Night Blindness (12 page)

Most of what I read, I didn't share with anyone. I didn't ask Dale or Ryder about it, but I wanted to know everything about this disease. And doing the research made me feel needed and smart. I had a purpose, and whether it came from guilt or some feral instinct to save my dad, I was still doing some good. In Santa Fe, I was so far from the girl I'd been. I modeled for the people Nic chose for me and gossiped with Hadley about all the galleries downtown closing because the economy was in the toilet. And I went on tour with Nic. But I wasn't organized like I had been. I'd forget to pull bills out of the wire basket in the kitchen and pay them on time. I never balanced the checkbook or made our bed. I usually had to sift through a pile of laundry to find a pair of socks. Since I did my job naked, it hardly mattered, except when I helped Hadley out at the café.

But here I was different. I was on the ball. I'd been one person, and then I wasn't. Now I was someone completely different. In Colston, I was back to my old straight-A self, the good girl my father could count on. The Jensen I'd created with Nic, the numb, unfeeling version of myself, was fading.

Despite his brain tumor, which made him forget everyday things and gave him horrible headaches, my dad was in high spirits. Sometimes I caught him in his office, holding his head in his hands, or I'd see him trying desperately to think of a word, but mostly he was up early, knocking on my door, asking what I had planned for the day, saying he wanted to play hooky from the foundation, and asking if I was game.

During those long June days, I sometimes got that feeling I'd had at the Seafood Shack, that everything was okay. Piecing together my favorite Elton John and Ella Fitzgerald songs on the piano, swimming at Shoal's Beach in a black bikini I'd bought in town, I could almost trick myself into believing that life had rewound. I'd never given up a full ride to Juilliard or hitchhiked to San Francisco to see the Dead, never dropped acid or slept with my art teacher, never posed nude for sculptors in Santa Fe or gotten so drunk at the Cowgirl Café I let a
bruja
tattoo a nightingale on each ankle. That had all been a long, outrageous dream, and now I was back where I belonged.

After the Alfa Romeo, my dad rented two more sports cars, a green Triumph Spitfire and a Porsche Carrera, which we took down the Merritt at 5:00
A.M.
all the way to the New York border so he could feel the speed on the straightaways. He wanted to go zip lining, too, but Dale Novak nixed it. He shrugged when she told him. “Well, then let's buy some water skis for Luke's Whaler,” he said.

“Dad…”

“What?” he asked innocently.

Instead, we took the Whaler down the Connecticut River, dropped the anchor between Essex and Hadlyme, and Mandy and I swam near Nutt Island while he and Luke fished. The current was so strong, twice Luke had to throw us a line so we could get back to the boat. I was glad we weren't water-skiing. While we tanned on the bow of
Charmer,
I thought about Ryder and wondered what he'd been doing. But we were deep into radiation with Dale, and I didn't have an excuse to call him. He was the surgeon. His part was on hold until after radiation ended.

On an overcast day at the end of the June, when the humid, still air of July was starting to creep in, my dad took me to North Cove Outfitters and bought us matching yellow Wellies. We went clamming like we used to when Will and I were little, filled an old Benjamin Moore bucket to the top, and called Luke on our way home. Jamie was just back from signing a new girl from Moscow, and the four of us spent the night on the deck, eating fresh seafood, drinking Chardonnay, and squirting each other with lemons.

On nights like those, Jamie seemed settled, almost peaceful. She relaxed into the glider with my father, leaning against him, her eyes blinking lazily, not unhappy or restless like she used to get. Sometimes it felt like I'd dreamed that span of time when she had her apartment and a lover on the side. Except I knew her. I still had the clear memory of how she'd been after Will died, spending nights at the brownstone with God knows who. As though strangers could take away her hurt better than her own family, or what was left of it.

“I interviewed that list of acupuncturists you gave us,” I said. Luke and I were sitting on the railing, watching fireflies. “And if you're willing to be a pincushion,” I told my dad, “I think they can help your headaches.”

“Give this girl a task, and she gets it done yesterday,” he said.

I smiled at him and wriggled my nose. But being home again, being a gold-star student, clamming, driving fast cars, and dozing on the Whaler couldn't change what my hours of research on the Internet and in the Yale Medical Library had told me. A meningioma was still a brain tumor. We couldn't lose our vigilance; we couldn't turn our backs on it, not even for a second. I'd read everything I could find on my father's condition, could recite statistics to anyone who asked, and there were still plenty of people with meningiomas who didn't survive.

 

11

“What color do you think the freaky receptionist's fingernails will be today?” I turned in to the hospital parking garage, and the Lexus's headlights went on without my having to push any buttons. I wasn't used to a car that gave me directions, warmed my ass, and created playlists on the stereo. I felt like I was driving a servant. I missed Sabrina, the '87 Saab convertible I'd inherited from Hadley, with the crank windows and cloth seats. It'd been six weeks since I'd put the top down and driven fast through those desert mountains, past tabletop mesas and the edges of the Rio Grande, Dave Matthews blaring.

My father didn't answer. When I glanced over, he was groping at the air, his mouth open, his tongue resting on his bottom lip. I'd seen that look in his eyes a million times before when he was going through playbooks or watching film, concentrating, as if he could just
think
hard enough, he'd understand.

When I turned in to the parking space, he surprised me by reaching over and touching my face, tracing it the way a blind person might, running his fingers over my jaw as though to conjure missing words. Cold prickled my spine. I turned off the ignition. “I'm Jensen,” I said. “Remember? Rhymes with Benson. Your high school football coach.” The books I'd read had suggested making up games to help him remember the things we never thought he'd forget. Our street, North Parker, sounded a little like fourth quarter. When he couldn't think of a word, I'd quote his favorite TV show, “‘Mnemonics for five hundred, Alex.'”

He waved at me as though I were being silly. “Of course,” he said. Instantly normal again, as though nothing had happened, he unclipped his seat belt.

I pulled my leather backpack off the seat. “Hang on a sec,” I said, opening my notebook.

“Are you ever going to tell me what you write in that thing?” He leaned across the console.

“Just stuff I don't want to forget.” He seemed satisfied with my half-truth, and I waited for him to climb out of the car. When his door closed, I scribbled
June 30th—forgot my name again.
It was the third time in six days.

In Dale's office, we stood at the front desk, waiting for the receptionist who'd checked us in five days a week for the last three weeks. “Name?” she asked.

Really?
“Sterling Reilly,” I told her as patiently as I could.

She ran a Smurf-colored fingernail down an appointment book. “Oh, there you are,” she said cheerily. “You get the day off. Dr. Novak had an emergency and said your treatment can wait until tomorrow.” The phone rang, and she slid the partition closed.

I glanced at the wall clock. “She could have called.”

My dad hooked his arm through mine. “Do you know what this means?” He winked at me. “Caller's Island.”

“Oh jeez,” I groaned.

“Come on, you loved it as a kid.”

We stepped into the elevator, and I pushed the button. “That was before I realized their roller coasters are held up by a couple of rusty nails.”

My dad loved Caller's Island, a tiny amusement park near Taft Airport, with rattling rides and paint-chipped carousel horses. Right up until Will died, the four of us, plus Ryder, would pile in the car for the forty-minute trip east, where we ate cotton candy and rode the looping roller coasters. Weathered carnies conned us into playing games we never won, promising oversize stuffed animals if we could just pop the balloon with an old dart.

My dad was staring up at the elevator numbers like a little boy. I felt bad for him. Dale had said no to spending too much time at the foundation during radiation, and I was forever telling him he couldn't drink a beer or eat a cookie and that waterskiing was out of the question. Jamie worked so much that I'd had to turn into the bad cop, the unfun parent.

“Okay,” I said.

His face split into a grin.

“Just this once,” I told him, even though I thought it was a terrible idea.

*   *   *

We stood in front of the wooden roller coaster, Caller's Island's main attraction. There had been an accident on I-95, and it had taken us a hellish hour to go six exits. I'd forgotten my sunglasses, and I had to put my hand up like a visor and squint. Looming past the ticket booth stood the double-loop roller coaster, its paint now faded to the color of the sky. “Are you sure about this? Dale said you should be taking it easy.”

He stood with his back to the sun, trying to block it from my eyes. He'd insisted we get fried dough with powdered sugar, and he had a telltale trail of it down his front. “I didn't hear you telling me to be careful when we were flying around Hamburg Cove last weekend.” I set my fried dough on a picnic table next to the carousel and sat down. He sat next to me. “And don't go getting a guilty conscience and fess up to Luke about our treats today.” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. TLA was crudely etched into the table next to two pairs of initials.
True love always. Trouble lies ahead.

He balanced his sunglasses on his forehead. “Come on, be my good girl, go on the roller coaster with your old man.”

A man and his German shepherd service dog sat at the table next to us. My father had no idea how not good I was. The dog stretched out and laid its head on the man's foot. “Doesn't he remind you of Bailey?” My dad nodded at the dog.

“Bailey?”

“Our old dog. The one Will begged us to adopt from the shelter.”

“Dad,” I said, my heart racing, “we've never had a dog. Jamie's allergic.”

He took off his glasses and stuck the arm in his ear. “Goddamn.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “I guess my excuse for getting you home is acting up.”

I looked at the squint lines around his eyes and the twitch in his bottom lip. A swarm of families went by, toddlers in strollers, kids holding giant pretzels. After they passed, I asked, “Are you worried? Does it make you scared?”

He waved away a yellow jacket buzzing around my uneaten fry bread. “Everything's a trade-off. When I entered the draft, I wanted to play for the 49ers or the Raiders, get as far away from Philly as I could. But the Steelers picked me up. I was pissed off at the time, but if I'd gone to San Fran or Oakland, I never would've met Luke. His college roommate was our backup punter. My last year playing, Luke introduced me to your mom at a VIP party before the Super Bowl. Everything happens for a reason, Whobaby. And don't you ever forget it.”

I stared down at the yellow jackets circling my food. After we'd buried Will, the priest had said the same thing, and I'd stayed there under the granddaddy maple, trying to think of a good reason why I was in the Edgehill Cemetery, putting flowers on my brother's casket. Finally, Ryder had taken my hand and led me away, holding me against him so I wouldn't fall. We didn't care anymore who saw us together. It was Will who had forbidden it, and after he died, it hardly mattered.

I got up. “Well, if we're going to do it, it might as well be now.” I threw the soggy dough in a nearby garbage can. There was a brand-new metal roller coaster beyond the Ferris wheel, but my dad had insisted on the old wooden one. He still had pictures of Will, Ryder, and me crammed in one car, mouths open, arms up. When the wind blew, it made a low, moaning noise like the goalposts in our backyard. “What if you fall out and bonk your head?” I asked him while we walked toward it.

“Maybe it will knock the tumor out through my mouth.” He tousled my hair. “Ever think of that?”

I handed two tickets to a teenaged kid who might have been asleep if not for the fact that he was reciting the rules. “Keep your arms inside at all times. No standing. Do not raise the safety bar until the ride has ended.”

My father folded the rest of our tickets like an accordion and stuffed them in his front pocket. “Ready?”

I couldn't shake the feeling that we shouldn't be doing this. That somehow flying upside down was not the right thing for a man with cancer.

We found a blue two-seater and pulled the safety bar over our laps. People were filling the cars around us. I leaned back. The air smelled of popcorn and sugar. Under the peeling blue was a layer of yellow paint, and I picked at it with my fingernail, wondering how old this thing was.

“So what's happening with those piano lessons?” my father asked while we waited. “You working on a concerto for your old man?”

Before I could answer, the carnival music started, an odd mix of cymbals and saxophone, and the train of cars lurched forward. Kids behind us started screaming. “If they do that the whole time,” my dad said, talking close to my ear, “maybe they'll blow out my eardrum and the tumor will come flying out.”

The ride picked up speed, and then the car felt like it had dropped off the track as we headed straight down. For a few seconds, we were free-falling. I tried to watch my dad, but it was hard to focus.