“I had no idea your vision was impaired.”
Another person who did not dare to use the word “blind.”
“My vision is excellent,” Steadman said. “It’s my eyesight that’s a little faulty.”
“It’s not getting you down. That’s just great.”
“No, because, bad as it might be, it’s better than anyone else’s.”
The president, Steadman saw, needed to be looked at. He was the embodiment of self-consciousness. Every word he said had conviction in it and a suggestion of, Remember this. He had a wonderful please-love-me laugh. He had a way of exaggerating his facial expressions, as though to indicate, I am laughing, I am touched, I am intently listening, I share your feelings.
“I like that. You’ve got a real good attitude,” the president said.
He was all calculation. But beneath the surface of his confident facial expression was a shaky heart and trembly attention, an insecurity, the fear that someone might see what he really felt, what he actually knew — his woe, his close-to-despairing feeling that he might be found out. Standing next to him, Steadman felt these vibrations — that the president needed to keep his secret even more than he needed to be loved for his candor. He was at the core a watchful anxious man who had spent his life being observed, who could not bear unsympathetic scrutiny, who hated to be alone. There was something explosive in him, too, that he was keeping in check. And not one secret but many.
“I will get you the finest doctors,” the president said. “We can fix this thing.”
How can I help you? was his mantra, because helping people was the key to earning their gratitude, their respect, their support. Steadman liked the man for understanding that power was something that you had to earn, that people gave you, not something you snatched and squeezed from the unwary. The president had been poor. The long climb from poverty, a history of favors asked for and repaid, had given him a sharp memory. He still had aspirations. Even in this easy group of rich well-wishers he was campaigning. Everything about his social posture — his smile, his banter, his kindness, his generous nature — said he wanted your vote.
Someone — a woman, the same woman as before — took Steadman’s hand and placed a cold glass into it. Her perfume, the pressure of her fingers, the softness of her skin, the warmth of her hand, the way she brushed him, her soft skirt, her tight thigh — all this told Steadman she was slender and young and sure of herself. And she was aroused — so obvious to him now that he was blind — a hot humid tenderness to her skin, a sticky quality to her lips, and the close dampness of her breath that her perfume did not mask.
“I mean it,” the president said, speaking of his offer to help.
“That’s very gracious. Thank you, sir.”
But the president, who missed nothing, had noticed the woman too, and he was attracted. Steadman realized how other people’s reactions were helpful, and now, in these past few minutes, feeling the heated gaze of many people, he had become the center of attention.
Because Steadman had become the most conspicuous person in the room, the president hung on, began needing him — Steadman could sense that, for by being next to him, he was peculiarly visible. That vanity in the president was mingled in a paradox of conceit with sympathy and kindness.
The others’ shock was apparent: no one had expected Steadman to show up blind. People who had found him arrogant or distant or offhand now pitied him, and faced him more squarely, emboldened by the strength, a swagger of wellbeing, that onlookers feel in the company of someone frail. For in their judgment Steadman was powerless and lame as a blind man, needing to be steered around by his elbow, no longer a threat or a source of sarcasm; he was impotent, he was pitiable, a cripple, and without help he would trip over chairs and bump into walls.
Steadman smiled at the thought of this, for the truth these people did not know was that he was perhaps a greater threat to their privacy now. He could gain access to and probe any of their secrets, was nimbler and more acute and virile than ever. Nothing was hidden from him.
Holding on to his arm, as much a new pal as a helper, restraining him a little, the president seemed to understand Steadman’s insightfulness. He introduced him to a few people — men and women whom Steadman already knew — and in doing so, the president was claiming him as his own, possessing him for his aura, his power to command attention.
The blindness fascinated the president, like a peculiar gift, a unique asset, a signature trait. Which it is, Steadman thought, all of that and more.
Still holding on to him, more tightly now, the president moved him through the party. Steadman understood the president as blind in a simple and old-fashioned way, fearing exposure. The poor man could not see himself at all. He was desperate in clinging to his secrets — secrets that to Steadman were obvious in his whole demeanor. Never mind what the secrets were — they smoldered like half-smothered fires in the president’s soul and shone in his fragile and easily readable face.
The president wanted everything, but most of all he wanted to be needed. And so he took charge of Steadman, possessed him and seemed proud, as though he’d captured a country or successfully wooed a woman — he had what he wanted.
He kept touching Steadman with deft slender fingers, and when Wolfbein appeared and introduced people to the president—“Mr. President, I want you to meet an old friend”—the president deflected him, and with Steadman on his arm said, “This is Slade Steadman. I’m sure you know his work.”
Steadman had become his prop, his cause, and though the president had put himself in charge, and was big and busy on his behalf, Steadman could see how wounded he was. The man was next to him, holding him, kneading his shoulder. Steadman could feel the warmth, which was more than warmth — the scorching heat and life of his eagerness and something like shame. He was fully alive, but what had he done that had made him so hot with guilt?
His pulse, his touch, told Steadman how appearances mattered to him, how surfaces meant everything, though he was the most watchful human imaginable. Perhaps he recognized this trait he shared with Steadman. He seemed like someone who was forever stalking, with an insatiable appetite, his hunger beyond the hunger of anyone else.
Also, what looked like guilt or shame was neither of those — they did not cut deep enough; it was undiluted embarrassment. He was brave in his secrets, not sorry for them but only fearful of being found out. His need to be fully visible was at odds with his need to conceal, and made him an active and distracting presence for his furtive alertness, and had given his smiling and much too reliable face a profound pinkness.
So he latched on to Steadman, because it proved that he had sympathy and altruism and charity. He was here at a party, not carousing — he hardly seemed to drink anyway, had barely touched his glass — but propping up a blind man, though Steadman was aware that it was really the other way around.
Ava joined them, was embraced by the president—“You’re a lucky gal”—and she took Steadman aside to say that she had been talking to the first lady.
“She’s amazing — she’s lovely,” Ava said. “She looks straight at you and tells you exactly what she thinks.”
“I saw her when they came in.”
Whenever Steadman referred to his seeing something, Ava reacted, made a gesture, not quite doubting, but impatient.