8 THE DANGER OF SEEING AND BEING

8

THE DANGER OF SEEING AND BEING

The second armchair, with footstool, remains in the library, as does the bed on which Vida slept for thirteen years. She reads in the chair and sometimes takes an afternoon nap on the narrow bed, surrounded by the palisades of books.

At night, she sleeps in the bedroom that her uncle occupied. She has made it over to her taste, which is pretty much his taste, but more so. A colorful Pendleton blanket, stretched across a frame, hangs on a wall. A Navajo rug warms her bare feet when the waxed-concrete floor is cold. A painted trastero contains all the jeans and shirts she needs, plus her two dresses.

Before retreating to the bathroom to shower, she steps to the bedroom window and pulls aside the panels of the white, translucent curtain that's lightly embroidered with butterflies in white thread and has a yellow-ribbon hem. She removes the bug screen and props it against the wall and cranks the casement panes out to their full extension. Although a little evening air will freshen the room, she opens the window because, intuitively, she expects Lupo to visit.

The hot shower soothes the muscles she strained at the placer mine. As she rinses the shampoo out of her hair, she is turning one of today's stones over and over in her mind's eye, a butterscotch-yellow chrysoberyl twice the size of her thumb. Even in its rough form, she sees what she believes might be an exceptional example of chatoyancy, which is also called "cat's-eye effect." If she cuts it properly, maintaining as much weight in carats as possible, it will have considerable value. More important: It will have great beauty.

She recalls a conversation with her uncle two years before he died, when she was sixteen. He was plainspoken, but there were occasions when he sought words that might define—although not explain—something ineffable.

On a Sunday in that late July, having washed and dried and put away the dinner dishes, they sit in rocking chairs on the front porch, enjoying coffee spiked with Baileys. While the sun lays a golden haze across the meadow, butterflies dance weary-winged above the grass, seeking rest from the day, as shadows spill eastward.

"Now I'm almost eighty-four, I no longer mind saying things that might make me seem foolish."

"You're the farthest thing from foolish, Uncle."

"Being human, I'm the nearest thing to it, the very thing itself. I've at last made peace with that fact."

"So then, what foolish thing do you want to tell me?"

"It started when you were ten or eleven. Since then, you turn up more and better gemstones than I do, on every expedition."

"I'm sure that's not right."

"But it is."

"Whether it is or not, I don't see why it makes you foolish."

"That's only the setup for what you'll think is silly when I say it. You're drawn to beauty as surely as hummingbirds are drawn to nectar."

"Who isn't drawn to beauty? Everyone is."

"No. You aren't drawn like others are. You see beauty where others never can. You see it with something other than your eyes."

"Now we're deep in the silly zone. Do I see it with my nose?"

"At the placer deposit, with nothing to see but sediment, you always choose the more rewarding square meter to dig."

"I still say it isn't always."

"It is always, sweetheart. Always, always. Often, when you've found remarkable stones within six or eight inches of the surface, you dig no deeper, when anyone else would."

"I think the word for that is ‘lazy.'"

"No. You move to another square meter and continue to work. During the past year, without telling you, I've several times gone the next day and dug deeper where you stopped. I've never found a stone. Somehow, you knew there was nothing more to be found."

"Oh, Uncle Ogden, really, I'm no psychic gemstone diviner."

"I didn't say you were psychic. Nothing as pulp fiction as that. You're something else there's no word for. At least, no word I know. It's not just the gemstones. It's also other things, like the wildflowers."

"What wildflowers?"

"Any wildflowers. When the meadow's full of them, you rush about with your clippers, snipping this and that with no apparent calculation—and every bloom in the bouquet is perfect."

"Really now, that's Nature's work, not mine."

He says, "I've gone out to pick a bunch of my own, with great care, but when I compare my bouquet to yours, it's pathetic. The colors are less rich. Some petals are spotted or missing."

"Well, see, you're my honorary papa. So you want to believe I'm special."

"Have you looked at yourself in the mirror, sweetheart? You're special whether you think you are or not."

Emphatically, if not sharply, she says, "Not! I'm not special. I'm just me. All right? So let's just shut up about it."

After a silence he says, "Are you okay?"

She can't at once respond. She sips her coffee and finds it difficult to swallow. When she says, "I didn't mean to snap at you," her voice breaks, and she doesn't like that.

He says, "No big deal. You didn't draw blood. If that's what you intended, we'll get out my files later and sharpen your teeth."

It's difficult to be angry with this sweet man. In fact, she isn't. She's been shaken by a long-unresolved grief and by the sudden recognition of a misgiving that has grown from it.

In time, when she's sure that she's in control of her emotions, she continues. "Everyone said my mom was special, bright and funny, so pretty, but I never knew her. My dad was a hero, but he was with me such a short time. What I have left of him is ... fading. Fading. It doesn't pay to be special in this world, Uncle. In fact, it's dangerous. I just want our quiet life. Our work, the meadow, the forest—and you."

"Then I'll live another eighty-four years."

"Good," she says.

Days later, when her uncle continues this conversation, Vida discovers his purpose hasn't been just to encourage her with loving praise, but also to warn her that a girl with special qualities should live fully, yet with caution in this world of envy, bestial desire, and cruel deceit. The misgiving she's felt since she was orphaned isn't irrational; Ogden shares it, and it's common sense.

She has been keeping a diary since she was ten. In addition to much else, she records in it these conversations with her uncle as accurately as she is able.

By the time Vida has finished showering, dried her hair, and dressed, Lupo has not arrived. She cranks the casement window shut and covers the panes with the embroidered curtain.

In the library, she makes a selection from the collection of vinyl recordings and puts the platter on the turntable. Speakers in all rooms give forth Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 4 in G Major, opus 58; Glenn Gould on piano is backed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Above the turntable hangs a pencil portrait of her uncle as a young man, rendered in marvelous detail. In the lower right-hand corner, instead of the artist's signature, there's a small, stylized image of a deer, specifically a fawn. Although Vida has lived with it all these years, sometimes when she looks at it, she thinks about what she found on the back of the portrait, after Ogden's death, and she is moved by the memory.

Before beginning to prepare dinner, she cranks open a kitchen window. No curtain hangs here, and the pleated shade is raised.

If Lupo fails to come this evening, she won't worry about him. He lives in two worlds with consummate grace, and sometimes she is half convinced that he's immortal.