Second Sight

by George D. Shuman

  He nodded and rolled his eyes. “Sorry, I just couldn’t let you get by”—he pointed toward the sidewalk—“the city is so big it keeps reminding me I’m so small. I’m quite new to Philadelphia.” He waved a hand and shook his head. “It just struck me that I actually recognized one face in all of the masses.” He put out a hand, palm facing Sherry. “I’m sorry; you must think I’m very silly.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Sherry said, sizing him up. “Odd place to meet someone who doesn’t know the city well. The neurology department of a city hospital.”

  “Yeah, well, then there’s that,” he said, scratching an ear with the cuff of his sleeve. “Can’t go anywhere without checking in with those buggers.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Fibromyalgia. I need therapy for pain. It messes with my sleep big-time. Bad genes, I guess, what can I say.”

  “Old head injury.” Sherry touched her scalp to explain her own visit to the unit. “They like to get their money’s worth out of you.”

  He laughed. “I’m Troy—” He tried to shift the books to his left hand to shake her hand, but he lost his grip and they fell clattering to the concrete. They stooped together to retrieve them and Sherry saw the open covers. One appeared to be a history book. There were men in powdered wigs in front of a flag-draped cannon. The other had only a black-and-white photograph of an old dilapidated building.

  “Sherry,” she said, taking his hand, but her mind was fully on the building. Sherry had never seen it before, but she was certain she knew what it was.

  “That book?” she said, pointing.

  “Halley House Orphanage.” He shrugged, tucking the books back under his arm. “I’m not really into ghost stories, but I was picking up stuff on Philadelphia’s history and there it was.”

  “I didn’t know there was a book,” Sherry said softly, trying to keep her composure.

  “You know the place, then. Yeah, they closed it in 1994. Supposed to be one of the oldest surviving orphanages from the 1800s.”

  “They started sending the residents to foster homes in the 1980s,” Sherry said absently. “Subsidized apartments. The projects,” she added more distastefully.

  “So you’re a historian?” The young man smiled.

  “No, I knew someone who grew up in there.” She had to force her eyes away from the picture. “And now they say it’s haunted.” She laughed nervously, wondering if she looked as stunned as she felt.

  “Everything’s haunted these days,” he said. “Helps the economy, I guess. More bad TV and ghost tours.”

  “Where do you live?” they both asked at the same time, and laughed.

  “South, near the river,” she said ambiguously.

  “Price Towers,” he said. “One bedroom takes three weeks’ salary every month. Could I buy you a coffee or a beer or something?”

  Sherry laughed again. “I like beer,” she said, thinking it so strange that he was carrying a book about her childhood.

  He looked around and shrugged. “Where’s a good place around here?” He looked lost.

  “Come on,” she said. “Follow me, and don’t drop your books.”

  Jamborees was getting the first few arrivals for happy hour. They took one of the high-back wooden booths opposite a brass and marble bar, ordered Guinness, and cracked open peanuts from galvanized buckets that advertised Corona.

  “You’re studying?” He looked at the books she had laid on her seat.

  “A secret,” she said mysteriously, pushing the cloth bag with Visual Dictionary and Phonemics Awareness behind her back.

  “Really?” He pretended to look concerned.

  “Really,” she said. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. What about you?”

  “History,” he said, “but only for my fun reading, and Philadelphia history in particular because I’ve recently taken up residence here. Never hurts to know something about where you live. I like history. It’s so much better when I already know the outcome of a story.”

  “I’d be better off that way with relationships too,” she joked, and could not afterward fathom why.

  He nodded. “I sense we have some common ground there.” He was pretending to be gravely serious, except that nothing was serious about him. He was fun. He was just fun, she thought. And if he got up this moment and walked away it wouldn’t matter in the least to her, except that she could say she had had a good time.

  “You’re an academic?”

  “God no.” She laughed. Then she thought about the books by her side and really started to laugh, having to cover her face with a napkin.

  “Me neither.” He smiled, getting caught up in her mirth. “I am the last person you might find in a classroom.”

  “But you like history.”

  “I like sticking my feet in the mud too. Frankly, I’m terrified of classrooms. I can’t deal with the sight of a lectern or podium.”

  “So what do you do?”

  “I’m a biologist. Molecular.”

  “Get out.”

  “No, seriously. Trait genetics is my specialty. Do you want to know where that nose of yours came from?”

  “Actually I would, but another time.” Sherry studied his face for a clue that he was joking. There was none.

  “And you?”

  “I do private readings.”

  “Stop it,” he said, mocking, raising his beer and leaving his lip covered in foam.

  A waiter came by offering menus. They ordered appetizers and another round of beer.

  “It’s complicated,” she said. “But let’s leave that for another time, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll just keep it light, then.”

  He stuck out his hand and she took it and shook. They had made a pact and she thought that his hand felt good. A good, strong hand.

  “May I look through your book, the orphanage book?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he said, pushing it toward her.

  “You said you’re from a small town. Where?” she asked, opening the cover.

  “Tall Timbers, Maryland.”

  She shook her head. “Never heard of it,” she said, flipping through the pages and looking for pictures.

  “Tip of southern Maryland in the Chesapeake Bay.”

  “You grew up on the water.” She turned a page and the black-and-white photo showed a ward of white metal beds pushed up, one against another. There were shoes at the ends and white night dresses folded and stacked on the pillows. Two ancient crones in black aprons and wearing black pinafores and tented hats stood rigidly in the background. Sherry knew the room, though she’d never seen it with her own two eyes, the arched ceiling with small dirty panes of barred glass, the cracked columns down the center. Her childhood flooded back to her, drowning her in waves of profound melancholy.

  “I grew up in a dump, but with plenty of water around it,” Troy said. “And lots of little critters swimming around in it.”

  “Hence your major,” Sherry managed to say. She closed the book and pushed it back across the table. This wasn’t the time to relive Halley House. This wasn’t the place.

  “Hence my major,” he repeated, raising his mug to toast, and they touched glass as new beers arrived.

  “Are you divorced or is that too personal?” Troy asked.

  “Never married,” Sherry said, wondering what she would make of this conversation, this man, if she didn’t have eyes to see with. Did the eyes take the edge off other senses? Well, of course, she knew that to be true in a dozen different ways, but the question was more about making judgments. Did the eyes favor beauty over insight? Did they automatically adjust or compensate for traits you could not see?

  He was interesting, to say the least. How many people did you bump into in the middle of a city carrying a book about your childhood origin?

  “I can’t even respond to that,” he said. His face registered surprise.

  “That I wasn’t married?”

  He nodded. “You’re no
t…?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t think I’m whatever it is you’re asking. If that’s what you’re asking.”

  He leaned forward with a most serious look on his face. “You realize you’re gorgeous, right? I mean, not pretty, but downright gorgeous.”

  Sherry looked down at the table.

  “No, you must know that.” He looked around the room. “Every guy in this place envies me. Every guy that passed us on the street envies me.”

  “That’s a little dramatic, wouldn’t you say?” Sherry put her mug to her lips, thankful that the booths were high-backed and very few people could get a look at her. She wasn’t recognized often out in public, but then she hadn’t spent a lot of time in public. When she did, she did her best to downplay her distinctive hair and the fact that she was blind. But who knew how many people had pointed at her over the years and hadn’t had the nerve to approach?

  Troy shook his head in wonder. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “Where do you study genetic traits?” she asked, changing the subject.

  Troy laughed. “I’m sorry, really I am. Um, have you heard of the Case-Kimble Foundation, Fairmount Park, near Roxborough Hospital?”

  “The pharmaceutical labs,” Sherry said. “I’ve never seen the buildings, but I know the park.”

  He nodded. “I have an office there. A lab.”

  “Nice place to work?” she asked, impressed.

  “It’s amazing,” he said. “They really treat us well. It’s like a city inside a city. Barber shop, spa, convenience store, there’s even a museum. Company history, of course. Stuffy things.”

  “And a four-story black marble mortar and pestle surrounded by fountains. The artist was Janssen from Estonia.”

  “They can afford to be extravagant.”

  “I’m sure they can,” Sherry said.

  “So you know Fairmount Park.”

  “The stables. I’ve been out to ride once or twice.”

  “Horses. That fits you,” he said. “One day you will have to see the foundation with me. I’ll give you the insider’s tour. If you wish, of course.”

  Sherry turned the glass in her fingers. “Sure,” she said. “Someday.”

  Two beers turned into three and then four, and at seven thirty they’d run out of things to say, but by then they’d begun to brush against each other’s shoes and fingers across the table. Now there was an unspoken bond and it was at times awkward and at others tantalizing. The night would end with a comma, not a period, she thought.

  She knew it was wrong. That she was disrespecting Brian Metcalf. But, unlike Brian, this man held no power over her. He was handsome and charming and, above all, disposable. If she went blind and never saw him again it would hurt neither one of them. If she died of cancer in five years, he wouldn’t even know it. He was safe. And she knew she would give him her phone number.

  18

  It was odd, Sherry thought, how the same drive to some distant place never seemed as long the second time around. They reached Stockton in less than four hours, which included a three-mile stretch of construction on I-87 with hundreds of orange cones and not a single highway worker.

  Once they left the interstate she saw tulips beginning to bloom. They had long been out of Philadelphia and Sherry was surprised once more at the cool temperature and the number of chimney fires and the smell of burnt wood in the air.

  “Betsy working today?”

  Brigham shook his head.

  “Well, are you ever going to tell me what she is doing?”

  “She said she’d meet us at the tavern at two.”

  “You know, I’m so glad I have eyes to witness this one remarkable event in my life.”

  “Oh, stop being so dramatic.”

  “We’ll make it there by then?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  Sherry reached to touch her Braille watch and smiled inwardly at the gaffe—for what, the thousandth time, was it? She glanced down and judged they were less than twenty minutes away. She pulled the visor down and checked herself in the mirror. She couldn’t say if it was because she cared what she saw or if she was only making up for all the times she hadn’t been able to do it before.

  “Did you date a lot before you met your wife, Mr. Brigham?” Sherry asked.

  “I dated a few women,” he said, not committing to a number.

  “How did you know Lynn was the one?”

  Brigham looked at her, then back at the road.

  “You just know,” he said. “It isn’t about any one thing.”

  “Did you ever have regrets?”

  “None that mattered,” he said.

  “Did you ever wonder if she had regrets?”

  Brigham was silent for a while, but Sherry sensed he was mulling it over.

  “I think I could have spent more time with her,” he said at last.

  “Because you were in the navy?”

  “Because of that, because of the committees I was on, because I thought I was indispensable to the government.”

  “She was happy, though. You two were happy?”

  “She never said different.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to put it that—”

  “There were never any bad anythings,” Brigham said grouchily. “We were apart a lot, is all. I don’t think either of us would have chosen differently if we had a second time around.”

  Stockton was all but deserted on a Wednesday afternoon. A wind was coming out of the north and whipping new buds on the trees. A stop sign wobbled on its post and the single flashing traffic signal in town was swinging on its cable.

  “Looks like an X-Files episode,” Sherry said. “Where is everybody?”

  Brigham turned to look at her. “Is that what you do all night long? Watch TV?”

  “Just rounding myself out,” she said defensively.

  The parking lot of Grant’s was empty but for a red Saab; likewise the small public parking lot across the street, where someone had chained an old bicycle.

  Brigham held Sherry’s arm as they pushed through the gusting wind to the door.

  The lobby smelled like old leather and sawdust; the hallway to the dining room hinted of delicious smoked food from the grill.

  “Now I’m hungry,” she said. “For red meat.”

  “We can do that.” Brigham removed his sports jacket and pulled Sherry’s sweater from her shoulders.

  Betsy was in a corner of the dining room, next to a woman with completely white hair. There was an old album on the table between coffee cups and empty soup bowls. Betsy stood and offered them hugs rather than handshakes, a gesture that might only reflect small-town friendliness or perhaps was calculated to beguile Mr. Brigham.

  Betsy introduced them. “Carla McCullough Corcoran, Sherry Moore”—they shook hands—“and Mr. Garland Brigham.”

  “Pleased, Mrs. Corcoran,” he said.

  Brigham and Sherry took seats opposite the women.

  “I can’t believe that someone has mentioned my Jack’s name after all these years.” Mrs. Corcoran reached out and cupped both of her hands over Sherry’s and then Brigham’s.

  Carla had a soft face and beautiful blue eyes. Sherry noticed that her nails were filed and polished, her hair was smart and short, and she wore a lamb’s wool sweater with a pair of designer stonewashed jeans.

  “We can’t thank you enough for seeing us, Mrs. Corcoran.”

  “Oh, pooh.” She took her hands away and waved them over the table. “But it’s not exactly Jack you’re interested in?” Carla had a knack for using her eyes, centering on you, making you feel as if you were the object of her attention, and the only object. Betsy had mentioned that Carla was a retired schoolteacher, and Sherry was sure she had used the technique to effect in many a classroom over the years.

  “I met a man in Philadelphia,” Sherry started to say. “Not really met, but he was…”

  “I know who you are, Miss Moore,” Carla said ki
ndly. “I think you mean to say you met a dead man.”

  Sherry laughed with embarrassment, determined not to underestimate this woman.

  “He was from the hospital here, Betsy told me.”

  “Yes, yes,” the old woman said.

  “Betsy said you knew about him too?”

  “Of course I did.” She laughed. “Everyone in town knew about him. The staff always joked how at least that poor boy was getting his money’s worth out of Uncle Sam. After a while the townspeople began to ask about how he was doing every year, glad to hear he lived another one on the government’s dime.”

  “The town doesn’t much hold the government in esteem.” Brigham didn’t quite phrase it as a question.

  “Oh, we’ve got nothing against the government….” Carla shook her head slowly, eyes alive with light. Happy eyes, Brigham thought. “No different than any other town around the country. But there was a time here we were all part of something bigger. Back then a lot of strangers came through town, quiet people, maybe even scared people, we thought. They were from the military, of course.”

  Carla picked up a pack of soup crackers and worked at tearing them open. “You ever see anybody that looked like they were crumbling under the weight of their own knowledge?” The old woman turned her eyes on Sherry. “You ever felt like that yourself? Like you heard something that changed your life and you couldn’t unhear it again?”

  Sherry thought of New Mexico and nodded. “Yes. I think I know what you mean.”

  Sherry found that she very much liked the manner of Carla McCullough Corcoran.

  “That’s what they reminded me of. Some of them came to the hospital after my husband brought the boy there. There were a couple of high-ranking officers, he said, from that army base of theirs, and the asylum administrators let the army do pretty much as they pleased back then. When the staff began to ask about the boy’s relatives, they sealed off the room and had their own doctors brought in. I heard all this much later, of course. After Jack was gone.”

  Betsy nodded, as if remembering the times she had heard the same story, over and over.