The Salt House by Huntington Cynthia

Author:Huntington, Cynthia [Huntington, Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: University Press of New England
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

I sit at the table writing in my journal. The book is filling with summer scenes, incidents, ideas—it pleases me to keep writing, to balance whole sentences on a thought or an impression, each one set down here and assigned a place. It gets darker and I begin to see my face in the window, translucent, like looking through water. Eyes, the darkest, catching light, a sweep of hair fallen over my forehead. Behind my eyes, across my temples, above my cheekbones, the northern edge of the water draws a line at the sky. My nose floats on the still, navy-blue water; my forehead is superimposed on the blue-grey horizon. I reach out my hand toward the glass and in my palm, exactly in the middle of my palm, is the first white star.

We do not talk. Bert lies on the bed, turning the pages of a book, the radio tuned to a whisper at his ear, a dream of baseball. In a single room, in separate pools of light, with not six feet between us, we make a spaciousness of the mind. The wind is wuthering across the dunes—a grating undertone of sand dragged across sand. I can barely hear the water now. New moon tonight: it will be dark and there will be stars. I’m distracted by a thunk-thunk at the window, and I look up. A brown moth bats at the pane, confused by our lights. Something creaks and cricks and scratches in the wall under the east window, some insect in the wood, a sound just at the threshold of hearing.

My hand pushes a huge, soft shadow across the page as I write. Look up. Now the window is blank and my face is a portrait lighted from one side. Nothing looks through me now—all that world is held behind my eyes, invisible, opening out behind. Another life, a deeper one, is there. On this side I cannot see it, except for that brief glimpse at dusk, in the momentary translucence of flesh and sky. How quickly it closes, uncertainly remembered. The flame jerks and straightens and my hand’s shadow flows over the page as I sit quietly writing at the end of the day.

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