Now I See You (20 page)

And now I’d found Dr. Goodstine, my dream doctor. Tall and unassuming with a pointy gray beard and glasses, Dr. Goodstine’s eyes were gentle. He had an unmistakably paternal air about him. The man had even given me eye patches to bring home for Lorenzo, so he could play pirate. He got it. Finally, a doctor who understood that I was a person, not just a collection of cells. Back when I was nineteen, I didn’t think that was such a tall order but after having seen a slew of specialists, Dr. Don’t-Shoot-the-Messenger Hall and Dr. Don’t-Tell-Me-Your-Feelings Turner included, I knew just how rare it was.

It had taken years for me to find Dr. Goodstine, but he was worth the wait. When the last test was completed at almost seven p.m., he invited David and me into his office to talk. After devoting eleven hours to my case, he spent another hour just talking to us, explaining everything in real-person language, answering every one of our questions, even ones that would’ve had Dr. Turner calling in the men in white suits, such as “Do you know other women with RP who have kids? Are their kids okay? I mean, they didn’t accidentally walk them out into traffic or anything, right? What I’m doing is not totally insane—is it?”

I’m sure he thought I could benefit from a brief sojourn in a mental health facility, but he answered my questions, probably because he guessed I didn’t have anyone else who could.

Dr. Goodstine had good news, too. Well, good news and bad news. On the bright side, even though it seemed to me that my pregnancies had sped up my vision loss, there was no compelling evidence of that in the test results. Yes, I’d lost a few degrees of my visual field, but nothing drastic. My visual acuity was considerably worse, but this was probably because—and here was the bad news—I’d developed cataracts. It was a common development in RP patients and nothing to worry about, he assured me. In fact, the cataracts could possibly be removed if they got significant enough, although I’d have to judge first whether the improvement in my vision was worth the surgery. Decoded, what that meant was: I might be so blind by then, there’d be no point.

And, of course, he mentioned, I did have some edemas in my eyes—well, not edemas exactly, just swelling that was edemalike—but they probably weren’t worth treating with medication since the gain was minimal and the side effects were somewhat bothersome.

I smiled, thinking of Dr. Turner’s failed experiment. Here was a test I’d given Dr. Goodstine, and he’d passed with flying colors.

When we were finally through, he recommended a killer place for Philly cheese steaks on our way out of town, and walked us to the elevators.

I thanked him profusely, pumping his hand with both my hands. How could I communicate how much his competence and kindness meant to me? The man had devoted his life to finding a cure for my strange, rare disease. He spent every day, all day in that lab, working on it. Knowing that made me feel enormously hopeful. Dr. Goodstine was on the case. It didn’t matter if he found a cure in time for me, or even if he ever found a cure at all. He was
trying
. How could I explain what that meant? I couldn’t, of course, but I gave it a shot.

“God bless you,” I blurted out, and then there was no shutting me up. “That sounds crazy I know. I mean, I sound like my grandmother, but really, God bless you Dr. Goodstine. You’re a good, good man and I’ll never forget you.”

He grinned. “Well, I’ll be seeing you again. Call me in two or three years, and we’ll bring you in to see how things are going. And maybe, by then, I’ll have something more promising in the way of treatment.”

On the ride back to New York, I called my parents, who’d just put the kids to bed, and relayed Dr. Goodstine’s rosy report.

“See?” my mother said. “Everything is going to be all right.”

It did appear that way.

And then Rosa started walking.

Tip #15: On keeping track of toddlers

The best option would be to lock your toddler in the apartment with you and throw away the key. Sadly, that’s frowned upon and also, inconvenient.

Particularly in public, you’ll want to make the most of audible clues. Avoid cultivating strong, silent types; in this respect only, loud motor-mouths are exactly what you want. Belled collars will get you a visit from Child Protective Services but belled anklets will look bohemian and cool in a vaguely Southeast Asian way. Squeaky sneakers, aka “squeakers,” are also socially accepted, though hearing that irritating sound every time your child takes a step may afford you mental problems to go along with your visual ones.

15. GOOD MOMMY

Damnit,
I thought,
not again
.

It was a sunny spring afternoon and I was sitting on a bench in the playground near my house holding a naked, filthy babydoll named Bobby. I had my daughter’s doll but not my daughter.

Where the hell is she?
I thought, turning my head toward the slide where I saw two-year-old Rosa a minute ago playing with her big brother. There was Lorenzo, right where I’d left him, pretending to be sucked headfirst into a lava pit. Rosa, however, was not with him.

She was not thundering across the shaky bridge or shimmying down the fireman pole. She was not in the sandbox or attempting to reach the monkey bars. She was not in this playground, as far as I could tell.

I mobilized for action by rising to my feet, making sure to keep a hold of Bobby’s beanbag body; I wouldn’t lose the beloved doll, too. My heart picked up speed until it was racing so fast all I could hear was the sound of my blood pumping in my ears.

Why did I take my eyes off her?
I fumed.
I should have learned my lesson by now.

I’d just looked away for a minute to locate the sippy cup that had fallen out of my diaper bag, but still, I cursed myself for not knowing better. Then I cursed myself for wasting time cursing myself. I needed to take action. I had taken my toddler to a crowded public playground in the heart of New York City and I had lost her. As I pissed away precious minutes standing there, she could be darting out of the playground gate—damn those laissez-faire parents who never shut the gate behind them—and running toward the four-lane intersection just steps away. She could be wandering into the bodega on the corner, or striking up a conversation with the unsettling middle-aged man who sat near the tire swing but never had any children with him. I could not just stand there.

Do something,
I told myself.
Now. Go. Move.

“Lorenzo,” I called, walking fast over to the slide. “Your sister. Where’s your sister?”

He shrugged before hurtling himself down the slide, bellowing his head off as he simulated being burned alive by hot magma. He was not, after all, his sister’s keeper.

This is exactly why I need to tell people about my eyesight,
I thought,
so I don’t rely on a four-year-old to help me parent.

Now I was running, darting around monkey bars, peering up the spiral slide. My fist was squeezed tight around Bobby’s soft hand, her body jerking this way and that as I rushed one way, then changed directions, second-guessing myself.

Come on, honey,
I thought.
Come find Mommy.

I tried to strategize but my brain had stopped working, filled instead with two words screaming in repetition:
my baby my baby my baby.

I needed to assess if it was time to get help—another mom, the police, someone who would do what I couldn’t and find my daughter—but I couldn’t assess anything because my brain had short circuited. I couldn’t even judge how long it’d been that I’d been looking: one minute? five? ten? What was she wearing? I didn’t remember. Where had I seen her last? I’d already forgotten. Did I have a recent picture?

No, damnit, no,
went the wail inside my head,
this cannot be happening
.

I reached the playground gate, which was ajar, and then there was nowhere else to go. I was sweating. Panting. Dizzy.

I closed my eyes.

Please,
I prayed,
please, just let me find her and I will never let this happen again.

I called her name, questioningly at first, and again, in a higher pitch. I called it three, four times, sending my voice out like a fishing line to catch her.

please please please

“Mommy!”

I swiveled to the sound. There she was, sitting on the same bench where I had been sitting a few minutes before, swinging her tiny feet, clad in pink Stride Rites, and holding a snack bag of Goldfish. Her eyes, electric blue like the center of a flame, were smiling at me and she waved one chubby, crummy hand energetically in my direction.

The sudden relief upset my equilibrium so much I thought for a second I was going to hurl.

But instead, I walked over slowly, sat down beside her, and pulled her onto my lap. Maybe the weight of her against my chest would stop me from having a full-on heart attack.

I wanted to give her a stern talking-to about running away but I couldn’t because chances were, she’d been sitting there the whole time.

I wanted to say something—
I’m sorry. I’m trying my best. I’ll do better.—
but it would be insane to think I could explain my predicament to a two-year-old. I couldn’t explain my predicament to grown-ups. That is, I wouldn’t. What I did instead was scramble to keep a secret that kept getting harder and harder to hide. I protected the secret when I should be protecting my children.

I stroked Rosa’s hair, for my benefit more than hers. Rosa’s hair was golden, just like a fairytale character. Except that it wasn’t just one color. There was the pale sun-bleached chunks on top but peeking out in between were darker, tawny bits, more the shade of a lion’s fur. In the back it was darker still, burnt, like the crust of crème brûlée.

“Bobby was looking for you,” I told her, offering her the babydoll. She grabbed Bobby out of my still-shaking hand and smashed a handful of Goldfish against its fabric mouth. Then she smashed another handful into my mouth.

“Good mommy!” she squealed.

No, I’m not,
I thought, chewing the grubby Goldfish,
I’m not a good mommy at all.

When Rosa took her first steps, my instinct was to push her back down. I didn’t do it of course. Still, the fear that filled me was powerful and persuasive.

“You are screwed!” Fear cackled. “Good luck with that.”

Immediately, Guilt popped up, sounding eerily like my mother.

“What kind of a mother lets Fear in, at a moment like this?” she chastised, clucking her teeth. “Some people should never have kids.”

Then, just in the nick of time, Joy rushed in, doing back handsprings and waving her pom poms madly, and soon I was shrieking and applauding, oohing and ahhing, and repeating incessantly “What a BIG GIRL!” which is precisely the protocol detailed in the Milestones section of the Mother of the Year Handbook.

This will be fine
, I thought to myself.
I can handle this
.

I was, of course, dead wrong. I couldn’t even begin to handle it.

In learning to walk, Rosa was coming into her own, blossoming into the girl she was destined to be.

That girl wasn’t mellow, not even moderately.

That girl was a balls-to-the-wall, thrill-seeking, high-flying speed demon.

That girl was a firecracker with a mischievous sense of humor. And I now see that her first great prank was leading us to believe, for the better part of a year, that she was our easy child.

People have different names for the category of child my daughter fit into as a toddler. Laissez-faire folks called her “a free spirit,” the practical-minded thought she was “high-maintenance,” and old-school disciplinarians deemed her a “hellion.” But the phrase just about everyone agreed on is “a handful.” When Rosa was between the ages of one and three, you could count on someone observing, “Wow, that one is really a handful, huh?” every single time we stepped outside.

I was spared having to think of a reply because I’d be too busy grabbing her by her collar before she stepped into oncoming traffic, or yanking her back from petting a dead rat, or knocking a shard of glass out of her hand before she swallowed it.

Don’t get me wrong. From the start, I loved my daughter’s exuberance. I was awestruck and inspired by her spirit. Which is why it was really too bad that I had to spend every waking second trying to crush it.

What else could I do? I wanted to keep the kid around, after all. Shielding that whirling dervish from harm would’ve been an uphill battle for a normal parent, much less one who was already half blind and had another young child to care for.

As soon as she walked, she ran, and as soon as she ran, I knew I had a problem. A big, fucking problem.

It’s not a problem unique to visually impaired people. In fact, everyone that has more than one child but still only one set of eyes encounters the same challenge. Every parent has, at one point or another, lost track of their child in some crowded public space, whether it’s a playground or a zoo or a supermarket—not in a serious way, not long enough to call the authorities or anything, but long enough to make you scared, sick-to-your-stomach, bargaining-with-God scared. It happens to everyone. It’s just that it happened to me on a regular basis.

When it was Lorenzo I was looking for, it was almost always a false alarm. Whether it was the fact that he was my firstborn, or just his naturally cautious outlook, he was never far. When David cut the cord on his birth day, he left the million little invisible rubber bands that kept Lorenzo always bouncing back to me.

Rosa, though, just never had that back-to-Mommy boomerang. Before she could walk, she cleaved to me, but only because I was her ride. Once she got mobile, she was off like a bottle rocket, and I swear I could hear her hissing “See you suckas!” as she whizzed past, shimmering golden hair flowing behind her like melted metal.