A Certain Slant of Light (6 page)

  
I wished I had a picture of James in his true body.

  
"And what do you remember from before you were Light?"
he asked me. "Tell all."

  
"Nothing." Then I realized that wasn't true. "Only my age,
my name, and that I was female." He waited for more. "The rest
is only images. And feelings. I won't go inside closets," I said.

  
The way he was gazing at me made me curious. "What do I
look like to you?" I heard myself asking. Immediately I was em
barrassed, but James wasn't.

  
"You look beautiful," he said. "You have dark eyes and light hair." He stopped but continued to stare.

  
"How old do I look?"

  
"A woman, not a girl." He shrugged. "I can't tell."

  
"I was twenty-seven," I said. "What am I wearing?" I added,
"I can't see myself in a reflection."

  
"I know," he said softly. I had almost forgotten that he had
been Light as well. "You're wearing a gown with a striped ribbon here." James drew the neckline of the dress on his own chest.

  
"What color?" I wanted to know.

  
He smiled. "It's difficult to explain. You're not like a painting.
You're like water. Sometimes you're full of color, sometimes
you're gray, sometimes almost clear."

  
"And when I'm full of color," I said. "What then?"

  
"Then your eyes are brown," he said. "Your hair is golden and your dress is blue."

  
One slow, hard pulse of cold clay beat through my heart. I
leaned closer to James, banishing the fear.

  
"What did you wear before you were inside Mr. Blake?" I
wanted to know.

  
He laughed. "I don't know. I couldn't see my reflection."

  
I laughed too; the feeling, so unfamiliar, made me giddy. Were
we actually joking about our deaths?

  
"Is the dress blue now?" I asked. "Or am I clear as water?"

  
"Now?" He stared a moment more, still holding the phone to
one ear. "You're silvery, like the Lady of the Lake."

  
I had so many more questions for him, but I couldn't stay.

  
"Tell me about haunting the school," he said.

  
"I need to leave now."

  
"Wait." He reached out to take my hand but couldn't. I was
startled by the flash of warmth. He took a moment before
speaking.

  
"Miss Helen, you have a way about you. When I watched you
with Mr. Brown, the way you read over his shoulder, how you lis
tened to him recite poetry. I don't have the words," he told me.

  
"It was as if you were the only one in the world who could under
stand me. And now you're looking at me and speaking to me." He
spoke very confidentially into the phone. "It's like a miracle."

  
Perhaps it was because Mr. Brown was preparing to drive off,
perhaps it was because James seemed to be speaking from my
own heart, or perhaps it was simply that I had gone for 130 years without being heard or seen, but all at once I felt faint. I dropped
my gaze.

  
"Did I say something wrong?"

  
"No." But I was fluttering madly like a winged thing about to
fly apart. Then a pang of ice told me Mr. Brown was moving too
far away.

  
"Please be there tomorrow," said James.

  
When you are Light, you may move through solid objects
with no more effort than it would take to add sums in your head.
But at that moment, if James hadn't opened the glass door, I'm
not sure that I would've had the strength to pass through it.

Three

I SAT ON Mr. Brown's ROOF through the tortured slowness of the
night, thinking of questions to ask James. I watched the stars arc
across the sky, slow as grass growing, and was at Mr. Brown's bed
side when the dawn broke. I wasn't put out by Mrs. Brown any
longer, not since I had someone of my own. Just as Mr. Brown
started to rise, however, she slid her hand up his bare back. As he fell under the covers again, I gave a cry of frustration, the sound
less fury of which disturbed only a sparrow on the windowsill. I blustered outside to wait in the back seat of the car.

  
I thought better of it when Mr. Brown appeared at last, rush
ing to button his shirt and run a hand through his hair. He had
spent almost his whole writing hour in bed, but I couldn't be unhappy with him. As he turned back toward me to pull the car out
of the driveway, he looked just a little like James—an angle of
his jaw or the curve of his lashes. My heart unwound. He was, af
ter all, my Mr. Brown, and he loved his wife, and at last, I had
someone to talk to after so many years of wanting to talk with
him and not being allowed. I remembered then how I used to
whisper to my previous host, my Poet, while he was dreaming.

  
That morning as Mr. Brown opened the box and took out the
pages of his unfinished novel, I rested my hand on the back of his
chair and leaned in toward the shell of his ear.

  
"I know you can't hear me," I said to him. "I wish that you
could." I moved my fingers to his shoulder. I rarely attempted to
be in the same space as the Quick. It was always an odd feeling,
like falling. This time it felt like sliding down a waterfall. At that
moment, he set the papers on his table and looked out at the
empty desks. He let the arm I was touching drop, his hand in
his lap.

  
"My friend," I said. "I want to tell you something." I felt fool
ish, and at the same time confiding in him made my heart pulse
like the fanning of doves' wings. "I've found someone," I told
him. "He can see me and hear me."

  
Mr. Brown turned to the door as if he had forgotten some
thing and was considering going back to his car.

  
"I wish you could be happy for me," I whispered in his ear.
"You're my only friend." Then I realized I had another friend
now. What a queer idea.

  
Mr. Brown looked out the windows on the left, then the door
on the right, as if he might see a familiar face looking in.

  
"I just wanted to tell you," I said. Then I withdrew my hand
and the first bell rang, startling him. He put the papers of his
novel away without writing a word.

  
That day as I waited for James, I felt not in the least afraid. As
he walked in and slyly scanned the room, he found me sitting at
his own desk. He tried not to laugh and I pretended not to notice
him. He walked calmly up to me, rubbed his chin for a moment
in mock contemplation, then continued past me toward the back
of the room where he sat in the very last seat. I stayed where I
was until every student was settled, even the young woman next
to me. Finally I drifted back toward him. At the sound of Mr. Brown's voice, I stopped, standing in the aisle right in front of
James.

  
"Mr. Blake?" called Mr. Brown.

  
James had been smiling up at me. Now he looked through me,
or tried to. I ruffled with pleasure at the idea that I could block
his view. He ended up leaning far to the left in order to see
around me. "Sir?"

  
"Anything wrong?" asked Mr. Brown. There were several
empty desks between us and the next occupied seat.

  
"Claustrophobia," said James.

  
Mr. Brown shook his head and commenced with the lesson. I moved to the desk to James's right and sat. He looked toward the
front of the room, as if listening to the difference between an ad
jective and an adverb, then reached over, took hold of my desktop,
and dragged the whole chair a foot closer to him. The deafening
scrape made Mr. Brown stop lecturing, and several heads turn
back toward us. James sat with his hands folded on his book and what appeared to them an empty desk beside him. As Mr. Brown
continued with the lesson, James slipped the same paper he'd
been writing on the day before out of his book and turned it over.
He took a runt of a pencil stub from his pocket and wrote: "How
long have you been Light?"

 
 
"One hundred and thirty years," I told him, speaking quietly,
though there was no need.

  
"Were you born here or did you die here?" he said softly but
not softly enough. The girl who used to sit beside him turned and
glared back at him.

  
"Write," I whispered.

  
"Which?" he wrote and tilted the page toward me, though it
was not necessary. I was leaning as close to him as a cat at a
mouse hole, ready to pounce on every word.

  
"Neither," I whispered.

  
He said aloud, "Then why—"

  
"Mr. Blake?" interrupted Mr. Brown. This time both the girl and the boy in front of us turned back to frown at him.

  
James jumped. "Sir!"

  
"Something you'd like to share with the rest of us?"

  
"Not for the world," he said.

  
I took my right hand and touched the fingers of James's right hand, the one that held the pencil. He made the smallest sound, a
faint intake of breath, and looked down at this. I folded my fin
gers into his. For some reason, perhaps because James was inside
this boy, my hand didn't pass through. In a fragile way, I could
hold his fingers. I wished I could grip the pencil, as well. I could
feel that falling sensation I felt whenever I touched the Quick,
but this time there was something different to the touch. I could feel his
knowing
that my hand was there. I could feel him seeing
my fingers. I could feel him thinking,
My God, I can feel her.