THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART SIXTY-ONE:

He sat at the desk, his palm spread over the braille printout of what he'd written so far of his novel set in the opening days of the Revolutionary War. The tip of his forefinger rested on Morgan Kent's name. Morgan Kent. A sighted man in a sighted world. What did he really know of that? Sure he knew the War backwards and forwards. And he'd spent many days in Williamsburg, getting to know the place where Morgan lived. Getting to know it as a blind man got to know something, anything. Got to know the scents of it, its sounds, the feel of its pickets and hedges. But Morgan knew what it looked like.

Williamsburg was ephemeral for him. He knew that. The bell in the tower of Bruton Parrish Church did not exist unless it were ringing the hours. It was not there, then it rang itself into existence...briefly...was silent and gone again. But Morgan could stand there on the Duke of Gloucester Street and look up at the bell. Its presence for him was steady, solid. Not only could Marshall not look up at the bell, he couldn't grasp what looking up was. And right now that
lack, that inability to grasp, was washing over him like the mud had in the bottom of the gully.

It was choking off his air supply and his fingers closed spasmodically on the top page, crumpling it.

It wasn't that he needed to see. No, that wasn't it. That wasn't what was drowning him. He needed to understand what seeing...was. What did it mean to look up at the tower and see the bell?  How did that work?  How did one apprehend the knowledge of the presence of the bell when it was silent? His mind was brilliant, quick, retentive, but it could not wrap itself around what seeing was.  And for the first time in his life he felt encapsulated. He didn't like it.

Lifting his hand with the crumpled page in it, he closed his fingers more tightly, crushing the page into a wad which he pressed against the side of his face. He sat there like that a long time, breathing through his mouth, his eyes tightly shut. "Damn it to hell!" he moaned, then threw

the wad across the room, startling the dog, who scrabbled to his feet.

He folded his forearms atop the stack of papers, laying his head on them. Morgan was slipping away from him. Or was he? Had he ever really been able to get inside Morgan's head?  Wasn't

a good author supposed to be able to look through the eyes of his character? Well, there was no chance of that, now was there?  He sat straight and using both hands, pushed the manuscript off the side of the desk, intending it to land in the wastepaper can that was usually situated midway there. The can, though, was several inches further back than normal and more pages sifted down to the floor than made it into the container.  He could tell from the sound that was what had happened and he laughed, an entirely mirthless laugh, and buried his face back in his arms.

What was the matter with him? He was getting married in a couple of days to a woman he adored and yet here he was like some internal combustion engine on overload. Married. Maybe that was it? After Beatrice, he'd presumed he'd simply live alone the rest of his life. He'd gotten quite good at it, in fact. Now here he was letting someone commit to joining her life in every way to his. She couldn't really know what that would be like for her, not really. He felt jarred right down to his core by his inability to grasp sight. It had simply never mattered all that much before. Then his world had been punctured by what Eden said were probably stars. Only they were unlike any concept he'd ever even wildly considered for stars and whatever they were was so utterly nebulous to him it amounted to little more than grasping at the fog. His mind came away that empty of comprehension. But the effort of it had dented his peace. That was it. He felt...dented.

She opened the door as soundlessly as she could, her eyes dropping to the wad of crumpled white paper on the floor just inside.  He was at the desk, his forehead resting on its surface, his hands folded over the top of his head. Her breath caught in her throat. She tiptoed several steps closer, noticing the mound of pages on the floor. He was throwing his book away. Oh, God, yes. That was what he was doing.

Wadsworth, aware as usual of Marshall's mood, did not rise to greet her but remained where

he was lying, his eyes going from Eden to the man at the desk and back again. What Marshall was feeling had communicated itself to him and he lay there, confused, anxious.

She paused, unsure of what to do. If Marshall knew she was there, he gave no sign of it. Should she touch his shoulder? Speak? Indecision kept her where she was a long moment until he let

out such a ragged sigh that nothing mattered but that she be beside him. Kneeling to the left

of his chair, she started to slide her arms around his waist. He jumped slightly at her unexpected touch, then lifted his head, turning his body in the chair more toward her.  She didn't say anything, nor did he. She just lay her face in his lap and he leaned over her, resting his cheek

on her back.

He had not been aware she'd entered the room, not until he felt her arms start around him.

He'd thought he wanted to be alone, but with her there, with her head in his lap, all he desired was to be close to her. So he lay his own head on her back, joining her in a place where words were not necessary. For a long, long time they remained like that, something in him quietly filling through her presence. After a while she whispered, "I'm here, my darling."

He breathed in a long, still somewhat shaky breath. "I'm trying to be here."  He meant that.

He wasn't fully there, not yet, but he was trying. It was not so simple to let go of something as monumental as this whole thing had become to him. It had altered his perception of his relationship to the rest of the world. And as much as it hurt, that meant her, too. She lived in that world of steady solidness from which he was ever set apart. "I don't want," he said, his

voice barely audible, "to live in needy tandem with you."

Needy tandem? What was he talking about? "Not once," she said firmly, "have I ever connected the word 'needy' to you. And what do you mean, anyway?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "My mind is too tired to think."  His tension had gotten a fierce headache fairly well locked in place. "Head hurts."

She loosened her arms. "Come over to the bed."

"I can't...not right now."

"Not that," she chuckled. "Just come. You'll see."

She propped herself with pillows against the headboard as he lay on his back, head in her lap.

A bit of smooth cream on her fingertips, she began a soft, circular motion on his temples. He sighed, moaning gratefully, as her fingers moved across his forehead, sliding around his brow bone, down under his eyes, back up to his temples. She kept at it a long time, occasionally pressing harder here and there.

"Feels so good," he murmured, starting to drift into sleep. "So good."

His lips parted as his breathing grew deep and regular. Still she kept up her massaging movements, only stopping when she was absolutely sure he was sound asleep. Looking down

at him, it occurred to her that they were in the same positions as when she'd sat with him on

the muddy path in the rain. She leaned forward as she had then, only this time not to shelter

his face from the downpour, but to place a soft kiss on his lips.

"You are so stuck with me, Doctor Sinclair," she said, tracing a fingertip along his chin line. "No matter what insecurities you might have come up with, you are stuck, completely and utterly stuck."  She smiled down at him. "You need to know that, mister, really you do." 

Sitting back against the headboard again, she looked across the room toward the desk, a frown line creasing her forehead as she stared at the scattered pages of his book on the floor beside it. He was more upset than she'd realized. What had he been thinking, feeling, to do that? She
looked back down at his face, calm and relaxed in sleep, utterly beautiful, utterly precious to her. Needy tandem. What in God's name did he mean by that? Tandem. She knew that meant

to move together, two things side by side or one behind the other, moving as one. When two
people loved one another, tandem was a good thing, wasn't it? But why the adjective?  Did it have something to do with Beatrice or was it entirely the sleigh accident? Maybe both?

She sat quietly, trying to recall what he'd explained to her about how it was for a blind person

to walk with a sighted one. On his own in familiar territory, he didn't need help, but if someone came up to him and he accepted their company, then his independence was gone. The normal concentration he would give to his route was swallowed up by the fact he must talk, must pay attention not to where he was going, to how he must go, but to the person who was guiding him.  He, then, became little more than a hitch-hiker. Was that what he meant?
 
Some minutes later, she got a cramp in her right calf and shifted her position slightly.  He sighed in his sleep, turning his cheek more against her lap. She smiled fondly at him. How far they'd come since that day in the rain. Her fingertips moved, lingering on his cheeks as they had
when the thick layer of mud had begun to dissolve, revealing his features for the first time. Even then she'd known, even then, that she was connected somehow to this man.  His hands rested atop his chest and she studied the way his fingers were made, her lips curving as she recalled how intimately those fingers had come to know her body. His fingers. She looked at his left hand. Wedding ring! His wedding ring would go there. Only she'd forgotten about that. Oh, good Lord! She didn't have a wedding ring for him! Cheeks puffed out, she stared up at the ceiling. Martha. Martha would know what to do, where to get one in this part of Pennsylvania. She glanced at the door, wishing she could talk with her. No, that could wait. Her hands cupped around his cheeks. This was where she belonged. For her there was nothing at all needy about being in tandem with him, not in a negative way, only that, yes, she needed him in her life. But the way he'd said it, it was filled with some inner pain, some doubt.

"Please don't feel that way, my darling," she whispered. "You are the bulwark of my life...my high tower. Does it sound silly," she asked conversationally even though he was asleep, "that you've become rather a rampart for me?"  She smiled to herself as she got a mental image
of a castle keep, with him as its defensive wall. "You're there now, you know, solid and strong between me and all the 'leftness' of my life. I stand on the walkway you've brought to me and I can look out at the future, at our future, mine and yours, and what's always been a little tentative in me is strengthened by your presence. I...," she paused because his lips had begun to curve.

"You are a very medievally-minded woman, Eden McLaughlin, but, God, how I do love you."

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