Apparition & Late Fictions by Thomas Lynch

Author:Thomas Lynch [Lynch, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Short Stories (Single Author)
ISBN: 9780393042078
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Published: 2010-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

NOW THE poet gave herself over to the chance unwinding of the days before her and to the pursuit of beauty outside of the forms her training and temperament had always used. Rather than put the hours to work over sonnets or sestinas or the further cataloguing of her husband’s work, rather than plan further lectures, assignments, classroom exercises or review her students’ writing samples, rather than send new work out to the better journals or plan a conference for the coming year, she sat for hours gazing at the water and the way the daylight worked upon it. She succumbed to her preoccupation with the young Jamaican, working her schedule around the girl’s schedule. When she was working the afternoon teas, Aisling partook of the afternoon teas. When she was working the dining room, Aisling lingered there. When she was out for the day with the young coachman, Aisling just followed on foot as the young couple shopped among the stalls in town, or toured the massive summer “cottages”—Queen Annes and Greek Revivals and Carpenter Gothics—on bluffs overlooking both ends of town. These were summer homes with names like “Far View” and “Tootle Cottage,” “Ingleneuk” and “Windemere,” built by the moguls of another age, Midwest capitalists who made their fortunes in textiles or railroads, lumber or banking; doctors and soldiers and clergymen. The cupolas and turrets, widow’s walks and towers rose over the broad porches to look out on Lake Huron and the Straits and west of the great bridge in the distance, all down the long blue edge of summer in Michigan. Aisling, of course, tried to keep her distance, but it wasn’t long before she could tell that Bintalou and her paramour—though of that she was not yet certain—had become aware of her pursuit. There was no good way to explain how it was she was always happening to be in their vicinity. What would she eventually tell whoever it was who might eventually ask? That she was transfixed by the vision of the girl; that the girl seemed in every one of her aspects, utterly sublime, and that since gazing upon her beauty, all other ruminations on the theme of beauty seemed poor imitations and wastes of time. She had made studies in her notebook, hoping to draw out some verse on this theme, but it was useless. On the subject of beauty Aisling could wax eloquent, but in the presence of it she was smitten to silence. All she could do was follow on, solitary in her pursuit, hoping to get some succor for the hunger it whetted in her for more of the same. She had grown more sleepless, more mindless of her resolve to rest, more mindful of the madness the girl had ignited in her. But she was helpless to do anything about it. She asked the hotel physician for a palliative for her constant headache, which now only sharpened when the girl was nowhere to be found. Aisling had confined her time downstairs in the hotel to the times Bintalou was working.

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