A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [120]
For the first time there was real irritation in his voice. “What do you think all of this has been like for me? I was frantic with worry. If one more day had gone by, if they hadn’t traced your card, I would have had to go to the police and then where would we have been?”
“I don’t know, Malcolm, where we would have been. I never know, do I, where we have been, where we are now. Perhaps you should tell me, perhaps you should explain it all to me.” Abruptly, she remembered that she had not yet put the you are here marker on the map she had been working on. She had always used a particular type of small mother-of pearl button for this, but she had forgotten to pack the button jar when she left the house. Often the button was placed in a parking lot, but there was no parking lot at the lighthouse. The end of the lane would have to do.
“You can’t seriously believe that I shouldn’t have been worried,” Malcolm was saying. He had moved away from her now and stood at a distance where he could see her face. “You’ve never been away overnight on your own. You barely know the people in the next town, never mind in the city. You were missing. I would have had to report you as a missing person.”
“A good description,” she said to him, “a very good description of me, don’t you think? Haven’t I always been a missing person?”
Malcolm’s expression darkened. Sylvia knew that she had hurt him, that soon he would begin to defend himself. “Remember this,” he said. “I’m only trying to look after you, the way I’ve always looked after you. I don’t understand this tone in your voice. I don’t understand what you think you are doing. You have no one but me to care for you.”
“I have some friends here,” Sylvia interrupted. “I have a friend here.”
Malcolm shook his head. “Who are these friends? How can I possibly believe in them? You don’t make friends … you’ve never been able to —”
“There’s Julia.”
“Yes, Julia,” Malcolm said vaguely. “But when I called her she wasn’t able tell me where you were. You were in distress, quite possibly in danger, but Julia wasn’t in a position to help me find you.”
Sylvia turned away from the wall, rose from the chair, and walked across the room to where her suitcase rested on a luggage rack. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, let’s get something to eat.” She opened her suitcase, unzipped a small quilted case, and lifted a string of pearls toward her throat. As if by instinct, Malcolm moved behind her and closed the clasp at the back of her neck, again without touching her skin. These were her mother’s pearls, her grandmother’s pearls. Perhaps they had belonged to her great-great-grandmother.
“We’ll talk about this later, when you feel better,” Malcolm said again. After putting on his jacket and before opening the door, he turned in Sylvia’s direction. “I was convinced that we had it all sorted, Syl,” he said, “convinced that you finally knew the difference between what goes on here,” he moved his fingers toward the top of her hair, careful not to touch her head, “and what goes on out there,” he swept his hand through the air that existed between them.
Sylvia had no answer for this, knowing that what he referred to was his reality and as such had nothing to do with her. His “out there” would be so much different from hers. “How do you know for certain,” Julia had once asked her, “that what you see is what other sighted people see?”
“I don’t know for certain,” Sylvia had answered. “I never have.”
As they walked down the hotel corridor, however, she touched her husband’s arm, wanting him to know, by this gesture, that there was no malice in the words she was going to say. He had taught her this, how to touch someone softly, when trying to make a point. It had not been easy for her, this reaching toward others, but she had learned to do it.