“I don’t have any jewelry.”
He whirled, shining the flashlight straight at her She stood in pink nightclothes, barefoot, her long hand on the wall of the arch leading to the hall.
“I do have two gold fillings.” She shuffled forward. He left Sandston Elementary sixteen years ago; he had not seen her again until now. She remained taller than him. She said, “But if you were a dentist, I doubt you’d be breaking into people’s homes.”
Mrs. Wilcox felt her way through the room, one arm outstretched. She dodged a table and lamp to deposit herself on an easy chair, which rocked back when she sat; a pad lifted under her feet. The chair was a recliner.
“Go ahead,” she said, wagging the back of a hand at him across the little room. “I can’t be expected to sleep while I’m being robbed.”
He aimed the flashlight directly into her face. Crinkles creviced her eyes and the circumference of her mouth. Her face was spotty and white like a full moon. She didn’t flinch.
“Did you call the police?” he asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I honestly do not possess one item that anyone could find a reason to steal. And I do not want the ruckus the police will bring with them. So, grab whatever you think will have value. I likely won’t miss it.”
He took steps toward her, not on tiptoes now, searching her with the flashlight beam. She held no phone, no weapon. Her nightdress exposed her contours, breasts sagging at her age; she concealed nothing. She wore no necklace or bracelet. Her arms and legs in the sallow light were paler than he recalled. Her hair, cut short, had gone snowy.
So had her eyes.
He strode to within a few steps of her. He wavered the light across her eyes. They did not blink or follow.
“You’re blind.”
“That’s right.”
“What happened?”
“The sugar diabetes.”
“When?”
“Took awhile.”
He waggled the light again, disbelieving. She did not register, but lifted her gaze to where she approximated his head must be. She missed, looking just to the left of his face, and this was disconcerting.
She said, “Go ahead and take what you need. Then please leave without breaking any more of my windows. You’ll find the newest thing in the house is the stove.”
He did not move away, or pull the flashlight from her eyes. She stared blankly and intently ahead, keen with her ears, he could tell. He examined her features for some modicum of fear, regret, even disgrace at being sightless, but saw none on Mrs. Wilcox.
“I’m going into the bedroom. You sit still.”
“That is my intention.”
He made quick work of her drawers and closets. True to her word, he found no valuables or loose jewels. She had no iPod, laptop, or cell phone. She’d pared her possessions down to only furniture and items of comfort. He found her purse on the dresser table and rooted inside. Her wallet surrendered one credit card and four twenty-dollar bills. He took the cash. Credit cards were a sucker steal, a fast way to get tracked and caught. He left it.
He didn’t bother with the guest bedroom. He returned to the den where she had not moved, her feet still up. A pang struck, widespread in his body, in his veins.
“You’ve got to have something,” he said.
“I don’t.”
He raised his right hand high across his chest, above his left shoulder, and brought the knuckles down hard across her cheek. The blow knocked Mrs. Wilcox sideways in the lounger; she almost rolled off it but the arm of the chair caught her. He stood in front of her, his hand followed through high, stinging.
“You do.”
She righted herself in the chair. She worked her jaw and touched fingertips to the angry mark spreading on her face.
“What I find fascinating,” she said evenly, “is that, somehow in your view, I deserved that.”
“You weren’t supposed to be blind.”
Lowering his hand, he backed away to the sofa. He cut off the flashlight, to sit and join Mrs. Wilcox in the darkness. They sat silently for a minute. He began to feel at a disadvantage, that she could function like this better than he.
“Why on earth,” she said into the inky room sizzling with the aftermath of the violence, “would that matter to you?” This was no plea or whine. Mrs. Wilcox was puzzled, and figuring. “Do you know me?”
“I know you.”
“Were you one of my students?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I had over a thousand. Stands to reason one of you would turn out a bad penny.” She said this with her hand returned to her cheek. She nodded into the darkness that was only hers.
He sat rigid on the sofa, afraid of her fixed stare. She cocked her head. Across the street on the ball field, a few children whooped, playing night-blind baseball. Mrs. Wilcox listened to them for a few moments, perhaps trying to recognize voices.
She spoke, still with her head tilted, as if the man across the room from her and the misbehaving children outside were no different.
“Where did I fail you?”
Did she just call him a failure? The notion smacked him across his own cheek. He hadn’t failed. Lousy luck, rotten economy, poor employees, greedy bankers, bad blows. These had failed him.
“What are you going to buy with my eighty dollars? Drugs, I assume, and what else?”
“Some food. A bus ride back downtown.”
She shook her head at the hook rug between them. Then she seemed to understand, or unravel, something. She put clouded eyes on him.
“Are you homeless?”
“For now.”
“How did that happen?”
He did not like the question; it seemed too complex a thing to ask about so simply. He was not sitting at a little desk anymore answering her.
“It took awhile.”
Her cheek glared a harsh vermillion. He expected to strike her again.
“Son, listen to me. In every life, at some point, we can’t predict when, a snapshot goes off, and there you stay. I’m seventy-seven years old now, but inside I’m just fourteen. You, I can tell, you’re still nine. You still hurt.”
He rose to take a step toward her.
She stopped him with an open hand. Her thin white fingers looked like pieces of chalk. “I don’t know who you are.”
“I think you do.”
“I don’t. Anyway, why would that be a concern? I’m blind. No court is ever going to let me be a witness.”
He stood rooted, halfway to her in the room.
“I can’t help you,” she said.
These words condemned him.
“I can’t help myself.”
Mrs. Wilcox’s hands flew from her sides, a familiar flapping gesture from long ago, for a wrong answer.
“Well, that’s downright ignorant, and disappointing to hear. I clearly did let you down, if that’s where your life has wound up on you. Can’t help yourself. What kind of pitiful fool did you grow into?”
Mrs. Wilcox pushed forward, collapsing the lounger into a regular chair. She put her bare feet down and rose, steady and spiteful.
“Let me be plain about this. Smack me around, if it soothes you. But you, young man, have to take care of your problems yourself, instead of dragging them in your third grade teacher’s back door. Aside from the obvious illegality, this is farcical and not worthy of you.”
He followed her with the flashlight, illuminating her way without considering that she did not need it. She stepped with her gray head high, back to her bedroom. She did not close the door between them. The bed springs creaked when she lay down.
She announced, “I am going back to bed.”
Carl cut off the flashlight. His need and his ache swelled.
He felt his way to the lounger. He sat on the warmed upholstery and leaned back, lifting his legs. In the blackness he sat like this, listening to her breathe in the next room. Little by little, his eyes adjusted to seeing nothing.