Laughing Down the Moon (16 page)

I found the mug’s edge, held the teapot over the mug, lowered it until I heard the clink of stainless steel on pottery and poured. I heard the water filling the cup. I heard the small sigh of the teabag as its contents accepted the watery intrusion. I felt really good about this. I could be blind. No, wait. That wasn’t fair. I had been blind for, what? Five minutes? Six? Ten? It was hard to say. Okay, maybe I had been blind for six minutes. That sounded about right. So being blind for six minutes while I made myself tea was not the same as, say, Shiloh being blind. No. She was really blind. Blind with a capital B. I-can’t-take-this-white-scarf-off-my-head blind. I-don’t-even-know-this-scarf-is-white blind.

What was I doing? I wanted to rip the scarf from my eyes, but I was immobilized by the overwhelming feeling that I was making light of something so monumental. My heart, stomach, everything rose into my throat. I held back tears. I shouldn’t be doing this, should I? But I wasn’t doing it flippantly. I wasn’t doing it mockingly. And I certainly wasn’t doing it perversely, was I? I was doing it to better understand Shiloh. I held the countertop’s edge with both hands and took a deep breath. I would keep the scarf on. I would keep it on until the day was over. I wasn’t sure how I would figure out when the day actually was over, but I would, somehow.

Okay, tea now. I wrapped my hands around the mug and raised it to my lips. I realized, in the absence of warmth in my palms, that I expected the mug to be hot. I also expected my scarf-covered face to be caught by the steam rising from the mug. Neither happened. I stuck a finger in the tea. It was barely lukewarm. How long had it taken me to make it? Shame over my gloating at being able to successfully and easily be blind brought heat to my face. I placed the mug on the counter. Millions of people lived without vision. Was I going to give up now or was I going to experience something that might allow me a more empathetic understanding?

I took the mug, with the tea bag still in it, since there’d be no way it would over-steep in the cooling water. I’d be lucky if the water leeched any flavor out of the leaves at all. I very slowly and cautiously made my way to the living room and set the mug on the fainting couch. It would be safe there. I inched over to the stereo. After what seemed like a long time, I found the power button and pushed it on. I then began searching for the function button. I wanted public radio, not the CDs. The CD would not help me discover the time, and I wanted some chatting to fill my mind. Music wouldn’t fill the void right now. I knew my tea was already cold, so I took my time, trying to picture the buttons on the stereo. I was doused by splashes of country, rhythm and blues, pop, more country and finally talking. I listened to the voices until I recognized that they were indeed Minnesota Public Radio voices I was hearing. It was as if I had been reunited with old, lost friends. I sighed and stood up slowly. I made my way back over to the couch, looking for my tea mug with my hands before sitting down. Finally. I stretched out my legs, feeling every fiber of muscle ease itself into relaxing, from my hips all the way down into my toes. Finally.

I sipped my cold, barely peachy tea. It was tolerable. I should have grabbed a travel mug though. That way I couldn’t spill it and no spiders or dirt could get into it. How would I even know if there was a spider in my tea? How would someone who was really blind ever know if her food was clean and safe to eat? There was another mental addition to my list of questions for Shiloh. I went to take a gulp of my tea—no sense sipping something that wasn’t hot. My plan was to drain the contents of the mug before any foreign objects, or beings, could find their way into the beverage. I was overzealous about my gulp. The majority of the tea landed on my shirt. When I jumped at the shock, more tea sloshed out of the other side of the mug. I heard the tea land on fabric with a soft, wet ploff.

Great. I had a cold, wet spot on my shirt and another possibly on my skirt or on the couch. I wanted to lift the scarf enough to peek at the couch. It wouldn’t really be cheating, would it?

I held my mug with both hands and guided it to my mouth to finish any dregs before they could do further damage. I heard the plop of the teabag as it dislodged itself from one side of mug’s interior and fell to the other. Well, that was that; the mug was empty. I placed the mug on the floor. I let my hands look for a wet spot on the couch and then on my skirt. I found nothing. Mystery not solved.

The rest of the evening’s experiment was no more gratifying. I hated being blind. My stomach growled. Dwight called from upstairs. Through the voices on the radio, I heard other, suspect noises from various parts of the house. The aura of needing to protect myself hung in the air about me, a residue leftover from working on my home security package article. My pulse pounded as I thought of horror movies. My phone rang three separate times. I thought about the article I needed to finish. My stomach growled more loudly, but not loudly enough to drown out my thoughts and questions. I sat still until it was time to sleep. It took me a long time to pee, brush my teeth and go to bed—hungry and naked save the scarf. I slept poorly knowing that behind every noise I heard, there was a homicidal madman, just waiting to get me.

Chapter Twenty-One

Girlie Points

“Clitoris!” I shrieked.

“Yes, clitoris.” Shiloh leaned back, crossed her arms over her chest and smiled. “And I’ll take an extra twenty points for that.”

“This isn’t fair,” I groaned. I recorded her points on the paper where she already had twice as many points as I did. We were playing Scrabble at her house on her Braille Scrabble board. She was beating the skirt off me.

“You were willing to play with girlie points, so it is fair.”

“Yeah, but how was I to know you were going to have a triple word score with ‘vulva’?”

“That was a good one, wasn’t it?” she gloated.

“Yeah, forty-five points good!” Even though my pride was buried somewhere under her letter tiles, just looking at her made me feel like I had won. The many-paned windows rattled around us as the wind blew. The weather presented a stark contrast to the warmth of Shiloh’s kitchen with its wonderful copper ceiling and red and orange brick walls. The wind was battling everything in its path, and it had started to sleet sometime during our game. I sat across the table from Shiloh.

She was here laughing with me, scoring extra points for every strictly feminine word, and it was amazing just to be in her presence. It was a busy way to play Scrabble—there was much more touching of the letters on the board than usual. I was in awe of her ability to memorize the board after feeling it. She was at no disadvantage, which was fortunate because she was quite competitive. I didn’t mind losing once in a while, and if I had to lose to anyone, I’d certainly choose to lose to Shiloh.

“Quit staring and make your word,” she said, smiling.

“Right.” I rearranged my letters on the table. I wasn’t confined to working in the tray since Shiloh wasn’t going to see my letters. G, H, O, I, R, A and Y. Not much to work with, and I was distracted to boot. “Okay, let’s see…” I said to let Shiloh know I’d stopped staring and was looking for a word. “Ohhh-kaaay.” I drew out the word and re-rearranged the tiles. Y, H, O, R, I, G and A. I looked at the board to see what letters were open. The tiny bumps on the tiles caught the light from the hanging Tiffany lamp above us.

“Shiloh, how long did it take you to learn to read Braille?”

“A couple of months I think.”

“That’s fast, isn’t it?” I asked. “I mean it’s like learning to read all over again. Doesn’t it take little kids longer than a couple of months to learn to read?”

“I don’t think it takes that long for little kids, and anyway, I was really desperate to do it. I started practicing before my vision was completely gone. I think that may have helped.”

“Why?”

“Why did it help?”

“Yeah.”

“I still have pictures in my head of the letter and how the dots look from when I first started learning. So I had the added benefit of seeing and feeling them before I had to rely on feeling alone.”

“I suppose that would help.”

“You know, that being said, the kids at Davidoff Academy learn Braille really quickly, and many of them have never been able to see. I don’t think it takes most of them even as long as it took me.”

“Kids are better at learning, no offense.”

“True,” she agreed. “Plus, it’s really lonely.” She paused. “No, not lonely. It makes you feel really vulnerable, I guess, not to be able to read, to have to rely on others for everything. It makes you feel vulnerable and lonely.” Even though it was still my turn, she began reading the words that had already been played on the Scrabble board. She picked off a few tiles and laid them down in front of her. She turned them toward me. They spelled my name.

“Here,” she said and reached until she found my hand. She put my fingertips on the little lettered squares. “You’re lucky, you only have to learn four letters for starters.”

I closed my eyes and felt my name. One high dot for the A’s. A line of dots for the L’s. A funny fat T of dots for the R and a trio of spread-out dots for the U. I tried to memorize each letter.

A heated jolt rushed through my hands when Shiloh placed her hands over mine again, but I didn’t open my eyes. I held still and reveled in her touch.

“Now close your eyes,” she said.

“They already are.”

She then held both my hands in one of hers and picked them up off the tiles. She held my hands for a moment longer before lowering them to the tiles, which were now in disarray. Was there a way to tell the tops of letters? I put them back in order, hoping I had the As and Ls in the right places, thinking I did.

“Okay, I did it. And if I’m wrong, well, I’ll just have to let my parents know I’ve changed my name.” I felt Shiloh’s hands against mine and took mine away so she could read.

“You did it!”

“Did I?” I opened my eyes. I did! Just as I was going to ask for twenty extra girlie points since my name was strictly feminine, the doorbell rang. The pizza Shiloh had ordered and paid for over the phone was here. That had been the bribe she had used earlier that evening to get me to drive over—she’d provide a pizza and wine. As if I needed to be bribed.

“I got it,” I said and touched her arm to let her know to stay seated.

“You can’t. I have to sign for the credit card,” she said, getting up and following me.

I let Shiloh pass me in the foyer and watched as her hair was blown about her face as she opened the door. She laughed as she pulled the delivery girl into the foyer. The girl set the pizza on the small table beside her and guided Shiloh’s hand so she could sign in the right place on the receipt. Outside the sleet raced sideways on the wind. The trees were frosted, and my car was unrecognizable, covered in icy white in Shiloh’s driveway. As the pizza girl left, a blanket of bad weather blew in the front door and melted into tiny diamonds on the terra-cotta floor.

“It’s lousy out, hey?” Shiloh asked me after she closed the door.

“Yup, perfect night to get beaten at Scrabble.”

Shiloh laughed like bells, music to my ears.

“You might have to stay the night,” she said over her shoulder, one hand trailing along the wall, the other balancing the pizza.

I didn’t know what to say to that. I wanted to make a joke, but I was so wrought up over the prospect of being near her all night that I couldn’t. Of course, I’d probably be on the couch if I did spend the night. We hadn’t really known each other long enough for anything else, had we? I felt like we had, but what was proper? And did I really care?

Around midnight I discovered I really did care what was proper. I didn’t want to screw this up by jumping in too quickly. I wasn’t sure it was right to start in the first place.

* * *

On the drive back home I pulled over to where I supposed the curb might be to tug at one of my frozen wiper blades, willing it to come loose from its icy mooring. I thought of the disappointment on Shiloh’s face when I told her I couldn’t spend the night with her. The truth was that I was really apprehensive, perhaps even terrified about getting too attached to her, yet I desired nothing more than to melt into her every fiber. I wanted to lose myself in her. But if I did, I ran the risk of literally losing myself again like I had with Mickey. And with Dr. Browning’s help I was just beginning to recover, to pull myself out of The Funk. I most definitely did not want to go back there when it all fell apart with Shiloh.

The wiper blade finally gave way with a tearing noise that was muffled by my ski hat. I thumped it back down on the windshield a few times in hopes of being able to see clearly for the rest of the ride home. If only I could clear the view from my heart as easily. Then I could figure out what I wanted—a relationship with an intelligent, sexy, hot woman or a safe existence untroubled by the dangers of love.

I groaned out loud and threw myself over the hood of my Honda. It felt good to just lie there pressing my cheek against the frozen crust of sleet that still clung to my car. Eventually, I figured anyone looking out his or her window or driving by might worry, so I stood up and brushed off the front of my coat. Goddess help me. This love thing was making me get all dramatic. I looked back at the few feet of visible tire tracks. I could turn around and go back to Shiloh’s. I could, I thought. But I didn’t.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Seeing

Shiloh’s voice was like a balm. On the phone she told me about her family's plans for a few upcoming get-togethers. The first of which was her youngest nephew’s bar mitzvah at the end of this week. My mind spun with all of the arranging she had to do in order to be at each of the events. She had several nieces and nephews, and she laughed over how much she wished at least one of them were old enough to drive so she didn’t need either of her parents, both of whom were beginning to experience EDS, or Elderly Driving Syndrome. Even though she couldn’t see, she sensed that her mom’s and her dad’s driving skills were seriously impaired.