Vision of Light

We had a new English teacher for my final year. I didn’t realise how entwined our destinies would become in future years. And maybe what happened to me all that time ago was the reason our paths met.

I really tried to get through English without my glasses. I knew that Didi Carne would make a thing about it and I didn’t want to draw attention to myself in our first class with a new teacher.

But it was too hard. The lights were dancing even more than normal and it was so distracting. As he wrote on the board, I just couldn’t see what he was writing.

So I discreetly pulled my glasses out and put them on.

Didi noticed immediately and started mocking me.

Mr Michaels - that was his name - immediately intervened. “What’s going on?”

“Just Iris and her fancy sunshades,” Didi said. A few of her cronies smirked.

I was so embarrassed. I let my hair fall in front of my face to hide them.

“They’re not even real glasses,” Didi said. “The lenses are plain. They’re just a stupid coloured lens that she puts on to pose.”

My friend Emily instantly came to my defence. “You know they’re medically prescribed.”

Didi rolled her eyes. “Sure.”

Mr Michaels looked at me and then back to Didi. “I have no problem with someone wearing prescription glasses. I suggest you focus on your own work and stop disrupting the class.”

That told her. But I could feel the venom in her gaze burning into the back of my head. She’d get her revenge on me somehow.

I just felt embarrassed by the whole thing. It didn’t help that Mr Michaels seemed really nice. He was also young and very good looking compared to most of the school staff.

We were studying Blake, who I quite liked. Not as much as Keats, who everyone falls in love with, but it was still beautiful verse. “To see a World in a Grain of Sand” and so on.

I took my glasses off afterwards and went with Emily to lunch. I still needed them but I knew people found it weird and pretentious to wear tinted glasses indoors.

Emily already had a crush on Mr Michaels. “Don’t you think he’s gorgeous? If only we were doing love poetry or something a bit sexier. ‘A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth, and love.’ Imagine him reading that to us!”

It was true that Blake wasn’t exactly sexy stuff. Not like Byron.

I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about Mr Michaels yet. Something about him unsettled me. I felt he’d looked at me in a penetrating way a couple of times and I thought he might have disapproved of my glasses, despite what he said. You weren’t allowed to wear regular sunshades in class and my prescription glasses did look a bit like that. Although they had purplish lenses.

We had English again the following day. To my surprise, Mr Michaels took me aside before class started, while everyone was getting seated and getting their things out.

“It’s Iris, isn’t it? I wondered if you wanted to move to the front row? If that might help with seeing the board more easily.”

He was being kind but the last thing I wanted was to sit on the front row. No one wants to sit there. “It’s okay. I can see fine, I just have a thing with glare,” I explained.

He studied me. People usually don’t understand because my vision problem isn’t like being short-sighted or having astigmatism or whatever. It’s more like a visual disturbance.

“Well, please don’t be concerned about asking for any support you need,” he said. “And there’s obviously no problem at all wearing whatever visual aids you’ve been prescribed.”

This was a relief because some teachers had been funny about it. “Thank you.”

My eyes weren’t doing great that day. Up nearer to him the glare was much more distracting. I hadn’t really looked closely at him before, beyond noticing that he was tall with dark blond hair. Now I saw what Emily meant. He really was incredibly good looking. His eyes were an unusual colour, sort of a golden grey.

I took my usual seat in the second from back row. Ignoring Didi and her friends, I put my glasses on. It’s always harder when people are moving, like a teacher at the front of the room, writing on the board, walking back and forth. Things sort of shift and flicker.

We studied the poem throughout the class. I liked bits of it but not all of it. There was something chilling about the line “Some are born to sweet delight” being repeated. No other line in the poem was repeated. It made the contrast with the following line, “Some are born to endless night”, more stark.

Just before the bell went, Mr Michaels gave us our homework to the usual groans. “The essay theme will be on how Blake explores the difference between seeing and understanding in Auguries of Innocence,” he told us. “I don’t need you to write pages and pages, but I do want it to be thoughtful. Not just what he says in the poem but why he says it.”

Emily and I went back to my place after school. My aunt, who I live with, was still at work.

“I’m never going to get this essay done,” Emily was complaining. “It’s too obscure.”

I had taken quite a few notes during class. “He gave us some pointers. It’s not that bad,” I said.

“I wouldn’t be bothered except he’s so gorgeous. I wonder if his photo is on the school website?” She went to look it up. “There he is. J Michaels. I wonder what the J stands for?”

I didn’t really think the photo did him justice but Emily downloaded it to her phone and set it as her lock screen.

“You can’t do that! Imagine if he sees,” I said.

Grudgingly agreeing, she replaced it with a photo of her cat. “He’s not that much older than us. This is probably his first teaching job. I reckon he’s no more than twenty-three.”

“That’s still five years older,” I pointed out.

“By the time we graduate from university we’ll be twenty-one. That’s not such a gap,” Emily said.

“If we get into university. Except he’ll also be three years older as well. You don’t get to catch up,” I pointed out. “Anyway he doesn’t look the sleazy type.”

“You can never tell.”

I could though. I could tell that he was alright.

Aunt Lois arrived back some time later. She was an interior designer and had become increasingly successful in the past few years. She was starting to get some seriously rich, VIP-type clients which took her across the country.

“Pizza tonight?” she called up the stairs. “Can you order? I’m snowed under.”

You would never think, looking at my aunt, that she existed on a diet far more of pizza than salad. Obviously we ate both but she had the slim, smart, glowing-with-health look of someone who goes to the gym every morning and exists on little more than green tea, oatmeal and blueberries.

Tonight though she did look tired. When we came downstairs she already had papers spread out all over the kitchen table. She smiled at us both. “Hello Emily. Are you staying for dinner?”

Emily had to get back. “I wish I could. But we have visitors.”

“No problem. You’re always welcome.”

I made Aunt Lois some tea so she could focus on her work. She had a home office but she preferred the larger table in the kitchen.

I ordered a couple of pizzas and she asked me about school, homework, the usual.

“Just an essay for English,” I told her. “We’ve got until mid next week.”

The next day was Saturday and I went out to run some errands. I dropped into a café for lunch. The Green Room was a place I really liked because they had lots of plants around and it was generally quiet. As I was waiting for them to bring me my food, I heard a voice.

“Iris?”

It was Mr Michaels. It’s always awkward seeing teachers out of school. You feel like they aren’t supposed to have actual lives.

“Mr Michaels. Hello.” I tried not to squint as I looked up at him. He was standing in a shaft of light and I didn’t have my glasses. I try to get by without them when I can. I live in endless hope that one day I’ll get used to the glare or they’ll find a cure or whatever went wrong with me just heals.

“Can I join you? Or are you waiting for someone?” It was only a two-person table, in the corner.

This was unexpected. “Sure.” Now I couldn’t just relax but I would have to make polite conversation and not spill food on myself.

“You’re not wearing your glasses today,” he observed.

“No. I don’t always.”

He was probably curious. Most people are, given the weird purplish colour of my lenses. The problem is that trying to explain often ends up with my whole Tragic Backstory, and then people get uncomfortable and wish they hadn’t asked.

Strangely I felt it would be okay to tell him. “I was in an accident and hit my head. Something happened to my optic nerve and it gave me visual disturbances. Like with migraines.”

It was nothing like migraines, at least from what I had read about them, but people understood that.

“I’m sorry. It must be difficult,” he said. “And none of my business.”

“It’s okay. People often ask.”

He was just looking at me with those strange, grey-gold eyes. And just for a moment all the lights softened. It was just a still, steady glow, not a flicker.

I stared at him. I couldn’t help it. It was just the relief of not having the dazzle going on.

He was the one who eventually spoke, changing the subject. “How are you getting on with Blake?”

“Not so bad. I can’t honestly say he’s my favourite,” I confessed, just as the waitress brought my order over. A burger and fries. I didn’t feel very hungry with him sitting there so I just picked at the fries.

Then his meal came - he must have ordered just after me - and it was the same. “Snap!” he said.

It made me relax and able to eat my own burger. It felt unusually normal, just sitting there having lunch with him. Even though he was a teacher. I thought of how envious Emily would be.

Later that afternoon I got most of my essay done. I wanted to get it out of the way. “We are led to believe a lie/When we see not thro’ the eye.”

I thought about this for some time. How else can you see but through the eye? It didn’t make sense. Did it mean we needed to witness stuff for ourselves?

Then why “through”, not “with”?

I found myself remembering Mr Michaels’ eyes. And I understood. The eye was a lens but your brain - your imagination - was doing the real work. This was the difference between seeing and understanding. The things we saw, like the hallucinated lights that my eyes saw, weren’t important or even real. It was what they meant.

After that the poem fell into place and I was able to write my essay. But it was darker than it had seemed before.