A Certain Slant of Light Read Free Page A

about a phrase here that described a river and a word there that described a dying man's eyes. I would fantasize, as he slept, long conversations we would have if he could see and hear me—the two of us sipping tea or walking in the country, laughing together over brilliant ideas. But that would never hap pen, of course. And so it went, my favorite hour of each day spent with him and his book, until the writing stopped the day he met his bride.
       They saw each other across a lecture hall and met in the door way as they left. There was an uncomfortable familiarity about it all. The way she smiled at him, the way he was thrilled when she laughed at his joke, the little excuses each had for touching the other. Her hand on his arm as she asked a question, his knee touching hers as they drank coffee at a tiny table in a pub so noisy they left to take a walk. None of my hosts had lived with a lover. And I'm ashamed to say I felt jealous when this girl moved into his life. At first I pretended I disapproved because he'd stopped working on his novel, but I knew that wasn't the only reason. An instability clutched me, and I found myself afraid of shadows and loud noises. I wanted to stop him, but although she had inad vertently halted his writing, she was undoubtedly making him happy. I wanted to warn her that a man might seem ideal and then turn cold and distant with no cause, but after all, it was Mr. Brown she was falling in love with. It would be a lie to argue that he wasn't worth the risk.
       And so because I loved him, I let her be, and because I feared pain, I learned to follow at a distance when they were together. I felt lonelier than I had ever been with any host, but I tried to love her as if she were my daughter. She had no quality I could easily complain about. It would be a sin to whisper discouragement in his ear. And so they were wed when he was twenty-three and she twenty-one. I taught myself to ignore the pangs I felt when he would tickle her while driving in the car or when she would rest her feet in his lap during breakfast. The intimacy hurt because it wasn't for me. I was Mr. Brown's and he was mine, but not the way she was his. Not the way he was hers.
       I taught myself the new rules to survive. Move out of the room when they kiss, enter the bedroom only when it is silent, cherish my time with Mr. Brown when he is at work. I obeyed these rules, and one day I was rewarded. Mr. Brown brought out his old tattered box, put it in his briefcase, and drove us to work an hour early. For more than a year now, Mr. Brown had been spending an hour each day, before his first students arrived, work ing on his novel with me beside him. Feeling inspired by this gift, I had tried to warm myself to his bride by whispering recipes in her ear while she was baking cookies or a cake. I thought I was being as gracious as her own mother might be, until a package arrived from her grandfather, an album of photographs of Mrs. Brown as a baby. The cub-ear curls of her hair and the dimpled backs of her tender hands bit at me like sleet. I couldn't look at them, coward that I was. I wasn't her mother. I had chosen Mr. Brown. And he had chosen her.
     
     
    Now I was afraid that the rules of my world were changing again. I had been seen by a human. Sitting on the sloped roof of Mr. Brown's small house while he and his wife slept and dreamed below, I studied a crescent moon hung crooked in a plum purple sky and thought about what it would be like to truly be seen. I imagined standing before the young man who seemed to see me and letting him look as long as he wished. How was he doing this? Had he somehow chosen me? I had two strong and seem ingly contradictory sensations. One was a fear of being seen by a mortal—as if beheld naked when you know you are clothed. The other was an almost indescribable sensation of attraction—the vine curling toward the sun's light in slow but single-minded longing. I wanted to see him again, to