Seraphina(24)

My hands dart over the page, a slender brush in each, one for the dots, one for the strokes and arcs, winding in and around each other as if I were making bobbin lace, not writing music. The effect is calligraphic, and highly satisfying. Outside my open window a lark sings, and my left hand—always the more mischievous of the two—takes a moment to jot down the notes in counterpoint to the main melody (with but a little alteration of the rhythm). That is serendipitous. So many things are, when we bother to look.

I know his tread, know it like my own pulse—better, perhaps, because my pulse has been doing unaccountable things recently in response to that footfall. Right now it beats seven against his three. That is too fast. Dr. Caramus was unconcerned when I told him; he did not believe me when I said I did not understand it.

I am on my feet, not knowing how, almost before the knock sounds at my door. My hands are inky, and my voice unreliable as I cry, “Come in!”


Claude lets himself in, his face that shade of sulky that it turns when he is trying not to get his hopes up. I snatch up a rag to wipe my hands and cover my confusion. Is this funny or frightening? I had no idea the two could be so close.

“I heard you wanted to see me,” he mumbles.

“Yes. I’m sorry, I … I should have answered your letters. I have had to think very carefully on this.”

“On whether you would help me write these songs?” he says, and there is something childish in his voice. Petulant. Which is irritating, on the one hand, and endearing on the other. He is transparently simple, this one, and unexpectedly complicated. And radiantly beautiful.

I hand him the page and watch his face soften into wonder. My hands go straight to my chest, as if they could squeeze my heart and slow it. He hands the song back to me and his voice quavers: “Would you sing it?”

I would rather play it for him on flute, but he clearly wishes to hear the words and tune together:

“My faith should not come easily;





There is no Heaven without pain.





My days should never flutter past





Unnoted, nor my past remain





Beyond its span of usefulness;





Let me not hold to grief.





My hope, my light, my Saint is love;





In love my one belief.”





He stares at me during the last lines and I fear my voice will falter. As it is, I have barely enough breath left in me for “belief.” I inhale, but the air seems to catch on its way in, like the shudder of breath after tears.

This emotion is maddening in its complexity. It’s like spotting difficult prey on the ground after a long day of fruitless hunting—there’s the exhilaration of an exciting chase mixed with the fear that it may all end in nothing, but there is never any question that you will try, for your very existence hangs on it. I am reminded also of the first time I dove from a sea cliff, keeping my wings folded until the last possible second, then scudding over the cresting waves, just out of reach of their foamy fingers, laughing at the danger, terrified by how close I had come.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” I say. “I understand now that I made you very sad. That was never my intention.”

Claude rubs the back of his neck and wrinkles his nose, about to tell me he was never sad. I believe this is called bravado and is not limited to lawyers, or even men, although that combination makes it almost unavoidable. Normally I could shrug at this, but today I need him to be truthful. Today is the beginning and the end. I reach across and take his hand.

That jolt we both feel—for I see it hit him too—is like electricity, but that is a metaphor I will never be able to give him, a concept that cannot be introduced. One of far too many, alas, but I am hoping—no, gambling, betting my very life—that in the end it will not matter, that this, this thing between us, this mystery, will be enough.

“Linn,” he says hoarsely, his jaw quivering just a little. He is frightened, too. Why should this be frightening? What purpose does that serve? “Linn,” he begins again, “when I believed you never wanted to see me again, I felt I’d stepped off a ledge and onto empty air: the ground was hurtling toward me at an alarming rate.”

Metaphor is awkward, but emotion, by its nature, leaves you no more scalable approach. I have not adequately mastered the art, but his comparisons always move me with their precision. I want to cry Eureka!, but I settle for “I felt that too! That’s it exactly!”

My other hand wants to touch his face, and I let it. He leans into it like a cat.

And that is when I know that I will kiss him, and the very thought of it fills me with … well, it’s as if I have just solved Skivver’s predictive equations or, even better, as if I have intuited the One Equation, seen the numbers behind the moon and stars, behind mountains and history, art and death and yearning, as if my comprehension is large enough that it can encompass universes, from the beginning to the end of time.

And I have to laugh a little at this conceit, because I do not even understand the present, and there is nothing in the world beyond this kiss.


The memory ended, ejecting me not into the garden but into real life: cold, hard floor; rumpled chemise; bitter taste in my mouth; alone. I was woozy, disoriented, and … and ick. That was my father she’d been kissing.