INVISIBLE

iUniverse, Inc.

Chapter One

We rode, the three of us, in a large, two-tone blue Oldsmobile. My father loved driving a big car, although it was only in the past four years that he could afford one. My mother sat beside him on the front seat, motionless. I was alone in the back—sixteen years old—yet wanting to be rocked like a baby. We rode in silence, except for an occasional screeching of brakes or honking horn. The people-silence was good. We needed it. Each of us needed the time to gather the floating fragments within and patch them into a whole, however splintered.

Alone in the back, I was able to retreat into the healing quiet. I was exhausted after days of questioning, probing, and poking. The ride was soothing. Motion was lulling me into sweet oblivion. There were neither clouds nor sun, landscape nor people, day nor time—only blessed emptiness.

"Beep, beep, beep," erupted from alongside of me, shattering the peace. "Beep, beep, beep, beep," continued the urgent warning.

"Who the hell do you think you are, Buster?" exploded from the open window of the car my father was passing on a narrow incline. Close, too close.

He was speeding again. My father loved to sit behind the wheel and put his foot down hard. "Hey, Dave," his friends would kid, "heard you were flying low again."

"So?" he would reply, his hand shooting upward to punctuate the rising inflection. His dark brown eyes bordered on defiance; his lips, however, betrayed a sheepish grin—big man with little boy hand caught in cookie jar.

I looked at the back of his head, with its neatly trimmed dark brown hair, and at the fleshy neck, barely protruding above his collar. Why does he speed? Does it make him feel important, taller than his five-feet-two inches, more powerful? Powerful? Not today! Shoulders sagging, body hunched and straining forward, hands clutching the wheel for support—these were not signs of power.

I closed my eyes, blotting out my father and the stony figure next to him. I rearranged myself on the seat, nestling into its comforting softness. I willed myself to recapture the delicious, lost emptiness. "Uh-ump, uh-ump," echoed the rhythmic pulsing of the tires. I descended slowly into their hypnotic throb. "Spin away," they chanted. "Spin away, spin away, cruel world." And it was so.

I woke once again to honking, swerving, screeching reality.

"Gyp," a voice was calling. I gulped air, struggling with re-entry into consciousness. Full awareness brought a shudder.

"Gyp," my father repeated my nickname. "I want you to know that I plan to look everywhere. I will leave no stone unturned."

My father had pulled over on the shoulder of the road. He sat behind the wheel, his head twisted back to face me. "If there is anything that can be done, Gyp," the words quickened, "it will be, I promise ..." His voice broke.

The motor roared; we were moving again. My father's hollow voice and my mother's still figure combined with dual force, crashing into my dormant memory. I struggled against the cruel awakening in vain. My mind, like a dropped ball of yarn, spun helplessly backward. Back, back it reeled, back to the crowded waiting room buzzing with anxious whispers. Pause. Then fast forward through the tension-filled examining rooms. Stop. Yes, there it was, the conference room, place of the final meeting—and of words never to be forgotten.

The conference room was one of several at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. It was a large room with windows along one side. My parents and I met with a doctor at the appointed time. The doctor was seated at a small desk near the windows. My parents sat across from him, my mother to his right and my father to his left, a little closer in. The three formed an irregular, pie-shaped wedge. I had been seated to the far right of the doctor, parallel to his desk, outside the circle—an onlooker.

My parents and I waited while the doctor leafed through the papers before him. After what felt like an eternity, the doctor smiled and uttered an abrupt, "Yes," obviously pleased that the papers were in order. He cleared his throat.

"Our examination," he began, "reveals that your daughter has retinitis pigmentosa." Silence. "Retinitis pigmentosa is a disease of the eye characterized by gradual deterioration of the retina." Pause. "First and most notably affected is peripheral vision, that is, side vision."

The doctor's voice sounded familiar, not his particular voice, but something about it—something, but what? It had more to do with his distinct enunciation than voice quality. Yes, I remembered now. It was the rabbi's voice! It was the rabbi, intoning that dreadful prayer that had always sent shivers through me, the one whose words struck fear into my heart every year for the ten days starting with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and ending with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. I could hear the somber recitation now:

On New Year's Day the decree is signed and on the Day of Atonement it is sealed. How many shall pass away and how many shall be born; who shall live and who shall die; who shall attain the measure of man's days and who shall not attain it; who shall perish by fire and who by water; who by sword and who by beast; who by hunger and who by thirst; who by earthquake and who by plague; who by strangling and who by stoning; who shall have rest and who shall go wandering; who shall be tranquil and who shall be disturbed; who shall be at ease and who shall be afflicted ...

Afflicted, afflicted. I realized with a start that the doctor was still speaking. I must pay attention. I had missed something about "rods and cones," "already night blind," "narrow field." He was explaining tunnel vision.

"In other words, when your daughter looks at an object, it is as though she were viewing it through a straw. When she looks at the printed page, she sees at most only three or four letters of a word. Although her central vision is reduced, it is your daughter's narrow field, her tunnel vision, that classifies her as legally blind."

I looked at my mother. Her lips were sucked into her mouth. Maybe not. Maybe they had just turned white. Could that happen? I leaned forward to get a better look but couldn't tell.

"As already noted," the doctor was saying, "the central vision is reduced. It will continue to diminish. We cannot predict the rate since each case is different. However, the central vision will be the last to go."

He said that the way I would say, "The plate of pretzels will soon be empty."

The professorial presentation continued. "Retinitis pigmentosa is a progressive disease resulting in blindness. However, there are some known cases where light perception ..."

The air around me exploded, cramming my ears with inhuman sounds. My eyes darted to my mother. She had turned to stone. She stared beyond the doctor, beyond the very walls of the room, beyond ... I turned to the doctor. His gaze was fastened on my father. I looked at my father. His face was buried in his hands. The animal sounds were his futile attempt to stifle his sobs. Impossible. Unbelievable. Men did not cry, and, if any did, surely my father would never be among the weepers. He was a rock; he was...