The Open Arch

Keir carried the chair through Blythe’s gate and discovered it would not pass the inner arch.

He had measured the chair. Blythe had measured the arch. Neither had thought to compare the numbers before he brought it across half the city.

For a moment they stood on opposite sides, holding a piece of furniture between them and considering the limits of adult competence.

“Turn it,” Blythe said.

“Which way?”

“The way that makes it fit.”

“A helpful specification.”

They turned it. A leg caught against the copper edge. Blythe swore. Keir apologised to the chair, which made her laugh so hard they had to set it down.

It was a good beginning to living together, he thought. Not elegant. Difficult to mistake for a performance.

They had talked about it for two weeks. Then talked about something else. Then returned to it over breakfast as though the question had become part of the furniture already.

He would keep the north house as his lamp workshop and a place for short running-light pieces. He could afford the rent from the work he was already doing; he had paid it alone before meeting her. Blythe would keep her glass workshop and her own accounts. They would share ordinary rooms, meals and a home in the house with the garden. Neither had to make a livelihood depend on the other’s affection.

The practical choices were not the difficult part.

The difficult part was putting a chair he liked in a room where she had already decided where everything belonged.

At last they took the legs off. The chair passed through the arch. They put it back together in the kitchen while Blythe read the little pencil marks he had made underneath years ago.

“You number furniture?”

“Only furniture that has defeated me before.”

“An extensive collection?”

“Growing.”

She sat in it to test the repair. He stood behind her with his hands on the back.

“Where do you want it?” he asked.

She looked around the kitchen. He could almost hear the old arrangements rising to offer objections.

“By the window,” she said.

He looked at the narrow shelf already there.

“What about that?”

“It can move.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I am experimenting.”

They moved the shelf.

That evening, Keir sat in his chair beside her window while she drew at the table. The open middle of the garden showed a dark sky beyond the smaller beds. His ordinary lamp stood on the floor. Her ugly third stem occupied the sill because she had decided it was useful to remember the attempt before the better one.

He had brought the tailless bird too.

Blythe put it beside the stem and said, “They appear to be having an argument.”

“The bird won’t finish it.”

She threw a folded cloth at him.

He caught it, got up and came to kiss her.

· · ·Scene break

Three days later she moved the chair.

Only a foot. To catch more light on the drawing table, she said when he came home and found it nearer the door.

Keir set down the lamp he was carrying.

“I liked it by the window.”

“It is still by the window.”

“Less by the window.”

“Keir.”

He heard the briskness in her voice and felt an old instinct to make a joke, then take his belongings back to the north house a little at a time until he could tell himself he had never moved in properly.

He put his coat on the peg instead.

“I want a place that stays where I put it,” he said.

Blythe looked at the chair, then at him.

“I didn’t think a foot would matter.”

“It matters that you thought you could decide.”

She sat down at the table. Her drawing lay in a square of good light.

He could see the real advantage of moving the chair. That was annoying. He would have preferred the disagreement to be simple.

“I have lived alone here for a long time,” she said.

“I know.”

“That isn’t an excuse. It is why I didn’t notice myself doing it.”

He nodded.

She looked at the room again.

“The table could turn.”

“Would that work?”

“We would have to find out.”

They turned it. The light fell differently, still good. The chair went back. Nothing in the room looked quite as balanced as before.

Blythe stood in the doorway with her arms folded.

“I don’t like that angle,” she said.

Keir almost laughed, then saw that she was telling him plainly, without making it a command.

“Give it three days?”

She considered.

“Three days. If I still hate it, we find another angle. Together.”

“Together.”

She came to him and put her arms around his waist.

“I am glad the chair is here,” she said.

“Even at a poor angle?”

“Even with its owner explaining furniture rights.”

He kissed her, then felt her smile against him.

The table stayed turned. By the second evening she had found a better place for the lamp. By the third neither remembered to discuss the angle because Tamsen came for supper and declared the new arrangement made it possible to reach the bread without performing a minor feat.

Blythe looked at Keir across the table.

He kept his expression innocent with some effort.

· · ·Scene break

His first short running-light piece was disappointing.

He made it at the north house, alone, with the door shut and no audience to mistake intention for achievement. A simple loop rising into a fan. He wanted it to open without the years of buried turns lending it depth.

It looked thin.

He changed it. It looked busier and still thin.

When he went home, Blythe was fitting an ordinary glass stem into the clear vessel Nerida had given her. The stem leaned, caught the lamplight and made a pale double shape on the wall.

He admired it resentfully.

“Bad evening?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to talk?”

“Not yet.”

She nodded and continued working.

He made tea. Sat in his chair. Watched the imperfect shadow on the wall.

After a while he said, “I miss being good at it.”

Blythe set down her tools.

“You are good at it.”

“Not at what I made tonight.”

She accepted the correction.

“No,” she said. “Perhaps not.”

It was a relief so sharp he laughed.

“That’s an appalling consolation.”

“You seemed dissatisfied with the first one.”

He reached for her hand when she passed. She sat on the arm of his chair, leaning against him.

“Will you try again?” she asked.

“Yes. Tomorrow.”

“Good. Tonight I have made something I want you to see. You may be jealous while admiring it.”

“An ideal arrangement.”

She showed him the stem. He admired it properly this time, asked about the shadow and listened while she described what she had not yet managed. Then he took her hand and brought it to his mouth.

“I’m glad I came home cross,” he said.

“I am glad you stayed cross here instead of going somewhere I couldn’t find you.”

He pulled her gently into his lap. She laughed, warned him about the repaired chair and then settled close, her arms around his shoulders. He kissed her with the familiar pleasure that was becoming no less startling for being available on an ordinary evening.

She touched his face.

“I love you,” she said.

He closed his eyes for a moment, letting himself hear it without checking what he had done to earn it that day.

“I love you too.”

They sat until the tea cooled. His disappointing loop existed nowhere now; he had let it end before leaving the workshop. Her unfinished stem stood in a vessel made for a different future. The room held both their failures comfortably enough.

Later, when they went upstairs, she paused on the landing and drew him toward the window. Beyond it the open garden lay silver under the moon.

“Look,” she said.

The clear flower that had once held the honey-jar amber caught a small reflection from their lamp. No preserved light, no replacement for what had gone. A fleeting ordinary gleam, visible from this place and nowhere else.

He put his arms around her from behind. She leaned back against him, covering his hands with hers.

They watched until the cloud moved and the gleam vanished.

Then she turned in his arms and kissed him, and neither asked the light to stay.