Love and First Sight(24)

But since Mom is hearing only one side of the conversation, I reply, “Great. Thank you for making a note of that.”

The receptionist counters that she did not make note of that, as she said, I am a minor— “All right, thanks, bye!” I say, and end the call.

The car is quiet for a while.

“You didn’t have to do that,” says Mom eventually. She sounds more hurt than angry.

“We had a deal. You went behind my back.”

We ride the rest of the way home in silence, without even normal car noises to cut the tension. Teslas—making awkward car rides even more awkward since 2008.

? ? ?


Dad gets home soon after we do. There’s a knock on my door.

“Will? Can we go for a bike ride on the tandem?”

I know Mom sent him as a proxy to persuade me to have the operation. But a part of me wants to be talked into it. I do want to see, after all. So I agree.

We put on our helmets and push out of the driveway. Once we are a few seconds away from the house, he says sternly from the front seat of the bike, “Your mother told me about the incident earlier.”

“I just felt like I needed some time to think it over.”

“I think that’s extremely wise.”

Wait, what? This was not the talk I was expecting. “You do?”

“That’s why I wanted to take you on a bike ride. I disagree with your mother on this, so I needed to get you alone to hear my concerns.”

He’s right. If Mom overheard Dad disagreeing with her like this, she’d flip out. He wouldn’t get in a single word.

Dad continues, “Since we first heard of the operation, I’ve been researching the medical literature on the subject. I have to say, it doesn’t look good, Will.”

“Is that a pun?”

My dad is a serious man, so I know that it’s not. I just like to mess with him sometimes.

“Um, no, sorry, no pun intended.”

He warns me that we are going to take a left turn. After a few seconds of pedaling, I know we are passing Whitford’s house.

He returns to his speech. “In all of recorded history, there have been fewer than twenty documented cases of early blind gaining eyesight later in life. And in those twenty cases, the outcomes were quite poor.”

“You mean, like, it didn’t work?” I ask.

“No, those twenty are the few on whom it did work. But they all had difficulty recognizing certain objects for the rest of their life. Some of them lost their vision again later. More important, every single patient experienced major depression as a result of gaining sight.”

I make a point to push harder on the pedals so Dad won’t notice how unsteady and confused I’m feeling.

“They were depressed? After they could see?”

“Yes. Some had mental breakdowns. Many wished they could return to blindness or even considered deliberately damaging their own eyes. Most were reported to have undergone significant changes in personality, usually toward melancholy and sadness.”

“But why?” I ask. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“The world didn’t look as good as everyone told them it would. One of the most famous cases, a man in England, was devastated to discover that both he and his wife were not as good-looking as he had always assumed they were. He was in otherwise good health, but he died just nineteen months after seeing for the first time. Apparently, he simply lost his will to live.”

I try to reverse the dark tone of the story. “Dad, is this your way of telling me I’m really ugly?”

He doesn’t take the bait. “No, son, I’m trying to say—”

“I know what you’re trying to say. It was just a joke.”

We ride in silence for a few seconds.

“Right turn.”

As I feel the bike lean into the turn, my mind swirls with this new information.

I want it to work. I want to find a way to make things turn out differently for me. “But what if I—what if a person went into the operation with low expectations? About what everything looks like?”

“That would be wise, of course. There are other obstacles, though. You’d also have significant frustration while adjusting. Your visual cortex has developed atypically.”

“Dr. Bianchi said that my brain could rewire itself,” I counter.

“Maybe. But only after a very difficult adjustment period. Listen, Will, I don’t want to come across like I don’t believe in you. I think you have adapted tremendously well, and that’s exactly why you don’t need this surgery. For instance, where are we right now?”

“What?” I say, confused by the sudden topic change.

“Where are we in the neighborhood?”

I’ve been keeping track of the route as we ride. “The front gate is coming up on our left,” I say.

“Correct,” he says in a Proud Father voice. “And you know this without ever having seen a map of these streets. You know our location by estimating the distance and our speed and tracking our turns. You already have a rich life, and you are perfectly capable of functioning in society.”

“I guess,” I reply, as if to say, So what?

“I myself figure out where we are by looking up from the handlebars and taking in the entire scene all at once. That’s the thing, Will. You’re a skilled navigator now, but if you have the surgery, it will be like starting over.”