The knock came softly at first. It was hard to hear, as autumn had staked its claim on the sky and the Saturday morning gusts carried dried leaves against the window. There it was again—both gentle and urgent, a tap on the glass of the storm door.
The house had a brick walk. All but the evergreens were now brown. The shrubs seemed envious of the burning bush across the lawn, but this morning even the bush was releasing its last leaves likes sparks into the cool breezes. Only embers remained among the twigs.
As the knock mingled with the calls of passing geese, she looked up from the breakfast table and stepped toward the front hall. A striking woman, she wore middle age as if considering whether to keep the outfit, or change back into youth. Her hair and her face bore timeless beauty. She and her husband were on the verge of the remarkable metamorphosis that returns two lovers to splendid terrible isolation as echoes of tiny feet and childish laughter take the form of e-mail and cell phone calls from far away. As she stepped into the hall, she couldn’t help but notice the absence of coats and scarves across the floor. Only adults now lived in this house.
Her eyes were also timeless. They flamed in a blue-green, made all the more vibrant this fall morning as sun streamed between the fast-flying clouds.
He looked up as she stepped away from the table. Her form always made him smile inside—sometimes outside. His own hair had somehow slipped to more grey than dark brown. It must have conspired against his youthfulness about the time the empty nest began to emerge in his mind. He hadn’t heard the knock.
As she came to the door, two sets of eyes watched her. One set was always watching this hall. There, inside the door, the first view of any guest, was a framed photograph of a little girl. Her smile from behind the glass never faded. Her photograph in this place of honor bore silent and wordless testimony to a time of unspeakable despair—the darkest shadow this family would ever know. The soft smiling face seemed forever peaceful, but if one listened near that magical photo, one could hear sounds that should never fall upon human ears—the shrieks of a father bowed over a small unmoving silhouette. The wrenching sobs of a mother calling to God with a soul overcome by guilt. Chirps of a heart monitor losing tempo toward an irregular rubato, eventually a steady tone—then silence.
The eyes of the little girl in the photograph watched the inhabitants of this house. Though both parents had eventually made life work, and had poured themselves into three new children, the missing first child was somehow the story of their lives. She was woven into every word, every glance, every cry, every laugh.
The sun was just over the shoulder of the visitor. She was tall and wore a beautiful English sweater, her light brown hair in a ponytail, tossed by the breeze. Her face was bright and glowing. The woman looked at the visitor through the glass—through the glass. For a moment she had the peculiar feeling that this view through the glass was how this visitor should be seen, and she hesitated before opening the door.
The visitor stood alone, a stunning beauty in the fall air. With the door open, her face was all the more amazing—both reflecting the sun, and shining itself. She looked to be in her twenties. The visitor extended a lovely hand. Instinctively the woman took it into her own, squeezing it gently as the visitor stepped into the entry. The woman did not know this person.
A leaf blew by them into the hall before the door swung shut.
“I came to say thank you.”
It was a quiet voice, perfectly matched in its golden tone to the beautiful face.
“Do I know you?” asked the woman, glancing briefly beyond the visitor to see if other guests accompanied her.
“I came to say thank you,” repeated the visitor. “That is something I tell you all the time, but I wanted to tell you now—to tell you here.”
The woman inhaled to express her confusion, but then stopped. Her breath was stolen. Even though the door was closed, the stray leaf in the hall seemed to take brief flight of its own accord. There was something about the visitor’s eyes. The woman became aware in an instant that she had been seeing these eyes for years, yet had never seen them before.
The man stepped into the hall, now aware of the tall young woman holding the hand of his wife, silently. Sun streamed across them. The door was closed but the air seemed to stir just the same.
The visitor continued—
“I came to tell you that we were in an embrace just now. We hug so often, practically all the time at home.” Her voice took on a slightly more urgent tone.
“At home we’re together often, and then I always thank you. I’ve always thought about thanking you here and now, but I never can because we’re home.”
He stepped forward to search out these peculiar words from the visitor. She held out her other hand to him. He took it, feeling the warmth and softness. The three stood now, flesh to flesh to flesh. There was a tiny rustle as the leaf again slid across the floor.
“I have so often asked him if I could come here—I especially ask when we hug at home.” There was a pause. The man and the woman stared at the visitor’s face—at her eyes of blue-green fire.
“Just now when I asked— he said I could come. We are embracing right now at home and at last he said I could come, for… a moment.” The visitor’s eyes glistened and a tear slid across her cheek.
Those eyes.
“I came to thank you…for loving me.”
Her voice suddenly was strained between sobs.
“I came to thank you for keeping my picture in your hall for these 21 years.“
There was a moment when time rushed from the room, leaving a vacuum filled only by light. The three felt themselves pulled gently together into an embrace. Each sensed the others like one feels water when swimming. The brown leaf rose, swirling in circles silently around them.
Her eyes brimming, the visitor again whispered “thank you," but this time the words seemed intended for different ears. Through the strange tears her final vision was the face of a little girl looking at her through glass from the wall.
The man and the woman stood alone, holding one another tearfully, strangely aware that it was new and old, absent for decades, yet never ended, never-ending. They buried their faces together, wordless. It was a Saturday morning in fall.
The brown leaf settled onto the hall floor. The door remained closed. They began to again perceive sounds. In each other’s arms, the visitor was gone. Again. It was just the two of them, now in a familiar isolated embrace—the embrace of lovers with three children leaving home and one forever watching from the hallway wall.
“At home we’re together often...” The words of the visitor seemed to hang in the air.
Amid the tears and familiar sounds of autumn, he noticed that something was wonderfully absent. Just in front of the glass where the little girl’s beautiful eyes watched the hallway there now remained only the sounds of wind and geese.
For John and Gretchen Steer, 10.05
