A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [37]
“No, I’m fine,” said Sylvia. “I’ve had lunch.” The restaurant had been one geared toward sandwiches; the variety of contents displayed behind the glass counter had almost driven her back out to the street until she realized she could simply mimic the choices of the customer who preceded her. Sylvia was beginning to appreciate the neutrality of the city, the fact that its inhabitants had absolutely no interest in her. Perhaps her life would have been easier to manage had she always been a stranger.
“Okay then.” Jerome walked quietly over to the couch and slowly sat down, as if he felt that any sudden movement might be too disruptive, might startle her.
He believes I am a problem, thought Sylvia, much like everyone else. She found this oddly unsettling, as if she had wanted to impress this young man and had failed somehow. Still, she had come this far and was not going to retreat into silence. She placed her handbag on the floor by her feet, removed her coat, and began to speak.
“My father was a doctor and I married my father’s partner, a man called Malcolm Bradley. I married a kind man who came into my father’s life as a locum. Malcolm, who wanted to look after me.”
She smiled after she said this, and Jerome smiled as well, out of politeness probably, for where was the joke? What she had said should not have been spoken lightly, she realized. Sometimes in recent years when she had stood in the evenings unnoticed at the doorway of Malcolm’s office, watching him turn the pages of the books that might or might not have described her condition, her heart nearly broke in the face of his need to believe in the purity of diagnosis. He was so innocent at these moments, this man who felt that everything deserved what he called “the dignity of a scientific explanation.” Had he taken her character through the several stages of the scientific method, spent months making observations, before carefully, deliberately, drawing his conclusion? Had he in fact married his conclusion?
“ ‘She will have a good life,’ he assured my parents, ‘a good life with me. I understand her.’ “
Sylvia sat very still, fearing that Jerome might ask what was wrong with her. It was the inquiry she dreaded more than anything, this question. When it was clear that he was not going to do so, she relaxed and said, “Did they tell you that Andrew Woodman was a landscape geographer?” she asked.
“No,” said Jerome, sitting back against the couch, “I think I read about that … afterwards, in the newspaper.” He cleared his throat. “And you told me as well.”
“Did I? He claimed that everywhere he went he found evidence of the behaviour of his forebears: rail fences, limestone foundations, lilac bushes blooming on otherwise abandoned farmsteads, an arcade of trees leading to a house that is no longer there.” She looked down. Her hands lying in her lap looked to her like two dead birds “All that sad refuse, Andrew used to say. And that island, of course … your island … abandoned by those ancestors a century before. He recorded everything that was left behind there, each sunken wreck, the remains of pilings, iron pulleys, cables, broken axles. You must have seen remnants … something?”
The young man nodded. “There were empty buildings and a couple of smaller sheds that had collapsed. And one huge anchor near the jetty. But I never saw the wrecks. I was hoping that the ice would clear enough for me to catch sight of one or two, but then …” He placed his elbow on his bent knee and ran his hand through his hair, not looking at her.
What is he seeing in his mind? Sylvia wondered. Certainly not Andrew. He wouldn’t want to remember that, wouldn’t want to think about it. Jerome’s hand was still in his hair, cupping the shape of his skull as if