“Yes. Did you receive mine?”
“Yes,” says Michael softly, and they hang up.
Em looks at Sarah seated on the floor and is startled to see how small her daughter becomes when she pulls this far inside. Four years ago, Sarah strutted through the same room, showing off a new dress the day of her high-school formal. She was wearing black velvet – long sleeves, low back, black stockings, new shoes. A part of her, as if this were a rite of passage, was awed and overwhelmed. A corsage had been dropped off in the afternoon, a ritual Em had mistakenly assumed to be a custom of the past. For hours Sarah drifted from room to room, detached in a way that had nothing to do with anyone but herself. Her behaviour was reminiscent of her child-self, when she’d drifted in and out of rooms on her birthday, whispering, “Cake, cake, cake.” Extreme pleasure spilled out of her then, as it did the afternoon of the dance. Em did not doubt that her daughter’s more serious life was ahead of her, but when Sarah kissed her and thanked her for helping with preparations, Em was close to tears, so newly grown-up did Sarah appear to be.
Surprisingly, on that occasion, Sarah’s expectations had been met. But Em remembers something else. When Sarah left the house and turned to say goodbye, a flash of uncertainty had crossed her face. So quickly, Em might have missed it. Poised but vulnerable – Sarah, at the edge of the world.
“Mom,” says Sarah, “how can someone love a person and then hurt them this badly? Did it ever happen to you? When you were younger, I mean. When a friendship fell apart? When nothing you did, no matter how you tried, could save it?”
“It happens to everyone,” Em says. And then she adds, “But I don’t think we try to wound intentionally.” She speaks with the greatest of care.
Always an early riser, Em wakes even earlier now that Sarah is home. She needs space, time alone. Her body agrees by taking up an amazingly accurate rhythm with the sun. Every morning her eyes open at the exact moment of sunrise. Each morning the time is slightly different, but she wakes with the change even if it’s only three minutes or four. She slips into her robe, goes to the window, and watches the bulge of sun as it lifts itself out of the sea.
When she and Michael spent time together, they stood at this same upstairs window, watching the sun rise through the undersides of clouds as it spilled silver across the waves. Sometimes there was only greyness, or a thin line of navy separating Earth from sky. Although the colours of the east were often like those of the west, she was aware of the subtle difference: in the east, there was a greater sense of light, of becoming.
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