It wasn’t easy for Dr. Pearson to sit down and figure out what to say to Rolph. The initial spadework was easy enough. It involved some data gathering, some attention to current events, some research into trends in history, and some reflection on the mystery and nature of evil. He saw it as his duty to present as balanced a picture as he could to Rolph and to let him take it from there.
But elements from his immediate past kept distracting and confusing him. Many of them inhabited the very house he was living in! They lurked in the Christmas tree and in the ornaments Kay had carefully chosen for it. They were hiding in the loveseat where Kay had revealed her secret. They were sprinkled all over the kitchen floor where she had dropped the two dishes. They mocked him from the kitchen table where they had shared devotions and prayer. They even nestled up to him at night in their bed of love.
By New Year’s Eve, Steve was no closer to putting pen to paper than he had been at Christmas. He was starting to wonder if he had it in him to do it at all. Then it crossed his mind that someone in the early 1950s had given him a news magazine that had impressed him with its keen analysis of the trends of the time. He’d saved it with similar material somewhere in the attic. One more piece of data to consider before he’d have to get down to business! So he climbed the steep narrow staircase and crawled through the trapdoor into the attic. He rummaged through stacks of old material—journals, magazines, even newspapers. It was cold in the attic, so he went back downstairs to fetch a sweater. This whole exercise was starting to feel futile to him. It left him as cold in his heart as he was in his body. On his knees on the dusty floor, his fingers numb and stiff, he sorted through the last remaining stack of magazines in search of the article he was looking for.
He was about to turn and leave when he spied a tattered old briefcase in the corner, encased in cobwebs. He stared at it for a few moments. A faint smile of recognition played with his cheeks. This old friend had gone through college with him and accompanied him to Germany and to the institute in Boston. It had sat in his truck all through World War II and all during his time in Pittsburg. And now it had lain in the attic for some eleven years gathering dust. Fondly he reached for the handle and pulled the ragged object toward him across the rough timbers of the floor. His numb fingers fumbled to release the catch and open the flap. Dipping into the body of the case, he slowly retrieved one picture frame containing a yellowed page of manuscript music. The ink was fading on the paper and the frame was cracked and split. Steve set it down gently and drew out the next and the next until all of them were arrayed before him in a row. Then he reached into the side pocket and withdrew another frame. And there, suddenly, was his Cecilia, beaming at him across the years and through the veil between earth and Heaven. Trembling, he set it down carefully on top of the music frames at his knees.
Now he had his wallet in his hands and was fumbling with the picture section. He removed one of them, his favorite photo of Kay taken two years after they were married, and set it down next to the portrait photo of Cecilia.
The low sun was sending two dust-laden shafts of light gliding almost horizontally through the dim attic from the small west windows. They were intercepted by the form of a shivering old man hunched over some objects on the floor, sobbing his heart out.
That evening, pages from a small lined tablet flew in all directions. The scrawl on them is at times almost illegible, and their order is not always clear. I found them stuffed into the top drawer of an already stuffed desk. Rolph may have been the motive behind this outpouring, but he tells me that he never saw those pages until I showed them to him after Dr. Pearson’s death.
This is what was on them, as best I could reconstruct it: