The Lesson

The Preparations for Traveling by Bus and the Seeing of a Magician in the Next Town and Anticipation Thereof, Also, to the Kitchen Where Lunch Is Put in a Bag, and to the Coatroom for Two Coats and a Hat

Loring had a slip of paper in her pocket. It read:

You will observe the boy at the theater and record his reactions. You will ask him questions. You will learn if it is all a vile trick.

All night she had been troubled by this: might it all be a vile trick.

1. if Stan was twelve years old

2. if her enemies had come up with a revenge

3. if it is all a lie, not a revenge. not a vile trick, not twelve years old, simply an actual but unfortunate thing

—

She had another note. That one said:

My dear love,

I am terrified all the time, but can’t say why. Where before you might solve this with nearness — just the quality of being near — now there is no solution. I am an old woman writing herself notes about fear, but there is no solution. Although this is true, it is also a glowingly bright day. I have a pile of letters that I am sending as a sort of joke. This invigorates me. Shouldn’t one laugh in the teeth of Thursdays and such other ignoble fools? I am writing this on a spool of thread — on a thread that I have drawn out from a spool. It will not bear reading. Yes, this all written on a piece of thread. It was an old gesture, invented by a woman named Marla Jone. She was a colonist in Massachusetts and died of the cold in her farmhouse. These were Loring’s thoughts about the thread technique. She admired Marla Jone quite frankly.