The Shadow Catcher

A few seconds later she was calm and she felt him lessen his hold on her, and then he backed away. Asahel was there, a look of quiet desperation in his eyes, and then Hercules was running past her with the ball and both Edward and Asahel ran after him.

So, in the end, it was love that saved her.

Un-named, unrecognized, at first; and certainly, for a long time, unrequited.

The feeling came unexpectedly and unannounced — an unheralded quickening in the air around her, an excitement of the mind, and, unmistakably, she began to look forward, rather than to dread, each new day. She began to look forward to what each new day might bring — a glimpse of him, or an encounter, a look, perhaps a word. She began to recover a sense of well-being, a sense of purpose, even if it was only to engage in a fantasy of doing something that would make him stop and notice her or saying something that would make him smile. But in the same week of their embrace Edward had disappeared again and she was left to daydream and to draw ungrounded and wildly optimistic assumptions. When he returned he barely noticed her, which only fueled what she now acknowledged had become a full-fledged infatuation. It wasn’t him, she told herself. It wasn’t specifically for him that she pined, but for the embrace, that moment when, surrounded by another’s arms, her body had seemed less of a burden, had, in fact, seemed light. But then she’d see him and she’d realize her obsession was not an abstract passion like an artist’s, like her father’s passion for his work, but that it was a lover’s passion for the object of desire, for the object of her love. She was in love, and she had no one in whom to confide, no one from whom to seek advice and counsel, so she sought her mother in her mind, her mother’s ghost, her mother, who would have no doubt approved enthusiastically, encouraging her along the most reckless and outrageous path. He had embraced her, hadn’t he? And that stood for something, didn’t it? Despite his silence and his distance. But his silence and his distance stood for something, too, she knew. Stood for something far more certain and established in the man than any rare signal of emotion. Still her inclination to delude herself was too attractive: to know the physical embraces that her parents must have known, to breathe the scent of someone’s skin and feel his pulse against her lips — that was a seductive, even necessary, self-delusion. If it had happened once, surely it would come her way again. It would have to.

But it didn’t.

Edward stayed to himself, a revered but inaccessible cipher on the family’s periphery, until one day in May when he rode into the compound with a large contraption wrapped in blankets and strapped onto the back of the buckboard. The Curtis women came out on the porch, followed by Clara, as Asahel and Hercules helped Edward grapple the mystery item to the ground and unwrap it.

“What are we supposed t’ do with that?” Ellen asked derisively.

“Enjoy it, Mother.”

“Well what is it?”

“A bathtub, I believe,” Eva suggested.

And not any ordinary tub for bathing, Clara saw. Shaped like a dancing slipper, high in the back, curved and snug at the front, it was hammered from a single sheet of copper which made it lightweight and portable, bright as a penny.

“Where did you get this from, brother?” Asahel teased. “From that house of fancy women?”

Edward colored. “Language, Asahel,” he scolded.

“Well I’m not havin’ it in the house,” Ellen maintained.

“Fine, we’ll keep it out here, then,” Edward told her.

“Don’t see why you go wastin’ your money on what we don’t need,” Ellen complained. “We got tubs already. Two of ’em.” Heavy, nickel buckets you had to stand in, Clara thought, next to the stove where you heated the water. And then struggle to carry the whole mess outside to dump it when you were done.

“It’s too pretty,” Ellen went on. “The Lord cautions against ostentation,” she reminded her son. “What were you thinking?”

Edward touched the back of the tub with his palm and let it glissade down the curved and smooth lip. “That it might bring pleasure to someone,” he said, his blue gaze fixed on Clara for what she thought was noticeably too long, while her heart lurched, before he and Asahel carried the tub onto the porch. There it stayed, for a month, unused by anyone, although Clara wiped it clean every day, reliving, in her mind, the way he had looked at her when he spoke the word, pleasure. Aren’t you tempted? Eva asked her, sneaking up behind her one day while she was polishing the tub with a soft rag.

Clara faced her, her color high, and almost said, It’s mine.

“I’m tempted,” Eva admitted. “Let’s fill her up and—”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” Ellen had snapped. “You tell her, Amelia, she’ll listen to you. God is watching what you do, Eva. He’s counseling your future husband.”