Amy Bloom: A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You

At the Spring Dance, Charley and Ellie drank two Manhattans apiece and began with a Viennese waltz and then a fox-trot and then another break for drinks. When Ellie put an open-hip twist into their rumba, Charley laughed out loud and whispered, slurring in Ellie’s ear, “I wish I was Jewish. Then I’d only have to come to the big weddings. No one would expect me to play eighteen fucking holes of golf at the Big Club with these imbeciles tomorrow.”

Ellie said, “I could convert and play golf with them, and you could become a lesbian.”

Charley twirled them around Mr. and Mrs. Fairbrother and slid his hand down Ellie’s firm, damp back. “I am a lesbian, aren’t I? How am I not a lesbian? You’re no help. My uncle Albert is the biggest fruit in Rhode Island, and he’s teeing off with us at one. No women on the links on Saturday. Really, Jewish would be better.”

When Charley and Ellie’s jitterbug slid them onto the ivy-patterned chintz couch, Mai kissed her father-in-law, gathered their coats, and put them both in the backseat. It may be true that alcohol has played a central part in every good time Ellie and Charley have had together, but even when they begin to find each other affected, possessive, and frankly a little pathetic (his lack of sperm, her lack of spouse), they remind themselves that no amount of alcohol can create affection where there is none and that they must really be very fond of each other after all.

“Inever know what time to make dinner,” Charley says. He pours Scotch into a glass, and a quick stream over the chicken. “Or what to make.”

If Mai’s not going to join them, he might as well make something interesting. For the last three days he’s cooked soft-boiled eggs, Cream of Wheat, crustless white toast. At two in the morning he made a dozen ramekins of egg custard so that Mai could try again no matter how many times she threw up.

“Coq au Scotch?” This doesn’t seem like a bad idea to Ellie.

“It’ll be our little secret,” Charley says.

Charley has brought hummus, pita chips, fresh mozzarella, and a case of wine from home. Ellie takes the corn onto the back porch, sorry she had a blueberry muffin and half of Mai’s milkshake just an hour ago.

“Do you want to nap? I’ll finish,” says Charley, sitting down to help shuck more corn than the two of them will ever eat.

“Nap? No, I’m fine. You lie down if you want to. I can set the table, make the salad.” Ellie knows there will be corn bisque tomorrow, possibly black-bean-and-corn salad. If there’s too much food, they will have the Cushings senior over, and Ellie will feel like the visiting troll.

“No thanks, it’s done already.”

Mai calls it the 66 Hemlock Drive Ironman Competition. When she was well, she got up first, went to bed last, and swam sixty laps in Hay Harbor, bringing crullers and the Times back from the bakery. Charley and Ellie were forever, contentedly, runners-up.

Charley sips his Scotch, watching the sailboats rock in their moorings. When Mai sails, she looks like Neptune’s daughter, streaming gold and white across the water. One of the things Charley does like about Ellie is her ability and her willingness to do nothing, for several hours at a time. Even though Charley believes that Mai will live, her illness makes everything else, every activity and wish, smoky and false. He watches himself going to the office, making deals he has hoped for, making more money than he had expected, and thinks, This doesn’t matter, and what matters I can’t do a thing about.

Charley looks into his glass. “You know, I know you’ve always been in love with her. I do understand.” And he does. He feels sorry for Ellie, he loves her for trailing after his beautiful Mai for twenty years, making do, admirably, with friendship, while having to contemplate Charley, every night, in the place she would like to be.

“I don’t know what you understand. I’ve never been in love with Mai. I love her, I love her to the ends of the earth, but not in love.” It has puzzled Ellie sometimes. Darling Mai, all that perfect equipment and not a lick of chemistry.

“Well, it’s not the kind of thing one argues about, but I see you’ve never been really serious with anyone. I don’t blame you, you know, she’s wonderful.” And Mai does seem, just now, really wonderful, irresistible, even easy to love.

“Of course Mai’s wonderful. I’m not arguing about that either. I don’t seem cut out for domestic life, Charley, and it’s not because I’ve been carrying a torch for twenty years.”

Ellie chews the ice in her drink. She had come close to domestic life with a college sweetheart who moved back in with her old boyfriend three months after they all graduated; fairly close with the clothing designer who moved to Ghana, which Ellie would not even consider; and very close just five years ago, and it is clear to Ellie now, when she runs into this woman and her good-looking girlfriend and their two happy Chinese children, black smooth bangs and big white smiles, in cuddly green fleece jackets with matching hats and adorable green sneakers, that the one right door had swung open briefly and Ellie had just stood there, her lame and hesitant soul unwilling to leave her body for the magnificent uncertainty of Paradise.

When they were nineteen, she and Mai lay on Ellie’s twin bed in their bikini underpants, with only the closet light on. Mai’s breasts were lit in a narrow yellow strip. Mai put Ellie’s left hand on her right breast.

“Is this what you do?”

Ellie patted Mai’s collarbone. “It’s what I do with a girlfriend.”

Mai smiled in the dark. “Goody for them. I’m your best friend.”

“Yup,” said Ellie, and they both rolled to the right, as they did every Sunday night, Mai in front, Ellie behind, and slept like spoons.

Ellie tucks Mai in. Mai wears Ellie’s old “If you can walk you can dance, if you can talk you can sing” T-shirt and Charley’s Valentine’s Day boxer shorts.

“I’m a fashion don’t,” Mai says.

“Yeah,” says Ellie, “not like me.”

“But that’s okay, Elliedear, you always dress like shit.” Elliedear and Maidarling is what Mrs. Cushing has called them for twenty years. “All sociologists dress like shit. E, did your feet go numb? I don’t know what it is. I thought they were cold, but they’re just nothing. No feeling.”

“It’s okay. Mine did too.” Ellie smooths out the top sheet and unfolds one of the beautifully faded Cushing quilts over Mai, who sweats and freezes all night.

“Did the feeling come back?”

“No.”

“You’re supposed to follow that with a positive remark, like ‘No, but now I don’t need shoes, and with the money I’ve saved—’”

“With the money I’ve saved, I’m moving to another planet.”

“That suggests that these feelings of homicidal irascibility will not be passing,” Mai says.

“Honey,” Ellie says, kissing Mai’s forehead, “how should I know? I was born bad-tempered.”

“When I’m better,” Mai says, and closes her eyes.

Ellie turns out the light and hopes that Mai will sleep until morning. When Mai has a bad night and Charley takes care of her, Ellie wakes up feeling useless and duped.

“When I’m better,” Mai says in the dark, “we’re getting you a girlfriend. Grace Paley’s soul in Jennifer Lopez’s body.”

Mai dreams that she is with her parents, skiing at Kvitfjell. The trees rush past her. The yellow goggles she had as a little girl cover her face, and she’s wearing her favorite bright yellow parka and the black Thinsulate mittens Charley got her last Christmas. Her parents are in front, skiing without poles, shouting encouragement to her over their shoulders. Her mother’s hair is still blond, still in a long braid with a blue ribbon twisting through it, and she calls out Mai’s name in her sweet, breathy voice. The wind carries her father’s words away, but she knows they want her to drop her poles. As Mai loosens her grip, her mother raises an arm, as if to wave, and catches something, Mai’s parka. Mai is skiing in just her turtleneck now, and it whips up over her head, tangling with her bra. Her yellow goggles work themselves loose and her scarf unwinds, wiggling down the ice toward her parents. Her black overalls unsnap, flying off her legs like something possessed, tumbling a hundred feet down to her father. Her parents catch each item quickly and toss it into the trees. “Skynde seg, come on.” Mai has only her boots and her mittens now, and the wind drives hard and sharp, right up her crotch, pressing her skin back into her bones. Her bare chest (two breasts again, she notices, even while sleeping) aches under the stinging blue snow, her eyelids freeze shut. She is skiing blind and naked. She wakes up, fists knotted in her wet pillowcase, thinking, How obvious. It seems to Mai that even her subconscious has lost its subtlety. Mai is famous for her subtle humor, her subtle beauty, her subtle understanding of the Brontë sisters, of nineteenth-century England, of academic politics and the art of tenure, which she got at thirty. Now she feels as subtle as Oprah and not even as quick.