A Certain Slant of Light (32 page)

  
Cathy fiddled with her letters.

  
"I'll try," he said, turning his back on us. "I know. I feel that
way too. Don't worry." The hush in his voice made Cathy stop
and listen. "Everything will work out. See you soon." He hung up
and came back to the table without glancing at Cathy, who was watching him.

  
"You didn't draw," Cathy reminded him.

  
He took three letters. There was an unnatural stillness in the
room as if the air had been shut off.

  
The game went on in near silence until Dan used his last letters to make the word
run.
There were no more tiles to choose.

  
"Daddy won," said Cathy, circling the score under his name.

 
 
Dan shrugged. "Game of luck." He picked up the pizza box
and the bottle of soda. "I'd better be going." Before leaving the
room, he bent to where Cathy still sat picking up the game pieces
and kissed her cheek. "Count your blessings," he said, quietly. She
looked like she was feeling the lack of air, too.

  
"I know," she whispered. He breezed out of the room as if he had all the air in the heavens. I helped Cathy put away the game
and clear up the plates and cups.

  
"How about a work night?" she asked. "We could sit together
like when you were little, and I could do the bills while you do
homework." She paused. "I forgot, you already did your home
work."

  
I would much rather have hidden in my room or sneaked off
to telephone Billy's house, but thoughts of James inspired me to
benevolence.

  
"I have reading to do."

  
I will make a promise to God, I decided. I will try to be as
kind to Cathy as James was to Mitch. This was my vow—to be a
friend to Jenny's mother.

  
I brought a book, and Cathy brought a box covered in brown-
and-cream colored paper bearing the label BILLS. She read figures
from statements and invoices and checked them for accuracy.
With birdlike care, she nested the little slips into piles, pecking at
a tiny adding machine with her pen, scratching notes in the little margins. This was good, I thought. We were passing an evening
in pleasant company, as I might have done with my Saint.

  
I sat across from her and, although it was almost impossible
not to think about James, I read silently from
Jane Eyre,
skipping
forward to her arrival at Thornfield. It was a completely liberat
ing experience to be able to turn pages at will. It had been very
frustrating, while Light, to be unable to read farther than my
host would feel inclined to. How many times Mr. Brown had
closed a book just when I wanted to start the next chapter. Now I
was stopped only by Cathy's sound of dismay.

  
"What in the world?" She stared at a slip of paper, then went
to the phone and dialed. After a pause she said, "It's me. Where
are you?" She hung up and returned to the table, even more
vexed. Since she didn't look up at me, I went back to Jane and Mr.
Rochester. A minute later, the phone rang.

  
"Hello?" She listened. "Where are you?" And then, "Why
didn't you pick up?" She twisted the cord. "I'm confused," she
said. "We have two gas receipts for Saturday. One for yours and one for mine." She listened. "But you said you ran out of gas on
Sunday." She listened and I was watching her, realizing that she
was talking about the day I had gone into Jenny's body.

  
"How could the receipt be wrong? It comes out of a com
puter." She paused, crumpling the slip in her fist. "I'm saying I
don't understand. No, I didn't say that." She paused. "I'm not say
ing that." As she listened, her head came down lower and lower
on her chest until she was staring down at her fist. "All right," she
said finally. "I know." She hung up without saying goodbye and
returned to the table, scooting in her chair and smoothing the
wrinkles out of the gas receipt.

  
"What are you reading?" she asked, her face both flushed
and pale.

  
"Jane Eyre"
I said.

  
She put the receipts away with a trembling hand. As she stood
with the box under one arm, she said, "Back in a tick."

  
I had to keep myself from going to the phone when she left
the room. The idea that I could be hearing James's voice in a mat
ter of seconds hurt me, but a moment later, Cathy was back with
a sewing basket and a shirt over one arm. She moved from the
seat she had chosen across from me to the seat beside me where
the light was better. The shirt she unfolded must've been Dan's. It was white with long sleeves. There was a button missing, the
fourth one down.

  
First, Cathy took out a small box and opened it. There was a
treasure trove of buttons inside, every size, color, and shape. She
fished out a few small white ones, holding them up to the other
buttons on the shirt until she found a close enough match. Next
she took a pin and deftly extracted the little bits of thread left
over from the button that was gone. Here was one thing that had changed little since my death. Needle and thread. I felt suddenly
homesick. My male hosts had not mended their own clothes very
often, but Cathy's slim wrist as she drew back a stitch reminded
me of my Saint.

  
I watched her from the corner of my eye, though my face was
still bent to my book. Now she stopped and stared at the shirt. She
pulled on the fabric surrounding the place where she was sewing on the new button. Was the shirt stretched there just a little, as if
it had been torn off him in haste, or was that my imagination?
She felt the buttons below and above, to see how loose they were.
They were a little loose. Then she did what I had just been think
ing I would do myself. She smelled it and, I know it couldn't have
been real, but I thought a faint scent of gardenias lifted from the
fabric. She wasn't sniffing to see whether the shirt was clean. I
believe that she would have started under the sleeves if this were
the case. No, she breathed in the collar of the shirt, blinked at it
for a moment, then gave it a hard shake as if dismissing the
thought. She retrieved the dangling needle and continued to sew
the new button in place.

  
"What's happening in your story?" she asked after a few
stitches.

  
"Jane is starting to fall in love with the master of the house."

  
She nodded as if having read a dozen Harlequin novels in her
youth meant she had heard it all.

  
"Shall I read out loud?" I offered.

  
Cathy smiled. "My grandmother used to have me read out
loud while she was quilting."

  
I took this as a yes and began to read. '"Were you happy when
you painted these pictures?' asked Mister Rochester presently. 'I was absorbed, sir, yes, and I was happy. To paint them, in short,
was to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known.'
'This is not saying much,'" I read. '"Your pleasures, by your own
account, have been few.'" I glanced at Cathy to see if she was in
terested, but I couldn't tell. Her placid expression was fixed on
her mending. "'But I daresay,'" I continued, '"You did exist in a
kind of artist's dreamland while you blent and arranged these
strange tints. Did you sit at them long each day?'"

  
Cathy sighed, and I believe I could have slipped into a Byron
poem or a Shakespearean soliloquy and she wouldn't have noticed.

  
"'I had nothing else to do, because it was the vacation,'" I
read. And to test my theory, I let a few pages turn by themselves,
and I jumped in without worrying whether it would fit together.
"I have the right to get pleasure out of life, and I will get it, cost
what it may.' 'Then you will degenerate still more, sir.' 'Possibly yet why should I, if I can get sweet fresh pleasure? And I may
it as sweet and fresh as the wild honey the bee gathers on the
moor.'" Now Cathy stopped in midstitch, listening without turn
ing to me. '"It will sting, it will taste bitter, sir.' 'How do you
know? You never tried it.'"

  
At this, Cathy looked at me, so I ceased my reading and looked
back at her, peering out from under my bowed head.

  
I tried a few more words. '"How very serious, how very
solemn you look,'" I read. '"And you are as ignorant of the matter
as this cameo head—'"

  
"I think that's enough reading for tonight," Cathy smiled politely. "I have a little headache." Primly she snipped her thread,
packed her mending, and stood. "I'll come tuck you in later."

  
I watched her walk out, I listened to the soft hiss of her shifting clothes as she moved down the hall, I waited for the click of
her bedroom door as it closed, and then I shut my book and crept
like a thief to the phone beside the couch. I was so relieved when
James answered himself.

  
"Are you alone?" I asked.

  
"Not quite," he said. There was a clack and rustle as he
moved the phone into another spot. "Now I am," he told me.
"Have any adventures?"

  
I was about to tell him of the hidden pictures, but I froze at
the sound of Cathy's shower switching on.

  
"I'm in trouble again," he laughed. "Mitch gave me a talking-
to."

  
"Did he hurt you?"

  
"No, he just told me that I might have walked in on him with
Libby, but
Vm
not allowed to have sex in his house until I'm
eighteen."

  
My heart started drumming in double time. "Why?"