Sharyn McCrumb - Sick Of Shadows

“No, thank you, Geoffrey.”

“Then I’m off.”

“You certainly are,” muttered Satisky, when his tormentor was safely out of earshot. He sank down in the armchair with a weary sigh.

“How was your trip to the library?” asked Elizabeth politely.

“Oh, pleasant enough, I suppose. It gave me something to do while Eileen was painting.”

“Have you seen Eileen this evening?” asked Elizabeth in a carefully neutral tone.

“No. I don’t even know what’s wrong. It isn’t anything I did. I mean, I heard that she took one look at Dr. Shepherd and went cra-I mean… Oh, you know!”

“Yes. She seems nervous. I think she may be pushing herself too hard to finish that painting. How much does she have left to do?”

“I don’t know! She won’t let me see it either, not that I-” He stopped short of saying “care.” If this cousin of hers went tale-bearing, he would really be in trouble. Elizabeth seemed nice enough, he grudgingly admitted, but he suspected her of having a sarcastic wit. Satisky didn’t care for sarcastic women; they tended to use ridicule as a weapon in disagreements. He much preferred tears, which he could dry manfully, and forgive, while still getting his own way in the argument. There was a slight family resemblance in looks between Elizabeth and Eileen, but the dispositions were altogether different. Eileen was a sweeter, softer girl. She looked like a picture of Elizabeth taken with an out-of-focus camera. When Eileen was not actually present, he found it difficult to picture her features, but he remembered her as a pleasant beige blur. This Elizabeth person was too positive by half. Vaguely he wondered if he were being interrogated.

“I was thinking that you might tell her not to work so hard on it,” Elizabeth was saying. “I think the pressure of trying to finish is upsetting her. Could you tell her that you don’t care if it’s not ready in time?”

“Oh, sure. Sure.”

“You’re probably nervous, too, around all these strangers. Will your family be coming down for the wedding?”

“No.” Satisky never wanted to say anything more than no to questions about his family, but in the silence that always followed, he found himself explaining that his parents had divorced when he was eight and that he had been raised by his grandmother, who had died two years ago. He had lost touch with his father, and his mother, who had remarried and was living on the West Coast, would not be coming to the wedding. He rattled off this explanation to Elizabeth, hoping that she wouldn’t become cloyingly sympathetic and ask him about his childhood. He didn’t like to talk about it, but he had survived it, and things were going well for him now. The only effect that he could determine was a distance between himself and other people, which had come from his years of solitary childhood. He had spent much of his time reading, and that was good; his literary background had served him well as a student of English, but it had made him unsure of how real people wanted to be treated. He never knew what to say to people whose next line he could not anticipate. He was uneasy with anyone who was not confined to the pages of a book, preferably a nineteenth-century edition. Perhaps that was why he had been able to love Eileen; she was not quite real.

Elizabeth was looking at him with interest, but not, he had to admit, with any particular sympathy. “How did you meet Eileen?” she asked.

He told her about the Milton seminar, and Eileen looking as vague and lost as-as Lycidas. She had been so shy and frightened that he had forgotten his own uneasiness around people. Eileen made him confident by comparison, so much so that he no longer worried about mispronouncing a name when he talked of literary matters. Like all people who read more than they conversed, Satisky had had his own way of pronouncing things before he had met anyone to discuss them with. This had led to embarrassing moments as an undergrad when he had spoken of “Frood” or “Go-Eth,” much to the amusement of his classmates. He did not explain all this to Elizabeth, of course. He had not even confided his insecurities to Eileen. How could Eileen depend on him if she knew how uncertain he was?

Satisky began to hit the arm of the chair gently with his fist. “Maybe I rushed her,” he said. “Maybe she isn’t ready-isn’t sure. Maybe she told Dr. Shepherd how she really feels about this marriage, and she’s afraid he’ll say something.”

He told Elizabeth about the sweet clinging girl he had fallen for, and his fantasy of rescuing her from dragons. Then she had turned out to be a very wealthy and complicated article. More than he’d bargained for.

“And even though I do want to marry her-I think-I’m afraid to ask myself why. Afraid it might turn out to be the money. It’s so much money! I don’t like what it’s doing to me! I don’t like what I’m becoming.”

“Have you tried to explain this to Eileen?”

Satisky looked shocked. “Of course not! She would be terribly hurt that I could even think of money instead of just of her. You know her-uh-background. What if she killed herself because of me? Do you expect me to live with that?”

One of the problems of listening to other people’s troubles is the difficulty in finding soothing noises to make. Elizabeth considered saying that everything would be all right, but the chance of that seemed remote. If Satisky really was so unsure of his feelings, he probably shouldn’t go through with the marriage, but she shared his apprehension. Eileen’s nerves were not yet strong enough to see her through a shock of that magnitude. Elizabeth had no intention of offering any advice on the subject, because she wanted no part of the guilt that Satisky seemed to be stuck with either way. She wished he hadn’t chosen to confide in her. One thing was certain: she had better get him off that subject before whoever-it-was-that-just-walked-by-the-door decided to stop and listen. God help her if anyone thought she was encouraging Satisky to have doubts! She would be accused of trying to steal her cousin’s fiancé, or trying to improve her chances for the inheritance, or both. She could imagine Aunt Amanda’s reaction to the situation.

“We shouldn’t be talking about this!” she whispered to Satisky. “Don’t even think about it anymore! Just-don’t!”

AMANDA CHANDLER SURVEYED the breakfast table with the air of a general conducting an inspection. In honor of the houseguests and the forthcoming wedding, this breakfast would be a family occasion, like those on weekends, when she would set aside time for getting together to discuss the plans for the day-usually her plans for their day. Despite the protests of Captain Grandfather and Dr. Chandler, who had to juggle early appointments, the meal was served at exactly ten o’clock-the shocking lateness being a concession to Geoffrey, who maintained that nothing short of Armageddon would arouse him earlier.

“And where is Eileen?” Amanda asked crisply, her eyes on Michael.

He looked away, murmuring something unintelligible.

“Elizabeth, would you please go upstairs and knock on her door? Tell her that we are waiting.”

Elizabeth hurried from the dining room, hoping that Eileen had just overslept. If she had decided to prolong her hysterics for another day, everyone’s nerves would start to go. She reached the upstairs hall. Eileen’s door was closed. Elizabeth tapped gently. “Eileen! Are you awake? It’s breakfast time!”

There was no sound from within.

Elizabeth tried the door. The handle turned easily, and she peeped inside. The bed was neatly made, and its occupant was not in the room. Elizabeth went back to the dining room and reported this to Amanda, who received the news in tight-lipped silence.