Sea Room

1917

1917 She took the short route to her place of work past the children's home, where she'd left him for good, as one might turn a pocket inside out to remove a paper wrapper or a seed. She showed a new severity of dress, wearing new business clothes without the scalloped apron he remembered. She could not walk far enough to disappear completely, and in a small mirror of polished slate, he chalked her picture. His father dead, she searched mattresses and underneath the floorboards but nothing was saved, only nests of blistered foil and cellophane. At the office, men admired her hands, unblemished by her brief chores at mothering, and by her husband's illness which ended quickly beyond her touch. She never advanced in her work; the ledgers were awkward, unruly in her arms. His father might have held him; his coat was fireproof, large enough to hide them both. He dreamed of it: an orphan riding the hook and ladder in the blood-poisoned arms of a ghost. But it was she who approached, parading along the high fence of his youth. No charity, no trade learned in the state system gave him skills to smooth the raised grain of a father's coffin. 54 His finger traced a worn and beautiful psalm until the print lifted off, into him. All days started with her receding figure; as she walked away her attire grew darker. "tears passed, each with its back to him. At last, he saw her silhouette against the kitchen wall in childhood, its ragged features of scrap paper, the warmth from the grate increasing. 55 ...