Love's Anatomy : Eyes

Allie - Sorry I didn't stop on my bike, late for a meeting. Big mistake. Spent hours trying to find you again. Would you have lunch with me (together this time)?

At the bottom he wrote his number, and beneath that, his name.

— Yeah, so what

is

it?

Tracy was at the edge of her chair, in the kitchen, of course. She had heard me rush the lock, throw the door open, and slam it again as though I had been chased by a mob. And then she heard me scream. She came running out into the hallway with a look of southern concern on her face, ready to comfort and mother me, and just as easily set the dogs on whoever had harmed me. Didn't know she was that fierce. What did I tell you the other day about Trace? I take it all back.

I had stood there like a statue that had just been delivered and dumped inside the door. No, I didn't: I started giggling and prancing about like a third-grader with a valentine. Tracy had asked me What, in tarnation, had gotten into me? so I gave her a brief and slightly breathless account of my past week, not bothering to mention the sun in the park, which would have taken some explaining even to myself; then I recounted most of the conversation with Mrs. Wheeler down the street, and finally revealed the folded piece of paper in my hand, which I had not yet opened. She looked at me as though I were crazy and stupid all in one, and simply said Well,

read

it! So I did.

— His name is Brennan. Nice handwriting. Allie, no one calls me Allie.

—

Someone

does. I like it. It's cute. I think I'm going to start using it, it's more like you, you know. Big mistake, huh? That boy's a sweetheart. So you going to call him up, or just sit there imagining him?

I just sat there imagining him. What did he look like? The picture I had in my mind was faded; to begin with, I had scarcely seen his features. It was as though I had seen

him

, but not his clothing, not his face. I didn't see his eyes so much as I saw how they moved, how the pupils opened when he looked my way. How they sparked from the light that leaned in through the window, or the café light above his table. But I couldn't remember the color of the iris. I could remember the shape of the whole eye, but not the shape of his face. His hair was brown, I thought. His smile was beautiful, but I didn't know anything about his teeth or even his lips: I should have seen his lips. What kind of attraction is that, when you didn't even remember a body, with arms and legs?

But I did remember his hands, I remembered watching him write. He had shrugged and smiled at the couple kissing next to him, then leaned back to his writing. I had watched one hand steady the notebook, while the other moved over its pages. It wasn't a worker's hand, but then neither was it soft, as though it could hold a hammer as easily as it did a pen. As though it could as easily and gracefully hold a woman as it did a pen. As though it could create art with a woman's body, as though it could stir a woman's body like stirring a pool of water, faster and faster.

— Allie...! Hello, Alison!

— What? Sorry, Trace, I was...

— Yeah, I know. So are you going to call him...? Hey, what's on the back?

She took the paper from my hand and turned it over, so the half-sheet that had been behind the fold, in the palm of my hand, was revealed. As I looked at it I looked into my own face, sketched in ball-point ink. It was a perfect likeness, as perfect as a ballpoint could make it, and underneath it he had written my name, Alison.

— Whooo hoo hoo hoo hoo,

darlin'! What'd he dew, take yer picture?

I took a deep breath. I felt empty, as though I had nothing inside of me, almost as though I were nothing, nothing at all. Or as though I were everything in the world. — Tracy, I need to eat. Did you cook already? Not yet? Come on, I'm buying.

+

There is a piece of music that runs through my head, but I don't know where I've heard it before. It may have been a song that played on the radio, before I was old enough to make words, and too young to have begun to string thoughts like melodies, or remember the pictures that accompanied them, like harmonies.

When I am quiet at night it finds me, and I begin to hum it to myself. I want to know what it is, so that I might find the lyric which is married to the sound. So light it is, and yet so deep. Now, if I close my eyes, I can almost see it, I can almost taste it. The music is something like a bright apple shining ripe in a high branch, under a late August sun; it is something like swimming naked in the lake behind our cabin under a full moon in spring. It is something like my first kiss, and even more like all the kisses which followed after. It is like the child I haven't conceived yet, but in my imagination, it is that child's laugh, and it is that child's cry.

I suppose I may have created that delicate melody myself, and my imagination adds to it a man's deeper registers, in counterpoint. But I don't play an instrument, so I can't play it; and I don't read music or write it. I only sing under my breath, slightly off-key, when I am quiet at night.

Whenever I go to a concert or buy a new recording from the store, I know that I will always be slightly disappointed: all those beautiful musicians and poets. But they don't know my music, and blind, they can only hunt about for it within the darkness of themselves. Some dive down deeply enough that they approach me, we approach each other there at the beginning of all songs, almost touching the single note common to every singer. The ends of their reaching fingers almost touch the ends of mine, they almost, almost meet, reaching to spark me alight like God and human on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. They have come close, an electric current tingling between us, though I was never shocked awake or stopped in my tracks. I was never quite brought to life.

I suppose I resisted being brought to life. What would happen if god touched my fingers, or surrounded me with his arms? What would happen if I let god into me? Would there be anything left, would I know myself anymore? I sat up so quickly by the river, though no one was near but he and I. Why did I turn away from the sun; and why didn't I reach the extra hair's width toward a musician's perfect orchestration?

I went up on the mountain

I stood down by the sea

I called to hear my echo

I called my love to me

Our Irish nanny taught us that song when I was young. She brought all the neighbor children to the park on sunny Saturday mornings, to the hill that overlooked the lake, and sang it to us. She taught us the children's game that accompanied it: we made a circle around one person in the center, who was blindfolded. Hands outstretched, he or she would spin, a colorful pinwheel, while we sang the refrain three times. When the singing stopped, the pinwheel stopped, and whomever you were facing would walk up and give you a kiss on the cheek. You had to guess who the person was, and once you succeeded, you would trade places.

Our nanny's daughter and son accompanied us, and sang with their lilting voices beneath the red curls and freckled cheeks. Liam and Sandy Grady. Everything was so green, I could close my eyes and imagine their home, far away to the east. I was ten years old.

I stood down by the sea; I called to hear my echo.

One of those summer days I spun until I was silly. I guessed each name, but always guessed a turn after or a turn before; I was dizzy, and I spun with a smile on my lips. Shy kisses of the little girls, shier kisses of the little boys, like small birds that would fly up and steal a tiny seed. Then one kiss was warm and slow on my cheek: — Jeremy, I said laughing. I spun around and around. The next kiss was warm and slow again, the same I was sure, and this time below the cheekbone, just at the corner of my mouth, just touching the soft line where my lips came together. Had I come full circle to face the same person again? — Liam? I guessed, and the smile was less on my face, but had burrowed down inside, or fallen like a coal dropped into the ocean, heating the water as it dissolved.

I listened to the song and turned again, the coarse weave of the cloth gently holding my eyelids closed.

I went up on the mountain...

I was spinning the other direction to unwind my dizziness, dizziness that was not purely physical.

I called my love to me.

I stopped and waited; there was a pause, and I felt someone approach me, more than simply hearing the footsteps, I could feel the approach, and my skin tingled as though a slight breeze had rushed along the hairs of my arms and had climbed up the back of my scalp. Was that not Liam? Then there was the warmth of a soft hand on my neck, and the warmest... oh, the warm and slow invitation of those lips... lips upon my lips! Softness into softness. My mouth responded, as though someone had called my name from close by, and I had answered without thinking. Lips soft as petals between fingers, moist and smooth... but petals warmed from within by an indefinite pulse of blood, and scented not with perfume but with the sweet tang of tea and innocence. The lips parted and a whisper of breath entered my mouth, touched my tongue, and without intending to I gasped slightly and drew the sweet air deep into my lungs. Then the lips closed and brushed away; then a cheek rested as softly against my cheek, and a voice spoke softly that only I might hear, gentle as an echo: — 'Tis Sandy.

— Well, I think Alison has spun about quite enough, now, hasn't she?

Nanny's lilting voice was kind and businesslike as her feet stepped smartly up behind me, then her fingers were working out the knot in the cloth. The hand and cheek that had warmed me slipped away, away, while the skin where they had rested was warmed as if by the sun; my head reached forward against the blindfold, my lips parted slightly into the air. Then my eyes opened on Sandy as she stepped backward to her place in the circle, her sea green eyes washing over and into my own.

+

A melody played in my head as we made our way to the restaurant, played in time to my footsteps. I'd write it down if I knew how to write music, or sing it if I were sure I could get it right. It seems it is only there when it is there, and afterward it's like a shell the ocean's roar has abandoned: if you hold it to your ear, it's an empty shell, without the waves that you imagine still exist.

We went slowly along the water. I recall nothing Tracy told me as we walked.