A Certain Slant of Light

by Laura Whitcomb

  By the time James’s class began to arrive that afternoon, I was fairly humiliated by my own need for comfort. I sat in the desk in the last row and wouldn’t meet James’s eyes as he sat down beside me. I could tell, by the way he was watching me without speaking, that he sensed something was wrong. Mr. Brown was leafing through papers on his desk. He stopped on one and silently read it back and front.

  “Listen up,” he said then. “Here’s a good example of description.” Then he read aloud: “The library smells like old books—a thousand leather doorways into other worlds.” Mr. Brown paused and glanced up at the room, but especially at James for one moment. “I hear silence, like the mind of God. I feel a presence in the empty chair beside me. The librarian watches me suspiciously. But the library is a sacred place, and I sit with the patron saint of readers.” Mr. Brown paused as he stared at the page, and then read, “Pulsing goddess light moves through me for one moment like—” Here Mr. Brown paused again. “Like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone. I smell mold, I hear the clock ticking, I see an empty chair. Ask me now and I’ll say this is just a place where you can’t play music or eat. She’s gone. The library sucks.”

  Two boys laughed, but it was a quiet, half-hearted sound that died in the silence. Mr. Brown was staring at the page, though he had read every word there. Perhaps he was staring at the white spaces in between. I turned to James, who was looking down at his hands. Finally Mr. Brown put the paper on his desk with deliberation.

  “Why was that a good description?” he asked the class.

  “’Cause the library does suck,” one boy near the front snorted.

  Mr. Brown ignored the giggles and looked from face to face with a kind of awe, as if he had never seen his students, or anything as fascinating, before.

  A girl in the front row raised a hesitant hand. Mr. Brown nodded at her. “Because he said how it smelled and sounded, not just how it looked?” she asked.

  “Good.” Mr. Brown almost laughed this syllable. “What else?”

  Now James had slid down in his seat as if shy of the attention, though Mr. Brown had made no reference to him. I leaned toward him with every intention of merely whispering in his ear, but when my lips neared his temple, I could not stop myself. With one hand on his chest, I pressed a brief kiss to his brow.

  To my surprise he gasped, arching in his chair, his left hand flying to his chest where I had touched him. I jumped back, unable to tell whether his expression was one of pain, fear, or ecstasy. I retreated to the back wall. I knew he had turned to find me, but I was ashamed and would not meet his gaze. Instead, I hurried out of the room and hid just outside the open door. I could hear Mr. Brown’s Voice, and I tried to let the familiar sound soothe me.

  “So we have sight, sound, smell, detail, simile, metaphor, and feelings. Good.”

  “Who wrote it?” one boy called.

  “If the author wants to tell you after class, he or she may choose to do so,” said Mr. Brown.

  I did a most childish thing then. I hid when the students left Mr. Brown’s class, not behind or under the tree where James would seek me out but high in the branches. I needed to think. I shadowed Mr. Brown so closely when he left that no light could have slipped between us if I’d been solid flesh. I held to him like a baby to its mother’s skirts until he was in his car. Then I sat beside him, something I never did. I always sat in the seat behind. As he started the engine, I saw James mounting his bicycle. I touched Mr. Brown’s arm.

  “Follow him,” I said. I couldn’t tell whether Mr. Brown had obeyed my command, until he turned the car south instead of north. We drove behind the bicycle, now a block ahead of us. As James came to a red light, one foot touching the curb for balance, his hair blowing and his green bag on his back, we caught up to him. After we turned on Rosewood, we passed a small park with a swing set and a statue of a deer. At the corner of Amelia, James’s bicycle swooped left, and a moment later Mr. Brown’s car rolled dreamily after him onto the tiny residential lane. The houses were small, wooden, and worn. James stopped in the driveway of the third one, both feet on the ground, his black shirt blowing in the wind as he turned toward us. Mr. Brown stopped his car right in the middle of the street and looked perplexed. He turned and saw James staring at him. The window rolled down with a soft hum.

  “Mr. Blake,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” said James, who brushed the hair out of his face. I stayed hidden behind Mr. Brown.

  “Good writing,” he told him.

  “Thanks.” I could feel James searching for me.

  “See you tomorrow.” Mr. Brown raised the window. “How the hell did I get on this street?” I looked back, as we glided away, to see James walk his bicycle toward the garage. It was a light blue house, peeling, with ivy growing up one side and a fig tree in the lawn. The number over the door was 723. The side mirror on the bike flashed as he rolled it into the darkness of the garage. I made a wish as if I had just seen a falling star. I wished that James were my host. A thrill burned through me like a fast wick. Seven twenty-three. I repeated it over and over like an incantation.

  When we arrived at Mr. Brown’s house a few minutes later, a dreadful thing happened. When he entered the house, I could not. I was as barred from moving through the doorway (or the wall, for that matter) as a leaf would be when blown up against a solid pane of glass. Instead of flowing through the door as he closed it behind him, I bobbed against it. I floated to the window where I could hear faint sounds from the kitchen. I could touch the outer walls in my benign way, but I could not enter. I didn’t mean to, but I cried out, like a child fallen down a well. My spectral voice frightened the crows in the oak nearby, and this sobered me, for a while. I paced round and round the small house, looking in at every window. As when I wished to be one of the actors I watched on a stage far below, I had made a grave error in judgment.

  I tried to thrust my arms through the wall and cleave to Mr. Brown again, as I had with my Knight, but I couldn’t. If you love me, I thought at him, invite me in. But I knew better. It wasn’t a matter of love. It was only nature. I hadn’t so much broken the rule of proximity as the mysterious rule of devotion. I had wished for another host. My spirit had wandered off, and this had severed our tie like a blossom cut from the vine. The old pain would be returning soon. Stubbornly I bumped against the same window time and again, like a moth with no memory. I found that the bedroom window was half open, but still I could not enter. I waited there, my face at the brink of the opening, my hands gripping the window frame like prison bars, waiting for my hell to come for me.

  Mr. Brown came in and sat on the bed, looking troubled. His wife followed and went to the mirror, taking a clip from the dressing table and looking at herself in the glass as she twisted and fastened up her hair. She saw Mr. Brown in the reflection and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said, but when he tried to smile, she turned and looked at him.

  He shrugged. Mrs. Brown came over and sat beside him. “Really,” she said.

  He lay down on his back, gazing at the ceiling. “I don’t know.”

  She lay on her side by him, raised up on her elbow so she could observe his expression. “Tell me.”

  He looked so worried, but he played absently with the fingers of her right hand as he spoke. “It’s like I have the feeling I lost something or I forgot something. It keeps bugging me.”

  Mrs. Brown leaned over and gave him a short kiss on the shoulder. “It’ll come back to you.” Then she said, “Did you mail that package to my sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that was probably it.”

  “It doesn’t feel like that,” he said. “It’s like when you know you dreamed about someone, but you can’t remember what happened in the dream. I feel as if I can’t remember...” He stopped. Mrs. Brown stroked his chest, drawing soft circles over his heart.

  After a moment he said, “What if I’ve forgotten a person?”

  “Like y
our first grade teacher, you mean? Someone like that?”

  “Is there a moment when you’ll never be able to remember something again?”

  “No,” said his wife. “Your mind will never lose anything forever that’s worth keeping.” She gave his temple a playful push, and he let his head fall to one side. “It’s all in there.”

  Something happened then. Any other night, he would have put his arms about her or tickled her. This time he simply looked back at the ceiling. His wife stood up and said, “Snap out of it, Babe.” But he didn’t laugh. She paused as she unbuttoned her jeans, frowning.

  “Maybe I lost my muse,” he said. “I wonder what I did wrong.”

  Her eyes flashed at him, a ripple went through the gentle stream of her nature. A shock wave she hid by turning her back on him as she got undressed. She was shaken, and I knew why. He had broken the illusion that she was his muse. She knew that he was smitten with her, but now she feared that she was not enough. Mrs. Brown slowly folded her T-shirt and laid it over her jeans on the dressing table chair.

  “I think I’ll take a shower,” she said. And on any other night, he would have followed her into the water, but tonight he lay staring at the ceiling.

  It was my fault. I had stepped off one stone in the river before finding another. He sat up as the water started running in the next room and looked toward the open window. He stood and walked to me now. Leaning a hand on the wall on each side of the frame, he studied the darkness, the breeze that wafted through me, stirring his hair. I was inches away, but he was alone. It was not like talking to him when I had touched his shoulder alone in our classroom. He couldn’t feel me anymore. If only I could appear to him like the ghosts in stories. The soles of my feet began to feel like ice.

  I backed away, willing his eyes to eventually lock with my own, but of course he was blind to me, and I couldn’t bear it. I had never left a host who wasn’t dying. I was losing my beloved friend, and he wasn’t going to heaven without me. He was going to live his life without me. I turned my back on him and fled. Once I had run from my hell and managed to make my way back to my host’s doorstep. I began walking in what I hoped was the right direction. As I felt the pain crack through my bones, I held the number I had memorized in my mind like a compass. Seven twenty-three.

  I was in the freezing waters again, being pulled down in the dark, the demons roaring above and mud flooding my throat. I reached out, trying to tear down the dirt wall, but it was a plank, like the side of a rough coffin. I clawed at the wood, and it started to crumble in little rotting chunks. Water shot between the boards with a scream.

  An animal, a black deer, loomed over me. It stood so still even as the wind was blowing leaves and sticks around in a wild maypole dance. I realized then, it was only a statue of a deer. I could see, behind it, two swings flapping in a crazy jig. I was too fragile to move. I felt as if I would be blown to pieces if I tried to rise, so I stayed close to the ground and let everything else riot over my head. My hell and a storm were strangely mingled.

  I couldn’t actually hear anything except the shriek of the wind and all that it carried, but I knew that someone was calling me. I looked around and on the street corner, I saw a figure. He put a hand up to his head, perhaps blocking the wind from his eyes. No, he was holding back his blowing hair. He started running toward me. When I saw that it was James, I struggled up but was thrown into the madness of the dance and caught in a tree over his head. I saw James stop on the sidewalk below and look about as if I had disappeared.

  I was then sucked into the sky, and I could see nothing. All I could hear was wind and all I could feel was wind, but I was thinking over and over, seven twenty-three, seven twenty-three. Finally, I smashed into the grass of a small yard. Ivy shook on a pale blue wooden wall, and then James was standing beside a fig tree that was jerking in the wind. He was scanning the street, but as I pulled myself toward him, he caught sight of me and stared. I crawled closer, trying to keep myself from sliding down the hole in the earth that dragged like a whirlpool at my feet. He seemed terrified. I must’ve looked like a monster, covered in mud, tearing at the grass. He held a hand out to me, but I didn’t want to pull him in.

  He dropped to his knees and tried to clutch at me with both hands, looking panicked when he couldn’t. Finally he threw himself on me, and I couldn’t help but embrace him. Don’t let me pull him down with me, I was praying. A moment later the wind had softened to a mild hiss.

  Kneeling beside me, he waited until I looked at him, then he slowly rose and began to move backward toward the small blue house, one foot behind the other, like a tightrope walker. I rose as well, concentrating on the wind ruffling his hair. With my other salvations, it had always been clear, the uniting of spirit and host. This felt different. I followed, so weak I felt as if all the color had been drained from the world. He climbed the porch stairs backward, one step at a time, and I followed. I kept my eyes on his face, perfect as a sculpture. He opened the door and backed in, then moved to one side and beckoned me to enter, as I had longed for Mr. Brown to do. I followed him into the house, and he closed the door.

  It was only then that I noticed the noise. There was loud music and many voices, much smoke, and little light in the small living room. A dozen men and women, all holding bottles of beer and burning cigarettes, moved about in unsteady, sweating clusters, swearing and laughing and taking little notice of James. Only one of them, a strong, tattooed man with no shirt, looked over.

  “Where’d you go?” he called.

  “Nowhere.” He had to yell to be heard over the din.

  “Do your homework,” the man called.

  “It’s Friday.”

  “What?” The man frowned, holding his beer-bottled hand to one ear.

  “Okay!” yelled James. He ducked down the tunnel of the hall. He stopped at a door with a hole as big as a baseball almost broken through it. He opened the door and waited until I had glided in before closing it. It was a small room, lit with a dim overhead light. There was a large square bed, far too big for the cramped space, a tiny desk and chair cluttered with magazines, clothes and cans, and the walls were almost completely covered with pictures, mostly from magazines, but there were also some larger pictures pinned and taped up, even on the ceiling. Some pictures were of almost nude women, some were of guitars and musicians, some of cars, and a few of athletes caught in mid jump. The space over the desk was papered, every inch, with cartoon drawings of dragons, insects, and monsters. Each was signed with the initials BB.

  I knew that these walls were full of color, but everything seemed gray. James watched me look about. He still seemed to be trembling, though the wind was far away now, only a tame howl outside the closed window. Even the overpowering squeal of music from the other room was just a muffled hum. This space seemed so alien, I had to stare.

  “This is Mr. Blake’s home,” I said.

  “Did you leave him?”

  The truth was more that I had lost Mr. Brown than left him, but I didn’t want to say it out loud. I felt a brick-heavy sorrow in my chest threaten to take me over, until James smiled.

  “Haunt me” he said, and he shrugged in such a light, odd manner, I felt instantly as if I must be taking myself far too seriously.

  “Don’t be foolish,” I told him.

  He pulled his book bag off the desk chair and motioned me to sit.

  “I’m your host now, aren’t I?” he asked.

  “I suppose that’s true.” My host. My James. “I don’t know what to do now, I confess,” I said. “It doesn’t seem quite proper, this...” I was at a loss.

  “I don’t know much at all about anything,” said James. “But I know we should be together, you and I. That’s all I can be sure of.”

  Together, he’d said. I wanted to know exactly what he meant.

  “How could we not?” he asked, sitting on the rumpled brown blanket on his bed. “It’s as if we were the only two of a species or the only two people on earth who spoke the s
ame language. How could we not be with each other?”

  I was shocked at his words, the last of a species. There was something carnal in the sound.

  “I’ve never cleaved to a host that...” I hesitated. “Well, that was aware of me.”

  This made him smile.

  “You’ll tire of me,” I said, afraid all at once of being hated. “I couldn’t bear that.”

  “Miss Helen,” he laughed, “you must be joking.” But then he thought on it again. “You may tire of me,” he said. “That’s far more likely Are you afraid of that?”

  “No, not of that,” I said.

  The door banged open with a flood of reckless music, and a woman staggered in, with a man following. The man put an arm around her waist and a hand into her shirt. She wore a short black skirt and a black lace blouse that was smoke thin. She blinked at James. “Hey, Billy.”

  “Hey, Rayna,” said James, sounding tired all at once.

  The man looked over her shoulder and frowned at James, not bothering to remove his hand from her breast. “Goddamn it.”

  “Do you mind?” said James.

  “Sorry,” she laughed. “We can go somewhere else.”

  “Like where?” asked the man. He had one earring and a beard like a pirate.

  “How about the bathroom?” said the woman, as she closed the door again.

  “I apologize,” James said to me, blushing. He went to the door and put on the chain lock. He sat back down on the bed with a sigh.

  “Which ones are in your family?” I asked.

  “Only the man who spoke to me when we first walked in. That’s Billy’s brother, Mitch. He doesn’t talk about it, so it’s difficult to know, but I think our mother died and our father’s in jail.”

  “I see.” It seemed like such a bleak life, but who was I to judge? I was not much more than a wisp of vapor. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He smiled. “It’s all right.” Then he looked around the room. “Last week I tried to change the pictures and clean up the mess, but when Mitch saw it, he thought that I was having a mental breakdown and was so upset, I went back to the clutter.”