A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [52]
“I can almost see,” said Jerome, a hint of surprise in his voice, “everything you say. Everything you’re talking about.”
Sylvia was thinking that much of what she had said about the hotel had been, in some way, triggered by Mira’s performance, and that here in this room she had for the first time actually seen sand covering a floor. “Mira …,” she began, then stopped. She was about to say something about Mira’s piece but thought better of it. Malcolm, instructing her in the finer points of social interaction, had told her to try, as much as possible, to stick to topics that she knew something about. Then he had laughed, remembering her tendency to lecture, to repeat, her tendency to get stuck on the topics that she knew far too much about.
“You were going to say something about Mira,” Jerome prompted.
“She seems so vital, somehow, so”—Sylvia searched for the word—“so awake.”
“She’s attentive,” said Jerome, “curious. She pays attention to almost everything.” He glanced toward the door as if he expected the girl to walk into the room. “About your hotel,” he added, “Mira would have said it was like a children’s story. In a children’s story anything at all can happen,” he said with surprising conviction. “The most impossible things and”—he looked at Sylvia—“as long as the story is being told, we believe everything. Or at least I always believed everything.”
“That may be why I loved childhood so much,” Sylvia said, “because of the larger belief, and because …”
“But your childhood —” Jerome interjected.
“I was very content, unless I was interfered with, unless I was interrupted, unless someone else stood in my path and blocked my view of my private world. I wonder why they couldn’t understand that, apart from this, I was content?”
“The world is so full of a number of things,” said Jerome, “I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”
“Yes,” said Sylvia. She reached into the pocket of the coat she had draped over the chair, pulled out the salt shaker, and held it in front of her. She had never done this before, had never let anyone know what she carried with her. “If you hold on to it long enough,” she told him, “it becomes warm in your hands.”
He leaned forward to look at the shaker, then reached over and lightly touched the top of it.
“Perhaps it was because I had no friends,” Sylvia continued. “Maybe that’s why they thought I wasn’t happy. All through high school, you see, I kept at a distance. Once or twice a year a boy would try to speak to me, or a girl who was not part of the crowd would attempt to form a friendship. But it was not possible. Either I wanted nothing to do with those who approached me or I watched them constantly, learned the buttons on their coats, the part in their hair, a freckle on an elbow, wanting all the details of their lives. When they began to withdraw, as they always did, it was a relief in a way. I could lose myself in the schoolwork, which was a safe haven, an achievable goal. Teachers, on the whole, approved of me, but I had no friends, until Julia of course.”
The high-pitched ringing of a cellphone burst into the room, causing Sylvia to jump in her chair as if she had been shaken from a trance. Jerome stood, excused himself, fumbled in his pocket for the phone. Then he turned his back and walked away, speaking quietly.
“That was just Mira telling me that she’ll be late,” he said when he returned to the couch. “They’re installing a sculpture show at the gallery. Metal trees apparently.” He smiled. “Sounds like there is a complete forest of them.”
“Forests,” said Sylvia. “The cottage where we met was surrounded by one of the few forests that still contained some old-growth trees, though Andrew never pointed out the oldest, most important ones. And I, I was afraid