Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund Page A

off.”
    â€œReally?” Frannie said.
    â€œUna has quite taken up your brand of teasing,” Aunt said to Uncle. “Under the small silver dome, Frannie, there is a round of butter.”
    â€œ ‘Honored Sirs,’ ” Uncle read from his position at the desk, “ ‘Today I have become newly acquainted with an apparatus, invented by Augustin Fresnel, that is vastly superior to the Argand Fountain Lamp, currently used in most lighthouses in this country. The apparatus has been duly tested in France, having been installed on July 25, 1823, at the great Cordouan Lighthouse—’ ”
    Aunt put in quietly, “Torchy, you’d best tell the Governor about the Fresnel’s efficiency.”
    Uncle referred to his notes jotted down at the mariner’s supply and reported that with the best parabolic reflectors set in the Argand lamp, 17 percent of the light was used, whereas with the dioptric apparatus83 percent was saved. What with his numbers and a patriotic appeal not to let our country lag behind France, Uncle wrote a splendid and, as it later proved, convincing letter. Although, for reasons not entirely clear to me, subsequent historical accounts credit New York with installing the first Fresnel lens in this country, in 1842, let the record show that, in fact, the first Fresnel, when I was sixteen, became the blinking eye of our Lighthouse.
    The first night we were back on the Island, we moved chairs out onto the dock and admired the steadiness of our light. I felt half in a trance—that Boston was gone, and it was replaced with our own simple vista. Aunt Agatha nodded at the beam and said, “How strange that sometimes things as well as people deserve some formal farewell.”
    Uncle agreed. “Once I heard a sailor sing good-bye to the crow’s nest, the last night he stood watch.”
    â€œMay I be as constant as that good light,” Aunt said.
    â€œYou are, dear wife.” Uncle reached out and stroked her cheek with the curl of his finger.
    Â 
    A LL THE NEXT WEEK , Frannie and I took an old, worn quilt to the elbow of beach and lay on the sand to watch the steadfast light. Its sides widened, like a megaphone, as it shone out and finally diffused itself into the dark with no boundary definition.
    How would we feel to have that steady illumination replaced by something intermittent? Something that swooped and darted far above our heads? Lying on the quilt on our strip of sand, I felt subdued, as people sometimes do, at the end of an era.
    Suddenly Frannie said, “Feel my forehead, Una. I’m glowing.”
    I touched her skin with my fingertips and felt the extraordinary heat immediately.
    â€œWe must go in.”
    Â 
    F RANNIE WAS rapidly very sick with the fever and blisters. They were so tight with fluid that they seemed to shine. In her delirium, she imagined the Giant to be walking. Once her eyes opened wide while I sat with her, and I quickly told her there was no such thing as the Giant. She nodded her head feebly and whispered through parched lips,“I know. He’s only a leg.” Quickly I gave her a spoonful of water. Then she shouted, “He has a hinge at the knee!”
    When one night we saw she might die of the smallpox, a terror gripped me such as I had never experienced. Helpless, I stood aside while Aunt bathed her forehead and Uncle held both of her hands. I wanted him to hold on to her forever. Once he let go, and I feared Frannie had died, but then he reached farther up and held her arms. Suddenly for myself I had to break the stasis of our waiting.
    I slipped outside and climbed up the stone boulders to the tower. I leaned my head against the stone. A hundred feet below the waves crashed against the headland, but the breeze was soft on my back, like a kindly touch. I didn’t know why I went there, but quiet words formed on my lips. With my forehead pressed against the stone, I prayed, “O Tower, who