Page 31 of Close Reading

Kim leans forward. Her eyes widen. “You’re right. That’s a footnote within a footnote. Is that possible?”

“Academically?”

“Typographically.”

Kim immediately opens a new browser tab. The moment of celebration has transformed, in the span of 30 seconds, into a new research question. The community watches. Marcus shakes his head fond resignation; he has known Kim for five years and understands that this is simply how Kim works, that the completion of Chapter Four was never going to be a resting place but a launching point.

Gerald is delighted. He and Kim are now in a rapid-fire exchange about the scholarly precedent for nested footnotes, and Gerald is citing examples from medieval manuscripts where the marginal commentary spawned its own marginal commentary, and Kim is taking notes, and the energy between them is that of two people who have found each other across the vast landscape of academic specificity and are finally having the conversation they were meant to have.

From the corner—the armchair near the side window, not Miriam’s armchair, the other one, the smaller one that nobody fights over because it has a spring that pokes through the upholstery in one specific spot and that Rowan has been sitting in unbothered for three years—Rowan speaks.

“Milestone hair. I’m doing your milestone hair.”

Rowan Chen, an MFA student in Creative Writing. They are warm tan, skinny, and short-haired. They are dressed with the considered specificity of someone who has thought about color and texture and pattern and arrived at conclusions that are entirely their own—a patterned button-down in teal and gold under a fleece vest, good boots. On their lap: a golden fanny pack that is moving.

Kim looks up from the footnote-within-footnote research. “Milestone hair?”

“New chapter, new color. This is a rule. I’ve been telling you this for two years.”

“You’ve been telling me this every time I finish a section. I’ve never taken you up on it.”

“Because you’ve never finished Chapter Four before. Chapter Four is different. Chapter Four gets the full treatment.” They gesture expansively, the gesture encompassing the full range of what the full treatment can achieve. “I did Chelsea’s last month, the whole spectrum, took three hours. Transformative. What are you thinking?”

Kim, who has not been thinking about her hair because she has been thinking about nested footnotes, is now thinking about her hair. The shift is visible, a new variable entering her system. She has been offered something she didn’t know she wanted. “Something different.”

“I can do different. I have a whole range.”

The fanny pack moves again. A small whiskered face emerges from the opening: Hammertime, Rowan’s hedgehog, approximately the size of a grapefruit, regarding the room with the offended dignity of a creature that has been awakened from a nap and is evaluating whether the interruption was warranted. Hammertime blinks once, slowly, with the deliberate contemplation of an animal that processes the world at a different speed than its surroundings and sees no reason to accelerate. Hammertime has been a Lavender House regular for as long as Rowan has. Bea made her peace with a hedgehog in the shop years ago, under conditions I suspect involved negotiation but that neither party has ever disclosed.

“Next week?” Kim says. “After I figure out the footnote-within-footnote thing.”

“Next week works. I’ll bring swatches.” Rowan settles back into the spring-compromised armchair with Hammertime in their lap and a satisfied expression.

Bea has returned to the machine. The La Marzocco hisses. Miriam has returned to her book.

Miriam.

I watch her for a moment—the silver hair, the comfortable shoes, the small old book. I strain to see the book’s interior, fairly certain the language is not English. She has not spoken during any of this. She listened to Marcus confront me about Margot. She listened to Kim’s announcement. She watched Rowan and Hammertime. She has been present for all of it and has contributed nothing, and the nothing she has contributed is, as always, the most considered offering in the room.

I think about Miriam’s silence. It’s like the silence in forests—the places where no sound is produced and where, if you listen carefully, the absence of sound contains its own information. The birds have stopped singing because something is moving through the canopy. The frogs have gone quiet because the temperature has shifted. Miriam is quiet because she is waiting.

I think about what Marcus said. Are you attracted to Margot Voss?

I think about what I said back. The attraction is… present.

It has been present since September. It has been present in my hands when I watch her write, in my stomach when she almost smiles, in the low hum that has lived in my body since last Tuesday night when I lay in the dark and let myself want her and was sixty pounds of golden retriever away from proving just how present the attraction is.

Bring her here, Miriam said, weeks ago.

I am going to bring her here. Not yet. But soon. When the time is right. When the door she has been holding shut has opened far enough for the light to come through.

I finish my coffee. I leave Lavender House. I walk to campus in the December mist with the word present in my mouth and the warmth of the room behind me and the shape of Margot’s absence beside me, specific as a shadow, warm as a hand I haven’t held.

15

MARGOT

The argument starts at 2:15 on a Tuesday in the second week of December. The ground level window in the workspace is fogged. The drizzle has been steady all afternoon, the patient kind, the kind that will still be here tomorrow and the day after, the kind that turns the Ardmore campus into a watercolor of itself. Through the fog on the glass I can see the path outside reduced to shapes—a student passing, the dark trunk of a Douglas fir.