Night Blindness by Susan Strecker Read Free Book Online Page A

door. “Wanna go for a drive, Whobaby?” Hungover, not really wanting to see anyone, I’d realize on those quiet rides how far I’d slipped from the honor roll, piano star girl, so far that my father probably had a hard time recognizing me, barefoot, my wild hair wrapped in woven string, tiny bells on my ankles, smelling of pot.
    It was a warm day, warm enough that I was wearing a red sundress I’d found in my closet and flip-flops I’d bought at the Colston drugstore the day before. It was incredibly humid, so green compared to the high desert, my eyes could barely get used to it. In the passenger’s seat, my dad sat smiling, tapping his fingers on the window in time to the music. I thought it was unfair when sick people looked healthy, like God was playing a trick. Not wanting to break our sweet silence to ask where we were going, I just drove the roads along Long Island Sound. I had the feeling I used to get as a kid, that just being near my father made me lucky. The forsythia and crocuses were blooming, the gammagrass was blowing sideways in the wind, and the air smelled of lilacs and salt. I drove north on Route 1 past antique shops and boutiques, lush marshes and sea-worn boats, places we’d water-skied as kids, docks where Mandy and I had set up portable radios and gotten tan, summer ice-cream stands, and the beach where Will had worked as a lifeguard the summer he was fifteen. We also passed the farmhouse where I’d gone to parties when I was home from Andover, the eyes of my old classmates telling me they were sorry but also glad it wasn’t their brother. We did cocaine off the butcher-block table and drank tequila out of dummy-locked liquor cabinets. I secretly hoped Ryder would come home from Yale and show up at those parties. But he never did. Instead, I would end up kissing some boy I didn’t care about, giving him a fake number, and then sleeping at Mandy’s until three the next day.
    â€œHow was it?” my father asked. We were stopped at a red light in Madison, and he took off his cap to smooth his hair. “Seeing Ryder again.”
    â€œWeird.” I watched a group of high school kids sprawled on the town green. One of the boys was on his stomach next to a girl on her back. The night before, I’d been rummaging through Jamie’s desk in the living room, looking for a pad of paper, when I found a manila envelope. A stack of Mother’s Day cards was inside. I recognized Ryder’s handwriting right away. He’d sent one every year since Will had died. My hands were shaking when I shoved them back in the desk.
    â€œHis parents retired and moved to Florida,” my dad said. “Did he tell you that?”
    â€œNo.” It made sense. His mother had been forty-three when she had him. His father was even older. They’d shared an obstetrics practice.
    â€œDamn good at what he does,” my dad was saying. The light changed, and he put his hat back on.
    When we were zooming down Route 1 again, I asked, “How long have you been back in touch with him?” I hadn’t known I would ask it, but it came back to me now how familiar he’d been with the kitchen, the way he’d brought me tea, and how he’d been with my parents in his office—the intimacy the three of them shared.
    â€œHe’s been coming by the house for a while.”
    A faint ringing sounded in my ears. “How long?”
    He didn’t answer for a minute. I switched gears, gaining speed on the straightaway, waiting for him to tell me to slow down. “Long time,” he finally said. “Almost five years.”
    Madison’s historic neighborhoods passed in a blur. I’d been in Berlin five years ago, installing Nico’s exhibit, “Nightingale,” in a new museum there. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I could hear the hurt in my voice.
    He shifted in his seat. “Your mother and I didn’t want to