They couldn’t stop the time that marched so noisily over their heads. They couldn’t prevent me from leaving the room, walking down the hall, out the door. Neither you, nor your goodness, nor china horses could keep me forever away from the arms of the world.
The hotel room had felt almost familiar when Sylvia re-entered it; the only change since she’d left a few hours earlier was the stack of fresh towels placed in the bathroom and a further straightening of the bed she had made before leaving. Her few cosmetics were lined up near the sink just the way she had left them, and the leather portfolio remained in perfect alignment with the right-hand corner of the desk. Her suitcase stood near the wall, the curtains were closed. I am going to be able to manage this, she thought. I am going to be able to be calm here.
When she was a child, there had been – apart from other people – two things that particularly separated her from calmness: wind in a room and outdoor mirrors. She could still call up the fear she had felt when, one morning in June, she had walked into the dining room to discover the sheer curtains moving like sleeves toward her, and a bouquet of flowers that had been dead and still the previous day bending and shaking in the breeze that entered through the open window. She had become accustomed to the fact that the air moved when she was outside, but she believed the interior of the house was the realm of stillness, so that when she became aware of the wind in the room it seemed to her that something alien and disturbing had begun to animate all that she had relied on to be quiet and in place.
After that she would let neither her father nor her mother open her bedroom window at night and would inquire repeatedly about all the other windows in the house before climbing carefully into bed. In spite of her parents’ assurances, she would worry that while she lay motionless between white sheets the long, draped arms of the curtains would be rising and falling as if conducting music she would never be able to hear, and would not be able to bear had she been able to hear it. These indoor currents and suspicions of music had caused her anxiety during her first years with Malcolm as well, but almost all of that was gone by the time she began to meet Andrew. And yet she had never been entirely comfortable in summer when Andrew wanted the front door of the cottage left open. She liked the idea of the two of them being closed in together; she liked the idea of shutting everything else out.
When she had been about twelve, her father had taken her to a country auction, thinking that it would be a pleasant outing for her after two days of tension in the house. A bad spell, he had said, referring to her mother’s mood that had been an unspoken but dark and pulsing presence. Sylvia had not responded well to anything about the auction: not to the jabbering man on the platform, not to the displaced furniture and household goods arranged on the grass, and certainly not to the more delicate items – sheets and doilies and tablecloths being pawed through by those she knew had no right to touch them. But when she had passed by a row of mirrors and had seen herself reflected in them – herself drenched in sunshine with the hem of her dress moving, grass under her shoes, barns and trees, hills and clouds behind her – she had begun to cry and had not stopped crying until her father was forced to take her home. When questioned, all she could say was that nothing was where it should be. What she had meant, she realized much later, was that the mirrors had shown her that there was no controlling what might enter the frame of experience, that the whole world might bully its way into a quiet interior, and that there would be no way of keeping it out.
It comforted her that the mirrors in her own house were hung in locations where windows and all that moved outside of windows could not be duplicated on their surfaces, and each
The hotel room had felt almost familiar when Sylvia re-entered it; the only change since she’d left a few hours earlier was the stack of fresh towels placed in the bathroom and a further straightening of the bed she had made before leaving. Her few cosmetics were lined up near the sink just the way she had left them, and the leather portfolio remained in perfect alignment with the right-hand corner of the desk. Her suitcase stood near the wall, the curtains were closed. I am going to be able to manage this, she thought. I am going to be able to be calm here.
When she was a child, there had been – apart from other people – two things that particularly separated her from calmness: wind in a room and outdoor mirrors. She could still call up the fear she had felt when, one morning in June, she had walked into the dining room to discover the sheer curtains moving like sleeves toward her, and a bouquet of flowers that had been dead and still the previous day bending and shaking in the breeze that entered through the open window. She had become accustomed to the fact that the air moved when she was outside, but she believed the interior of the house was the realm of stillness, so that when she became aware of the wind in the room it seemed to her that something alien and disturbing had begun to animate all that she had relied on to be quiet and in place.
After that she would let neither her father nor her mother open her bedroom window at night and would inquire repeatedly about all the other windows in the house before climbing carefully into bed. In spite of her parents’ assurances, she would worry that while she lay motionless between white sheets the long, draped arms of the curtains would be rising and falling as if conducting music she would never be able to hear, and would not be able to bear had she been able to hear it. These indoor currents and suspicions of music had caused her anxiety during her first years with Malcolm as well, but almost all of that was gone by the time she began to meet Andrew. And yet she had never been entirely comfortable in summer when Andrew wanted the front door of the cottage left open. She liked the idea of the two of them being closed in together; she liked the idea of shutting everything else out.
When she had been about twelve, her father had taken her to a country auction, thinking that it would be a pleasant outing for her after two days of tension in the house. A bad spell, he had said, referring to her mother’s mood that had been an unspoken but dark and pulsing presence. Sylvia had not responded well to anything about the auction: not to the jabbering man on the platform, not to the displaced furniture and household goods arranged on the grass, and certainly not to the more delicate items – sheets and doilies and tablecloths being pawed through by those she knew had no right to touch them. But when she had passed by a row of mirrors and had seen herself reflected in them – herself drenched in sunshine with the hem of her dress moving, grass under her shoes, barns and trees, hills and clouds behind her – she had begun to cry and had not stopped crying until her father was forced to take her home. When questioned, all she could say was that nothing was where it should be. What she had meant, she realized much later, was that the mirrors had shown her that there was no controlling what might enter the frame of experience, that the whole world might bully its way into a quiet interior, and that there would be no way of keeping it out.
It comforted her that the mirrors in her own house were hung in locations where windows and all that moved outside of windows could not be duplicated on their surfaces, and each
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