because it had pretty much remained unchanged from that now-distant time. The grill and counter were still in the same place; so were the booths by the window. Even the old rusty plow blade that Mrs. Winthrop, the cafe’s first owner, claimed her great-grandfather had used to break ground on their family farm in 1754 still hung on the back wall, though now hemmed in by bright neon signs hawking beer and soft drinks.
I took my usual seat in the booth farthest from the door, the one that nestled in a corner by the window, and from which I could look out and watch the village’s activities. And without warning I saw Dr. Craddock pull up in front of our Myrtle Street house just as he had on that night so long ago, driving the sleek black sedan in which he paid house calls in the twenties, saw him as he walked through the rain to where my father stood gloomily on the porch. The doctor had been dressed in a black suit, and had taken off his hat as he came up the stairs, his question delivered almost like a plea.
And as I sat there hearing the doctor’s voice, time reversed itself, old buildings replacing more recent ones, the blue pavement of Main Street suddenly buried beneath a stretch of earth marked by both wooden wagon wheels and the narrow rubber tread of clanging Model A’s.
Far in the distance I saw an old iron bell materialize out of the motionless air of the long-empty bell tower of what had once been Chatham School, then begin to move, as if it had been pushed by an invisible hand, its implacable toll reverberating over the buildings and playing fields of Chatham School summoning us to our classes in the morning, and releasing us from them in the afternoon, ringing matins and vespers with an authority and sense of purpose that had little diminished from the time of monks and kings.
And then, as if from some high aerie where I sat perched above them, I saw the boys pour out of the great wooden doors at the front of the school, sweep down its wide cement stairs, and fan out into the surrounding streets, myself among them, the gray school jacket now draped over my shoulders, its little shield embroidered on the front pocket, along with the single phrase,
It was a Friday afternoon in late November, around three weeks after I’d taken Sarah to Miss Channing’s cottage for her first reading lesson. By then Sarah and I had become somewhat closer, she no longer simply a servant girl, I no longer simply the son of her master. Her yearning to make something of herself fired my own emerging vision of living an artist’s life, a life lived “on the run,” as Jonathan Channing had called it, and whose vast ambitions Sarah’s own great hope seemed to mirror in some way.
We were on our way to the lighthouse that afternoon, Sarah in a cheerful mood, strolling almost gaily over a carpet of red and yellow leaves, Sarah with a new purse she’d bought at a village shop, I with my sketchbook tucked firmly beneath my arm.
“I just want you to look at them before I show them to Miss Channing,” I told her as we strode across the street, then onto the broad yard that swept out from the whitewashed base of the lighthouse. “And if they’re bad, Sarah, I want you to tell me so. I don’t want Miss Channing to see them if they’re bad.”
Sarah flashed me a smile. “Give them to me, Henry, and stop going on so about it,” she said, playfully snatching the sketchbook from my hand.
“It’s just pictures of places around here mostly,” I added as she opened it. “Just beaches and stuff.”
But to me they were anything but local scenes. For what they portrayed was not Chatham, but my view of it. As such, they were moody drawings of shrouded seascapes and gloomy woods, each done with an unmistakable intensity, everything oddly torn and twisted, as if I’d begun with an ordinary scene in mind, some commonplace beach or village lane, then dipped it in black ink and put it through a grinder.
And yet, for all their adolescent excess, they’d had a certain sense of balance and proportion, the intricate bark of a distant tree, the grittiness of beach sand, drawings that suggested not only the look of things, but their physical textures. There was a vision of the world in them as well, a feeling for the claustrophobia of life, so that even the vistas, wide though they seemed, appeared pinched and walled in at the same time, the earth, for all its spinning vastness, no more than a single locked room from which nothing seemed able to escape.
Sarah remained silent while she flipped through my sketchbook. Then, with a quick flick of her hand, she closed it, a wry smile on her lips.
“I like them, Henry,” she said happily. “I like them a lot.”
She no doubt expected a smile to burst onto my face, but nothing of the sort happened. Instead, I stared at her with a decidedly troubled look. “But do you think Miss Channing will like them?” I demanded.
She looked at me as if the question were absurd. “Of course she will,” she said. She gave me a slight nudge. “Besides, even if Miss Channing didn’t like your drawings, all she’d want to do is teach you how to make them better.”
“All right,” I said, drawing the sketchbook from her hand as I got to my feet.
I walked a short distance away from her across the lighthouse grounds, then stopped and glanced back to where she remained seated on the little cement bench. “Thank you, Sarah,” I said.
She watched me closely, clearly sensing my insecurity, her teasing, carefree mood now entirely vanished. “Do you want me to come with you, Henry?”
I knew she’d read my mind. “Yes, I think I do.”
“All right,” Sarah said, coming to her feet with a sweep of her skirt. “But only as far as the courtyard, not into Miss Channing’s room. When you show her your drawings, you should do it on your own.”
I’d expected to find her alone, doing what she normally did at the end of the school day, washing the tables and putting away her supplies. It was only alter I’d reached the door of her classroom and peered inside that I realized she was not. Even so, I don’t know why it surprised me so, finding Mr. Reed in her room, leaning casually against the front table while she stood a few feet away, her back to him, washing the blackboard with a wet cloth. After all, I’d often seen them arriving at school in the morning and leaving together in the afternoon, Mr. Reed behind the wheel of his sedan, Miss Channing seated quite properly on the passenger side. I’d seen them together at other times as well, strolling side by side down the school corridor, or sitting on the steps, having lunch, usually with a gathering of other teachers, yet slightly off to the side, a mood surrounding them like an invisible field, so that even in the midst of others, they seemed intimately alone.
“Hello,” Miss Channing said when she turned away from the blackboard and saw me standing at the door. “Please, come in, Henry.”
I came into her room with a reluctance and sense of intrusion that I still can’t entirely explain, unless, from time to time, we are touched by the opposite of aftermath, feel not the swirling eddies of a retreating wave, but the dark pull of an approaching one.
