The Quickness of Blood

OVER and over the picture would come into her mind as complete as a tableau. A deep couch and she—a version of herself—full length in it, reading, the courtly Mr. Purcell, with his pouched eyes and expression of forbearance, also holding a book but in a chair to her right, nearly close enough for her to touch his knee or his mottled hand: a still life, almost. If it was just a figment, why did it feel so much like an answer to a riddle? Opposite the couch there was a wall of windows filled with sky and the upper storey of trees. The branches swayed slightly more in one direction than another; maybe it would rain, but gently. Inside the room—what? Everything to be discovered seemed already here, moving quietly in the quiet. The riddle was about knowledge, about how to know. And why. Pages turned, branches swayed, month after month, the same dormancy, breathing just above not breathing, watched.

Meanwhile the holidays arrived and passed. Janice was conveyed from and back to the college by Greyhound bus, her eyes on the midday return taken in by a landscape of new snow, traveling alongside the bus but in the opposite direction, a whiteness on which to view the contents of her mind, the whole jumble so far, why not—no, of course impossible—but how like a physical ache, this feeling that she could turn herself inside out and still not see how to turn into herself. Who does Harold think he is—not even to call! Her mother had suddenly spoken out about her son, Janice’s older brother and sometime tormenter, the two of them, mother and daughter, in the chilly upstairs hallway of the manse, the day before Christmas, which for the reverend’s wife seemed already a disappointment, no matter the nearness of the blessed birth. Her own boy, her favorite, had taken himself out of touch. Mom, Janice had said in a mustered attempt to be of comfort, but the maternal shoulder had turned away, characteristically back to the task at hand; reaching into the linen closet, her mother assembled a little stack of perfectly ironed sheets and pillowcases, which Janice already knew she would not in her own life as a woman even attempt to repeat.

The bus was overheated. Stale. She stared out the window at the surface of winter, even though frozen in place still appearing to float by and by and out of sight. Spring would come, this snow would melt, and then what? Time took care of a lot of things, but how would it watch over her?

Never trust anyone all the way, her grandma had whispered to her at supper on Christmas Eve; now mind you it was all right to trust part way, but never all the way. Remember that. Then Grandma wanted to know, in a louder, brighter voice, if Janice had a young man. Sort of, Janice said. Oyster stew was being ladled into the good bowls. Not talking openly about the son, not at the table, was like a terrible agreement to make everything worse; Janice suspected that the three additional guests, lonely congregants she hadn’t met before, had been invited officially in kindness but secretly out of fear that without these public eyes, the family might fall into a not very Christmas-like morass of sadness and blame. As he ceremoniously served the bowls of stew, her father spoke out in his pulpit voice: Mother, would you like to tell our guests that story about the oysters at your wedding? Oh my, those oysters was a crying shame, Grandma answered, the whole barrel turned bad on the way up the Mississippi. 1908. What was that? So what did they eat? Well, they ate the crackers and the cheeses. Roast beef. She could just see it all laid out. Beans baked with sorghum. Creamed potatoes. Stuffed eggs. Pies. The cake. Maud had made the wedding cake. Maud was dead now.

Janice saw the faded wedding slipping over the snow beside the Greyhound, guests with their plates of food, the...