The Color Master: Stories by Aimee Bender Read Free Book Online

instruments into my eyes. She made me read various letters across the room. She had me close one eye and then the other.
    “His vision is fine,” she said, after ten minutes.
    “Ah,” said my mother.
    I chomped down on a butterscotch, and a little shard of gold sugar flew up and stuck on the doctor’s white coat collar.
    “Sorry,” I said.
    She brushed off her coat and put a few slides up on the wall and had me explain them: Does the line appear to be wavy? It’s really straight. Does the circle above appear to be smaller? It’s really the same size as the one below. “But doesn’t everyone have these perception problems?” I asked, after identifying both the witch and the young girl in the same drawing of a face. “True,” she said. “Sure. But they’re fun to look at, aren’t they?”
    She turned the slide projector off and rummaged in a drawer, returning with a photograph of a group of people.
    “Let’s try this,” she said. “William, who are these people?”
    “They’re a group of people,” I said.
    She bobbed her head. “Mmm-hmmm. Okay. And what do these people do?”
    “They’re all nurses,” I said.
    “That’s right!”
    I pointed to the bottom of the photo, where it said
Nurse Convention
on a black plaque in big white letters.
    She nodded; her neck was so long that a nod for her took about four seconds to complete.
    “And what can you tell me about any of the people in the picture?”
    “They’re all nurses,” I said again.
    “And how are they different?”
    “They’re different heights,” I said.
    “Okay.” She looked in my ear while I was talking.
    “My ears feel fine,” I said.
    “She’s checking your balance,” whispered my mother, sitting perfectly still in a stiff orange chair in the corner.
    The doctor straightened the photo in front of me.
    “Now, William,” she said, “can you tell me if any of the nurses are older than the others?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, are there elderly nurses in the photo?”
    I peered at it. They all looked pretty old to me. I found one with white hair.
    “This one seems old,” I said. “He has white hair.”
    She looked over my shoulder at the photo. “Okay,” she said. “Good. And you can tell that it’s a man there.”
    “Yes,” I said. “It’s an old man nurse, right there.”
    “And what else can you tell me about them?”
    “Nothing much,” I said. “A bunch of nurses in a photo. For a convention.”
    She returned to the drawer and brought out another picture. The second photo was of a bunch of young men in the army.
    “Soldiers,” I said, pleased with myself. I could tell from the camouflage clothing.
    “Okay,” she said. “And?”
    “And what?”
    “And … how are they different?”
    “What do you mean?” I asked. “From each other? They’re all soldiers.”
    “For example,” she said, “are some happy?”
    I looked at it again. They were moving around, some of them. “Sure,” I said. “I suppose some are.”
    “Can you tell?”
    “Not really,” I said. “You can’t ever tell for sure if someone’s happy or not.”
    She pointed to the corner with her fingertip. “What about this one here?”
    “What about him?”
    “How is he doing?”
    I peered closely at his face. “I don’t think he looks too good,” I said. “His expression is weird.”
    The doctor blew her nose into a tissue. “He’s getting shot,” she said.
    “Oh,” I said. “Huh. I didn’t see that part yet.”
    “You didn’t see his torso?”
    “No,” I said. “I was looking at his face, like you asked. Now that I look at his body, I can see that he is getting shot.”
    “And so is he happy?”
    “Well, I certainly doubt it,” I said. “I’m not a moron.”
    “And are any of them dead?”
    I looked again at the photo. It took me a long time. Several of the soldiers were lying down. One of the ones lying down had his face in the dirt.
    “This one could be dead,” I said, after about five