Crashing Through (21 page)

The men found prime seating on a curb as the parade began to roll. A giant and skinny creature or machine or robot wobbled down the road, its top disappearing and reappearing from the trees.

“Wow! What’s that?” May asked his boys.

“That’s a stilt walker!” Carson replied.

May began to ask for more details when a flailing shape streaked by atop a circle, stopped, then went backward on the same circle, parts thrusting to all sides.

“What’s that?”

“That’s the unicycle guy!” the boys shouted.

“Is he waving at us?”

“No!” The boys laughed. “He’s balancing!”

For the next hour, an assembly line of mysterious creatures passed May’s eye: hula hoopers, tall clowns wearing umbrella hats, short kids holding big balloons, men wearing animal costumes, animals wearing sunglasses, Native Americans in traditional clothing, posters written in tall Chinese characters, horses with writing on their bodies. And floats. Lots of floats.

May yearned to understand these magnificent color-shapes, but where was he to begin? This was not a hotel room, where he could deduce that the dark round shape near the sink was a coffeemaker. This was not his living room, where he could reason that the rectangular shape on the table was the TV remote. He stared at each passing curiosity. Which part should he look at first? Which parts were important and which could be ignored? Which parts would give him a clue? By the time he attempted to answer these questions, a new object had paraded itself before him.

Near the end, the Cal Aggie Marching Band swung into action. As the players passed in front of May and his boys, they stopped marching and held their positions. Some members were just three feet away. May inhaled their bright uniforms and studied their brass instruments, some of which looked bigger than the person who carried it. Someone yelled a command and the band broke into another song, their knees rising and falling, drummers lifting and pounding, trombones herking and jerking, kids whirling, every uniform matching, and May marveled at it all, and when he looked down he could see his children moving too, pointing at things for him to see, telling him what was before them, and May could feel tears running down his face, and it seemed strange to him to be crying in front of the Cal Aggie Marching Band when he hadn’t cried the day his bandages came off, and it seemed right to him to be crying because when he looked down again his sons seemed to be looking at him.

One night shortly after the parade, May and Jennifer lay awake in bed. She asked how he felt about his new vision. He told her that he loved it, that he was relishing every crack in the sidewalk, every differently colored doorway.

“I pinch myself every day,” he said. “Vision is a bigger deal than I thought it would be. It’s just incredibly interesting.”

“It looks like really hard work, too,” Jennifer said. “Sometimes you look exhausted. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“It is really hard work,” May agreed. “It seems like I have to process every little thing consciously to understand what I’m seeing. Everything is interesting to me, but sometimes it feels like I can’t do anything in peace. And yet I don’t want to close my eyes. I don’t want to miss anything.”

“What do you mean you have to process things?”

“Well, I think the best way I can describe it is that, for me, trying to see feels like trying to speak a foreign language.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know how, when you’re learning a language, sentences don’t just roll off your tongue? You have to think of the vocabulary words you want. Then you have to conjugate the verbs. Then you have to figure out how to order the words. That’s what seeing feels like to me. One way or another, either through touching or logic or clues or whatever, I’ve gotta think about what I’m seeing, I have to put it all together consciously. Only then do I understand what I’m seeing.”

“You’re not fluent.”

“I’m not fluent. Except for color and things that move—that stuff just happens for me. It’s like color and moving things are my native language.”

“Are you worried about it?”

“No. This is all still new—it’s only been about six weeks. I’m sure it’ll get easier with time. I mean, who learns a new language in six weeks? I just need a little time.”

Jennifer rolled over and kissed her husband. A few moments later she was asleep. May lay awake beside her. He had seen Dr. Goodman several times since the bandages had come off. Visit to visit, his vision was always the same. Goodman always told him, “No change.”

“It’s early,” May told himself. “Good things take time. It’s not like anyone said it’s going to be like this for life.”

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Now that May had vision, people demanded to know what he would be rushing to see. Was it the Great Pyramid in Egypt? A giant panda in China? The new
Tyrannosaurus rex
on display in Chicago? He gave them half of his real answer: he couldn’t wait to see the panoramas at the Kirkwood ski resort. He shared the other half only with Jennifer.

“I’ve gotta get to the topless beaches at Saint-Tropez,” he said. “When are we going?”

“Look,” Jennifer said. “You need to grab a couple of your buddies, book your tickets, and go have at it. You don’t need me around.”

“Yeah, but you could be topless, too. You’re not topless enough at home. Saint-Tropez could inspire you.”

Jennifer threw a playful punch. May delighted in seeing it coming.

As it was, Jennifer had already taken measures to address the second half of May’s wish. A normally conservative dresser, she had been wearing tighter and more brightly colored clothes, especially tops, when they went out for the evening.

“You look great!” May would tell her.

“I don’t go to work like this,” Jennifer reminded him. “This hasn’t been my style, so I’m still getting used to these clothes.”

May was grateful for his wife’s indulgence. But that still left a universe of other women to see. A friend brought a
Playboy
magazine to his house. May studied the photos and was especially taken with one that spanned three pages.

“I can’t get over her,” May said. “She’s got a crease going through her body.”

“You’re looking at the crease?”

Photos with good contrast, bright lighting, and stark backgrounds unlocked a wonderland of forbidden delights. Still, fine details weren’t clear to him, making it difficult for him to locate some of his favorite features. He could not judge depth—none of the ladies looked voluptuous unless they faced to the side. But oh, the skin and curves! They were everywhere, and they tipped the row of dominoes in May’s fantasy centers, allowing his imagination and sensory memories to fill in the rest. He’d heard men say that the hint of a woman’s outline behind a changing curtain could be more exciting than seeing the actual woman herself. He’d never quite understood that, but he did today.

May did not rush to see the great wonders of the world. But he practically ran to Peet’s Coffee in west Davis, through which endless parades of beautiful women were said to pass. He arrived during the morning rush, took a position at an outdoor table, and cast his vision into the oncoming stream of people. What he saw approaching were walking enigmas.

Were they men or women? He didn’t know how to begin to decide. Faces revealed nothing to him of a person’s gender, so he looked next to hair length, a decent clue but one riddled with exceptions, especially in this laid-back university town. Women seldom wore dresses or scarves or other telltale clothing—in fact, it startled him to see how similarly the sexes dressed. He searched for the confessing shape of a woman’s breasts, but unless she was wearing a tight and colorful top he could not detect a thing.

Wrestling with unreliable clues was just half the battle. Often, May had only five or ten seconds to work through the information he’d gathered—hair, clothes, chest—before the candidate had passed, forcing him to clear his head and begin twisting a fresh Rubik’s Cube of clues for the next passerby.

“Man, I’ve had vision for almost two months,” he told Josh while walking home one day. “Why aren’t I getting any better at this?”

At home, he told Jennifer about his coffee-shop missions.

“I know there are beautiful women in these places,” he said. “But it takes forever to figure out if the person I’m seeing is even female. Then, just when I think I’ve got it, she’s gone—or he’s gone—and I have to start over again.”

“It’s still early,” Jennifer said. “You’re still getting used to your vision.”

“It’s been two months. Is that still early?”

“It might be, Mike.”

“I don’t know, Jen. It took me about five seconds to see colors. It took me a day before I could catch a ball on the run. I still can’t read. I still don’t know Carson’s face from Wyndham’s face. Does that make sense to you?”

“I know it’s hard work. I can see you working.”

“I don’t mind the work. In fact, the work is an adventure itself, it’s fascinating. But after a while you want to think that all the work is getting you somewhere. I mean, that’s human nature, right?”

A few days later, May got ready to leave for an eye appointment in San Francisco.

“I think Goodman’s going to see some improvement this time,” he told Jennifer. “It seems like I’ve been recognizing things a little faster. I think I’ve been doing better at Peet’s, too.”

“Don’t do too good at Peet’s,” Jennifer said. “Give Dan a hug for me.”

“I think I’m going to impress him today,” May said.

May took the ferry to San Francisco, then chose to make the half-hour walk with Josh to Goodman’s office. He fired up his GPS and began to follow its spoken directions. Every few steps he glimpsed a line on the sidewalk and found himself trying to determine whether it was a curb or a shadow, a drop-off or some paint, and he had to remind himself to let Josh guide him forward and to use his own vision for sightseeing to the sides.

A few blocks into the walk, May hit his stride. His GPS was flawless, he and Josh were walking seamlessly, and he could see San Francisco’s buildings climbing into the sky all around him. “I’ve got to tell my dad about this,” he thought. Then he took a few more steps, closed his eyes, and thought about how strange it was to keep forgetting that one’s father had died even though he’d been dead for half a year.

As he neared Goodman’s office, May could see shapes of white and brown swirling on the sidewalk in front of him. He stopped for a moment to contemplate the scene. He knew such haphazard things could not be meant for an orderly sidewalk in an orderly city. That meant these shapes no one was chasing must be garbage, and at that moment the white and brown no longer looked like just shapes to him, now they made a feeling inside him, now their movements became careless, their colors turned drab, now they seemed wrong to him, now they looked like garbage, like something he hadn’t seen the moment before, and now he was disgusted.

He kept walking. To his right, he could see the windows of a building. Some appeared vaguely yellow, others had crooked lines across their widths, still others appeared not to be there at all. He stopped and looked more closely. The yellowed windows seemed difficult to look through. He’d heard things could look yellow when dingy and dreary, when worn out, and he began to think that these windows went with the garbage he’d seen, that he was looking at something that had been let go, that wasn’t cared for anymore, and when he knew that, the yellow windows weren’t just yellow anymore, they were ugly. He stared longer at the crooked lines on the other windows. No one would have drawn lines like that, lines that zigged and zagged for no reason and went to nowhere. He knew, therefore, that they must be cracks, and he hoped that no one had to live inside a building that made such sad impressions on the eye.

A block later, Josh moved to avoid something on the sidewalk. To May, it appeared to be a large dark shadow or a big bag of garbage—garbage would make sense in an area like this. He bent down to take a closer look. Emerging from the center of the darkness he could see the shape of human arms and legs, and now his heart pounded, and he moved his eye above the arms and found a neck and then a head, and now the image coalesced in rapid fire in his understanding: this was a human being, this was a homeless person curled on his side, and he tried to look for a face even though he couldn’t understand faces, and he felt his throat tighten and tears well in his eyes when he looked back at the person’s arms and legs, because he’d seen countless arms and legs by now and every one of them had been moving, every one of them had been talking and taking people places, but these arms and legs weren’t talking or going anywhere, they just lay there shouting to him in their stillness, and May wished for the night so that this person might have some privacy, and even though he could see that the person was bundled in clothes, May wished for the night so that the world wouldn’t see this person lying in the street so naked.

May took Josh’s harness and kept walking, holding back his tears. He had only a few blocks to pull himself together. For the rest of the walk to Goodman’s office he thought about nothing but the person in the street. He’d known about homeless people. But until today, he had always been guided around them. Near Goodman’s office, he closed his eyes to collect himself, but the image of the person was still as bright and sharp as ever.

Dr. Goodman’s receptionist greeted May and Josh and led them to an examining room. The high-backed chair and octopus of equipment were a familiar comfort to May. He relaxed and remembered why he had left the house so hopeful today—he expected to hear that his vision had finally improved.

Goodman entered and reached to shake hands. May met his hand perfectly.

“Mike,” Goodman said. “I wonder if you’d mind answering a question before we start.”

“Sure thing, Dan.”

“My sons and I were talking about you. I told them how well you see colors. They wanted to know if you dreamed in color when you were blind.”

“I don’t know,” May replied. “I don’t know if there was any visual component to my dreams when I was blind. But here’s the really strange thing. When I was blind, Jennifer used to ask if I saw colors or pictures or images in my dreams. And even then I didn’t know. I always knew the storyline, like if someone was chasing me. But when she’d ask if there was a visual element, I’d say, ‘I don’t know. I just know what was happening.’”

“Do you have vision in your dreams now?”

“Yes. And the vision is just like when I’m awake. I connect with a thing’s texture first and its visual component second. I can’t see faces any better than when I’m awake. But I did have this dream recently where vision was really dominant.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I was in this room and I could see a lot of giraffes rolling and flailing around on the floor. And I could see Wyndham sleeping nearby. So I pushed one of the giraffes away to keep it from squashing Wyndham. I saw the danger and acted on it, all by vision.”

“That’s fascinating.”

“Yes. And I thought about it the next day. I’ve never seen a giraffe move, but I think I got that flailing and rolling motion from watching Josh in real life.”

Goodman began the examination. He held an eye chart up to May’s nose and had him read the letters. He put various lenses over May’s eye and had him read again. He asked him to count fingers. He ran tests on the eye.

“No change,” Goodman finally said. “You’re very consistent visit to visit.”

“No change? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. You’ve still got a beautiful working eye. You should be able to drive with this eye. But you’re nowhere close. The issue must be your visual cortex, your brain.”

May’s stomach tightened. Blood rushed to his face. He wanted to shout, “How can that be? How can I have an eye good enough to drive a car but I can’t even see the eye chart from twenty feet? Why do things look sharp but I can’t see details? What’s happening here? Start connecting, for God’s sake! Start connecting!”

“Thanks, Dan,” May said. “Thanks for everything. Maybe I’ll surprise you next time around.”

That afternoon at home, May went into the kitchen to fix himself a sandwich. Scattered across the counter he could see a book, a cutting board, car keys, Jennifer’s fabric samples, an open jar of peanut butter, school projects, Jennifer’s sunglasses…

“Jen? Jen! Where are you?”

Jennifer walked into the kitchen.

“Hi, sweetie. When did you come in?”

“Look at this stuff!” May said.

“Oh, I meant to move some of that—”

“Why is there a book in the middle of a cutting board? Why are your keys in a different place every day—except for in your purse, which is the one place they belong?”

“Don’t tell me where my keys belong.”

“Well, I know they don’t belong in the peanut butter. Can we agree on that? Keys don’t belong in the peanut butter?”

“They’re not in the peanut butter. What’s your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem. I’m organized. I hate clutter. You know I hate clutter. You’ve known for fourteen years that I hate clutter. Yet here it is, again and again. It’s like you put it there to get me.”

“Why do you have to inspect everything so closely? You look for clutter, Mike. You want to find it. You’re on the hunt for it all the time. We’re just living here. Just let us live.”

May started to move the piles on the counter.

“Don’t move my things.”

“I’m just putting them into piles, a little organization.”

“That’s an attack on me, Mike.”

“No, it’s just a little organization.”

“Why can’t you just live with it?”

“Because now I can see it.”

One afternoon, May told Jennifer that he was going for coffee at Peet’s.

“Are you going girl watching?” she asked.

“I’m going to try,” he said. “I’m still not very good.”

“Want some help?”

May looked at her.

“Do you think you can?” he asked.

“Oh, I know I can,” she replied.

The couple found a table at Peet’s, near the sidewalk.

“Before we start, show me how you look for women,” she said.

May looked down the street. When a long-haired candidate strode past his table he made mental notes on her appearance.

“Whoa!” Jennifer said. “You can’t do it like that!”

“Like what?”

“You were rubbernecking. You turned your entire body around to follow her! You’ll get busted doing that. Here, feel this.”

She took May’s hands and put them on her face. She turned her head slowly in a forty-five-degree arc.

“You can turn your head that far, but going all the way around is leering—someone will punch you. Try to move your eye instead of your head. You have to be subtle.”