Love in the Present Tense (16 page)

MITCH,
age
37:
flashes and floaters

There are only two times I can remember Leonard needing me. Only two times he seemed really scared, and came running to me, wanting me to be a father to him. Most of the time he had this life thing aced. But there were these two times.

They fell a dozen years apart, almost to the day. Both times I was right in the middle of making love to Barb when he tapped me on the shoulder—literally or figuratively—to call me away. I suppose I was loath to be interrupted, both times. At the time I'm sure what I was doing seemed all-important. But, looking back, Barb let me make love to her hundreds of times. Leonard let me father him only twice. So I suppose it was worth the interruption.

The first time, he tapped me on the shoulder because he couldn't breathe. The second time it was because he couldn't see.

The phone rang, and I didn't care.

“Don't get it,” I said. I was on the bottom, and she looked like she was about to get it. “Let it go,” I said.

“My phone is on call forwarding,” she said. “It could be Harry. I have to pick up.”

Fortunately, by then I didn't mind the interruption nearly so much, because after the use of the word “Harry” things were pretty well dead in the water anyway.

“Hello,” she said, still sitting astride me. Then, “Yes, he's right here, hon.” She covered the mouthpiece with one hand. “It's Leonard,” she said. “He sounds upset.”

When I got to Jake and Mona's house, he was sitting on the porch in the pitch dark. At first I didn't even see him. There were no lights on in the house; the whole world was asleep minus two. Then I saw him making his way down the walk.

The two words he'd said on the phone still jarred around in my head. Flashes and floaters. Two big red flags of his eye condition.

“Leonard,” I said when he got into my new car. “How long have you been having them?”

“The flashes a few days. Floaters around the same time. But tonight I was getting the curtain in my left eye, so then I got scared.”

“Why didn't you tell someone?” My voice just kept rising. “Why didn't you tell me?”

I hadn't intended to shout. But the curtain. That meant the retina was actually detaching. The curtain was the retina itself, coming down. A painless descent into blindness. And speed was our only ally. And no one had told me until now.

Leonard sat very still, staring straight ahead. I wondered what he saw through those battlefield eyes. “Please don't yell at me, Mitch.” He sounded like he was about to cry. Leonard never cried. That I knew of.

I pulled on the hand brake and threw my arms around him.

“I'm scared, Mitch,” he said.

I wanted to tell him that I was, too. That all the shouting just arose out of all that scared. But nothing came out of my mouth at all. Even though I think I tried.

Leonard said, “I told Jake and Mona, and they put in for an authorization. They told Medi-Cal it was an emergency. But it's still not an emergency like a heart transplant or something. Anyway, we were still waiting. I didn't want to tell Jake and Mona how scared I was because it would be like I was in trouble and they couldn't help me. They were already so worried, so I didn't tell them when it got really bad. I called you instead. I'm sorry, Mitch.”

He was dressed only in jeans and a short-sleeved tee and he felt so skinny and small.

I wanted to breathe some of my excess caring into him and make him big enough to take on any kid at school. I wanted to make him a big strong guy with perfect vision. I thought about the stories he told me, the way he made it sound like he picked fights at school. I wished he could trust me enough to tell me the truth.

I knew about the truth. I lived in the real world, with real bullies. When I was Leonard's age I was the fat boy. They beat the crap out of me. Everybody wanted a piece of me. Everybody got in my face determined to find and claim some last piece of dignity some other bully had overlooked. Strip it away, run it up the flagpole, and laugh as I stood shivering without it.

I took off my coat and put it around his shoulders. Then I made him put on his seat belt and we drove. God, how we drove.

After I sold the car I came back to the hospital, and Jake and Mona and I sat in the waiting room looking at our hands, then at each other, then back at our hands. Once I looked up at Mona and started to speak, but her mouth opened at the exact same time. We deferred to each other like nervous drivers at a four-way stop, each too polite to claim right-of-way. Then the moment was gone; whatever I had been about to say flew away and the room fell silent again. Well, actually it had never been anything but silent. It was just the promise of some proper thing to say, like an oasis that turns out to be nothing but a mirage. It vanished back into desert.

“We appreciate it, Mitch,” Jake said, startling me. I actually jumped. “Don't think for a moment we don't.”

The “but” part just hung in the air, and everyone was careful not to look its way or do anything to encourage it.

Leonard was safely out of surgery, but still not awake. The doctors felt it had gone reasonably well, but we were all sobered by our entrance into the several-month period required to gauge the practical result. In a movie they would take off the bandages and Leonard would see. It was dawning on all of us, I believe, that this was not a movie.

“I know you wanted to be the ones to provide for him,” I said.

“Doesn't matter,” Mona said. “What matters is that he was provided for.”

She was right and she was lying, all at the same time, and I could tell we all knew it.

“I know you wanted him to come to you when it got bad,” I said.

The moment I said it, Mona burst into tears.

Jake moved over to comfort her, and gave her a handkerchief from his jeans pocket. A white cloth handkerchief. I'm not sure I'd ever seen one in real life. I'd only heard about them. I didn't know anyone really carried them anymore.

I watched Jake hover over her, trying hard to make it right, and I felt wrong about myself. I watched his rough hands and pictured him coming home from hard days of labor, exhausted, while I drove around in my midnight blue Mercedes convertible, attending cocktail parties with the senator while I carried on a long-standing affair with his wife. Jake was a man who worked hard and did not deserve to be stolen from, and I worried that in some small way I had done just that. I had stolen his claim to father Leonard, not just on the night of his hospital admission but all along. I was complicit in a scheme to make him a father in name only, while Leonard and I held our bond in a secret pact, beyond the reach of everyone. And worse yet, knowing this, I wasn't quite willing to make it stop.

“What does he tell you about his troubles at school?” I asked. It seemed to come out of nowhere, even to me.

“He has trouble fitting in,” Jake said. “He's small. He has glasses and asthma, so the bigger kids pick on him.”

“He tells you that?”

“Of course he does. Why wouldn't he?”

I took a deep breath. “Because he doesn't tell
me
,” I said. “He doesn't tell me. Because he thinks it would break my heart. Same reason he wouldn't tell you when he couldn't wait any longer for his eye surgery. He doesn't want to break anybody's heart.”

Mona pulled a shuddery breath and blew her nose in the handkerchief. “People have to hear the damn truth,” she said. “Heartbreaking or not.”

“I know,” I said. “I agree.”

It hit me that when Leonard got out of the hospital it would be time to have a good long talk about Pearl.

The first time I got to go in and see Leonard he was lying on his stomach in bed, his face resting in a doughnut-shaped contraption to make the position slightly more comfortable. He had a thin hospital blanket pulled up to his hips. His gown was tied at the back of his neck, then fell open across his shoulder blades.

I asked him if he was cold.

Instead of answering the question, he swept his arms up and forward, and then back, as if swimming.

“Leonard Devereaux Kowalski takes the gold in the hundred-meter breaststroke,” he said. Too quietly, I thought. It was too soon to joke but he was doing it anyway.

It was a thought out of nowhere, but it made me laugh all the same.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and ran my hand across his thin shoulder blades. I think I was needing to fix what was out of my control.

I pulled the gown closed across his back because everything else was unfixable.

He said, “I'm thinking I should miss the whole rest of this school year.”

“I agree. Even if your vision comes back before then. You have to take extra care of your eyes. With your temper, and the way you pick fights…I'm not sure I trust you to control yourself.”

“I have to tell you something about that,” he said.

He had metal cups taped over his eyes. Bandages underneath, then metal guards, vented to breathe, then tape to hold them in place. I could see the edge of one, just visible underneath the doughnut-shaped headrest.

“No you don't,” I said. “You don't have to tell me anything you don't want.”

We sat quietly for a moment, and I pulled the blanket up higher onto his back.

After a time I said, “Jake and Mona and I thought it might be a good idea if you did your recovery time at my house. Because I can work at home. I can work on my laptop by your bed and you'll have someone with you all the time.”

“Jake and Mona went for that?”

“They think it's a good idea, yeah.”

“I'm surprised.”

“They love you,” I said.

“They must,” he said. “They really must.”

On the day of his release, I helped Leonard into a cab in front of the hospital.

“What is this?” he said.

“What is what?”

“This. What am I getting into the back of? This is not your new car.”