Sunlight in a Window-Niche

The two young men heaved open the cumbersome door, off Ninth and Franklin, into my two-story mansion that occupied much of the street.

The stagnant air inside freshened a little, as it would, when they swept in on the wings of their youthful vitality, coming out of the southern summertime and into my abode.

Edgar, had he yet been as much a student of ambiences and atmospheres as he would later become once grown, might have paused a little longer outside to enjoy the edifice. As things were, he and my son put down their school things on a credenza in the foyer. Then, they came straight through an archway into the back of the house.

Where the parlor stretched off towards me, any hint of sparseness in the decorations gave up the ghost. The classical solemnity of the hall yielded to lush velvet and polished wood. Perhaps here, belatedly, Edgar took proper note of his surroundings.

At any rate, that was where he found me, wandering in the labyrinths of my mind.

I was fixed on a housefly that kept bumping into the glass repeatedly in fruitless, senseless motions of hope. A forlorn desperation, I thought, to escape. The entrance of the boys seemed to agitate it further, bringing with it perhaps subtle senses of the green world outside.

Robert greeted me. “Good evening, Mother,” he said. “May I introduce you to my friend, Edgar?”

I knew, even at his tender age, that my son was trying to coax me out of my solitude, the grim lair of my interior, but I would have felt naked – like a homeless hermit crab – to show myself off in front of him or anybody.

“I’d like to show him my rabbits,” Robert continued, seeing I was noncommittal. “And, afterwards, he is going to help me with my memorization.”

I nodded, seeing no reason either to halt or encourage this.

Rob was eager to see some sign of approval from me. “Edgar is an absolute genius at remembering all the assigned readings,” he went on, excitedly gesticulating as he spoke, the way he had as a child. “The masters love testing him, and he’s never failed to impress them yet.”

Bars of daylight streamed in through the window’s thick, heavy glass, bathing my slender form in its golden radiance. I looked down at my dress, which was nothing to shout about really, and I saw its every thread ablaze with such light as I had only associated thus far with the heady milieu of Hellenic myth.

I had been alone for unmeasured hours in a sort of semi-darkness, even though the heat of the day had not escaped me. Now, all at once, it seemed as if I burned amidst the embers of Hestia’s hearth.

“Mother, is that all right? Are you feeling well today?”

I turned halfway toward my eldest’s voice. “Oh, yes,” I said, the words trailing from my mouth as if in a sticky river of honey, before surfing the gilded beams that pierced the space between us. “Thank you, Rob. I am happy to see you come home to me with a friend by your side.”

At the time, I was unaware that the simple sound of my voice could have had such an effect as to render a boy momentarily speechless.

I cupped my hands around the fly, capturing it in the space between my clasped palms, surprising myself with my own dexterity, but keeping calm, unwilling either to free or damage the trapped creature.

“Hello, Mrs. Stanard,” Edgar said, apparently rediscovering his words and squinting to discern the features of my silhouette ahead of him, which might have seemed like a reflection of his own.

He waited for my response, as I read his mind.

Lo ! in that little window-niche

How statue-like I see thee stand

“Welcome, Edgar. Please call me Jane,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll agree that there’s no need for formalities amongst friends.” I smiled at last as I said this.

With lines of poetry in thy hand

That express in perfect lyrics each

The stature of thy dreaming’s reach

As I stepped from the sun’s garish glare, the heat switched its alliance. My own flesh chilled in the shadows, as a flush crept up Edgar’s neck and into his face. He, this young man, this friend of Rob’s with the dark eyes swirling in a cyclone of passion and emotion well beyond his years, looked awestruck to the point of fainting.

I think that I’ve come home at last

From the future, or the past.

I giggled like a schoolgirl, imagining him captivated by my face - a classic beauty, I had been told – Hellenic. I could see the effect I was having on him, transporting him to a landscape of magic and myth, like some mysterious substance that could alter the workings of the soul.

“Somehow, Jane doesn’t suit you,” he said, smally, quietly, and yet confidently. “I shall call you Helen.”

He said the name with the manner of one who has, with a struggle, reached and taken the choice fruit from a tree.

“Helen?” I said, feeling the fly flitting to and fro in my hands. “Rob, dear. Please open the window for me.”

The little, fuzzy creature, full of its own intense nervous energy, disappeared into the humid day.

“Yes. Helen,” Edgar said, as he watched the fly disappearing. “The word denotes sunlight. And you are as dazzling as the dawn on a midsummer morning.”

My empty hand fluttered to my neck to twist the thin chain there, a nervous habit of mine, before betraying the tableau with another girlish laugh.

When I reached him, I took his hand and spoke gentle and gracious words of welcome. Then, directing my attention to my son, my vision cleared, and I remembered. I was no venerated goddess but a loving mother and wife.

“Yes, Rob, my beautiful boy,” I said, placing a flurry of kisses upon his cheek. “I can see your friend here has a flair with words.”

“Oh, yes. In fact, to tell you the truth, that is the reason I brought him here today. Words. He just cannot stop the words. Can you, Edgar?”

“Well, what is this conspiracy about then?” I asked, looking back and forth at the two boys.

“Edgar here is in a bit of trouble at home,” Rob said, slowly, measuring his words to see how they would land with me. “Trouble he would like to avoid for as long as possible. Mr. Allan found some of Edgar’s manuscript all over the backs of his ledger sheets. And he is not very keen on the idea of Edgar’s written prose.”

Edgar smiled at me, his Helen. “A businessman I will never be. Poetry over profit, I decree,” he said, stressing the rhyme in jest. “But, truthfully, there is no seducing me from the path of literature, the most noble of professions.”

“But both Mr. Allan and the headmaster are certainly trying,” Rob said. “Edgar here has an entire collection of poetry completed, however Headmaster advised Mr. Allan against publication.”

“Is that right?” I said, feeling my body stretch out like that of a cat in the sun, as the conversation fell into the orbit of one of my favorite distractions. “I myself adore poetry. Perhaps I can read some of yours when you visit again.”

“It would be my pleasure, Helen,” he said, a playful smile on his lips. “But until then, perhaps a few words from a favorite. Maid of Athens, ere we part, Give, oh, give me back my heart!”

“Oh, Lordy, Edgar,” Rob said, shaking his head and hitting him on the arm. “Enough with the words now, man. To the rabbits!”

“To the rabbits!” Edgar sang back, and I wondered what mythical connotations these words had conjured for him.

***

Edgar’s calls to our home became evermore frequent over the following weeks. It seemed as if he was drawn to its warmth like a sea-battered ship to a lighthouse. His friendship with Robert deepened, even with the couple of years that Edgar had on him. And it seemed he enjoyed the other children as well, easily taking on the role of big brother. Including the baby that I sometimes rocked in my arms when he read to me. It seemed little Jane also felt the comfort of Edgar’s voice, spiked with just a touch of Southern drowsiness.

One day after a particularly arduous boxing match after school, Edgar arrived with a discolored eye, the bruise already blossoming into that of an African violet.

“Oh, you poor man,” I said, smiling to see the poet bear the warrior’s wounds. “I see you have chosen to come home with your shield.”

He returned the smile sheepishly, but not without a touch of pride.

“Sit down,” I said.

After Edgar positioned himself on the feathered cushion of the divan, I approached him in a bond of sympathy. I placed my cool, gentle hand – a mother’s touch - beneath his chin and lifted it to inspect the injury.

“Robert, can you go to the kitchen and bring back a cold compress?”

“I can assure you that is not needed,” Edgar said in a soft voice. “I am not so easily broken.”

“Mother, he tells the truth,” Robert said. “Just a few weeks ago, my pal here swam six miles up the James River,” he said, admiration and humor coloring his words. “None of the fellows believed he could do it, but about three hours later he emerged victorious. Looking a lot worse for the wear than now, I should add.”

“Like Byron emerging from the Hellespont, eh?”

Fraught with need to impress, Edgar said, “I was so covered in blisters on my shoulders, back, and arms, that I had to sleep on my stomach for three days.”

After the two boys shared a humorous glance, Edgar added, “I only wish it seemed so funny at the time.”

“Boys will be boys,” I said. “But as a mother, I must nurture.”

Unbidden words leaked from his lips. “Unfortunately, that I would not know.”

The angels, whispering to one another,

Can find, among their burning terms of love,

None so devotional as that of "Mother”

I saw it cross his face and tickle his brain. A pang of emptiness laced with something close to despair. Before it disappeared into a grateful smile.

“I suppose a cold compress would not hurt,” he said.

***

Days later, as Edgar’s black eye receded, I began to feel the bruised petals of pain pulsating upon my own forehead. My vision blurred a bit, I was thankful that Edgar was again visiting after school. Even though my son would be more than adequate to read to me, it was Edgar’s melodic voice that elevated those dusty evenings into timeless moments from the youth of the world.

When he came to me that time, without my Rob who planned on rowing, his face was closed, almost petulant. The way-worn wanderer dealt with much stress at home, with Mrs. Allan’s illness and Mr. Allan’s iron-willed temperament and pressure to conform to his desires.

But when he saw me waiting at the table with tea and sweets, the tension between his eyebrows relaxed. His face transformed into the carefree manner of young men who have had more promising starts in life.

“How was school?”

“I read. I wrote. I solved equations,” he said. “All so much dross, I’m sure you’ll agree. But I brought you a poem. Not one of my own today, but a voice of a kindred spirit. It’s called Youth and Age.”

Upon hearing the title, I laughed, perhaps a little too loudly and for too long. “This may be a little too close to home.”

He smiled his sly smile, the one that held all the intelligence and wit that one was capable of holding, and then perhaps a little more. “Oh, Helen,” he said. “You are not old... or, at least not this old.” He gestured to the poem before him.

As he read through each opening stanza in his melodious voice, spellbound, I was indeed young again. Hope clung like a bee and lightly flashed along.

Absentmindedly, I grasped the chain around my neck.

Edgar read the words written by another man, an aged man, but spoke each syllable as if he knew and understood. “But Spring-tide blossoms on thy lips, And tears take sunshine from thine eyes! Life is but thought: so think I will That Youth and I are house-mates still.”

When he finished, he looked at me expectantly. “Divine. Do you agree?”

“Yes. And this is why you must never stop writing,” I said, my voice intense with emotion. “Words. His words, your words. What power they have. What beauty. What hope they offer.”

As I brought my hand down from my neck, my chain lay there like a snake woven through my fingers. The clasp was broken.

***

Then, that final day in April, he knocked on the door with a poem clutched in his hand. He was not expecting my husband, a hard-working government officer, to be home at that time of day.

“Sir,” he said, taking in the disheveled clothing and worry lines mapping his face. A stark comparison to the tidy aspect he usually presented.

“Edgar,” Mr. Stanard said, his voice commanding and short. “Run along home. Now is not the time for visitors.”

“But I must see Mrs. Stanard,” Edgar said. “She requested for me to bring her a poem I was reworking for her.”

“Jane is not well. You must leave now.”

A screech of agony, something more bestial than human, pierced the air. Frantic, I swiveled my head around before grasping that the offending source was me.

Stumbling to the window, feverish and dizzy, I endeavored to focus my gaze on Edgar. His sweet face, a kaleidoscope of emotions, as the door – the entry to the habitat of his heart - slammed and locked at my husband’s words.

He stood on the doorstep for several minutes before going back out to the sidewalk. I watched, already mourning his genius, as he searched the windows one by one, until his eyes – ponds of love and misery - met mine – red-rimmed and insane - once more as I was tucked into bed.

I thank the very Lord that my beloved children did not witness the rift expanding through my skull, the volcano that finally erupted from my crown, enveloping everything in suffocating ash.

His Helen, the first purely ideal love of his soul, was no more. Only festering flesh and bones under Shockoe’s soil. Another grave at which a tender boy’s heart holds vigil. He reads to me now.