Raveling (60 page)

Stupidly, I stood in the cold water up to my knees for a few long minutes, and then I turned around and walked back to the
beach house, my feet aching. It was extremely cold inside, so I made a fire and, after the furnace heated up, took a long
hot shower. I was probably in there for over an hour, just standing beneath the spray, my eyes closed, trying to let a lifetime
of worry drain from my body. I had a change of clothes in the bedroom. I had a few cans of soup in the kitchen cabinet. I’d
stay here tonight, I thought. I’d get some rest.

Hannah opened her eyes that Christmas morning to a dazzle of gold coming in at a sideways angle through her bedroom window.
It was clear and uniform, a single shaft filled with
individual particles of brilliance and glittering dust. It was late for Hannah, too, almost eight o’clock. From the bed she
could see the minute hand on its way toward twelve, the hour firmly on eight, the red second hand gliding smoothly forward
into the day. She could look across the covers of her bed and see the old maple bedposts, glossy and brown in the morning
shimmer. She could see every green twist in the ivy motif of her duvet cover. She held up her hands. Her fingers were long,
thinner than she remembered, the flesh translucent. The bones and muscles were plainly visible, the metacarpals and phalanges,
the joints and ligaments, the arteries and veins on clear display. Her fingernails were blunt, with ridges across their surfaces.

Hannah threw her legs onto the floor and stepped into the hallway, her ankles making a small
crick-crick-cricking
sound as she walked. With her eyes she followed the old oriental runner carpet and noticed with surprise and amazement how
dirty it had become, flecked with bits of leaves and clods of dried mud. She looked at the black-and-white prints of forest
scenes on the walls—remembering how she’d picked them out with my father at a photography gallery all those years ago—where
was that? Martha’s Vineyard—and saw them clearly, it seemed to her, for the first time since that afternoon. She could hear
movement downstairs. It was Thalia, the nurse Eric had hired to take care of her in her blindness, preparing something in
the kitchen. Hannah went into the bathroom and closed the door softly, hoping Thalia wouldn’t hear.

Inside, the full-length mirror revealed an old woman in a dingy, yellowed nightgown. Hannah put a hand to her face, touching
her lower lip delicately. She was so pale. She ran a finger along the blue vein on her temple, noticing the way it disappeared
into her hairline. She closed her eyes and rubbed them, and when she opened them up again the old
woman was still there, still gray, singular and small—how small she had become, how frail—in the reflection.

Had she been breathing? She took a breath.

There was no wind outside, she noticed, no rattling in the treetops, no sound at all, so she went to the little bathroom window
and looked out at the yard.

There was the flagstone patio, the pool/garden, overgrown with her dead plantings from the spring. She had known Eric would
never get around to that. There was the patch of grass, still green, but fading to brown a bit in its winter cycle, and then
there were the woods, the line of trees clear and solid against the grass. There were two girls’ bicycles, one pink, one purple,
with white handlebars, pieces of Christmas ribbon attached. Hannah strained, leaning her face against the glass, to see into
the yard next door, wondering if the two girls were out there on this cold day, but she could not see from this perspective.
Her forehead touched the glass of the bathroom window, and she could smell the dust that had gathered there, the musty odor.
She had never been a good housewife, she thought, had never been able to keep the house clean the way other women did. But
Jim had never complained. That had been her own criticism. She turned and, as her body twisted toward the bathroom interior
with the thought of its cleanliness, she was certain she heard something in the backyard, a voice, a small voice coming from
where she had just been looking, just seen so clearly, with a singular, lucid vision, that no one was there. She thought she
heard her daughter. Was it Fiona? And when she looked, she saw not only one, but two little girls, one ash-blonde, one brunette,
each in their red woolly Christmas coats. Hannah could even see how pink the cold wind had made their little-girl cheeks.
She could see how one of them sucked on a piece of her blond hair like a string. She could see how one was
stronger than the other, one quieter, one more brash, one more beautiful, one more sensitive. She could see these two little
girls so clearly. They took their bicycles and rolled them away then, into their own yard, out of view.

“Mrs. Airie… Hannah, are you in there?” It was the nurse out in the hall.

“I’m just, um, I’m just going to take a shower, Thalia, and then I’ll be downstairs for breakfast, okay?”

“Can you find everything all right in there? Can I help you with anything?”

“I know just where everything is,” Hannah said. “I can remember my own bathroom.”

“Trying to be helpful, that’s all.” Thalia allowed a pause. “And Merry Christmas.”

Hannah stood at the window and focused on the trees in the distance, the bare branches of the perennials, the dark green needles
on the evergreens. And as she looked at them she saw the familiar blurring of colors, the softening around the edges of things,
the running together. But she could put her fingers into her eyes and wipe away the tears forming there, and when she did,
everything became clear again. She could see. She could see it was winter outside, and there was no water in the pool, and
there was no little girl in the yard.

I had told Thalia I just wanted to be alone, and she’d said I was just like my mother, Merry Christmas to me, too. I had been
sitting on the blue couch in the living room, still wearing my overcoat, the layers and layers of sweaters. I still had a
chill under my skin from being outside all night. I still had the camera around my neck. I had been staring at my new sneakers,
a pair of blue-and-silver Nikes. I had been imagining my brother up to his knees in the winter surf.

Hannah stood at the end of the stairs with her hand touching the banister and said, “I can see you.”

I lifted my head. “You can see?”

“I can see everything. I can see absolutely—”

I got up. “You’re not kidding me, are you, Mom?”

“—everything.” She walked into the room. “I can see better than I could before, I think. Why do you have that camera?”

“Come on, Mom.”

She pointed to the newspaper on the coffee table. She read the headlines. “Chemical Spill In Westchester County.” She was
smiling. “Middle East Conflict Intensifies.” She came toward me. “Popular Newscaster Implicated In Extortion Trial. You’re
better, too,” she said. “I can see it in your face.”

“What happened?”

“I woke up,” she said.

“You woke up and you can see?”

“That’s what happened.” She reached to my face. Her hand was trembling. “You look handsome.”

“You opened your eyes—”

“—and I could see,” she said. “The ivy pattern on the bedspread, the trees in the yard, the little girls next door.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said.

“Let me make you some breakfast.” She started to walk toward the kitchen, but I grabbed her arm, which felt like a thin branch.

“Wait,” I said. “I want you to see something.”

“What is it?”

“Come upstairs.”

“Now?”

“Please,” I said. “It’s important.” I was like an astronaut. I was stepping onto the moon, my hands and feet growing lighter.
I walked to the stairs, my overcoat still on. Hannah
followed me. I had a feeling she knew where I was leading her. I had a feeling the force of gravity was growing less oppressive.
“It’s in Eric’s room.”

“Pilot—”

“It’s in here.”

“—I don’t think I want—”

I opened the door and she stood in the hallway.

“—to see this right now.”

“You have to come all the way in.”

She stepped into the room. “Pilot,” she said, “no.”

I reached up to the top of Eric’s shelf, all the way up to the large silver bowl, the New York State Junior Scientist cup
he had won for designing a prosthetic limb for Halley the Comet.

“Pilot, please, I told you I—”

I pulled it down and removed the old plastic Wonderbread bag inside it. I put the silver trophy on the bed and held the plastic
bag out toward my mother. “This is it,” I told her. “This is the evidence.”

She put a hand over her mouth.

I could feel the clothes lifting away from my body. I could feel the helium filling the inside of my veins, the buoyancy.
Under the layers of dust, the Wonderbread bag seemed as new as it had the day I placed it there, all those years ago, standing
on the same captain’s chair that was now pushed under my brother’s old desk. Maybe the colors had faded. Maybe the red, blue,
and yellow Wonderbread graphics had changed since then, become more streamlined. But it looked as though I could have placed
these things inside that silver trophy one minute ago. Inside the bag were a single red shoe, clearly visible, with no lace,
and of course the black-handled hunting knife with the silver inlay of the rhinoceros on the handle.

Hannah sat down on Eric’s old bed. She looked around. A million years ago, long before I could remember, she had
decorated this room with a nautical motif, and there were anchors and sailboats all over the wallpaper and drapes. I think
she couldn’t help—even at this strange moment—but to marvel proudly at the imagery of this room, the dozens of silver and
gold trophies, the sea-blue decorator curtains, the brass, anchor-shaped handles on the dresser. She exhaled heavily. “What
are you going to do?”

I sat down beside her, pushing the old New York State Junior Scientist trophy out of my way. “I’m going to do what I should
have done when I was nine.” I felt like my body wasn’t touching anything.

“Oh.”

“Did you know?” I said.

“
Pilot
.”

“Mom, did you know what he did?”

“Katherine,” I said, and I was holding the phone in the living room, rotary-dial, black, “I’d like to meet Jerry Cleveland.
I mean, I’d like to see him again.”