She turned on the television, thinking it would divert him, and was shocked by his reaction
(although she told herself that what she felt was amusement). When he told her he couldn’t
see it, she had no idea how to take what he was saying; her first thought that it was some
sort of oblique andteddibly intellectual criticism of the medium itself. Then she thought he
might be speaking (in equally oblique fashion) of his sorrow, his state of mourning. It
wasn’t until he told her that he heard voices, yes, but saw only lines which made his eyes
water that she realized he was telling her the literal truth: he could not see the pictures on
the screen. Not the rerun ofRoseanne, not the infomercial for Ab-Flex, not the talking head
on the local news. She held on until the story about Stephen King (taken by LifeFlight
helicopter to Central Maine General in Lewiston, where an early-evening operation
seemed to have saved his right leg—condition listed as fair, more operations ahead, road to
recovery expected to be long and uncertain), then turned the TV off.