The Lesson

The Seventh Visit

The seventh visit was not a week later. It was that morning after. Loring was where she had been that whole night, sitting in the room, beside the opened box. There was nothing in it. The paper had been taken away by the boy. She might never see it. The very thought filled her with terror. There was a knock at the door. Again, a knock at the door. Then someone beating on the door.

Stan’s mother said to Stan, she said,

— You will tell her what you told me.

Stan, eyes red, looking at his feet.

— You will tell her, she said again. I will talk and then you will talk and we will be through with this.

Loring went slowly down the stairs. She went slowly to the door. She opened it.

— I am not coming in, said the mother. I am not coming in, and Stan is not coming in, not ever again. You are a mad person. I can’t believe I let Stan into your house in the first place. I don’t even want our money back. I don’t want anything. I want you to leave Stan alone and never speak to him again. I want you to never speak to anyone again about any of this. I want you to stay in your house and die and be gone. Stan, tell her what you think.

Loring looked at Stan.

He looked up at her and his face was hard. It was the face of a little boy, curled up like a muscle.

— I don’t care at all about you, he said. I don’t care about chess, either, or about your husband. I thought we were playing a game, and I was bored of my house and my family, so I didn’t mind coming here. Then I thought I could get a magic show out of it. Then I thought I could see how far you would go. But you smell awful. Your house smells awful. Your skin is hard to look at. I don’t want to look at you anymore, or be near you. My mom was angry about the clothes you made me wear and she started asking me questions. Then she found the papers you wrote for me. Then my father came. You knew this would happen. I don’t ever want to see you again.

— You see, said the mother. You are by yourself in this. It’s always been that way.

Loring looked down at Stan. Her eyes were wide and her expression pleading.

— Wait, she said.

The boy recoiled from her. In a second, his mother was between them.

— That’s the end of it.

She pushed Loring into the house and shut the door. Then they went away.

—

In the parlor, Loring was crying. She was sitting in the chair and holding Ezra’s picture in her hands. She had thrown the gloves off. She had thrown the veil onto the ground. She was coughing and weeping and coughing. She could scarcely see.

If she could reason with herself, it was not in a way that anyone could know. She was thinking about objects, about the spaces between objects. She was thinking about the cemetery and then she wanted to be there. She wanted to reach the cemetery that second.

— I will go there, she said.