Love and First Sight(10)

“How’s your second day of mainstreaming going?” asks Nick.

“I like how that can be a verb or an adjective,” says Ion. “You are mainstreaming at a mainstream school.”

“Or a noun,” adds Whitford. “The mainstream school will funnel you into the mainstream.”

“Exactly why this place sucks,” says Nick. “Mainstream always equals suckitude.”

There’s a gap in the conversation, but I sense that it has continued in a wordless exchange of facial expressions. I read the braille label on a Tupperware container from my lunch bag. Carrots. Mom always packs carrots. I think she secretly believes my eyesight can be salvaged if I just consume enough beta-carotene.

Eventually Ion says, “So what do your parents do, Will?”

“My mom is a professional helicopter parent and country clubber. And my dad’s a doctor.”

“What kind of doctor?” asks Nick.

I was afraid he’d ask this. I try to avoid answering directly. I don’t know Nick all that well yet, but I already know that if he finds out, he’ll have a field day.

“Like, you know, sick people come to his place of business, and he makes them feel good,” I say.

“A statement that could also describe a prostitute,” says Nick. “I mean, what kind of medicine does he practice?”

I’m cornered. “He’s a urologist,” I admit.

“No!” says Nick in a tone of gleeful mock disbelief.

“Oh, grow up!” says Ion.

“A urologist? Like he—” says Nick.

“Yes,” I say.

“So he’s gay?” Nick asks.

“Seriously?” scolds Ion. “Just because you’re a complete dick doesn’t mean you have to be a homophobe.”

I say, “He did create me with my mom, so I don’t think—”

But Nick’s on a roll now. “I don’t get why any medical student would choose urology, you know? Like, why not plastic surgery? Now there’s a job for you. Play with boobs all day and get paid big bucks for it.”

“What are we? Schoolchildren?” says Ion.

But Nick’s still going: “I just wonder about any straight male who says to himself, ‘You know what I’d like to do for the rest of my life? Examine penises.’”

By way of changing the conversation, I tell them about the museum visit I have scheduled for tomorrow with the girl from journalism.

“What’s her name?” asks Nick.

“Cecily.”

“Wait. Cecily Hoder?” asks Whitford, surprised.

“Yeah.”

No one says anything.

“What?” I ask.

“If she didn’t have a different lunch period than us,” Ion says, “Cecily Hoder would be sitting here. She’s the fourth member of our academic quiz team.”





CHAPTER 5


In the art museum the next afternoon, each click of my cane on the hard, smooth floor reverberates like a shotgun blast. It’s so quiet I can hear a faint buzz overhead, presumably from the ceiling lights. That’s a funny thing about artificial light: You can hear it. But I’ve never heard the sun, moon, or stars. Natural light, it seems, travels in silence. Like a Tesla.

Cecily and I stand in front of a painting, silent. No snaps of her camera yet. She’s just looking at it, I guess.

Remembering that I’m here to make things up to her after our disastrous first encounter, I try to break the ice by asking her how she got into photography.

“Through painting, actually,” she says.

“So why not…” I say. I speak carefully, lest I induce another tearful breakdown.

“Paint?” she suggests.

“Well, yeah.”

“Oh, I can’t paint.”

“No?”

“Definitely not.”

“I’ve never painted, but how hard can it be? You hold the brush and then you rub paint on the paper until it looks like what you see. Right?” I ask.

“Yeah, but it’s not like that. You are re-creating the image. That takes talent.”

“To paint what’s right there in front of you?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Um, let me think of an example.” She pauses. “Okay, it’s like how you can be looking at something, a person or a beautiful landscape like, I don’t know, the Grand Canyon, but then you take a photo with a cell phone camera and it doesn’t look the same. It takes skill even to create photos that represent what the eye sees.”

Sigh. Will people never learn? “Still doesn’t mean much to me.”

“Oh, right, sorry. I guess it’s like… You know what my voice sounds like, right?”

“Yeah.” I ponder her voice for a moment. It’s controlled and pressurized, like the water flowing through a turbine in a dam. But dams don’t just generate power. They are a barricade. They hold back a flood.

“And the sound of my voice is very clear coming through your ears?”

The question interrupts my thoughts about hydropower. “Sure.”

“Can you imitate it?”

“How do you mean?”