Stephen White - Blinded

It’s a total crapshoot.

Lauren and I didn’t often use the word “exacerbation.” To use it had the ugliness of a profanity. But as I left her toweling off after her quick bath-I stayed until then because I feared sleep would take her right there in the bathtub-we both knew that an exacerbation, a fresh wound on some previously unaffected nerve, was what we feared was happening.

If we were right? I didn’t want to think about it. But I knew the list of potential consequences was as long as the list of the body’s miraculous capabilities. Numbness, blindness, paralysis, weakness, bladder problems, GI problems-I stopped myself before the list grew any longer. And it could have grown much longer.

But repeating the litany of potential disabilities wasn’t helpful.

Did I cause Lauren to have an exacerbation by not taking my daughter to her friend’s birthday party?

No. Of course not.

I didn’t. Really.

Really.

Sunday was full of surprises. None of them good.

Lauren never really woke up from her Saturday “nap.” She opened her eyes for a while, but whatever was going on with her neurologically and immunologically was consuming enough of her energy that she didn’t venture farther from the bed than the bathroom.

She declined dinner. Grace and I ate alone.

As was typical, I was the first in the family out of bed on Sunday morning. Instead of pulling on Lycra and Gore-Tex and heading to my bicycle-the pre-Thanksgiving snowstorm made my typical weekend morning ride impractical-I tugged on some fleece sweats and thick socks and carried the local paper and a cup of coffee to the living room.

The sky above the Front Range of the Rockies was the color of deep tropical water, the soaring granite slabs of the Flatirons were bearded with snow, and the earth was carpeted white as far as my eyes could see.

It was absolutely enchanting. I hoped Carmen Reynoso was someplace she could enjoy this view.

I listened for the sound of Adrienne mangling Christmas carols or the rumble of her John Deere. Nothing. Lauren had left some Debussy in the CD changer. I flicked it on, turned down the volume, and lifted the hefty Sunday paper to my lap, fearing that the tale of Sterling and Gibbs Storey might have finally made it from the police files to the newspaper.

Below the fold, bottom right, some bold type caught my eye. But it wasn’t an exposé about the Storeys. The headline read,JUDGE’S SPOUSE ARRESTED FOR POSSESSION OF COCAINE.

Huh, I thought, I know about that.

Jim Zebid had told me about it. I hadn’t given his revelations about Jara Heller’s husband’s criminal activities a moment’s thought since I’d heard them during Jim’s regular session the previous Tuesday.

What was Judge Heller’s husband’s name?

I started to read the article. Jara Heller’s husband’s name, it turned out, was Penn Heller. I allowed myself to be distracted for a moment trying to figure out how someone ended up with the name Penn. Pennington? Pennsylvania? Penncroft? Couldn’t. Nor did I recall any legal cocktail party chatter with a male spouse named Penn.

The article didn’t have much information. Police, acting on a tip, arrested Mr. Heller, an investment banker with some firm I’d never heard of, early Saturday evening in a brewpub downtown, and they’d confiscated a “significant quantity” of white powder and an unspecified quantity of cash. The reporter apparently attempted to reach Judge Heller for a comment, but his calls were not returned by press time.

Huh.

I felt a pang of sympathy for Jara Heller. She had a decent reputation on the bench and was known as a hard worker who knew the law and played fair. I’d always thought she was personable and that she couched her ambition better than many of her colleagues did. Whatever her husband was involved in wasn’t going to do much for her reputation. I wasn’t smart enough to know what it would do to her future on the bench. I’d ask Lauren when she got up.

A distant humming sound intruded on my reverie about the Hellers. Within seconds the hum became an insistent rumble. Adrienne wasn’t singing, but she had indeed fired up the Deere and was preparing to plow the lane. Sunday or not, she loved the damn tractor too much to allow a decent snowfall to melt of its own volition.

Solar energy was her sworn enemy.

The roar of the Deere awakened Grace, and within a minute I was called to my daughter’s room by her surprisingly mature lungs.

Diaper change for Grace. Take the dogs out, feed them. Waffles. Sunday almost always meant waffles-from-scratch waffles-and lots of chatter. Debussy ended, and the next disk in the changer fired up. Tony Bennett and k.d. lang doing Louis Armstrong. Perfect.

The weekend morning routine was soothing but surreal. After breakfast Grace played in her high chair. I tried to focus on the paper. But below the surface calm lurked, I knew, the monster that lived in the depths: the closed bedroom door and the precarious state of my wife’s health. I waited for the sound of the toilet flushing, or water pinging against the tile in the shower, anything to indicate that Lauren’s day had started in a fashion that resembled normal. But eight o’clock came and went without a hint of her condition.

The phone rang at 8:05.

I pounced on it.

“It’s me,” Sam said.

“Another field trip?” I asked. “I think I’m busy.”

“I’m calling from the pay phone outside Moe’s. The place is crowded even after a blizzard.”

Moe’s Bagels was in a little shopping center on North Broadway not far from Sam’s house. I made an assumption that he was out for his prescribed morning rehab walk and was seeking moral support from me much the way that an alcoholic might call his sponsor from outside a saloon. I said, “It’s okay, Sam. But get something with whole grain. And nonfat cream cheese. Not the good stuff. But lox is okay. Omega-three oils.”

“I’m not asking for help with the menu. I’m calling from a pay phone outside of Moe’s so that if somebody ever subpoenas your phone records, they won’t show that I talked to you at eight o’clock on this Sunday morning.” His tone was gruff.

I sat down. “Yeah? Why?”

“Because Sterling Storey is dead. And I’d rather people not know that I’m the one who told you. Just in case that becomes important.”

“What?” My exclamation had to do with surprise at the news of Sterling’s death. But I was also wondering how it could become important from whom I’d heard the news. Paranoia wasn’t part of my friend’s character, so I assumed that Sam was a step or two ahead of me. Although all the chess pieces appeared blurred on the board to me, Sam was plotting moves farther down the line.

“Lucy came by to see me last night, kind of late. You know, to check on me. She told me about it.”

“Why is Lucy worried about you?”

“That’s not why I called, either, Alan. Focus.”

I considered pressing it; after all, he’d offered the opening. But I didn’t. “Okay, then what happened to Sterling?”

“I don’t know what happened to Sterling Storey. All I know is what I’m hearing.”

Another one of those critical distinctions that Sam liked to make. I asked, “And the Storey story is what?”

His voice changed. It became a little louder, a little less patient. “Hold on. I’m waiting for a woman to stop staring at me thinking I’ll get off the damn phone any second if she’s rude enough. I hate that. Don’t you hate that? Now she’s like five feet away. She’s staring right at me. I’m staring right back at her.

“Hey, lady, I’m going to be a while, do you mind? Get over it.”