Now I See You Read Online Free PDF

wilted orchids, malfunctioning heart valves—there is nothing my father cannot fix. Almost nothing.
    I’d known the diagnosis was bad but watching my father cry, it seemed worse than bad. It seemed insurmountable.
    “I just want to tell you that I’m sorry,” he managed, wiping his face briskly. “It’s my fault. I gave you my genes, and they did this to you.”
    As the Park Avenue doc had explained it, since there was no family history of the disease, mine was probably a spontaneous mutation, which meant that my father’s self-flagellation was, technically, unwarranted. Which would’ve been helpful to mention had I not been struck dumb, as well as half blind.
    “If one of the genes was just a little different, this wouldn’t be happening,” he went on.
    “It’s okay,” I croaked.
    “I wish I could take this off of you and put it onto me. You don’t deserve this.”
    The lump in my throat was getting unmanageably big, and I knew any second, the only thing that could make the situation worse was about to happen, and I’d start crying, too. Pretty soon, my dad and I would be bawling in stereo, and the sound of that sobfest would attract my mother and sisters, and then everyone would be weeping like a goddamned Greek chorus. This had to end, now. I cleared my throat.
    “It’s not your fault, Daddy,” I began with confidence. “And it is going to be all right. There is a lot of promising research and I’m young so there’s plenty of time. It’s going to be all right.”
    I made up the shit about “promising research.” I mean, there probably was some mad scientist somewhere injecting stuff into rat retinas or reconstituting cadaver eyeballs, and for the purposes of this emergency pep talk, these endeavors qualified as “closing in on a cure.” I must have sounded convincing because my father smiled.
    He took my hand and squeezed it. Then he put a bookmark in his medical book, closed it, and told me he was going to bed.
    I, on the other hand, might never sleep again. Seeing my father cry was more harrowing than having electrodes attached to my eyes. Whatever else happened, I had to make sure I never saw my father cry again on my account, because I might not make it through the next episode with my wits intact. I’d have to deliver on my pep talk, make sure it did turn out all right. The first step was clear: get the hell out of Bleak House. That was easy enough, as I had to report to my post as acting apprentice in Williamstown shortly.
    But there was another, more important step I needed to take to turn things around: from now on, I’d keep my depressing disease to myself. It was becoming clear that I’d have enough on my plate without having to deal with the pity and concern of other people. Unlike leprosy or elephantiasis, nobody would know about my disease unless I told them—for now, at least. And I had a right to privacy, I reasoned; I had a right not to be reduced to The Tragic Case. As far as my family was concerned, not only did I have a right, I had a responsibility.

 
 
Tip #3: On handshakes
    When you lack peripheral vision, handshakes can be a real pain in the ass. You’ll inevitably leave folks hanging with their palms splayed out expectantly, and they will have no choice but to conclude you’re a stone-cold bitch.
    Thankfully, there’s an easy solution. Be aggressively friendly and beat your partner to the shake. As soon you sniff an introduction in the works, shoot your right hand out like a ramrod. With lousy depth perception, you may misjudge how close they’re standing and end up making contact with your potential friend’s solar plexus instead of their hand. Should that occur, act like it was fully intentional by rubbing the fabric of their shirt between your fingers, offering a relevant observation, for example: “What is this, cashmere? Or is it a blend?”
    This tactic works best when your partner is donning linen or silk or worsted wool, and less well when they are