O’Neill’s words swim on the page. Across from her, Aidan has on a striped shirt and a black V-neck sweater. She notes onyx cuff links. She catches these details in quick glances.
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out her cigarettes. She leans forward an inch to ask if he would like one, but then notes his pack, Camels, and a box of matches on the table next to him. She wishes she could read the name of the restaurant on the front cover. Is it from New York or St. Louis?
His shoe jiggles once. She takes a long drag. There’s so much she never noticed about this room. The Delft clock. An array of silver boxes atop a desk. A darkened portrait of an important man. No, a self-important man. But then, it was for the painter to say, wasn’t it? The man in the picture might have been told to stand with his chin elevated, his fingers inside his buttoned coat. In his other hand, he holds a book, a fact that changes her idea of both the man and the painter. A book, not a Bible, suggests learning as opposed to commerce. When she glances down from the portrait, Aidan is staring at her. She smiles slightly.
“Have you had a good day?” he asks.
“Yes. At least I think so. I can hardly remember it.”
“You’re a busy woman.”
“I suppose I am. I was looking at that painting and trying to decide what the man did for a living.”
He turns to examine the picture. “A reader, certainly. Perhaps a teacher who thinks a lot of himself. I suppose your husband must be related to the man.”
“What era do you think it’s from?”
“Judging from the clothes and mustache, mid-to late nineteenth century. He could have been your husband’s grandfather.”
“You’ll have your portrait done,” she says.
“Why do you say that?”
“You’ll be an important musician, and someone will want to do a painting of you.”
“A photograph for a poster, maybe.”
“I was thinking that there’s so much talent in your hands.” She has seen his fingers move so fast they created a blur as she watched.
“There has to be dexterity,” he concedes, “but they’re only producing what’s in the brain.”
“All that music in the brain. It must be full up.”
He laughs. “There’s room for plenty more.”
Grace tries her book again, but reads the same sentence three times. “Have you ever been married?” she asks, pulling a piece of lint from her powder blue sweater.
“No, my work doesn’t lend itself to marriage. I travel too much, work nights.”
Her hand trembles as she turns another page. She lays her fingers hard against the open book. Does she only imagine the connection between them? Not that of landlady and lodger, though they are that. Not that of mutual refugees from a catastrophe, though they are that, too. And not merely friends, or even friends, as she and Rosie are to each other. Grace is married. Why does she keep forgetting that?
She thinks that her body, if it could, might speak. Touch my hand. Let me touch your hand. Put your hand at the back of my neck. Nothing more. Her body can’t ask for more.
Her mother called him handsome. The straight brow and the eyes, a soft brown. His hair curls slightly and then doesn’t, as if it can’t make up its mind. His mouth is straight and hard, not cruel in any way, but…serious. Yes, she would say he has a serious mouth.
“I like this house,” he says.
“You do?”
“I’m a man of hotel rooms. This is grand, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so. It housed a woman who hated me, but I’ve come to appreciate it without having to think about her.”
“Even children couldn’t break the ice?”
“Apparently not.”
“Your husband must have been torn.”
“Yes, he was.” But was he? Maybe not.
How might her life have been different if she hadn’t married Gene? Would she be a secretary now? An unmarried daughter, living with her mother? Might she have met someone who truly loved her?
“What are you thinking?” he asks. “You look pensive.”
Should she tell him? “I was wondering what my life might have been like had I not met Gene when I did, but then I quickly realized I wouldn’t have my children as they are, and that was the end of that.”
He is silent.
“Do you imagine alternate lives for yourself?” she asks.
“No, not really. I can’t see having another life. I wouldn’t want one.”
“You’ve worked too hard.”
“Something like that.”
She watches him return to his reading. Do the words swim on the page for him? She lights a second cigarette. If she keeps this up, she’ll become a chain-smoker. A year ago, Grace discovered, during a hectic morning, that she’d left a cigarette burning on the edge of the bathroom sink while another was going in an ashtray in the kitchen, and the realization shook her. She vowed to be more careful. Again, she looks over at Aidan and discovers he is again staring at her.
She smiles, and he looks away.
She crosses her legs, aware of a silky rustle. She puts out her cigarette. She ought to go up.
“What are your plans for tomorrow?” he asks.
“Pretty much the same as today. I thought I’d start looking for work, but they say the storm we’re expecting will be a bad one. I don’t want to leave my mother with the kids alone.”
“I’ll be here,” he says.
“Thank you, but I think I’ll start looking on Monday. Fresh start.”
He rolls his sleeves, and she can see from the dial on his watch that it’s well after nine. She would stay until one in the morning if he asked her to. He does want her to stay, she can feel it.
But after another minute, Aidan says, “I suppose I’ll take my book to bed now.”
“Good night then,” she says.
He stands and is careful not to brush against her.
She feels bereft even before he has left the room.
Grace lies on her four-poster, the children asleep in the room with her. She stares at the ceiling and feels heat rise and then drain from her face. She wants to put her mouth to Aidan’s skin. She wants him to run his fingers through her hair. That’s all. Does there have to be more? There must, because she wouldn’t feel like this. She understands that the act might be wrong, but the desire for it is not.
In the morning, Grace bundles the children into their winter woolens, and together she and Claire walk down the gravel lane. Grace shows Tom, in her arms, the ocean. She wonders if he remembers it from the night of the fire, if he will always carry with him a vestigial love for or fear of the sea. What will the hideous night do to Claire? Or did the fact that their mother held them tight through the natural horrors give them a protective coating that will serve them well?
The snow crust has grown soft, which makes walking easier. Grace reminds Claire to look both ways before they cross the coast road, even though there hasn’t been a vehicle on it for half an hour. On the other side, they struggle over low prickly bushes, cut grass, and mounds of snow-covered sand. Claire loses a boot, which Grace finds and puts over Claire’s wet sock. Because the tide is low, the beach gravel and the sea’s leavings are plentiful. When she was a girl, Grace used to search for sea glass among the pebbles. She shows Claire what to look for and notes as she does that there are hundreds of emeralds strewn among the debris. When she bends to look, she discovers they are small bits of emerald sea glass, each the size of a stone in a ring. There are no other colors that day, no other shapes. It’s not a configuration she’s ever seen before. What caused this unique and even offering?