Blind Sight (18 page)

W
hen I was ten, my sisters and I spent two weeks with Aunt Caroline and Uncle Louis at their house in White Plains, New York. Sara had not come with us because she was in Colorado leading a Rolfing seminar. Nana didn’t come with us either. She went to Nebraska to visit her sister. We took the train by ourselves to White Plains, with Aurora acting as our leader, which meant that she got to hold the tickets and was in charge of keeping track of the stops so we would get out at the right one. I remember that she took this duty very seriously.

Aunt Linny met us at the train station in a brand-new car. I remember that because she almost hit somebody pulling out of the train station parking lot, and she got totally flustered by this and made us promise not to tell Uncle Louis.

My aunt and uncle live in a really big house. A deliberately big house, I would say. We live in a big house too, but it’s not all fixed up and new, and this makes it seem more accidentally large.

I’ve never been exactly clear on our family’s finances. Sara’s sort of a well-known person in the world of yoga and alternative healing, but that’s not, like, a high-finance world. The Rising Moon Wellness Center is successful, but it’s Sara’s friend Lydia that actually owns it. I think Sara still gets some money from Barry, Paul’s brother, for my sisters, or maybe as part of the divorce. Nana made money from her books, and also I think my grandfather’s family had money, and she got some when he died. My sisters and I earned money by working at the Wellness Center, and Aurora babysat. Pearl and I had our little driveway-shoveling business in the winter. So there seemed to be money around, in a general way, although we don’t have a fancy car, or designer clothes, or go on ski trips, like a lot of the kids at school. Well, actually my sisters have some designer clothes, because Aunt Linny always gives them clothes for their birthdays and at Christmas. Our nicest presents always come from Aunt Caroline and Uncle Louis. Not necessarily the best presents, because both Sara and Nana are really good at giving presents, and Aunt Nancy always sends us big gift certificates for books, but I mean my aunt and uncle give us stuff that we wouldn’t even think about asking for. This computer I am writing on was a gift from them.

Anyway, Aunt Linny went out of her way to make everything nice for us on that trip. She took us to the swimming pool at her country club and to the Bronx Zoo. We went into New York City for the day and saw the musical
Titanic
on Broadway. Doing things with Aunt Linny is fun because of the element of conspiracy that Aunt Linny creates around her. Standing in front of the concession stand at the Bronx Zoo, Aunt Linny would gaze and sort of murmur, “Things to eat … 
should
we?” and we would all say, “Yes, let’s get pretzels,” or whatever and Aunt Linny would say, “Pretzels! Really? Well, I won’t tell if you won’t,” and somehow eating pretzels became this very subversive action.

What I remember best, though, was the Fourth of July party that happened while we were there. That memory has a couple of different parts to it.

The first one is that Aunt Caroline had forgotten something she needed at the grocery store that day and Uncle Louis took me with him in his car to go get it. I didn’t really like being in the car with Uncle Louis by myself, because I don’t really like him so much. Pearl always says I like everyone, and that I am completely uncritical, but that’s not totally true. I have likes and dislikes like everyone else. People often make that mistake about me.

Uncle Louis is not a bad person. It’s just that I’m not comfortable around him. He used to pat me on the head. That might not sound like a big deal, but I didn’t like it. For one thing, he is really tall, and has big hands, and his hand would hover over my head before he patted it, and so there was a moment when I knew that at any second this hand was going to descend, and there would be three or four pats, of varying degrees of strength, and that I would just have to stand there while it happened, and I never knew what to do, like should I say, “Thank you,” or what. What I always really wanted to say was, “Don’t touch my head.” He also has this way of speaking like he’s giving a demonstration of what a powerful speaking voice sounds like, as if we should all be totally mesmerized by how brilliant he is, even if he’s saying something like, “Pass the juice.”

Growing up, there was always some extra gift for me that was specifically just from him, and it was always some gift that was very “boy” like binoculars, or a compass, or a telescope, and I liked all those things, I was grateful for them, but I didn’t like how it made it seem as if Uncle Louis was “looking out for me,” or something like that.

I know that Uncle Louis is supposed to be this incredibly impressive person, and people talk about how “charismatic” and “charming” he is, but I just don’t get it. Pearl doesn’t either, but with her it’s more about Uncle Louis’s hair. “Uncle Louis walks around like somebody just told him what a great head of hair he has,” is how she describes him.

I don’t mean to imply that there is anything creepy about my
Uncle Louis. Sara always has nice things to say about him because he helped her get divorced and Sara thought he was so great she introduced him to Caroline, and they got married. And it’s not like we see all that much of him, or that he’s a major player in my life.

Anyway, I remember being in the car with him, that Fourth of July, and I remember at the grocery store the clerk handed me the bag of whatever it was and said, “Why don’t you carry this for your granddad?” And Uncle Louis got
into
it with this clerk, like he reprimanded her about making personal remarks to strangers, and I was just standing there with this bag of groceries. It was very uncomfortable. I guess Uncle Louis is used to people just gazing at him in awe, or admiring his hair or something, but it was an honest mistake and, I mean, he
is
sort of old enough to be my grandfather.

So then we got back in the car and Uncle Louis was totally silent, and then I said something, or did something, and he said, “I understand I have no control over the way you are being brought up, but when you are with me, Luke, you will obey my rules.”

I don’t remember what I did to provoke that. I felt like I didn’t do anything at all and I felt like he was making sort of a slur on Sara, who always, like I said, spoke really nicely about
him:
“He held out a hand to me in a dark hour of my life. He’s so good for Caroline,” etc. Anyway, just because Sara isn’t a big rich lawyer doesn’t mean she’s not a competent parent or that we didn’t have rules.

The party turned out to be fun, though. Right before the guests arrived, Aunt Caroline said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we all played croquet?” and my sisters and I set up a course in the backyard and we had a tournament, and everybody played. We had a good view of the country club’s fireworks right from the backyard.

The last part of this memory is of Uncle Louis and Aunt Caroline getting into a fight after the party. They fought in their bedroom, and the three of us could hear it, and so Aurora said we should all go out in the yard and pick up the croquet hoops.

“It’s ’cause all the women were flirting with Uncle Louis,” Aurora
said. “That’s why they’re fighting. Because Uncle Louis is so handsome.”

“Gross,” said Pearl.

“Also they had too much to drink,” Aurora said. “When you drink, it affects your judgment.” (I totally have to remind her of this conversation.)

“How can you tell if Aunt Linny is drunk?” Pearl asked.

Then Pearl did an imitation of Aunt Linny playing croquet, where she would start to line up her mallet in completely the wrong direction and then go, “Oh, oh, where am I supposed to go now? Which one is me? Am I orange still? What should I be doing?” and then an imitation of how Aunt Linny took these tremendous whacks at her ball, I mean just creaming it, and how we all had to dive out of the way. I remember standing in that yard and laughing so hard I was crying at Pearl doing this imitation. And part of my laughing, and general happiness at that moment, I have to say, was that I was glad that someone was yelling at Uncle Louis and his stupid hair.

I am remembering this because we are having a Fourth of July party here, today, with this other family of mine. It seems weird to call them my family since I’m coming in halfway through the movie, as it were, but Bubbles, at least, seems to feel like I’m as much a Franco as a Prescott. Apparently I am not a Boyle at all.

“You’re a Franco,” is what she said to me several times yesterday. It’s sometimes a little difficult to follow the logic of Bubbles’s conversation, though.

“I’m the best cook,” Bubbles told me, at the Kroger where we picked up two tons of meat and a box of frozen veggie burgers for me. “I don’t make fancy things because I don’t have time. I had to work full-time and raise a son. But what I cook, I cook good. Everybody loves my cooking. You live with your grandma, right? Your grandma and your mom?”

(Time for me to nod and begin opening mouth.)

“Yeah, I didn’t have my mother around to help me,” Bubbles continued on. “I had to help her. People say that it’s so amazing, how I do everything for everybody, but that’s just what I do. I drink coffee late at night and it doesn’t keep me up because when you work like I do, you go to sleep when you need to sleep. That’s what I do. I sleep when I need to sleep.”

Even if you ask her a direct question, you get a lot of other things besides your answer. For instance, I asked her if she grew up speaking Spanish at home, because both her parents were from Mexico.

“Yeah, people always tell me how my son looks like me,” Bubbles said. “Let me tell you, I turned heads in my day. I still turn heads. I coulda married, like, five different doctors, but you know what, I take care of enough doctors at work, I don’t need to take care of another one at home. You take Spanish at school or something?”

(Nod from me and the beginnings of the idea of opening my mouth.)

“Yeah, if you speak another language,” Bubbles said, “it’s like a sign of education. If you’re white. If you’re Spanish and you speak Spanish then everybody’s like, ‘Speak English, this is America.’ My parents both came here when they were little kids. My grandfather said to my father, ‘We speak American now.’ You know what my mother called my son? She called him “
flaco,
” because that means skinny. He was the skinniest baby ever. People thought I didn’t feed him. Did I feed him? I fed him every second of the day. Look what happened. Now he’s a big star and he eats nothing but those fucking shakes.”

I don’t think that Bubbles knows much Spanish. She is a Catholic, though. I found that out, and my dad is too because there is a picture in the house (in a white frame with a gold cross on it) of him being baptized. He never said anything to me about that.

I didn’t even get a chance to talk to Aurora or Pearl yesterday, even though I had texted them that I would, because Bubbles kept me pretty busy with her, and I didn’t feel like I could whip out my
phone and make a call. Honestly, I’m not sure if there was even a moment when I could have
said
something like, “I need to call my sisters.” Bubbles had me mow her lawn at one point, but I needed both hands for the mower. All in all, it was a pretty long day. I didn’t get to run, either. So I’m going to go now. I’ve charted a little course for myself. Okay, let’s kick it in gear now and get out of the house before Bubbles is up.

Luke is about halfway down the block when he identifies the car Mark rented coming up the street. For a moment, Luke thinks about cutting through someone’s lawn and avoiding it. The car slows down and Mark rolls down the passenger window.

“Are you running away?”

“Just running. I didn’t think you’d be back so early,” Luke says.

“Can you wait for two minutes? I’ll just park and change.”

“Okay.”

Luke waits. He tells himself that he is irritated because now he will have to do a shorter run. Mark’s knees start to hurt after about four miles. Luke does some squats. After a bit, Mark comes jogging up the street and Luke starts running a little before Mark gets to him. Mark stays a few steps behind until they both have to stop at an intersection.

“How’s it going?” Mark asks.

“Fine,” Luke says. “How are you?”

“I owe you one,” Mark says quietly. “Thank you.”

Luke wants to say, “Whatever,” but he doesn’t. He just nods.

Later in the afternoon, Luke finds himself immediately accepted by and assimilated into the Franco family. He is hugged by all of his father’s uncles and cousins and their wives and husbands. He is offered beers and mocked about his veggie burger. Francos instruct
other Francos to hold the camera so that Luke can be in the picture. Luke is enjoined to try Aunt Sheila’s potato salad, to help Uncle Robbie bring out more ice, to listen to stories of Franco family lore.

So this one time, me and Frankie were driving Pops over to the VA and Frankie, he thought he’d be real cute and tell Pops …

No, dude, Robbie was scared of that fuckin cat, man, he’d be all running away from it, and Trey and me we used to take that cat and …

But then I remembered that this chick, she had her name on her license plate, so I climbed out the window, man, and ran out to her car while she was still sleeping …

None of the stories Luke hears involve his father. Luke watches Mark listening to these same stories. Mark laughs and says, “Oh shit,” or “Oh, man,” in response.

Luke has trouble sorting out who belongs to whom in his father’s family. Bubbles is the oldest of her four siblings, two of whom are present, with their wives and five of their collective children, who are all Mark’s cousins. There is another cousin present from an absent uncle, and two cousins who are honorary cousins, the offspring of an absent aunt’s second husband’s first wife. Additionally, there are two of Bubbles’s coworkers on hand.

There are children of the cousins at the party too, all of them under the age of twelve. Luke watches as Mark’s cousin Kerry offers Mark her newborn. Mark handles the baby easily, nonchalantly, bouncing it lightly in his arms as he talks to his Uncle Robbie. The baby reaches out a hand and touches Mark’s chin. Luke watches as Mark does his upside-down smile and shakes the tiny hand. Kerry takes a picture of Mark holding the infant up to his face.