The Shadow Catcher

She held the two L-shaped pieces at right angles to each other.

“Viewing frame,” she said.

She slid the two pieces up and down along their axes. “Here, look through the center. At the barn. You can change the dimensions of the frame to form your focus…”

Edward took the pieces in his hands and held them up before his eyes and framed her face in them, then, holding them apart, said, “But I can’t accept these.”

“You must. They were designed for use. I’ll never use them, and you will.”

“What are these bright circles in the wood?”

“Butterfly wings.”

Their fingers brushed as they both reached to touch an inlay.

“Father made them on his trip to Florence. He studied all kinds of strange techniques there. That’s where he bought this…” She handed him a book.

“Il Libro dell’Arte,” he read. “Italian?”

“Open it…”

Inside, on each page, handwritten between the printed lines in a bold brownish-red ink, was her father’s own translation.

“It’s a craftsman’s handbook by Cennino Cennini—15th century. Here, look—” She turned the pages for him:

“HOW YOU SHOULD GIVE THE SYSTEM OF LIGHTING,

LIGHTS OR SHADE, TO YOUR FIGURES, ENDOWING

THEM WITH A SYSTEM OF RELIEF.”

They read her father’s translation together: “Always follow the dominant lighting; and make it your careful duty to analyze it, and follow it through, because, if it failed in this respect, your work would be lacking in relief, and would come out a shallow thing, of little mastery.”

“—is that what it says? — ‘of little mastery’?” He took the book in his hands and laid his palms across the pages. “I shall treasure this. Thank you, Scout.” He leaned toward her and for the briefest flicker passed his lips across her cheek.

He stayed on his feet most of the day, taking practice walks around the yard, and by suppertime it was clear to her that he was on his way to full recovery. They took their evening meal at the table in the kitchen and after he had finished his piece of custard pie and a mug of sweetened tea he said, “I think that I deserve some rest.” Leaning on his walking stick, he stood, while Clara remained seated, stock still, thinking he would leave her there and retreat to his own bed in the barn. But he started down the hall, saying, “—coming?” and she followed him, carrying the lantern. She watched him undress and then undressed, herself, down to her undergarments. He got into bed and sat upright against the pillow and started playing with the viewing frame again, looking through the square the two sides made, focusing views of things around him. “I think this is my favorite toy,” he said as she slipped into the bed beside him. He framed her face and she turned her head to profile so her features were backlighted by the lantern.

“That day you were in the tub,” he said.

She angled her head more elegantly so she could look him in the eye. The lantern highlighted her hair, a burnished corona.

“Why did you stand up?”

She stared at him.

“So you would look at me. So you would see me.”

“—see you…how?”

“The way I am.”

He put down the viewing frame and studied her.

“Show me,” he instructed.

Moving carefully, almost afraid to fall, fearful of disturbing what she intuited was a fatal balance, she stood, walked several paces toward the wall so he could see the full length of her body, turned to face him and slipped off her remaining underclothes.

“Turn around,” he told her.

She turned her back to him.

“Lift up your hair,” he said.

She raised her hair with one arm and stood waiting, facing away from him, facing the wall, facing into that non-participatory space that figures turned away in pictures face.

“Don’t move,” he said.

She stood for him, staring forward at the wall, until his silence started to feel strange and his unseen gaze on her created not a shared experience but a partition. She began to want to look back, to meet his eyes, to play an active, not a passive, part in what he saw, so she glanced over her shoulder and saw that he had framed her body in the viewing frame. She stood regarding him and in the shadow of the lantern on his face saw for the first time a different sort of animation rising in his eyes. “Come here,” he said, and as she moved to him she became aware of something in his body, in the way he held himself. When she climbed beneath the sheets she saw his excited sex, a third party in the bed.

“Show me how to do this,” he asked her.

“Edward, I don’t know—”

“You know everything,” he said.