Chapter 5
THE CATWALK
Whenever a shadow of doubt or restlessness fell over me, I reminded myself that dealing with Aster meant dealing with the unknown. Even when I spoke to him about issues he cared about, I learned that his views were subject to change and shift more rapidly than a human’s.
People always came with pre-set personalities and beliefs, every one his own culture and his own world, observing his own customs and honoring rituals sacred to him alone.
Aster was fluid. He wasn’t a world. He was the space that enveloped worlds, and his temperament changed with the wind.
One day he paced the grounds barefoot with an unbuttoned shirt, surprising me with a glass of wine and a chocolate.
The next, a fury would overtake him. I would wake to find him wearing a gray robe, with flecks of gold spotting his eyes and a possessive need for control that hadn’t raised its head in our earlier encounters. Even a temper.
I didn’t dislike the changes in Aster, and I didn’t question them.
He abided by the laws of myth, not reality.
Nor did I regret pledging myself to him.
The more his fury and ambition manifested, the more energy I threw into my novel and the more passionately he made love to me in the gaps between writing.
On his friskier days, getting dressed at all felt unworth the effort.
One morning in mid-July I woke up later than usual, after dawn and the promised sunrise.
I found myself alone in an otherwise empty bed, which was normal—I didn’t know when Aster got up, but I usually found him in the shower or waiting for me downstairs by the time I opened my eyes.
Given that the sun had already clearly risen—the time was almost seven thirty—I was frankly surprised he hadn’t woken me with a rough shake earlier.
I got up and threw my silk robe around my shoulders, rehearsing a set of excuses and apologies as I hurried into the bathroom, and then down the stairs to see if my muse waited for me in the kitchen or near the old secretary desk. I saw him nowhere.
“Aster?” I asked out loud, tightening the strap across my waist.
For a moment, I missed the days when he appeared magically at my bidding whenever I pronounced his name.
The days when he wanted to look at me and didn’t think of my writing at all, before I insisted it become his priority.
The days before we had domesticated each other.
That Aster only existed in the past tense.
He was like me now, and I was becoming like him.
Ephemeral: a word directly related to the word “fever” and meant to describe something that would only last a single day.
I hugged my arms over my chest and waited, turning to the shadows to catch him.
The shadows were empty.
Climbing up the stairs, I decided that Aster’s absence was easier to bear than the concerns he’d share if he were here.
Your book won’t happen. Not the way you’re treating it.
You value your comfort more than your own life.
I couldn’t fault him for his concerns. They were my concerns reflected back at me.
Not finding him, I showered alone, changed into a light shirt with khaki shorts, and ate a croissant at the kitchen bar alone for breakfast. After I’d finished, I explored the estate on my own. I had hardly considered the lighthouse since Aster first appeared and started working with me.
Back when I first moved in, I thought that I’d have more than enough time to absorb the history and atmosphere of the lighthouse and Illumination Point.
I planned to visit a few other historical and cultural sights on this part of the Maine coast, to learn what I could and let the knowledge spill through in whatever book I’d written.
But Aster had lured my attention away from the conventional.
I couldn’t focus on history when the present dazzled me beyond my comprehension.
I couldn’t research other people while spending this much time researching myself… and the man who inspired me.
I looked at the Winslow Homer replica on the wall and the incidental cross with a new sense of awe.
I put on my flip-flops, retreated to the porch, and for a few moments surveyed the ocean wordlessly and pictured the original owners of this house, the Childress family with their haunted eyes, watching for coming ships.
Then my gaze turned. I saw the profile of the lighthouse above me, the statuesque tower where the light had once regularly warned away ships in storms and fog, and I realized that I had never climbed it throughout my entire stay so far. I couldn’t believe I’d stayed away this long.
My curiosity won out. I ran back into the house and found the keys to the tower in a basket in the kitchen. From what I understood, the lighthouse property was free for me to explore as I wished.
I pried the door open with some difficulty.
I didn’t know how regularly the tower was cleaned or maintained, and I found the inside cool but unmistakably damp.
The spiral staircase leading upward was thin, with perforated steel steps so narrow that I would have to walk on the balls of my feet to climb.
It was dark as well. There might have been lights at one point, but the only light now shone from a few narrow windows spaced at regular intervals during the climb.
I didn’t know what to expect at the top, whether the optic section which previously held the light was empty or if the light, though inoperative, still hung in its familiar place, surrounded by a network of mirrors and glass. The catwalk should be clear, at least.
The tower seemed taller on the inside than on the outside (about twice the height of the quarters nearby), but I climbed the heavy stairs quickly with all the energy of a child exploring a new place to play.
Aster began to slip my mind. I still wanted to find him, but with every step I thought of him less and and the lighthouse more, the structure of concrete and light and the ocean cresting around it.
Finally I reached the top. At the end of a more heavily windowed section of the tower was an opening to the smooth floor: the light’s chamber.
The upper room smelled dusty, like an old attic no one had disturbed in decades.
I climbed up and noticed the gap where the light used to sit.
Across from the gap, Aster stood outside on the catwalk.
Aster wasn’t looking at me when I first saw him.
He stood in the open air, on the catwalk which was easily approachable from the light chamber.
Aster faced away from me, gazing over the horizon of endless ocean in front of us, seemingly lost in thought.
He looked poetic, almost melancholy, in a dark blue jacket with hair cut short and now more blond than white.
“Hello,” I said.
The sun stull hung in the east over the ocean, in the direction we both faced. When I approached him and looked out, I had to squint, at which point I found myself unable to enjoy the beautiful view that must have been before me.
Aster, unsquinting, turned to face me. You found me.
“Only after I scrubbed the rest of the place clean,” I said. I let out a brief sigh. “You’ve never not been there before. I thought you’d abandoned me.”
You left me no other choice. You slept in. I didn’t want to disturb you.
I heard no accusation in his tone but only a dull frustration that bordered on sadness. “Aster, is everything all right?”
He drew a sharp breath. I wonder how lonely it must have been, for all the men who lived here and lit a flame here at night, all alone and unappreciated. Did they ever receive a vision unique to them?
This odd musing with ideas and philosophizing about the nature of the universe was common with Aster, who externalized much of my own curiosity, but now I sensed that he was dodging something, working to distract both himself and me.
“What is it?” I said. “Did you taste something new? Smell something?”
I can’t lie to you anymore, can I? said Aster, sadly.
“I don’t want you to lie.”
I slept last night. And I’ve never slept before. And when I woke up, my first thought was that I had become temporary. I don’t know how to deal with that.
He spoke gravely, as if to inform me of a terminal diagnosis.
“Temporary?”
Like a leaf on a tree in autumn.
“Aster, that’s ridiculous,” I said in a false effort to cheer him up. “You’re not temporary. What do you mean?”
I’m not made of what I was. I mean, I’m still Aster. I’m still a muse. I’m just worried that I’m not...
“Not a proper muse?”
His lips trembled before he spoke. I won’t last.
“You’re not dying, are you?”
Not dying. I’m immortal. But it’s not death I’m looking at. I’m afraid.
“Afraid of what?”
That one day, no one will know my name.
“Are you afraid of being forgotten?” I recognized the fear at once. This was a part of a dialog I’d put myself through many times, and I pressed forward over a familiar script.
When I seriously considered Aster’s situation, I lacked the ability to think of anything more than a cheap fantasy cliche or a half-remembered fragment from old mythology.
I pictured a lower god losing his immortality and doomed to live out the rest of his life among humanity or an angel cast down from heaven.
Aster looked at me, fluttering his lashes timidly. Forgotten? Is that your word for it? Like any of the nameless men who used to work here and lived and died and no one ever noticed or cared? I’m not used to having an end, even a happy one.
“We all have our limits,” I said.
Limits mean death. Forgottenness. Ultimate namelessness. His eyes sparkled with fascination and horror at the concept. Tell me. You’re human. You’re mortal. How do you deal with the fact that you will die someday?
I pointed helplessly to the house below us.
“There’s a book down there about the family who ran this place.
The people who build the tower. Who climbed up here every time the weather got rough.
Their names were Robert and Ethel Childress, and they were as real as we were.
And they’re not forgotten. Their fingerprints are all over this place. ”
Who were they? Do you know more than their names?
I held my breath in thought, but had no idea how to respond. “We’re standing on their legacy, and that has to count for something, doesn’t it?”
I can’t be a name on a list or a nail hammered into a plank of wood.
That’s not life. That’s not mattering. This is the kind of thing that scares me, Stella.
That really terrifies me. He gritted his teeth together and I realized that he had grabbed onto my arms in desperation, like a drowning man grabbing for a life raft.
Then he looked down. Confused. He released my arms. Apologies.
I never meant to hurt you. I don’t know what possessed me.
“You didn’t hurt me,” I said, rubbing my arms where I could still feel his fingers.
My words were a lie. Aster had hurt me with his touch more than I realized he could.
Once or twice I had imagined that Aster’s grip was growing stronger, that it hadn’t always been so firm or so real.
“Look, if something’s happening to you, we can fix it.
We can stop running and hiding from convention.
You were right, when you first came here.
Right in saying that there were certain questions I couldn’t ask and certain things I couldn’t do.
I’m sorry about that. I didn’t realize there would be consequences. ”
You think we can put Humpty Dumpty back together again? Aster asked, and his expression softened into a smile. He crossed the small room and walked to the stairs. It’s not as easy as that. Come back down the stairs with me, and let’s see if we can find a solution together.
Moments later we sat in the living room of the house.
I crossed my legs studiously on the couch as if I expected Aster to give me a professorial lecture.
Aster, meanwhile, paced back and forth across the hardwood floor in a frenzy, alternately angry and desperate and thrilled.
He clasped his hands together, twisting and rubbing them like a madman.
For a time, he didn’t speak. He said he wanted to get his thoughts in order. I said he could take his time. Then he pivoted. He faced me. He squeezed his hands together and began. I don’t need time. I already know… it’s you, Stella. From the moment I first saw you, I knew you’d be my end.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
You gave me something that never belonged to me before, something I wasn’t supposed to have.
I swallowed. Why didn’t he sound like he was blaming me, even at his insistence that he was? Why didn’t he sound vengeful about it?
Stella, you woke me up to a part of myself I didn’t know could have a life of its own.
I’ve tasted the forbidden fruit, and it’s the same flavor as your lips on mine.
I love you, Stella, but it’s not just that.
I fell in love with you. And that is never supposed to happen.
Not for a muse. I don’t even know what’s going to happen now.
My cheeks grew flushed. I wondered fleetingly if he wanted to rip my clothes off and ravish me here and now on the couch. I would have welcomed it. But there was a feverish, chaotic element of this that felt more violent than romantic. “Should I have stayed away? Followed the old rules?”
Aster shushed me. He leaned over me and then sat beside me and then wrapped an arm around me and hugged me tightly.
It was an affectionate hug, not romantic or lusty.
It’s not that I am incapable of going back to the creature I was.
My essence remains the same. It’s that my desires have changed.
I don’t want to be a muse anymore. I want to live, Stella.
I want to live the way you do, to share in your temporary nature, to become an individual with a heart and fear and anger and not just ideas spilling over ideas.
I am going to die, Stella, and you have already fired the arrow of my death. Don’t you know what we have done?
I sat still a moment, still feeling that he might pull off my shirt or twist me to sit on top of him. Neither happened. Instead we only looked deep into each other’s eyes and realized that even if we couldn’t understand it, we had crossed a point of no return.