• • •
It feels like magic. I am so many, so big, so red, so hard to find. Invisible.
Hip is hard to find, too, after. I won’t see him for a while. A shift of earth and time has taken place, all but imperceptible. A subtle mechanism, working.
Thus the turning of the year.
• • •
Winter in Whitby is perpetual twilight, perpetual rain edged sharply with ice. Roses long since nipped from the vine, the vine itself gone, shriveled against the whitewash, fallen. Grey twilight packed against the windows where green vines used to be. Inside the Birdcage we are held tight by clouded twilight, like the delicate objects of glass wrapped in cotton wool—those my father sends to London, those he doesn’t. Sunrise at half eight; sunset at half three; Hip gone; nowhere; absent. The three of us, then. Together.
Curtains drawn tight. Block it out.
• • •
I am upstairs in the bedroom, on the Turkish carpet, surrounded by what have been, in my life, companions: Señor El Galliñazo, formerly brilliant wattles greyed with time, peering down skeptically from the top of my mother’s dresser. He is not my only audience: there is a cayman, too, gap-toothed grin beneath wicked yellow eyes, coolly carnivorous. These do not unnerve me.
From downstairs voices filter up, muffled by the carpet, fragmented by the roar of the river. I can’t make out the words, just rhythm, cadence, tone. Three voices, two male, one female. Two low notes, one high. Untamped by either rug or roar: fragrant, unfamiliar aroma of tobacco, winding its way up the spiral staircase.
And I can hear my mother laughing. This noise, too, floats upward, the unaccustomed sound of her happiness making its way among and around the clamorous disharmonies of the river, buoyed, somehow, instead of drowned, by the sound of the water. It washes over me, this tide of my mother’s laughter. Hearing it makes me aware how seldom she laughs.
Downstairs, they are talking to Harry Owen. A stranger, he has entered unexpectedly through the kitchen door, bringing with him blast of cold and wet, spackling of sleet, black umbrella half furled, dripping; boots clinging with leaves; small earnest spectacles blurred with the weather; soaked mackintosh slick as a second skin, which reveals, when removed, tweed, a dark serious wedge of beard, deep resonant voice, smell of cinnamon and tobacco. Cigar tamped out at hearth, new one lit. Leather satchel, overbursting with books and papers, belted once, crosswise, belted again, lengthwise, as if he fears that left unrestrained it might fly apart, releasing its contents to the wind. But in the Birdcage it is safe; he leans it against the hob, along with the umbrella, once he has it thoroughly buttoned and contained. He is my parents’ friend; but he is nothing to me, a stranger who takes my chin in his fingers, turns my face from side to side, then runs his fingertips lightly over my skull, beginning at the forehead, then back and up, behind the ears.
She is the image of Felix Girard! he says. Same broad regio frontalis . . . same cranial vault . . . same strong orbital structure . . . prominent chin . . . and then too the shoulders, the chest, the membri inferioris . . . everything! Remarkable resemblance! Young lady, you will have a large brain and a strong body, just like your grandfather!
• • •
He has not mentioned the adventuring spirit; I have that, too. But do I really have a grandfather? Felix Girard is a mythical creature. We do not speak of him.
• • •
Harry Owen lets go. I take a step back, stare; we stare at each other. Already I am as tall as he is. I feel conscious, under his scrutiny, of my long, gangly legs, my big, uncoordinated feet, my large hands, but then, too, of the small, tender new breasts, feel all of it taken into his gaze, examined. Critically? This is unclear. Clinically? Yes. He is a stranger. I don’t see the friend in him yet.