Blind (9 page)

What everyone is wearing is something I barely cared about before the accident and obviously can’t bother with now. Logan claims not to care, either, because she thinks caring about that is fun and doesn’t want me to feel left out, but she can’t keep herself from telling me that Amanda Boughman is still super gorgeous even though her dad left and her mom has no money, so where does she get all her clothes? And Monica Dancat, who Logan says must buy all her clothes at the army supply store, because she looks like she’s “going to war in a lesbian costume.” I don’t know what “lesbian costume” means—maybe Monica wears camouflage? I never ask any follow-up questions. Because I hate that kind of conversation. Whenever I say someone is pretty or cute at Lake Main, people laugh, even Logan, like what can I mean by cute? But there are ways to be pretty that don’t involve the things Logan looks for.

She described Blythe Keene’s leather jacket for ten minutes. Maybe she’s obsessed with Blythe, just like everyone else. Blythe moved to Sauberg in sixth grade, years after the rest of us, so she’s been the beat of Lake Main’s gossipy heart ever since she got here and moved in next door to Claire’s giant castle of a house, which Claire’s parents built themselves, making everyone else’s parents angry.

By middle school everyone knew Blythe and Claire had danced naked on the roof of the school, on a dare. The roof is slanted and dangerous, and it was still light out, and apparently they took pictures, although I never saw them and neither did anyone else I know. They also went swimming at night, even when it wasn’t summer, in other people’s pools and in Lake Brainch, and they were the first ones to drink. Blythe once got sent home from school for wearing a skirt so short you could see her underwear. She was always older and more rebellious than anyone else, and Claire had a better shot at being like her than anyone else. Maybe because her family was different; they were a catalog family, 2-D, shiny and shellacked. Claire’s hair was a mix of colors that didn’t occur in nature—so streaky she looked like some artsy god had poured paint on her head and shoulders. Blythe’s hair was straight white blonde, until Claire died, when, according to Logan, she dyed it a horrible, oily black. It still smells blonde to me, like a clear, square mint.

Logan says it’s their parents’ fault that Blythe is always in trouble and Claire’s gone. Because they were fanatically strict, and apparently hated each other. I’m not sure that’s right, but I get what she means: if you forbid your kids to live, they’ll live anyway, probably harder than they would have. And lie to you. If you were over at Blythe’s house and you said “God,” even just like “Oh my god” or something, her mom sent you home for taking the lord’s name in vain. They weren’t allowed to say or do anything, which might be why they did so much of everything. Although Claire wasn’t wild with boys the way Blythe is; we all know Blythe has slept with lots of guys, and that she doesn’t care about the rumors or the boys themselves.

Even my older sisters know about Blythe having sex with seniors, and then afterward not caring whether they call her. And not picking up when they do call, or calling them, for that matter. I once heard Sarah say Blythe is “the guy about it,” I guess meaning she cares more about whom she likes than who likes her. It kind of makes her the movie star of my mind. I don’t even get to try to be like Blythe, because of what happened. But maybe I would have if I could have. Been wild, I mean. And proud. I wish I were wild and proud.

I interrupted Logan’s Lake Main fashion monologue to ask if she wanted to come to dinner, but she said, “I can’t,” and then went quiet. Which she never used to do, but lately does a lot. Like she didn’t want to tell me about the Halloween party she went to. Which is my fault, because I didn’t want to go, but I kind of thought she’d describe it to me later.

Then I remembered she had driver’s ed. The idea of everyone in the world getting their licenses in the next few months isn’t something I want to chat about. My regular shrink appointments are Friday afternoons, interspersed with occasional Dr. Walker appointments to look at my scar, so when I’m on a table with hot lights and hands all over my blank face, or sitting on Dr. Sassoman’s couch, talking about forever in my dark, Logan has her hands on the steering wheel of a car, with a teacher in the passenger seat and bright, laughing friends in the back, waiting for their turns, looking out the open windows at whatever is still there for everyone who can see: house, house, tree, tree, playground, runner, sunlight, flowers, 3-D life, the way that movement looks. On Fridays, I sit still. And try to remember to breathe.

So maybe Seb is right and this is the kind of self-pity that nothing will come of, but
never
being able to go anywhere myself or have the same freedom as Logan and everyone else gives me a dropping feeling, like the
forever
of being dead. It’s just such a long time not to be able to drive. Not to grow up for real. I can’t tell anyone. I mean, Seb still skis and plays soccer and “beep ball,” which is baseball with blindfolds and a ball that beeps. Even after he gave up on getting me to ski, he invited me to come and at least “watch” one of his beep ball games, but I never did. Because I didn’t want to watch what I couldn’t see. And unlike him, I’ll never take the driving test. But Logan will. And Naomi and Jenna and Benj and even Babiest Baby Lily.

• • •

After my accident, only Logan told me the truth. My parents asked both her and my sisters not to read me the stories about me, but Logan did it anyway. I was the “local girl” with the “horrific tragedy.” I was Job and Oedipus. My tragedy was “biblical,” my accident “freak,” my loss “blinding.” I was unlucky and tragic; every single article called me “disfigured.”

Logan had to tell me. We have a rulebook called L&E, which we made when we were little and still try to live by. Leah always told me that the most important thing was to be nice to other girls, because people love to lie about how girls are competitive, jealous bitches caught in an endless cycle of catfighting and competing. (“And for what?” Leah always asks me. “Boys? Limited positions of glory in the world?”) Leah says there are plenty of boys or girls or jobs or trophies or whatever you want in the world, so share. She says it’s our job in a family of so many girls to help correct the stupid beliefs people hold about girls. I don’t know how Leah figured this out, or why Sarah never did, but Logan and I wrote it down like a girl bible. We vowed to be one person, with indivisible hopes and happiness: If one of us did well, we both felt joyful. If one of our hearts was broken, we were both devastated. And Logan kept her part of that deal; she almost died when my accident happened. Sometimes I’m surprised she didn’t actually gouge her eyes out.

We wrote that we would tell each other the straight truth all the time, although the L&E book has helped me get why an occasional white lie or omission isn’t always a bad thing. Like the time in seventh grade when I overheard Blythe Keene and Amanda Boughman talking about how Logan twitched her butt so much when she walked that she looked like “an epileptic pony,” and of course I told Lo right away because it was the loyal L&E imperative, and anyway I thought if Blythe and Amanda were talking about me that way, I’d want to know. But leaving the actual pony part out might have done the job just as well, without ruining everyone’s friendships for an entire year.

I guess Logan could have left out some of the worst parts of those reports about me. Or maybe she did. Maybe they were even more horrible than I know. I just thanked her for not patronizing and lying to me like everyone else did. I said it would have been worse not to know what everyone was saying. I said that people could write whatever they wanted, but no one would ever get to see my disfigured eyes again.

“But you have to leave the house someday. And see people again,” Lo said quietly.

I said, “I can’t see.”

She never made that mistake again; just stopped using the words
look
,
see
, or
burned
, and started buying me “Emma Silver Star Glasses.” And once I put the first pair on, I never left my room without sunglasses on again.

Because my left eye is closed, and there’s a scar along the lid that runs in a diagonal line from the top to just underneath my eye. I’ve only asked about it directly one time, and it was the last time anyone has said anything about it to me. No one is allowed to mention it ever again. Because on an odd and awful night almost exactly a year ago last fall, I woke up thrashing and stumbled into the kitchen to get some water. My mom had forgotten to leave a bottle on my nightstand, because we didn’t have any systems yet. I went without sunglasses or Spark or my cane, feeling the wall, trying not to trip or cry. I thought it was the middle of the night because I had fallen out of space and time. I was so thirsty and so scared that the thirst and fear felt confusing, like they were the same feeling.

Then I heard breathing, and my mom’s voice said, “Hi, sweetie,” and my hands flew up to my eyes. I smelled something thick, muddy, chemical.

“What are you doing?” I asked, jittery and still covering my eyes, even from her.

“I’m having a glass of wine,” she said. “Why are you up, Em?”

So that was the smell. Why was my mom having wine in the middle of the night? “I can’t sleep,” I told her. I was glad she’d mentioned the wine, because I wouldn’t have liked it if she was hiding things from me just because I couldn’t see them.

She asked, “Would you like a sip?”

“Of wine?”

“Yes, wine. Here.” She stood up and I heard her getting a glass down. Then I heard the pouring, a thick, purple sound, and the smell came closer to me. She put her hands on my shoulders, pulled a chair out, and helped me into it.

“Try a little,” she said. “It’s better than that Manischewitz Passover crap, that’s for sure.” She laughed a deep, sad, throaty laugh that made me feel very scared.

“Are you drunk?” I asked.

She laughed again, but this time it was her real laugh. “No!” she said. “Certainly not. I’ve had about four sips of wine. I’m afraid even I have more tolerance than that.”

“I thought you said Jews don’t drink; that self-medicating is for anesthetized WASPs.”

“You heard that?”

“Yes.”

She sighed.

“Why are you drinking?”

“Having a glass of wine once in a blue moon isn’t drinking,” she said.

“But it’s the middle of the night,” I said. “And you’re alone.”

“It’s ten o’clock, sweetie. I’m waiting for your dad to get home from the hospital and have a glass of wine with me. And I’m not alone. You’re here with me, and I’m glad.”

I took this in. I had never considered the possibility that my parents sat at the table late at night, drinking wine, either alone or together. In spite of myself, I felt left out. And then stupid for that. I mean, this was last year. It wasn’t like I was a baby. I drank a big gulp of my wine, and it tasted sour, made my tongue sweat.

“Yuck,” I said. “I like the Manischewitz better. This tastes like coins. Or”—I pushed my lips together—“Band-Aids?”

My mom laughed her real laugh again then, and I felt less sad, less scared.

Then I sat right next to her at the table and asked, “What does it look like?”

And she didn’t ask me what, because she knew I was talking about my left eye.

She just said, fast, “It’s much better, Emma, sweetie. Not so livid as it was.”

That word,
livid
, for something on my face, my eye, made my throat close with fear. Even though she was using it to make the point that the scar wasn’t livid anymore. My mouth was thick with the choking taste of the wine, but I made the shape of
livid
again and again, silently, pressing my tongue up against the back of my teeth. I was trying to make
livid
lose its meaning, the way repeating a word can. My mom was still talking when I came back from the work of undoing her stupid adjective. The scar had “calmed down now,” she was saying, and I looked like I had “as a baby, when I was asleep but about to wake up, with one eye closed and the other one open.”

“You always looked a little suspicious when you were a baby, and that’s how this looks now, too. You look beautiful, vulnerable, strong,” she said. “You look just like yourself.”

I wasn’t going for it. “The scar is disgusting,” I said, pushing my chair back and standing. “You’re lying. It’s thick and ropy and red and purple and horrible.” Because that’s how it felt to my fingers, crazy and jagged and maybe like a multicolored, furious, mountainous ridge jutting off my face. “I’m a sickening, livid monster. Why can’t you ever tell me the truth about anything?”

I leaned in then and put my hands on my mom’s face, to see if she was crying. Wet, yes. Tears. I had put it meanly to make her cry, and it had worked, and now I felt the meanness bubbling, boiling inside me. But I said nothing to fix it; I couldn’t. I just stood there. The skin on my mom’s cheeks felt thin and fragile, the tears toxic, like they might eat away at her face. I let my hands fall back to my sides hopelessly, and thought about salt, how weird it is that tears contain it, that our eyes produce something they hate.

“Nothing about you could ever be disgusting,” my mom said. But I knew she was wrong; I was ruined inside and out. I went back to my bed, forgetting to get water. I lay there, dying of thirst.

• • •

Our Bridge date with Zach was on November 2. It was so rainy and windy that leaves swirled like cartoon tornadoes and the lake roared, wanting to swallow us all up. I knew I would never get near water again. It seemed impossible that summer had ever been to Sauberg, that any of us had ever swum in Lake Brainch, seen sunlight, watched actual clouds move across the sky like spun sugar. It should have been beautiful. Claire should have been alive. I should have been able to see the leaves. The leaves should have been red and gold and yellow, but they were nothing but a wet smell, dirty, decaying. What I could feel of them, under me, sinking into the ground, was a reminder of the wrong, worst things. When I picked up a handful of leaves, hoping to feel the red and gold of them, they disintegrated in my hands. What about leaves raked into crisp piles? Why were these so soaking, peeling from the ground in only the most furious gusts of wind, sticking to our jackets? On our way to Bridge, Logan screamed when a muddy leaf pasted itself to her face. It felt like the world was ending. And I’m aware that having no control over how to fix the world is a typical human predicament, but it felt desperately, uniquely urgent to me.