“What happened?” I asked again as I drew closer with a sense of dread. The last time I’d seen my parents in such wordless despair was three years ago, when Grandpa toppled onto a restaurant floor, dead of an aneurysm. Dad couldn’t possibly have a ticking time bomb inside his brain, too, could he? Still no answer.
My parents’ Fifty by Fifty Manifesto scrawled on a white restaurant napkin rested between them on the table like an upended tombstone. I clutched the edges of my jacket around me.
“What is it?” I asked. My voice rose. “What?”
Dad met Mom’s gaze, avoiding mine. An entire conversation bookended with arguments and agreements had taken place while I blinked.
Mom started explaining, “Your dad was climbing a ladder and missed a rung—”
“You did?” I shot a quick look at him, frowning. Dad was one of the most coordinated people I knew. I’d seen him balance confidently on the top rung of a scary-tall ladder that no one’s ever supposed to stand on, just to remove a hornet’s nest.
“He hit his head pretty hard,” Mom said, sliding her hand atop Dad’s. “So we went to the emergency room and—”
“I’m going blind,” Dad said bluntly.
“They think.” Mom’s voice was fierce. “It was just one doctor’s opinion.”
“She’s right, Mollie. There’s a black dot when I look out my left eye.”
“But they can fix it, right?” I asked, shaking my head as if I was denying the diagnosis.
“Retinal neuropathy, that’s the best guess,” Dad said. He played with the corner of their legendary napkin, the list of all the adventures they’d promised each other to take: trekking the Inca Trail, canyoneering in Wadi Mujib, surfing at Puerto Escondido. “There’s no cure.”
“They’ll know more once they get the blood work back,” Mom jumped in.
“Six months.” Dad folded his arms across his chest, rocking forward in his chair. “That’s what I have left to see. To see.”
“We don’t know for sure, Gregor, until we get the second opinion.”
Dad lifted his head to stare at Mom incredulously. “Mollie, come on.” And then he proceeded to tell me about the genetic disease, which typically strikes men in their early twenties. “I’ve got all the symptoms.”
“But it doesn’t make sense!” I cried.
In what universe would it make any kind of sense for my dad, the ultimate photographer, to go blind? And besides, he was in better shape than men half his age. So how could he be getting a disease?
“Luck of the genetic draw. The only thing that matters,” Dad said tiredly, “is that I won’t be able to take care of anyone in six months.”
“That’s not true,” Mom protested.
Dad ordered in an uncharacteristically harsh tone, “Mollie. Stop.”
The room reverberated with Mom’s hurt, Dad’s hopelessness, my confusion. Mom bit her lip, chastened. For once, her cheerleader optimism failed her. Dad’s tension was a beacon for Auggie, who lifted herself from Mom’s perpetually cold feet to resettle at Dad’s side. Her baleful eyes stared up at Dad until he rested his hand on her head. “It’s okay, girl. God, I blamed the dog for missing the bedbugs over the last couple of weeks. It was me.”
Dad dropped his head into his hands. His half-dollar-size bald spot—that vulnerable patch of bare skin—made my heart clutch. For the first time, I realized that Dad wasn’t invincible. It was frightening, that thought.
“Wouldn’t you know it? The twins are settled. Shana’s almost in college. Just when it was almost my time to do what I wanted… I wasted my whole life killing rats. Trapping moles. Gassing spiders.” A shudder of anguish passed over my father, and he wrapped his arms around himself, rocking back and forth. “‘He killed bedbugs,’ for God’s sake; that’s going to be my legacy.”
“Dad! You were taking care of us,” I told him.
Mom added passionately, “Providing for us.”
“And what am I going to do to take care of everybody now?” Dad asked, his eyes wild. “You can’t kill bedbugs if you can’t see them.”
Guiltily, I thought of all the times my brothers and I swore that there was no way in hell we were ever going to run Paradise Pest Control. Who cared if we were the fourth generation? My future, for one, was taking place in galleries and photo shoots. It had never registered that our paradise was Dad’s purgatory, where he stayed out of duty to us.
Without warning, Dad scraped his chair back, gouging the hardwood floor.
“Gregor!” Mom called, standing up to follow, but the resolute bang of the front door made it clear: He wanted to be alone, wanted to be out of our home and this life.