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It was on the last day of summer that Blake woke up and realized that his world had turned to darkness and he was utterly blind. In an instant their world fell apart – came crashing down, and plunged them into black despair and devastation.
Despite always knowing it was coming – despite the steady diminishing of his sight – now suddenly Blake was shocked. He was blind, and the realization appalled him and filled him with trembling terror.
He sat up in bed, groped wordlessly for his jeans, and pulled them on. His blood had turned to ice in his veins, dread clutching at his heart so that his breathing was short and shallow. He got to his feet on shaking legs and the sound in his throat was a pitiful sob.
“Connie, I’m blind.”
He heard her move on the bed, heard the urgent rustle of the sheets around her and then her sudden startled gasp of disbelief.
His words echoed in his head for long numbing seconds – and then an unholy anger came upon him, roaring and snarling and ravenous behind his sightless eyes.
His instinct was to rage against the atrocious cruelty of it. He blundered through the house, kicking over furniture and bellowing his desolation like a wounded beast. He stumbled over the sofa, groped sightless for the living room wall and clawed his way towards the studio. A glass at his elbow fell to the floor and shattered, one of the rugs slipped from beneath his feet and he crashed painfully to the ground.
Connie came from the bedroom behind him, her hands clutched to her mouth, and she was sobbing tears of distress and helplessness. She heard the torture in Blake’s voice and she was powerless to reach him. She cringed against the doorway as he crashed futilely through the house.
In a spare room closet was a cane that Blake had been given by the eye specialists many years before. He groped for it now like an angry drunkard, felt it in his hand and wielded it like a sword.
“Why me?” he screamed. “Why did you do this to me? Haven’t I suffered enough?” He groped his way back along the hall. He was breathing raggedly. He stumbled to the screen door and kicked it open in his wrath. Ned cowered, not understanding. The great dog slinked timidly with its head hung low to where Connie crouched against the wall, and both woman and beast were trembling.
Blake swung the cane viciously in front of him, heard it crack loud against the porch railing. He stumbled down the stairs and fell into the sand. He felt rain spatter against his head, and sensed the anger of the sky, humming in the air like electricity. He went away down to the beach, falling again and again, but each time dragging himself to his feet, sobbing in grief and anguish with each step until he was just a small broken figure on the sand, against the backdrop of a boiling grey sky full of thunder and menace.
For a day and a night Blake wandered endlessly along the length of the deserted beach while the storm winds snarled against him and the rain fell in a thick grey swirling mist. Lightning flickered in the sky and thunder growled, always far off in the distance like the sound of muffled cannons. By the morning he was haggard and drawn, his legs numb and faltering so that his feet dragged exhausted in the wet sand and he fell time and time again.
Connie had sat at the window in silent vigil and watched him, her face filling with a wrench of agony each time he had come into sight, and then following him with sad eyes until he disappeared towards one of the rocky headlands. The tide had come in through the night, sweeping the sand smooth of his ragged footprints.
In the morning she could bear the torture of his pain no longer. She went fearfully down the porch steps towards the beach and into the sickly pale dawn, with no choice but to put their love on the line.
47.
He did not sense her there, did not hear her soft footfalls above the effervescent hiss of the waves running up across the shore, so that when she spoke, the sound of her voice seemed to come from a great distance away, like an echo in his memory.
Blake looked about, blind and frowning.
“Connie?”
“Yes,” she said, and felt her breath jag.
Blake’s face was gaunt, his eyes haggard dark holes in his face. He was unshaven, the color seemingly drained from his body so that he looked pallid as ash. He turned away from the sound of her voice, bone-weary and drowning in his despair.
“I want you to leave,” Blake said, his voice hollow.
“What?”
He turned back, seemed to gaze sightless past her shoulder. “I said I want you to leave,” he repeated, trying to embellish his words with cruelty and anger. “I want you out of my life.”
Connie nodded. She felt a tear run down her cheek. “Why?” she asked in a whisper, the sound of her voice so soft that Blake barely caught the word.
“Because you don’t need this!” he cried suddenly, every word seething with his frustration and bitter hopelessness. “You don’t need to be dragged down into this… this tortured hell of darkness. You still have your life. You’re young and beautiful. Don’t do this to yourself or to me. Don’t stay here out of sympathy. I couldn’t bear that.”
“You’ve given me no choice,” Connie whispered.
“I have!” Blake hissed. “I’m giving you that choice right now. I’m giving you the chance to get away from me, to start your life over again. God!” he clenched his fists suddenly and threw his head back to the looming sky, his oath seeming to echo against the clouds. “Please. I’m begging you. I couldn’t live with myself knowing you were staying here just because you felt sorry for me.”
He started to stride away, sightless along the beach. He took three shuffling steps and then stopped, turned back. “I would know, Connie,” he said with raw emotion. “I would hear it in your voice, feel it every time you gazed at me… and it would kill me. I don’t want you drawn down into this. You’re a good soul, a beautiful person. Leave the darkness to ghosts and shadows like me. Get away while you can.”
He turned away again, felt the icy chill of the breeze of the ocean slap against his cheek. He felt his feet stumble, but he steadied himself and hunched his shoulders. Connie ran after him. She clawed at his arm, and spun him around. She was weeping now, the tears slick on her cheeks, her face flushed red from the aching pain that clamped down like a heavy weight in her chest. She glared at Blake and her words were like a lash.
“I don’t want to live with a
disabled man!” she screamed at him. “And that’s what you are right now. Not because you’re blind Blake, but because your heart is hollow. It’s so filled with sadness and misery and self-pity that there is no room for me. Your blindness isn’t your problem. The grief that you cling to is your problem. Let it go!”
“It’s who I am!” Blake shouted. “It’s who I have become. Not because I wanted to, but because I was punished. You don’t have to live with it, Connie. I do!”
“No!” she screamed, her voice becoming shrill and piercing. “You don’t, Blake!” You can let it go, free yourself of it all, and make room for me in your life and your heart. The blindness doesn’t affect how I feel about you!”
He stood, his lungs filling like a bellows with great ragged trembling breaths. She could see the fury on his face but she stood braced before the storm of it, defiant and desperate to appeal to him.
“Go!” Blake shouted again. “Get away from me.”
“I wish I could!” Connie cried. “But I can’t, Blake. I can’t walk away from the only man I’ve ever met who has seen the real me – seen through me – who has seen my soul…” her voice went silent suddenly and dropped to a whisper, “and who adores me…” she repeated the words he had revealed when she had seen the portrait.
Blake felt the shock of it like a physical slap. His voice became empty, dead on his lips. “How I feel about you doesn’t matter,” he spoke slowly, his voice rumbling like an uneasy volcano. “This is not about my feelings. It’s about your future, Connie, and all the happiness you would be giving up. I can’t live with your seeping sadness. I’ve suffered enough pain already.”
Blake had wandered down to the edges of the surf. Wavelets lapped around their feet and splashed up their legs. Connie barely seemed to notice.
“I know you’ve suffered,” Connie’s voice cracked with her frustration. “But it’s time to let that go, Blake. If you want me in your life, you have to make space for me in your heart – enough space so that Chloe’s tragedy and every other setback is just a shadow.”
