Jesse Ball: The Lesson

Loring took the things and went down the stairs.

She could hear him, dressing. She heard the door open, and she heard the door to the spare room as it creaked open. She could hear him pull a chair over to the table, could hear him at the box.

She went up the stairs, and she was dressed as he had bid her.

What she saw there was something like her husband, dressed as he had been.

— Ezra, she said. What is in that box?

— My Loring, he said, my Loring. These are feathers for your hair. These are rings for your fingers.

She knelt by him and he put feathers in her hair. He put rings on her fingers. She pressed her face against his, and ran her fingers along his back. She was crying and crying.

— I said, also, that in the box there would be an order, something to be fulfilled. I said that.

— Ezra, she said. What is it you would have me do?

— First he said, have you not wondered where I am?

— I have dreamt, she said, I have imagined that I would go away. I would find it possible one day to go away from all I have, that there would be a place where I was going, and I would go to it. I would go there, and in that place I would be awaited. I believe it would involve nothing at all, a short trip, as if by car or boat, as if by water. I would say, already we are here, we are here, and we would be there.

She took a deep breath.

— Will you not tell me what you ask?

— I will not say yet, he said. For that we wait.

— No, tell me.

She pulled at his hands with her gloved hands. Tell me.

— No! NO! he shouted.

He pulled himself away from her and ran into the bedroom. He climbed onto the bed and there collapsed, weeping, and was soon asleep.

He was still asleep when his mother came, and dressed as he was, she took him away.

The seventh visit was not a week later. It was that morning after. Loring was where she had been that whole night, sitting in the room, beside the opened box. There was nothing in it. The paper had been taken away by the boy. She might never see it. The very thought filled her with terror. There was a knock at the door. Again, a knock at the door. Then someone beating on the door.

Stan’s mother said to Stan, she said,

— You will tell her what you told me.

Stan, eyes red, looking at his feet.

— You will tell her, she said again. I will talk and then you will talk and we will be through with this.

Loring went slowly down the stairs. She went slowly to the door. She opened it.

— I am not coming in, said the mother. I am not coming in, and Stan is not coming in, not ever again. You are a mad person. I can’t believe I let Stan into your house in the first place. I don’t even want our money back. I don’t want anything. I want you to leave Stan alone and never speak to him again. I want you to never speak to anyone again about any of this. I want you to stay in your house and die and be gone. Stan, tell her what you think.

Loring looked at Stan.

He looked up at her and his face was hard. It was the face of a little boy, curled up like a muscle.

— I don’t care at all about you, he said. I don’t care about chess, either, or about your husband. I thought we were playing a game, and I was bored of my house and my family, so I didn’t mind coming here. Then I thought I could get a magic show out of it. Then I thought I could see how far you would go. But you smell awful. Your house smells awful. Your skin is hard to look at. I don’t want to look at you anymore, or be near you. My mom was angry about the clothes you made me wear and she started asking me questions. Then she found the papers you wrote for me. Then my father came. You knew this would happen. I don’t ever want to see you again.

— You see, said the mother. You are by yourself in this. It’s always been that way.

Loring looked down at Stan. Her eyes were wide and her expression pleading.

— Wait, she said.

The boy recoiled from her. In a second, his mother was between them.

— That’s the end of it.

She pushed Loring into the house and shut the door. Then they went away.

—

In the parlor, Loring was crying. She was sitting in the chair and holding Ezra’s picture in her hands. She had thrown the gloves off. She had thrown the veil onto the ground. She was coughing and weeping and coughing. She could scarcely see.

If she could reason with herself, it was not in a way that anyone could know. She was thinking about objects, about the spaces between objects. She was thinking about the cemetery and then she wanted to be there. She wanted to reach the cemetery that second.

— I will go there, she said.

Loring went out into the street. She felt that if she did not go outside, she would not be able to go ever again. The day was a long low-ceilinged day, and there was a shawl of grey pulled over the town. But there by the edges, it was breaking. What passed at the edges could not at first be seen.

It was long and far. It was like something heard, but it was seen. She was smiling and her face was unchanged, it was like a last face, the last face a person wears.

In the distance, she saw birds turning in the air — a hundred of them, all turning. Where had they been going, and why in error? They turned in a great sweeping arc, and came back.

Oh, my love, she thought, and she ran there, as if running, crying out,

Nonetheless, my love, I hold out my hand only to you as the train departs!