School startled me. It was as if I’d forgotten all about it during that snowy vacation, composed, it seemed to me, of long evenings playing Scrabble with the Hohns under the flame-shaped bulbs and one brilliant blue afternoon in the backyard building two snowmen with Emily: one with a wide-rimmed red hat on its head and a paper rose stuck in its chest, the other with a pipe in its mouth and an empty can of Campbell’s tomato soup on its head. School was a clash of olive-green lockers, a scraping of many desks. Already I was looking forward to summer. I would be sitting near Emily in the warm shade of her backyard, in an aluminum chaise longue with six adjustable positions, reading a library book whose stamped card served as a bookmark, while beside me, on a round white wrought-iron table with an openwork top, a glass of homemade lemonade with a slice of lemon in it stood next to a plate of fresh-baked brownies with walnuts.
One morning toward the end of January I stepped into homeroom and saw that Emily wasn’t there. I could feel disappointment spreading in me like tiredness. And yet, at the very center of my disappointment, I was aware of a prickle of satisfaction — for hadn’t I known she was bound to be absent again? All that day I tried to savor her absence. It would, I told myself, make her presence all the more vivid and dramatic. The next morning, when I entered homeroom, I didn’t allow myself to look in the direction of her desk. Instead, I imagined Emily seated there in her dark green or burnt-orange sweater, with the sleeves pushed halfway up her forearms and the collar of her shirt lying on both sides of her neck. When, overcoming my reluctance, I turned to look at her, I was so shocked by the sight of her empty desk that I glanced down at my watch, as if to see how much time was left before she really wasn’t there.
At home I sat on the wooden steps between the kitchen and the back porch, with the telephone cord squeezed in the closed door, and called Emily. Mrs. Hohn answered. Emily was fine. She’d had to have a little work done on her hand; she was resting now. I wanted to know what kind of work. “Some minor surgery — nothing to worry about, Will. She came through with flying colors. I’m so proud of her. She’s resting now. She ought to be back to school in a couple of days. I’ll tell her you called. She’ll be so pleased.” Only in my room, as I sat bent over my typewriter on its rattly metal table next to my desk, did I understand what I’d wanted to say to Mrs. Hohn. Why didn’t you tell me? Why? In my mind I shouted into the telephone. Anger burned in me like fever.
She was absent the next day, and the next. I called each afternoon; always Mrs. Hohn assured me that Emily was resting. The medication had left her feeling a little woozy, Dr. Morrison had said it might have that effect, she’d be up and about in no time. The next day Emily was absent again. At home I sat on the wooden steps, on the cold porch, with the phone in my lap, and did not call. I understood that Mrs. Hohn would tell me nothing — that my questions disturbed her. I called my friend Danny and invited him over for a game of chess.
The next day she wasn’t at her locker. I was unsurprised — so deeply unsurprised that I felt no disappointment — and as I entered homeroom I glanced wearily in the direction of her desk, which when it was empty always stood out sharply, like a chair in an old View-Master reel. Emily was sitting quietly there. I’d been so certain of the empty desk that for a moment I became uneasy, as if I were in one of those TV dramas where you open a familiar door and enter another world.
She was sitting very still. Her books rested in two neat piles on the rack under her chair, and her forearms lay on the blond writing surface. She was wearing a pleated tan skirt and a dark red wool pullover with the sleeves pushed halfway up her forearms. On her left hand she wore a white glove. The glove was tight at the wrist and then flared out a little. Her gloved hand lay motionless, the fingers curved and slightly spread, facing down. She sat upright and stared straight ahead. The whiteness of the glove, the stillness of her arms, the slight tension I could see in her neck, all this made me think that it must be another girl, who was wearing Emily’s clothes and taking her place in class, so that the other Emily, the one who didn’t wear a white glove, could continue to lead her life elsewhere, for reasons she would later explain to me.
I sat down and looked over at her. She sat to my right and two seats up. She did not glance over to me. Her hair, thick with complicated small waves, concealed most of her face, except for her small rounded chin and the sharpish tip of her nose. I wondered who she was, this statue-girl with her one white glove. I glanced at the clock. I looked down at my own left hand, which had assumed the position of the gloved hand, and glanced back at her. She had turned her head in my direction and was giving me one of her slow smiles — and I felt so filled with gratitude that it was as if I had wronged her and been forgiven.
In the hall I nodded casually toward the glove. “So what’s that all about?”
“It’s nothing,” she said. “Just some minor surgery. No big deal. He wants me to keep it covered.” She shrugged her right shoulder. “Nothing to worry about.”
I waited for her to say more, as though she’d stopped in the middle of a sentence.
“Then I won’t worry about it,” I said, and in my mind I heard my father saying: “Case closed.”
Emily said nothing. I shrugged and said, “Case closed.”
And as I walked home with her that day, wearing thick blue gloves of my own, I didn’t worry about it. I didn’t worry about it when I stepped into the warm yellow kitchen and greeted Mrs. Hohn, who smiled radiantly at me and said, “Welcome back, Will — this place hasn’t been the same without you.” I was back from exile, back in the peaceful place, after Emily’s minor surgery that was already a thing of the past, though recent enough to require a protective covering; there was probably a bandage of some sort underneath, which would have attracted its own kind of unwelcome attention; already the white glove seemed less strange, like a new hairdo that took a bit of getting used to.
Upstairs in Emily’s room I straddled the wooden desk-chair, with my forearms resting on the back, while she lay on the bed against two pillows. Her white-gloved hand rested beside her on the pink spread. I tried not to look at it. She wanted to know everything she’d missed in English and Problems of American Democracy, and I went through the classes day by day, after which I told her about Larry Klein’s latest antic: he had skipped class and was found seated in the empty auditorium, and when he was brought to the principal’s office he said he thought seniors could skip class at their own discretion. “That’s what he said: ‘at their own discretion.’ Sanders just stared.” The glove didn’t move. There was a knock at Emily’s door. Mrs. Hohn entered, with a tray of chocolate chip cookies and two glasses of lemonade. “Now you two just relax and enjoy yourselves,” she said. “And if you want anything, just holler.” At 5:30 I heard the opening of the storm door and the wooden door. The glove shifted slightly. I stood up and gathered my books. “See you tomorrow,” I said, and glanced at the glove, which had moved from the spread to Emily’s lap.
Mr. Hohn drove me home. The streetlights had come on, though there was light left in the sky; on one side of the street it was nearly night, and on the other it was still late afternoon. Through lamp-lit porch windows I could see parts of couches and table lamps and shimmering television screens. Mr. Hohn gripped the wheel with a pair of yellow-brown leather gloves that had a pattern of little holes on the back of each finger. “I was wondering,” I heard myself say, as I stared at the bent fingers, “about Emily’s hand.”
“The operation was successful,” he said, with his eyes on the road, “which is one good thing, let me tell you”—and at the word “operation” I imagined Emily’s hand streaming with blood.