Blinding Light (28 page)

Now he saw what she was hinting at. She was right: going to the party had exposed him to the possibility of questions he couldn't answer truthfully. And there would be more questions. He needed a better explanation; he needed a story.

“They want to help you,” Ava said, and she laughed at the thought of it, but it was a shallow, wounded laugh.

“What would be the point of seeing a doctor?”

“So that you can say you've seen a doctor.”

“You're a doctor.”

“I'm the blind man's lover.”

H
E WOKE
much too early, seeing the whole day ahead in Boston and feeling cross, thinking of how he loathed medical doctors, their absurd authority, their bossy arrogance, their airs—you were familiar, they were formal; you were small, they were large; “Wait here, Slade, the doctor is busy at the moment.” A doctor posed as a figure of power and wisdom, knowing how to ease pain and cure sickness and save lives. Those skills were like a higher form of plumbing, mastered by earnest drudges, yet they regarded themselves as shamans and did not want to be judged like ordinary mortals. They hated their learning to be called into question, and they never listened.

Ava was different from every doctor he had ever known. She read books for pleasure, she did not advertise herself as a doctor, and she did not disagree with him when he declared that doctors caused illnesses, that hospitals were disease factories, that most new drugs were poorly tested and overprescribed. Doctors made people sick with dirty drugs. The ideal doctor-patient relationship was his love affair with Ava, or the Secoya shaman's with his ayahuasca-taker. To be humbled by the chanting shaman and granted visions by his drug—that was the purest healing.

That week of revelation on the Aguarico River reminded Steadman that they had not left the Vineyard since arriving back from Ecuador last November—had been buried alive all winter and spring and into the summer, those dazzling months of work and sex. And then at nine, starting for the airport, Ava at the wheel, Steadman furious in the passenger seat, scowling at an impenetrable line of traffic they were trying to join, they came to a dead stop at the junction of his country lane and the main road.

Summer people in crawling cars, sunburned and squinting in impatience, children's bored bobbing faces at the windows—an unbroken line of cars going nowhere. Disgusted by all these intrusive strangers in their Jeeps and minivans and truck-like vehicles with big wheels and bumpers and bike racks, only ten minutes into the trip, Steadman regretted agreeing to the eye appointment in Boston.

“Take the shortcut.” He was staring at her leg, praying for it to articulate her gas-pedal foot.

“I can't even get into the traffic.”

Trying to force a space for herself, Ava eased the car forward, but when a Range Rover hesitated and a space opened, a man on a moped darted into it, as though sucked into a vacuum, and after him a procession of bikes—dad, mom, wobbling kids, and another adult in skintight spandex on two wheels towing a bike trailer. Then the urgent inching cars closed the gap. A red-faced woman in the passenger seat of a convertible peered at Steadman, and with her arms folded and her head forward she opened her mouth wide, her nose pinched white, and yawned irritably, with a coarse goose-hiss that he could hear.

“Go home!” he called out.

The woman smacked her lips and blinked and calmly mouthed the words “Fuck you.”

Ava sighed at the slowly moving line of cars and headed into them, forcing open a space angled sideways, in the path of oncoming cars, but still only half inserted, for the traffic had stopped again in what was a two-mile backup into Vineyard Haven. The shortcut to the airport was still almost a mile away.

Mopeds veered in and out of the stopped cars, cyclists bumped along the side of the road, and two women jogged ostentatiously past, sweat-soaked in their scanty clothes—a dog barked at them, thrusting its loose spittle-flecked jaws out of a car window, sounding outraged. Someone's radio—the convertible in front?—was very loud, and among the unmoving cars in the still summer air someone's cigar smoke reached Steadman and Ava.

“The president was puffing a cigar at Wolfbein's, did you see?” Ava said, just to make conversation, because the delay was so serious and she wanted to calm Steadman's anxiety about the plane they had to catch.

“What the fuck is this traffic all about?”

Steadman's anger was a gumminess in his mouth and grit in his eyes and his guts churning with frustration. He felt like an innocent loosed upon a mobbed and noisy world. He was upset and angrier for the way that Ava, with that pointless cigar remark, was trying to distract him from the bikes, smoke, noise, strangers, New York license plates, joggers, the leafy road blocked with cars—and the most annoying thing about slow traffic was the visibility of bumper stickers on the SUVs. The more expensive the vehicle, the more frivolous the message.

“Look at the size of them. They're made for jungles and deserts.”

Ava said, “That reminds me. The agency wants you to sign off on a proposal from Jeep for some kind of Trespassing Limited Edition. Like the Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer.”

He imagined the vehicle in the Trespassing style, the safari look, the earth tones, the sturdy seats, the loops and brush guards and compartments, the compass, the altimeter, the gear bags, the khaki, the canvas patches, the leather details. All this because he had written a book. He went sad and silent.

Ava said, “Anyway, there's another flight at noon,” and kept on, sounding hopeful, offering consolation, until she became aware of the silence from Steadman.

Gazing straight ahead, smiling slightly, licking his lips, Steadman held a small bottle in his hands that Ava could tell was empty.

“What did you just go and do?”

Instead of replying to that, he said, “The traffic's moving”—though it wasn't—so he added, “A mile down the road,” for he was blind again, in another dimension of understanding, relaxed, seeing past the jammed-up cars and the bikes, and calculating that they would easily make the flight.

At the airport, Steadman was smiling behind his dark glasses as they checked in.

“Just carry-ons,” Ava said to the woman behind the counter tapping the computer keyboard.

Steadman said softly, as though to himself, “That traffic was in my head.”

Swishing his white cane, he loped confidently toward the small plane, ahead of Ava but following the other boarding passengers.

“Brother Steadman, how're you doing?” a man said from one of the forward seats.

“Bill,” Steadman said, recognizing Styron's voice and, sensing him begin to rise from his seat, “Please don't get up.”

“You're doing just fine,” Styron said. “Wasn't that a great party at the Wolfbeins'?”

“A historic occasion.”

“You made it so. You're a brave guy.”

“Cut it out.”

“No, you're a trouper. I was fetched by the sight of you talking to the president. He was mighty impressed, too.”

Ava's embarrassment was visceral—Steadman sensed it powerfully, feeling what she felt, tightening like a cramp, reproaching him, and he said, “Please don't say that, Bill. I'm the same as always, maybe a little brighter.”

“You're right here, sir,” a woman said—the flight attendant, Steadman knew, directing him to a seat on the aisle. Ava took the window seat.

Steadman was aware of being close to Styron, just behind him, an odor, a mutter, the crunch of Styron's folding a thick newspaper, the sense of his fragile fingers, his knuckles on the crease.

“You going to Boston, Bill?”

“Just to change planes,” Styron said. “Susanna's filming
Shadrach
in North Carolina. She invited me down.”

“I'm seeing a doctor at the Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary.”

“I hope it's good news.”

“Whatever. I'm happy.”

“That's what I mean by brave.”

And again the contraction, the cramp of shame from Ava beside him, though they were not even touching. But he resented her reaction now, like an intrusion into his serenity.

“I'm working on a book.”

“That means everything,” Styron said.

They taxied, the small plane's wheels bumping; they took off, as though suddenly caught and lifted by a sling of wind, and the aircraft twisted and vibrated, the engine noise filling the compartment until they were well aloft and cruising, bumped by hidden angles of clouds and gulps of air.

“I could fly this thing.”

“Sure you could,” Styron said, with magnanimous authority and a little chuckle.

Steadman threw off his seat belt. He hoisted himself from his seat and walked to the cockpit door, which was propped open.

“Hi, Captain.”

The noise was loudest here, the pile-driver racket of pistons and propellers, but one of the pilots sensed him standing at the door. He smiled when he saw the white slender cane and the dark glasses, the Panama hat, the elbows out, head upright, face forward, ears cocked, in a blind man's alert posture, a listening animal.

“Why are you flying along the canal? That's not your usual flight path.”

“Incoming traffic's stacked up to the west because of weather. We've been given a slot on the south-facing runway, so we'll make an easterly approach. Hey, how did you know our bearing?”

“Sunshine,” Steadman said. “The canal entrance is down there. The Sandwich power plant. The harbor. The marsh. The dunes to the east. Scusset to the west—and now we're banking toward Plymouth. Duxbury coming up, and we're hitting the headwind, northwesterly today—”

“Better take your seat, sir.”

“Let me spell you at the controls.”

Shortening his neck in apprehension, one pilot hunched forward, gripping his wheel protectively, while the other pilot kept his gaze on Steadman, looking alarmed at this smiling talkative blind man offering to fly the plane.

“Move over,” Steadman said, nudging the man with his cane.

“I'm going to have to insist that you return to your assigned seat and fasten your seat belt,” the man said, seeing himself and the copilot reflected on the mirror lenses of Steadman's glasses.

“You think I can't fly blind? I can fly better blind.”

“We'll be landing in just a few minutes, sir,” the pilot said, as though to a madman.

“I knew that,” Steadman said, and tapped his cane again. “Marshfield, North River—”

“Step away from the controls!”

At last, Ava touched his arm and said, “Please, Slade.”

Returning to his seat, he brushed the terrified and anxious body of the flight attendant, who asked Ava in a murmur whether he was all right.

Ava was too embarrassed to mention any of this in front of Bill Styron, and was relieved when they had landed and said their goodbyes and were in a cab a few minutes later. She was about to raise the subject of his bizarre behavior in the cockpit when, going through the Sumner Tunnel, Steadman took charge, saying, “Take a hard right after the exit. We're going to Quincy Market. I'll tell you where.”

“Nothing wrong with your eyes, sir,” the cab driver said. His own dark eyes and big nose and part of his smile filled the smeared oblong of the rearview mirror.

“Right here,” Steadman said, and then, as if reading the signs but without looking at them, “Martignetti Liquors. La Rosa Deli. Mama's Pizza. The Big Dig labyrinth.”

Silenced by Steadman's talk, the cab driver began to frown, as though he were being mocked.

“Stop here. We'll walk.”

“You said Quincy Market.”

“But you're not moving. The Union Oyster House is on a one-way street. It's quicker to walk.”

Then he was out of the car and Ava was paying the fare. The driver was nodding at the side mirror and saying, “Where's the fire?” Steadman had hurried ahead, and when Ava caught up with him he was striding, slashing his cane at the sidewalk.

“Why are you doing this?”

He didn't answer, he walked ahead of her, whipping his cane, scattering the other strollers, who, noticing that he was blind, seemed to regard him with a mixture of fear and awe. Farther on, he reached toward the bow window of the Union Oyster House and felt along the single panes, the thick cracked paint, and tapped his way into the entrance.

A man and woman leaving the restaurant stepped back at the sight of this tall blind man—dark glasses, one arm outstretched, the other swishing a white cane, digging its ferrule into the threshold. A young waiter swept by him and bowed, almost genuflected, and said, “Right this way, sir.” Steadman followed the ingratiating voice to a side booth. A dangerous-looking man was always “sir.”

Ava was sliding into the seat as Steadman said, “Too near the bar.”

“The bar is empty, sir.”

“I don't want all those stools and bottles in my face.”

The waiter was probably thinking, But you're blind!

“What about there?” Steadman's white cane swung like a compass needle to indicate an empty table.

“Reserved, I'm afraid.”

Steadman peered at him and said, “Has it escaped your notice that I'm blind?”

“I think we can accommodate you, sir,” the young man said, clearing two of the four place settings from the table in a clatter of silverware. “I'm Kevin. I'll be your waiter today. May I offer you a cocktail?”

Ava was tense, silent, fearful of what Steadman might say next, for he had an unsettling habit of joshing waiters, being amiable and ironic and overfriendly, which was worse than being stern, for it threw them off and sometimes insulted them. But he tapped the menu without looking at it.

“No cocktails,” he said. “I'll have a dozen oysters and a bowl of chowder.”

“The lobster chowder is my personal favorite.”

“Then why don't you order it, Kevin? I'm having the clam chowder.”