TWENTY-THREE

Love” seemed such an extreme word for what little others, looking from outside, might see of what lay between us. It was a word that shocked me when I first read it on the page. And yet, in that instant of shock, there was recognition.

How could what was between us be anything else?

I was his mirror; he was my confessor.

It was the only way I could explain to myself how we had found ourselves at such a place in time.

When I wrote to him about this new theory of mine, he countered that while he could fully comprehend how he functioned as my confessor—since it was obvious so many of the things I now shared with him on a daily basis were things I had never shared with anyone else before—he had trouble grasping how I was his mirror.

I thought how like an ornamental mirror I was with him: When candelabra were lit, the mirror’s gilded frame caused him to glitter more brightly, the reflected image—him—set off at best advantage. But that seemed too fanciful, so instead I wrote:

                  

It is that you like the reflection you see when you look inside me. It is, in some ways, drastically different from how the rest of the world views you. In me, you see possibilities of yourself you had not been aware of in quite such a way before. And, at the risk of repeating myself, you like that.

                  

The smile was evident in his reply. Not even having a clue as to what that smile might really look like, I saw it plain as day.

                  

Well, he wrote, smiling, that is certainly true enough.


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It was hard to believe, at times, my life could still proceed with any degree of normalcy at all; and yet it did. I could not stop the turning of the leaves; nor, I found, did I want to. Time, inexplicably, felt as though it were suddenly on my side. It seemed that, if I could just be patient, my heart’s desire would somehow become mine. Wait, plant one foot in front of the other, allow the nights to stack up—and then…and then…what?

I did not know, was not ready to wrap my mind just yet around how such a tomorrow might ultimately be achieved.

In the meantime, there were still the days between now and that nebulously distant tomorrow to get through. There were decisions about menus to be settled, a son to keep in smiles, and a husband who, having finished the draft of his prison novel, was now at loose ends.

Ah, my husband.

Having previously approved of his intent on a career in writing and of the domestic bliss that a husband’s contentment with his daily work would provide, I now longed for the days when he was a mere employee, however high-ranking, of merchants. True, then we had not even the dream of the wealth that was our accustomed lot now, but the advantage of his old job was that he did have to leave and go to work every day.

As it was…

“Emma, what shall we do today?”

I had been hearing such words each day for the last month, words I thought might drive me mad. Odd that a man who had no trouble dreaming up all sorts of occupying tasks for a myriad cast of imaginary characters should not be able to occupy his own mind during the daylight hours once he had completed building a boat for those characters and setting them out to sea.

And so, we visited friends; we had friends visit us. We went out to the country; we shopped in the city. We played with Weston to the point where, really, he probably would have preferred a slight holiday from us.

There had been a time, very early on in John’s writing career, when I was sadly wakened to the inherent loneliness of living with a writer. Oh, to be sure, if I wanted companionship, I need no longer go outside the home to seek it. If I wanted someone to share something with, all I need do was go to his library door and someone would be there.

Except I didn’t, because there wasn’t.

True, John was not an ogre about interruptions if they came at an acceptable time. But even if on the surface it appeared as though he were responding to my words, answering a query, he was no more with me than, say, I was with Lucy as she puttered around the house, removing draperies that needed to be cleaned. You could say whenever John was working on a project, we didn’t really live in the same house at all.

Now, however, I longed for the solitude that had once been a torment.

There was no time even to write to Chance. Before, when John had been hard at work on his novel, he had rarely noticed anything amiss. Now, he would not fail to do so should he be allowed to see how much space on blank paper was filled with the thoughts that passed between myself and the prisoner.

I found myself urging him to take up his pen.

“Emma, what shall we do today?”

I cleared my throat. When I did speak, my words sounded carefully formed even to my own ears. “You know, John, now the last book is at the publisher’s and you await their verdict, that does not necessarily mean you must twiddle your thumbs at their pleasure.”

“What do you mean?”

“How about if you were to begin a new project?”

“Are you sure it is not simply that you have grown used to having me out of your hair? And now, I am back in it, you seek to find a way to extricate me again?”

Seeing the aghast expression on my face, he laughed.

“No,” he said, “I am sure that is not the case. No, I do know you have always had my best interests in mind. Still,”—he paused, considering—“although I am a bit restless of this holiday of mine, I am not altogether sure I am ready to give it up in favor of returning to work just yet.”

And so, he was not to be rushed.

As I tried to figure out how else to occupy John’s time, so he would not spend so much time occupying mine, Timmins brought in the post.

Ever since I had employed the ruse of Harry Baldwin, I took special care to pick up the post each day myself, so I could keep back Chance’s letters, showing John only the three that had come from Harry. A fourth had never come, despite that a few weeks had gone by since the third, not to mention the fact I had paid for four. I had given it up as lost money.

“Ah,” John said now, flipping through the letters. “You have another letter from your prisoner.”

Dear God! I thought; for once hoping, praying, it was not from Chance.

“Here.” John extended the envelope. “Why don’t we read it together?”

I hoped he did not see my hand tremble as I took the letter. But then I saw right away, from the writing on the envelope, it was not my Chance.

And so, John read over my shoulder:

                  

Dear Mrs. John Smith,

It is still boring here. The food is still lousy. Sometimes, I get lonely for the outside world…


Chance Wood

                  

“Huh,” John said, ripping the letter in half, “I can see now why you just throw these away. He is not the most original man, is he, your prisoner?” John yawned. “I do not think you need to show me any more letters. It is sufficient one of us be bored. So,” he finished, “what shall we do today?”

And so I was free again from the prying eyes of my husband and yet the task of occupying that husband continued.

Now the only way I could find any peace in my own home was to rise before everyone else in the morning. The evenings were out because my husband, as much in love with reading the created worlds of others as he was in creating them himself, sat up long into the dark hours of these nights, catching up on what he had not had sufficient time for when he was still laboring over the perfection of his own novel globe.

The very early morning was all that was still left to me now.


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The bathroom was crammed full with twin upholstered chairs in tapestries whose chief colors were mauve and forest, with a vanity and a large cupboard to contain all the linens, with ornate lighting fixtures—Argand burners with tubular wicks, the whale oil in the lamps giving off a light beneath the glass shades that was clear, bright, and smokeless—and with gilt-framed pictures on the walls.

And a mirror, of course, a very large mirror from which I had spent years avoiding my naked reflection.

The bathroom, and in particular its mirror, seemed like the perfect place to go in the morning, when one needed to hide in solitude from a world not yet waking.

As I stood before the mirror, looking at the places on my body my hands had learned how to touch in the dark, I realized I did not know this woman; but then, I had not known the one who had come before her either.

It was not an unattractive picture, this gilt-edged reflection, the very attractiveness of it accusing me for having shunned the sight of it for so long. The curled hair, wherever it grew, was still dark, still had the shining remnant stamp of youth left on it. The skin, never exposed to any sunlight, was pale, but not unhealthily so. The breasts were full, the circles around the nipples large, brown, the nipples themselves erect with tiny bumps of excitement raised on the skin that encircled them. The waist was smaller than it had been since my late girlhood, due to the lack of appetite for food and excess of energy brought about by my heightened awareness these last several months. The legs appeared surprisingly long and shapely for the body, considering I was not a tall woman. The hips, the lower stomach—both gave some evidence of time. But what of that? I was a thirty-four-year-old lady who had once pushed a baby out into the world. There was nothing to be ashamed of in the evidence of those facts.

And then there was the inverted triangle of black hair, the triangle I had spent so much time and energy over the course of my lifetime studiously ignoring.

I imagined him behind me now, entering me. My breath came faster and I turned my eyes away from the reflection, but then I imagined him, still behind me, forcing my face forward, making me look at him, at us, at what I was doing.

Afterward, as I leaned against the wall, still panting as I rested my forehead on the back of my hand, I heard my household begin to stir as Weston called to me.

Somehow, this had to stop.