I’d promised to visit both of the Skelleys, but I knew I must speak to the Reverend alone. I waited behind a hedge until I saw Thomas leave with a satchel bulging with his sketch pads and specimen jars; he would be rambling in the woods for hours. Then I knocked.
“Catherine,” Reverend Skelley said gently. “Come in. Thomas just went out for the afternoon, he’ll be sorry to have missed you.”
His tone was so soft that I thought he meant to welcome me back as if nothing had happened, to elide all confrontation and accusation. I was grateful for this kindness, of course, but also impatient with it. I was done with fog, with hints and implications. Everything must be made clear—or as clear as possible.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been to see you in so long,” I said. “I found myself afflicted with a disease of the mind, and it made me very selfish and ungrateful. You deserved better from me.”
Reverend Skelley caught my brusque tone, and the impact tipped back his head. Then he nodded, reevaluating. “I thought you were angry with me.”
“I was,” I said. “I still am. But not so angry that I would disappear without a word for a whole year.”
“Will you come in and have tea with me? It seems we have much to discuss.”
I followed him into the parlor, which was so populated by papers and dropped books and lizard skeletons posed under bell jars that it had more the look of a ramshackle study. There was the same wooden armchair where I’d puzzled through my first lines from Medea, the same threadbare Turkish rug where Thomas and I had sprawled together on our backs, debating spontaneous generation. The whole scene touched me like longing materialized.
I hesitated and then took my old chair, and the Reverend smiled under his moustache. There was tea already made, and he slipped to the kitchen to secure a second cup, then poured it for me. It was over-steeped and quite bitter. He sat in his own upholstered Sheraton chair and looked at me, and there was so much waiting to be said that I choked on it.
“This disease of the mind you mentioned,” he said at last, carefully. “Catherine, I hope you know that you can tell me anything in confidence, and be sure that I will never think any less of you?”
“I could tell you almost anything,” I said. “But not that.” I thought of saying that I was recovering, that he need not be concerned—but that was true only if disease was taken to refer to my depression. And that was by far the smaller part of it. “I can’t tell you what I now know about myself without implicating others.”
From the spark in his eyes, I knew he guessed I meant Gus. More than that: he blamed Gus for whatever afflicted me. I caught a flash of highly uncharacteristic anger, half hidden by his softness.
“I would never ask you to betray anyone’s secrets, of course.”
“But I can tell you this much,” I pursued, doggedly treading down my own unwillingness to cause him grief. “I foresee a life of solitary self-discipline, of quiet; it will be necessary, if I’m to control my sickness. I can never marry. I beg you not to believe any speculations you might hear to the contrary—not to entertain any yourself. Please.”
A pause. “And this is why you’ve been angry with me. Because you realized my hopes for you and my son.”
“Because you weren’t frank with me. I’m used to Margo Farrow attempting to design my life without consulting me, but I never expected that from you.” I’d thought I was over the hurt of his calculation—that it had been drowned by a tide of deeper pains. But saying it aloud made my voice catch.
But Reverend Skelley was shaking his head. “Catherine, Catherine, I confess I hoped you would come to love Thomas. But you misunderstand—”
“What?” I said. “That you thought he was hopelessly unsuited to winning a wife, so you tried to secure one for him, and all under the guise of education?”
Was it my love for Reverend Skelley that made me so sharp with him? If I slashed at him this way, was I trying to cut away all obscurities, and see if I could still love what was left?
To see if he could? I think that must be the truth of it. I was challenging him to love me in my most spare and brutal form. I wanted to see if I could be true to myself, with all the awfulness I knew myself contained, and yet somehow remain worthy of love—love as pure and rare as his.
“No,” he protested. His head was shaking steadily from side to side, his tan-and-gray hair feathering with the motion. “No. Secure is—not at all the right word. May I explain?”
I felt a sudden reluctance to hear him out, but made myself nod.
“I know no one, man or woman, with a greater independence of mind than yours. You may recall that I was present when the Farrow ladies tried to secure you, and I saw how foolish was the attempt. I thought instead of creating the right conditions for—a difficult communication, a fragile transference. I knew it was unlikely even so, and I accepted every possible outcome with an equal fullness of heart.”
One phrase stood out in this speech. “The right conditions? And what were those?”
“I have infinite faith in Thomas’s worth. But I also know that his worth is not the sort that communicates easily, or directly, to others. His spirit is one that must be conveyed through a medium, as it were: the medium of small things, carefully observed; the medium of infinitesimal beauties, made immense by amazement.” Reverend Skelley looked at me, searching and serious. “Thomas speaks through his love of the world, and he speaks only to those who share it.”
I stood up abruptly, and just as abruptly sat back down. He followed the movement without comment.
“In bringing the two of you together through study, I hoped to allow the opportunity for you to see in him what I do. I imagined nothing more than that, I promise. If you don’t love him, or if you love him with a sisterly love, I accept that absolutely. I accept even his heartache as a gift.”
“I never said that.” The words were out before I could catch myself.
Reverend Skelley tried, and failed, to suppress a flash of joy. When he spoke again it was with exaggerated mildness.
“If it’s a question of your desire to go to college, I’m certain Thomas would wait as long as necessary.” This was a novel idea, and in another mood I might have exclaimed in amazement—was it possible that he did not expect me to choose between Thomas and myself, and never had? Of course, since I’d abandoned my studies, my chance of attending college was desperately slim.
I shook my head. “It isn’t that. It’s that Thomas must not be allowed to love me.”
“Because of this disease of the mind you’ve identified in yourself.” He managed to deliver the phrase disease of the mind in a way that made it virtually equivalent to the name Gus Farrow. In his peaceful, subtle way, Reverend Skelley was expressing murderous hostility.
“Yes,” I said.
“And would you like to resume your studies with me, once Thomas is back at Madison in September?”
“Very much,” I said. “As long as we understand each other now, and you can forgive me.” Even for what you don’t know stayed unspoken. “It’s very kind of you to offer.”
“You are as welcome in my heart and home as any daughter could ever be,” he said, and stood. “Whatever your difficulties, remember that.”
When I left his house, I stood for some time on the step and simply felt the wind—felt it minutely, every plosive kiss and whorled grain. In that moment I thought I’d received the secret of perfect happiness. As I walked away I was not myself but the world, buoyant with beauty and complexity.
But not for long. I heard huffing breath and running steps and turned to find Gus red-faced on my heels—and how had he known where I was? It occurred to me that he might be using his magic to spy on me. Rage shoved between me and the fullness of my senses, slapped back my joy.
“What were you doing in there?” Gus shouted, not caring who heard us. The street was not crowded but there were a few people strolling here and there, a man painting a fence—and it would take only one to report this meeting to his ghastly mother. “I thought you’d given up all that, I thought you understood! Catherine, you know what you are.”
I was too angry to answer and walked on without so much as acknowledging him. He gave an outraged cry and scurried after me.
It was only when we were in a quiet lane that I spoke, my voice low and furious. “Did you even consider the risk to my father’s job, Gus? And yelling you know what you are in the middle of the street—did you think, for one instant, of how that might be construed?”
He flushed an even deeper crimson. “Why should we care what anyone here thinks? We’re so far beyond them already—and as soon as you see through your confusion, we’ll be farther than they could ever reach, or even imagine. I thought you were almost ready, and now I catch you regressing!”
If everything must be made clear, it must be made clear to Gus most of all.
“I will never go to Nautilus, Gus. It’s your choice, not mine. Go without me.”
“But—” Gus was breathless, flummoxed. “It isn’t a matter of choosing!”
“Magic may be in me, but that doesn’t mean I have to submit to it. I can choose to foreswear it. I can choose to stifle it to the best of my ability, and I can deny it any scope to act.”
“But why would anyone—why would you—”
“Because,” I snapped, “the world is more marvelous without it.”
Gus reeled to a stop, his hand tight on my wrist. We’d always maintained a careful reserve with each other when it came to physical contact, and I was too stunned by this breach to react at first.
“Our future is in Nautilus,” Gus said, and all at once his voice was flat with menace. “There is no other. What we are is integral to our natures, and you can only ignore that for so long.”
“You may be a sorcerer,” I said. “I won’t try again to dissuade you from your pursuit of magic. But I want something different, and I am something different.”
“Not just that,” Gus said. “Not just that. I don’t remotely approve of Margo’s Spiritualism, but she’s right about one thing. You are my spiritual affinity, and there is no wanting, and no choosing, in the face of what is.”
I tried to yank my wrist away, but Gus only squeezed harder.
“I want you, and I choose you. I always have. But I don’t need to do either of those things, because what binds us is bigger than that. It’s all that you are and all that I am, and choice is irrelevant.” If there was romance in this speech, he undermined it with a tone very near disdain. “You can’t fail to love me, Catherine, not as long as you are yourself. Do you see?”
“No,” I said. The force of his certainty seemed to rip the breath from my lungs; my thoughts ricocheted too fast to catch. “No. You’ve been my dear friend, Gus, but that is all. That is all. You can’t stop me from wanting for myself, or from living without you.”
(Let me pause here. Let me have this brief silence, let me hold it where my heart once beat. I offer it in answer to my scream.)
It was Gus’s turn to be stunned. His eyes went round with wounded disbelief, and I felt his grip weaken. I tore my arm away and leapt back. We gaped at each other across years of understanding gone limp and useless while I rubbed my aching wrist. The wind gasped cold with a coming storm; the leaves shook.
“What is it you think you want?” Gus asked at last.
His tone was icy, but I thought the mere fact of the question implied a shift toward acceptance. Breath rushed from my lungs and I nearly closed my eyes with relief.
“I want to love small things,” I said. “Beetles’ wings, seeds. Nothing is small if you see it truly.”
Gus tipped his head in contemplation, and I wondered if everything could still be well—if some scrap of friendship, even, could be salvaged. He needed only to hear me, to recognize me as myself and not an image cast up by his longing.
“Then that’s what my magic will save you from,” Gus said, and turned away.