Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published in The MacGuffin 37.3 (Fall/Winter 2021).
Some men are breast men. Others are ass men. Will Donahue was an elbow man.
Will’s hand curved around Evie Schaeffer’s elbow as she walked him to the door from the children’s section at the library where he had asked about a book for his nephew. He didn’t really need her guidance—his white cane would’ve shown him the way—but he couldn’t resist the chance to touch the sweet-smelling woman with the smooth voice. He kept his hand at her elbow as she told him how she had moved from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh, and how charming the cramped, gray city was. He liked her pleasant lies and elbows.
Elbows gave you a feel for someone. Flabby elbows belonged to fleshy people and felt as if he were hanging onto raw dough. Scrawny elbows jabbed him and were always on the verge of slipping out of his hand. Evie had good elbows that fit perfectly into his hand, neither too soft nor too sharp.
He thought of Evie that night, her gentle yet clear voice, the lilac scent that clung to her, and the soft press of her hands. There had been a moment where he had glimpsed a luminescence surrounding her head. Since his slippery and distorted sight wasn’t to be trusted, he would later have the circulation librarian confirm that Evie was indeed a blonde. He drifted off to sleep, wondering if he had finally found what dating websites had failed to give him—a love connection, something any ordinary thirty-three-year-old man wanted.
He woke up with his brother’s words in his mind: “Go after what you want. Otherwise, you get the leftovers.”
He went to the library the following Saturday ostensibly to drop off an audiobook, and mustered the courage to ask, “Would you like to go to DiAnoia’s with me? Best lasagna in town,” he said, having rehearsed the casual tone 85 times.
She paused.
“Oh,” he stammered. “If you have a boyfriend…”
“No, no,” she said. “It’s not that.”
He cleared his throat. “I would love to get to know who’s behind the beautiful voice.”
“Oh my,” she breathed, “nobody has ever said anything like that to me before.” She agreed in short order.
They made arrangements, and Will tapped away, full of uncertainty. He wondered why she had hesitated. Whenever he revealed his blindness to women on online dating sites, they suddenly had a dentist appointment at 7 p.m. on a Saturday or said they weren’t into the caregiver thing. That was when they responded at all.
He chose the restaurant because it was a short bus ride from his insurance job downtown, and Penn Ave was easy to navigate. The maitre d’ knew him from high school and would seat him early. He memorized the menu beforehand, settling on the gnocchi and Chianti. By the time Evie arrived, he had scouted the locations of the napkins, glasses, and silverware.
Evie told him what it was like being a transplant. “I miss my friends and family, but I don’t miss the,” she inhaled, “posturing. People care so much about clothing labels and who you know. The fake smiles are blinding.”
She gasped at the b-word. Will reassured her that he was a-okay with the word and wondered why some people thought it was a slur.
Will tried to dazzle her with his varied interests. He went snowboarding in the winter (with a trained guide). He loved watching movies (with audio description). The kitchen was his favorite place in his apartment, where he prepared Italian feasts (using Braille-labeled measuring cups). The more wine he drank, the more he mellowed. They discovered a shared love of mysteries and Frank Sinatra.
A little tipsy, Evie told him why she had left L.A.—a bad relationship. “Something inside him got all twisted and mean, working backstage and watching others get what he couldn’t have,” she sighed. “I wanted to get away from that.”
He raised his glass. “To a fresh start,” he said. Their glasses clinked.
There were three women in particular he wanted to forget: Melanie, Camille, and Bethany. Melanie had elbowed her way into his bed after guiding him to the bathroom at a concert. She was soon ordering meals for him and cutting up his chicken. When he made his specialty—Bolognese sauce, the Old World way—she took over chopping the carrots and celery. By the month’s end, he’d had enough and called things off. Before storming out, she said he couldn’t do better.
Camille had delicate yet sharp elbows. When people told her that she was a good person for dating a blind man, she thanked them with too much pleasure. Knobby-elbowed Bethany interrogated him: Did he dream? (Yes.) Did he feel bad about being blind? (No, he had gone blind at four, and that was a long time ago.) Could he get aroused if he couldn’t see a woman? (Yes, and he showed her, which felt less satisfying than it should’ve.)
When Will confided his dating woes to Bryan, his brother replied, “Mommy types go for you. You’re the perfect package—a handsome devil who needs help.”
On their second date at Highland Park, his white cane tip glided over the cracked pavement circling the reservoir. In his zeal to prove his navigational prowess, he had lost his ability to carry a conversation.
“Will?” Evie hurried to catch up.
He stopped to focus on her.
“I … I don’t want to offend you,” she whispered. “I—I’ve never been with a blind person before, and I don’t know what to do.”
He gazed down at the beige-and-navy smear for some time before he understood. Perhaps the problem with the other women had been that they never asked him what to do. Instead of being led about, he and Evie could work together.
“We can walk like this.” He showed her how to tuck his hand under her elbow so they could move more easily. He learned that she had two sisters, drank potfuls of Earl Grey, and wanted three children. (He preferred two but was flexible.)
He introduced her to the ways of the blind during the next few dates. When to take his arm and when not to. How to describe things. How Hollywood had invented the whole feeling-faces thing. He told her a little about his shadowy world.
“So.” Evie’s voice had lost some of its anxiety as they strolled through Frick Park. “I look like a smear?”
“Pretty much.”
She paused and laughed. “That’s oddly liberating. Maybe we’d be better off if we all saw only blurs.”
During this time, her form became a mosaic of body parts. Soft shoulders that he held against him when he hugged her. Firm breasts that pressed against him as she reached for napkins at his favorite Middle Eastern restaurant. A moist mouth infused with the sweet tang of Earl Grey.
After their fifth date, he brought her to his apartment. She exclaimed about the floral arrangement atop his nightstand, one that the florist recommended for maximum romance. Their hands tangled as they reached for buttons and zippers. “You make me feel beautiful,” she whispered as she slid off her bra.
“You are.”
A new terrain opened up as she removed her clothes. His fingers skimmed previously uncharted territory of supple curves and rough hair. She shivered and arched into his touch as he explored her body with the attentiveness of a conscientious cartographer. He discovered reassuringly solid legs, a rounded stomach, and skin that tasted salty and sweet. As she pulled him toward her, his image of her took shape: colorless and tangible with a halo of light. He entered her warm body with a groan. She looped her legs around him and held tight.
She was beautiful, gorgeous, hot. They made love at every opportunity.
She murmured one night, “I love the way you touch me. It’s so gentle.”
His fingertips glided down her shoulder. “It’s like reading Braille,” he said. “If you press too hard, you lose the nuances.”
Will and Evie spent weeks in their love cocoon until he took her to meet his brother.
It was one of those cafes Will hated. The smell of over-brewed coffee filled the air as the espresso machine whirred and belched. The din of people talking over each other bounced along brick-lined space. His white cane kept hitting the tightly packed chairs and tables.
“Over here!” his brother called, his baritone rising above the noise. “It’s quieter in the back.”
Bryan pulled Will into a hug. The two men had the same build and height. What set Bryan apart was the paunch around his waist and the overpowering waxy smell of his hair gel.
As they all settled into their seats, Bryan said, “So, you’re Will’s new girlfriend. Emily, right?”
Her tone sharpened. “Evie, actually.”
“Whoops, sorry. I’m terrible with names … geez, that drove my ex crazy. Of course, everything about me drove her crazy.”
“Why’d you pick here?” Will asked. “You know I don’t like this kind of place.”
“Yeah, I know.” He sounded sheepish. “The waitress here is really cute, and she’s a great mom—her daughter’s in Chad’s class. She doesn’t like me for some reason, so maybe—”
“I thought you outgrew that,” Will said.
“Hey, it used to work, and if it ain’t broke…”
A bright voice interrupted. Amy introduced herself as their server with the practiced friendliness of her profession.
“How’s Giselle?” Bryan asked her.
“She’s fine,” was her curt reply.
“Uh, okay. Um, my brother here is blind. Could you please read the specials?”
A pause. “Of course.” Her voice softened as she listed the sandwiches of the day. “The spicy turkey is my favorite,” she whispered to Will.
“Thanks, Amy. Hope Giselle’s doing good,” Bryan said, and she responded with a modicum of warmth this time.
“I never understood it,” Will said once Amy left. “They just change when they find out about me.”
Evie shifted next to him.
Bryan chuckled. “Hell if I know. When I beat up kids for calling you names, girls ate it up. ‘Course, nothing tops the day you did it yourself.”
“What?” Evie said, her voice tense. “Why would Will do something like that?”
Bryan launched into the story, leaving out the bulk of the beginning and calling Doug Fletcher Derek Flint. “Lemme tell you, everyone thought Will was Daredevil. Nobody messed with him after that.”
The more accurate version went like this: Will stepped out of the gym showers his sophomore year and found his white cane missing.
“Hello?” he called. His voice echoed without a response. “Come on, give it back,” he said as he patted his way toward the main locker room.
The ventilation system kicked in, and the sound reverberated throughout the narrow room. The droning continued as Will listened for movement. Something creaked. He shouted, “Face me like a man!” and ran toward the noise.
The gym teacher found him crashing into benches with blood trickling down his cheek. The teacher asked him what in the hell he was doing, and Will replied that someone was there, and he would kick their asses.
“Nobody’s here! Jesus Christ, you really are blind,” the gym teacher said.
It took the gym teacher twenty minutes to find Doug Fletcher, a junior whose pranks were his only claim to fame, tossing Will’s white cane javelin-style near the football field. The principal suspended Doug for two weeks, and everyone shook their heads at how the prankster had hoodwinked the poor blind boy. Doug wrote an apology letter required by the school administration: I’m real sorry about the whole thing. It seemed funny at the time, but now I know it wasn’t. Sorry, man.
The note wasn’t in Braille, and Bryan read it aloud in a mocking voice, “What a lame-ass apology. Someone’s gotta set him straight, someone like you,” Bryan said afterward.
His brother brought Doug Fletcher behind the bleachers one afternoon and told Will to have at him.
“Hey,” Doug squeaked. “Uh, did you get the letter? It was just a joke … a bad one.”
Will balled his hands into fists. He could feel everyone watching him, their gazes just like the ones that surrounded him when he went out. The mother who hissed at her child not to stare. The neighbor who waited in the shadows, ready to rush to his aid as he tapped his way around the neighborhood. The teacher of the blind who told him that he needed to smile more. “People read your expressions, so you need to show your feelings,” she said as her fingers lifted his cheeks into a grin.
He squinted at the dark silhouettes against the bright sky and wondered what they saw. A butt of a joke, he decided.
“It wasn’t funny!” Will shouted as he slammed into Doug’s thin body. Doug gasped his apologies in between Will’s punches. The onlookers cheered as his elbow sank into Doug’s soft stomach. “Fight back!” Will hissed as Doug lay inert, either too cowardly or too magnanimous to fight a blind boy. The smell of torn grass clung to his nose, the taste of blood filled his mouth from biting his lip, his fists pounding warm flesh.
“All right, that’s enough.” Bryan touched Will’s shoulder after a few moments.
Will stood by with swollen knuckles and a dirt-smeared face as they carried Doug to the nurse’s office. He felt his way to the bleachers and vomited. The news that the bruised Doug refused to tattle didn’t make him feel better, nor did the congratulatory back-slaps in the hallways.
Bryan finished his abridged version, and Evie said, “Was that really necessary?”
“Had to be done. People think they can mess with you if you’re blind, but Will showed ’em,” his brother said with a smile in his voice.
Evie didn’t speak as Bryan recalled a school trip to the art museum. “This old lady insisted on describing all of the pairings to Will. When they got to a nude, she went all red and said, ‘Oh dear. Let’s move on, sweetheart,’ as if Will were a big baby. I told Will that it was a naked fat chick lying on the grass. You should’ve seen her face!”
Will chuckled. “She described that Van Gogh’s self-portrait as a strange man with an injured ear.”
The conversation moved to the more ordinary topic of Bryan’s occupation as an accountant. “Tax season’s a bitch, let me tell you,” his brother said in between bites. “But once it’s over, I’m a free man. I can go play catch with Chad. Great kid, hard to believe he’s mine.”
Evie excused herself, an unsteady cadence to her footsteps. Once she was gone, Will said, “She’s great, isn’t she?”
A silence followed. “She seems nice.”
“C’mon. She’s beautiful, smart, and nice.”
“Well … maybe smart and nice, but she’s no beauty queen.”
Will stiffened. “You’re fucking with me.”
“Aw, come on. I wouldn’t do that.”
Before Will could inquire further, Bryan excused himself to catch Amy on break. When Evie returned a few moments later, it was time to go. The spring chill hit his overheated face as they stepped outside, Bryan’s overloud voice still in his ears. Will broke free of Evie’s grip and began walking. His pace was too fast for his white cane, and he stumbled over a crack.
The cacophony of a gentrifying neighborhood surrounded him—jackhammers screaming, drills whining, and cars honking—making him dizzy. He tried to remember where Evie had parked.
“The car is in the opposite direction,” Evie said from behind.
When he didn’t respond, she continued, her voice discordant: “The two of you look so alike, yet are so different. He’s…”
“He’s not that bad.”
“You’re so sweet and gentle.”
“What if I’m not that gentle, Evie?”
Her voice softened. “Don’t be silly. That fight was your brother’s fault.”
She wrapped his hand around her elbow with a reassuring pat. Her elbow somehow felt wrong in his hand, sharp and awkward.
He reached for her that night and discovered a few things. The hips he had thought charmingly round now felt matronly. Her breasts were lopsided, and hair sprouted from one nipple. Her body’s softness now felt squishy instead of comforting.
He wondered if these imperfections added up to something grotesque. Or whether the ugliness lurked beneath what could be felt. Or perhaps it lay in the composition of her otherwise ordinary features into something off-balance, hideous.
He felt himself soften.
His fingers pressed harder as he measured, weighted, and evaluated.
“Stop!” she cried as she recoiled from his touch.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, sick to his stomach.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know.”
As he drifted off to sleep, a new silhouette surfaced with lopsided breasts and coarse hair everywhere. He dreamed that everyone was snickering at him as he walked around with the deformed creature. After awakening in a cold sweat, he told himself not to be an asshole, which didn’t chase away the grotesque figure.
He asked Murat, the cashier at his favorite takeout place, what Evie looked like. Murat mumbled, “Uh, she’s blonde, I think. Kinda pale.” When Will prodded him on the question of beauty, Murat said, “Sure, she’s nice-looking, I guess. Ready to order?”
With talcum powder scenting her words, his elderly neighbor Daphne said, “My word, I don’t know what anyone looks like anymore. These plaid shirts … women wearing gym clothes like regular clothes! Nobody knows how to dress anymore. Now, Evie … at least she wears real pants.” When Will pressed for more, Daphne sighed, “Really, Will. Don’t be rude. Beauty comes from within.”
Clive, the grocery clerk who stank of cigarettes despite his claims of having given up the cancer sticks years ago, said, “What’s it matter to you? You can’t see her.” When Will insisted on more, Clive grumbled, “She’s cute enough.”
Derek, who was also blind and was unfailingly honest, laughed and said, “You’re an idiot,” before hanging up.
Bryan sighed into the phone. “It’s her nose. It’s a little crooked, and one nostril’s bigger than the other. Also, she could lose a few pounds.”
“Fuck you,” Will said and ended the call. His satisfaction was temporary. He still had the deformity in his mind.
He thought about Jerome, who had been his roommate at a summer camp for blind and visually impaired teenagers. Jerome liked to philosophize into the night, his voice deeper than his years. One night, he dispensed with Nietzsche and Du Bois and came up with something of his own: “We live in a sighted world where everyone judges us with their eyes. It’s like living in a room with a one-way mirror. Everyone just watches us, and that gives them power. We gotta break through and take it back!” his baritone crescendoing in the night. A boy told him to shut up and go to sleep. Will never forgot the one-way-mirror.
When they met for lunch the following Tuesday, Evie found Will prying a middle-aged woman’s plump fingers off his arm. “I’m fine. Thank you,” he told the woman firmly.
The woman huffed. “I was just trying to help.”
Evie’s lilac scent invaded his nose as she tucked his hand under her elbow. “That was a bit rude, Will.”
“She dragged me across the street!”
Evie sighed. “She wasn’t some juvenile boy playing a prank. You could’ve been nicer.”
They remained quiet throughout the meal as Will tried not to think about the one-way mirror. He spent the next few weeks focusing on Evie’s melodious voice and pleasant smell, except that her new, sharper voice kept interrupting. He overheard her scolding a boy for hitting a girl (who had punched him first), saying, “There is no excuse for hitting anyone.” Sometimes, she touched him with such tenderness that he remembered the old Evie. Other times, her elbow jabbed him as she guided him too roughly, and he couldn’t remember if this was a new habit or he had merely never noticed before. He didn’t know which silhouette was the true one: the beautiful figure or the deformity.
One Saturday afternoon, he made her his famous Bolognese sauce. The trick was to add milk to protect the beef from the tomatoes’ acidity. Evie sat in the living room, and Will told himself that he was a fool, that Evie was everything he wanted. His co-workers had congratulated him on finding a steady girlfriend. “Never thought it’d happen,” one had said.
He spilled some sauce as he twirled the spaghetti, and Evie reached over to wipe it up.
“Don’t do that,” he said as he caught her hand.
“You spilled something.”
He traced her pinkie with his thumb. Her hand felt good in his, small and delicate. He just had to know.
“Evie,” he paused, “please tell me what you look like.”
A note of uncertainty slipped into her voice as she described herself: blonde, brown eyes, medium build. She wore a blue Oxford button-down, jeans, and a silver necklace. All things Will already knew.
“But what does it all add up to?”
Her hand slid out of his, and his palm felt empty. “What do you mean?”
The pungent smell of tomatoes hung in the air as he blurted out, “Are you ugly or not?”
Her voice went cold. “What the hell?”
He couldn’t possibly explain. She lived on the other side of the one-way mirror. “Please, Evie. I need to know. I hate needing to know, but please.”
“If you loved me, you wouldn’t ask.”
“If you loved me, you’d tell me.”
“This is unbelievable.” The chair scraped the floor as she got up. “You weren’t supposed to be like this!”
“Evie—” he said, but it was too late. Her footsteps receded, and his front door slammed.
He sat there for a long time, his Bolognese sauce congealing. When he started clearing the table, he caught a whiff of her—lilac with a hint of Earl Grey. It followed him everywhere in the apartment, growing stronger with each step.
