—Everything all right, Charles? your mother said with toast in her mouth.
—Fine, madam, Charles whispered. I wondered if he was trying not to laugh. And your mother said
—Would you be so kind as to ring my son, I’d like to speak to him.
—Speak to him, indeed, I shouted (yes, dear, I shouted. But honestly what would you have done?) but your mother ignored me.
—It is not possible, madam, Charles said. There was some amount of trouble last night and the lines are down.
Your mother asked what sort of trouble, and of course, Charles did not know. No one knows anything anymore, we just soldier on like good little Britons. You might know, of course.
Do you?
Ever yours,
Angela
What she did not:
The only room with decent light was the music room, so she carried her sketchbook and carpetbag to the third floor, stopping at the dumbwaiter to place a note which read, Tea and sustenance to the music room at ten o’clock, if you please, and send it on its way.
A large rectangle of sunlight brightened half the room and fell, like silk, to the ground. When Angela had visited as a child, she would sometimes position her body just so within the rectangle and listen to the parents play, while enjoying the press and weight of light. She wondered if the light could somehow penetrate her small body, or perhaps radiate through it, if the outline of her hands and torso and spindly legs would somehow dissolve, leaving only heat and faded color behind.
The music room was quiet and dusty. She could sketch the room, of course. Perhaps she would. She stood upon the lit rectangle and tilted her face toward the window. Normally, she would squint, but now she found that she had no need. She stared open-eyed at the sun, drinking it in. She looked at her hands. They were faded, translucent, lovely. This did not strike her as odd. She was an artist. She lived on light. She sat and sketched a woman fading into the sun. Then, she slept. She did not know for how long.
Later, Charles came in with tea. No one was there.
He saw a sketch on the table.
Go away, he whispered.
He didn’t mention it to anyone else.
He didn’t touch the sketchpad.
What he wrote:
My darling Angela,
I regret to tell you that I have, apparently, been sacked. Or not sacked per se, but temporarily relieved of my duties. Fortunately for the two of us, I will remain on the rolls, which is good, because I don’t know how I would eat otherwise. I might have considered joining you in Westhoughton, but the rails are closed for the time being. Only military business now, and rarely that. It is oddly quiet without the regular churn of the engines. I never thought I would miss it, but I do.
I do not know what I have done to deserve the ire of my commander. He said they were overstaffed, but I know for a fact that is a lie. Every man in the office cowers under the stacks waiting on his desk. The commander was not, however, unkind. He told me to divert myself, that I would be back on my feet in no time, and to have a stiff upper lip and so forth, which was nonsense because I shall still be paid and shall apparently return after a suitable time. Suitable for what, they could not say.
But fortunately, after an unpleasant day, I came home and discovered that your letter was not in the post basket with everything else, but was resting prettily on the mantel, which means that our dear Andrew must have seen it and brought it in as a surprise. Don’t worry about my mother. I’ll write to her. Everything will be beautiful.
Yours,
John
What he did not:
He celebrated his newfound free time by enjoying a lovely afternoon with his shining American, accompanied by three liters of a lovely Côtes du Rhône from his jealously guarded prewar cache of wine, drunk directly from the bottles. The American spoke little, drank much, and was exquisitely, brutally beautiful. The walls shook. The bed moaned. The American left at sunset, pausing, briefly, at the door, and slipping away without a word. While drinking what was left of the wine, John read and reread Angela’s letter so many times, he began to recite it.
When he woke, he squinted at the slant of light penetrating his room. He rubbed his eyebrows and between his eyebrows and blinked. Then, he blinked again. A girl stood in the light, a pretty girl staring first at the sun, then at her hands. John cleared his throat. The girl turned to him, smiled, and vanished. John fell heavily back onto the pillows. The girl, of course, looked like Angela, and was Angela. But it could not have been, so it must not have been. He sat back up and the room was empty, as it should be.
He yawned and noticed the letter from Angela was now on her pillow. He had, apparently, resealed it, de-creased it, and placed it where her head should go. He laughed at himself, at what drink can do to a man. He wrapped himself in a robe and padded into the kitchen. The letter was there too, sealed and unopened. He opened it. It was the same letter.
Three letters leaned against one another in the fireplace, their edges now seared by the hot remains of yesterday’s coal. Two letters floated in the sink. Six had been slipped between the door and the jamb and stuck out like nails waiting to be hammered in. And somewhere quite close, a girl was singing.
John gathered the letters in his hands and stood by the window. Bringing the paper to his nose, he closed his eyes and breathed them in. Lilac, of course. And lavender. He let them fall; they spun like dry leaves and scattered on the floor. He sat down and wrote to his mother.
What she wrote:
Dearest John,
Today I sang in your honor, and I found that I could not stop. All day I have been here, drawing portraits of light. Singing odes to light. I open my mouth and light hangs upon my mouth, drips from my tongue, spills down my front, and pools at my feet. Charles came in with tea. (Did I want tea? Do I even drink tea? It’s strange, but I have only a vague notion of the substance of tea. I believe it is not unlike the consumption of light.) He is so pale, poor man. I took his hand. His skin was papery and cool. My hand slipped over it like graphite along the clean space of an empty sheet. He shivered. I could not feel him shiver—not with my hands, anyway. But I felt it all the same. Within. If you understand. Do you understand? You always did understand. There was a day when I learned to see. And learning to see, and making art, and loving you were bound inextricably together. Much now, my dear, is unbound, but those three remain.
Once, there were people in the window. Do you remember, my love? Their mouths were pink and open, and their hair floated like seaweed. It floats still. Charles told me to go away, but you would never tell me so.
Not you, John.
Never, ever you.
Angela
What she did not:
She knew to keep her distance from the windowpanes. The people inside were clearer to her now, clearer than they had ever been. She had always seen them, of course, ever since that day when she was a child. But never directly. They had hovered vaguely at the corners of her eyes, the glass clearing itself every time she stared straight on.
But now they sharpened; they defined themselves. They pressed their long fingers on the glass and called her name. Their cold, pink mouths were open, toothless, hungry—an uneven gash in a cold white space. Their eyes were blank and black—hollow pits where once there was a soul or a self or at least something, but now was not.
Her drawings littered the floor. Her letters too. How they reached their destination was a mystery, though she knew they did. Implicitly. She made something. She was. She would, she decided, remain so. Charles did not pick up the papers she scattered on the floor. He avoided the music room as much as he could. He averted his gaze when she wandered into his quarters at night. He shut his eyes at the seaweed float of her waterlogged hair. He clapped his hands over his ears when she opened her pink slash mouth.
Open the door when the light pours through, she sang. Ope
nthedoorwhenthelightpoursthrough
Openthedoorwhenthelightpoursthroughopenthedoorwhenthe lightpoursthrough
openthedooropenthedooropenthedooropenthedooropenthedoor, she sang, and sang, and sang. After two days of her ceaseless song, he opened the door. She poured herself into the light, and she was light, and line, and space, and negative space, and thought, and the lack of thought, and being, and nonbeing. She was. She knew it.
What he wrote:
My darling,
Have you noticed any strange doors of late? Doors that, I don’t know, darling. That, er, appear out of nowhere, perhaps. Doors that you might have a strong desire to open.
Or have you noticed, on the edges of your vision, well, a sort of veil or shimmering substance? A light, as it were.
I do not ask to cause you to feel alarm or to rush you into anything for which you may or may not be prepared. I only write this (my dear, my precious, my heart’s sweet angel) on the chance that you may be—I mean to say—putting anything off, as it were. Lingering, you know? For my sake.
What I am trying to tell you, my love, is that if you should happen to, in some sense, run into (assuming, of course, that one does run in this, er, condition) anyone—a beloved person, for example—who has been, well, gone for some time, and you feel yourself wanting to, I mean to say, go—you know—along . . . please my darling, do not tarry on my account. Please do not. I cannot bear the thought that you may have found yourself stuck, and that it is my fault. I am fine. I will be fine, my love.
Your most Affectionate Husband,
John
What he did not:
He wondered who would be the one to meet his wife in her nebulous state, and who would be given the great privilege to grasp that delicate hand, and lead her . . . there.
Wherever there was.
Specifically, he wondered if it would be her brother, James—beautiful, sickly James. James of the downy hair. James of the willowy limbs. James of the seafoam skin. James of the irritable lungs. James of the bloody cough. James, red lipped, pale to the point of translucency, and dead in John’s arms. James who loved him, but not like that. And who broke John’s heart. John knew that if James came for him, he’d follow him through any door in the universe, and would not hesitate. Not for a moment.
Though he had guessed well enough on his own, someone at the office had thought to slip a copied report—classified, of course—detailing the known facts of the train crash. The number of souls aboard. Lost, all of them. All, all lost. And Angela—angel, angel Angela—who wasn’t supposed to be there, but was, and now she wasn’t.
And yet.
The letters massed in the corners. They smothered the fire in the grate and mounded over the sink. They poured across the floor, particularly near the windows. They seemed to prefer light. Before he sat down to breakfast, John swept the letters into great heaps at odd intervals throughout the house, intending to burn them in the fireplace, but found he didn’t have the heart for it. Instead, the heaps grew, and the letters multiplied. They kept John up all night. At ten o’clock the next morning the American opened the front door. He did not knock.
“What’s with the letters?” he said.
“It’s complicated,” John replied. He tugged at the folds of his dressing gown. It could be cleaner, of course. Angela always saw to such things. His American was pressed, shaved, and clean. He shone brightly in the doorway. John squinted and gasped.
“I’m leaving,” the American said, keeping his eyes slanted to the floor.
“When?” John asked. He also did not look up. Light poured in from all directions. It swirled across the floorboards. The letters rustled in their heaps, paper murmuring against paper.
“Tomorrow,” he said, and before John could speak, he added, “and don’t ask me where. I can’t say.”
“Of course.” The light intensified. John shaded his eyes. He sweated and squinted.
“Are you—” The American cleared his throat. “I mean, have they found out—told you for sure. About your wife.” He said the word wife as though pronouncing a word in a foreign tongue. “Is she—”
“Yes,” John said while clearing his throat. “Which is to say. We assume. In all likelihood.”
“Terrible thing,” the American said, unstraightening, then straightening, his tie.
“Yes.”
“If I don’t—you know. If I don’t see you again. I—”
“Of course, of course,” John said, running his fingers through his hair, watching with growing panic how the letters spread like mold across the surface of the ottoman, stacked themselves higher on the desk, spilled down the edge of the table. The American didn’t seem to notice. John wondered briefly if they should embrace, declare their love, plot an escape. He wondered if they should begin making plans to settle in the Lake District, raise lambs, live on milk and bread and young meat, live on wine and sex and song.
“Well then,” the American said, and opened the door. The light poured in. John fell to his knees, raised his hands to the light, “Oh! God!” he said, but the American turned and departed without a word. He left the door open.
What she wrote:
Dearest,
Once there was a boy who loved a boy who did not love him back. Once there was a girl who loved a boy who loved a boy. Once there was a girl who loved a boy who loved her back. Mostly.
If love is light and food is light and life is light, are we always in day? Are we doomed to never sleep?
Ever yours,
Angela
Dear John,
I dream of your hands. I dream of fingers as they play along, across, and in. I dream how a moan becomes song and song becomes art and art becomes light. Your light enters me and I shine forever.
Ever yours,
Angela
Dear John,
Light
Art
Light
Song
Light
Light
Light
Do you understand me?
Ever yours—
Dear John,
adooropensawomanlovesalifeblendsintolightandlightandlight
ever yours
ever
ever
What she did not:
There are three things that seem important to her now:
First, light. Light is useful. Particularly when one has no form, but still has substance. Light is a vehicle, though unreliable, particularly given the climate.
Second, the body. Despite its fading, and dissolution into light, she still feels the opening of the mouth, the electric nerves of the fingertips, the hungry scoop between her thighs.
Third, doors. There are doors that remain impenetrable, doors that yield to the gentle insistence of her will, doors that lead her from place to place. There is a door that she needs to find. But what or where it is, and of what use, this is a mystery.
She slides through space and time. The moments of her life unfurl before her, an elegant geometry of angles and arcs and perfect reasoning. She sees a boy who showed her how to see ghosts—which is to say death—which is to say art—which is to say infinity. She sees another boy with pale skin and a red mouth, coughing blood into a napkin. She sees the red-mouthed boy floating away on harmonics and dissonance and brutal love. She sees another—her other—dissembling, dissolving, despairing daily.
She is formless substance. She is light. She is song. She is the art behind art—which is to say, infinite. As formless substance, she sees her other kneeling in the doorway. As light she pours through the door. As song she slides what used to be her fingertips into the secret grooves of his throat. She plucks out melody and harmony—line, phrase, dissonance, and counterpoint. As art she lands upon his open mouth. She lays her mouth upon his mouth, space and negative space. He tastes of lilac and lavender, oi
l and smoke. He sings of bent metal and burning wood and beautiful soldiers and poisoned waters and multitudes of airships hurling themselves against the geodesic sky. He sings of a war that seems as though it will never end. He sings of lost love, lost art, lost music, lost nations, lost women, and lost men.
He sings her name. He never, ever stops.
A young girl loved a poet. Loved him. She loved the graphite stains on his fingers, the thick cowlick that covered his left eye, the hand-rolled cigarette dangling from his open mouth. She loved the way he pressed himself against her in the dark and scratched poems into the soft skin of her long, bare back.
“Don’t date poets,” her mother said. “More trouble than they’re worth. Open them up and there’s nothing more than a wad of torn-up paper at the heart.”
To the poet she said, “Why settle down yet? You’re young; she’s young. A broken heart will burn you alive. You hear me?”
But the girl didn’t listen and the boy didn’t care. The girl came home with sonnets scribbled on her arms, first draft villanelles veining their way up her lilied thighs. At night her mother heard the off-pitch wail of love songs through an open window, a bed creaking to lines that did not scan.
But he was a poet, so his fate was sealed: seventeen; cigarette spewing ash into his eyes; a launch of metal; gasoline blooming like roses at the side of the road. A screaming boy, flung into the darkening sky.
Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories Page 4
