Once in a while I will take the train to our old house in Connecticut. I’ll sit by the lake my brother loved and slowly lower my legs into the chilly water until they become blue and blurry, detached and impossible to touch.
I am alone. I have not seen or heard anything about Marta since I left her and college so abruptly last winter in Poughkeepsie. Occasionally I will smoke a cigarette or play a Billie Holiday record. Occasionally I w ill pick up the phone in an attempt to find out w hat happened to her, but I guess I am afraid to know, for I have never once dialed the numbers that could answer my question.
I spend a good deal of time reading: classics, detective novels, romance novels, science journals — anything. I like biographies; it brings me some comfort to know that no life is simple. I am now reading the biographies of Colette, Grace Kelly, and Nabokov. My grandfather gave us many books about the Indians, which I have recently begun reading again; they keep me near to him. I read American history, too, as if all the clues to these terrible disappearances are to be found in that complex, heartbreaking story. I love poetry, of course: Rilke, whom my mother loved so much; Neruda, Dickinson, Whitman, Lowell, Bishop. I can bear to read almost any book except lo Vanessa.
The lake, despite a deteriorating pH level and a few dead fish along the shore, is still crystal blue. The fish out of water are purple and blue, armored in death, protected somehow.
The last time I saw Fletcher he was dressed in a charcoal-gray suit and following a fat man down a street in Connecticut.
I go to the movies a lot. New York is the city of movies: Bunuel, Godard, Fassbinder. Father always loved the movies. His Oldsmobile was located a few weeks ago in a parking lot outside New York harbor. I went down to identify it like a body. A brochure picturing icy fjords was found on the front seat. I imagine he sails toward some neutral country, Sweden or Norway, where they are just about to enter their season of darkness. Anyone vv ho knows him would hope that a Mozart quintet or a Vivaldi concerto still runs through his head.
Fletcher is in South Dakota where I hope he has found some peace.
“All my letters to Fletcher have been returned, Jack.” I can’t help thinking that he sees them all, even touches them, without speaking — I always think of him as not speaking anymore. He points a straight arm away from his body and the letters are sent back to me. But maybe he’s forgotten how to read altogether. Maybe he’s left the English language behind completely. “I’m so worried about him.”
“Shh,” Jack says, “not here.” He takes my hand. “Look,” he says. “Here there are only you and I. We can do it,” he whispers. “We can make the world over. Just the two of us. Right here. Right now.”
It looks huge to him. He might not call it an iceberg, but simply ice. The whole world is shifting beneath him. He can’t explain why anymore. He just notices.
In the world we try to make together there is a classroom, and in our classroom games Jack is always strict.
“You’re late,” he says, looking at me disapprovingly. “I will not stand for tardiness in my class. Do you understand that, Miss Turin?” He is wearing a suit and tie. He puts on his wire-rimmed glasses.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize I was so late.”
He checks his watch. “It’s 3:12.” He grimaces.
I walk into the room. He has two bright lights set up. The desk is covered with books. I sit in the straight-backed chair he has positioned for me.
“My homework,” I say, handing him papers. He frowns, takes them from me, and places them on the desk.
He removes his suit jacket and rolls up his sleeves. I try to picture the strange geometry of our lives, the unlikely way we have intersected with each other, the theorems that have made this possible. But I am not that good a student.
“Page fifty-six,” he says.
He draws three triangles on the blackboard. “Do the proof for problem one.”
He knows I will need help, that I cannot retain even the most simple formula in my head. How do you find right angles again? He will begin to scold me soon. He will tell me over and over what the hypotenuse is and why it is so important.
“Why is it so important, anyway?” I beat him to it. He frowns. These are only the basics, he makes that clear; we cannot continue until we know these. There will be no way to move on without them, no way to proceed.
“You’ll be stuck here forever,” he says. “Is that what you want?”
I shake my head no.
“Then concentrate,” he says. “Concentrate. Work.”
He understands the importance of working hard — the importance of discipline. It is his message, his gift, the thing that he knows; he wants to give it to me.
“OK,” he says, and he goes over the formulas again and again until I know them, until I am exhausted. I put my head on the desk. I move my chair closer to his.
“Chaos is subdued here,” he says, as he draws shapes on the board. “Copy them down,” he says quietly. Burdens lift, things simplify, reduce. “We can block out the world outside the classroom,” he says, sitting down at his desk, tired, too.
“I love you the distance of the focal length squared,” I tell him. When I reach for him under the desk he pulls away. He removes his glasses.
“Miss Turin,” he says, “I never make love with my students. It’s a rule.”
I reach for him again, put my hand on his thigh. “Prove it,” I say.
He stands up. I fidget with his belt. He steps back. “Prove it again,” I say, unbuttoning my schoolgirl blouse.
He unties my ponytail. “It’s a rule,” he says. “We must be serious.”
What he is teaching me is that what we must do will not be easy, and we will have to work hard to get there. We must be diligent, we must not be afraid to work, sacrifice. It will take the greatest effort even to make the slightest progress.
“Is this a metaphor for something, Jack?”
“This is math class,” he says.
He buttons up my blouse, buckles his belt. I am his student today and the rules of the classroom must be respected, the lessons of the classroom must be learned. He’s not ready to give up on me so soon.
“Now for a quiz,” he says, drawing yet another shape on the board. He trembles, I think. We must be strong, discipline ourselves. These are only exercises, quizzes — yet preparation, nonetheless, for the real tests still to come.
“You must not be afraid, Vanessa. It means us no harm. It’s even more beautiful than a swan.”
I shivered. Great sadness filled the room. Her hand trembled on my forehead.
“You must fly with it — wherever it asks you.
“Sometimes,” she said, holding my hand, “it will take you on its luminous back to places that seem bad — dark, cold, lonely places. But you must not be afraid. It is all for a reason. You must believe that you will come back.”