Not that the world was changeless around me. Fall was upon us, the trees — but what has that to do with the likes of us? We don’t shiver, we don’t require scarves and overcoats — those are for you. Nor does our melancholy have need of autumnal decors. Autumn, then: a fact, no more. What was changing was Maureen. Her waiting had become more charged with anticipation — I could feel it in the atmosphere. I could see it as well, for she now had a habit of changing into more elaborate clothes. One night I found her in a flouncy black dress that swooped down to her ankles, with a lavender shawl flung around her shoulders and big-loop earrings dangling like door knockers. Another night she wore a pleated mint-green skirt that came halfway down her thighs and a white V-neck sweater tucked into a wide red belt. Her hairstyles kept pace with her costumes: one night a frothy mass of curls, the next a tight updo with a French twist in back. Sometimes she talked in a rush, bursting into laughter and throwing her hands around; at others she sat silently and stared at me with an intensity that made me look away. Although she continued to honor my desire for silence, she began contriving ways to draw me into her talk. “I’m just going to ask you a question, and you just nod yes or no. Okay? Here goes. Do you find me a little — you know, attractive? I mean: this much?” Here she held up a hand, with the index finger one-half inch from the thumb. I wanted to tell her that, had we met at some other time, in some other universe — but what was the point? Her ardor made me restless. Did she really expect something of me? Was I supposed to take her out to dinner at the new bistro on South Main? I imagined the two of us sitting across from each other at a candle-lit corner table while people rose with their mouths open, their napkins falling, their wineglasses lying sideways on the red-stained white tablecloths. Even better: she would ask me to meet her mother. “Mother, this is Paul. Paul, say hello to Mother.” I was elaborating this picture when I became aware of a change in the atmosphere. The air had become denser and was pressing against me. I saw that she was leaning toward me, slowly reaching out a hand. It’s difficult for me to explain the sensation I then felt. It was a sensation of extreme alertness and above all of danger — as if something monstrous had entered the room.
I am not timid by nature and have never been afraid of the bodies of women. This fear was of a different kind — a warning that had flared up in every particle of my being. It wasn’t a physical fear. It was the fear of a child alone in the dark.
I stood up. I stepped back. I fled.
At that time I still had much to learn about the relations it is possible for us to have with your kind.
She understood; she didn’t attempt to touch me again. On her face, the next night, I saw only tiredness and gratitude — gratitude that I hadn’t taken flight forever. For my part, I wondered with irritation why I’d come back. My position toward her was becoming impossible. What was I doing there? What was I doing anywhere? Banished from her kind, distant from my own, I was nothing — nothing at all. Even that wasn’t true. If only it were! How I longed for the simplicity, the purity, of nothingness! Instead I was a something — a restlessness blown by a wind. I had sought her out for reasons still not clear to me, thereby awakening in her an absurd passion. I should have left that house, fled from that town, that solar system. But where was I to go? Besides, I was weak — we are all weak, we others. The weak are dangerous. Down with us.
During this time I hadn’t neglected the gatherings. They had about them a touch of the Quaker meeting and a touch of the secret society. It was still necessary for me to overcome an instinct of aversion, but nevertheless I found my way up to those attics and sought out the empty spaces. Some held forth inanely and at wearisome length; a few struck at the center of things. I paid attention whenever the figure in the pullover rose from wherever he was sitting. He spoke more than once of the phenomenon of what he called “presence”—the showing forth of one of our kind to one of yours. The precise conditions of its operation remained, he said, unknown to us. It was clear enough that in order for the phenomenon to take place, a receptive temperament was necessary, though what constituted receptivity was far less clear. Some of us believed that only certain human beings possessed the temperament that permitted presence to operate, while others argued that any temperament was receptive under favorable conditions, even if it remained uncertain what those favorable conditions might be. But it wasn’t only a question of the receiver. We too had a necessary part to play. We must, if he might put it that way, be receptive to being received. We must, in some sense, desire to be seen. It was true that there were cases in which we were seen unawares; such instances were uncommon, though not rare, and were not fully understood. There were also many cases in which the conditions appeared to be right, but presence was not achieved.
Such questions fascinate us, though they’re of no particular use. I knew at any rate that I had become entirely visible to Maureen, with whom I continued my nightly visits. She kept her distance, a little too pointedly, as if to assure me, reproachfully, that I was safe with her. I accepted the reproach and was grateful in my own way that she continued to receive me. One night I sensed that she was distressed about something. Her hands kept fluttering up to her face, where she would touch her eyeglasses or push back strands of hair. Had I upset her again? There was no mystery: she poured out her trouble. Her niece was coming to stay with her for a week — a whole week. She’d be arriving tomorrow. Andrea visited from time to time, and they got on really really well, but now was definitely not a good time, as I could surely understand. She and Andrea always sat up talking — but now she couldn’t bear the thought of sacrificing our evenings, since of course it was out of the question that Andrea should know anything about me. The only possible solution — she’d thought of many impossible ones — was for me to listen for Andrea’s return to the guest room, after which I would come down and visit. She would stay up late, as late as necessary, so that at least she didn’t feel she’d banished me — to say nothing about her own feelings of exile and the resentment she was bound to feel against Andrea, who to be fair was completely innocent and had problems of her own. She was the older of her sister’s two daughters, and from the beginning she’d been a disappointment to her mother — a plain-faced little girl, given to fits of sullenness, withdrawn even as a child, which wasn’t to say that she wasn’t a wonderful girl with a tender heart, but her mother saw only the outside of things — and you could imagine what happened when Sandra came along, Sandra with those big blue eyes and blond curls, happy, lovely, laughing Sandra, who looked like a cheerleader even at the age of four. Oh, but that was nasty; that was cruel; Sandra was all right, really; it was her mother who spoiled her rotten, bought the beautiful clothes that, on Andrea, always seemed a little out of place. It was only natural that Aunt Maureen should have shown an interest in poor little Andy, whom her mother was all too willing to allow to be taken off her hands. And so a bond had grown up between them, the childless auntie and the unhappy niece, each with a sister so popular that there had been nothing left for anyone else. She’d seen her niece through the throes, and brother did she mean throes, of adolescence, when Andrea had begun therapy, and she’d been there for her on Christmas holidays, when sexy Sandra and the boyfriend of the moment came rolling into town — and even now, at the age of twenty-six, holding down a decent job at the ad agency and paying her own rent, Andrea would drop in on her old Auntie Maur from time to time, especially when vacations loomed with their promise of empty days. So here she was — arriving tomorrow. There was no way out of it.