Under Shifting Glass (14 page)

I wish she'd said not
friend
but
relative
, because I want to wish the babies well, I want them to have all the love in the world. But she said
friend
, so it's Zoe who comes into my mind, Zoe dancing in the park and lying in the half-moon swing with me and looking at the sky. Only Zoe will probably never come with me to the park again.

So I haven't chosen anyone before Lalitavajri goes on. “Now, keeping yourself relaxed and open, hearing your own breath, turn your attention to a difficult person, an enemy.”

And just before I tell myself I have no enemies, Zoe's face comes again. Zoe telling Paddy mumbo jumbo about the
twins, Zoe shutting me out in the car, Zoe saying,
Since when were we joined at the hip?
Zoe failing to come to my house on Easter Sunday with a Creme Egg. Zoe going to the movies. With Paddy.

“And noticing any resistance,” says Lalitavajri, “and not judging it, imagine this person well and happy.”

I notice the resistance. I notice that my bones aren't made of light anymore. They're made of glass.

And I want to wish Zoe well, but right now I just can't.

Can't
.

Can't
.

I'm too busy
.

“Now,” says Lalitavajri, “move your
metta
, your loving-kindness, outward. Let it take in everyone in this room and everyone in this town, everyone in this country, all those awake and all those asleep . . .”

And I see where she's going with this and I want to follow, I want to expand outward and embrace the whole world with my calm, warm bones of light. But if your bones are made of glass, you can't do that. You're all hard and fragile and have no give in you at all.

“Let your loving-kindness,” says Lalitavajri, “flow over all those on islands and all those on continents, all those babies being born and and all those people dying . . .”

But nothing flows out of me except this one thought: Why has Lalitavajri yoked together these babies and these dead people? And why is she talking about babies and death at the precise moment when I'm thinking about the death of my friendship with Zoe? As if she knows something, if she knows what I know, that they're interconnected, that if one dies the other dies. Make her stop talking about babies and death!

Only then I think maybe it's me who's joining everything so bitterly together, me sitting here all crunched up with my mouthful of glass.

And I realize there's no space around my heart anymore. It's all gone very tight. Just like my hands. My hands are clenching so tight there is no nest anymore.

I've crushed it, crushed it to nothing.

So what's happened to the breath?

It's back in the flask. It looks weak, feeble. My mind was so full of hate I didn't notice how I'd squeezed it out, and now it lies shivering and defeated at the bottom of the glass. It reminds me of the candle in the church, how the flame guttered just before it died.

So I know something bad's happened even before Gran's car arrives. Before I see her face—gray and panicked.

“It's Clem,” I say, as I climb into the front seat beside her. “It's Clem, isn't it?”

“How do you know?” she says. “How can you know that?”

“Your face,” I lie.

“He's taken another—dip,” Gran says.

She makes no attempt to stall, to hide things. So it must be worse than I thought. It must be terrible.

“What does it mean?” I can hear my voice, all high and tight.

“They have to bring the surgery forward.”

“To when?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow!”

“Yes.”

“But what about the rehearsal, the practice operation, where . . . ?” Where they learn how not to pick the wrong socket wrench.

“There won't be time for that,” says Gran.

Of course, I blame myself, for all that absence of
metta
. What if I'd loved everyone, loved Zoe, kept myself warm and open? It wouldn't have happened, would it? It's all my fault.

“I'm sorry,” I say to the flask. The gray sky outside my room makes it feel darker than ever. “I'm really sorry.”

No reply.

“Why don't you scream at me? Yell?”

Silence.

“Why don't you howl? What happened to your big black howls?”

I'd prefer the black howls, horrible as they were. Anything would be better than this shivering, dying, guttering, nearly ended flame.

I remember how I held the howling black flask close to my body and how I rocked and gave it warmth and it seemed to make a difference. I hold the flask close again, glass to skin. It makes no difference at all.

It just feels cold.

I feel cold.

Really cold.

How can you have a cold flame?

Because the flame is dying.

“Do you think Rob would want you to behave like this?” I shout at the flask.

No reply.

“And who is Rob, anyway?”

No reply.

Everything is colder. I don't know if it's my head, my heart, or the weather.

I find myself at the piano. What happened to my new song with the lion thread? I haven't heard a single note of it for days. Maybe I haven't been listening right, or maybe everything that's been going on with the babies and Zoe and the hate has blocked my ears.

I put my hands on the keys, but my fingers are frozen. There is no more music in them than there is in my head.
You cannot force a song; it comes when it's ready. Surely I, of all people, know that?

I shut the lid of the piano.

One long night before the twins' operation.

How will I be able to sleep?

“Here,” says Gran. “I've made you some warm milk.”

I watch the hot drink going cold, just like everything else.

“Get into bed,” says Gran.

I get into bed holding the flask. I think maybe I shouldn't take my eyes off it for a second. But then there's never anything new to see, only the cold, hopeless, guttering thing.

“Why don't you make the seed fish swim?” I cry. “Just one. For me. So I know you're still there. So I know Clem's still there. Please. Please!”

No reply.

No reply!

“I hate you, hate you, hate you.”

But actually it's me I hate. Because no matter how many times I go over it in my head, try to convince myself that it could just be a
coincidence
, that this new dip has nothing to do with me the way the first howling dip had nothing to do with me, I can't let myself off the hook. I'd never heard of the word
metta
before this afternoon, but now it seems the only thing that matters. Loving-kindness. I mean, if you
have a fight with a friend, you think it's just to do with the two of you, don't you? But what if (I'm thinking this looking at the guttering flame), when any one of us is angry or hurt, then the whole sum of human happiness goes down? What then? If we're all connected, all in this together (which is, I think, what Lalitavajri was saying), then how we behave every minute of every day—that must matter, too.

This is a late-night conversation I'm having with myself, and I know I'm tired and I might not be thinking too straight, but the bottom line is this: To help Clem, I feel I have to do something about the way things are with me and Zoe.

Right Now.

Then I remember that I did try—I went to her house, right? And she brushed me off. No, no, she just said she was busy and . . .

Think
metta
. Think loving-kindness. Try again. Never give up.

An idea comes to me. I get out of bed, pull my robe around me, and because I'm still shivering, add my duvet and go to sit at the desk.

The bureau.

The place where Aunt Edie sat to write her private letters, letters from her secret heart. I fold down the desk lid
and find some paper and a black ballpoint pen. Letters, I think, are not like texts—
sry. SRY cll me
—which can be brushed aside like flies. They're more than that, deeper. You can say things in a letter that sometimes you can't say face-to-face.

But what should I say?

Dear Zoe
, I write.

Dear, dear, dearest Zoe
.

Please feel free to go to a movie with anyone you like. Not that you need my permission. You don't, of course. You're a free agent, you just do whatever you want, with whoever you want, whenever you want
. . . .

I break off. I'm laying it on too thick, making it sound as if she's doing all the taking and I'm doing all the giving. I crumple the paper up, start again.

Dear Zoe
,

You're wonderful. You're amazing. I love everything about you. I even loved when you were four and wore that stupid shirt with the pink rose on it. Wore it over your sweater! I thought that was so funny. Did I ever tell you that I asked my mom for a shirt with a rose on it? And she bought me one. Though I only ever wore mine under my sweater
. . . .

I stop again.
I don't care whether you come or not. Just don't get serious with me
. This is serious, isn't it? This is
pressure, too. This says: You have to love me as much as I love you; you have to remember how frail I am compared to you; you need to protect me. Pressure, pressure, pressure. Heavy, heavy, heavy. Sad, sad, sad. Did Aunt Edie have this trouble with her letters? I crumple up the second piece of paper.

Dear Zoe
, I begin for the third time. Beside me on the desk, the flame in the flask is still guttering.

I'm sorry. Sometimes my heart's all messy. Sometimes I say the wrong things. Want the wrong things
.

Forgive me?

Love you
.

Jess
.

Then I add some kisses.

xxxxxxxxxx

I notice how the kisses look like a daisy chain and think that maybe this is the right letter to send, or at least a good-enough letter, so I fold it in three and tape it down (as I don't have any envelopes) and write her name bold on the front.

ZOE
.

Life
.

I look at the flask again. Still guttering. I wrote the letter to change things with the flask and it hasn't. But it has changed something in me.

I feel lighter, more positive.

I rearrange the duvet from clothing to bedcover and climb into bed.

In the morning I will put this letter in Zoe's mailbox. I won't ring the doorbell, I won't make a big deal about it, she'll just find it when she finds it. I am calmer now, the way you are when you stop shouting and begin to do something about a problem. I hold the flask close for a moment.

“You'll be all right,” I whisper. “You'll see. I'll find a way. You'll be all right.”

Then I sleep.

I wake with a start, a muscle in my leg spasming. I kick out, knock the flask (which is somehow still in my hands), grab it back, look. No change. The flame fluttering—weak and low.

Then I wonder how, in the dark of night, I can see the flask so clearly. Which is when I realize it's not dark at all. My room is full of a strange white light. It's also very quiet, like someone threw a blanket over the whole world.

I get up. As I peel back the duvet, I feel goose bumps flash up my arm. By the time I get to the window, I'm hugging myself, arms clasped tight, for warmth, for security. Then through the crack in the curtains I see it.

It's snowing.

The huge hush is four or five inches of snow. I unclasp my arms and open the curtains wide. The sight is astonishing. Snow—on Easter! The world I see from my window is not the one I went to bed with. The snow covers everything, cars and houses and trees, so that the view is just one landscape of white—everything joined—yes, everything joined up together, because of the snow.

“Is this it? The next part of the journey?”

No reply.

I'm going to go out in the snow, though it's deep in the middle of the night. I can't not be part of this world where white earth meets white sky. I dress as quickly and as quietly as I can, tuck the flask and the letter into my pocket, and tiptoe downstairs.

I'm glad that I'm so practiced with cracks and creaks and floorboards; waking Gran is not part of my plan. I take gloves and a scarf from the chest in the hall and my coat and boots from the closet. What to do about a house key? There are keys in the kitchen, but the kitchen is directly under Gran's bedroom. I decide just to leave the door unlocked.

Then I step out into the joined-up world.

The sky is white-blue, in some places completely white, as white as the earth, which is why it's so bright, why there seems to be hardly any darkness at all. The snow itself has
eased. It is very light now, just a few flurries, though it must have been snowing really heavily for hours.

The hush is extraordinary. Nothing seems to be moving except for me, so I hear every sound I make as though it is amplified a thousand times. The crunch of my own footsteps in the deep new snow and the in-out of my breath that crystallizes in a small cloud of warmth in front of my cold mouth.

I see how deep my feet go, maybe it's not four or five inches, maybe it's only three or four, but seeing my footprints where there are no others makes them seem significant. The map of my journey.

All along the cul-de-sac are streetlights that look very orange against the white, white snow. It's only a matter of moments before I arrive at Zoe's house, me the midnight mailman. I think of her tucked in bed knowing nothing about what's going on in this bright new world—but she will know. I watch my prints come up to her door. Her mailbox is low, so I have to kneel to push the letter in.

As I stand up again, I imagine her coming (bounding) downstairs in the morning, all excited about the snow, picking up the envelope, reading what I've written, and just smiling, smiling at the world, at the words, at me. She has such a wonderful smile.