Free Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger Page B

very large and draughty and stood by itself at a crossroads. We didn’t use the second floor, all of our bedrooms were on the first floor. Even the maid slept on the first floor.
    “My father was a don at St. John’s, and we used to have a great many visitors come to stay with us. Ordinarily there were enough rooms to accommodate everyone, but on this occasion there must have been more visitors than usual, because my younger brother, Samuel, was put to sleep in one of the unused bedrooms on the top floor.” James smiled to himself. “Sam was generally a pretty cool customer, as the Americans say, but he howled all night, until my mother went up and took him to sleep in her room.”
    Robert said, “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
    “Sam died in the war.”
    “Oh.”
    “So, the next night, I was to sleep in the second-floor room-”
    “Wait. Did Sam tell you why he’d cried?”
    James said, “Sam was only four, and of course I teased him, so he wouldn’t say. At least that’s what I remember. So, I was put to bed upstairs. I remember lying there with the blanket pulled up to my chin, my mother kissing me goodnight, and there I was in the dark, not knowing what terrible thing might be ready to slink out from the wardrobe and smother me…”
    Jessica smiled. Robert thought it might be a smile for the morbidly fantastical imaginations of children.
     
    “So what happened?”
    “I fell asleep. But later that night I woke up. There was moonlight coming in through the window, and the shadows of tree branches fell onto the bed, waving gently in the breeze.”
    “And then you saw the ghost?”
    James laughed. “Dear chap, the branches
were
the ghost. There weren’t any trees within a hundred yards of that house. They’d all been cut down years before. I saw the ghost of a tree.”
    Robert thought about it. “That’s rather elegant. I was expecting ghouls.”
    “Well, that’s just it, you see. I think perhaps if that sort of thing does happen-ghosts-it must be more beautiful, more surprising than all these old tales would have us believe.”
    Robert happened to look at Jessica while James was speaking. She was gazing at her husband with an expression that combined patience, admiration, and something very private that seemed to Robert like the distillation of a lifetime of marriage. He felt a sudden need to be alone. “Do you have any ibuprofen?” he asked Jessica. “I think the sun’s given me a headache.”
    “Of course, let me get it for you.”
    “No, no,” he said, getting up. “I’ll just have a lie down before we eat.”
    “There’s some Anadin in the cabinet in the ground-floor loo.”
    Jessica and James watched Robert walk stiffly across the terrace and into the house. “I’m really worried about him,” Jessica said. “He’s lost the plot, a bit.”
    James said, “She’s only been dead eight months. Give him some time.”
    “Ye-es. I don’t know. He seems to have stopped-that is, he’s doing all the things one does, but there’s no heart in him. I don’t think he’s even working on his thesis. He’s just not getting over her.”
    James met his wife’s anxious eyes. He smiled. “How long would it take you to get over me?”
     
    She held out her bent hand, and he took it in his. She said, “Dear James. I don’t imagine I would ever get over you.”
    “Well, Jessica,” said her husband, “there’s your answer.”
    Inside the house, Robert stood in the dim ground-floor hallway with two tablets in his hand. He swallowed them without water and leaned his forehead against the cool plaster wall. It felt marvellous after the relentless sunlight. He could hear the children calling to each other, croquet abandoned for some other game. Now that he was alone he wanted to go back outside, to distract himself, talk of something else. He would go back in a few minutes. His throat felt constricted; the pills had gone down the wrong way. He realised that he was leaving sweat on the