I sip my wine. Another chat box pops up: Andrew, a man I met on a site for classic-film enthusiasts.
Graham Greene series Angelika this w/e?
I pause. The Fallen Idol is a favorite—the doomed butler; the fateful paper plane—and it’s been fifteen years since I watched Ministry of Fear. And old movies, of course, brought me and Ed together.
But I haven’t explained my situation to Andrew. Unavailable sums it up.
I return to Sally.
thedoctorisin: Are you keeping up with your psychologist?
Sally4th: yes :) thanx. down to just 1x week. she says progress is excellent
Sally4th: meds and beds is the key
thedoctorisin: Are you sleeping well?
Sally4th: i still get bad dreams
Sally4th: u?
thedoctorisin: I’m sleeping a lot.
Too much, probably. I should mention that to Dr. Fielding. Not sure I will.
Sally4th: ur progress? u fit for fight?
thedoctorisin: I’m not as quick as you! PTSD is a beast. But I’m tough.
Sally4th: yes u r!
Sally4th: just wanted to check on my friends here—thinking about u all!!!
I bid Sally adieu just as my tutor dials in on Skype. “Bonjour, Yves,” I mutter to myself. I pause for a moment before answering; I look forward to seeing him, I realize—that inky hair, that dark bloom to his skin. Those eyebrows that bolt into each other and buckle like l’accent circonflexe when my accent puzzles him, which is often.
If Andrew checks in again, I’ll ignore him for now. Maybe for good. Classic cinema: That’s what I share with Ed. No one else.
I upend the hourglass on my desk, watch how the little pyramid of sand seems to pulse as the grains dimple it. So much time. Nearly a year. I haven’t left the house in nearly a year.
Well, almost. Five times in eight weeks I’ve managed to venture outside, out back, into the garden. My “secret weapon,” as Dr. Fielding calls it, is my umbrella—Ed’s umbrella, really, a rickety London Fog contraption. Dr. Fielding, a rickety contraption himself, will stand like a scarecrow in the garden as I push the door open, the umbrella brandished before me. A flick of the spring and it blooms; I stare intently at the bowl of its body, at its ribs and skin. Dark tartan, four squares of black arranged across each fold of canopy, four lines of white in every warp and weft. Four squares, four lines. Four blacks, four whites. Breathe in, count to four. Breathe out, count to four. Four. The magic number.
The umbrella projects straight ahead of me, like a saber, like a shield.
And then I step outside.
Out, two, three, four.
In, two, three, four.
The nylon glows against the sun. I descend the first step (there are, naturally, four) and tilt the umbrella toward the sky, just a bit, peek at his shoes, his shins. The world teems in my peripheral vision, like water about to flood a diving bell.
“Remember, you’ve got your secret weapon,” Dr. Fielding calls.
It’s not a secret, I want to cry; it’s a fucking umbrella, wielded in broad daylight.
Out, two, three, four; in, two, three, four—and unexpectedly it works; I’m conducted down the steps (out, two, three, four) and across a few yards of lawn (in, two, three, four). Until the panic wells within, a rising tide that swamps my sight, drowns out Dr. Fielding’s voice. And then . . . best not to think of it.
Saturday, October 30
7
A storm. The ash tree cowers, the limestone glowers, dark and damp. I remember dropping a glass onto the patio once; it burst like a bubble, merlot flaring across the ground and flooding the veins of the stonework, black and bloody, crawling toward my feet.
Sometimes, when the skies are low, I imagine myself overhead, in a plane or on a cloud, surveying the island below: the bridges spoked from its east coast; the cars sucked toward it like flies swarming a lightbulb.
It’s been so long since I felt the rain. Or wind—the caress of wind, I nearly said, except that sounds like something you’d read in a supermarket romance.
It’s true, though. And snow too, but snow I never want to feel again.
A peach was mixed in with my Granny Smiths in this morning’s FreshDirect delivery. I wonder how that happened.
The night we met, at an art-house screening of The 39 Steps, Ed and I compared histories. My mother, I told him, had weaned me on old thrillers and classic noir; as a teenager