The Effects of Light

by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

  But then she saw the stately Georgian buildings, peeking out from behind the trees. The lawns, green-felt heavens for the college dogs playing Frisbee with their owners. The library, a stone tribute to Gothic architecture. She could dissect each spot, remember it, and in doing so, make the going back manageable. She was walking into a past time, but she was braced, and so it didn’t tilt her. If anything, being on campus called up more immediate feelings of guilt about leaving Mark and the other college three thousand miles behind. Mark was probably sick with worry. She’d sent both letters Express Mail from the post office, to get them out of her hands, to get them to their destinations quickly so Samuel would know she wanted nothing to do with him, and so Mark would know, finally, who she was. As far as she was concerned, after a cross-country flight with the letters in her bag, they couldn’t get back to their designated recipients fast enough. Those slim envelopes weighed too much for her, the information in them too much to handle alone. She couldn’t bear to think of Samuel. She felt ashamed for running away from Mark. The sooner he got his letter, the closer he’d be to understanding what had happened, and the closer she’d be to getting him back. For in all this new strangeness, she wanted to call Mark. She needed him to root her in the world. She dreaded their coming conversation—he’d be justified in feeling terribly hurt—but that didn’t keep her from longing for his presence. Especially now that this mysterious envelope was waiting like a patient but needy child in her passenger seat.

  The grass here at the college glowed nearly neon. David had always advised, “Don’t roll around on that grass. Full of chemicals,” and so, naturally, she’d rolled down each hill on campus when he wasn’t looking. Even pulled grass stems out of the ground and chewed on their sweet white ends.

  Now she turned off the idling car in the turnaround and reached for the envelope beside her. It slid across the seat, under her hand, and she gathered up its weight and guessed at all the possibilities. A diary? Whose? The envelope flap looked fused to the envelope, sealed, as Berger had explained, for just around thirteen years. The truth was, there was no proof of its being sealed that long, but she chose to believe Berger and found herself wondering whether David had breathed the air inside it, whether he’d sealed it in there before his heart attack, then given it to Ruth. Why Ruth would have a diary of David’s was a mystery Myla couldn’t dare consider.

  Myla held the envelope up to the light and made out the clear shape of a spiral notebook, which she’d gathered anyway simply from feeling with academic fingers. The researcher in her implored her to wait longer, to see what else she could discover from the primary source of the envelope itself, but curiosity was killing her. So she opened it.

  Old air pocked out into her face. She pushed away her impulse toward sentimentality and reached into the envelope, curving open the top to see inside. She latched her fingers over the rim of the notebook and pulled it out to her, into the light. It was red, obviously well loved, with scratches and bends and dents in the cardboard cover. Thinner than it should be, which meant pages had been torn out. Nothing written on either cover. She had to open it, had to see what waited inside. She slipped her nail under the front cover and flipped it open.

  There was blank space for most of the page. Then, written in the middle, in small brown letters, the word Lines. It was unmistakably her father’s handwriting. Myla caught her breath and turned the page.

  Blank space, but this time three words in the middle. Linked by lines: Lines—Thought—Time.

  Next page, those same words in the middle, surrounded by one circle, and then branching out from that circle, more lines to more words, making a sun of language: Industrial Revolution—death of the imagination—Vermeer—Jesus in the frescoes—elimination of self—van Gogh’s paint globs—photography as realism—the burst of words stopped Myla. She was trying to make out what this was. It looked like brainstorming, the kind she’d been taught in fifth-grade history, complete with thought bubbles on the blackboard. There was no question David had written page after page, but why on earth would Ruth have had this? And if this notebook had, as Marcus Berger claimed, been sealed thirteen years ago, that would have been just around the time Ruth went missing. It hurt Myla’s brain too much to think about. She flipped through the rest of the book, turning page after page of circles upon circles, words upon words, until she reached a section that seemed to be all about photography.

  Technical terms abounded here, words like aperture and foreshortening. Written in the middle of the page was Camera Obscura, and branching out from it were the words invention of the real—Vermeer—Dutch masters, etc.—photography and realism. She flipped to the surrounding pages, but this was the only one about photography. Myla was surprised it held no mention of Ruth’s photographs.

  Myla sighed, looking at her father’s handwriting. She wanted to know what it all meant. She wanted to know now.

  MYLA AND I MAKE UP A GAME. It starts simple enough—I run to the table and touch it, then jump on the couch before Myla catches me. But she doesn’t catch me with her body; she catches me with words. First we play that Myla has to say a rhyme like “Peter Piper” or “She sells seashells.” She has to say the rhyme really fast, and meanwhile I’m running. I try to get to the couch before Myla finishes the rhyme. Her words race my legs.

  When I get too fast at touching the table, Myla says we have to make the running distance farther, and even though I know she’s mad because I keep winning, I let her change the rules because it does get a little boring to win over and over again. So this time I have to run around the couch once, then touch the table, then sit down. Pretty soon she’s saying the rhymes so fast that her words start to beat my legs. She decides we should go outside and make the rhododendron bush and the big tree the distance to run between. Also, she has a new idea about the words. No more rhymes, she says. “You’re five and three quarters, Pru. You should really be practicing your reading on a daily basis.” And she goes to the two-book dictionary with the tiny doll-size words in it and the magnifying glass. She gets the book with the end of the alphabet. She says it’ll have all the hard X and Y words.

  The night is cool and smells like grass. In another week we’ll have to put on sweaters. But for now we can run in the same clothes we threw on that morning. It’s a day when you never even bother with shoes.

  First it’s my turn to run. I go hold on to the smooth rhododendron leaves, and Myla puts her hand up in the air. When she drops it, I run hard to the tree bark, scratch my face against it. Then she drops her hand again and I run back into the night, toward where I think the bush might be. She squints with the magnifying glass as she sits in the light from the porch and tells into the night one definition for each round. One word and its meanings for each time her hand goes down into the night to send me out into it.

  We know it’s a stupid game. We know that we have to play this in the dark because the other kids in the neighborhood want to ride bikes and play Horse in the basketball hoops their dads hung on their garage doors. We’d never do this in the day when someone could catch us. But this night smells so sweet, like you could run in it forever and your legs would never get tired. You’d never even get cold. Myla’s voice matches the air, and even when we know the game is over and we’re tired of it, even when I come sit next to her, she keeps reading. She flips the book, points to a word, reads it. The meanings don’t mean anything to us. They only make marks in the air, obovoid and obrize and obrotund flouncing themselves into the air above us and disappearing into the blue-dark sky.

  Then Myla says, “Ooooh, here’s one. This one’s dirty, Pru.” Her voice gets secret, as if David might be listening to us, even though we know he hasn’t looked up from his desk all day. She says, “I’ll read the word and you sound it out after me. Put your finger under the word to help you.” She takes my pointer finger and puts it under the word, but my hand jabs a shadow over everything. She moves my hand away. “Forget it,” she says. “Pretend your finger’s under it. Okay,
ready to read?” I nod yes. So we begin.

  “Obscene,” says Myla. So I say it after her. Then she points to the tiny words after it, in cursive and with all kinds of marks and numbers. “Don’t worry about that stuff,” she says. “It’s just there to tell you where the word came from. No one pays attention to the origins anyway. Okay. Here’s the fun part. Now you get to see everything it means. Read the number.”

  I read, “One.”

  “Good. Offensive . . .” She points to me.

  I read, “. . . to the . . .”

  “. . . senses . . .”

  “. . . or to taste or . . .”

  “. . . refinement; disgusting, repulsive, filthy, foul, abominable, loathsome. Now somewhat ‘arch.’ I don’t know what ‘arch’ means.” And when Myla says all these words, she puts on her lady-in-waiting voice, fancy.

  Then I read, “Two.”

  She looks at me. “I think these words are too hard for you, Pru. How about I just read them and you follow along with your eyes?” She knows I don’t want this. She knows I want to read them too. “Fine,” she says. And then quieter she says, “We’ll be out here all night,” but she lets us keep reading. “Where were we?”

  “Two,” I tell her.

  “Right. Offensive . . .”

  “. . . to . . .”

  “. . . modesty or decency; expressing . . .”

  “. . . or . . .”

  “. . . suggesting unchaste or lustful ideas: impure, indecent, lewd. Obscene parts, privy parts.” Myla is giggling. She whispers, “You know, private parts, Pru?” and I get what she’s saying, and I understand why it should be funny, but it doesn’t make me want to laugh. I turn the page and go to definition number three.

  I say, “Three.” Myla’s still laughing, so I look at the first part of the first word and see that I can read it. “Ill,” I read.

  “Good,” says Myla. “Like when you’re sick.”

  “I know,” I say, “I’m not stupid.” But I can’t read the second part of the word no matter how hard I look at it. Finally I have to look at Myla so she’ll help me.

  “Ill-omened,” she says, “inauspicious. That means like a bad sign, like something that shouldn’t be the way it is.” She shrugs. “I don’t know, I can’t explain. Inauspicious just means what it means, you know?”

  But that’s not why I’m looking at her the way I am. I’m trying to work my mind around all the meanings. Why would a word that’s only about people’s bodies and their private parts also be about spirits and omens and bad signs? Like if you have a body and it does the things it’s made to do, then the future can only be bad?

  Myla folds the dictionary under her arm. She’s bored and already wondering if there’s anything good on TV. So I can’t say these thoughts to her. But I know something new is in me, a question, a wondering, a thought.

  chapter six

  the thrill of discovery at the college had worn off. Now Myla was flopped on the bed she’d rented in the downtown Hilton. She’d placed David’s notebook squarely on the bedside table an hour before and was still staring at it. She’d flipped through the notebook over and over, but as time passed, no hidden knowledge had revealed itself. In fact, looking at page after page had merely confirmed that her father had written down hundreds of words and connected them with lines. She didn’t understand the connections, didn’t know why van Gogh was linked with perspective, couldn’t fathom what Jesus had to do with Vermeer.

  Myla groaned. She was frustrated. Frustrated if this was all there was left. Frustrated that she’d never learn who’d given it to her. Had David set this up himself, years ago, knowing he was sick? She knew there’d been a book, what they’d all called The Book, The Masterpiece, the one he pounded onto paper every night, words flying from his hands into his typewriter. Back then she’d found him grown up and messy. She’d been irritated by the slabs of paper scattered all around the house. But now she was concerned for him, and concerned for herself. She looked at the options methodically. There were two.

  The first went something like this: the notebook had nothing to do with The Book. This possibility left her with nothing. There’d been no sign of a manuscript, no notes, no acknowledgment of anything book-related in the house when she’d ransacked it after his death. She realized now that she’d come back here because, at some level, she’d allowed herself to believe Berger knew something about this final piece. Of course she’d wanted Ruth, but more than that, she’d wanted her father’s voice. As the years had passed, no matter how hard she’d pretended otherwise, she’d longed for her father’s words and mind. If this notebook had nothing to do with The Book, that meant there was likely nothing left of it in the world.

  But there was a second, equally frightening option. What if this notebook did have to do with The Book or, worse yet, was all there was left of it? That meant she, Myla Rose Wolfe, was the only link between David’s mind and the world. And then: what if she simply couldn’t decode her father’s message? If she were unable to do so, that would mean she’d completely lost what she once had of her father’s mind. She’d be at an ending point practically before she began.

  What to do? There were two people who’d welcome her into their home, who might well have some answers. She told herself she hadn’t contacted them already because she didn’t want to bother them, but her silence owed itself to more than that. She felt a certain shame. Thirteen years. She’d kept herself away from them for thirteen years. Emma must be twenty-three. For a long time Myla had held firmly on to strings of residual anger, but over time, another sentiment had replaced the rage. Simply put, she was embarrassed. Deeply. And she wanted to sort that out before she saw any of them. Especially sweet little Em.

  Myla wanted to be able to talk to Mark about all this, to express her fear that she’d lost the pathway of her father’s thinking, to mention her shame at not having contacted Steve and Jane and Emma, to describe the spongy, lung-filling air of Portland. She wanted, even believed she needed, Mark to help her navigate through this new lexicon, offering alternatives, nodding conspiratorially, challenging her with questions, as if he’d always known about these worries and this world. But she knew Mark had been Kate Scott’s partner in crime in a world he’d recognized. Perhaps the revelation that she was someone else, that she’d hidden her “real” past, had lied to him, would mean he wouldn’t, couldn’t, know her anymore. In any case, she couldn’t call him yet, since her letter had been sent only this afternoon, and he wouldn’t be checking his mailbox until after tomorrow’s classes. She’d call him later, when he was informed, and then she’d just have to see what happened next.

  And now, without a phone call to make, or any discernible answers in David’s notebook, Myla closed her eyes. She accepted, grudgingly, that there was nothing else to do but sleep, and dreams came fast.

  She knew Pru was waiting. They were in the forest and Myla was feeling brave. She knew all she had to do was find Pru. At first this seemed possible, even likely. She could hear Pru crying, crying the way she’d cried when she was new and their mother had still been alive, and she sounded close. But soon the whimpering began to move farther and farther away. Myla started to run, moving fast, pushing through the ever thickening brambles, but she was having a hard time breathing. The air was filling with the smell of pine, and what had started as subtle and sweet, a hint of forest in the air, soon turned pungent, sickening. It was asthma in her chest, this air, like rocks heavying her lungs, and even though she tried to run faster, she knew she’d have to stop running soon.

  That was the worst part of this dream. She’d had it for years, and the worst part, even beyond hearing her baby sister’s cries, or the discomfort of the air, or the smell that made her want to retch, was the moment when she had to decide to stop. Then she’d know it was over. Then she’d lose Pru’s sound, lose any sense of where she was standing. She’d be alone. The air would clear. And then she’d wake up.

  JANE IS GOING ON ERRANDS SO she drops Emma over t
o play with us. The new babysitter is here and David isn’t coming home for another two hours. After Jane leaves, Emma and I start playing Dogs, but then we see Myla running fast down the driveway. We follow her and see that Ruth just pulled up.

  “Hi guys,” says Ruth, and it’s like there’s a sparkle in the air because it’s so much fun that she just came over without calling first.

  Myla asks her, “Can’t you stay? David’s coming home at six, and you could send home the stinky babysitter. Please? Anyway, no one else in sixth grade needs someone to take care of them. I’m eleven, Ruth. It’s embarrassing. It’s these babies who need someone to watch them.”

  Ruth gets out of the car. She says, “That’s beside the point,” and smiles at us. She never treats me like being six years old is a bad thing. Then she looks at Emma. “What do you think?” she asks her.

  “Stay and play,” says Emma.

  So that’s what Ruth does. We take her film coolers and the camera out of the car so they can stay safe in the house. The new babysitter rides her bike away and then we sit on the front porch and eat fruit pops. Myla tells us a story about this goofball, Pete, in her class, and when she talks she stands up and acts it out for us. She makes me stand up and I pretend to be her and she pretends to be Pete and makes monkey noises and then Emma gets to be the teacher writing on the chalkboard and then turning around really slow to glare in Pete’s direction. It makes Ruth laugh so we act it out again, but it isn’t as funny the second time.

  Then we’re kind of bored. Myla asks Ruth where she was coming from, and Ruth tells us she was at a horse barn taking some more pictures of horses and their riders. “Racehorse riders are called jockeys,” she says, and I like that word because it makes me think of jumping. Ruth promises she’ll take us to the stables sometime.

  Then Myla asks, “Did you use up all your film?”