23
Debris from Sunday night was still all over the house when I got back from school—leprechaun hats and empty whiskey bottles, and on the kitchen counter the remainder of David’s ham was covered in flies. I didn’t think flies came in the cold. I thought they were warmish bugs. One by one I killed them, then I cleaned the kitchen, as quietly as possible. Typically I longed for noise to drown out my thoughts, but for once I wanted quiet. I was trying to listen. The unusual thing about quiet is that when you seek it, it’s difficult to attain. With each next sound extinguished, another rises up, finer and more entrapping, until you arrive right back in the infinite attitude of your own riotous mind.
I turned down the lights and slipped into the living room, where I swept the cold hearth, taking up the silent ash that had once been wood, but before that trees, and before that other things, living things, moss and leaves and hares. My eyes stared into the soot, the way eyes sometimes do, numb when you are nothing to no one. The room was so silent I could hear the falling snow.
After cleaning, I showered—slowly, mindfully, and with gratitude. When I turned the knobs to stop the sound of the water, the sound stopped, and I remember feeling grateful for the simplicity of that enterprise.
There was sound from downstairs, though no one was around but me—not Kate, not my mother, not Powell or Jack. I stepped out of the tub and moved to the top of the landing, where I could hear the throaty crack of a new fire. I leaned against the door and grabbed my jeans, wrenching them up around my wet hips. I pulled on a T-shirt and started down the stairs. As I walked, I went slow, then slower, because, just because. It was as if I’d never felt the plush of the carpet, the pocked plaster walls, the wormy surface of the banister.
Rourke was at the hearth, his hand against the mantel, his head hanging. He seemed quiet also. The fire jumped irritably, carping and stuttering before hurling itself into an empire of nothingness—if ever you have dreamt of flying at night, that is what you have dreamt. When he turned his eyes assessed me, as if by accident, as if he had not expected me, though of course he had. I shoved my shirt into my jeans and zipped them. He stepped right. I went left, taking his spot at the hearth. I shook the water from my hair. I noticed that his mouth appeared swollen, as if stung by bees. I longed to kiss it, to be kissed by it.
He reached to pry something from his back pocket, and he tossed it onto the coffee table. It was my glove, the one I’d lost in Montauk. Though he said nothing, I understood. He’d seen me at breakfast with Ray. It was strange, the way the glove hit the table with a knock instead of a slap. I wondered was it frozen.
Immediately, he left, and the door closed after him with a punitive click. I looked at the glove. It lay very still, palm up, fingers serene, as though caught in a gesture of divine meditation. Not in any gesture, but in my gesture because the glove possessed the shape of my hand. Though it was compelling to think of myself in terms of such things as absence and presence, me and not me, I was drawn more to themes of Rourke. I could not help but view the glove as his, insofar as it had fallen into his custody, insofar as in his trust it had achieved dynamic new meaning. I thought he was telling me he could not be provoked. Asking me not to provoke him. It was a confession of sorts.
I turned down the lights and moved to the window, letting the fire languish. I passed through the quiet night with quiet thoughts. I left off thinking that something must have hurt him very much for him to have traveled so far.