Blind Sight (31 page)

“Hey, I know I don’t look like him. But I saw pictures when he was my age. And he used to be just, like, this skinny nerd guy too.”

“So there’s hope for all of us,” Nick says. “That’s good to know.”

Six sets of clearly visible ribs expand and contract with laughter.

“State, State, State,” they chant.

Ivan waits until about a mile in, after they have broken into pairs, with Ivan and Luke leading, to say, “I saw Amy last week. She said she and Darren were breaking up. You going to get back with her?”

Luke thinks about lying curled up with Leila, after they had sex. He thinks about the text Leila sent him from London: “Ur sweet. I love umbrellas.” He thinks about Amy’s email. He thinks that Amy wanting to be with him because his dad is famous is worse than her wanting to be with him because she wanted to get back at Darren. He hears Mark say, “Everybody uses everybody.”

“Nah,” Luke says. “We’re not really a good match.”

“People are gonna be jealous,” Ivan says, after a moment. “And you know people are going to want to be your friend now, just because.”

“Which is totally ridiculous,” Luke says, firmly. “It’s not like
I’m
famous.”

“Yeah, but it’s f-ing Delaware, dude. What else are we going to talk about? Cheese sale at the Amish Market?”

“True.”

“Yeah, listen. Don’t worry. You’ll be news for a little bit but then something else will happen. I’m not gonna lie. I think it’s cool your dad is Mark Franco. But I know you haven’t changed or anything. We all know that. Everybody was psyched you were coming today. Not because your dad’s famous. Everybody likes you for you. We just wanted you back.”

“Thanks,” Luke says. “It’s good to be back,” he lies.

Once they stop talking, though, Luke does begin to feel good.
He enjoys running in a pack again, in the soggy honeysuckle and dog crap–scented air of an August Delaware, and maintaining a pace he can tell is just a little bit faster than what Ivan expected. He tells himself that he is going to look sincerely at everything he passes, in anticipation of the time when he will once again stop really seeing what is around him. He tells himself that he is going to stay present and focused in the moment, discounting those moments where he looks at his watch, which is still set to Los Angeles time so he can more easily estimate what Mark might be doing.

After the run, Luke bikes slowly to the Wellness Center. He takes the longer route, in order to coast down the hill on FairView Road, and catch a breeze.

Outside the Wellness Center, he parks his bike next to Sara’s, puts on his T-shirt, and drags himself up steps he has painted and repainted for the past five years. He pushes open the door. The aroma of the Wellness Center is the aroma of Sara’s room, of Sara herself: orange, lavender, sandalwood.

At the front desk is Lydia, Sara’s partner, whom Luke has known for most of his life, and whose Philadelphian accent and speech pattern is one of the highlights of Pearl’s repertoire of imitations. It was Lydia’s money, settled on her after her divorce from one of the DuPont heirs, that made the Center possible.

“Luke!” screams Lydia, in a whisper. She holds up her hands and shakes them, the gesture for applause in sign language—learned by Sara at a two-week ASL workshop—and the Rising Moon Wellness Center greeting when a class is in session.

Luke takes off his shoes and Lydia gives him one of her two-second, rib-crunching hugs—less an embrace than a chiropractic adjustment.

Luke can hear Sara leading her students in the larger of the two studios through most of the conversation with Lydia. He can also hear Sara in Lydia herself, whose feeling toward Sara borders on the worshipful, and whose imitation-Sara responses—“That is beautiful”
and “What an interesting journey”—slide in between Lydia’s more natural exclamations: “wowie-wow” and “geez Louise.”

The class reaches the final pose, savasana, and falls silent. Luke cannot see Sara, but he can picture her, walking lightly in between the aisles of yoga mats, occasionally bending down to place her hands on someone’s feet, or forehead, or abdomen, her eyes shut, breathing through her nose. Later, those who have been touched by Sara will tell each other about how powerful that moment was for them. Luke has heard how Powerful–Healing–Wise–Compassionate–Beautiful–Special Sara is for all his life, by people who are envious of Luke for being Sara’s child, and therefore a part of all that Specialness.

Lydia says she’s thrilled with the idea of sending the spirit of Rising Moon to Colorado, but, “Holy shmo, Acton won’t be the same without Sara.” She puts her face close to Luke and says into his ear, “I am so proud of her. For once she is thinking about her own happiness.” Luke only just stops himself from jerking his head away from the wetness of Lydia’s consonants.

A loud and reverent “Namaste” comes in a chorus from the other room. It is Sara’s advanced class, and always crowded. Soggy and blissful women begin to filter out of the studio. Many of them spot Luke and want to hug him. They say, “You’ve had quite the summer!” or “I guess you’ve been busy!” in a way Luke does not know how to answer. In order to give himself something to do, Luke moves into the studio, grabs the floor duster, begins sweeping.

“There’s our famous Luke,” booms Howard, Luke’s least-favorite Rising Moon regular. Howard’s lack of genital support underneath his thin sweatpants and his scraggly shoulder hair have bothered Luke for nearly a decade.

“Hi Howard.” Luke sweeps around him.

“Oho!” Howard cries. “Glad to see you haven’t forgotten all the little people!”

Luke looks at Sara, whose usual after-class crowd of devotees has now all turned to him, grinning. Sara’s face is smooth, impassive,
a visiting queen. Luke has always assumed that Sara liked it, being queen. He has never thought that a Sara-who-is-queen was a Sara who was not “thinking about her own happiness.” Luke uses the floor sweeper more vigorously.

Sara rolls up her mat and Luke helps her restack the blankets and then idles outside, waiting. Sara appears and they mount their bikes. For awhile they ride in silence and then Luke asks, “Oh, so, what are you telling people? About the whole situation … with Dad?”

“What are
you
telling people?” Sara counters, her eyes on an approaching car.

“I’m just … what do you mean?”

“Did the guys ask you about it?”

“Kind of.”

“I let people know you were spending the summer with your father,” Sara says. “It’s actually been very enlightening being asked questions. Very revealing, in some ways, don’t you think? Of course, I freely admit that I didn’t know that your father had become a well-known actor. I suppose that reveals something about me.”

The light has changed, but they remain where they are, each with a left foot on the ground, anchoring the bikes.

Luke takes a breath, plunges forward. “I guess we should … um, he told me about coming to see me after I was born, and what you talked about … I mean, what he told you. About himself. The thing he said he didn’t want to be? That he was … you know …” Luke, who has not thought out how to approach this topic with Sara, fumbles.

“I’m not sure what you are referring to,” Sara says.

“Oh.” Luke thinks. “Oh, um … never mind. I just—”

“At that time he expressed some confusion about his sexual identity,” Sara says, evenly. “Is that what you want to talk about?”

“Okay—” Luke looks behind them. A woman is walking her dog, toward them. Cars are passing with their windows down.

“You know you can’t say anything about it,” Luke says, in a rush because the woman with the dog is getting closer. “I mean, not even
that he was … confused or whatever. Just. You know. You haven’t said that, have you? To anyone? Like, Lydia, or anyone?”

The woman with the dog passes them. Sara smiles brilliantly at her and wishes her a beautiful afternoon. “Oh! Oh, you too,” the woman says, momentarily confused and then pleased by Sara’s radiance, as strangers generally are.

“It’s just,” Luke says, quietly, “he’s like, struggled for a long time to get where he is. If anything got spread around, that could hurt him. You know what I’m talking about.”

“Actually, I don’t,” Sara says. “I hope you don’t either, really, because I hope that I’ve taught you not to care what people say about you.”

“It’s not for me.” Luke kicks the spokes of his front tire in frustration. “It’s for him. I don’t care at all. But other people will.”

“And is that how we introduce change in the world?” Sara asks. “By keeping secrets and—” she stops and fiddles with the basket on her bike. “I’m sorry, Luke. I do know what you’re talking about, but if you remember, I didn’t ever tell
you
about Mark’s sexuality. That information wasn’t mine to tell, and I didn’t tell it. I do think people have a right to privacy.”

Sara reaches out and touches Luke’s shoulder.

“Luke, you seem … is there something you want to talk to me about?”

“No,” Luke says. “I’m fine. I just … I just wanted to get that clear, I guess. I feel a little protective of him.”

Sara lets go of Luke and straightens out her bike. She looks like a queen again, smooth faced, ramrod-straight spine, shoulders back.

“We should get home,” Sara says. “You said you wanted to pick up the girls at the station.”

She kicks off her left foot and crosses the street. After a moment, Luke follows her.

• • •

An hour later Luke is leaning against the front door of the Impala, holding up his sign: “GODDESSES REPORT HERE.”

Aurora and Pearl, backpacked and sunglass-y, practically tackle Luke, who is relieved to feel that his sisters, at least, are entirely recognizable and familiar, even though Pearl has cut her hair short again.

“Luke!” Pearl screams. “You are a STUD! Look at him, Rory. He is gorgeous!”

“Since the day he was born,” Aurora says, kissing Luke on the cheek.

“Yes, but now …” Pearl steps back and examines Luke. “Now he’s … what?” Pearl narrows her eyes at Luke, holding up her thumb like a painter considering perspective. Aurora joins her sister and flutters her fingers against her pursed lips.

“Hmmm …” Aurora says. “Yes, definitely something different.”

Luke does his camera face for Aurora and Pearl, complete with eyebrow lift and half smile.

“You’ve lost your kid thing,” Aurora says. “I’m sad.”

Pearl pulls a magazine out of her backpack. The cover photo is a close-up of Mark Franco’s face, staring skeptically at an invisible viewer.

“We think he looks like you,” Aurora says. “Not really so much in the features, but the facial expression. This is totally a Luke expression.”

“Really?” Luke looks at the photo.

“They talk about you in the interview,” Pearl says. “I mean, you were there when it took place, apparently.”

“Oh yeah,” Luke says. “That one. Wow. What’s it say?”

Pearl reads portions of the interview out loud to Luke in the car. Luke takes the long way home, around the cemetery, so they have more time to themselves.

“
‘He’s the biggest sweetheart you’ll ever meet,’ says costar Joelle Fox. ‘And yet, he’s definitely got a dark side too. I think that’s what makes him so sexy,
’ ” Pearl reads. “
Dave Sonderson, who directed Franco in small
roles in two features before casting him on
The Last,
agrees. ‘He has this tremendous quality,’ Sonderson says. ‘He’s an observer, a watcher. And then suddenly he explodes with all this energy and passion. And you know he hasn’t missed a beat. He carries himself with ease, but you know that there’s dynamite in there too.’
”

“Is that accurate?” Aurora asks.

“Ummm,” Luke says.

“ ‘
But it’s not until Franco’s teenage son makes an appearance,
’ ” Pearl reads, skipping to a new section, “
‘that something like a genuine smile appears on his face.’
”

Luke smiles, himself, at this.

“And then this is in parentheses,” Pearl continues. “
‘Luke is Franco’s son with Sara Prescott, a yoga instructor whom Franco met in New York City in 1989. The two were never married.’
”

Luke whips his head around to look at Pearl.

“I know,” she says.

“It’s so interesting,” Aurora reaches into the backseat to take the magazine out of Pearl’s hands. “To hear her sort of dismissed as that. I’m sure Sara won’t take it personally, but it’s funny. She’s spent her life healing people, but it’s your dad who’s famous, just for being an actor, and so she becomes just a yoga teacher from the eighties.”

“She’s stuck inside a parentheses,” Pearl says, from the backseat. “Like Abigail Perkins. Accused of unmarried sex, New York City, 1988. Convicted, but not executed.”

“Women always get stuck in parentheses,” Aurora says.

“Read the part about how wonderful Luke is.”

“ ‘
To all appearances, Luke seems an exceptionally bright and polite young man,
’ ” Aurora reads, “ ‘
And the rapport between father and son is evident. ‘I think I’m more myself around my son,’ Franco says. ‘Than around anyone else. He keeps me honest.’
”

Luke can’t help laughing at this.

“I know,” Pearl says. “ ‘
To all appearances.’
Who else would write a crappy phrase like that but some celebrity journalist? It’s sort of a
boring interview, really. But those pictures of your dad are ridiculously hot. Very Heathcliff meets James Bond.”

“He wants to meet you two,” Luke says. “He’s already heard a lot from the Aurora and Pearl archives. He thinks you both sound awesome.”

“Well, we are that,” Pearl says. “Would we like him?”

“Actually yes. You would. You will.”

“Poor Sara,” Aurora says. “She does all the work of raising you, and your dad gets to have this amazing rapport with the results. Maybe we should all meet our parents for the first time when we’re seventeen.”

“We should go on a manhunt in India for the father formerly known as Paul,” Pearl says to Aurora. “Get the whole band together back in Delaware. Cut an album.”

“There aren’t enough swords,” Aurora says, “for Nana to survive that.”

The house changes with the addition of Luke’s sisters. Nancy, amused by Pearl’s imitations of bourgeois brunch patrons and their nanny-raised children, and treated to a mini lecture by Aurora on the differences between gender and equity feminism, becomes almost jovial. Nana assumes a Mountjoy-style grandmotherliness, and retreats largely to the kitchen for the production of baked goods. Pearl explains to Sara the difference between having read a novel and
knowing
a novel. Sara, who never reads novels, smiles vaguely and opens a bottle of wine at dinner. Luke is aware of Sara’s tension, of his growing irritation at Sara’s tension. He half hopes one of his sisters will say or do something outrageous, to divert Sara’s attention from him, which he can feel coming at him in waves, like sonar. After dinner, Luke goes to the backyard to call his father. There must not be, Luke realizes, lightning bugs in California, because he is now noticing them again.