Night Blindness (34 page)

All the way through dinner, I focused on the grilled steak and sweet potatoes, on Mandy's laugh, on how my father held my mother's fingers in his and kissed them every so often, on Luke's superwhite teeth and his dreads and how happy I was to be there. I tried not to think about Santa Fe, the loft, and modeling. I tried not to think about Greece.

It wasn't even eleven when my dad said he was going to bed. I squeezed Ryder's hand and glanced at my father. I thought I'd been discreet, but my dad set his napkin on the table and said, “Jensen, I saw that.” He sounded annoyed and amused at the same time. “Your old man is allowed to be tired. I promise I'll still be breathing in the morning.”

Jamie swatted his butt with her napkin. “Not funny, Sterling.”

Fred sprang up and shook his hand. “Thank you so much for having me, Mr. Reilly. It's an honor to be a guest in your home.”

My dad put his arm around him and walked him across the deck to the door. He stood with his back to us. “If you're with Mandy, you're never a guest. You're family. Now let me tell you something.”

We all got quiet so that we could listen.

“I've known Mandy since she was a girl. And I love her like my own.”

“Aw, J.J.,” Mandy whispered. “Your dad's going to make me cry.”

I put up my finger up to shush her.

“Take care of her,” my dad told him in a tone that was both warm and threatening. Fred didn't answer, and I thought maybe he was about to pass out or pee in his pants. My father turned around and winked at us. “We're done now,” he said. “You can go back to chatting.”

We all cracked up.

“Thanks, Sterling,” Mandy called out. “I love you, too.”

Jamie stood. “I'll walk you to the bedroom, darling.” I watched my parents disappear into the house. Before Fred made it back to the table, Starflower reached over and took Mandy's hand, holding it against her heart. “Yes,” she said with her eyes closed. “I believe you're going to marry that one.”

Mandy laughed. “Oh, I want to marry him. But I'm in no hurry.”

Starflower picked up her tea with both hands and took a sip. “You will be once the baby comes.”

Fred came back to the table, and I noticed his cowlick and those long, dark eyelashes. Here he was, the first man Mandy had ever loved.

“So, Jensen.” Luke swirled his cognac around in his glass. “You got a piano out there in Santa Fe?”

“Yeah.” I thought of the old Steinway my father had insisted on getting for me when he came to visit one Thanksgiving. I wondered vaguely if I would play it when I got back.

“Not like that one at Woolsey Hall, I bet.” He winked at me.

I felt Ryder breathing next to me.

“No,” I said. “Not quite like that one.”

“A piano is a piano is a piano.” Luke lifted his glass. “Doesn't actually matter much what kind.”

“We're going miss you, J.J.,” Mandy told me.

“You know I'll be back,” I said.

Starflower was watching me, blinking those brown eyes expectantly, as if she knew something I didn't.

“Well.” Luke took a sip of his drink. “We're counting on it, baby girl. If you don't, there's more than one heart that's going to break.”

 

34

“I can't come,” Ryder said into the phone the next night. I'd been to see my father's attorney, then met my parents for dinner. I was in the living room, watching Jamie pull out of the driveway to go sign papers at A Will to Live. “I'm sorry. I just got a call from the hospital and—”

“You're scared.” I sat on the couch.

He was quiet on the other end. I could hear my father turning on the shower upstairs. “Let's say good-bye right this time,” I told him. “Please.” He didn't say anything. “I'll wait all night for you.”

“All right,” he finally said. “I'll be over as soon as I can.”

In the attic, I put on Furtwängler's rendition of Beethoven's Ninth. It had been recorded in Berlin and had a sort of Old Testament, fire-and-brimstone feel. I liked to play it when I painted. The self-portraits I'd tried to finish over the summer were still hanging on the walls, staring at me from their dark backgrounds. They were the only things left to pack, and I'd been putting it off.

I didn't hear my dad come up the stairs, but suddenly he was there in the doorway in a bathrobe, his hair wet. “Aren't you supposed to go out for drinks with Ryder?” he yelled over the music.

“Don't come in here.” I heard the snap in my voice, but I couldn't help it; I didn't want him to see these paintings. They seemed like testimony to all the ways I'd failed in my life.

He took a step forward and cupped his hand behind his ear. “What?” he yelled. He'd already noticed them.

“Nothing.” I turned down the stereo. “Ryder got called to the hospital. He's coming by later.” The room seemed oddly quiet without the music.

“Well, I like wine.” He was studying the paintings. “If you don't mind hanging out with your old man, we can have a glass on the deck.”

I gathered the brushes. “That sounds great, Daddy.”

He leaned into the painting that had the red mark across its face. “We have that good Chilean stuff Luke left last night. I'll uncork it.” But he kept staring at my work. He went from one to another, moving his glasses down his nose and then stepping back and pushing them up again. In Santa Fe, this was the moment I hated, when Nic came into the studio without warning and made some offhand remark about contours, depth, or color. I gathered the remainder of the brushes and piled them next to the wooden paint box and leftover canvases.

“You capture the best part of him in these,” my father finally said.

It took a minute to sink in.

“All this time, I had no idea this was what you'd been doing here.” He was standing in the middle of the room, his face shot through with light from the yard lamps outside. “I understand now why you came up here.” His eyes had a faraway look. “It's how you see him again.”

I got up slowly and stood next to him. The paintings looked completely different now. We stood there with all those faces gazing back at us.

“You did good, Whobaby.” He put his palm on my shoulder. “You brought him home.” We both stood there until my dad, as if coming out of a dream, said, “Well, I better go get some real clothes on.” Before he turned to go, he said, “Jenny?” I hadn't heard him call me that since before Will. “You know why I loved football?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Running,” he told me. “Believe it or not, I was a skinny thing. And I grew up in a hard part of South Philly. The neighborhood kids were tough as hell on me and I was too scared to fight back.” He laughed a little, his mouth turned into a smile, his eyes far away. “I was a runner. You understand me? When the going got tough, I ran. I ran away from the bullies. Away from my crappy neighborhood. Eventually, I made a good living out of running. But Whobaby, that's a hell of a way to live, running. You got to stop sometime. You got to turn around and face what you think's been coming at you. And damn it, you did.” His voice was hoarse but strong. “That's better than any award or fancy accolade. You understand me? That's something to be proud of.” He smoothed back his hair with his big bear-paw hand. “I'll never forget that day when I turned around and fought back.” He laughed. “I got a black eye and a fat lip. But you know what?”

“No,” I said quietly. “What?”

“That's the best goddamn thing I ever did. Finally, I wasn't afraid the bigger kids were coming after me anymore.” He kissed my head. “I haven't been the same since.” He looked around the room, his focus landing on my paintings. “Good work,” he said softly. “Beautiful, beautiful work, my Whobaby, my shining star.”

I listened to his footsteps fade as he went down the narrow attic stairs. I was still staring at the painting with the red mark. After a moment, I squatted down and opened my paint palette, took out one of the midsize brushes, and stuck it in water before dipping it in the white paint. Using wide horizontal strokes, I covered the suggestion of long, dark curls. I took the top off the yellow, wet another brush, and dipped it in, mixing it with the base and making a sun-blasted blond color. I painted this around the contours of the face. Then I closed my eyes and listened to the stillness in the attic, the quiet there. It's what I did before I viewed a painting. I closed my eyes and counted to one hundred.

Finally, I opened my eyes. I could see his cheekbones, the regal line of his nose, the heaviness of his brows, that gentle sloping forehead. The change in color had made him absolutely real. Staring back at me with the cut he'd gotten on his face the day he flipped his bicycle when he was nine was not my portrait, but Will's.

All those days I'd come up here and listened to Beethoven's Ninth, trying to find myself, he had been here the whole time, watching me, waiting for me to recognize him. Now that I saw him, I couldn't unsee him. He was everywhere.

I stood in the attic room, where he and I used to play with the dollhouse, where for hours at a time it had just been us, and where I had come on hot, sticky afternoons this summer, trying to find myself, and I saw that my brother had been with me all along. Nic was wrong. “Before you do anything else, you have to paint your self-portrait,” he used to say. Before I did anything else, I had to bring Will back, or maybe, I thought standing in the middle of the room, I had to let him come back to me.

It came to me slowly but very clearly; there was no mistaking it. On Will's face I saw the one thing I'd wanted most from him. I saw forgiveness.

I don't know how long I stayed there, seeing that, but when I finally left the paintings hanging there and headed downstairs, I felt washed through. Walking down the steps, everything seemed brighter. I had been in this house for years, and yet I'd never seen it quite like I saw it now. The knots in the wood were beautiful. The bright yellow in the hallway had a celestial feel. I was feeling something I hadn't felt in a long time: I was excited. I thought maybe I'd leave a message on Ryder's cell and tell him to meet us at The Wharf. My dad and I could get the convertible out and drive to the shore. I'd have a Maker's Mark on the rocks and a piece of chocolate cake. Maybe Jamie would be home by then and she'd want to come, too.

“Dad,” I called. In the hall, I didn't turn away from the picture of Will and me on a Ferris wheel; I let myself stop at the photo of us riding inner tubes on Martha's Vineyard the summer I was twelve. Will had forgiven me. I had seen it. I knew it like I knew my own name, my telephone number. “Dad,” I said again.

When I passed his room, I caught a glimpse of him lying across his bed, his glasses still on, both hands pressed to his heart. I pushed the door open wider. “Daddy.” I crossed the room. I didn't know what I would tell him, how I would explain the happiness he had given me by seeing what he had, but I thought for now I could just kiss him on the cheek and take him out for a drink.

I stood over the bed, almost not wanting to wake him. Since he'd recovered from the Keppra fever, he could fall asleep anywhere, and I was envious of that peace. He looked calm, his mouth slightly open, his palms resting on his chest. I sat next to him. “Daddy?” I reached out to touch his arm. And then I stopped. Later, I couldn't say what it was. A stillness, or a feeling that something had left the room. I knew at once I was completely alone. Drawing my hand back, I saw then that his belly wasn't rising and falling. I put my fingers to his neck for a pulse. A panic rose from my thighs into my throat. There wasn't one.

And then I was grabbing the phone off its cradle and dialing numbers. “The nature of your emergency,” a voice said, and I saw that my father had been in the midst of putting on his shoes. One loafer was on the floor near him, and the other was still on his foot, waiting to drop.

 

35

The morning of my father's funeral, I was sitting on the living room couch, wearing a pair of Ryder's old sweatpants and a Steelers T-shirt my father had given me as a teenager. “Nic's here,” Mandy said. She was standing at the window, barefoot and wearing a black dress.

“Can you let him in?” I asked.

I kept my eyes closed as I listened to her open the door. “Where is she?” Nic asked. Then I heard his boots on the floor, and when I opened my eyes, he was looking down at me. He was wearing a black collarless button-down. He'd shaved and didn't smell like pot. I put my arms up and he sat next to me. “Hey, sweet lady.”

“Hey,” I said. As if no time had passed, as if we were still happy and in Santa Fe, I leaned into him and fit myself into the crook of his arm. He smelled like the homemade soap we used to buy at the farmers' market.

“Have you eaten anything?”

I shook my head. “I can't.”

He checked his watch. “How about a shower, then?”

Mandy sat on the other side of me. “Good idea.”

“No,” I said too loudly. “If I shower, you'll make me get dressed. And if I get dressed—”

“You'll have to go to the funeral,” Nic said. “Where is everyone?”

I thought about my dad in the funeral home, pumped up with embalming fluid, dressed in the same suit he'd worn to Luke's birthday party the night he found out he had a brain tumor. I closed my eyes again. My exhaustion felt palpable, cement running through my blood.

“Jamie and Luke went for a drive,” Mandy told him. She was staring at the ceiling, probably trying to think of what to say next. “To the cemetery,” she whispered.

“I can hear you,” I said, and we all laughed a little.

“What about … Ryder?” he asked.

“He went home to get his suit. He'll be back in a little while,” Mandy told him.

The coroner had told us my father hadn't suffered. I wondered if she told everyone that. She said the disease and radiation had weakened his heart, and that it'd given out. But he'd gone quickly and without pain. “I feel sick,” I said now.