When I See You (17 page)

"Brock can take care of himself," she says. "It's
you
; I'm worried about."

"No need to worry about me." I blush under her penetrating gaze.

"Brock Wainwright was a great guy, but—."

"Still is," I say with surprising vehemence.
Why am I defending him?

"He's interesting, Jordan, but he's
blind
. He's handicapped."

The apprehension in her voice is obvious. Fear of the unknown? Fear of blindness? Who knows? Ashleigh has always been squeamish around medical issues, imperfections, or anything that has to do with feeling something deeply beyond lust. I pulse with sudden irritation at her and something else. "Nobody says that anymore. He's visually challenged. And, it may not even be permanent."

"Really?" Ashleigh finishes the last of her wine and gives me an appraising look.

"But I don't think you should get involved with Brock Wainwright," I say slowly, hoping to put an end to this conversation.

She gazes at her sparkling left hand and then back at me. "I'm not talking about
me
getting involved with Brock Wainwright."

I sit silent, refusing to take the bait as to what she is getting at.

"I have to take some time to figure out what to do about Michael," she says with a sigh. "Maybe, Austin will provide answers for both of us."

Wisdom and experience force me to shake my head. I smile at the irony of this entire conversation.

"It's never that simple."

I look around the restaurant at this magical place where Ethan and I first met.

"If it was just about a diamond ring and saying you're committed to one another, everyone would get married and live happily ever after," I say quietly.

Ashleigh reaches for my left hand and fingers my wedding ring. "It's never that simple. Is it?"

"No," I say. "That's just the fairytale we like to believe."

*≈*≈*

Chapter 10. It will come

Brock

I've become the pied piper of Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center. The adolescent high school students, all blind, seem to hang on to my every utterance. How the word got around about my being part of a famous sniper team; I'll never know. The reputation has brought with it, hero status. No matter if it's unwelcome. No matter that my resentment at my situation has made me become somewhat surly and definitely unlovable. Attributes both my father and my mother will willingly attest to now.

The students of Criss Cole don't care. Our shared lot in life, in combating blindness, binds us together like the magical Gorilla Glue I used to pack in my rucksack, which proved so useful in the deserts and mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. That special glue and baby wipes made us believe we lived in a God's paradise, at least, for Ethan and me at the time. And now, my followers, here in this new foreign place of Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center, refuse to leave me alone and function like the Gorilla Glue from my past, sticking to me no matter what I do or say.

My new combat field is littered with misplaced chairs and tables, unfamiliar hallways, and the constant barrage of strangers and their voices. The noise of a black world and everyday objects I no longer see are unsympathetic to my sightless plight in every way.

Kate was right. I've managed to learn Braille. The raised dots rule my life at the Center and my parent's ranch house, now. My mother has enlisted the Center's help with the service of labeling everything I could possibly touch with the language of the Blind. My refusal to accept my fate, of never being able to see again, seems to have only spurred everyone onward. Those that surround me from the director of the school to my family and, most unexpectedly, the adolescents of Criss Cole, do everything possible to accommodate me and my blindness.

Blind, like me, my groupies swarm me whenever there's a free moment at the Center. Now, I sit on top of one of the lunch tables reluctantly entertaining my brood—my newfound world of blind worshippers.

"Lieutenant Wainwright, what was it like to be under fire?" Ruben Lowenstein asks from somewhere near my right.

"It didn't happen often," I say.

My mind flashes to our last mission, and I try to remember anything about that day, but nothing comes to me. I conjure up Ethan's face in my mind and can feel the sweat begin to form on my upper lip as I do so. My breathing accelerates.

"But, you made it right? You're here. Was it the shrapnel that blinded you?" asks another boy. His voice is now familiar, but his name escapes me.

I'm beginning to hyperventilate in attempting to call up any memories of that last day with Ethan and our last mission.

"I made it. I can't explain the blindness. No one can." My words come out harsher than I intended, and my breathing becomes even more labored.

"Children, I think that's enough for one day. It's time for class, anyway." The voice of Lucille Gestner breaks through the rising volume of excited students hurling questions at me. "Come. Come back to class."

I hear the kids shuffle off with the rhythmic tap taps of their white canes, also known as mobility tools for the visually impaired. I turn away from the direction Lucille Gestner's voice came from, trying to recover from my near panic attack before the director of Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center sees it.

"Have you given thought to being a teacher?" Lucille Gestner asks when the room becomes quiet again.

The very fine, vivacious director at Criss Cole and my personal champion, whether I like it or not, will not be deterred. Every day she asks me about my vocation plans.

Her enthusiasm for the blind grates directly on my soul, at this point.

"I'd like to be a sniper again."

I position my hands around an invisible rifle and pull the trigger in a generalized direction away from the sound of her voice.

"Okay," she says patiently. She reminds me of Glenda the Good Witch from the Wizard of Oz. "Your second choice, then. Teaching?"

The woman will not give up on me. I have tried to convince her so many times that I am not worth the effort. The more difficult I make her life, with my lack of enthusiasm and cooperation for her benevolent work, the more steadfast and determined she becomes. Like now. I sigh in exasperation.

"No." I sound so resolute; I've convinced myself. I give her a fake smile.

"I've got all day," she says in this cheerful voice.

"Lawyer," I supply without thinking. "I'll finish my last semester of law school. It will make my father happy."

"Okay. Lawyer. Hmmm…I'm kind of surprised at that choice, but we can arrange it. Special software. Computer. Audio aids, a tutor——" Her sweet voice trails off and I turn my face in her general direction, feeling this sudden despair and profound loss.

"I don't know. Let me think about it."

I've given her the pat answer of lawyer to get her off my back for the day and yet feel this rising panic as my life continues to spin out of control as I realize, once again, I'm helpless to stop it.

"Walk with me," Lucille says in her brisk business-like way.

I automatically stand and grasp the collapsible white cane that was bestowed upon me three months before when I first arrived here. I feel for her presence and grasp her outstretched arm and instinctively tap my way out the door to the campus grounds with Lucille Gestner. Arm-in-arm. It's fucking pathetic.

Lucille encircles her arm with my left one and we move along at an easy pace in the warmth of a summer day in Austin. I lift my head up toward where the sky should be and take a deep cleansing breath, faltering with my step in doing so, and feel her grasp my arm more tightly.

"You're doing well."

"No. I'm not."

"You are. One of these days, Lieutenant, it will come."

"What will come?"

"The peace. The tranquility. The acceptance. It will come. I've seen it happen."

"Well, you're lucky to be able to
see
, Ms. Gestner. So lucky." My tone is bleak and bitter. I do nothing to hide it.

"You have some decisions to make. Where you plan to make your permanent residence, for one. Then, we can go through the place and prepare it for you. Where and what you want to do your vocational training in. Life awaits, Lieutenant Wainwright. You really must get on with it."

"Is that so?" My sardonic tone does not dissuade her.

"It is."

We walk in absolute silence for the next fifteen minutes. If she hadn't been holding on to me, I would have thought I was walking alone. Maybe, that was her intention. I don't know.

"You know, Brock, it's okay to be scared," she finally says with a heavy sigh.

"I've never been more scared in my life and I've been to Afghanistan for Christ's sake."

"I know."

"I just want—I just want my life back. I just want my best friend back." I falter and am overcome with emotion that invades me every time I consciously think of Ethan. "I just…want to go home."

"I thought you were home?"

"Afghanistan," I finally say.

"Something or someone brought you back here, Brock. One day it will come to you. One day, you'll embrace your future. One day, you'll know what it is."

"Yeah, but will I be able to
see
it?"

"Yes. You will," Lucille says.

Her voice holds such conviction that I stop walking and search in vain, in the blackness of it all, for her face. For some sign.

"I need you to be right."

"I will be," she promises.

≈ ≈

I stand at the Center's curb, testing the edge with my white cane. I'm almost thirty years old, and I'm standing here, waiting for my mother to pick me up. The perversion of it all is not lost on me in this moment. A few dark minutes pass, and then, I hear the whir of a V-8 engine and recognize the familiar drumming of my mother's Buick sedan.

"You need to get your oil changed," I say.

The electronic hum of her window rolling down gets closer, and she calls out a hello in her lyrical voice. "How do you know?"

I slide into the passenger seat. Chanel No. 5 assails my nostrils, and I grimace once again at the improved olfactory talent I now possess.

"I can hear it, Janie."

"Don't be cheeky, Brock."

"I'm not. It's true. You practically run the engine out of oil every time, and Dad's warned you about it, too. I can hear the cylinders practically freezing up."

"Fine. I'll get the oil changed," Janie concedes with an exaggerated sigh. "How was your week?"

"Great. I have to pick a vocation and a place to stay so they can get me all fixed up. I'm done in a couple of weeks. Then, I'll be out on my own."

"You're going to be fine," she says in her soothing voice. "What vocation are you going to choose?"

Nothing is lost on my mother, and I sigh heavily at the realization.

"Well, I still want to be a sniper." I hear my mother's soft laugh, and it buoys me up in some way. I grin in the general direction of her voice.

"You need to stop giving Lucille Gestner such a hard time, Brock. She's a good friend of mine." Her reprimand is soft. My mother has been one of my biggest fans my entire life, much to the dismay of my twin sister, Diana, who still complains that she favors me too much. "Come on; tell me what you're going to do."

"Lucille Gestner thinks I would be a good teacher. I suggested a lawyer. That way I could work on my own; wherever. The truth is—I don't know what I want to be. It wasn't supposed to work out like this." She pats my hand where it rests on the console between us.

"Okay, just know that no one is more overjoyed than me to have you back home. You can stay with us as long as you want."

"I realize how thrilled you are that I'm back, mother," I say with a wry smile. "But, just once, I wish you would take the time to appreciate all that I've lost."

"Oh Brock, I know it seems impossible right now, but I just know that everything is going to sort itself out."

We lapse into silence. I try and quell the frustration that lurks inside of me, just below the surface most of the time these days.

I can't even drive. My Porsche 911 sits, unused, in the garage at the ranch. My mother drives me everywhere, as if I'm eight-years-old again.

I've come to know all the various sounds of the drive from the Center to my parent's ranch. There's the buzz of the highway, and then, the soft feel of asphalt, and finally, the lurch of the car as it traverses onto an uneven surface and the familiar ping of pitched gravel against the tires and the car's under-body that leads straight to my parent's ranch house ten miles out of Austin.

"I almost forgot," my mother says in her best teasing, singsong voice as she pulls the car to a decided stop. "You have two new emails. I printed them off for you."

"What? So, I can
read
them? From who?" I ask as I slide out of the car.

"Kate and Jordan."