The Canals of Mars: A Memoir

Night Vision

O urHeartsKeepSingingisthetitleofanoldalbumIdiscover inabinmarkedNothingover$2.99.Thenameofthegroupis theBraillettes,whoarepicturedonthecover,threeapparently blind women who beam their best version of good attitude toward an unseen camera. According to the jacket, they’ve been recorded by Heart Warming Records. Last night I woke, saw nothing, and knew it was my Bill Nelson dream, the one where he makes change in the perpetual dark, handling each coin in his black purse until he’s satisfied which ones accurately pay for his rolls. As soon as I’m awake, the dream, as it should, turns to memory—the times when I imagined Bill Nelson, the blind customer I delivered baked goods to, would cheat himself so I could pocket the extraquartersanddimes,lying to myself about the blind, how they mistake coins like I misread, in my half-vision five decades later, the brief rebus of road signs, the colorful puzzle of passersby. Theairpuffsbetweenblinksconfirmit’snotglaucomasucking my sight. Better, better, worse, better—these chants focus where things stand since the last time I heard diopters, thickness, and the measurements for the great curve of inadequate correction. The doctor hums the ceiling tunes, adds his strings to the ones playing “My Girl” and “Uptown Girl.” “Follow the light,” he croons. “Now ignore it.” Iwanttosay“How?”halfexpectinghimtoswitchitoff,smiling in the dark at optometrist humor. “Have you worried?” he’d say, the room struck black, waiting for what I’ll answer, my optimistic eyes still blinking, whether or not I’ll be sadly clever with compensatory, heartfelt singing. Aldous Huxley, whose eyesight was worse than mine, learned Braille to relieve his eyes. He saved vision for writing and followed a regimen of Night Vision 172 ■ w e a k n e s s exercises to improve his sight. One of these was “Nose Writing,” during which he fixed his eyes on the end of his nose and moved his head as if he were writing. I write nearly every morning; my head barely moves except when I turn a page. EachtimeIhavemylenseschanged,Iaskthewomanwhofitsmyglasseswhether I’ve become the patient with the worst prescription. We play it like a joke, and to tell the truth, when I first asked fifteen years ago, I was certain there were dozensofpatients,inthisofficealone,whowereworseoff.NowIamlesscertain, and her answer arrives less quickly. “Oh no, not the worst,” she eventually says, rehearsed by now, but nearly blind is no longer a vague expression. Specific enough, I know, because I’ve had my first anxiety attack in the optometrist’s chair. An embarrassment reserved in the past for blood tests, stress tests,andthefoulshieldstuffedinthebackofthemouthforseriousdentalwork, I’ve gone clammy and faint under the gaze of so many doctors and nurses that I am the champion of medical catharsis. Now, I’ve had to ask the optometrist to stop and step back; I’ve had to slow my breathing and take the water and forehead wipe with another terrible joke about resurrection. When I was in first grade, before I was fitted for my first pair of glasses and couldmanagetheblackboardfromaseathalfwaybacktherow,myparentstook me to a minstrel show in our church basement. On the stage were six men in blackface, three on either side of a patriarch of the church who was always called Major Hartman. There was an hour of foot-shuffling, fried-chicken-eating jokes. The congregation laughed and so did I, able to pick out, even from ten rows back, the enormous lips of my Uncle Ted. But what I remember most clearly now is Major Hartman, after the show, being led from the stage and down the aisle to an open space, where he stared from eyes so opaque with cataracts that he cocked his head like a bird to listen for voices. “He can see shadows,” my father said. “He sees light and dark and movement ”—making the Major’s world seem as if it were appropriate for the first day of Genesis. I wanted to know if the Major recognized me, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. Instead, all I could do was walk up to him and squint at his eyes, his head swiveling toward my father, who was speaking, and then briefly, when I stepped back, peeking down toward the tap of my cleated shoes. In the past, some people wore gold earrings, believing they sharpened eyesight. Dubious even as motive, I think, but the Sioux believed in the more likely power of bezoar stones, inorganic masses of magnesium phosphate and lime that form aroundforeignsubstancesinthealimentarycanalsofruminantslikebuffaloand deer. The dust...