The Effects Of Light Part 2

She had twenty-five minutes before boarding, time enough to worry whether she'd done the right thing, specifically in terms of Mark. She'd contemplated asking him to come with her, to leave school behind, to join her in her quest, but she hadn't known where to begin. He didn't even know who she was. She wanted to simply skip to Portland, to see him there, where everything began. See him as herself, and then he would understand.

Instead of offering him an explanation, she'd simply left. She hadn't even said goodbye, and she knew this would hurt him. So she took the two letters out of her bag to read them once again. She'd mail them on the other side, in the other airport, so Mark could have a postmark that would prove she'd gone where she said she'd gone. Maybe that would put his mind at ease.

Samuel-

Did you have any idea who I really am? If you did, if what we shared was just part of some sick game you were playing, then you aren't even worth wasting these words on. If you didn't, then my G.o.d, you are the stunningly common combination of intellectual sn.o.b and weak scholar. I thought I admired your ideas, but now I can see they're based not on research or on reason but on whim and theoretical notions of how people "are." How's this: instead of expounding on other people's lives, try getting one of your own. Climb down from your ivory tower, and you'll find it's a lot less cut-and-dried for the rest of us.

She put the letter back in its envelope and back into her bag, then turned to the tender letter, the one she'd tried to make as uncowardly as possible.

Dear Mark,

My name is not Kate Scott. My name is Myla Rose Wolfe. I am the elder sister of the Ruth Handel girls, and if you don't understand what that means, ask Samuel. I'm sure he'll be pleased to explain his version of the whole story.

I was eighteen when my family died: my sister and my father, within months of each other. I had two choices: die myself or change who I was. I can't explain it any better than that-I know, me, at a loss for words-but that's the best I can do. I transferred schools and forced my way through academia. I changed my name along the way to the most innocuous, unremarkable one I could find.

I've realized recently that this plan isn't going to work anymore. I'm broken. Until I figure out how I'm broken, I can't be a friend to anyone. So I'm going home, Mark. To Portland, Oregon.

I'm sorry for the mess I've made. I hope you can forgive all my lying. You're all the family I have. That doesn't mean you owe me anything; I just wanted you to know.

Don't worry.

Love, Myla They were calling Myla's row as she folded the letter into thirds, stuck it back into the envelope for the last time, and licked the flap shut. She was crying, but the tears were caused by the simplest thing. She'd written her name. Her real name. Myla. And now she was going home.

WE SING PAUL SIMON WITH David, we sing Odetta, the Supremes, Gilbert and Sullivan, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong. We sing songs people think I shouldn't know. David pops the needle down on each record and Myla knows all the words. She knows all the harmonies, and she and David teach me to sing the straight tune, the regular part, so she can make chords and play with each song. I never get to sing harmony, except when Myla is at soccer or we've dropped her off at a friend's and it's just me and David in the car, then he lets me sing harmony. Then he says, "Pru, you take it!" and the first thing out of my mouth is singing.

Bedtime is best, though. Usually we'll put on a record and dance around the house, was.h.i.+ng dishes and sweeping up the floor in the kitchen when it's covered with onion paper and potato peels and pieces of zucchini. I have a little red broom that my mother had when she was a little girl. We keep it in the closet next to the fridge. The record will be on loud, and it will already be nine or nine-thirty even and then David will look at us and say, "It's nine? Why didn't you girls remind me about bed?" and that makes us laugh. He picks me up and helps me put the broom away. Even he knows the bedtime comment is a joke, even he knows all the pretend he makes about being a dad kind of man is silly. He's a dad in all the ways that matter, even if they're not about bedtime.

Then we bundle ourselves upstairs. We take a bath or we just brush our teeth and take our time peeing. Myla always wants us to take as much time as we can before he pokes his head in and says, "You two, B-E-D. Bed. Now." Then we know we've got to scramble into bed if we want a story.

We have a real girl's room. It's the one piece of the house where everything looks the same. All blue and matching, with stars and moons. Myla tells me it's the room our mother made for her. When I was small, this made me feel left out because it seemed our mother hadn't made anything for just me. But then Myla explained I was too little to ever be just me when our mother knew me. When our mother died, I was just a baby. I was still a piece of her. And then after our mother died, I became a piece of Myla, because Myla knew I was still too small to be a whole thing on my own. So sharing Myla's room is Myla sharing a part of our mom with me. I guess I understand that, but it's still hard sometimes to be four and three quarters and not have anything all to myself that I can keep a secret from Myla.

David comes in and sits on the edge of our bed. He tucks the sheets around us and always pretends he's going to leave us there in the dark. But after he says good night, one of us says, "Tell us another one." So he'll breathe quiet and sometimes he'll pretend he doesn't want to tell us. But he always does. And then the stories paint our room for sleeping.

"Once upon a time, there were two friends who decided to live and work together in a yellow house in Arles, France. Their names were Vincent and Paul. Vincent wasn't a very happy man, but he was thrilled when Paul agreed to move into the vacation house for nine weeks in the fall of 1888. They'd work side by side, stretching the boundaries of the work they'd done before this. The work these men did was-"

"Painting!" says Myla. Each night one of us gets to say this, because each night David makes the stories about people who make pictures.

"Exactly," says David, and smiles at us for knowing the answer. "The work these men did was painting. Each day they took long walks in the countryside surrounding Arles, and one evening they noticed a vineyard after a rainfall, radiant with color: reds, yellows, purples. They decided to give themselves an a.s.signment: each would create a painting based on his memory of that vineyard in that exact moment when they'd walked by.

"We can only imagine what it must have been like for them, working in the same house, using their memories and imaginations to make that vineyard real. Perhaps the next morning Vincent happened by Paul's studio to find Paul already laying a base coat, already entranced in what he was about to create. Perhaps that afternoon, an idea came to Vincent, and he too began to work in earnest.

"Vincent and Paul became engrossed in their pictures, and worked from the moment the first light appeared, until just after night had fallen. They probably even forgot to eat. At last came the day when they were both finished, when they'd show each other what they'd created. I imagine they did it in the morning, when the light was warm and soft and at an angle. They flipped their paintings around at the same moment, released them into the world simultaneously. Then Vincent saw what Paul had painted, and Paul saw what Vincent had painted.

"Paul had painted the vineyard in the background. In the front of the picture, the foreground, was a girl, crying. She was so very sad that it was nearly unbearable for Vincent to look at. Paul had called his painting Grape Harvest at Arles: Human Misery. The painting was dark. There was none of the joy that Vincent had seen on the day he walked by the vineyard.

"Vincent's painting, on the other hand, depicted women tending the field, working with their hands to gather fruit. Sunlight bathed the workers. Vincent called his painting The Red Vineyard. The painting was bright. There was none of the sadness that Paul had seen on the day he walked by the vineyard.

"And that, for me, is the best part of this story: both men painted what they sensed. Neither painted what his eyes saw; instead, the paintings were guided by artistic vision. And because both of their minds saw the world so differently, both painted entirely different works of art. That's what made them great painters. That element of listening to their artistic selves is what makes both of their bodies of work compelling, even invigorating, today."

David stops talking and our three breathings fill the room. Then he says, "Does anyone want to guess who these men were?"

Myla whispers in my ear, "Pru-y, you know the first one, don't you? Think. What last name goes well with Vincent?" So in my head I go over some last names I might have heard with Vincent, and then all of a sudden I know, just like Vincent knew his picture.

"Van Gogh," I say.

And David says, "Good." But we can't remember the second one and he says, "You've probably heard less about him, so I'll tell you. It's Gauguin. Paul Gauguin. Tomorrow I'll show you some of his work. But now it's time for bed."

Then I ask, "What happened after that, after the paintings were made?"

"Well," says David, "it becomes a sad story. Paul Gauguin moved soon after, and Vincent van Gogh went crazy. He died. But we have his pictures to remember the way he saw the world when he was happy and working." David leans over and kisses us on the cheeks. Then, like always, he lies down on the floor next to our bed and holds my hand. "Just a little nap," he says. He'll be downstairs flipping through papers all night. For now he's just for us.

ON THE AIRPLANE, SOARING above the Midwest, Myla's brain quickened with dreams. She was too tired to keep them at bay any longer, and settled into an unusually delicious sleep underneath a blue flannel blanket, her head tucked against the body of the plane. The first dream was warm and gentle. All she knew was that there was someone else beside her, pressing against her, keeping her safe. There was orange light all around them, and though she couldn't see the other person's face, she knew he was a friend, knew he'd touch her and soothe her and keep her from loneliness.

The seatbelt light dinged Myla back into semiconsciousness as a flight attendant's voice warned of coming turbulence. Myla tried to will herself back to the place she'd been, to the soft body of the unknown other, but she took a wrong turn. She was asleep again, but this time the territory was much more familiar. She clenched her stomach in her sleep, as always.

She was near the ocean. It was in front of her. She could hear the tide moving up and down the sh.o.r.eline, and she was running toward it, sure she'd be able to reach it at any moment. She ran because in front of her, just out of sight, just out of reach, were Pru and David. There was always one sand dune between her and them, and she could catch pieces of their voices, of their laughter, lilting back over the sand as she sprinted to catch up. She knew they'd have to stop soon, because the ocean was just up ahead, just out of sight. It was only a question of catching up. Then she realized darkness was falling, that soon she wouldn't be able to rely on their footprints to guide her. So she called their names. She stopped at the top of the next dune and called to them, her hands around her mouth, listening for a response. And then, somehow, she just knew: they were gone. They'd left her. They'd simply disappeared. She started to panic. She told herself that all she needed to do was get to the ocean and she'd find them. But when she listened for the ocean, it too was gone. There was nothing to run toward. There was nothing to want. All around her there was only sand, miles and miles of sand, and the darkness was coming fast.

AT THE END OF THE SEMESTERS, David invites his cla.s.ses over for dinner. It's a nice thing he does for them, without their parents near them, and Myla and I are in charge of putting out the food on the tables and making sure each bowl has a serving spoon. It's called a potluck, but sometimes David calls it a groaning board because the table is like a board that's groaning with all the heavy food.

This time it's spring. We set up the table inside, but everyone takes their paper plates and napkins and goes and sits in the backyard. The students smell our rosebushes and sit in the folding chairs that Myla and I put into circles before they came over.

The cla.s.s is big, all freshmen. I get confused by what order the years go in, but "freshman" is easy to remember. I memorized the name of this cla.s.s because Myla taught me how to sound it out, off David's syllabus, the one that's been sitting by our telephone all year. This is the Freshman 101-102 Survey of Art History, and the students have been together all year so they're probably all friends. David invites all the other teachers who helped him to come too, so Mr. Chang brings his son, Frankie, to hang out with Myla and me. Frankie's all right, but he wants to hold his dad's hand the whole time. So I walk around and watch the students' eyes, see the way they look at me and want to be my friend. Other teachers come, all the boring men who have offices on David's hall. And then a lady with funny hair and Ruth too.

I don't even notice that Myla is alone with Ruth and talking to her until one of the girl students says to me, "It must be cool to grow up on campus."

I say, "Well, we don't live on campus, you know."

And she nods and says, "I mean, hanging out on campus. Getting to know all the profs." She pops a potato chip into her mouth and points at Ruth and Myla standing by the roses. "Getting to know them like they're real people." Then her friend comes up and doesn't really know how to talk to kids. So I leave them. I go to Ruth and Myla's conversation.

When I get there, they stop talking. Myla smiles at me like she and I aren't the same right now. Ruth says, "Hi, Prudence."

"You can call me Pru," I say.

"Hi, Pru," she says. "We were just talking about those pictures I took of you two." The pictures seem so long ago that it takes me time to put myself back in that day.

Myla says, "You know, Prudence, the pictures in Ruth's studio?" I glare at her. She shouldn't call me Prudence. I can tell she's only using the word "studio" to show off.

"I know," I say. I put my hand on a rose leaf and wait to see if the edges will slice.

"Well," says Ruth, "I don't know how you'd feel about this, and I need to talk to your dad about it, but I was thinking, if you guys want to, we could take more pictures sometime." She pauses. "You see, for a long time I've been taking pictures of horses! Imagine that!"

"Horses are beautiful," I say.

Ruth looks at me. "Yes, they are." She smiles. "But honestly, I'd also like to take pictures of you."

"Cool," says Myla.

"Yeah," I say, "that would be fun, right?"

"Well," Ruth says, "we'll have to see. With you two, I'd like to do a mix of portraiture and more figurative work-I'm sorry, I must be talking over your heads a little-"

But Myla is fast. "We know what those words mean," she says. "Our dad uses those words all the time. 'Portraiture'-that's your portrait. 'Figurative'-that's more about the body." And Myla takes my hand and holds it hard. She looks at me and smiles. "Let us know, Ruth," she says, almost like a mom. "We'd love to work with you sometime." And then David calls us in for cake.

proof two girls stand side by side. The older one is taller, and her frame fills the right side of the photograph. Her shoulders are square to the camera, her chin level, her eyes piercing. Her hair is pulled back, but messily, and loose strands frame her face. She's wearing a sundress, and the strap over her left shoulder has slipped, so it rests loosely around her forearm. The other strap, on her other shoulder, is taut.

The younger girl is shorter, but it's obvious she doesn't want to be. Her neck and chin are stretching into the air, and she's managing a sort of smile in the midst of all that pus.h.i.+ng. Her hands rest on her hips, giving her further purchase with which to extend up into air. She's nude with the exception of a pair of white cotton underpants. She is also soaking wet. Her hair, loose and dripping, sends rivulets of water down her stomach. Each water bullet leaves a pathway behind it, a traced history of its travel down her. Her clavicle and navel bud with wetness. Her underwear is nearly transparent, showing the vague outline of her lower belly and her pubis. In milky patches, the underwear sticks to the contours of her skin.

You notice the obvious juxtapositions: older to younger, taller to shorter, dry to wet, dressed to naked. And then you look up. Above the younger girl's head is sky, and in the midst of it, the outline of an unplanned bird, caught in midflight. It soars above her, in that s.p.a.ce she cannot yet reach but is desperate to achieve. You see it, but she does not.

chapter four.

the sky was clear around Myla's plane as it swooped over the southeastern slice of Was.h.i.+ngton State. Oregon spread out and out on her left. Only a few clouds ranged over the dry gra.s.sy spread of land. Everything was brilliant from above, a sun-bright afternoon of straw-colored land stretching into more straightness. And then, just when the gra.s.ses seemed to have pledged a monotonous eternal owners.h.i.+p of the land, touches of green began to show, so slowly that at first they seemed imaginary. As the land came closer and closer, green gave way to lush, dark wetness.

Then Myla realized she hadn't been looking straight out the window, only down. Because when her eyes met with the outside, she caught Mount Hood out her window, gleaming and snow-covered. So close was the airplane to the mountain's point that Myla believed she could touch it; in fact, it seemed as if only the window was keeping her from forcing her arm into the atmosphere and raking her fingers down the mountain's white face. The sun gleaming off it made her want to sneeze.

She craned her neck to look down and caught a glimpse of the blue band of the Columbia ribboning against the blanket of green. Things were getting closer and closer every minute. The Columbia curled and waved and caught sharp points of light that made squinting the only way to see. Soon she caught the gleam of Multnomah Falls, a little wave to her of white in the now nearly black darkness of Pacific rainforest. She had to keep her hand over her mouth as they skipped over Crown Point. She could even make out the little visitors' center. It was too far away to make out people.

As the plane continued to descend, she noticed the highway, then the cars. Far off, she made out Portland. Sinking into the Portland afternoon, she could already antic.i.p.ate the warm, moist air springing around her once she was outside. She wasn't even here on the plane, she thought. She was there, down below, waiting for her body to join her. She knew now that she hadn't ever been anywhere else. Her mind had been here all along. If only her body could be convinced. If only her body were willing.

EVEN THOUGH EMMA IS ONLY two and a half and I'm five and a half, Emma's my best friend. If sisters were allowed to be best friends, then maybe I'd say Myla was, but sisters don't count, and it's easier to be friends with someone three years younger than you than with someone five years older. Especially when the older person is Myla. I think Emma is my best friend because I've known her since she was a baby, and that means we can trust each other. Also, I can boss her around the way Myla bosses me.

Emma's favorite game to play is Dogs, and we play it under the rhododendron bush in my front yard. If we're over at her house, we make a fort in her room, under the old crib where she doesn't sleep anymore. She's always the baby dog, and she's also in charge of making some of the stuffed animals talk. I'm the mother dog and I take care of all of them.

One time Myla comes up to the rhododendron bush. I can tell she's watching us, but I pretend to ignore her. Finally she says, "Emma's only two, you know. You can't expect her to do everything in the game."

Emma starts barking at her, and it's funny because Myla doesn't pay attention to how smart Emma is. Emma just keeps barking until Myla rolls her eyes and goes and sits down next to the babysitter, Leslie. Myla's bored, I can tell, and bossing us seems like fun. But Emma doesn't let her win, like I sometimes do, and I like that. Emma guards our house, just like a dog would, just like I'd tell her to if she didn't know how. We might be three years apart, but we fit. And secretly I wonder if Myla's kind of jealous. There just weren't as many kids around when she was little like us.

Another time when I'm over at Emma's house, we decide that we should make Emma look more like a dog. So I take markers and put a nose and whiskers on her face.

Then Myla comes upstairs. As soon as she sees Emma, she says, "You two are going to be in big trouble. Jane is going to freak out when she sees what you did to Emma."

But then when Jane comes upstairs, she just laughs. I can see that Myla is crossing her arms in the corner of the room and watching to see us get it, but Jane's not really that mad. She says to me, "You're so artistic, Pru. Look at our little puppy. But next time, why don't you draw on paper instead?"

Then Jane picks up Emma and holds her on her hip, and Emma nuzzles like a real puppy into Jane's neck. I watch them and I want something, but it isn't Myla and it isn't Jane and it isn't Ruth or even David. I know it's silly to think I want my mother-because I barely met her anyway, so how can I remember what she felt like-but I think that might be it. I miss her, and she was barely there in the first place. Missing her makes a hollow place inside, one I can't ever reach by myself.

MYLA'S RENTAL CAR WAS s.h.i.+NY, red, and small. The woman behind the counter asked if she needed any maps, and Myla hesitated, then said no. It had been thirteen years, but she knew exactly how to get around. The air around her jumped with possibility.

First of all, things smelled better than they did back east. Walking to her car, she could almost taste the wet in the air, the way she might hear a beehive buzzing with sound. That was the way the earth smelled, full and busy. There was no rain in the sky now, but it was always lurking, as clouds swifted over the airport, moving from the ocean inland, over Myla and over the city. She'd forgotten how quickly the weather changed here; hail one minute, brilliant suns.h.i.+ne the next. Or this. Quick-moving clouds.

The trees planted in the median of the parking lot were newly, scandalously green, a green that seemed plastic. But here they were, leaf buds fluorescent in their greenness. She pinched a new green curl between her fingers, and the moist rankled her taste buds as she unlocked the car door.

Once she was on the road, it was easy to hurtle toward the city, easy to see the metaphor of moving toward one's future. She listened to the hum of tires as she turned from one highway to the next, moving into the center of what was once her life. She'd left the East Coast as Kate Scott, but she was here as Myla Wolfe. She felt the three thousand miles between her and the Kate Scott she'd left behind growing larger and larger with each inch she covered. She was moving toward hope, and the journey was quick.

Myla couldn't stop the cry, the stab of wonder, when the road curled up a small hill, then evened out so it paralleled the Willamette River, with Portland laid out just on the other side. The buildings were beautiful and wet and glistening. This city was more alive than she'd imagined. It was smaller too, and she unrolled her window and let the fresh spring wind whip in to wet her hair and lips and hands. A stream of cool water jetted up from her tires, rooting up the damp left in the macadam by an early-morning rainstorm. She was suspended on the bridge now, driving toward the city, crossing the river. She relished this second, and it was the first honest thing she'd relished in an uncountably long time. It was delicious, this moment, a perfection. Going and not yet there. Things were getting bigger, but she wanted to hold on to now, on to this moment of plans, possibilities, unexplored ideas. Now there was a goal. She was driving into this place, she was pus.h.i.+ng into it, she would bore into it, find what she'd buried, and carry it out into day.

WORKING WITH RUTH IS WORK, there's no question about that. Even when we're over at her house just to have dinner or pick up an article David wants to read, being with Ruth is still a working thing. But it's funny too, because in the beginning we just hang out. First Myla asks Ruth about her boyfriends. I think it's boring, but Myla always asks questions like: "So how old were you when you met John?" And then that starts it off. The two of them in the kitchen brus.h.i.+ng each other's hair, and talking about dates and kissing and holding hands. I usually color in the living room, where I can sit on my knees at the coffee table and be far away from their talking.

The good part is that sometimes Ruth talks about making pictures. She shows us things. Like when she let us look at the ground gla.s.s on the back of the eight-by-ten camera, where the pictures show up upside down. I saw the pictures right away, all clear. An upside-down chair and an upside-down Myla sitting in the chair. When Myla looked-after stomping around all rude because she wanted a turn-at first she couldn't see anything because she was looking through the gla.s.s, not at it. Ruth had to get under the dark-cloth with her and show her how to see. And when she finally saw me in the ground gla.s.s, she acted like it was no big deal. I knew she was mad because she needed help to see and I didn't. But what I wanted was to be like Ruth, who told us that even though it's supposed to be easier to make a good picture if everything is upside down because then you just see lines and shapes and colors, she can't do that anymore. She's been looking at the ground gla.s.s for so long that everything on it is turned right side up.

When it's a shoot, it's hard work but it's fun. Myla calls Ruth "The Queen of Inspiration" because that's what Ruth becomes. We'll be there in the afternoon, sitting and painting, drinking tea, listening to Mozart's Requiem. Then all of a sudden Ruth's eyes work a different way. She'll be looking at my arm one minute, and I'll know she's thinking it's just my arm, and then the next minute I can see her looking at the shape of it, how it moves, what muscles in it work what way. And then she says something like, "Pru. There. Don't move." And she goes and gets a camera, sometimes the thirty-five-millimeter, or if the light is right, it'll be the eight-by-ten. Then it's like her mind has power over her whole body, and she won't get tired. She'll work until there's no more film. She'll work until there's no more light. She'll work until Myla or I finally open our mouths and say we're hungry or bored.

I like it. I like sitting there before the shoot, telling jokes. I like it when David leaves us there so he can get some work done. Ruth lets us eat whatever we want, even if it's chocolate at eight in the morning. She says it's her job to spoil us. But she doesn't spoil us either. Because she opens us up to how big her work is, to how tired it can make you, to how good it feels to have it and the missing of it when she has to put it away for the night.

After the afternoons, she'll make us big pasta dinners with pesto and garlic bread. David comes back from the college and has a gla.s.s of merlot. They talk and talk until Myla and I crawl out to the living room and lie on Ruth's pillows on the floor. And then the next thing I know, David is heaving me onto his shoulder and saying, "School tomorrow." And then I watch Ruth over his shoulder as he carries me to the car. School tomorrow means five days until the next time we come, and sometimes that seems forever.

chapter five.

myla believed that if she didn't go directly to the source, she'd find herself floating. At least someone had called her here, and even though she'd never met him, and didn't know for certain what he held for her, she knew this lawyer, this Marcus Berger, was the place to start. So she placed a call and was surprised when Marcus Berger answered the phone, surprised at his straining vocal quality, so like a teenage boy's, surprised at his lack of surprise when she announced she was in town. He suggested she come immediately.

The office was in a neighborhood Myla had always remembered as poised on the cusp of being cool-cool, that is, in the eyes of daughters of college professors and the girl students who took care of them. So it wasn't such a surprise when, searching in vain for free parking, she witnessed flocks of yuppies with their strollers and cell phones herding through store after store. Stores with Italian names and designer dresses, stores with thirty-five-dollar candles in the windows, stores selling angular, uncomfortable-looking shoes ("Two pairs for $99!," although Myla did have to remind herself that this was considered cheap these days). Was it inappropriate to feel old at the age of thirty-one? The drive up and down Northwest Twenty-third was slow. None of the pedestrians seemed to know what a crosswalk was, so she read the names of the shops: Urbino Home, Slang Bette, Mama Ro's. Like a poem.

She found a side street with parking, a minor miracle, and backed into a s.p.a.ce. On the opposite side of the street, nestled between two ostentatious Victorian houses patinaed with color like well-manicured toenails, she saw what looked like a halfway house. Stretching around the two monstrosities were large, white, disinfected porches, porches that disregarded dirt and the outdoors in general. The halfway house, on the other hand, was small and dark, and Myla imagined it was filled with flora and fauna. It was tropical in its promise. Two old men in flannel s.h.i.+rts smoked on the stoop.

Up until this moment, she hadn't really allowed herself to contemplate the reason Marcus Berger had contacted her; or perhaps more precisely, she hadn't let herself imagine the ident.i.ty of his client. But now Myla realized that all along she'd a.s.sumed the client was Ruth. As far as Myla knew, no one had seen or heard from Ruth Handel in thirteen years. But now, here, it was thrilling to imagine that Ruth had orchestrated this. That she was the "unnamed client" who'd provided the flight coupons and summoned Myla to this meeting. It would mean she was alive. That she'd survived. It would mean Myla would get to see her.

Still, if Ruth were to present herself alive, there'd be all sorts of problems. Issues needing to be addressed, conversations. If Ruth were sitting upstairs . . .

Myla opened the car door then and let the Portland of her childhood rush in to greet her. It still seeped. The glorious rain, a permanent wet that thoroughly soaked into hedges and tires and sidewalk cracks, was strangely surrept.i.tious: when she leaned down to press her hand against the sidewalk, her palm came up dry. And yet moss edged every asphalt and concrete crack, tingeing the world with green. This was seepage. It was an old wet, deeper than the surface. It made you moist inside your heart, made your insides warm as rotting, mottled wood.

It started to drizzle, and she looked up and saw tiny bits of wet gleaming down on her. She felt them pattering on her hand, weightless, translucent. It could rain here for days, and you'd never feel the wet as something distinct from the whole vast dampness of the world. You were never that separated from the ground and its constant pull on sky. The sky spilled and made it all-the ground, the city, the people-deeper and greener with each pa.s.sing day. She felt like a little girl again.