Radiance

Don’t call me that. There are more lies in this house than wallpaper. Don’t pile on any new ones. The roof won’t stand the weight.

PERCIVAL

Ada said you can stay with her until this has all blown over. We’ll go after the New Year’s parade. If you’d rather a flat in the city, perhaps we can come to some arrangement…

SEVERIN

What about Mary?

PERCIVAL

Mary’s shooting on location this year.

SEVERIN

[begins to cry] Why? Papa, I want to stay here. This is my home. Don’t you love me?

PERCIVAL

I am disruptive to your life right now. And…you are disruptive to mine. I love you, but there’s a great deal of trouble at the moment.

SEVERIN

Oh, there’s always trouble. There’s always something. Some reason I’m inconvenient. Some excuse to stay away. What kind of trouble now?

PERCIVAL

People…people are saying I shot someone.

SEVERIN

[SEVERIN pulls away.] Uncle Thad? [Percival does not answer.] Did you?

PERCIVAL

Rinny, it’s very complicated…

SEVERIN

Oh my god.

PERCIVAL

{He reaches out for her, his shadow for her shadow.] Darling, listen.

SEVERIN

No, don’t touch me. Call Ada. I won’t stay in this house another second.

The Deep Blue Devil

The Man in the Malachite Mask

Doctor Callow’s Dream:

The House, the Eye, and the Whale

Once upon a time, in the Land of Milk and Desire, there lived a boy who had outsmarted his birthright. Whether he knew it or not, this is a very dangerous thing to do. A birthright can’t be cut off like a bit of fingernail—it hangs about, sullen, limping through the years with two wooden legs and a clay hand, waiting, slinking, sniffing for a chance to get in the game again.

Only once did Anchises, whom everyone called Doctor Callow, tell a grown person about the workings of his heart. When he was eight and believed that his biggest wishes-which-were-not-really-wishes were behind him, little Doctor Callow went to see a witch (who was not really a witch, but an ornery old woman who had once made her living as an ostentatious fortune teller in Judgment-of-Paris, one of the great cities of the southern part of the Land of Milk and Desire, very far from Adonis, a city where the laws against conflict are so strict that the slightest bickering over a supper bill is cause for expulsion). The witch’s name was Hesiod—though it wasn’t, really. She had been born Basak Uzun, but began trying to escape her name as soon as her mouth got big enough to say it. She tried on many new names before she saw “Hesiod” in a beautiful book about the ancient days of Home, a place she had never seen and would never see. The name sounded to her like yellow sunlight on brown, dry earth, and she took it the way some young persons take trinkets when a shopkeeper’s back is turned, even though it was a boy’s name. She didn’t find that out until much later, and by then, she didn’t care. Hesiod fell in love with a dashing diver and came away from Judgment-of-Paris to homestead in Adonis, a place so new at the time that it didn’t have a name. When her beloved died at sea—brushed ever so lightly, as lightly as a lover, by the frond of a callowhale—Hesiod returned to her old ways, for telling fortunes is a hard habit to break.

Anchises strung six trout-which-were-not-really-trout on a heavy rope and brought them along to pay for his fortune. Hesiod’s hut, its veranda washed by salt wind, its windows pink sea glass, sat, quite satisfied with itself, by the shore of the Qadesh. Anchises knocked three times, which is traditional. Hesiod answered him, her long grey hair plaited with cacao-husks and ocean daisies (which are not really daisies, but livid, lilac, languorous anemones that can survive for six days without water). Doctor Callow presented his gift of fish.

Hesiod plucked out one of the fish’s eyes and ate it without a word. It must have tasted good, as eyes go, for she shrugged and let him into her house, sat him on a driftwood-which-was-not-really-driftwood chair, and pulled out her cards. She spread them on the table in a graceful fan, like a casino girl (which Hesiod had also been when she was young). The witch-who-was-not-really-a-witch had a crystal ball, too, but she never used it and it wore a perfect coat of dust. It was just for show, but people like a fortune-teller with a crystal ball.

“What’s your name?” said Hesiod gruffly. She wasn’t really gruff, but people like a grouchy witch. A friendly one couldn’t possibly know anything about the world.

“Doctor Callow,” answered the boy proudly.

“No it isn’t,” snorted the old woman.

His little shoulders fell. “It’s Anchises Kephus, ma’am,” he mumbled.

“That’s fine, boy. I can always spot another scrap who’s shucked their name. If a name doesn’t fit you, best leave it on the road for someone else who’ll like it better.”