’m not ashamed; it’s just that it will make things complicated for me at home. So, it was … something between you and me, I guess.”

  “I won’t tell a
nyone,” Mark says. “I won’t tell anyone what you told me.”

  “Is that …?” Luke asks, tentatively.

  “I understand exactly what you mean,” Mark says. “I feel the same way. I feel exactly the same way. I wish … I wish I could tell you how … it’s just that … how do I say this?”

  Luke waits.

  “Everyone is the person that I haven’t told, Luke,” Mark says. “Everyone. And I didn’t want you to be everyone, too.”

  Luke thinks that he would like to hug his father. Before he can finish the thought, Luke is hugging his father.

  They are slightly different in height. Luke steps forward on his toes an inch in order for his chin to make it past Mark’s shoulder. This throws Luke’s balance off a little and he leans into Mark, who, after a moment, hugs Luke very hard, almost lifting him off his feet. Releasing each other, they stagger a little, and then stand there nodding, as if they approve of their clumsiness.

  “Would you like a beer?” Mark asks.

  “Um … maybe?”

  “It seems like the occasion calls for something a little stronger than water,” Mark says. “I’ll get you a beer.”

  Mark goes inside the house and Luke sits down on the bamboo armchair next to Mark’s. No matter how hot it gets during the day, it still gets quite cool at night in Los Angeles. Mark has turned the heat lamp on. Somewhere, a fire truck is sounding its alarm. Somewhere in Los Angeles, Luke has noticed, a fire truck is always sounding its alarm.

  Mark comes through the French doors carrying two beers, hands one to Luke. Mark sits down. Mark and Luke look at the empty backyard for a moment. Mark holds out his bottle toward Luke without looking at Luke, and Luke holds out his bottle toward Mark without looking at Mark. They clink bottles.

  “So,” Luke says. “It turns out you’re a smoker.”

  Mark gives a short laugh, almost a bark.

  “Good one.”

  They sip their beers.

  “So,” Luke says. “I’m thinking you … spiced up the dialogue a little bit from the original version?”

  “I was hoping for a sitcom effect. Rather than some sort of Tennessee Williams drama.”

  “There’s some pretty funny lines in there.”

  “Well, we’re known for our sense of humor,” Mark says, lighting another cigarette.

  Luke takes a sip of his beer. He’s only ever had a few sips of beer before, and hasn’t cared for the taste, although this one tastes pretty good.

  “Sara didn’t tell me,” Luke says, just now realizing this.

  “When I talked to her, you know, when we got back in touch, we didn’t really talk about it. I sort of … anyway, it’s not … I don’t know.

  “On a level of one to ten,” Mark asks, after a moment. “How uncomfortable are you right now?”

  Luke looks at Mark.

  “I’m not uncomfortable at all,” Luke says, who is mostly not. Luke has participated in social and political discussions regarding homosexuality, but has not fully conceptualized the sexual mechanics of it. Luke cannot connect Mark to the one or two vaguely repellant images he does have. He knows that some men are gay and do gay things and Luke now knows that Mark is gay but Mark is definitely not “some men” therefore Mark does not do anything Luke would find repellant.

  “I’m something,” Luke says, who has gotten a little lost in the circuitous loops of his own logic. “But not uncomfortable. What number are you?”

  Mark takes a long drag off his cigarette.

  “I’m about a seven, I guess,” Mark says. “There is also … I’m registering high on the fear factor. ’Cause … well … I don’t know what happens next. And … you know … did I just ruin something?”

  “No way,” Luke says. “Not a chance.”

  “No?”

  “No way.”

  “Does it change things between us?” Mark asks.

  Luke thinks.

  “Yes,” Luke says.

  I know him now, Luke thinks. Now, I know him. He wants me to know him and I do. He wants me to be the one person who knows him.

  Mark laughs, a genuine laugh this time.

  “Yeah,” Mark says. “Yeah, I guess it does.”

  Luke and Mark clink beers again.

  “So you can ask questions and stuff,” Mark says. “Whatever you want.”

  Luke and Mark sip beer. Luke listens to the cicadas sing in the yard.

  “Oh, Dad?” Luke asks, abandoning, forever, the italics.

  “Yes?”

  “I forgot to ask you,” Luke says. “Is ‘yclept’ really a word?”

  There is a long pause. Luke decides that he will not drink any more beer. Cicadas sing.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Mark says, at last. “That was a really genius move on my part. I’m glad you remembered.”

  “So, it’s a real word?” Luke asks.

  “It’s a real word,” Mark says.

  “What’s it mean?” Luke is almost sleepy now. It has been a long day.

  “Named,” Mark says. “It means named.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Names can be very deceptive, for they divert our thoughts from what is accurate, to what is inaccurate. Thus one who hears the word ‘God’ does not perceive what is accurate, but perceives what is inaccurate. So also with The Father, and The Son, and The Holy Spirit, and Life, and Light, and Resurrection, and The Church, and all the Rest. People do not perceive what is accurate, but they perceive what is inaccurate.”

  That’s from the Gnostic Gospel of Philip. Sara was big into the Gnostics at one point, and this was a favorite of hers.

  The subject of names has come up in my family over the years. As in, “Why did you name me what you did?” This is inevitable in a family of the twentieth, and then twenty-first, century where one of the family members is named Pearl.

  Pearl used to complain about her name, but I guess she got used to it, or grew into it, or something. Now she wears her name with a certain defiant majesty, like the way another person might wear a giant afro. Pearl doesn’t have a nickname, although sometimes Sara calls her “Kali.” Kali is a Hindu goddess, the one who went into a killing frenzy against a field of demons. Kali is usually depicted standing on top of her husband, Shiva, with a bunch of weapons in her hand and her tongue hanging out.

  Aurora we often call Rory.

  I don’t have an official nickname but sometimes my sisters call me Ribs because I am skinny. I have my collection of running aliases but I don’t tell people about those.

  All I ever heard about my name was that I was going to be called Leila, because Leila is the feminine form of the Semitic word for night and Sara thought it would be appropriate to go from Aurora (dawn) to Leila (night). Sara did say that “Luke” just seemed to fit me. Personally, I like that it is monosyllabic.

  The possibility of being yclept Sky was never mentioned. I’m really glad my name isn’t Sky.

  I guess I should go and look at that Moment Before picture again, in the light of this new information. Names aren’t the only things that are deceptive. Sometimes images are too. You can see the mobile above my crib in the photo, but I thought the little yellow things were snails. Or bananas. I didn’t know they were renderings of me and my aura.

  A word here about Aurora and auras: yes, she does see colors around things, not around everything, but a lot of things. There is a closet in our house that we call “The Blue Closet” not because it’s painted blue, but because Aurora says that it has a blue aura. Interestingly, I was no longer yellow once I was born. I was green, and at a certain point I became orange. Aurora also has a very particular sense of smell. I think these two things might be linked, and that Aurora might have a form of synesthesia, which is where two sensory modalities in your brain involuntarily cross each other. I was reading about this the other day. The most common form of synesthesia is to experience numbers as colors, but there are lots of different manifestations. In fact, synesthetes can go their whole lives undiagnosed, and never fully c
onsciously register the correlations they are making. Maybe Aurora sees the Blue Closet as Blue because it has cedar chips in it, and whenever she smells cedar wood, her brain says: blue. Maybe my colors have changed because my changing hormones have changed the way I smell. Synesthesia is consistent, which is how they know it’s not just people being artistic, so it would be simple to test Rory and see if she has it. I’m not going to suggest this to her, though. I think she would prefer to be someone who sees auras, and not have to go back and review her whole life and change all the times she saw an aura into a time she was having a multimodal sensory experience.

  I think certain things make more sense now that I know what I know. For instance, Aimee makes more sense now. (Although the thing with her purse is still a mystery.) Why it took my dad seventeen years to get in touch with me makes more sense. You can see how things were complicated for him.

  I wasn’t sure what the rules were, on us talking about his script, but throughout the past two days my dad and I have kept up a running conversation about things between conversations about other unrelated things in a kind of extended parenthetical statement.

  Like, yesterday we spent the day going into all these cool stores in an area here called Silver Lake. There were other people around, sometimes, so we didn’t go into details, or say anything if we were in earshot of other people, but we did talk. Mark has a way of creating a kind of bubble of privacy around us when we are in public.

  When we were looking at these funny kitchen gadgets in a store called “Eat Me,” I said, “Check out these salt and pepper shakers,” and he said, “Oh, those are cool,” and I asked, (Does Kati know?) and he said, (Nobody knows. Whether or not they suspect is another story.) Later on, at an antique place called “Den of Antiquity,” after I explained synesthesia to my dad he said, (Well, I haven’t been a monk my whole life, so there are people who know.) And then when we stopped for tea at Casbah Cafe we talked about different foods we don’t like and he threw in, (I’ve been careful. The people that know have just as much reason as I do for no one to know), and I said, (Oh because they are famous too?) and he said, (That, or married.) On a side note: both my dad and I have an aversion to cottage cheese.

  The other question I asked him was, (Do you still feel the same way? That it’s something you don’t want to be?) But for that he had only one answer: (It is what it is), he said.