“The painting is much smaller. Here, let’s walk closer.”
She leads me up to the painting. And indeed, as we draw nearer, the colors in the middle of the white rectangle—which it turns out are the painting in the center of the wall—become larger as we approach.
“Now. Can you see the road in the painting?” she asks.
I look very closely but all I see is a dance of colors. Orange, red, blue. But no road.
“It’s a triangle,” she hints.
“Sorry, I can’t find it.”
“Are your hands clean?”
“Yeah.”
She lifts one of my hands and traces my fingertips across the paint.
“These are the edges of the road.”
I feel the shape, and as I do, it jumps out at my eyes.
“Wow! I see it! The triangle! It’s a yellow triangle, right there, a yellow triangle!”
I have no idea how a person could know this is a road, or how she would know by looking at it that this road is supposed to seem like it’s getting further away on the flat canvas of the painting. But I know there’s a triangle. I can see that much.
She hugs me, the protruding lens of her camera squeezing against my chest.
“Will! This is so exciting!”
Though I can’t see the tears, I can hear that she starts to cry a little. “I can’t believe it worked! You can see!”
“Yeah,” I say. “I can.”
She gushes, “I’m so happy right now. You can see! It worked! AHH! This is crazy. Here, we need a picture. A selfie of this moment. Smile!”
We stand in front of the painting, and she snaps a few photos.
Later that day, I have a follow-up appointment with Dr. Bianchi. I put on goggles and press a button when I see dots of light, and I identify colors on flash cards for him. Upon seeing me successfully recognize a color for the first time, Dr. Bianchi makes several happy exclamations in Italian and throws his hairy arms around me.
CHAPTER 21
On Tuesday evening, I’m sitting at my desk reviewing my toy blocks. I can recognize each now, almost instantly and from many angles. But after naming a shape, I still reach out and touch it to confirm I am correct.
There’s a knock at my door.
It’s Dad. I can tell from the knock.
“Will?”
“Come in.”
He does. I turn and watch a formless, shifting array of colors as the door opens and he walks into my room and sits on the bed, the mattress exhaling under his weight.
“Seems like you’ve pretty much conquered those blocks now,” he says.
“I guess so.”
“Ready to graduate to real objects?”
I resent his implication that my progress isn’t real because I’m learning with toys. “These are real shapes.”
“Sorry, you’re right. You’re doing great. But now that you know basic shapes, maybe it’s time to try to identify complex ones?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I’ve got a good example downstairs. You might say it’s a gift to congratulate you on winning the election yesterday. Want to check it out?”
We go downstairs. I follow the sound of his movements, walking by touch with my eyes shut. But every few steps, I open my eyes for a second, take just a quick, dizzying peek at the moving hallway.
Dad says proudly, “Here it is, Will, your first complex object to identify by sight.”
We are in the side hallway, which we’ve always kept clear of furniture. Only some photo frames hanging about shoulder level. He squares my shoulders so I’m facing the wall.
“You want me to look at the photos?” I ask. I could probably handle that. I mean, at least I now know how to tell the difference between a framed object and the wall it’s hanging on.
“No, there’s something else here. See if you can figure out what it is.”
I wonder why Dad is doing this. Probably because I’m his son and he wants me to successfully adapt. But I can’t help wondering if a part of him—maybe a part he’s not even aware of—might actually want to push me to failure. He told me not to get the operation. He warned me tasks like this one would be overwhelmingly difficult. If that’s the lesson he’s trying to teach here, I want to prove him wrong.
So maybe this is a trick question: I’m supposed to search and search and give up, only to realize there is no object.
“Dad, I’ve walked by this wall and touched it a hundred times. There’s nothing else here,” I say. In other words, I see what you’re trying to do here, Dad. And I’m not amused.
“No, I moved the object here from another part of the house.”
This strikes me as suspicious. “Why not just move me to that part of the house?”
He chuckles. “Will, obviously if I took you to the place where this object normally is found, you would know what it is based on context. Bringing it here makes it challenging.”