A Map Of Glass Part 2

"I know that, but often it doesn't seem that way to me."

Julia's hands had moved across the surface of the pine table as if testing the familiarity of the grain. Her irises were soft, opaque, as beautiful and distant as planets. "There is being touched, and then there is touching, and attached to both of these things there is intention."

"But how do you know for sure what is intended?" As a child Sylvia had been certain that her mother's few attempts at embraces had been meant to restrain her, to cause her to stop doing something, or to move her in a direction other than the one she had wanted to take. "I like," Sylvia began, "to count on things being the same way they were the last time I saw them. Sometimes I think that the world is just too crowded, too full of people rearranging things, touching each other, making changes."

"It's like that for the newly sighted," Julia said quietly, then added, "or so I've heard. They are sometimes unable to cope with the profuseness of whatever is out there in the perceived world. Many of them apparently want to go back... back to blindness." She paused, thinking. "Perhaps there is something comforting about being able to choose a view rather than having it thrust upon you, to choose a view and then to touch a map. Maybe I'm more fortunate than I know."

Sylvia had watched as Julia sat back and relaxed in her chair. How wonderful she had looked right then, sitting beside the kitchen window, her blond hair and translucent skin and eyes making her seem ageless despite her forty-some years. She had been the first person Sylvia had wanted to spend time with, the first person, apart from Malcolm, with whom she had felt safe.

When Sylvia stood at the door that day preparing to leave, Julia had lifted one of her pale arms and had asked Sylvia to touch it. "Put your hand there," she had said, "just above my wrist." Sylvia hesitated. Then she placed her palm on the milk-white skin. "See how naturally your fingers curl around the shape?" Julia continued. "Human beings were made to touch one another."

Sylvia was surprised by the smoothness and warmth of her friend's arm. But then everything about Julia was soft, pliable. As she walked away from the farmhouse she thought about how Julia navigated through life. There were the maps, of course, and the cane, the tools she used for unfamiliar places. But the way she moved around the furniture, the obstacles in the rooms of her house, was so fluid, so filled with grace it was as if the structure of her body were made of some other substance altogether, something more forgiving than bone.

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Malcolm had taught Sylvia about conversation. The introduction of a new piece of information usually requires that a question be asked, he had explained, even if the information comes about as a result of a previous question. This was an idea that the then much younger Sylvia had found to be absurd in theory and exhausting in practice. She had never let go of her fear of questioning but tried, anyway, to follow Malcolm's advice when they were in social situations. Later, when she had been with Julia, or Andrew, she had learned about the pleasure of conversation, the comfort of listening and being listened to, and in time she'd been able, quite naturally, to choose one path or another into long episodes of talk. There must have been questions, but she couldn't recall them, only how easily the pattern of speech and silence had fallen into place between them, until that pattern had begun to alter, break apart, become unrecognizable.

Now in midafternoon, with a series of frantic city images still present in her mind, she stood again in the alley at the industrial door of Jerome's studio wondering what they would say to each other. Jerome answered immediately when she knocked, opened the door wide, and then, without speaking, moved to one side to allow Sylvia in. As she stepped over the threshold, the large orange cat escaped into the alley.

"Swimmer!" Jerome called after the departing animal. "Oh well, we'll hear him when he comes back."

"I'm sorry, should I have tried to stop him?"

"No, no. He doesn't know the city all that well, but he's learning. He'll survive. He's used to the outdoors. I found him on the island, just before..."

"Just before you found Andrew."

"Yes," Jerome stood stiffly near the couch for a moment or two. Then he motioned to the chair Sylvia had occupied the previous day, "Maybe we should sit down."

Sylvia sat, then shrugged off her coat and let it fall over the back of the chair. Melting slush from the street pooled on the cement floor around her fur-topped boots. Only one bank of fluorescent lights was on today and through a window a wealth of sunlight was streaming. "Much warmer today," she said. This was one of the many climate-related remarks that Malcolm had suggested she use when he was trying to teach her the skills of social interaction. She had learned many things about weather during this period, had developed a fascination for it in fact, watching reports on the television and reading books about meteorology until her insistence that it should become the focus of any conversation had led to Malcolm's banning of the subject altogether. She smiled, remembering this, seeing the humor in it now.

"Yes," said Jerome, settling himself onto the old couch, "warmer."

The s.p.a.ce between them became silent. Sylvia was aware of a vacancy. "Your girlfriend?" she asked.

"She's at the gallery. An art gallery, where she works." Jerome paused. "Her name is Mira," he offered.

"Yes, she told me. Mira," Sylvia repeated the name. "Almost like mirror," she added.

"Almost. I hadn't thought of that." Jerome leaned against the back of the couch, placed one ankle on his bent knee. Then suddenly he was on his feet again. "Are you comfortable?" he asked. "Warm enough? These old rads... but there is a thermostat. I can turn it up if you like."

His nervousness made Sylvia aware of the tension developing in her own body. "No, no," she said, "this is fine."

Jerome sat down again and looked at her with what could have been either pity or curiosity.

"I sometimes can't recall his face," Sylvia said. She hesitated for a moment, then continued, "When I knew about you, I thought that "

"Don't forget that I didn't know him," Jerome interjected. "I want to help but, because I didn't know him, I'm not sure what "

"You... you came across him accidentally and so... so did I, and I've come to believe that without these accidents there really is nothing, nothing to life at all." How could it be that something unexpected, what she had in the past feared, had been what introduced her to Andrew? All this year, after his death, when she had been reading and rereading everything he had written in his notebooks, she knew she was attempting to make the accidental solid. Much of what he had told her was recorded there, but there was more. Was it Andrew's reconstruction that had filled in the gaps, or had his memory already grown so thin that imaginary events began to appear on the page? It had been impossible for Sylvia to find the solidity she sought.

"Tell me," said Jerome. "Tell me about Andrew Woodman, how you came to know him."

The evenness of his tone did not discourage her, made her, in fact, feel more relaxed than any degree of eagerness. Eagerness implied expectation and she had never been at ease with expectation.

And so she began to talk in a room with a steel door, cement walls, and no comforts, a room that had not been conceived with conversation in mind. She talked about the County, its farms and lakeside villages, its graveyards and ancient houses, its churches and meeting halls. She described Andrew, a tall man with an angular face, one who liked to be alone and who had never married; a man who had believed that domesticity would soften the focused attention he needed to give to the physical details of the earth. Outside was the constant hum of the city, the unknown world. Inside the young man shifted his position now and then on the old couch, leaning forward, or nodding to indicate that he was listening. Sylvia found herself speaking slowly and carefully, as if rehearsing a speech she had memorized.

"The day that you found Andrew you became the present, the end of the story, the end of my story, the reply to the last unanswered question," she told him. "And you were the end of Andrew's story as well. You were, in a way, the last thing he told me. Toward the end, one of the very last things he said aloud was something about a hook of the past sewing us together. By then it was difficult to grasp what he was talking about. I've always pictured the kind of needle sailors used for making sails. I saw these in the museum... the museum where I sometimes do volunteer work." She paused. "They look a bit like long silver question marks."

Andrew had gone to the museum to see the needles after she had told him about them, but he had gone on a day when he was certain she would not be there. It was she who had insisted on this, unable by then to bear the idea of seeing him in a place that was not entirely their own. The whole room between them. The whole room between them. She had read that line in a book somewhere and had never forgotten it. The room was never between them when they met privately. The room was a part of them then, an extension of the story Andrew was building, sentence by sentence, the long journey through the tangled highways of his family's past. She had read that line in a book somewhere and had never forgotten it. The room was never between them when they met privately. The room was a part of them then, an extension of the story Andrew was building, sentence by sentence, the long journey through the tangled highways of his family's past.

"Memories are fixed, aren't they?" she said. "They might diminish, they might fade, but they don't change, become something else. I am now, you see, his memory." She sat forward in her chair. "Andrew thought he was was the history that his forebears created, he felt responsible for that history, I think, and for those people. They are my responsibility now." the history that his forebears created, he felt responsible for that history, I think, and for those people. They are my responsibility now."

Jerome glanced at her. Then he looked quickly away as if he felt suddenly shy or embarra.s.sed. Sylvia couldn't tell by the expression on his face what he was thinking.

"I'm not certain that what you said about memory is correct," he said. "I think it can can change." change."

"Can it? Perhaps it only becomes stronger, purer." What she wanted was to sharpen her memories of Andrew, memories she feared were beginning to separate themselves from her. She had never before felt separate from Andrew. No, that was not quite accurate. There had been times when she had wanted to remain apart even in her imagination, times when she would spend an entire day examining, one by one, the goblets and candlesticks and winegla.s.ses of her mother's cranberry gla.s.s collection rather than think of him at all, because the slightest shadow of him in her mind brought with it too much pain. But once she had seen him again, she would begin to crave inclusion, the encircling arm, the connection. She had never felt anything like it before. She began to believe that she could feel him moving toward her and then turning away from her, even when they were hundreds of miles apart. Such was her affliction. Despite her parents' care, despite her husband's love, she believed that the only family she had had until him was the family of the dead. Objects, maps, and vanished children.

"What kind of a young man found Andrew, I wondered," she said to Jerome now. "How would what he saw have affected him?" Because she read that he was an artist, she suspected that he might have been looking for a way to become haunted, by something, anything, and that being the case, this event might have entered his psyche like a dark, permanent gift. "All I really knew about you was that you were a painter."

"Actually, I am not a painter," offered Jerome. "I've never been a painter, really. What I do is more sculptural... involves three-dimensional s.p.a.ce."

Sylvia hesitated at this point. Then, after a few moments of silence, she began to speak again. "Andrew felt that he had been destined to become a historical geographer," she said. "He told me that the mistakes of his ancestors had made this a kind of dynastic necessity. Unlike his forebears, you see, he paid careful attention to landscape, to its present and to the past embedded in its present."

Sylvia studied the face of the young man she was speaking to, his smooth wide forehead, full lips, and clean dark hair. He appeared to be thoughtful, serious, and yet somehow benignly detached. She was thankful for this detachment. She smiled at him and continued.

"Andrew never forgot his ancestors: they were always with him. One of the first stories he told me was about the dunes at the end of the peninsula, dunes that were strongly a.s.sociated with his family. We barely knew each other, yet I had driven out there with him. I had said that I wanted these lovely, soft mountains of sand to remain in place forever. He maintained that these were a mistake, a man-made mistake, that the dunes were not natural, were, instead the result of human carelessness. You see, Branwell Woodman, Andrew's great-grandfather and the son of old Joseph Woodman, the timber merchant, had bought a hotel near there, a hotel that became entirely engulfed by sand."

Andrew had been looking across a billow of sand that sloped down to the edge of the water when he spoke of this. Sylvia remembered distinctly now, his light brown, slightly greying hair, the perturbed, almost angry expression of his face in profile. He had lifted his left arm to point in the direction of the long-vanished hotel. There was an ordinance survey map twitching in the wind at the end of his right hand. Abruptly he had turned toward her, his face for the first time collapsing toward softness, tenderness. And then his left hand had moved toward her hair. "Still, some mistakes can be beautiful," he had said.

Sylvia held this inner picture for as long as she could, but then, as always, it began to dissolve. She could still see the dunes but not Andrew, not his hair, not his hand. "Everything," she said to Jerome, "almost everything seems to disappear in one way or another." Emerging slightly from her open handbag, the spines of the two green notebooks shone in the afternoon light. She leaned forward to touch them, then twisted around in her chair, having heard the sound of the door opening. The girl called Mira walked into the s.p.a.ce in the company of the cat who was circling around her feet and rubbing up against her legs. "h.e.l.lo," she said, placing two bulging plastic bags on the floor. "What's been going on?"

Sylvia tightened the scarf she was wearing around her throat. "I scarcely know," she said. "I seem to have just gone on and on. I should probably go now." She pushed one arm and then another into the sleeves of her coat.

"We were just talking about memory," Jerome said, "about memory and change. Where did you find Swimmer? He shot out of the door like an arrow, no stopping him."

"I barely know," Sylvia continued, "whether I made any sense. I've been told that there are often times when I make no sense."

Mira turned to Jerome. "I tried to call you, but you didn't answer. I spent the whole afternoon with that client I told you about. The one who takes paintings home on approval, then always brings them back. I wonder if he'll ever really buy anything. Maybe he secretly hates art."

"The phone was turned off," said Jerome. Sylvia could see that the young man had brightened just looking at the girl. The intimacy between them included a kind of electrical awakening, even with the introduction of such an ordinary subject as a cat or a telephone. As she rose to go, both young people turned to look at her as if for the first time.

"Shall I come back tomorrow?" she asked, surprised that she was addressing this question to the girl.

"Oh yes," said Mira, "I think all this is good for him." She smiled at Jerome, then reached into one of the grocery bags, pulled out an orange, and tossed it in his direction. "Vitamin C," she said, then laughed as Jerome, having missed the catch, chased the fruit across the room.

The girl stretched her arms into the air then, keeping her back straight, bent at the waist, and swung her arms behind her where they remained extended like wings.

Sylvia thought about this odd gesture as she walked down the alley toward the street. The light was beginning to decline. She b.u.t.toned her coat against the cold.

Sylvia began to think of her husband, of the way he came into her life. A good young doctor, her father had said, feeling fortunate to have enticed him away from the city and into the backwater that was their County in order to join the practice. He had been speaking, of course, to her mother, not to her. He attempted to converse with Sylvia only occasionally, and when he did, he used the tone one reserves for a very young child. Sylvia was twenty at the time, but had not often left the house since she had completed high school and had walked forever away from a world where despite her anxiety and confusion in the face of anything social, answering only when spoken to she had felt almost happy when lost in the satisfying task of learning facts. There had been no talk about university, though her grades had always been exceptional: there were no universities in the County and both parents had accepted that their daughter would never leave home. And she hadn't left home, had not been "admitted," despite her mother's frequent threats when she was a child, and had not gone away for the suggested stint at a summer camp for "special" children. It had been her quiet father who had protected her from such departures, his grim silence eventually winning out over her mother's desperate requests, her mother's arguments.

The good doctor had been invited to dinner soon after his arrival in town. This customary courtesy when taking on a new loc.u.m or partner had been endured by Sylvia two or three times in the past. A stranger in the house could cause almost anything to happen to her: utter paralysis, a loss of motor skills, total withdrawal, awkwardness, collisions with furniture, or, at best, rote behavior of a more or less civilized kind. Still her father had not wanted to exclude her. He had accepted, and expected others to accept, her disability, though no one had been able to identify the affliction.

She wondered now how she had been explained to Malcolm. What exactly did her father say about the strange daughter in order to prepare the young man for her presence? My daughter is disabled My daughter is disabled was a sentence she had heard him use on more than one occasion, often in her presence as if she hadn't been there at all, or as if she were locked in an adjoining room. If the person he was speaking to was a stranger, he or she would often look her over in a puzzled sort of way, seeking the flaw, and when unable to find it, no one had had the courage to make an inquiry. Only one very elderly and courtly man, whom she and her father had encountered while out walking, a man revisiting the town of his youth, had been able to come up with an interesting reply. "Your daughter," he had said with sadness, "is disabled by her beauty." Sylvia would always remember this, and often whispered it to herself at night before going to sleep though she had never been able to fully understand what the word was a sentence she had heard him use on more than one occasion, often in her presence as if she hadn't been there at all, or as if she were locked in an adjoining room. If the person he was speaking to was a stranger, he or she would often look her over in a puzzled sort of way, seeking the flaw, and when unable to find it, no one had had the courage to make an inquiry. Only one very elderly and courtly man, whom she and her father had encountered while out walking, a man revisiting the town of his youth, had been able to come up with an interesting reply. "Your daughter," he had said with sadness, "is disabled by her beauty." Sylvia would always remember this, and often whispered it to herself at night before going to sleep though she had never been able to fully understand what the word beauty beauty meant, at least in reference to her own physical self. meant, at least in reference to her own physical self.

Malcolm had spent most of the visit gazing at her with an eager, frank curiosity, while she fidgeted under his scrutiny. She had left the dinner table in mid-meal in order to be closer to the three china horses that stood on a table in the corner of the dining room. Her parents had once or twice tried to introduce a pet, a kitten or a dog, into her life, but the unpredictability of live animals had disoriented her, though she had always been and remained delighted by the notion of animals. She preferred the stillness, the sheen, of the three miniature beasts on this table. There had once been four horses, but her mother, cleaning, had broken one. Sylvia had mourned for several months.

Unlike any other guest, Malcolm had put down his knife and fork and had come across the room to stand beside her. "Oh, please continue with your meal," her mother had said brightly. "Sylvia just likes to get up now and then to look at the horses, don't you, darling? Nothing to be concerned about." But Malcolm had been concerned. To Sylvia's great discomfort, he had stood beside her and lifted one of the china animals from the polished mahogany. "They're lovely horses," he said, and then, "Do you have names for them?" He held the blond horse in his fingers as he spoke.

"No," she had whispered. Then with her hand atop his she gently eased the horse back to the tabletop. "They don't like to be touched, to be changed," she had said quietly just before she turned and left the room for the night, her eyes on the floor as she walked silently away. In her room she listened to the murmur of the continuing dinner, though she could not make out the words that were spoken. And later, she heard the door close behind the stranger, the sound of his footsteps moving away, the creak of the old wrought-iron gate at the front of the garden.

She could visualize the path he would take, past the Petersons' white house with the tower, past the Redners' brick house with the tall, nodding hollyhocks in the garden. As she had done each time she went to school, he would walk over the one broken sidewalk square and, at the corner, over the square that had the words Brunswick Block 1906 Brunswick Block 1906 incised into its surface. The drugstore, the five-and-dime store, the Queen's Hotel, an outdoor bench no one sat on, a tree that was surrounded by a bent iron cage, the war memorial with its steady stone soldier and the names of the dead boys who had made the mistake of leaving home. Several years later she would make a tactile map of all this for Julia. "The curb, the surface of Willow Road, another curb, Church Street," she would say while her friend's fingers brushed the surfaces of the textures Sylvia had glued onto a rectangular piece of cardboard. "This is your world," Julia had said. "How built it is, how different than my farm." Malcolm would walk up the gravel path to the Morris apartments where he said he was staying. She would not have followed him through the door there. Only her own interior rooms and the cold halls and cla.s.srooms of the two schools she had attended were known to her at the time in any intimate sort of way. incised into its surface. The drugstore, the five-and-dime store, the Queen's Hotel, an outdoor bench no one sat on, a tree that was surrounded by a bent iron cage, the war memorial with its steady stone soldier and the names of the dead boys who had made the mistake of leaving home. Several years later she would make a tactile map of all this for Julia. "The curb, the surface of Willow Road, another curb, Church Street," she would say while her friend's fingers brushed the surfaces of the textures Sylvia had glued onto a rectangular piece of cardboard. "This is your world," Julia had said. "How built it is, how different than my farm." Malcolm would walk up the gravel path to the Morris apartments where he said he was staying. She would not have followed him through the door there. Only her own interior rooms and the cold halls and cla.s.srooms of the two schools she had attended were known to her at the time in any intimate sort of way.

The next time Malcolm came for dinner, he brought her a china horse.

For the first six months, the horses were all they spoke about, with Malcolm doing most of the speaking. Then, gradually, she began to show him the rest of the house, the particular objects she had animated in one way or another; her grandfather's important-looking shaving stand with its shining mirror the exact size of a face, a low footstool crouching near a Morris chair. Malcolm had pretended to be interested in all this, or perhaps he had really been interested. His tone when he talked was unthreatening, pleasing, careful. It was not unlike the tone her father had used to coax her out of bed, down the stairs, off to school in the past, except that, unlike her father, Malcolm seemed to want to enter her own world and to discuss what it might be that intrigued her there.

He did not shut her out of his world either, often describing an appealing child or a colorful adult who had come into the office, or making reference to a picturesque part of the County he had visited when making a housecall. Sometimes, when her parents were in the room, he complained a little about paperwork, how it never seemed to end. There was only one nurse-receptionist in the office: it seemed unfair to expect her to do it all. Maybe, he suggested, Sylvia could come in for a couple of afternoons a week, just to ease the load.

Her father seemed pleased; her mother had looked irritated, doubtful. "Sylvia will never be able to maintain a job," she said.

Malcolm had bristled. "She could most certainly maintain a part-time job," he said, "even after she is married."

"Good Lord," her mother had replied briskly. "Who on earth would ever have the patience for that?" She was not referring to the job.

Sylvia stared across the room and into the hall where she could see a painting of Niagara Falls. She concentrated on the white, indistinct cloud of steam at the bottom of the cataract and the way the river opened out from this spot, purposefully, with some other destination in mind.

"I would," Malcolm had said as he reached across the table for the hand that Sylvia immediately withdrew. "I would have the patience for that."

Her parents had made a faint attempt to discourage Malcolm, had used words like sacrifice sacrifice while he had used words of love. Secretly, however, Sylvia knew that they considered the young doctor to be a miraculous blessing, a gift of luck visiting their unlucky home. When it was obvious that he was serious determined in fact her father had told her that if she married Malcolm, the young doctor had agreed that he would come to live in the house. "And you'll never have to leave," he said, knowing that that would be what she wanted. He was right, that was what she wanted although, until that moment, it had never occurred to her that the house, its objects and corners and stories, might be removed from her life. while he had used words of love. Secretly, however, Sylvia knew that they considered the young doctor to be a miraculous blessing, a gift of luck visiting their unlucky home. When it was obvious that he was serious determined in fact her father had told her that if she married Malcolm, the young doctor had agreed that he would come to live in the house. "And you'll never have to leave," he said, knowing that that would be what she wanted. He was right, that was what she wanted although, until that moment, it had never occurred to her that the house, its objects and corners and stories, might be removed from her life.

After that, as if repeating a line he had been told he would be expected to say, her father asked if she'd thought about whether she wanted to marry Malcolm.

She had said nothing; none of it seemed to have much to do with her.

Her mother had spoken to her harshly one night in the kitchen shortly after Malcolm had left the house. She had spun around angrily from her place at the sink, suds and water dripping from her hands. "You'll have to let him touch you," she had hissed in the direction of her daughter. "You'll have to let him touch you in ways you can't even imagine. And you have never, never let me, your father, or anyone else touch you. You won't be able to do it, and he will leave and we'll all be worse off than before." But neither the outburst nor what her mother said worried Sylvia. She knew exactly what her mother was talking about. And Malcolm had a.s.sured her, had promised her with his hand on the old family Bible. "I will not touch you," he swore, "until you want me to." She was never going to want him to; there was never going to be a problem.

There was a story about the four horses: the three horses and the one that had been broken by her mother. There would likely be a story about the new horse that Malcolm had brought into the house, but it had not yet become known to Sylvia at the time of her marriage. In the original story, the four horses had always lived together in the brown field that was the top of the mahogany occasional table that sat under the wall clock. The pendulum was a kind of bra.s.s moon to them, swaying in skies that were given to storms punctuated by the thunderous resonance of the gong. Normal weather was just a rhythm, a solemn, steady ticking or sometimes a creaking as if someone were slowly descending a flight of stairs. There was no time at all in the brown pasture, just weather and changing light. The four horses were grouped together because there was a calm love that existed among them, with no variation in it: it neither gained nor faltered in intensity. That and the fact that as long as they were grouped together there could be no arrivals, no departures, no accidents. The horses could prevent things from happening by staying close to one another without ever touching. Touch, Sylvia knew, caused fracture, and horses should never, never fracture. Horses had to be shot if anything about them was broken. Her father had told her that. Her mother, in the story, had shot the one horse, and still, while Sylvia slept, the weather of the clock ticked on and the storms boomed out into the night, and then continued to mark the mornings when she was awake, and when she was at school while school was still a part of her life. These were the kind of things she liked to think about at the time that Malcolm first came into her life: unnamed china horses.

Sylvia also liked to think about a piece of Staffordshire china that had been in the house for as long as she could remember. As a young child, she had asked her father when "the girl and the dog and the bird who were all joined together by the tree" had come to the house, and he had told her from the beginning, as far as he knew. And so, for her, the grouping became a kind of symbol of the Creation, one of "my first things," as she liked to call these pieces of china at the time. This term had nothing to do with ownership, rather it concerned the connection she believed existed between her and the shape such a thing would hold on to, unchangingly, forever. Often without laying one finger on it, she would whisper to the piece, "There was a girl and a dog and a bird and they were all joined together, forever, by a tree." The girl wore a pink dress, a white ap.r.o.n, and had a green ribbon round her neck and, on her head, a hat adorned with feathers. The dog was spotted and had delicate whiskers and nails made by the finest lines of paint. The bird was brown and black and was resting on a limb of the tree. They remained discrete, separate, attached only to and by the tree a leafless tree, a tree that knew no seasons. A kind of security and contentment emanated from the grouping, as if the players in the tableaux knew who they were, what their role was, where they belonged. They were stable. They had no moods. They displayed no disturbing behavior.

How charmed Malcolm had been by such things when he had finally persuaded her that it was safe to tell him about them. "I am safe, Syl," he would say, and then as if to indicate that he understood what mattered to her, "I am as safe as houses." It was then that she decided to show him the large 1878 County atlas with its old pictures of shops and houses and farms that had since fallen into disrepair or, in some cases, had disappeared completely from the roads on which they had stood. "These are safe too," she had told him, pointing to one building after another. And when he had asked her why they were safe, she had said, "Because everything that was going to happen to them, in them, has already happened. There will be no more changes. They are here," she placed her hand flat on a page, "just like this, forever."

"'And, little town,'" he had said, looking at a depiction of a village street, "'thy streets for evermore will silent be.'"

She had smiled at him then and had, for the first time, looked fully into his face. He knew about the poem that she had carried with her in her mind since Grade Twelve and he had a.s.sumed that she would know as well. He had not explained, had not said the words "Ode on a Grecian Urn," or "John Keats," as almost anyone else would have done, condescending to her "disability," her "condition." She relaxed almost completely then, concluded that he was someone she could like.

Oh Malcolm, she thought now, as she walked through the door of the hotel, you were safe. It was I who was never safe, for beneath the serene appearance of my house, there was always a story that I was making in my mind. No matter how carefully still the horses stood, in the end, even they couldn't stop things from happening. They couldn't stop the time that marched so noisily over their heads. They couldn't prevent me from leaving the room, walking down the hall, out the door. Neither you, nor your goodness, nor china horses could keep me forever away from the arms of the world.

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The hotel room had felt almost familiar when Sylvia re-entered it; the only change since she'd left a few hours earlier was the stack of fresh towels placed in the bathroom and a further straightening of the bed she had made before leaving. Her few cosmetics were lined up near the sink just the way she had left them, and the leather portfolio remained in perfect alignment with the right-hand corner of the desk. Her suitcase stood near the wall, the curtains were closed. I am going to be able to manage this, she thought. I am going to be able to be calm here.

When she was a child, there had been apart from other people two things that particularly separated her from calmness: wind in a room and outdoor mirrors. She could still call up the fear she had felt when, one morning in June, she had walked into the dining room to discover the sheer curtains moving like sleeves toward her, and a bouquet of flowers that had been dead and still the previous day bending and shaking in the breeze that entered through the open window. She had become accustomed to the fact that the air moved when she was outside, but she believed the interior of the house was the realm of stillness, so that when she became aware of the wind in the room it seemed to her that something alien and disturbing had begun to animate all that she had relied on to be quiet and in place.

After that she would let neither her father nor her mother open her bedroom window at night and would inquire repeatedly about all the other windows in the house before climbing carefully into bed. In spite of her parents' a.s.surances, she would worry that while she lay motionless between white sheets the long, draped arms of the curtains would be rising and falling as if conducting music she would never be able to hear, and would not be able to bear had she been able to hear it. These indoor currents and suspicions of music had caused her anxiety during her first years with Malcolm as well, but almost all of that was gone by the time she began to meet Andrew. And yet she had never been entirely comfortable in summer when Andrew wanted the front door of the cottage left open. She liked the idea of the two of them being closed in together; she liked the idea of shutting everything else out.

When she had been about twelve, her father had taken her to a country auction, thinking that it would be a pleasant outing for her after two days of tension in the house. A bad spell, he had said, referring to her mother's mood that had been an unspoken but dark and pulsing presence. Sylvia had not responded well to anything about the auction: not to the jabbering man on the platform, not to the displaced furniture and household goods arranged on the gra.s.s, and certainly not to the more delicate items sheets and doilies and tablecloths being pawed through by those she knew had no right to touch them. But when she had pa.s.sed by a row of mirrors and had seen herself reflected in them herself drenched in sunshine with the hem of her dress moving, gra.s.s under her shoes, barns and trees, hills and clouds behind her she had begun to cry and had not stopped crying until her father was forced to take her home. When questioned, all she could say was that nothing was where it should be. What she had meant, she realized much later, was that the mirrors had shown her that there was no controlling what might enter the frame of experience, that the whole world might bully its way into a quiet interior, and that there would be no way of keeping it out.

It comforted her that the mirrors in her own house were hung in locations where windows and all that moved outside of windows could not be duplicated on their surfaces, and each day when she pa.s.sed them the same reflected furniture stood, reversed it is true, but stoically and rea.s.suringly in place. Nothing about the three mirrors in this hotel room could startle or betray her either. In the one that hung over the dresser she saw herself reflected, from the waist up, against the background of the bed, bedside tables, and lamps, and when she closed the bathroom door, she saw the whole woman she had become: angular, slightly stooped, vague grey eyes, the veins of the hands that hung by her hips, the sharp shin bones that traveled from the hem of her skirt down to her narrow feet, the grey-blond hair that was pulled back from her face, and behind all this just the blankness of a wall.

On one of the bedside tables, beside the two notebooks, The Relations of History and Geography The Relations of History and Geography remained unopened where she had placed it the previous day. She had brought the book with her to the city, hoping that she might be able to begin to reread it when she was in a new place, as she had not had the courage to do so over the previous year. She had picked it up on occasion, had opened it, and had turned it on an angle to the light to search for the incised lines that would indicate that Andrew had marked a particular pa.s.sage with his thumbnail. Then she had lightly touched with her fingers this practically invisible, frail trace of him on the printed text. But she could not read the pa.s.sages that had interested him: not yet, not so far. remained unopened where she had placed it the previous day. She had brought the book with her to the city, hoping that she might be able to begin to reread it when she was in a new place, as she had not had the courage to do so over the previous year. She had picked it up on occasion, had opened it, and had turned it on an angle to the light to search for the incised lines that would indicate that Andrew had marked a particular pa.s.sage with his thumbnail. Then she had lightly touched with her fingers this practically invisible, frail trace of him on the printed text. But she could not read the pa.s.sages that had interested him: not yet, not so far.

The book had been Andrew's last gift to her at a time when his gifts could take any shape at all an empty s...o...b..x, an oddly shaped stick, and once a Sears Catalogue from 1976. He would rise in the middle of a conversation, sometimes in the middle of a sentence, cross the room, rummage through the bookshelves or the box near the fire, and return to her with some object or another in his hands. "Please take it," he would say. "It would mean so much to me if you did." Once, he had approached her with a loaf of bread in his hands. "Please accept this bouquet," he had said. And when she had laughed, he had laughed with her, and then had spoken the word joy joy while removing her blouse. This book, then, was the final offering from his hand, and she had kept it near her in the hope that, when she could bring herself to read it, there might be some message from him encoded in its chapters, though she knew this to be irrational, wishful thinking. Andrew was not the kind of man who sent symbolic messages, not even the younger Andrew, twenty years before. No, all of the messages she had read in the objects that were near him or in the cloud formations that pa.s.sed over him, even, sometimes, in the expressions that visited his face were often, she now acknowledged, envisioned by her alone, invented by her need. She reached for the book, let it fall open to a page near the back, and forced herself to read a thumbnail-marked quotation by a man named York Powell: while removing her blouse. This book, then, was the final offering from his hand, and she had kept it near her in the hope that, when she could bring herself to read it, there might be some message from him encoded in its chapters, though she knew this to be irrational, wishful thinking. Andrew was not the kind of man who sent symbolic messages, not even the younger Andrew, twenty years before. No, all of the messages she had read in the objects that were near him or in the cloud formations that pa.s.sed over him, even, sometimes, in the expressions that visited his face were often, she now acknowledged, envisioned by her alone, invented by her need. She reached for the book, let it fall open to a page near the back, and forced herself to read a thumbnail-marked quotation by a man named York Powell: The country was to him a living being, developing under his eyes, and the history of its past was to be discovered from the conditions of its present.... He could read much of the palimpsest before him. He was keen to note the survivals that are the key to so much that has now disappeared but that once existed.

She lifted her eyes from the page and stared at a small red light below the television that was beating soundlessly like something alive. She had not heard of the author who had written these lines or the scholar to whom the quotation referred, but the words described Andrew so accurately they stirred her heart and awakened her grief and she turned her face to one side, closed the book, and placed it back on the table.

The next afternoon at two o'clock, as Sylvia approached Jerome's door, she saw that it was held open by a broken piece of timber. Timber, she thought, no one uses the word any more, a light, musical word, so much better than lumber or wood. As a teenager she had often whispered to herself a sentence that sounded to her like poetry: My house is made of timber and of gla.s.s My house is made of timber and of gla.s.s. The sentence had comforted her, especially when she found herself outside the house walking to school. Now as she stepped over the threshold of this interior that was so new to her, Sylvia found that she was in an empty room: no sign of Jerome and no fluorescent light either. "I'm in here," the young man called from the adjoining s.p.a.ce. "I'll be with you in a moment." He emerged a few seconds later looking distracted, distant.

"Is something wrong?" Sylvia asked and then, by habit, made a mental note that she had read the expression of another, the way Malcolm had taught her to do.

Jerome glanced in her direction, then lowered his gaze. "No, nothing, I was just looking at some drawings, some things I haven't finished yet."

Sylvia wondered if she should ask to see these drawings but decided against making the request. She seated herself in the customary chair. Jerome walked over to the wall, flicked some switches, and looked up as two banks of fluorescent lights quivered toward full illumination. Then he walked across the room and leaned against the counter near the sink. "Would you like some tea?" he asked. "Mira has green tea. I could make some."

"No, I'm fine," said Sylvia. "I've had lunch." The restaurant had been one geared toward sandwiches; the variety of contents displayed behind the gla.s.s counter had almost driven her back out to the street until she realized she could simply mimic the choices of the customer who preceded her. Sylvia was beginning to appreciate the neutrality of the city, the fact that its inhabitants had absolutely no interest in her. Perhaps her life would have been easier to manage had she always been a stranger.

"Okay then." Jerome walked quietly over to the couch and slowly sat down, as if he felt that any sudden movement might be too disruptive, might startle her.

He believes I am a problem, thought Sylvia, much like everyone else. She found this oddly unsettling, as if she had wanted to impress this young man and had failed somehow. Still, she had come this far and was not going to retreat into silence. She placed her handbag on the floor by her feet, removed her coat, and began to speak.

"My father was a doctor and I married my father's partner, a man called Malcolm Bradley. I married a kind man who came into my father's life as a loc.u.m. Malcolm, who wanted to look after me."

She smiled after she said this, and Jerome smiled as well, out of politeness probably, for where was the joke? What she had said should not have been spoken lightly, she realized. Sometimes in recent years when she had stood in the evenings unnoticed at the doorway of Malcolm's office, watching him turn the pages of the books that might or might not have described her condition, her heart nearly broke in the face of his need to believe in the purity of diagnosis. He was so innocent at these moments, this man who felt that everything deserved what he called "the dignity of a scientific explanation." Had he taken her character through the several stages of the scientific method, spent months making observations, before carefully, deliberately, drawing his conclusion? Had he in fact married his conclusion?

"'She will have a good life,' he a.s.sured my parents, 'a good life with me. I understand her.'"

Sylvia sat very still, fearing that Jerome might ask what was wrong with her. It was the inquiry she dreaded more than anything, this question. When it was clear that he was not going to do so, she relaxed and said, "Did they tell you that Andrew Woodman was a landscape geographer?" she asked.

"No," said Jerome, sitting back against the couch, "I think I read about that... afterwards, in the newspaper." He cleared his throat. "And you told me as well."

"Did I? He claimed that everywhere he went he found evidence of the behavior of his forebears: rail fences, limestone foundations, lilac bushes blooming on otherwise abandoned farmsteads, an arcade of trees leading to a house that is no longer there." She looked down. Her hands lying in her lap looked to her like two dead birds "All that sad refuse, Andrew used to say. And that island, of course... your island... abandoned by those ancestors a century before. He recorded everything that was left behind there, each sunken wreck, the remains of pilings, iron pulleys, cables, broken axels. You must have seen remnants... something?"