The Effects Of Light Part 7

"So what does it mean?" She couldn't help asking the most basic question.

"I'm afraid you have a rather high estimation of my mental abilities, Myla. To a.s.sume I-"

"Okay, okay," said Myla. "Be humble if you must." She turned back to Samuel. "He's much more of an intellectual than he gives himself credit for. Am I right, Jane?" Jane nodded, smiling. "Tell us, Steve," said Myla. "Tell us what you figured out."

Steve shook his head. "See, here it is, Myla, I don't want you to get your hopes up about all this-"

"Just tell me," said Myla. "I know you understand my father's brain. I know you've picked something up, even just one tiny thing, and that thing's going to help us."

But Steve rumbled, "No no no. I will not let this go on. No misplaced reverence."

"It isn't misplaced, Steve. It's the truth. I came to you. I came here for your help because I knew you'd be the only person who could help me. The only person in the world." Myla put her hand on Steve's, but he didn't reciprocate the touch. Suddenly Myla read him, understood what he'd been trying to say; it was almost as though his frustration was pumping into her through her fingers. Then he spoke.

"The truth, Myles, is that I have no idea what the h.e.l.l your father's talking about. Not a clue." To himself, he muttered, "Dammit." Then he looked down the table and bellowed at Jane. "Impossible to try to get a point across in this family when everyone keeps talking over you. I've been trying to tell you that I looked at the notebook-spent hours with it, in fact-and I'm no closer to understanding it than I was in the first place. So much for my intellectual abilities."

Jane spoke first. "There's no reason to raise your voice. No one's expecting anything of you except your opinion. Right, Myla?"

Myla could feel her face warming. She could feel tears burning her eyes. She nodded her head and managed, "Of course not," even though she knew that what she'd been expecting was answers. She'd expected Steve to tell her what the h.e.l.l the notebook meant. And now she was alone again, alone with her father's indiscernible thoughts and no one to help her interpret them.

Steve understood. "I'm sorry," he said after a while. "I told you, I'm a math guy. I loved your dad like a brother, and I was good at nodding along whenever he'd posit one of his theories, but even then I wasn't privy to his mind." He pulled his napkin from his lap and folded it on the table. Then he pushed back his chair and stood. He looked for a minute as if he had something to say, then he shook his head. He gathered the dishes from the table and walked to the kitchen.

Myla put her head in her hands. She wished she could help her physical response, her sickened disappointment, if only to spare Steve's feelings. But she needed a moment to gather herself before she could go to him and absolve him of his responsibility.

Samuel leaned toward her across the table. "You said the notebook was full of words, like brainstorming?"

Myla had all but forgotten Samuel's presence. She glimpsed him through her fingers, realizing she'd let him in on something dangerous. She'd proved his point for him: not only would he believe her father was a bad man, he'd also think him an indecipherable scholar. Myla couldn't speak. She nodded.

"Could I see it?" he asked.

Jane cleared her throat. "I'll get it from Steve," she said, excusing herself from the table, while Myla hid herself from everyone's eyes. He was in this far. He might as well rip her father's notebook apart as well.

Fifteen minutes later, they were all gathered on the couch in the living room. Samuel had called them to him, and now he was flipping through the notebook with rapid excitement. "Your father was doing some pretty sophisticated thinking about response theory. I'm almost sure of it."

"Response theory?" Jane asked.

"See, I've been forcing David Freedberg's The Power of Images down my students' throats, which, as we all know, doesn't guarantee that I know anything about his thesis. But his basic a.s.sumption is that image alone exerts enormous power over the human psyche. Even if we're not aware of the mechanism." Samuel paused, then looked at Myla and smiled. "Myla sat in on one of the lectures when we were talking about this idea. Basically, it posits that certain physical responses, uncontrollable by the mind, are unleashed when humans see certain things depicted."

"Okay." Steve smirked. "And in plain English?"

Samuel smiled. "This isn't a revolutionary theory; in fact, people have believed it since the first man drew a painting on a cave wall. Here's an example: we know that when people eat off a yellow plate, they eat faster and they eat more. The conclusion we draw is-"

Jane spoke. "That yellow does something to human brains to make them think they're hungry."

"Right. Now, the thing is that even in the last ten years" -here Samuel hesitated-"since David's death, scientists have been hooking people up to electrodes and seeing what part of the brain responds to yellow. But it looks to me like there isn't much science in his notes. The words he's written down: Jesus in the frescoes, oh, and Vermeer over here, well, they seem to be highlighting an artistic point of view. Maybe he's trying to get at specific ways in art that response theory works."

Myla was nodding. "Welcome to Myla's Childhood 101: An Overview of David Wolfe's Scintillating Bedtime Stories." Everyone laughed at the touch of sarcasm in her voice, and Myla felt herself flush with possibility. She put her hand on Steve's shoulder.

Samuel was eager to continue. "So it seems your father was suggesting that just looking at a picture can make people believe or act in specific ways that they'd never consciously admit."

Steve turned to Myla, patting the hand she'd placed on him. "Nabbed a good one, I see. One who can help you in your research."

"In my research?" said Myla. "I thought this was our project."

Steve shook his head. "Some help I've been. Okay, yes, I'll get you into the library-the woman at the front desk owes me a favor, and no, Jane, not that kind of favor-but after that, you're on your own. Except that you've got Samuel here."

Samuel coughed.

"Samuel," Steve beamed, "you should know, before you tackle this project, the exact pedigree of the brain you'll be trying to unearth. Myla's dad loved art. It was the guiding philosophy of his life. David believed art was the most powerful force on earth. He once told me that image was the closest we could get to G.o.d." This surprised Myla. She'd never once heard David mention G.o.d. Steve continued, "So I guess the good news here, if we choose to trust this Samuel person, is that the notebook may be the precursor to a bigger enterprise. Does that seem in the realm of possibility?"

"Sure," said Samuel. "Are we looking for something bigger?"

"My father may have written a book," explained Myla. "We all expected to find it somewhere among his things, but it never emerged."

Steve continued Myla's thought. "Perhaps this notebook encodes a shorthand for bigger ideas filed away somewhere. Imagine that each word is a tab on a file folder. Each word calls up a whole file of ideas that David held in his head. So what we've got to do is figure out what those files consisted of."

But Myla wanted more. "What about the diagrams in the notebook? The brainstorming that it looks like he's doing?"

Samuel was all professor: "They read to me like different ways of getting at the same question. The problem is, I don't know what that question is, so it's hard to figure out how David's trying to answer it."

Steve was getting excited too. "Here's the deal, though: no one thought about art the way your father did. According to Samuel, the notebook gives us hints about what David's connecting to what. And maybe, probably, those things are so unusual that we'll detect a pattern. And perhaps within that pattern, we'll find ourselves an argument." He touched Myla on the arm. "Your father was a professor, sure, and there were lots of things about him that made him good at that-diligence, love of the job, intelligence. But there was something else in him, something huge, that made it fun to hear him talk about art. Art was his breath.

"One day-I'll never forget-I came home from school and you guys were over at the house. It was the mid-eighties, so you girls must have been about fifteen and ten. You were upstairs with Emma. Jane came and met me at the front door, looking white as a sheet, and said, 'I think you'd better go outside.' I found David on the back porch with a gla.s.s of lemonade. And he looked devastated. I'd seen him looking like that only once before. When your mother died.

"I'm scared, so I pull up a chair. I ask what's happened, and he looks at me and says, 'Didn't you hear? Didn't you hear the news?' I shake my head no and prepare for the worst. He says, 'Rembrandt's Danae. Some man in Russia attacked her. With a knife. With acid.'

"It was a painting, Myla. A painting. And you'd have thought that someone he loved had died. I admired him for that personal love. Nothing mathematic ever made me feel that way."

It was delicious to hear Steve speak about her father like this, especially after seeing him so devastated, so distant, earlier in the evening. "That's the kind of man your father was," he went on. "He was extraordinary. And it's too bad you have only me to tell you that. Because you're a h.e.l.l of a lot more like him than you think."

Myla was whirling with possibility, watching Steve believe again in David's words. She was shocked by Samuel's presence, amazed by his sudden insertion into the very heart of her family. Amazed that he'd helped. She was elated, rising, in the promise of what he was offering: an interpretation of the notebook that had, on first glance, been full of foreign concepts.

But she felt the need to tell Steve and Jane one more thing. "We'd stopped talking, you know. At the end." She paused. "David and I." Myla looked up, and all eyes were on her. "I was so angry, so angry. And of course I thought both of us were doomed to live forever." Her eyes were dry.

"Sweetheart, your dad understood. Trust me." Steve spoke with authority. "I'm a dad. Silence is hard, but it's still a kind of speech. And now you have this." Steve touched the notebook. "He's still talking."

I ASK EMMA, "REMEMBER how I used to paint you?"

She looks up from her drawing. "No," she says.

"How I used to paint your face."

That makes her laugh. She asks me, "What would you paint?"

"Oh, dog faces, or rabbit faces. I used face paint after I got in trouble once for using markers."

That makes Emma laugh more. Then I say, "So I've been thinking. We were little kids then, and we did one kind of painting. But now I'm eight. I want to try a new kind of painting. I used to paint you, but now I want to paint you."

She tries to figure out the riddle, and then I see her understand. "Oooooh," she says. "You want to paint some pictures of me."

"Exactly," I say. "Artists need practice, and it's important to study the figure."

She asks me, "How do you know all that stuff?"

I tell her, "I don't know. I just do. Anyway. Would you be my model? You'll have to hold still for long periods."

She nods.

And then I say, "And would you mind keeping it a secret?"

She nods, but she asks me why.

I have to think about exactly the right way to explain. "Everyone around us knows more about art than we do. So maybe if we do pictures by ourselves, we'll get to be the experts for once."

The next day I try to paint her with watercolors, but the paper gets too soggy and the colors run into each other. Her face and her hair turn into one big brown blob and I don't even get to the rest of her body.

It's frustrating, because I had such a clear picture in my mind about what the painting would look like. And I can't do it. Emma's patient but I'm not. After a couple of tries, I tell her thank you and give her a piece of chocolate left over from Halloween.

"Don't worry," she tells me, "I bet this is how a lot of artists start out."

proof the younger girl is older now, but you recognize her. Long legs, long hair, but no hips yet, no b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She's nude, and she stands on the far edge of a small lake. On either side of her, pine stumps stud the ground, and you imagine splinters knifing through her bare feet as she climbed to her spot. Perhaps her shoes are hidden somewhere, behind a stump. Or perhaps she swam, but no, her hair is dry, so she must have walked from here, where the camera is, all the way around the lip of the lake, wading some of the way. Now she is far.

Her white body stands out against the dark lines of trees behind her. Her hands are open, solid; she spreads them wide, as if she is blessing the day. Her eyes are closed. A smile plays on her face, and it suggests to you that she knows something special, a secret. The sky behind her, beyond the forest, is open, painted with the whisper of clouds.

At the back of the picture, you see a dark smudge. At first you think it must be a mistake, but when you look closely, you make out looming clouds, a storm moving in. She doesn't see it. It will come from behind her. From your vantage point, nothing acknowledges the wind about to whip up, the air that will fill with wet. And yet you know it is coming.

How will she get back?

chapter ten.

myla came down the stairs with bedding in her arms. Through the open window, cool darkness filtered into the living room. Samuel was sitting on the couch with his hands folded in his lap. He looked up when he saw her descending. "I was wondering what happened to you guys," he said as he glanced at her armload.

"The linen closet's a mess," she said.

"Oh." Samuel stood, confusion on his face. "Well, I just wanted to say good night before I headed out-"

"These are for you," said Myla as she handed him the bedding.

Samuel took the blankets and sheets from her arms, but was looking at her face, shaking his head. "I'm going to find a hotel. I don't think I-"

"You don't know these people. You eat dinner at their house, you have to sleep here. Their rules, not mine." She tried to keep the warmth from her voice as she said: "They think we're friends."

Samuel raised an eyebrow. "And are we?"

Myla sat down on the couch. "You helped me out tonight. You helped us all out. And honestly, I was surprised. I didn't expect you to show up on my doorstep claiming you could help and then actually be able to help me. So that counts for something."

"On the other hand . . ." Samuel began for her.

"There is no other hand. A week ago I thought we were friends. This morning I thought we were enemies. Now you're here. Now I don't know what we are."

"Fair enough," said Samuel.

"And just how long are you planning on staying, anyway?" Myla caught herself. "That sounded ruder than I meant it. I just mean, how did you leave the college before the semester ended?"

Samuel smiled. "You're not the only one who can just pick up and leave dramatically. No, I'm glad you asked. Two words: 'family emergency.' I've got to call in and let them know how my 'grandmother' is faring." Myla felt a set of worried questions about to spill out, but Samuel spoke before she could voice them. "No pressure," he said. "No expectations. It was my chance and I took it. I won't regret that, no matter what happens."

"Okay. So." Myla stood as a pulse of exhaustion s.h.i.+vered up her body. She scanned the pile of bedding now pressed against Samuel's chest. "Will you be warm enough?"

Samuel laughed. "It's May. You've handed me, like, ten blankets. I think I'll be fine."

"Okay," said Myla.

"Okay," said Samuel. Myla turned and walked to the stairs, but Samuel's voice stopped her. "I want to apologize."

"For what?"

"For what I said in my lecture. I wish I could take it back."

Myla put her hand on the banister. It was smooth and cool. She closed her eyes and waited for the right words. "I learned a long time ago that no one can be responsible for anyone else's beliefs. You believe what you believe. You know what you know. The best any of us can do is to examine our own prejudices, our own a.s.sumptions, and correct ourselves when we're wrong." She smiled at him, then looked up the staircase. She was weary. She put one foot on the next step.

"Sleep well," Samuel said, after a moment. Myla climbed the carpeted stairs one at a time, into the light of the upstairs hallway.

Now Myla was lying in bed, and she could feel herself drifting, heavy, into sleep. She imagined Samuel curled almost directly beneath her, one floor down, and in her drowsiness, she remembered his breath, warm and frequent on her back. She remembered it, and it comforted her. She knew she'd dream.

She was in a dark room, alone. There was a television on the opposite wall, and though it provided both blinking light and image, no sound emerged. She knew, from entering this dream before, that she had no control over the volume. She stepped forward until the television came into focus, and watched what she knew would be showing. It was an interview, an interview that had never happened except in Myla's nightmares. Pru sat in an armrested chair, wearing a collared dress with a white cardigan. Her feet barely reached the edge of the cus.h.i.+on. She was tiny, unable to span the distance to the floor.

Myla kept stepping closer and closer to the screen, trying to read Pru's lips. The camera was now focused in close-up on her head; it switched quickly to the woman interviewing her, coiffed and red-faced. Myla knew the interviewer was starting to ask questions Pru wouldn't know how to answer, and in her mind, Myla tried to send Pru messages: "Say you don't know. Say you don't want to answer that. Say they should ask Ruth."

Even though Myla knew she had no power in this dream, no way to communicate anything to her sister, she still tried and tried, tried so hard it hurt her brain. She could see Pru s.h.i.+fting uncomfortably; she read her little sister's body language loud and clear. There was nothing to be done but watch. That was when Myla would start to panic, would cough and punch. She'd yell at the television, try to get Pru to hear her. Meanwhile, the smell of pine would fill her lungs, taking away her air. She'd scream herself awake.

This time the end was different. The end was cut short. Instead of awakening in a room alone, having tried everything she could, she felt her mind being pulled back into her body. Someone was shaking her before she even started fighting hard. Someone was calling her back.

Myla opened her eyes and Samuel was over her. "It's a dream," he said. "A nightmare. Wake up. It's over."

She was confused. How was Samuel here, in her bedroom? She sat up in bed and noticed a shadow at the door.

Samuel turned and said, "She's awake now."

Myla heard Jane's croaky nighttime voice: "Do you need anything?"

Myla couldn't remember how to speak. Samuel said over his shoulder, "Go back to sleep. I'll get her whatever she wants."

Jane yawned. "Good night." Her shadow faded down the hallway, and her bedroom door shut.