A Pilot's Wife

Flashes

The features of the woman impressed themselves upon Olivia's consciousness, like acid eating away at a photographic plate. The bright blue eyes, the thick, dark lashes. The narrow jeans, long legged. The ivory flats, well worn, like slippers. The pink shirt, sleeves rolled. A thousand questions competed for Olivia's attention. When? For how long? How was it done? Why?

The baby in the woman's arms was a boy. A boy with green eyes. The hues were slightly different, though the difference was not as pronounced at it had been in his father's eyes.

The envelope of time ripped open, and Olivia dropped in. She struggled not to have to lean against the door with the shock of the woman, of the boy's face.

"Come in."

The invitation broke the long note of silence that had passed between the two women. Although it was not a invitation at all, not in the way such offers are normally made, with a smile or a step backward into a hallway to allow entry. It was, rather, a statement, simple and without inflection, as though the woman had said instead, neither of us have a choice now.

And the instinct was, or course, to enter the house, to get out the wet. To sit down.

Olivia lowered the umbrella and collapsed it as she stepped over the doorsill. The woman inside the house held the door with one hand, the baby in the other arm. The baby, perhaps having noted the silence, looked at the stranger with intense curiosity. A child in the hallway had stopped her playing to play attention.

Olivia allowed the umbrella to drip onto the polished floor. In the several seconds the two women stood in the entryway, Olivia noticed the way the woman's hair swayed along her collarbones. Expertly cut, as Olivia's was not. Her's was unevenly curly, but her twist that held her hair hid that from the woman in front of her. She touched her own hair and regretted doing so.

It was hot in the hallway, excessively hot and airless. Olivia could feel the perspiration trickling inside her blouse, which was under her wool coat, making her more hot.

"You're Muire O'Brien," Olivia said

The baby in Muire O'Brien's arms, despite the different sex, despite the slightly lighter hair color, was precisely the baby that Julia had been at that age, five months old, Olivia guessed. The realization created dissonance, a screeching in her ears, as though this woman she had never met were holding Olivia's child.

James had had a son.

The dark haired woman turned and left the hallway for a sitting room, leaving Olivia to follow. The child in the hallway, a beautiful girl with enlarged pupils and a cupid mouth, picked up a handful of construction blocks, pressed them to her chest, and, eyeing Olivia the entire time, edged along the wall and entered the sitting room, moving closer to her mother's legs. The girl looked like her mother, whereas the boy, the son, resembled the father.

Olivia put down the umbrella in a corner and walked from the entry way to the sitting room. Muire O'Brien stood with her back to the fireplace, waiting for her, although there had been no invitation to sit down, wouldn't be.

The room had high ceilings and had been painted a lemon yellow. Ornately carved moldings were shiny with glossy white paint. At the front, the curved windows had long gauzy curtains on French rods. Several low chairs of wrought iron, cushioned with oversized white pillows, had been placed around a carved wooden cocktail table, reminding Olivia of Arab rooms. Over the mantle, behind the woman's head, was a massive gold mirror, which reflected Olivia's image in the doorway, so that, in essence, Olivia and Muire O'Brien stood in the same frame. On the mantle was a photograph in marquetry, a pinkish gold case, a bronze figure. On either side of the bow window were tall bookcases. A carpet of muted grays and greens lay underfoot. The effect was of light and air, despite the grand architecture of the house, despite the dark of the weather.