40
“MOST NIGHTS,” she said, “while John was upstairs standing at the window and talking to Eleanor—”
“—describing the dark surface of the sea, recounting the adventures of the day—”
“Yeah—”
“—while he was sitting beside her, holding her hand—”
“Come on, Peter.”
“Sorry.”
“I was downstairs, prowling through the house.”
“What?”
“Yes. Listen to me. While he was upstairs, I was looking through your grandparents’ things.”
“Oh,” I said. “Searching for the secret of their affection.”
“I suppose so,” she said. “It wasn’t deliberate. I didn’t intend to snoop. I didn’t mean to pry. I didn’t set out to violate their privacy. It wasn’t my aim. I didn’t start out by saying to myself, ‘Now my goal is to penetrate their lives, dig into every nook and cranny, discover their secrets, and know them.’ I just drifted into it.”
“Sure. I can understand—”
“It started in the kitchen,” she said, cutting me off, “but my curiosity extended far beyond the kitchen, of course, so one night—a night that I remember very well—I started on the living room. John went upstairs, carrying the tray, and I waited until I heard the rumble of his voice, then I slipped into the living room, silently, and stood at the bottom of the stairs—”
“—as you had on so many other nights.”
“Yes.”
“But this time you didn’t start up the stairs to listen more closely.”
“No, I didn’t start up the stairs. Instead, I went over to the sofa and sat for a while, and listened to his voice and—felt it. That was something I did, felt his voice. It seemed to resonate through the house and through me. I could put my hands on my heart and feel it. It was a soothing voice—”
“It was a big voice, deep, with a rhythm and sonority like the sea itself, the sort of voice that needn’t be raised to be heard. His voice implied its volume, even when he was speaking softly, because his voice was so full—of understanding, of experience, of love.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll agree with that. All of that. And while I was listening to his voice, or I should say hearing it, not actively listening to it, just letting it penetrate me that way, from a distance, from above—I felt the comfort of it, like—”
“—a quilt, or a wool blanket—”
“No. No, not something thick, not heavy, more as if it were a warm night, when you go to bed naked, and you stretch out under nothing but a sheet, very light, just enough to make you feel covered and protected, and you can feel in that light touch, like the gentlest arm around your shoulders, that it will be a fine night for sleeping, a night when nothing will go wrong, when even your dreams will be easy, dreams of drifting—”
“Okay.”
“—dreams of drifting along, under the moon.”
“All right.”
“What was the quality that I found so comforting in that voice? It wasn’t what I had found comforting in my father’s voice when I was a little girl. That was something like self-confidence, or self-assurance. My father seemed to know exactly what he was doing, and I seemed to hear that in his voice, and it was very comforting, like the way he would sometimes put his hand on my shoulder, when I was very little, to guide me through a crowd, that steadying hand of competence, and I thought I could hear the same steady competence in his voice. But that wasn’t what I heard in John’s voice.”
“Are you kidding? My grandfather was the most capable man I’ve ever—”
“But he wasn’t at all confident about any of this, Peter. He was—afraid.”
“And you heard it in his voice?”
“Oh, no, no. Not at all. It took me so long to figure out what it was that I heard in his voice because I had never heard it before. It was devotion.”
[to be continued]
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