She glanced over at me and looked away. “I was afraid before,” she said. “But I decided not to be.” A pause. “I want to get to know you.” She continued to sit upright, like a student in a principal’s office.
Something about her awkwardness put me — I was going to say: at ease. But we are never at ease. It’s more accurate to say that the unease which is my nature became a little less uneasy, like a fist relaxing slightly — the knuckles are no longer white, but the fist remains closed.
“I turned on all the lights,” she said. “But later I went back and turned them all off.” She raised a hand to her hair, wound a strand round and round a finger, then removed her finger and lowered her hand. She turned her head toward me and held it there.
She continued to hold it there as I began to speak. My voice sounded to me like the rustle of dry leaves. Even in my past life I was a man of few words, but on this night I told my story: the unbreathing figure in the bed, the dawn flight, the wooden steps to the attic, the visits to her aunt. It occurred to me, with surprise, that I really did have a story to tell.
When I came to the end I waited for her to pour out her own story, but she said simply, “Thank you.” A sudden yawn, deep and shuddering, seized her. She thrust a hand across her mouth as if she were trying to stifle a laugh. “Oh god,” she said. “That had nothing to do with — it’s just so late. Look! It’s practically morning.” Through the drawn drapes I could see a faint lightness.
She stood up. “She’ll worry about me.” She looked at me. “I hope we can be friends now.” At once she turned away, walking with great strides, swinging out of sight and thrusting herself heavily up the stairs.
Above, a door shut. I remained alone in the empty room. I imagined Andrea striding fiercely through the house, turning on light after light, faster and faster. When all the lights are on, she returns to Maureen’s room. She lies down on the bed with her eyes open. She says nothing. After a while she gets up. She looks around. Then she walks back through the house, turning each light off, one after the other.
The next day it rained. It was one of those violent autumn rains that hurl themselves against roofs and attic windows, while through the water-sheeted glass there’s nothing to see but the bleak dark sky and the branches bending in the wind. The attic was dusky-dark. A good day for solitude! That was the thought that presented itself to my mind as I made my way down the attic stairs in search of — something else. Through the storm I had heard Maureen’s car backing out of the drive. I was struck by the gloom of the upper hall, as if the storm clouds had penetrated the house itself. Then I saw that the shade had been drawn on the window at the end of the hall and the two ruffled curtains pulled together. For some reason I thought: They have left me here, they have all gone away. When I reached the bottom of the carpeted stairs I saw that all the shades had been drawn and the curtains closed. A sullen day-darkness hung in the house. Andrea was sitting on the couch, in her bathrobe, erect but with half-closed eyes.
She raised an arm and swept her hand vaguely sideways before letting it drop to the couch cushion. It rose and came to rest in her lap. “I wanted you to feel — welcome,” she said, without turning to look at me.
I walked past the couch in silence and settled into my armchair. The word “welcome” had irritated me, and I looked at her without pleasure. I wanted to shout: We never feel welcome! — but I sat there, listening to the windows rattling behind the closed curtains. I stared at her large hands resting awkwardly in her big lap.
She said, “Auntie Maur told me you like to — I don’t know, sit with her at night, and I thought maybe if we — I like rain, rainy days.” She paused. “It’s all right if you don’t feel like talking. We can just sit here.”
After a while she said, “I’m going to make some tea now. I think a cup of tea would be nice. I’ll be right back.”
I watched her go slowly past my chair into the kitchen. There was strain in her face, and her stride was slightly wrong in some way, as if she were practicing a walk in front of a mirror. As I listened to her moving about in the kitchen, the thought occurred to me that now would be a good time to rise from my chair and pass out the door into the storm, never to return. I sat there thinking this thought and hearing the sound of the rain against the house, and of the teapot as she set it down on the stove.
All that dark morning she passed back and forth between the kitchen and the living room, carrying cups of tea, plates of crackers, glasses of juice. In the living room she would sit for a while over her tea, then stand up and go to a window. There she pushed aside a curtain and looked out at the rain. Moments later she would go over to the bookcase, take out a book, and bring it to the couch, where she opened it up and immediately put it aside. Sometimes she went into the kitchen, washed a cup, and set it in the dish rack to dry. Even when she sat still she was always in motion, stretching out her arms and interlocking her hands, or raking her fingers through her tangled hair. She rarely looked in my direction, but from time to time would utter a few words intended for me, such as “These rainy days are really something” or “I can see you better now.” Even as she moved restlessly about, I was sharply aware of her awareness of me. I noticed that she was very careful to keep a good distance between us at all times; but it was when she was farthest from me, across the room or hidden away in the kitchen, that I most had the feeling she had somehow wrapped an arm around me and brought me with her.
At lunchtime she carried her plate with its sandwich and her saucer with its cup of tea into the living room, where she placed them on the coffee table. She ate bending over awkwardly, while repeatedly wiping her mouth with a napkin.
After lunch she brought her dishes back to the kitchen and returned to sit on the couch. She leaned back and closed her eyes. Slowly her mouth began to open; she covered it with a hand. “Days like this,” she said, “make me sleepy.” She shifted on the couch. Then she stood up, pushed a hand through her hair, and began walking toward the stairway. There she stopped, glanced in my direction, and began climbing the stairs.
I listened to her clumping up the stairs in her fuzzy pink slippers. In the dusky light of the living room a restlessness came over me, and as I rose from the armchair I had the odd sense that she was watching me from the landing, even though she was no longer in view.
When I reached the top of the stairs, no one was there. I could hear the rain against the curtained window at the end of the hall. I made my way past the closed door of the attic to a door that stood partway open, and with a feeling of anxiety I entered Maureen’s room.
The curtain had been drawn. Andrea lay on one side of the bed with an arm over her eyes. I sat down on the other side of the bed and then lay down. I have already mentioned the sensation of danger that flares in us when the distance between us and you grows too close. That sensation was leaping in me as I lay on the bed beside this young woman with the fuzzy pink slippers who lay on her back with an arm flung over her face. But I was aware of a second sensation as well. This might be described as a sensation of disobedience, a rebellion against the very warning that sounded in me like a cry. It’s the feeling of a child who reaches toward the fire and, despite the heat scorching his hand, reaches farther. Was it perhaps only a desire to know? I forced myself closer to the flame, which in this case was also an icy wind. As I crossed the boundary I felt an unraveling, a fierce dissolution. Flesh stops at flesh — but we others, we mingle entirely, we invade and penetrate like rays of light, like dark smoke. I felt myself spreading through her like wind in a room. Who knows how long it lasted? At some point I found myself separate from her. I lay there unmoving. Tears of terror or tenderness lay on her cheek. Danger leaped along my side.