A Certain Slant of Light

by Laura Whitcomb

  “I have a present for you.” He pulled a small disk out and held it in front of his face like a monocle. It was a plastic button printed with the words YOU ARE MY HOME.

  “What is it?” I asked, delighted even before hearing the story.

  “It was a game in English class,” he said, pinning the button to my dress. “If you could remember what character said the line, you won the button.”

  Now I recalled Mr. Brown playing this game with his students the year before. “Smike,” I said.

  “Very good,” he laughed. “You and I could have wiped out the treasure chest.”

  We took an apple and a bottle of water from the kitchen, and James led us into the garage through the inside door. I kept stroking the button like a magic amulet. James reached under the front left fender of Mitch’s car and pulled out a tiny tin box that held a key.

  “What does Mitch do for work?” I asked.

  “He’s a mechanic.” Like a gentleman, James opened the passenger door for me. I loved the way the car smelled of car, not like Cathy’s. “You wouldn’t know it to look at this creature of a car,” he said, getting in. “He scraped it together from other people’s wrecks.”

  “Like Frankenstein.”

  “Precisely.” He started the engine and glanced at me. “You should drive. You need the practice to pass your test.”

  “I don’t know how to drive,” I said.

  “You don’t need to have Jenny’s memories,” said James, opening the automatic garage door. It roared painfully upward. “Automobiles haven’t changed all that much.” He pushed his hips back in the seat and pointed down at the pedals. “Left brake, right gas.”

  “This doesn’t help me,” I pointed out.

  “What are you talking about?” He seemed almost annoyed at my reluctance. “Didn’t they let women drive?”

  “The car hadn’t been invented yet,” I told him.

  James looked at me blankly for one moment, then bent forward in such uncontrolled laughter that I thought he was going to stop breathing. His face turned red, and tears were running down his cheeks.

  “I beg your pardon,” I said, trying to seem offended. “Are you making fun of my age?”

  This didn’t help. He motioned that I should stop speaking. I couldn’t be angry with him, though.

  “I’m sorry,” he gasped. I sat and started to eat the apple. Finally he wiped his eyes on his shirt and sighed, but he wouldn’t look at me. I gave him a bite from the apple and he calmed down.

  “Hadn’t been invented,” he mumbled. Then he bit his lip, and his shoulders started to shake again.

  Near the school, James parked on a side street. Just as we got to his locker, the bell rang. He opened the metal door with a clank and brought out my book bag.

  “Can I come calling on you tonight?” he asked.

  I was instantly shackled with thoughts of Jenny’s home. “I’m not allowed suitors,” I said. “I’ll have to try to find a chink in the armor.”

  “Why does everything you say sound so appealing?” he whispered.

  “Is it a half day tomorrow?” I asked suddenly.

  His face lit up. “I forgot.”

  “But Cathy will probably pick me up early.”

  “Maybe she won’t remember,” said James. “Mitch didn’t know when we had the last one.”

  I stopped listening and put a hand on his arm. There was a girl, walking with a group of twenty or more, all wearing red and white shirts and shorts, about thirty feet from us. She had stopped and was fixed on the sight of James. He looked to see what had drawn my attention. When he met her eyes, the girl turned so chalky gray, I was sure she would faint, but a friend came back a few paces and whispered to her. The pale girl, her eyes deeply shadowed, folded her arms against the vision of him and let her friend coax her away.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said James. “They’re from Wilson, I think. They look like cheerleaders.”

  “She knows Billy,” I said, which was certainly not difficult to see.

  “But I don’t think she likes him.” James gave a small laugh, but I knew it bothered him.

  “Blake,” a voice called. It sent a chill through me. “We wanna talk to you.”

  The same young man who had stopped to talk to James in the library was walking up to us with another boy. The one following had tangled red hair down to his shoulders and a dirty denim jacket covered with words he’d written on it himself. James gently but firmly turned me in the opposite direction and gave me a little push. I walked away without looking back.

  After school, I didn’t see James at the parking lot. And I didn’t see the maroon car. Instead I saw Jenny’s father pulling up in his van. It seemed like an ambulance, it was so white. He waved, and I tried to be subtle as I unpinned my Smike button and tucked it into my book bag.

  “Hi, Puppy.”

  “Hi, Dan.” I sat down, putting my bag in my lap. Then I realized my mistake. “I mean father.”

  “When did you start calling me father?” he asked.

  “Sorry, Dad.” Then I said something that surprised me. “I’ve been changing a lot lately,” I told him.

  I believe Cathy would’ve been disturbed by this, but Dan’s glance at me seemed impressed. “You can call me father.” As he pulled away from the school, I looked back, hoping to catch a glimpse of James.

  “You’re not going to decide you want to be called Jennifer all of a sudden, are you?” he laughed. “No,” I said. “I’m not a Jennifer.”

  “You’ll always be Puppy to me.”

  “Where’s mother? I mean Mom?”

  “It’s Tuesday,” he reminded me. “She’s at Missionary Meeting. Where did you think?”

  I sighed, tired of making mistakes.

  “Buckle up,” he ordered.

  I pulled the shoulder strap across my chest and smelled there the soft scent of gardenias.

  Twelve

  “WANT TO PRACTICE?” Dan asked, when we were a few blocks from school.

  “Practice what?”

  “We could go to the Market Basket parking lot, if you don’t mind the Previa.” He winked at me, but I was terrified as soon as I understood. “What is it?” he frowned.

  “No, thank you.” I heard the fear in my own voice.

  Dan turned chilly, tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “The righteous are bold as a lion.”

  He was calling me a coward, and although he hadn’t ordered me to practice driving, I felt strongly that I had disobeyed. I tried to imagine what Jenny might say to mend his temper and show respect.

  “I want to study hard tonight,” I lied. “I have a quiz tomorrow. I want you to be proud of me.”

  This seemed enough. He relaxed, placing a hand on the back of my neck. It felt like a yoke of heat dragging me down.

  When we got home, I crept quickly into the bathroom and bathed. Today there was no blood on my clothes. I didn’t know where Dan was in the house. It was as perfectly still as a museum after hours. I tiptoed to the study, and then, as I neared the half-open door, I heard him talking on the phone. While trying to start back toward my room, a creak in the floor startled me.

  “Well, okay.” His voice shifted into a new volume. “I’ll be there if I have to.”

  I ducked into my room and was already sitting on the bed, holding Romeo and Juliet (right side up, no less) in front of my face when he knocked once and entered.

  “Is that your homework?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “Your hair’s wet,” Dan pointed out.

  It was a miracle that he didn’t realize Jenny had no English class this term, for everything else I did that strayed from the daily routine was noticed. Every breath counted, every step measured. I struggled for an explanation, but before I could speak, he left me alone.

  I had grabbed the Shakespeare in such haste that I’d knocked the book bag over. I righted the bag, but the button James had given me fell out and rolled on
its edge under my dresser. I had to get down on my knees to feel beneath it. When my hand closed on the disk, I accidentally banged the bottom of the lowest drawer. There was a rattling sound there that I found curious. I pulled the button out and looked into the bottom dresser drawer. I found some scarves and stockings there and one knit hat but nothing that would rattle. I shook the drawer and heard it again. For some reason, at that moment, I saw Mitch, his brow furrowed with intention, delving in the toes of Billy’s boots, like an egg-hungry snake.

  I emptied the drawer of scarves and soft gloves. The bottom was lined with yellow and white gingham paper, just like the other drawers and the shelves in the closet. I tapped on it, and it sounded hollow. Then I saw a tiny piece of cream-colored ribbon sticking out of the middle of one side. I pulled on it, and the false bottom lifted out. There, in the space beneath, was a lumpy lavender pillowslip and a manila envelope. I felt my heart jump forward to a trot. I glanced at my door, but it was closed. Slowly I took out Jenny’s secrets, but I was almost afraid to open them.

  It’s all right to look, I told myself. Perhaps they’re messages for you. Gingerly I unrolled the pillowslip. There were three items inside—a camera called a Polaroid, a package of film in a blue box labeled BLACK AND WHITE, and a small plastic bag with a few dollar bills and a few coins. I wrapped them up again, afraid someone would walk in. Next I opened the envelope. A stack of photographs slid out. The ones on top were like the picture on the film box—small, square, with black-and-white images. There were a dozen or so. I was fascinated. Not one was like the last. Some had words hand-printed under the image in black ink. One was of a pale hand, probably Jenny’s own, stretched up to touch a leaf on the branch of a tree. Under it were the words Adam’s Reach. One was of Jenny, her whole self head to foot, dressed in a thin white nightgown, looking at herself in the mirror of her closet door as she jumped, balletlike, frozen in midair, the flash of the camera in front of her face making a blinding little star where her head should have been. Another was a flock of pigeons blurred in group ascent, a flutter of frozen wings. Another was of a cat’s footprints on a car windshield.

  Under these were some larger photos, also in black and white, and I scrutinized them one by one. Jenny, nude, curled in a ball, sitting on the floor in front of her closet mirror, with the camera on the carpet beside her. The blackness behind her and in all the curves of her form made the lightness of her skin seem to glow. One was of her own feet, one stepping up the wall in the arch of midstride with the other lifted in a turn, like a folk dancer headed for the ceiling. Another was of Jenny—I assumed it was Jenny—with a white sheet over her head, sitting with a suitcase beside her on the bed. I couldn’t tell where the camera was. This one had a piece of white tape in the upper-right corner with the words the ghost waits written on it. The last, the most startling to me, was Jenny’s face, taken in the dressing table mirror. She rested her chin in her hands, looking into the camera with absolute peace. It was a disturbing picture because I had never seen her this way. I had seen her with myself behind her eyes, and I had seen her empty but never with Jenny’s soul inside. For the first time, I wondered where she was, and the fact that it was the first time I had done so made me sorry.

  It was the sound of the front door that sobered me. I slipped all the photographs back into the envelope and put both it and the pillowslip back into the bottom of the drawer. As I heard Cathy coming down the hall calling to Dan, I lowered the false bottom back in place. Just as she opened my door, without knocking, I picked up one scarf and started folding it.

  “What’re you doing?” she said, looking at the pile of clothes.

  “Just sorting a few things,” I told her.

  “Do you not like Brad Smith?”

  I was so surprised I didn’t answer.

  “You don’t have to go with anybody,” she smiled. “I’m chaperoning. You can ride with me.”

  She was talking about the boy she’d arranged to take me to the church dance. “Is that tonight?”

  “Tonight?” She repeated the word and her smile faded. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m all right.” I smiled as best I could. “Let me know when to set the table.”

  “It’s Tuesday,” she said. “Paper plates for game night. Hawaiian okay?”

  “Hawaiian?” I placed the scarf I’d just folded in the drawer and started folding another. “Yes.”

  “Where has your mind been?” she frowned.

  “I have a quiz tomorrow,” I said.

  “Ever since you fainted on Sunday, you’ve been acting funny.”

  “Sorry,” was all I could think to say.

  “Are you done studying?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m ordering now. Meet you in the den in half an hour.” Then she paused. “What happened to your hair?”

  I touched my head, which was still damp from my bath. “Don’t ask,” I said on a whim, and it seemed to help. She left with a little laugh.

  I put the clothes back in the drawer and picked up the button James had given me. I was about to put it in my book bag when I thought, what difference would it make? I pinned it to the outside of the bag.

  Cathy wasn’t in the dining room or kitchen. When I found her, she was setting three folding chairs up around a card table between the two couches in the middle of the family room. Although it would’ve been easier to use the chairs from the Prayer Corner, she didn’t touch them. They were sacred space, apparently. The large TV was dark, but soft music was coming from somewhere. She had a boxed game called Monopoly sitting out. The distance behind her eyes as she unpacked the game saddened me. It seemed as if humans had lost the ability to make their own fun. The more they were gifted with inventions, the less they needed one another. They didn’t sing or play fiddle at the hearth; they turned on the stereo. They didn’t tell stories on the porch; they watched television. Cathy laid out thin plastic plates with knives and forks wrapped in paper napkins like Christmas crackers, but it didn’t feel at all festive.

  “I’m not going to be that little iron this time,” she said. “I want to be the ship.”

  She placed three tiny metal toys in one corner of the playing board—a little dog, a top hat, and a little ocean liner. When the doorbell rang, she called, “Dan, it’s the pizza!”

  A minute later, Dan walked into the family room with a pizza box lifted on one hand as if he were a waiter. He had changed into a casual shirt and smiled at us, yet I had a feeling it wasn’t his wife and daughter or the food that was making him smile. He looked as if he had just remembered a joke but was not planning on repeating it. He set the pizza box down on the end table beside one of the couches. I was surprised by the beautiful smell that came with it. I had seen plenty of pizzas but never tasted one.

  “I don’t know about Monopoly,” he said.

  “We haven’t played it since last month,” said Cathy.

  “It’s just that I have to go in to the office later,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll have time.”

  Cathy stopped and stared at him. “Jenny, please go get the soda and cups.”

  I went quickly, feeling that Cathy wanted me out of the room. Unfortunately the cups and the bottle of soda were easy to find on the kitchen counter. I walked back down the hall at a snail’s pace, listening to the voices of Jenny’s parents.

  “I know it’s family night,” he said. “I’m here. I can stay for an hour. I just need to go in and rework an account with Steve.”

  “You promised that Tuesday nights would be off-limits.”

  “I’m doing the best I can.” He sounded more like her father than her husband. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask for you to be supportive and understanding about my work. I try to earn a good living to make sure my family is taken care of. Don’t you think I’d rather play Monopoly than do paperwork?”

  I stood outside the door, wishing I could sit on the roof.

  “Jen?” Dan called.

  Cathy
still looked unhappy when I came in. Dan put a slice of pizza on each of the three plates. Cathy poured the soda. I sat between them like a pet.

  “We can play Monopoly,” said Dan. “I’ll just give you two equal shares of my wealth when I have to leave.” He reached in the box and took out the miniature iron, switching it for the ship, which he tossed into the box. “Dad, Mom, and Pup,” he said.

  He hadn’t noticed that his wife had made a new choice, chosen a marker that was the symbol of freedom and adventure and left behind the little housewife iron. I watched her, waiting to see whether she’d stand up for herself.

  “No, it’s all right.” Cathy looked weary. “Let’s play Scrabble. That’s faster.”

  She stood and scooped up the Monopoly game, sliding the board and pieces back into the box.

  “That sounds good,” said Dan.

  Cathy brought another box and opened it. I understood this game better. I’d seen Mr. and Mrs. Brown play it with friends several times.

  “Cathleen?” Dan intended to sound tender but failed.

  She finally looked her husband in the eyes and gave him a smile I knew was a lie.

  “That’s my girl,” he grinned, standing to give her a kiss on the cheek.

  I almost made the mistake of tasting the pizza on my plate while Cathy arranged all the Scrabble pieces to lie upside down, but then Dan said, “Why don’t you ask grace tonight, Puppy?”

  They bowed their heads, eyes closed, Cathy with her hands clasped under her chin. I folded my hands and tried to remember a prayer. They hadn’t said grace at the Brown’s. It had been a long time. I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate. Then a bone-white tablecloth with blue violets painted on the corners came into my mind, and a grisly fear shook me. For a moment I could hear shutters rattling and branches drumming against the wall outside. I was standing now looking down at an empty table covered with this painted cloth. The table trembled, the flowered edges of the cloth flapped as if coming alive. I looked around the dim room—the fireplace with the hanging pot, the sink and pump, the straw broom standing in the dark corner. Although the windows were shut, the panes of glass creaked in their frames, and a phantom draft rippled the white cloth across the table. I held something heavy on my left hip.