Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(49)

Instead of acknowledging Evan, or his help, or his existence, really.

I can still see, I yelled at him last week, my throat tight, because it had no idea how to really do the whole yelling thing. Stop, just stop. You’re doing more to take away my vision than this disease is.

And then he had let out a breath, uncontrolled, like I’d hit him in the stomach.

I’d looked at him, one arm over his chest, one fist at his mouth, like he had to hold in yelling back at me.

I wanted him to. I wanted him to yell at me.

I wanted something mean and hard to shove back against and scream at, and since it couldn’t be my mom or Dr. Allen, or my lab colleagues, or my worried friends I wasn’t calling, he was tagged as it.

I had stared at him across that table last week, breathing hard, willing him to answer me with a lecture or with anger or irritation, anything to give me an excuse.

I was right there in that moment, too, I wasn’t floating above my body or feeling all weird, it was me, and I was mad, and Evan could just so go suck it.

He stared back, his wide eyebrows steepled, his forehead all wrinkly, his fist at his mouth.

When I realized he wouldn’t give me what I needed, I stood up, so fast the plastic school chair I was sitting in banged to the floor behind me. I had tripped over it twice, stomping out, hating how big and unwieldy I felt in my own body, hating Evan.

Hating this thing no one understood or could predict or control.

Then, after all that last week, I walked in today, and he had told me to hang up my things and meet him in the foyer.

He had walked past me to leave the therapy room, looked at me, and I realized he was making a concession.

Not in that room, not today.

We wouldn’t have to be together in that room anticipating the worst possible thing I could imagine happening to me.

Then, he had made me close my eyes and given me evidence to examine and catalog and consider.

I’m sure my mom could write a poem about it, how he made me close my eyes and gave me back some of the vision I had lost, and all I can say is that what happened is something like that and something much more fun, too.

If you’re a scientist, moments like today where the experiment is running well and there is so much information coming back from it you’ll never be able to sort through it in your lifetime, well, that’s fun.

Then he had told me that I was the one, all along, leading the way.

Which is maybe why, at the end, before I had to run to meet my bus because I had actually almost lost track of time, I hugged him.

Tight, too, one of my patented Jenny Wright hugs that friends ask for, particularly, when they need some squishy happiness.

He’d said oof, and I squeezed him and pushed my face against his collarbone, smiling, all high from everything that I’d learned.

He was minty and tall, his sweater scratchy, and I didn’t expect a hug back because maybe that wasn’t allowed or something, but then I found out what absurdly long arms are nice for, which mainly seems to be their ability to get themselves all the way around decent-sized and grateful women.

He hugs tight, too.

The heat has made my little row house almost a little too warm, but I haven’t been completely warm all day so I let it run, sinking into the silly-looking papasan chair my mom insisted on getting me for my place, and as usual, she’s right because it is such a comfortable cradle for my round butt and exactly right for when I want to rest my body but my mind isn’t ready to sleep.

I snuggle into my silly chair, where I can watch the snow through the living-room window and watch for his avatar to highlight, letting me know he’s there.

I start my message like I always do.

What did you see today?

We exchange a few stories, and then C writes,

When I was a kid the neighbors had this bulldog, Sergeant. They were an older couple and couldn’t give him the exercise he needed, so they paid me five dollars a week to exercise him.

C has been feeling nostalgic this evening. He posted a picture of a bee on a flower, the yellow-and-black fur of the bee so sharp I wonder why I’ve never tried to pet a bee before.

When I ask him about it, he sends a long and rambling message about honeysuckle vines and the best way to pull out the stamens and taste the nectar, something his grandma had taught him.

His other picture has taken me a long time to guess what it is, it’s so close-up, everything in the frame is black and shiny and convoluted like grainy leather, and he finally gives in and tells me it’s a dog’s nose.

So now I am reading his messages about Sergeant and how he was an epic dog and how it all turned out like that Henry Huggins story by Beverly Cleary where the dog has to choose who his real owner is.

That book has always made me cry.

I look out my three living-room windows, curtains open to show off the view of the swirling snowflakes, and there is now a wall of harsh orange light, and shadows all around the edges. The orange light is from the streetlights outside, and my strange night vision is making giant halos around every beam of it, obliterating the ability to focus on anything distinct.

I keep forgetting that before I sit down at my computer in the evenings, or with a laptop, I should turn lights on inside the house. The dark sneaks up on me in the winter and it’s not good for my eyes, just as it’s not good for anyone’s eyes, to stare into the backlit screen while everything else is dark.