Points of Departure by Pat Murphy Read Free Book Online Page A

“I told you not to take it and for onceyou listened. You can’t come back. There’s no place for you here anymore.” Though Amanda’s voice was warm with affection, the words left Liz with a cold feeling: no place for her anymore.
    The feeling lingered after Amanda bade her good-night and headed upstairs to the attic bedroom. In the many shadowed hallway, Liz paused at the door to the guest bedroom listening to Amanda’s footsteps ascendthe stairs.
    Though the hour was past one, Elsa had not yet come home. Liz turned from the guest room and pushed open the door to her old room.
    A bouquet of daisies, backlit by moonlight, stood on the windowsill; Liz had always had flowers in her room. The desk was littered with sketches, books, designs. An easy chair—the same easy chair that she had used or else one just as misshapen—stood bythe open window, an Indian muslin bedspread flung over it to hide the rips in its upholstery.
    Through the open window and across the quiet yard, Liz heard someone whistling a fragment of song—just as she had whistled to keep back the darkness on her way home from coffeehouses, parties, late nights in the studio.
    Liz heard a footstep on the driveway and she fled to the guest room, listening inthe darkness to the sound of Elsa’s key in the lock and chiding herself for invading the student’s privacy.
    Liz woke early the next morning. The sunlight filtered through the leaves of the tree outside the window and created shifting patterns on the ceiling. The sunlight had made shifting patterns on the ceiling of the adjacent room when she had been a student. Liz heard the creak of bedspringsin the room next door, the sound of the closet door opening. She heard footsteps on the stairs but she lay in bed, watching the light dance as the wind moved the leaves, until she heard the front door open and close. She waited until the sound of footsteps on the gravel drive had faded in the distance before she got up and joined Amanda in the kitchen for breakfast.
    After breakfast, she caughtthe same bus she had taken each day as a student. On the bus and on the walk through the campus to Professor Whittier’s office, memories plagued her. Not good memories; not bad memories; just memories; I dropped my portfolio in front of this door when I was hurrying to class, I got caught in the rain and took shelter in this building, I used that fountain to fill an old jam jar with water for abouquet of flowers, I stood right here the first time I went to see Professor Whittier, a sketch of mine hung on the wall just around this corner.
    Just around the corner, a sketch hung on the wall. Liz stopped. She recognized the woman in the portrait as Amanda and she peered at the signature. Elsa Brant. Liz could not put words to the disquieting feeling that touched her—the same uneasinessthat had kept her bed that morning.
    When she raised her hand to knock on Professor Whittier’s door, she could not suppress the thought: I used to do this every day. And she could not avoid the thought that followed: Elsa probably does this every day.
    Professor Whittier had not changed in her absence. The glacial old man nodded slowly when she told him about the work she would be doing in NewYork. They talked about the changes in the school, the growth in her work, and then she could not resist asking about his students.
    He shrugged. Through the years, he had remained as slow and unstoppable as a mountain of ice. “All art students are alike: lazy, self-indulgent. That hasn’t changed,” he said. “Only one—the girl who works in your old studio—shows any promise. Her name is Elsa Brant.”

    Liz had fixed her gaze on the drawing that hung behind Professor Whittier’s head, a sketch of Bristol that she had completed during her sophomore year. She remembered sitting in the living room on a warm afternoon while the dog slept in a patch of sunshine, trying to catch the smooth grace of the animal in pen and ink. She remembered the