Things Not Seen

The girl looks up, startled. She’s listening to an audiotape of The Scarlet Letter. Bobby tells her he wanted to say hi. She remembers his voice. He apologizes for leaving in a hurry the last time. They chat a bit and discover that they both have parents who teach at the university. For schooling, she takes correspondence courses.

To keep the conversation going, he asks when she became blind. Abruptly, she’s edgy: “You were curious about the little blind girl?” (77). Bobby tries to repair the damage, but she harangues him until he says he’s sorry to bother her and leaves. Seconds later, she opens the door and calls to him, asking him to come back. Other students look up, wondering who she’s talking to, since they can’t see anyone in the hall. He walks back, whispers, “Okay,” and steps back into the listening room.

They both apologize. He saying he’s been on his own for a few days and forgot how to talk to people. She smiles, and he sees in her face “sadness. And loneliness. A lot of loneliness, I think” (79). He mentions his parents’ accident and being alone at home. She admits that most people avoid her, and no one asks about her blindness; she’s good at feeling sorry for herself, so she was startled by his question, then sad, then angry. Bobby adds, “And don’t forget sarcastic” (80). She laughs.

An alarm beeps. She has to leave, but she invites him to walk a bit with her. He accepts.

Bobby and the girl use the elevator. Other students crowd in, but her cane keeps them at a distance, so no one bumps into the invisible boy. As they leave, Walt says goodbye, addressing her as “Alicia.” Outside, she uses the cane well and walks with confidence. Bobby compliments her, and she responds that in 10 years she’ll be as good at walking as a six-year-old. Then she admits she’s being sarcastic again.

She lives a few blocks away, and Bobby agrees to walk her home. She takes his elbow, and he adjusts his pace to hers. He’s worried about other pedestrians bumping him, but everyone gives Alicia a wide berth. All goes well until they’re crossing a street and a kid on a scooter nearly hits Alicia. Bobby pulls her away just in time, but her hand reaches out for balance and touches his bare rib cage.

At the corner, she’s upset because he’s not wearing a shirt. She yells at him: “You’re not the first creep to try to pick up a cute little blind girl, and I’m not stupid” (86). She orders him to walk away and shout that he’s leaving, or she’ll scream.

Bobby, frustrated, tells her he’s completely naked, then asks her why, despite that, there’s no crowd around him: “So which do you think it is, Alicia? Is everyone around us blind, or am I…invisible?” (88). She demands his hand, then grips it tightly and orders him to squeeze hers when someone walks by. A man approaches, and Bobby squeezes her hand as instructed. Alicia asks the man to settle an argument about whether she or the person whose hand she’s holding is taller. Perplexed, the man says there’s no one there, and he walks on.

Alicia struggles to breathe and to accept what she’s just learned. Bobby explains why he’s naked: Clothes don’t disappear when he wears them, so the only way he can go outside clothed is if he bundles up completely, which only works on very cold days. They walk away from sidewalk traffic. Alicia handles the news better than Bobby’s parents did. A sudden, chilly breeze strikes them, and she says, “You must be freezing” (91). They go to a Starbucks; she orders a cocoa with two straws, and they share the drink.

They both apologize for getting angry. He asks her to keep his predicament a secret; she says no one would believe her anyway. Bobby has to get home; they agree to meet again at the listening room the next afternoon. As he jogs home, he realizes he’s smiling. It’s his first smile in two days.

The phone is ringing as Bobby gets home. It’s his mom, who’s panicked because she’s called several times. Bobby explains that he went out. Emily disapproves of his doing so without consulting her or his dad; they argue. She says she’ll be home the next day around noon. She adds: “And call if you need to talk to someone. Bobby… your dad and I love you very much. We do” (95). He responds with his usual curt “Yup” and they hang up. Bobby immediately wishes he’d been nicer.

He takes a bath, eats a big dinner, plays trumpet, and watches The Terminator. The phone rings; he answers, “Yeah?” It’s Alicia. She’s displeased with his phone greeting; he explains that he thought it was his nagging parents. She says, “Then I’ll try again” (96), hangs up, and calls again. He answers very formally, as if a receptionist. She laughs and teases him about it.

She says she’s still mulling over his invisibility since she’s not sure how to make sense of it. She asks what he was doing when they first bumped into each other; he tells her about his trip to the library, and how he went to the hospital to see his parents. She says he’s very brave, especially about telling her he’s invisible. He says she just made him mad by saying he was a pervert. Alicia asks if their meet tomorrow at the library is still on, and Bobby says his mom will be returning home, but he’ll try. He thanks her for calling, and they hang up.

The phone rings again. Bobby plays receptionist again, calling Alicia by name, but it’s his dad. David wants to know who this “Miss Van Dorn” is (98); he says it’s just a friend. They talk, but only half of Bobby’s mind is on the conversation; the other half is thinking about how Alicia already is a friend.

Emily gets home shortly after noon. Bobby is glad to see her, and he hugs her. She sees that the house has gotten a bit messy in her absence, and Bobby helps by vacuuming. At 1:30, he announces that he has to leave. She demands to know where, and he ends up telling her about Alicia. Shocked that he’d give away his secret, Emily says, “I’m very disappointed in you” (101). He retorts angrily that it was a “special situation” and his decision to make.

He stalks out, strips off his clothes, and leaves for his appointment with Alicia. It’s only 42 degrees out, so he jogs the whole way. He finds her waiting in her listening room. She’s dressed very nicely, including a pearl necklace; he realizes she’s treating it as a date. This makes him nervous.

They talk about how both their parents are fussy. Bobby asks her how she became blind; she reacts again with sarcasm, then admits that she doesn’t know how to talk about it. She describes how, just before she turned 13, she awoke at night and the bed covers had fallen to the floor. She reached down to pick them up, fell out of bed, and hit her head. It felt minor, and, thinking nothing of it, she went back to sleep. In the morning, she couldn’t see.

People suddenly seemed to want her to go away. Her blindness made them uncomfortable. She felt as invisible as the world she could no longer see. Her future life at college, as an archaeologist, as a parent: It all disappeared. Her parents seemed to think of her as a “big job” and not the daughter they were proud of.

Bobby senses her anger. He also notices a man standing outside and staring through the window at them, trying to see what Alicia is doing. Bobby thanks her for telling him so personal a story. She counters that he did the same the day before, when he confessed his invisibility.

The man outside barges in and demands to know who Alicia is talking to. The man is her father.

Bobby saves Alicia from lying for him by talking to her father, Professor Leo Van Dorn. Leo “passes through all the phases that Mom, Dad, and Alicia have: fear, confusion, disbelief, and then amazement that levels out to a steady curiosity” (109). Like Bobby’s father, Leo immediately comes up with ideas about the science behind Bobby’s invisibility, calling it “extraordinary.”

Bobby says it’s ok to tell Mrs. Van Dorn about his condition as long as she doesn’t call the cops. Alicia and her father go home and tell her; later, on the phone, Alicia tells Bobby what happened. For a time, Mrs. Van Dorn thought her husband and daughter were playing a practical joke on her. Then she wondered what Bobby wears, and Alicia told her Bobby mostly goes naked. Bobby notes that “Mrs. Van Dorn [was] not amused by this” (110).

Alicia invites Bobby to visit. On Saturday he shows up, invisible, and discovers that Alicia omitted telling her mom that he’d be there. Her mom gets Bobby a long robe and then sits with them during the entire visit.

Later in the afternoon, Bobby calls his father at the hospital, expecting another argument about blabbing to outsiders. David, though, is surprisingly mellow about it. He even looks forward to discussing the physics with Leo. Bobby’s relieved at his father’s reaction but suspects it might be due to hospital painkillers.

Saturday morning, Bobby wakes scared. Nothing’s changed except that he’s gotten used to being invisible, and that frightens him. When his dad gets home after two weeks, he spends a lot of time rummaging through books and journals, searching for ideas about Bobby’s condition. Bobby finds that he and his dad are getting along better—less yelling, more listening.

Bobby and Alicia talk a lot on the phone and gripe about their parents. She mentions that, just before she lost her sight, she was reading a book by Kurt Vonnegut called Welcome to the Monkey House, but hasn’t been able to find an audio version. Bobby has read Vonnegut, and he gets his mom to buy a copy of Monkey House, which he reads to Alicia over the phone. She says he’s a very good narrator.

Alicia is Bobby’s first friend who’s a girl. The ones at school he considers “scary,” with their high-intensity academic goals or their lavish display of their parents’ money. He’s only ever gotten along with one or two; Alicia proves “that a girl will talk to me, and even seem to enjoy it. We both enjoy it” (114).

Bobby and Alicia’s parents talk briefly on the phone and agree to absolute secrecy. Otherwise, they have no immediate ideas on what to do. Bobby hopes that everyone—he calls both families “the Committee”—will work up an action plan, but none appears.

Recalling that Sherlock Holmes—a detective from Arthur Conan Doyle’s series of stories—always investigates carefully, Bobby decides to play detective. He writes down everything he can remember about the two days leading up to his invisibility, takes inventory of every item in his bedroom, bathroom, and hallway, and lists the items in various categories. After two weeks of this, he still doesn’t have any clues.

High school staffers begin to call, anxious that Bobby isn’t back in class. One teacher offers to bring assignments and explain them. The office simply needs a note from Bobby’s doctor, but the family doesn’t trust theirs not to gossip. The County Board of Health hears about the boy who’s still sick. The school and county begin to focus on Bobby’s case, “[a]nd this committee has an action plan” (118).

Bobby’s high school begins calling, wondering where Bobby is. A truancy officer, Ms. Pagett, shows up at the Phillips’s door. Emily—who, Bobby notes, once chained herself to a college president’s office door for six days to force him to hire more women—berates Ms. Pagett for bothering her family. She calls the woman “Miss Badger,” then announces that her son has been withdrawn from school and has gone to live for a while with a relative in Florida. Ms. Pagett leaves and goes across the street to talk to Mrs. Trent.

Bobby thinks the whole incident is funny, but his mom sternly warns him that police can show up in an hour and tear the house apart. She doesn’t want to lose Bobby to the state. She calls Aunt Ethel in Florida, fills her in on the invisibility problem and warns her to avoid taking any calls from Chicago. Ethel wants Bobby down there right away to be her bridge partner.

Emily is wrong about the authorities needing an hour to get a search warrant: “[I]t only takes Ms. Pagett forty-five minutes” (125).

Emily orders Bobby to clean up his room and make it look like it hasn’t been used in many days. He grouses but does it. When the police show up with a warrant and go upstairs to examine his room, Bobby feels grateful: “I’m glad Mom is so smart. She called this one right” (127-28).

The police finish their search empty-handed. Ms. Pagett threatens Emily with criminal charges if Bobby isn’t found in five days. They leave, and Emily lets fly a litany of curses. Bobby is surprised and impressed at how human his mom really is. He’s also glad she’s working so hard to protect him.

Emily sits and admits that she regrets being harsh. Bobby says they had it coming, but Emily disagrees, saying they’re just doing their job, and they know something’s wrong. David comes home; he hugs Emily. Bobby says it may be time to inform the government about his invisibility, but his father insists he’s not about to let some government research lab take Bobby away.

Ms. Pagett gave them five days to clear up the mystery. Bobby can’t accept the idea of his parents locked up in Cook County Jail. He must do something, and “[a] lot can happen in five days” (133).

Alicia calls, but Emily answers and says he’s in Florida. She warns Bobby not to use the house phone—wiretaps are possible in a child-disappearance case—and gives him her cell phone so he can call Alicia back.

Alicia has just finished The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells, a book about a power-mad genius who makes himself invisible but discovers it’s a terrible experience. He becomes murderously unhinged, and it takes six people to kill him. Bobby says it sounds too depressing, but Alicia says the book reminds her that Bobby’s not a maniac but a good person who became invisible by accident. Also, he has people who care about him, including her.

He wonders if there are other people like him who are invisible and can’t talk about it. Alicia is skeptical, but she admits that her dad talks a lot about how there must be life on other planets, and that Earth isn’t unique. Bobby says maybe he’s not unique, either. She wonders what good it would do to find other invisibles; Bobby says that “we could compare notes” (139).

He asks if Alicia’s doctors searched for cases like hers. She says they did and found about 50 in North America, but that those people also have no cure. She says his situation could be different, though. He’s frustrated because he doesn’t know how to contact the other invisible people and find the solution in only five days.

Alicia lectures him about giving up. They argue and nearly hang up on each other, but they calm down. Bobby says he’s tried to think of other solutions, but they involve haunting Ms. Pagett or writing a suicide note that clears his parents. Alicia says she won’t give up, even if he does.

They finish the call and hang up, “but it’s like there’s still a connection. I can feel it. And it feels good” (143).