A Certain Slant of Light (48 page)

  
I watched this from above her. I was like a kite caught in a
tree at the corner of the ceiling. Then Jenny jumped at the sound
of the doorbell. It rang over and over until the sound of Cathy's
voice was heard, strained and rising. Now there was knocking at the bathroom door. "Jenny?" Cathy tried the handle, but the door
was locked. "Are you feeling sick?" Jenny turned off the tap and
listened, eyes wide with fear.

  
Then a boy's voice. "Jenny?" It said. "Can I talk to you?"

  
Then Cathy, "Honey, there's someone to see you."

  
Jenny didn't answer. She seemed paralyzed. It was as if she
didn't know where she was, who she was, who were her enemies.
The two voices argued in whispers.

  
"I'm serious." Cathy called through the door. She put on her
calm but stern voice. "This is your mother speaking. You let me
in this minute." The knocking grew to a loud thumping. The
hinges rattled.

  
"Are you hurt?" The boy's voice again.

  
"No." Jenny's voice was so soft no one had heard.

  
"Open this door!" Cathy was getting shrill. "I'm going to call
the police."

  
The door handle shook until the pills on the floor started vibrating. Then the sound of Cathy's voice as it moved down the
hall. "I'm calling 911."

  
"I'm all right," Jenny called.

  
The door burst open with a crack of wood, and Billy Blake was
standing on the tile floor, a sleeping pill crunched under his shoe.

  
Jenny hid her nakedness, holding her knees in front of her,
shivering and staring at him in amazement.

  
"Are you okay?" he asked.

  
"I don't know," she said with a trembling jaw.

Billy took a towel and draped it over her shoulders as he
kneeled down by the tub.

  
"I'm sorry I said I didn't remember you when you came to see
me today," he said.

  
"I came to see you?" She stared at his face as if she were try
ing to recall a dream she'd had.

  
"After you left, I found this in my room." He took something
from his back pocket and showed it to her. "This is us," he said.

  
With wet hands, she held the sides of the little black-and-
white photograph, blurry and overexposed, two laughing faces
close together, naked shoulders.

  
"I've been having some trouble remembering things," he
told her.

  
She looked at Billy, still stunned. "Me too."

  
"You look happy with me," he said, as if this were unbeliev
able.

  
Jenny stared at the faces in the photograph with tears in her
eyes, then took a breath. "Yeah, I do."

  
He sat down and, as she studied the picture, he gently rubbed
the towel on her wet hair. She looked back at his face and asked,
though it seemed to embarrass her, "Is your name Billy?"

  
He laughed. "Yeah."

  
All this I observed from the corner of the ceiling above the
but now I was passing out of the room, right through the roof,
felt my heart fold out like a blossom not only because Jenny
saved herself and Billy had found her but also because I was be
ing drawn to heaven at last. I was sure I could see some light
ahead and then James smiling at me as if through a hole in the
sky no bigger than a cat.

  
But to my sharp sorrow, the hole was a hole in a cellar door
and there was icy cold all around me and only darkness except
that one patch where the storm jittered in lightning flashes
above. I didn't struggle anymore.

  
"Helen?" His voice was right by my ear, and I felt James close
his arms around me from behind. What a painful mix of desire
and loss overwhelmed me. He was all that I wanted, but I knew I
was only dreaming him. There was dark water all the way up to
my chin. His arms weren't solid and his voice was inside my
head. He pressed into me like heat. I wanted to weep, but I had
plummeted past tears.

  
"You're not really here," I told him.

  
"I am," he said. He was melting into me.

  
A new chapter of my hell was beginning—my worst moment
jailed around me for eternity and God dangling my unclaimable
joy just outside the bars.

  
"Come with me," he said.

  
Mourning for the pleasure of our joined bodies, I wanted to
weep, but I was dry as a skull. "I can't."

  
"You can break open these walls," he said. "You built them."

  
"Only God can tear down these walls," I told him.

  
He laughed, deep inside me, and whispered, "Stubborn."

  
"Mama?" I looked up into the hole in the cellar door and saw baby girl's face staring in at me, frightened. A flicker of hope
lit my heart. Maybe I could alter the nightmare.

  
"Hang on to the branches as you go," I called to her. She
frowned at me, then the
   
pale valentine of her face moved out of sight. I saw her tiny hand grasp the branch just outside the
jning.

  
"Run!" You, my girl, can survive me, I thought. My beloved
fidant. My savior from dark dreams—who rescued me with
your sudden crying in the night, bringing me out of your father's
cold bed and into your arms. You, my only child. You, my only friend. Don't wait. Run.
Live.

  
To my horror, her small voice came again from just outside.

  
"Mama?"

  
Why didn't she go? I wanted to call to her, but water filled my mouth. I grabbed the edges of the torn wood and tried to rip them
open. Small pieces of black kindling crumbled in my hands. If I
could be certain she had survived, I thought, I could be at peace no
matter how loud the storm raged, no matter how cold my body.
Again I heard her voice in the darkness, above the face of the wa
ter.

  
"Mama, I've been waiting for you."

  
I dragged my head up closer to the hole and said, "No, baby.
Don't wait for me."

  
Then I saw her. My baby girl's eyes were in the smooth, round
face of a woman whose hair was streaked with gray. She peered
down out of the light at me. When she smiled, I saw her dimples.

  
"No, Mama," she laughed, offering me her wrinkled hand.
"I've been waiting for you."

  
I took hold of her and climbed half out of the cellar and into
her arms. Not caring that I dripped mud, she stood on the wet
steps and kissed the places where she had clung to me for life, my
temple, my brow, my hair, and all I could think was,
She lived.
My baby lived.
She cupped my face in the palms of her hands
and patted my cheeks as she had when she was two.

  
Through those palms I felt the whole light-footed dance of her
spirit. She had never been haunted by my death, never blamed
either of us. In the clarity of her eyes I could see her long life—
her husband's wink as he pressed a fiddle under his red beard, her
two freckled sons racing through the kitchen, her granddaughter
pulling at her apron, grinning up with four tiny square teeth. Joy,
like a warm wind, blew at my hair and skirts, rippling the water
at my knees.

  
"Where have you been?" My daughter shook her head, but
she was laughing. "Couldn't you hear me calling you?"

  
If at my last breath, when I'd swallowed down death, I had
opened my eyes in the water, I would've seen that I had saved her
by breaking a hole through the cellar door. Instead I'd closed my
eyes and imagined hell. For year upon year I had hidden behind
my hosts and stopped my ears. How long had she been calling
me? Half a century? I was so sorry to have kept her waiting, I be
gan to weep, but she lifted my chin, refusing to allow another
moment of regret. She kissed me lightly on the lips and stepped
out of the water.

  
A stone had been lifted from my chest, a fist of frozen tears.
Light had never been this weightless.

  
And there was James.

  
I climbed the last step, reaching for him. He wore his uniform
and put his arms around my wet body, lifting me like a bride over
the threshold. It wasn't a dream. The breeze smelled of jasmine,
the light dappled through moving leaves, mockingbirds called and
answered each other. It was blazing with detail. And I was no
shadow. I was just as real as the garden that folded out around me.

  
James set me on my feet but held me with one arm as if he
couldn't bear to let me go. There was my oak tree, whole again
and standing tall. And there was a cluster of smiling soldiers,
drinking wine from the bottle and watching us with amusement.

  
At a table in the shade, four familiar gentlefolk sat having tea, turning to me from their conversation, as if I were the guest of
honor—my Saint, my Knight, my Playwright, and my Poet.

  
This green place in which I stood with James turned slowly
around us like a music box. All my memories returning, and all
his. I could see and feel each of his days and he mine. Childhood
songs, books read, hearts broken, arguments forgiven. The sweet
ness of these imperfections far outshining the regrets. Our lives
overlapped as naturally as two blades of grass brushing together.