When she got to John"s parents" diner, she didn"t even turn the engine off or close the door.
When she read the letter aloud to a packed restaurant, John"s father collapsed.
He was home before the war ended, but couldn"t stand without help.
Two years later, after fully recovering, John was offered an engineering job in England by one of his RAF friends.
Harriet had never left the East Coast of America, but the English welcomed them with open arms. After a few months, John wrote home and asked his parents to wire his life savings so he could invest in a material to make airplanes lighter and stronger.
My grandpa John would have been one of the richest men in Britain today, Mom says, but he gave most of his fortune away-keeping only what they needed to be comfortable.
In some ways, I think Grandpa John has always felt responsible for my blindness, as if it were something he once wished for himself. He was in the hospital for a long time during the war, and n.o.body really knows what he saw, or what happened to him after being shot down-not even my grandmother.
His explanation never went beyond the letter.
The first time I remember visiting them in London, my mother had booked a table for a special lunch with just Grandpa and me, and then arranged an afternoon at the Imperial War Museum to see the tanks and the planes.
We were staying at Claridge"s Hotel-Grandpa John"s treat. I remember waiting on the bed in fancy clothes. My mother was drying her hair. She said it wasn"t like him to be late. Eventually, the telephone rang. It was my grandmother. Grandpa John had locked himself in the bedroom and wouldn"t come out.
We made up for it in the years ahead, though. Long walks on the beach, bedtime stories that were so long I fell asleep in the middle, cooking brisket from a family recipe.
He also taught me how to dance. It was something he did with my grandmother, even when there was no music. During the war, American servicemen often took local English girls to dances. A few fell in love, but most did it to pa.s.s the time. Grandpa John stayed in his bunk and wrote letters to Harriet. He even kept paper and a pencil under his seat in the aircraft for the long flights back to base.
I was named after a pioneer of flight. The last time I told that story was on a bench in Montauk. It was summer and very hot. We were sitting on Gosman"s Dock. It was busy with summer people. I had been to a birthday brunch. Children were crying, and laughter spilled from the bars.
Philip was shy at first. I think I asked him to look out for a blue SUV. I told him my father"s friend was picking me up.
The summer traffic must have been especially heavy, because we talked for a long time. Sometimes I wonder if Dave wasn"t just sitting in the car watching us.
Philip told me what it was like being a fisherman. He said most of what he catches on the boat is for restaurants in Manhattan. He told me it"s a hard life, but that it"s his life. I asked him if he felt sorry for the fish, and he laughed but gave me a serious answer.
He seemed intelligent. I wondered if he would lie on the beach with me and read poems aloud. I tried to recite a poem from memory about a fish by Elizabeth Bishop, but I only got halfway through.
He asked me if I had ever seen a fish being caught and then quickly apologized. I didn"t mind, and explained how I see things clearly in my own way. I see my parents, my garden, my bedroom, my things on the wall, even Dad"s boat, even the sea, even a fish being caught.
He asked me more about being blind, but I couldn"t think of anything to say. Then a couple wanted us to take their picture.
I was wearing a summer dress from Nanette Lepore and a pair of sandals. When the couple left, Philip said I had beautiful shoulders. I waited for him to touch them, my heart like a pendulum, swinging between hope and fear.
When Dave arrived, Philip was shy again. We all stood there.
Then Dave and I went to speak at the same time, but I struggled through the embarra.s.sment and told Philip my phone number. Dave offered to write it down, but n.o.body had a pen.
On the journey back to Amagansett, I couldn"t hide from myself. It"s as though certain parts inside me broke, but instead of being damaged, I was free. Dave had all the windows open. I could hear his watchband on the door as he tapped to the music. I told him he could smoke if he wanted.
But Philip never called, and the next few months were very hard. It wasn"t that I didn"t have someone I really liked-but the realization that I had never had anyone.
I was afraid of the sea when I was a girl. Someone said it went on forever and that frightened me. I wondered why my parents had chosen to live at the beginning and the end of the world.
In summer, I go sailing on my father"s small yacht. Sometimes I steer while my father looks up from The New York Times calling out, "Leftabit! Rightabit! Leftabit! Now go around the iceberg if you can, Amelia."
Being blind is not like you would imagine. It"s not like closing your eyes and trying to see. I don"t feel as though I"m lacking. I see people by what they say to others, by how they move and how they breathe.
We have an apartment on the Upper East Side that we seldom use. It"s really Grandpa John"s for when he visits. It"s close to a cafe on Madison Avenue called Sant Ambroeus-the place we went after learning that my blindness is permanent.
Grandpa John grew up at a diner on Long Island, but finds it hard to leave England now that he"s old.
My mother was raised in England and has an accent. When she was very young, Grandpa John used to wake up screaming. Eventually, Harriet made him go to the village hall once a week for tea with other veterans of World War II. It was a ritual he would keep until he was the only one left. Mom said that whatever they talked about there changed him, and he was suddenly around more, and would dig for potatoes with her in the garden with his suit on, and lie in the mud and make pig noises.
My grandparents really loved each other. I often wonder why they had only one child.
My first time was on the beach at my parents" anniversary party after it got late and people chatted on the terrace in small groups. I was twenty. His name was Julio. He came out with his mother from the city just for the party. I knew him from when we were kids, and his family rented a house year-round a few doors down. Amagansett was so remote then. Our road had only three houses on it.
Back then Julio"s mother used to come over and sit on the deck with my mother and drink wine. Julio and I would play for hours. My parents have always liked to drink and talk.
When I was a teenager, they sat me on the couch between them and dropped their wedding alb.u.m into my lap. They were married in January sometime in the eighties. They had a honeymoon in Tokyo, but spent most of their time in Kyoto-which my father said also told the story of ancient China. They turned the pages slowly. I could hear their fingers on the plastic.
"There"s your father eating the first slice of wedding cake."
"She actually fed it to me," Dad said. "Which embarra.s.sed me then, but later I was glad she did it."
"Why?" my mother wanted to know.
"Because I realized they are my hands now."
"Your hands!" My mother laughed. "You"re mad."
I think people would be happier if they admitted things more often. In a sense we are all prisoners of some memory, or fear, or disappointment-we are all defined by something we can"t change.
Losing my virginity to Julio after my parents" anniversary party was amazing. He had a girlfriend-but sometimes you have to break rules because nothing is perfect.
Years and years before, when Julio lived close by, he taught me how to ride a skateboard. He held my hand as it rolled along. Then, laughing but determined, I walked it to the top of the hill. Julio was frantic, but I wasn"t afraid because I knew the road and would have heard a car. I remember the wheels spitting out small stones. How could I have known the neighbor"s boyfriend was out from the city for Pa.s.sover and parked on the road?
I spent the night in Southampton hospital.
The doctor said I was very lucky. My father said to him, "You guys always say that," and the doctor chuckled. Then my mother asked if it was the same emergency room where they brought Marilyn Monroe.
Julio came a bit later with his mother and some flowers. They were like summer in his arms.
I told him he shouldn"t have brought flowers-that I wasn"t dead yet. But he didn"t laugh. Everyone told him to cheer up.
After they"d gone and we were alone, Julio cried and cried. He said his parents were getting a divorce. Three months later they moved out, and Julio went to live in Park Slope. We saw each other from time to time and at my parents" anniversary party, but our friendship was based on the past.
The reason I have a date tonight is because of something that happened on the Jitney last week.
The bus was busy that day. We crawl when there"s traffic. I know where we are by the length of the turns and the b.u.mps of railroad tracks.
When sunlight pours into the bus, I put on sungla.s.ses and get sleepy. I feel my eyes closing. Falling asleep is like walking out on a frozen lake. The ice gets thinner and thinner until suddenly you fall through.
When someone sat down next to me, I woke up.
"h.e.l.lo," said a voice.
It was a young woman. By the time we were on the Long Island Expressway, she had explained how she"s going to the airport to meet her father for the very first time.
I smiled and said smartly that I"d never seen my father, either.
She touched my hand without realizing I"m blind.
"It doesn"t matter," she whispered. "He feels you."
And I suddenly thought of Philip out on the sea.
So long I imagined him, so many days last summer I conjured him on my father"s boat with us.
I could feel him cutting through the swell, a bulk of fish in the hull.
Forklifts humming back at the dock.
From my office that morning I called Dave. At first he didn"t remember who I was talking about. Then I reminded him about picking me up at Gosman"s in Montauk. He asked if I knew Philip"s last name.
On the Jitney home that night, Dave called to say he hadn"t found anything out-but that Janet was going to ask around. I thanked him but felt defeated. Before hanging up, Dave said that if Janet couldn"t find Philip, he"d break up with her.
The next day at work I was summoned from a meeting to take a phone call.
It was an effort for him to talk because there was so much to say.
He said that an Irishwoman was waiting for his boat when they docked that morning-that they had come in early because the lines were freezing.
He said he forgot my number, but had recently been looking for me-admitted he called the Guggenheim Museum by mistake, even hung around Stephen Talkhouse on weekends, watching people dance. n.o.body knew who I was, he said.
He said his mother had been very sick when we met last summer on the bench at Gosman"s Dock.
I asked if she was okay. He said she died.
Then a long silence that meant we were going to see each other.
When I went back to the meeting, the interns were looking through hundreds of World War II photographs for a proposed future exhibition. The photographs once belonged to American servicemen who were killed or went missing in Europe. They kept them in their wallets. They looked at them and wrote letters, maybe even held them as they died.
I thought of Grandpa John.
It"s late afternoon in England. He"s in the conservatory. It"s raining. Soft thuds on the gla.s.s. My grandmother"s steps keep him going. The memory of her steps keeps him going.
He"s watering his plants.
Cla.s.sical music is on.
During the war, he had a gun in someone"s mouth. The man was trying to scream. A burst lip from the pushing metal. Eyes watering with fear and rage.
JOHN.
FRANCE,.
1944.
I.
JOHN BRAY FELL silently through the night sky, his body less than it ever was, his life a collage devoid of single meaning.
The impact was so intense that John mistook his panic for death itself. Smoke and freezing air filled the cabin. The B-24 nosed into a dive. He formed a ladder with the syllables of his wife"s name. Each syllable a rung closer to her, but further from G.o.d. A moment before jumping, John realized his leg was on fire and then a sudden freeze and darkness that meant he had made it. He tore at the harness, no time to count, he pulled at everything.
The navigator lived long enough to release his parachute, then fell without moving, a ring of stars in each eye. The others were captured or died from injuries soon after landing.
As the canopy spread and swung wildly, John feared for an instant that he was still attached to the aircraft. Then he looked around and saw nothing. He gripped the straps until his hands went numb. Breathing was quick and his lungs bled with cold. One of his feet was badly injured. A dense throb as though his heart had fallen into his boot.
He was still saying the word Harriet long after he"d forgotten he was doing it. Shaken loose from the a.s.sociation of memory, it was an awkward sound with no meaning.
He knew the enemy would find wings, the fuselage, bits of wire, a tail section, small fires.
He might never see Harriet again. They were married but had not yet lived together as man and wife. He might never see the diner where he grew up, or the street upon which he had played baseball and ridden his bicycle. He might never see the dog, or pet it on his way upstairs. He might never go out for ice cream on summer nights with his new wife in sandals, never stand in line at the post office, or ask to borrow the car. He would never stroll the boardwalk at Coney Island, and his dream of living with Harriet, kissing over tea at Lord & Taylor, dancing at the Palace, dizzy with happiness, would end before it had even begun.
His life was here now in the dark, in the emptiness, drifting through the air over Belgium or France.
It no longer mattered where.
Everything that happened to him from this moment on would be an encore.
JOHN.
LONG ISLAND,.
1939.
II.
THE DINER WAS full of large parties. The air swirled in currents of smoke and laughter. Outside: Plymouths, Packards, and Fords held life in the haunches of their gleaming coats.
John clearing dishes. His mother"s voice saying good-bye in the distance. The register and its tight bell. The smell of syrup. The fire of yolk over white plates. Uneaten crusts of toast. A single fork under the table. The ashtrays completely full. And somebody has forgotten a coat.
John lifted it from the back of the chair.
He or she would soon return with cold hands and the car running outside with the door open.
The coat was long with a belt. It was soft and possessed of a scent that seemed to lift him. It filled his body and was strongest on the collar. There were hairs, too, streaks of honey in waves upon the wool.
John took the coat into the staff room, and buried his face in the fabric. He held it against his body, to get an idea of her size. A name tag sewn below the collar spelled out her name, and like a vein, it pulsed beneath his fingers.
Harriet wasn"t serious about John at first. He was three years younger and doted on her. But then after the attack on Pearl Harbor, she considered what her life would be like if he was sent to fight.