“. . . place … to … play. Sets …”
Quietness. Her eyes twitched, remembering.
“Sets … toys … electric … trains. Boys, yes. Ten …” She took a breath. “Eleven … years … old.”
The candle flames flickered.
“. . . he … always said … Christmas … always … never away. He’d … die … if … it’s not Christmas … silly man. But … twelve … he made … parents take back … socks … ties … sweaters. Christmas day. Buy toys. Or he wouldn’t talk.”
Her voice trailed off.
I glanced at Crumley. His eyes bulged from wanting to hear more, more. The incense blew. I chimed the bell.
“And … ?”he whispered for the first time. “And … ?”
“And …” she echoed. She read her lines off the inside of her eyelids. “That’s … how he … ran … studio.”
The bones had reappeared in her body. She was being structured up in her chair as if her remembrance pulled strings, and the old strengths and the lost life and substance of herself were eased in place. Even the bones in her face seemed to restructure her cheeks and chin. She talked faster now. And, finally, let it all come.
“Played. Yes. No work … played. The studio. When his father … died.”
And as she talked, the words came now in threes and fours and finally in bursts and at long last in runs and thrusts and trills. Color touched her cheeks, and fire her eyes. She began to ascend. Like an elevator coming up a dark shaft into the light, her soul arose, and herself with it, rising to her feet.
It reminded me of those nights in 1925, 1926, when music or voices in far places played or sang in static and you tried to twist and fix seven or eight dials on your super-heterodyne radio to hear way-off Schenectady where some damn fools played music you didn’t want to hear but you kept tuning until one by one you locked the dials and the static melted and the voices shot out of the big disc-shaped speaker and you laughed with triumph even though all you wanted was the sound, not the sense. So it was this night, the place, with the incense and the bell and candle fires summoning Emily Sloane up and up into the light. And she was all remembrance and no flesh, so listen, listen, the bell, the bell, and the voice, the voice, and Constance behind the white statue ready to catch it if it fell, and the statue said:
“The studio. Was brand new, Christmas. Every day. He was always. Here at seven. Morning. Eager. Impatient. If he saw people. With shut mouths. He said open! Laugh. Never understood. Anyone depressed, when there was one life. To live. Much not done …”
She drifted again, lost, as if this one long burst had tired her to exhaustion. She circulated her blood a dozen heartbeats, filled her lungs, and ran on, like one pursued: “I … same year, with him. Twenty-five, just arrived from Illinois. Crazy for films. He saw I was crazy. Kept me … near.”
Silence. Then:
“Wonderful. All first years … The studio grew. He built. Blueprints. Called himself Explorer. Chart maker. By thirty-five. He said. Wanted the world inside … walls. No travel. Hated trains. Cars. Cars killed his father. Great love. So, see, lived in a small world. Grew smaller, the more cities, countries he built on lot. Gaul! His. Then … Mexico. Islands off Africa. Then … Africa! He said. No need travel. Just lock himself inside. Invite people. See Nairobi? Here! London? Paris? There. Built special rooms each set to stay. Overnight: New York. Weekends: Left Bank … wake to Roman Ruins. Put flowers. Cleopatra’s tomb. Behind the fronts of each town put carpets, beds, running water. Studio people laughed at him. Didn’t care. Young, foolish. He went on building. 1929, 1930! ’31, ’32!”
Across the room, Crumley raised his eyebrows at me. Lord! I thought I had hit on something new, living and writing in my grandparents’ Green Town house!!
“Even a place,” murmured Emily Sloane, “like Notre Dame. Sleeping bag. So high up over Paris. Wake early to sun. Crazy? No. He laughed. Let you laugh. Not crazy … it was only later …”
She sank under.
For a long while we thought she had drowned for good.
But then I chimed the bell again and she gathered her invisible knitting to stitch with her fingers, looking down at the pattern she wove on her breast.
“Later on … it … truly … mad.
“I married Sloane. Stopped being secretary. Never forgave. He kept playing with great toys … he said he still loved me. And then that night … accident. It. It. It happened.
“And so … I died.”
Crumley and I waited for a long minute. One of the candles went dark.
“He comes to visit, you know,” she said at last to the fading sound of more candles flickering out.
“He?” I dared to whisper.
“Yes. Oh, two … three … times … a year.”
Do you know how many years have passed? I wondered.