The Effects Of Light Part 8

"G.o.d," said Myla, coming into herself. "I must have been making a lot of noise."

"Yeah," said Samuel. "You were screaming." He touched her hair. "Are you okay?" he asked, then took his hand away, as if aware that his touch might alarm her.

"Oh, sure," said Myla. "I'm sorry I woke you guys up. I have these dreams sometimes. And they're always pretty dark. But it's gotten to a place where I can control them." She shrugged. "Or at least I thought I could."

"You never once woke me when-" Samuel caught himself. "How do the students react?"

Myla laughed, embarra.s.sed. "Everyone makes such crazy sounds in the dorm that a little screaming doesn't show up on the radar." Then she asked, "How's the couch?"

"Comfortable." He stood up. "I guess I'll be going. Unless you need something."

"No."

Myla lay back and listened to Samuel's thuds down the stairs. As she closed her eyes, she realized her face was warm, but not from her nightmare. It was Samuel's mention of the many nights they'd spent together. It was the sweet memory those words held of all the hours she'd slept in his bed, when his body had kept her from her terrors. And now he was below her, one floor below. She listened for him, but he was back in bed. The house was quiet. She slept.

PRETTY SOON I FORGET ABOUT the pictures. It gets cold, but at first it's beautiful-yellow leaves make our street round with fake sunlight. Walking home from school is walking through a tunnel of gold. Even when it's raining, which is all the time. Then the leaves paste themselves on the streets and make trenches of brown for every step I take. This lasts for months. I have to wear boots big enough to reach my knees. We lean the boots, green and heavy, upside down over the heating vent every night before I go to sleep. In the morning the soft flannel in them is burning hot. Burning hot all the way to school.

Myla decides she wants her own room. She says my things get in her way, and she kicks them when she yells down the stairs at David. "I'm a teenager now. Thirteen? Doesn't that mean anything to you? None of the rest of my friends have to share a bed with an eight-year-old!" She says she needs her privacy, and when we're alone, she mouths "Sorry." But she isn't, not really, and I don't blame her. I don't understand her enough to blame her. I want to be with her, but she doesn't want to be near me. So I let her move.

David lets me have a bunk bed, even though it's only me who sleeps in my room. I tell him I want to sleep in a place where you have to use a ladder to get up, and he says that sounds like a pretty good reason. When we go to pick it out, Myla tries out the beds with me and tells me she's jealous because David never let her get a brand-new bed when she was eight. I pick out a s.h.i.+ny red one, with metal bars and legs. You can even take the bottom bunk out and make a desk s.p.a.ce underneath it. Myla says that when I'm older, that kind of study s.p.a.ce will be invaluable.

Then Myla moves down the hall to the guest room. That's what we call it, but it's never been a place for guests. More like David's boxes, and even boxes of our mother's books. David says he'll move them down to the bas.e.m.e.nt, but Myla likes them there. She acts like she doesn't care but I know her better. I think David does too. He moves them into a corner and puts a sheet over them.

The first night without her is silent. I don't get scared, but that's the closest feeling I know to what it's like. It makes no sense to me that her breath is gone. It makes no sense that she wants to sleep down the hall, when I'm so close. So I get out of bed and peek out my doorway. The hall is dark, and her door is closed. Light slices out from under her door. I squat down on the floor and wait. I wait for the light to turn out, and it takes a long time. When it does, when the faint click comes from her room, I know it's time. I go back to my bed, fumble my feet over the cold steps of the ladder, and go up into the darkness. I climb into bed and wait for it to warm up. Only my heat now. Only my breath.

SAMUEL SNEAKED A CUP OF coffee into the library by holding it inside his briefcase. Myla watched him carefully balancing the bag as he walked through the building's entrance. Sipping coffee in a library seemed an extravagance, one she'd never considered. She admired the way he persevered, risking spillage and burns, not to mention the possibility of scolding librarians, just because he loved coffee. She wondered if she needed any single thing that strongly.

Steve escorted them to a wide oak table where they spread out their notebooks. He placed David's notebook squarely in the middle, patting it as he set it down. Myla felt a wave of fear that leaving it out on the table risked theft, but she knew this was paranoid. This notebook was her treasure, but to anyone else, it was nothing special. Steve showed them around, giving a mini-tour of the reference desk and the stacks and the reserve room. In the time since she'd last been here, the whole place had been renovated; things seemed slightly dislocated, though familiar.

Steve reminded them that he was doing the best he could, "But keep in mind, I'm no professor emeritus in art history. h.e.l.l, I was never emeritus in mathematics either, but who's counting?" He suggested they start by looking at something concrete. So when they headed off into the stacks and returned with armfuls of large books, he rumbled around, examining each, then thrust one heavy tome into Myla's arms and took one for himself. He let Samuel choose his own. Steve flipped through her book, pointed to a chapter, and said, "Start here." His finger jabbed the page. They settled opposite each other, Steve smiling from finally being able to help her. They read in silence.

The book Steve had given Myla was about Rembrandt. At first Myla had no idea why he had chosen Rembrandt specifically-as far as she knew, none of the brainstorming circles in the notebook had anything to do with the Dutch painter. And the chapter Steve had given her was relatively mundane, a re-creation of Rembrandt's married life to Saskia van Uylenburgh and a.n.a.lyses of some of the Saskia paintings: Saskia Wearing a Veil, Saskia Laughing. Then numerous speculations about whether Saskia was in fact the subject of two of Rembrandt's paintings, both portraits of Flora, the G.o.ddess of spring. Myla felt her mind turning off, felt it asking, "Who cares which painting is based on her? If he loved her, wouldn't they all be?" This had always been her problem with the study of art: she never understood how people could spend hours interpreting the tiniest turn of a finger or the direction of the eyes. When she looked at representations of Mary, she hardly looked at the robes themselves; she looked through them to the meaning behind them. What did azure mean to medieval painters imagining Mary? Why was she clothed in velvet? Myla was never satisfied by simply looking at the pictures. She wanted context. She wanted something bigger.

Then, just as she felt her resistance pus.h.i.+ng her over into frustration, she flipped the page and fell into such exhilaration, it caught her breath. Steve looked up from his reading, and she smiled until he settled down again. For here was the author's explanation of the attack on the Danae.

In Leningrad, on June 15, 1985, a Lithuanian man had walked into the Rembrandt gallery in the Hermitage. The Danae was the first painting in the gallery, and the man walked to her, stabbed her in the groin, punctured her a second time, and then threw sulfuric acid on her face, torso, and legs. The guards didn't reach her in time to intervene, and even if they had, they wouldn't have known what to do, because they hadn't been trained for such an attack. Who wants to murder paintings?

No one knew why the man had attacked that particular painting. Some argued that it was simply because the Danae was the first Rembrandt in the gallery, the most accessible, that he'd been out to damage anything. Some argued that it was because the Danae was the most expensive painting in the room. The attacker himself claimed it was out of nationalist protest.

But the book Myla read posited that it was none of these things. Rather, it theorized that the man had attacked the painting because of its pure sensuality: the display of Danae's rec.u.mbent nakedness, the slide of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s into her wide belly into the chalice of her hips, the fact that her crotch was at the very mathematically calculable center of the painting. What could be more of a taunt to a religious zealot?

Danae was nude. She reclined on the bed. She had been imprisoned by her father, Acrisius, the king of the Argives, because of a prophecy that his grandson, Danae's son, would murder him. So Acrisius locked his daughter in a tall, unreachable tower. Jupiter, formidable, tricky Jupiter, found his way through the walls of the tower and impregnated Danae in a golden shower of sunlight. And here she lay in Rembrandt's eye, washed golden in the light of Jupiter's l.u.s.t. She bore Jupiter a child because he had shone upon her. And then, thousands of years later, a man painted her story, and hundreds of years after that, another man came and cut her with a knife.

Myla scribbled down a few notes, thinking about how David would have spoken to her about Rembrandt. He would have reminded Myla the child that Rembrandt and his art had given Danae life, but Myla the adult knew things were more complicated. The painter may have given Danae life, but he'd also failed to protect her. He'd put her out there, left her subject to someone's knife.

She lifted her eyes, watching Samuel as he read. His words from the lecture hall echoed in her head, filling her with doubt. If exploring this notebook meant having to think about things like this, about all their lost chances, was such exploration truly worth it? Pondering these issues meant taking David down from the shelf, studying him. And that meant picking him apart, examining him critically, doubting him, judging his limitations. Perhaps that would be too hard. She closed the book. She needed s.p.a.ce for thinking. She needed to move.

MY BIRTHDAY COMES AT THE start of school, when Oregon isn't at all like Oregon but is dry, dry, dry, hot, hot, hot. You can wear shorts to school, play soccer on bristly gra.s.s instead of mud, but just as soon as you get used to these things, just as you begin to think about a Halloween costume that doesn't need a sweater under it, everything changes. The wind blasts and the sky starts pouring. But my birthday is still summer, and David suggests we all drive up the gorge and have a picnic by Multnomah Falls. Then we make a list of all the people we want to invite.

When we're driving to the store for food, David says, "Pru, all sorts of people are coming for your birthday, and I'm wondering if I could bring a friend."

"Sure," I say, and I think that's the end.

But Myla perks up from the backseat. "Who's the friend?"

David coughs. "A colleague, actually. An adjunct in anthro. She's-"

"I knew it!" says Myla. "I knew it was a girl."

David glances in the rearview mirror. "Oh, really? How'd you know that?"

"Because if she wasn't your girlfriend, you wouldn't have made such a big deal about it. You would have just introduced them when they showed up." I can't tell if Myla is speaking fact or finding fault. She sounds angry but excited too.

I shrug. "Sounds fine to me."

Everyone meets at our house early. Jane and Steve and Emma get there first, and when they see we aren't ready, Jane teases David, "I thought you said we'd take off at nine."

"I guess our household's working on relative time these days," he says.

Steve laughs and says, "Gee, David, we have no idea what that's like," and he nods his head toward Emma. Then Myla comes down from the house, yawning. She hasn't brushed her hair.

"Happy birthday, Pru," she says, and slips her hand around my waist while she kisses Jane.

"What's this?" asks Jane. "I thought you wanted to wear your new dress."

"I don't know," says Myla. "I don't really feel like going." She lets it drop like a heavy rock into our lake of conversation. She doesn't look at David. She doesn't look at me.

Jane smiles at me and says, "Well, that's nonsense," and puts her hand on Myla's back and steers her toward the house. Emma runs to me and grabs my hand and pulls me out of the gloom Myla has left behind. We're not interested in playing Dogs anymore, so we sit under the rhododendron bush and plan turning it into our fort. Then Ruth pokes her head in. "Happy birthday, kiddo. I can't believe you're nine. Where'd my little girl go?" I kiss her on the cheek and she says she thinks everyone's ready to go. But then she says, "I see the new anthro lady just arrived," and when she says "lady" I can see that she has opinions.

Myla will come, but only if Ruth rides in our car. I want to ride with Emma, but that might hurt Ruth's feelings, and Myla's glaring at me not to leave her alone with the grown-ups. So Jane and Steve and Emma follow us in their car, and in our car, the backseat is me, then Myla, then Ruth. That's because in the front seat is David and his friend, Helaine.

She's quiet. She looks out the winds.h.i.+eld, not out the side window. It's like a pole runs straight up through her neck and keeps her head extra straight. Ruth, Myla, and I decide not to pay attention to her. Instead, we sing most of the way, and the windows are rolled down too much to listen to a word either Helaine or David is saying.

Pretty soon we're out of the city, and trees blur past us. We start the narrow twist and turn up through the rocks, and the sun dapples down on us, green through the trees. I roll my window down as far as it can go and stick my hand out to ride it on the wind. The wind hits my eyes so hard that I almost have to close them to see.

Then one more turn, and we pop out of the top of the trees and onto Crown Point. Myla jumps out and gets David, pulls him away from the car to the lookout. We ask Helaine if she wants to come too, but she says, "Thank you, no," and she turns her head a little and smiles with a closed mouth. "My back," she says. "Once I'm in the car, I'm in." So Ruth and I get out and wave to Jane and Steve sitting in the car next to us. Emma gets out of her car and comes with us.

"Should we wait with her?" I ask Ruth.

"Who? Jane?"

"No," I say. "Helaine."

Ruth snorts. "I'm sure she'll be fine." She grabs my hand and pulls me out to the lookout.

Up here, the Columbia is like a big blue and gold scarf. It moves like silk flicking in the wind, and the boats below are tiny b.u.t.tons. Across the river lies Was.h.i.+ngton, green and hilled. Up here, falling feels like it would be simple, beautiful, easy.

Then Ruth starts singing "Roll On, Columbia," and Myla and Emma join in. I don't know the verse, only the chorus part, and on our walk back to the car, David explains all about the WPA and Woody Guthrie.

When we get to Multnomah Falls, we grab bags and blankets from the back. We can't see the falls yet from the road, so we have to walk a little bit. And then before we see it, it's the sound that makes us know it's there, like quiet thunder. Everything smells like moss before I see the sheet of white.

"Food first?" asks David, and we all say yes, so he heads us down to the gra.s.sy part below the falls. We spread out with grapes and olives and cheese and bread and we eat. Then everyone pretends there's nothing more to do, and Myla gets sneaky and pulls me away to play behind a big rock. Emma keeps spying over a boulder at us and then running back to the picnic. I know when I get back there'll be cake, but I get sneaky too and play along.

Myla and I sit down on a log. "Do you like your birthday so far?" she asks.

"Well, it's not really my birthday," I remind her. "Not until Tuesday."

"I know, I know," she says, "but I mean, do you like your party?"

"Yeah, I guess." Then we're quiet.

"Do you wish Mom was here?" The question's like a match in a dark room.

"I guess so," I say. "Yeah. I wish she was here."

"Me too," says Myla, and she pats her hand on my back.

Later, after cake, after presents, we go up to the bridge that stretches across the bottom part of the falls. The air is wet in my lungs, and the hand railing is slick and soft. I hold on tight and look down at the water slipping and slamming below us. David comes up behind me and puts his hands over mine.

"Happy birthday, Pru."

Then Myla comes up beside us. "David," she says, "Pru and I are riding home in Jane's car."

"Okay," he says.

"So just be sure you don't forget Ruth, okay? 'Cause she won't be with us."

"Fine, good," he says, and leans down to point out something across the river.

"Be sure Ruth goes with you. Just be sure."

"Yes, Myla, understood! I won't forget!" he says. And then Myla stomps off. David goes to talk to Helaine, and Ruth goes to comfort Myla, and Jane and Emma are on the other side of the bridge, looking up at the water. Steve comes and stands next to me. He doesn't say anything, just stands beside me and looks, like he wants me to know things are okay.

We stay up here, on the slick stone bridge, facing the river, and try to make out shapes: our car, the place where our blanket was, and the tiny dots of people looking up at us and pointing, like we are more important because of the waterfall behind us, like because of it, they want to imagine being in our lives.

chapter eleven.

samuel and Myla wound up the road she'd traveled innumerable times. She was aching for what was to come: the rush of water in her ears, the dampness in her lungs, the force and size of a river as it ended in air. "We're going to Multnomah Falls," she said, and Samuel nodded, although she knew he had no idea what that was.

As they crossed the Sandy River, pa.s.sing the metal dragon someone had welded-"Very seventies," Samuel remarked-and wended their way through the town of Corbett, Myla was caught in her mind. There was plenty to contend with already: Jane and Steve's expectations, Samuel's sudden presence, David's notebook needing translation. Compared to all this, a mess of student papers was nothing. Were she at the college with Mark, life would be easy. Gossip exchanged, a shared m.u.f.fin, an eye roll or two about their enormous course loads. Nothing this big.

Now the car broke into farmland, riding the spine of the ridge. Myla knew soon enough they'd see the change in alt.i.tude. Samuel gazed out the windows at the light and architecture and sky and trees. He tapped his hand against his knee, and Myla couldn't tell if that revealed nervousness or an ingrained habit. She didn't know him well enough to know such things, and the absurdity of their current situation-alone in a car together, halfway across the world, with perhaps nothing to say to each other-made her smile.

"What?" asked Samuel.

"Oh, nothing. I was just hoping Steve's enthusiasm hasn't been too much for you. He can be a bit overwhelming when he likes something. And he sure likes you."

"No, not at all. He's great. He and Jane seem very vibrant. Young, I mean."

Though Samuel hadn't asked for anything to be explained, Myla said, "They were my father's closest friends. They were integral in raising me." She paused, then chose to say her sister's name. "Integral in raising Pru and me. But before coming back this time, I hadn't spoken to them in thirteen years. Since I left home."

"Oh," said Samuel. "Wow." Then silence. It was funny, because Myla expected this silence between them to become more and more uncomfortable as it went on, but it didn't. Instead the silence softened gently, taking into account the sounds and smells of the car, the light breeze skipping in through the crack from Samuel's rolled-down window, the sun illuminating the deciduous trees that lined the roadbed. As she drove, Myla watched the new leaves in the sunlight, made out their tiny shapes above her. It seemed at this moment that she hadn't noticed leaves in a very long time; that in her life as Kate Scott, the tops of trees had been swaddled only in a vague, undefined green. Kate Scott could not live here. There were too many trees to be accounted for.

At first Myla hadn't known why she wanted to bring Samuel to Multnomah Falls. It was an intensely personal gesture, although of course he would have no way of knowing that. But following her instincts was the only thing she could do, and so they'd buckled into the car and backed out of the driveway. Now, with the knowledge that the Columbia would come into view below them in just a few miles, she gripped the steering wheel and understood. She was being David. Samuel was being her.

When she was a child, whenever David had been puzzling over something-Myla wondered now if those "somethings" had been related to The Book-he'd load her and Pru into the car and say, "Let's drive." Though he'd never mention their destination, Pru and Myla always knew where they were headed. They'd drive up the Columbia River Highway, elbow their way around Crown Point, then head straight to Multnomah Falls. At the falls, there'd always be a quick stroll up to the bridge, after which, depending on the season, there'd be ice cream at the outdoor stand or French-onion gratinee served at a heavy wood table in front of the restaurant's giant fireplace. The gratinee had always seemed terribly exotic to Myla, even before she was old enough to make out the word as foreign.

Now, as Myla drove, she laughed at herself. Here she was, years later, sitting exactly where David had sat, heading out to the country to allow her brain some breathing room. And Samuel sat beside her, her hostage, just as she, as a child, had been David's. She'd spent many hours sitting in the pa.s.senger seat, idly wondering what was on David's mind. And now Samuel was doing just the same thing with her.

"First stop," she said as they pulled up at the lookout point. Myla eased her door open, unbuckled her seatbelt, and walked to the edge. Below her, the Columbia swelled and tossed, and her hair was rumpled in the wind. Her arms liked the reminder of life on them, and she felt Samuel's cool shadow velvet her back.

"My G.o.d," he said. "This is gorgeous."

Myla nodded and smiled. Words seemed unnecessary. They might as well have left them behind in Portland. Samuel walked the rim of the lookout point, squinting down at the bright tossing waters. Myla watched a barge pa.s.sing patiently below. It was simple up here, above life. The sound of a distant engine made her notice a plane flying above, made her remember her own place in the air only a few days before.

Back in the car, before starting it, Myla let words emerge from her, slow and easy. "I'd like your help. And you're welcome to stay as long as you want. But I can't offer myself. I don't have my self to offer."

Samuel nodded after a time. Myla tried to create a new sentence, to explain further, but everything she thought was too complicated to put into words. The sound of her voice in this car would be too loud. And having said what she needed to say, she felt an odd sense of elation. It felt good to be so honest, to let silence take back over, to be able to locate what she needed. It gave her hope that she might someday have a self to give.

After pulling out of the lookout point, they started down the ridge. Myla hesitated at Crown Point, then sloped the car down the mossy old highway. It was slower this way, much slower than pa.s.sage on the swift new road below that paralleled the Columbia and flashed with cars and semi trucks. But this was the way Myla knew, the way to Multnomah Falls. This was the way she'd traveled with her family, and it seemed important to know that Samuel would like it. It was beautiful. It was green.

ALL OF A SUDDEN FOURTH grade is over and at last it's summer again. It pounces on us and makes us hot. Even though David is out of school, he still spends every day at the college. Myla goes to camp and hates it. I spend most days with Jane and Emma.

They take me to the pool and I learn b.r.e.a.s.t.stroke, the crawl, and the beginnings of the b.u.t.terfly. But I miss Myla. She's only gone for three weeks, but it feels like forever. She writes me letters-most of which I don't get until she's already back-talking about all the stupid songs they have to sing and all the stupid boys in her group and how bad the food is. I know some of those things are true and some of those things she's just saying.

One day before Myla gets back, Ruth comes over and tells the girl taking care of me to take the rest of the afternoon off. So we sit on the front porch and eat plums and Ruth says, "I haven't gotten any great pictures of you for a while. So I'm thinking-how would you like to come up to Elk Lake with me sometime in July?"

"What's Elk Lake?"

"There's a cabin up there that's been in my family for a while. It's in the woods. If I didn't have more responsible relatives, it'd be rotten and crumbled by now. But I'd like to go there and make pictures, and I'd like it if you'd come-you and Myla."

"Sure," I say. "That'd be cool."

"We could make s'mores, and Myla could teach us camp songs-"

"She hates camp songs."

"Okay, well, I could teach you a camp song or two, and we could go swimming and canoeing-"

"What about David?" I ask.

"Well," she says, "David's welcome, of course. But I think he might have stuff to do here, like work." Ruth looks away.