Blind Sight (10 page)

Luke has been peripherally aware, throughout dinner, that his father has been systematically ripping the paper napkin his drink came on into little tiny balls, then aligning these balls into a geometric pattern next to his plate. When Aimee busies herself with a text, Luke points at the paper balls.

“What’s that all about?” Luke asks with a smile.

Mark raises an eyebrow, lines up a paper ball, and shoots it with a flick of his thumb and second finger at Luke’s chest. Mark then picks up his phone and taps out a text. After a moment, Luke’s phone vibrates inside his leather jacket. Luke takes his phone out and reads a text from Mark.

Good grub but wish we home watchng Discov Chnl

Leaving the restaurant, they run the same gamut of photographers, shouting, “Mark!” and “Aimee!” just as before. In the car, Mark tells Aimee that he has an early-morning photo call for a magazine interview. Back at the house, Luke engineers a discreet fade into his bedroom to give Mark and Aimee time for whatever private goodbye ceremony they might need. Before he does, Aimee gives him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Luke does not care for Aimee’s perfume, and this distracts him from enjoying the embrace. Walking down the hallway, Luke hears Mark saying, “I’ll walk you out” to Aimee, and before Luke has finished reading an email from Aurora, he hears his father reentering the house. Luke listens to Mark kicking off his shoes, tossing keys onto the little mosaic tile table in the foyer, and padding down the hallway to his, Luke’s, room.

“Oh man.” Mark flops down on Luke’s bed. “That girl can talk, huh?”

“She’s nice,” says Luke, from his desk chair. “I hope I’m not cramping your, um, style, or anything like that. Seriously.”

“Seriously,” says Mark, “I have no style for you to cramp.” Mark props himself up on his elbows and considers the ceiling. “Not in that way.”

“Here I was hoping you were going to tell me how to score hot chicks,” jokes Luke.

“Well, Aimee is in love with you,” Mark says. “But she’s too young for me and she’s too old for you. I think she might get voted off the island this week.”

“Seriously?” asks Luke. “You’re breaking up with her?”

“Oh sure.” Mark arranges pillows behind his head. “She’s gorgeous and sweet and smells good and all that. But did you know she carries an empty purse around?”

“What?” laughs Luke.

“I’m not joking. When she somersaulted over the table to show you pictures of Misty’s first Christmas, she knocked her purse on the floor. I picked it up and saw it was totally empty inside.”

“Huh,” says Luke.

“Yah. I mean, like totally empty.”

“How’d she get in her car?” asks Luke. “How does she drive?”

“She left her car key on top of her rear tire,” says Mark. “For real. I saw her pull it out. I mean, what the hell? I can see if she didn’t have a purse, but that’s the whole thing. She had a purse. She had a non-functioning purse. The purse was just for show.”

“That’s weird,” Luke agrees. All the women Luke knows require large purses. His Nana, for instance, is able at any moment to produce from her purse a smaller purse for coins, a wallet, a date book, Kleenex, stamps, a pair of reading glasses, peppermints, coupons for the Kroger paper-clipped together, a ziplock bag with aspirin in it, Band-Aids, Vaseline, hand cream, safety pins, pens, pencils, a pencil sharpener, nail clippers, a calculator, a datebook, emery boards, antibacterial soap, and the New Testament. The one thing Luke’s grandmother does not have in her purse is a phone.

“Aimee had a phone,” Luke suggests. “She had her phone with her.”

“She carried that,” says Mark. “In her hand. Not in her purse.”

“Okay,” says Luke. “So you’re voting her off the island because you think she’s empty too? Like the empty purse is a metaphor?”

“Yah, but not for her, for me.” Mark sighs. “Or, I don’t know. How do I put it?”

Luke waits.

“She’s my empty purse,” Mark says. “She’s my accessory. Among other things, it’s not fair to her. She could be someone else’s full purse.”

“I get what you’re trying to say.”

“You get what I’m saying?” Mark asks. “Really?”

“Well,” says Luke, thinking about his own Amy. “I think I’ve had kind of a similar situation going on.”

“Okay, wait.” Mark sits up. “What?”

“Well, it’s funny how both of our sort-of girlfriends have the same name. And you know … being with a girl for the wrong reasons. Well, she was with
me
for the wrong reasons, she was using me, but since I knew that, I mean, that kind of throws my motivations into doubt.”

“Wow,” says Mark. “Okay.”

“I don’t mean that your Aimee is using you.”

“Oh, she is using me. I’m using her worse, though, because she doesn’t know it.”

“You think she’s using you?”

“Everybody uses everybody.”

“Oh,” says Luke, who is losing the neat comparison he was in the process of assembling. He is struck now with the thought that perhaps his father’s situation is not like his at all, and that actually his father is less like a Luke and more like a Chad. Luke needs to move away from this thought, and so he searches, as he does when he is worried, for a philosophical platform to stand on.

“I guess,” Luke says, “everyone has motivations. Every action we take is motivated by some need.”

Mark laughs.

“You’re a really smart kid, you know that? You’re much smarter than I am. You want to play some Scrabble?”

Luke says yes to this. Perhaps it’s being an actor, Luke thinks, as Mark gets up to find the game, that makes his father know when to stop talking about whatever you are talking about and talk about
something else. Mark surprises Luke with a thorough knowledge of the two- and three-letter words necessary for competitive Scrabble. They play a close game, which Mark wins. Luke takes pride in the fact that his father is smart enough to beat him, and he is a little relieved as well. Luke wants proof that Mark is not a Chad. Frequently, the amount of evidence that Luke requires is in inverse proportion to the amount of hope he maintains. Luke does
not
hope that there is a God, therefore he requires substantial evidence that one exists. Luke
does
hope a great deal that his father is not a Chad, and is therefore almost entirely satisfied on this point by the thought that a Chad could never beat him in Scrabble.

K
ati came early to the house today to make sure “everybody has everything they need” for this interview my dad is doing, and to take him to a photo shoot he had to do before the journalist came over. It turned out, though, that Kati was the one who needed things. She needed Mark to shave. She needed the caterer to have provided decaffeinated tea. She needed me to take the blower to the patio furniture again, because they got leafy. I was doing this when she joined me on the patio.

“So you don’t have to talk to the interviewer today,” Kati said, helping me with the cushions. “Or answer any questions. You can just do a walk-through.”

“A walk-through?” I asked.

“You know, just walk through the living room at some point. Wave. Say hello if you feel like it?” Kati smacked pillows.

She was wearing a chain around her neck with a pendant
attached. This pendant fell forward when she leaned over the chaise lounge. I imagined grasping the pendant with my teeth and pulling, causing Kati’s clothes to magically fall off, enabling Kati and myself to immediately have sex.

“So … what would I be walking through the living room
for
?” I asked.

“Well, if you get hungry,” Kati said, eyeing the pillows critically. “And you want something from the kitchen: something to eat, a soda, whatever. Just don’t feel like you have to hide in your bedroom. It’d be nice if you came out and said a quick hello.”

“Okay. Sure. No problem. They know about me, right? The interviewer?”

“Oh yes, of course,” Kati said.

I actually got an email from Pearl informing me that my name is now included in Mark Franco’s website biography. It says, “Mark has a son, Luke, from a previous relationship,” but it doesn’t say Sara’s name.

Kati busied herself with more pillows. I put the table back in its spot.

“It’s an important time for your dad,” Kati said. “You know, for him to be able to really take it to the next level.”

Kati’s got really nice hair: blond on top, but darker brown underneath, a “bob,” I think it’s called. I like how smooth it is. She was wearing a shirt that tied around her neck and came lower down in the back. The small white tag with washing instructions was peeping out of this. Considering the geometry of the blouse, I would say that Kati was definitely not wearing a bra.

I knew Kati wanted something from me, something to do with Mark, and that it was now my job to glean what this was, exactly. I waited for instructions.

“We’ve got to keep building up the heat,” Kati said. “He’s got to really get in the game now.”

I wasn’t sure how providing immaculate patio cushions or faking a sudden need for a soda in order to wave hello to an interviewer
sipping decaffeinated tea would help my dad build up heat or get in the game, but I said, “Okay.” Then I thought that maybe by saying that I should feel free to “walk through” my dad’s interview, Kati was really trying to tell me that everyone would prefer that I didn’t. That maybe it wasn’t very convenient to have a teenage son about when you want everyone to think you are a dark and dangerous guy that all the women desire, like James, the character Mark plays on
The Last
.

I wondered if I should tell Kati about her tag or just casually reach around and tuck it in myself.

“Your dad seems much more relaxed since you’ve been here,” Kati said. “He’s kind of an introverted guy, normally.”

I haven’t noticed that my dad is all that introverted, but I just nodded because Kati seemed to be on the verge of coming to whatever point she needed to make and I didn’t want to interrupt her.

“Anyway,” Kati concluded, “I think, we think, that it’s best to respect your mother’s privacy, and your own, of course, and so it’s understood that you live with your mom for most of the year, and you’re spending the summer with your dad, and that’s it, really, no big deal.”

I hope she didn’t think I would actually tell some person I’ve never met about Anthony Boyle and his sudden reemergence in my life as the transformed Mark Franco and freshly minted dad. Although it’s nice that Kati wants to make sure Mark looks good and not like an absentee father.

“I see what you’re saying,” I told her. “I’ll just do a walk-through, like you said, and let my dad do the talking.”

“Yeah, hey, whatever, just be yourself,” Kati said. “Okay, this looks good. Thanks, Luke.”

I told her “no problem” and then pointed out the tag thing on the back of her shirt.

Later, after Kati and Mark had left for the photo shoot, I ignored a hard-on and went for a run in the canyon, took care of the second hard-on that occurred after my shower, and then enjoyed the instant access to perfectly constructed food in my father’s refrigerator. Just as
I was starting to think about maybe doing a little work on my essay, I heard the sounds of Mark returning: the front door opening, the keys being tossed onto the table, now accompanied by a new female voice. The interviewer, I guessed. After a moment, Mark appeared in the doorway to my room.

“Cool?”

“Cool,” I said. “I’m just looking at these websites on essay-writing advice. I’ll come say hello in a little bit?”

Mark nodded, making one of his upside-down smiles, and left. I turned back to my computer and looked at the list of writing prompts from EssaysThatDon’tSuck.com.

I just spent a few minutes practicing Mark’s upside-down smile. I’ve almost nailed it, I think.

Okay, time to do a little work.

“What fictional character do you most identify with?” This is supposed to be a creative essay–type prompt, I guess.

I like fiction, but what I identify most with is reading biology or philosophy, because that’s what is going on with everyone whether or not they are aware of it. I like poetry if it’s short. I’ve always liked Pearl’s poetry. She is really talented. Sometimes she’ll just scribble something out and hand it to you, without even taking time over the wording. I still have in my wallet this one she wrote for me on the back of a movie ticket stub.

I love that last line: “I think.”

We have fictional characters in my family, sort of. Nana wrote a whole series based on stories her mother told her about growing up
in Littleton, Massachusetts, in the early 1900s. I forgot to tell Mark about those. Maybe I blocked it out.

There are eight books all together, beginning with
Introducing The Mountjoy Girls
(which Nana wrote when she was just seventeen years old) and ending with
The Mountjoy Girls Set Sail
(written just before Sara was born). The Mountjoy Girls are three sisters, surprise, surprise: Sally, Anne, and Eleanor.

Nana got a bit famous from the books. In the attic there are scrapbooks filled with pictures of her in the newspapers and magazines. There’s even one of Sara and my aunts in a magazine called
McCall’s
with a caption underneath that says,
A New Generation of Mountjoy Girls: Sara, Nancy, and Caroline Duren Prescott
. There are tons of letters there from girls who read the books, too.

The
Mountjoy Girls
books went out of print for awhile, but then they got on those Recommended Reading Lists of wholesome books that Christian organizations put out for parents. So the series got reissued a few years ago in a new edition, and Nana is having kind of a comeback. She gets invited to speak at different places. She goes if it’s connected in some way with a Christian organization, because then it is goodly.

My sisters loved
The Mountjoy Girls
. They still do. When Rory and Pearl were home for Christmas last year, they spent a whole week curled up on the couch rereading all of the books. Aurora said that she realized she was old enough now to feel nostalgic about her childhood. Pearl said that Nana’s prose was actually quite good.