The Hour of Silhouette by Juleen Brantingham

The room seemed to be made of windows. They extended from the ceiling nearly to the floor, their outlines not softened by drapes or curtains except the ones of natural green hanging from half a dozen maples. A sun-room it was called and perhaps it was, earlier in the day. But now, with the hands of the clock approaching six, there was no sun to be seen - only the glare of the sky that, in spite of the generosity of the windows, did not penetrate the room, only reflected from its surfaces.

Those surfaces were the planes and curves of unexpectedly fine furniture - a piano, tables of oiled walnut, upholstery that looked like silk, a delicately colored rug like a painting in thread. It was a surprising room, surprising that it had retained its original character, from a time when this place was not a Home but only a house. How had they kept it so?

Leona Farrier was to be one of the favored few who were allowed to enjoy the beauty of the room and the view from the windows for an hour every day. It was, the nurse had explained, a special treat because she was doing so well. She had not bothered to add that Leona could be trusted not to soil the furniture or to make little messes with stolen food. Such things were understood.

Leona would not have felt particularly honored even if she had been able to think of anything but the agony of putting one foot ahead of the other, leaning on the nurse's arm. She accepted the privilege as she accepted all the privileges of what she saw as her station in life, not as things to be enjoyed in themselves but as marks of rank. Leona knew she was above the usual ruck and run of humanity, but others sometimes needed to be reminded.

At the door to the sun-room Leona paused. Let the nurse think she was admiring the room. It gave her a moment to regain her strength without admitting that she needed that moment. Leona did not regret her earlier rejection of a wheelchair - Leona never regretted her actions - but she did wish sometimes that it was not necessary to set such a good example.

She felt burdened and put upon. She had no patience with the body that had betrayed her, the nurses who patronized her, or with any of the trappings of this refuge for the pitiful. She certainly did not feel honored to be allowed to spend the hour before dinner in the company of the four or five others the nurses considered trustworthy.

She had no faith in their judgment of that either. The old man in the corner, for example. Look at him nodding, mumbling to himself. Any moment now he would probably begin drooling or doing something equally disgusting.

The nurse helped her to a comfortable chair close to the windows, facing them. It was not the place Leona would have chosen for herself, but she felt she could not endure another moment on her feet. The sky was bright, too bright, and she knew she would be able to make out nothing of the features of those who passed between her and the windows. The nurse, leaning over to put a lapboard on Leona's knees, was a silhouette, a dark, twisted thing against the glare.

Leona felt her breath gathering in a sob at the back of her throat. Enough of that. It was upsetting what this illness had done to her carefully ordered life. It was nearly unendurable that it should also play havoc with her emotions, causing her to laugh or cry at the slightest thing until she felt she hardly knew herself.

She blinked away the tears, telling herself it was the glare, picked up the deck of cards and began a game of solitaire. The Solitaire Lady, the old ones called her, their titters drawing a line under the other meaning of the word.

It was dreadful, this waiting. Of course, Leona was only waiting for her health to return, which wasn't nearly as bad as waiting to die. Unlike the others in the Home, she would leave in a week or two to pick up the threads of her life again. She would never look back. This was only an interlude, like the quiet hour before dinner. She could endure even this, knowing it had a limit.

But still it was dreadful, this waiting.

Though she carefully avoided looking out the windows, the glare was giving her a headache. She had always had this trouble with her eyesight, but she had ordered her life so most of the time she hardly noticed it. In her apartment she veiled daylight's glare with gauzy curtains and lit the lamps earlier than most people. She never drove her car after sunset. Her eyes seemingly could not adjust. They played tricks on her. In silhouette and shadow she saw things that should not be there.

More than the waiting, Leona hated her helplessness. Now that she had caught her breath, she could pick up the bell on the table and summon the nurse, ask to be moved to a chair that faced away from the windows. But to do so would make her seem like the others, the whiners and fussers who had abdicated control of their lives to the white goddesses.

Rather than act like those she despised, Leona would endure. In a day or two the trip from her room would not exhaust her, and if she felt like moving from one chair to another she could do it without help.

Her hands counted and turned the cards, stacked and rearranged so quickly she didn't have to think about the game. It was as if her hands played, leaving her mind free to wander and reflect. Some minds are not made for reflection, as some pieces of glass are made to be seen through, not into. But under some conditions, when the light is exactly so, images can be seen.

It came to Leona suddenly that she had hurt people. Her husband, perhaps, and her children. It was a novel thought. Is that why they - And did he, because -

She had never played solitaire before she came to the Home. She'd never had much interest in trivial games, but here one needed something to help the hands of the clock move along. From time to time one of the other trustworthies spoke to her. She did not look up, knowing she would see only painful glare and silhouette. She did not reply for these people were inconsequential, only a step or two away from what the nurses euphemistically referred to as "failing."

Except for herself, of course.

After a time they took the hint and stopped bothering her. Two of them sat near the center of the room, behind her chair, gossiping about long-dead contemporaries and their nearly forgotten scandals. Another was coaxing soft notes from the piano. Only the old man remained where Leona could see him, in his corner, and then only if she looked up from her solitaire. She did not look up, though from the corner of her eye she was aware of his presence, partially silhouetted against the glare, partially wrapped in the shadows formed by the angle of the walls separating the windows.

There was something about the old man she had noted as the nurse brought her to this chair, something familiar. Her husband, father, and brother were dead and she knew it could not be her son. That left her lovers - but she had forgotten them almost as soon as she knew them, so no use to try to call up their memories now.

For a few moments it amused her to wonder if the old man might have been part of that most vivid memory - the rising and falling, rising and falling, while in the next room her husband was dying. His doctor, hadn't it been? His final words, which she had been almost too late to hear, had been of his gratitude and love for a self-sacrificing, faithful wife.

It had been almost a litany of their marriage. It occurred to her now that he must have known of her lovers and hoped by repeating the words to make them work a kind of magic.

A silhouette. That's all he had ever seen. A silhouette.

The doctor had also been complimentary during those moments preceding her husband's crisis, but he hadn't been thinking of her more respectable attributes. Again a silhouette. Could it have been the old man? It was briefly amusing to think so.

She glanced at her watch. The hands had hardly moved since the last time she looked. The hours had substance here, and weight. They bowed the shoulders of the elderly infirm. Here Leona's time was all the same, for herself, but scheduled to suit the convenience of others. It was a step backward into childhood, and Leona resented it.

What she had seen of the sun-room, briefly shielding her eyes against the glare, was lovely. In a more gracious time someone had taken pains with the furnishings. The lines suggested airiness and ease, but these were not the usual flimsy summer things. It would be the perfect place to entertain guests, away from the harsh sterility of the rest of the converted house.

Leona did not expect guests and did not regret their absence. Before she came here she had given strict orders and she was not the kind of woman who expected, even hoped to have those orders disobeyed. She most definitely did not want visitors while she was here at the Home. She thought of herself as the strong one, the one on whom others leaned. She did not care to have her friends see her, even temporarily, against a background of those who all their lives must have been pushed about by circumstance. She could not be pushed. Someone might assume her illness had changed her.

She had been the one to decide she must spend time in a Home rather than be a burden to her family. She had chosen this Home and made the arrangements. She gave the orders that she was to be left alone to mend. She was in charge, always.

And she was in charge even of this foolish card game. When it seemed there were no more moves to be made, she cut the cards she held in her hand, rearranging her options.

"I s-saw that!"

Stupid old man.

"I s-saw th-that. You ch-cheated!"

The note of hysteria in his voice brought silence to the rest of the room. These old people were so foolish. Tempests in teapots were the only thing that kept them from dying immediately of boredom. But they had the attention span of a two-year-old. Leona ignored the old man, waiting for him to fall back into the pool of his memories.

Red queen on the black king ignore the creeping hours. This interlude would end.

The nurse came to summon the others to their rooms for dinner. She stayed by the door to speak to someone. Leona sat helpless, forced to wait for the nurse's strong arms, hating it.

When the old man got to his feet, casting a shadow on Leona's lapboard, she looked at him once, quickly, fearing the touch of her glance would bring on his hysteria again. She blinked as the glare brought tears to her eyes. His dark presence was a grotesque thing, seemingly covered with lumps and clots that fell away as he moved. When he was gone, the lumps remained in the corner as if waiting for his return.

If Leona had had a fanciful turn of mind she might have thought of those lumps and clots as little beasts of shadow-stuff, feeding on the old man, draining him of life. But she rejected such thoughts. Fancies were for the weak and timid.

She had dealt with illness before, the usual childhood things and her husband's long decline. But she had never been ill herself. She did not know how to be patient. Two steps from her bed to her chair. What were two steps? Only two out of how many thousands, millions she had taken? But those two steps were an effort calling for self-congratulation while her pulse throbbed in her ears and perspiration dampened her body.

The walk from her room to the sun-room was an event as momentous as the travels of Marco Polo. She rejected the once-again-offered wheelchair and never considered the ultimate cowardice of refusing to go. But dread cast a shadow over the afternoon hours. The second and third day the nurse returned her to the same chair, near the windows and the old man, and Leona was too exhausted to object.

He watched her. She knew he watched her, staring from the safety of his shadows. Was he remembering when her face had been not so lined, when her body had moved as easily and responsively as a girl's? Was he the one, the forgotten one whose guilt - surely, if he could feel it - should be greater than her own? And why was she thinking of guilt now, when it had never occurred to her as she stood by her husband's bed?

She felt impaled by the light. She longed for darkness, the peaceful, concealing darkness of night.

Again he accused her of cheating. The others stopped their gossiping and their piano playing and Leona imagined their eyes turning, widening. It was no longer amusing to think he might be speaking of something other than the card game.

She did not respond to his accusation, of course. It was a point of pride with her that she never allowed herself to become involved in these senile games.

It was another point of pride that she was fighting her weakness and defeating it. She would not give in as others had, as her husband had, to the narrowing boundaries of illness. She forced them back. On the fourth day, after a brief rest, she realized she was strong enough to get up and move to another chair if she chose. But the old man was watching. She could almost make out the gleam of his eyes within the clots of shadow. Would he think she was trying to escape? She remained where she was and made no effort to hide the way her hands manipulated the cards to win every game.

As the hour of the fourth day passed, this new game became more amusing than solitaire. The others in the room must have been frozen, because Leona could hear nothing but the old man's words and the sound of cards slapping on the lapboard.

His voice raged every time she slipped a card to a more favorable position. Surely if the light were better she would see unhealthy purple in his face. He was spitting words now, and his silhouette leaned from shadows as he tried to rise to add force to his words.

The game ended, as she had feared it must, when one of the others became alarmed and summoned the nurse. The old man was led away, lumps and clots of shadow flaking from his silhouette, trailing scraps of hysteria. Leona smiled. He was terribly thin without his little beasts. He must have been a long time dying.

With the old man gone, Leona's hands lost interest in solitaire and fell idle on the lapboard. Her eyes kept returning to the corner, trying to see past the glare of the windows. Strange - it almost seemed as if he still sat there, spying on her.

The room grew more dim. There was a storm coming. High, racing clouds and wind-whipped leaves made shadows that slipped and slithered in the sun-room. There was tension in the air, but whether it was from the coming storm or the remains of her battle with the old man Leona couldn't have said. Once, while trying to force her hands to resume their game, she thought she glimpsed a black snake sliding toward her from the corner. She almost cried out when it reached her feet but stopped herself in time, realizing that it was only a harmless shadow.

That night, as rain pelted the window and wind howled, her weakness returned, worse than before. She slept badly, once crying out at the pain in her legs. She spent most of the next day with a handkerchief in her hands, to dab away the treacherous tears. She told herself she was not losing her courage, she was not. But tears continued to drop from her eyes, and the thought of the long walk to the sun-room hung over her like a pall.

When she had to stop to catch her breath halfway down the hall, the nurse again suggested a wheelchair. Leona drove herself to complete the walk at once, almost without the nurse's help. But the cost of her pride was high. When she reached her accustomed chair she felt a weight crushing her chest. She dismissed the nurse with an abrupt wave, afraid her right to be here might be taken away "for her own good."

The nurse ignored her gesture. "Are you sure you feel up to this today, dear? Perhaps I should take you back to your room so you can get a little extra rest. I'm sure that with the storm last night you didn't get much sleep. Everyone had a bad night."

Even if she had been dying, Leona would have found the strength to deny being a part of this group. She shook her head impatiently and clutched at the nurse's arm.

"Old man - sits in the corner - where is he?"

The nurse looked at her so strangely that for a moment Leona was afraid her eyes had played a trick on her again, that he was there in the shadows after all. Then she sensed the pity, like warm, dripping butterscotch.

"Is he a friend of yours? I'm sorry, dear. He was terribly upset about something yesterday and then the strain of a restless night - it wasn't good for him. He seems to be failing. The doctor is with him now."

After the nurse had gone, Leona allowed herself to smile.

She woke with a start. Had she been asleep? But she never slept during the day. Naps were for babies and old people. She dabbed at her eyes, which had begun to dribble tears as soon as she opened them. The lapboard was an uncomfortably heavy burden. Perhaps she should give up solitaire. Perhaps it was the lapboard that made her legs feel as if they were being nibbled by ants.

But what would her hands do without a game to play? How could she help the hours to pass? She couldn't amuse herself by looking at the scenery, because the glare of the sky would blind her when the nurse came to take her to her room. And in here the shadows . . .

She shuddered. In the old man's corner she could almost make out his shape, part shadow and part silhouette. It was as if the little beasts had taken his shape to mock her. Had he been that forgotten one? Why did he seem to stare at her still?

Don't look, she warned herself. Don't let him know you know he is there.

No - look quickly because the little beasts have begun to slip and shift at the touch of your eyes. They are sliding across the floor now, dangerous life-sucking beasts, toward your legs, little clots of shadow.

Move. Move. They're not very fast. Move before they can reach your chair.

Leona pushed the lapboard to the floor and struggled to stand. In a panic she turned, her hands outstretched pleadingly, to see the others staring at her, like a flock of white birds startled by the appearance of a cat. What could she say? How could she explain? She had to get away, out of reach of the old man's little beasts, but these stupid ones would not be able to understand.

She looked at her feet, willing them to move. As she stepped away from the chair she saw her shadow on the floor like an elongated silhouette.

She was looking at it when the clots of shadow reached her feet and began to slither up her legs.