CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness (34 page)

Not you, John.

Never, ever you.

Ever yours,

Angela

What she did not:

She knew to avoid the windowpanes. The people inside were clearer to her now, clearer than they had ever been. She had always seen them, ever since that day when she was a child. But never directly. They hovered vaguely at the corners of her eyes, the glass clearing itself every time she stared straight on.

But now they sharpened; they defined themselves. They pressed their long fingers on the glass and called her name. They were desperate, trapped. Their cold, pink mouths were open, toothless, hungry—an uneven gash in a cold white space. She knew without being told how they tried to move through light, how they were caught, trapped in glass, how they couldn’t get out. Their eyes were blank, black—hollow pits where once there was a soul or a self or at least
something
, but now was not.

It was not a fate she would choose. She kept to the center of the room, moving only through open interior doors. She waited for someone to open a window or a door to the light. She waited a long time.

Her drawings littered the floor. Her letters too. How they reached their destination was a mystery, though she knew they did. She made something. She
was.
She would, she decided, remain so. Charles did not pick up the papers she scattered on the floor. He avoided the music room altogether. He averted his gaze when she wandered into his quarters at night. He shut his eyes at the seaweed wanderings of her waterlogged hair. Charles clapped his hands over his ears when she opened her pink slash mouth.

Open the door when the light pours through
, she sang.
openthedoorwhenthelightpoursthrougopenthedoorwhenthelig
htpoursthroughopenthedoorwhenthelightpoursthroughopenth
edooropenthedooropenthedooropenthedooropenthedoor,
she sang, and sang, and sang. After two days of her ceaseless song, he opened the door. She poured herself into the light, and she
was
light, and line, and space, and negative space, and thought, and the lack of thought, and being, and nonbeing. She
was.
She knew it.

What he wrote:

My darling,

Have you noticed any strange doors that you find yourself wanting to go through? On the edges of your vision, have you noticed, well, a sort of
veil
or some similar shimmering substance? A light, as it were. Have you found yourself wanting to know the location of, say, a long dark tunnel—one that, perhaps, has an attractive endpoint? I do not say this to cause you to feel alarm or to rush you into anything for which you may or may not be prepared. I only write this (my dear, my precious, my heart’s sweet angel) on the off chance that you may be—er—putting anything
off
, as it were. You know, for my sake.

What I mean to say, my love, is that if you should happen to, as it were,
run into
(assuming, of course, that one does run in this, er,
condition
) anyone that has been, well,
gone
for some time, and you feel yourself wanting to, I mean to say,
go—
you know—
along
with them, please my darling, do not tarry on my account. I will be fine, my love.

Your most Affectionate Husband,

John

What he did not:

He wondered if it would be James—beautiful, sickly James. James of the downy hair. James of the willowy limbs. James of the seafoam skin. James who loved him, but not
like
that.
James of the irritable lungs. James of the bloody cough. James, red lipped, pale to the point of tranluscency and dead in his arms. John knew that if James came for
him
, there would be no question of crossing over.

Angela, darling, lovely, lucky, and, yes, quite dead. And
not.
Not, as well. And that was the trouble, wasn’t it?

Though he had guessed it well enough on his own, someone at the office had thought to slip a copied report—classified, of course, and probably treasonous for its mere exit from the fortified walls of the RAF offices—detailing the known facts of the train crash. The number of souls aboard. Lost, all of them. All, all lost. And Angela—angel, angel Angela—who wasn’t supposed to be there, but
was,
and now she
wasn’t.

And yet.

The letters massed in the corners. They smothered the fire in the grate and mounded over the sink. They poured across the floor, particularly near the windows. They seemed to prefer light. Before he had sat down to breakfast, John swept the letters into great piles at odd intervals throughout the house. And yet they multiplied. At ten a.m. the American opened the front door. He did not knock.

“What’s with the letters?” he said.

“It’s complicated,” John replied. He tugged at the folds of his dressing gown. It was dingier than it should have been. Angela always saw to such things. On another day he might have been embarrassed, but his mind was cluttered, dusty, over-exposed. His American, on the other hand, was pressed, shaved and clean. He shone brightly in the doorway. John squinted and gasped.

“Of course,” the American said, keeping his eyes slanted to the floor. “I’m leaving.”

“When,” John asked. He also did not look up. Light poured in from all directions. It swirled across the floorboards. It stirred the letters in their piles.

“Tomorrow,” he said, and before John could speak, he added, “and don’t ask me where. I can’t say.”

“Of course.” The light intensified. John shaded his eyes. He sweated and squinted.

“Are you—” the American cleared his throat. “I mean, have they found out—told you for sure. About your wife.” He said the word “wife” as though pronouncing a word in a foreign tongue. “Is she—”

“Yes,” John said while clearing his throat. “Which is to say. We assume. In all likelihood.”

“Terrible thing,” the American said, unstraightening, then straightening, his tie.

“Yes.”

“If I don’t—you know. If I don’t see you again. I—”

“Of course, of course,” John said, running his fingers through his hair, watching with growing panic how the letters spread like mold across the surface of the ottoman, stacked themselves higher and higher on the desk, spilled down the edge of the table. The American didn’t seem to notice. John wondered briefly if they should embrace, declare their love, plot an escape. He wondered if they should begin making plans to settle in the Lake District, raise lambs, live on milk and bread and young meat, live on wine and sex and song.

“Well then,” the American said, and opened the door.

The light poured in. John fell to his knees, raised his hands to the light, “Oh! God!” he said, but the American turned and left without a word. He left the door open.

What she wrote:

Dearest,

Once there was a boy who loved a boy who did not love him back. Once there was a girl who loved a boy who loved a boy. Once there was a girl who loved a boy who loved her back,
mostly.

If love is light and food is light and life is light, are we always in day? Are we doomed to never sleep?

Ever Yours,

Angela

Dear John,

I dream of your hands. I dream of fingers as they played along, across, and in. I dream how a moan becomes song and song becomes art and art becomes light. Your light enters me and I shine forever.

Ever Yours,

Angela

Dear John,

adooropensawomanlovesalifeblendsintolightandlightandlight

ever yours

ever

ever

What she did not:

There are three things that seem important to her now: Firstly, that light is useful. Particularly when one has no form, but still has substance. Light is a vehicle, though unreliable, particularly given the climate. Secondly, though the body dissolves she still feels the opening of the mouth, the electric nerves of the fingertips, the hungry scoop between what once were her thighs. Thirdly are doors. There are doors that remain impenetrable, doors that yield to the gentle insistence of her will, doors that lead her from place to place. There is a door that she needs to find. But what or where it is, and of what use, this is a mystery.

She slides through space—time too, from what she can tell. The moments of her life unfurl before her, an elegant geometry, all angles and arcs and perfect reasoning. She sees a boy who showed her to see ghosts—which is to say
death
—which is to say
art
—which is to say infinity. She sees another boy with pale skin and a red mouth, coughing blood into a napkin. She sees the red mouthed boy floating away on harmonics and dissonance and brutal love. She sees another—her
Other
—dissembling, dissolving, despairing daily.

She is light. She is song. She is the art behind art—which is to say,
infinite
. As a formless substance, she sees her Other kneeling in the doorway. As light she pours through the door. As art she lands upon his open mouth. As song she slides what used to be her fingertips into the secret grooves of his throat. She plucks out melody and harmony—line, phrase, space, negative space. She draws dissonance and counterpoint. She lays her mouth upon his mouth. He tastes lilac and lavender and oil and smoke. He sings of bent metal and burning wood and beautiful soldiers and poisoned waters and multitudes of airships hurling themselves against the geodesic sky. He sings of a war that will never end. He sings of lost love, lost art, lost music, lost nations, lost women and lost men. He sings her name. He never, ever, stops.

Barbara Krasnoff

I remember.

When I was a girl, I loved going to the beauty shop. It had light blue walls, I think, and a radio. I sat under the dryer wearing a pink smock, reading the latest issue of Vogue, and listening to . . . what was her name? . . . to one of my friends talking about her latest boyfriend. It was nice.

Kay’s is nice, too. The woman in charge comes to greet us; she has bright yellow hair and thick glasses and she says hello to me, not just to that woman who is standing next to me (should I know her?) the way a lot of people do. And she wears a name tag on her pink smock so that I always know her name; it says “KAY” with tiny purple flowers entwined around it.

Even though I’ve only lived in this neighborhood for . . . well, for a few years (I remember that I grew up in Williamsburg and brought up my children in Canarsie; I remember those years very well), Kay’s looks like all the beauty shops I ever knew. Once, I remember, I went to a new one, and it had deafening music and strange machines and tall boys talking loud and winking at the others when they thought I didn’t see. (I know I’m old. I can’t help it. They’ll be old one day too, and why don’t they understand that?)

* * *

Kay smiles at me, takes my coat and my pocketbook, and helps me sit down in one of the chairs while the woman who’s always next to me goes and sits in front of the salon and takes out a little, um, thing and talks into it.

“And how are you today?” Kay says while she puts a towel around my neck and then covers me with a flowery cape to protect my clothes. I’m fine, I say, although we both know I’m not fine at all. I’m disappearing. Bit by bit.

I don’t know why and neither do they. The doctors, I mean. Tests are inconclusive. (You see? I can understand these things; I’ve got a Masters in History, after all.) They say it past me, to the woman who says she’s my daughter (although my daughter is bright and small and energetic, not tired and sad like she is), but I listen. And sometimes I remember.

Kay chats to me while she dampens my hair and takes out her scissors. I had beautiful hair (I have photos), thick and brown. Jack used to run his hands through it and beg me not to cut it, although long hair wasn’t really the fashion and I really looked better with short. Now, I look in the mirror and it’s all dull gray and I can see parts of my scalp showing through; it makes me want to cry, more than the wrinkles and the pieces of my life that have disappeared.

I start to get up, to get away from the mirror, but the moment I start to move Kay swings the chair around so I’m looking instead at the TV set that’s been set up high on the back wall. “There,” she says. “You don’t mind facing the wall, do you? It’s so much easier for me.” She chatters on, about her friend’s daughter who is pregnant and miserable; about how the weather has been unseasonably icy and why do they call it global warming when things are getting colder?