The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham Read Free Book Online Page B

stands beside the bed, listening to the steady murmur of Beth’s breathing.
    He can smell her—the lavender soap they all use, mingled with a smell he can only think of as
womanly
, a ripe cleanliness that’s somehow enhanced and deepened by sleep, all mixed up now with the powder and nettle of her medicines, the strangest roil of pharmaceutical immaculacy and some sour chamomile-family herb that has in all likelihood been gathered for centuries in bogs and marshes, along with a sickroom smell he can only think of as electric, the indescribable cauterizing invisible whatever that runs through wires hidden in the walls of rooms in which someone is mortally ill.
    He bends over, looks closely at Beth’s face, which is pretty, pretty enough, but, at the same time, better than pretty, more personal. If prettiness implies a certain quality of banal resemblance, Beth looks like no one but herself. Her lips, slightly parted, issuing the faint whistle of her breath, are puffy and puckery; her nose some remnant of an Asian ancestor, with its flattened humility, its little slits of nostrils; her eyelids blue-white, the lashes sable; the pallid pinkish melon scalp of her chemo-induced baldness.
    She’s lovely, but she’s not a great beauty, and her accomplishments are charming, but minor. She’s a good baker. She has fashion sense. She’s smart, an avid reader. She’s kind to just about everyone.
    Is it possible that the light, by choosing to appear to him as Beth fades, meant something about a life that continues beyond the limits of the flesh?
    Or is that some messianic bent of Barrett’s?
    Could that be why his lover left? Because he’s too prone to Signs of Significance?
    Barrett bends low, puts his face so close to Beth’s that he can feel her breath on his chin. She’s alive. She’s alive right now. Her eyelids twitch over a dream.
    He imagines her dreams as pale and buoyant, bright even in extremis; no lurking invisible terrors, no shriek of annihilation, no innocent-seeming heads turning to reveal black holes instead of eyes, or teeth like razors. He hopes that’s true.
    A moment later he stands, abruptly, as if somebody had called his name. He almost stumbles backward over the fact that Beth is being taken out so early, and that her absence will be felt by a small body of people, but will otherwise go unnoticed. It’s not a surprise. But it strikes him now with particular force. Is it more tragic, or is it less, to slip so quietly and briefly into and out of the world? To have added, and altered, so little.
    An unwelcome thought: Beth’s primary accomplishment may be to have loved and been loved by Tyler. Tyler, who sees something invisible even to everyone else who loves her. She is widely loved. But Tyler adores her, Tyler is fascinated by her, Tyler finds her extraordinary.
    As does Barrett, though he does so because Tyler does. Still. Beth will have been loved ardently by a main man and a backup man. She will have been, in a certain sense, doubly married.
    How exactly will Tyler live on after she’s departed? Barrett adores Beth, and (as far as he knows) she adores him in return, but it’s Tyler, and Tyler alone, who delivers the daily ministrations. How will he live not only with the loss of her but also the loss of the purpose she’s created, these past two years? Caring for Beth has been his career. He’s played and composed his music on the side, whenever he’s not too urgently needed.
    Somehow, Barrett has failed to fully apprehend it until now: Tyler is worried, Tyler is aggrieved, but also, since Beth’s diagnosis, he’s been more content than Barrett has seen him in years. Tyler would never admit it, not even to himself, but seeing to Beth—comforting her, feeding her, keeping track of her medication, arguing with her doctors—has made him successful. Here is something he can do, and can do well, as the music flicks teasingly around him, just out of reach. And there is, probably, isn’t