A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [134]
“Poor Jerome, I thought, reading your name, learning your age, and the fact that the sail loft had been given to you as a studio in which to make your art. Poor young Jerome. He would have dropped the brush, or pencil, or whatever was in his hand and he would have descended the stairs of the sail loft, then he would have moved out through the soggy late-spring snow and down to the dock.
“The ice would have been dark blue with a grey tinge … am I correct? It would have been feathered at its edges with snow, a frosty, almost decorative edge receding a little because of the water that would be nuzzling it like an animal. The figure frozen in it would appear to be halted forever in the attitude of one who is about to rise from a bed or from the grave, a figure interrupted forever in the midst of an act of resurrection. The arms would have been outstretched, I think, as if about to receive a blessing, a vision, the stigmata, or perhaps simply a lover.”
Sylvia paused and looked away from Jerome, toward the wall. “Simply a lover,” she repeated.
“I had seen him like this, you see,” she continued, still not looking at Jerome. “I had seen him in morning, in afternoon light, partly rising from a bed with his arms outstretched, his lower torso buried in white bedclothes, his expression benign, tender, as I walked toward him, his entire self exposed. I had seen all this in him, and he had seen all this in me, and yet each time there would come the moment when we dressed, gathered together the few belongings that we had brought with us, and prepared to leave.”
Sylvia, as if finishing a performance, walked back to her chair.
“Not ever, not even at his weakest moment, did he ask me to stay, although once I remember, once he said, ‘ Don’t go yet, not quite yet.’ “ Her voice began to break. “I will always, always keep that memory.”
Jerome had moved swiftly, soundlessly, from the couch and was sitting on the table directly in front of Sylvia. Here he was able to lean toward her, to be within reaching distance. He took both her hands in his and held on to them.
An hour later, Sylvia and Jerome were standing side by side in front of a drafting table slowly, deliberately, going through the photos Jerome had taken on the island. “I finally began to develop them,” he told her, “just this week.” He moved one photo to the front of the table. “In the mornings,” he added, “before you arrived.”
Just after Jerome had shown Sylvia some of the “Dugouts” that would be used for his Nine Revelations of Navigation, and after he had found in himself the courage to point out the place where he had found the body, they heard the front door open and a few seconds later Malcolm and Mira entered the studio. “I was just putting the key in the lock when he walked up behind me,” Mira said. She looked serious, worried. “He says he’s your husband.”
“Yes,” said Sylvia, “he is.” She stood to one side and stepped back so that she could see all the photos that were laid out on the table, and so that Jerome could point to them and tell Mira what they were. There was a calmness in her now that she realized was in opposition to the tension that had entered the room with Malcolm. “His name is Malcolm. And Malcolm, this is Mira and”—she turned toward the young man—“Jerome.”
Jerome turned slowly, a photo of a milkweed pod still in his hand. Then he carefully put the picture down and, without making eye contact, walked across the room to extend his hand, a hand that Sylvia now knew well, having held it and then watched it move from one black-and-white