A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [94]
He surveyed the two shelves of poetry volumes (two out of five hundred shelves? a thousand?), and he wondered, not for the first time, why it was he had attached his own star—his work, his editing—to such a marginal enterprise as publishing literary works. Worse, to the most marginal practitioners of it. To date, Harrison had edited a half dozen biographies of poets and two slender volumes of verse: one from the American poet Audr Heinrich, a venture that had brought the man, as well as Harrison’s publishing house, some considerable renown, and the other from the Persian-Canadian poet Vashti Baker, a volume that had slipped so far below the radar screen, it had essentially vaporized itself. Of these books, however, Harrison was proud. Certainly prouder than he was of the various self-help books and thrillers he’d had to edit to help keep his company in the black.
Harrison pulled out the Laski volume and took a seat at a polished cherry reading table. He opened the book. He knew the man’s work to be arresting and deceptively simple. Harrison skimmed the volume, looking for poems about women. Although he hadn’t consciously realized it at the time, Harrison knew now that he was hoping to find, in the verse, references to Nora. The phrase “wet with water” caught his eye. He read the rest of the poem. It seemed to be about a woman washing her hair while a man watches, thinking about his son watching his own wife wash her hair.
Harrison fanned the pages of the book slowly, scanning the type, looking for key words and lines. It was a trick he’d learned as an editor. If he suspected a repetition of a word in a text, he could find the first reference in seconds by using this technique. He fanned once again, starting from the back of the book. He saw the word “tongue.” He flattened the book on the table.
The poem was entitled “Under the Canted Roof” and was graphic in its sexual details, somewhat more so than Laski’s other works. The verse had the feel of reportage. Although Harrison had not read Laski’s final collection, the poem seemed like something of a new direction for the man. The woman in the poem was blond, but Harrison had no doubt that Laski was referring to Nora. The narrow thigh; the asymmetrical smile. He thought of Nora’s funny half smile.
Harrison closed his eyes, and a kind of prurient jealousy squeezed at him. He had no one to blame but himself. This was what he had unconsciously sought when he’d come into the library, something intimate about the marriage of Nora and Carl Laski. Harrison opened his eyes and read the poem again, as if, hidden among the words, Harrison would discover a detail even more revealing.
Though the poem was about sexuality, there was little joy. Within ecstasy lay the seeds of loss. Was this the glimpse of Nora’s marriage Harrison had hoped for?
As Harrison examined the lines again, he remembered an accusation Evelyn had tossed his way during a fight they’d had some six years into their own marriage. He was insulated, she said. He did not know how to love someone else. She meant herself, of course, and Harrison recalled being stung by the criticism hurled in the heat of the argument, immediately taken back that evening. For he knew that something he’d thought resilient—his marriage—might now be subject to all sorts of criticism, as if open season had been declared. After Evelyn had left the bedroom, Harrison had lain on the bed, wondering if Evelyn was correct. Had he, somewhere along the line, lost the ability to love another person fully? But then he’d had the thought that his boys were someone elses, and he certainly loved them, and that realization had been immensely reassuring to him. He had even, he remembered, sat up, feeling