Around the house down the street stands an eight-foot fence with boards squeezed tightly together; not the kind of fence you can see through. Even so, the backyard is bare—just grass and dirt—in case someone should happen to look in. The outside of the house is painted a plain off-white with no unnecessary ornaments; bare, but with a certain simple elegance that hints at something more than the stark landscaping suggests. The blinds are always down, except on that rare occasion when it's possible to view a small pair of clear blue eyes peeking out through a crack then disappearing. Her eyes are very much like the windows: seldom opened to the world, just barely peeked out of, and never seen into. Not really. The door almost never opens, but when it does, all that can ever be seen is part of an arm and a hand—slender and delicate—as it retrieves a parcel from the step. But then the door shuts and all one is left to look at is a faded bronze knocker that seems to be set a little too high for the average person. It's by no means an ugly house by all outward appearances, but the inside, Oh! The inside! The windows are covered with deep blue drapery, self-indulgent in its richness and its excess. The furniture is a deep red mahogany and its fabrics are rich with varied shade and texture. The shelves are populated by countless stacks of books, packed in tightly, row upon row. Upon the walls are hung paintings, drawing, photographs—works of art by her own hand. One is still wet, yet it already hands on the wall beside the piano. This particular painting is one foot wide by one and three-quarters feet tall, but somehow seems larger, as if from behind it there extends outward a third dimension. The shapes are well defined; the colors are bright. The painting appears to be a confusion, a random mass of distraction, but if one looks long enough, the disorder settles into itself, and into a comprehensible form that cannot be named, but only felt. Four feet to the right of this painting stands a sophisticated, well-polished writing desk, on top of which lies a leather-bound book with a bright red bookmark just visible over the top. Also atop the desk are the remnants of a recently opened package—the same package her hand had reached out of the door and received a day earlier. And outside, the passers-by pass by, never guessing the contents of the fenced in house, never guessing the contents of the woman inside. They simply see a house, down the street, with an eight-foot fence, instead of a sanctuary for the body and for the mind: a house to fit her soul. |
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