Candlesight. Michael Liddy
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because so many things were swirling around her. For a long time the giddiness continued before she finally settled on one controlling thought, more domineering and aggressive than the others.
Smiling to herself she whispered, “I’m going to be something. I’m going to be remembered. Maybe I’ll never have a real family and children, but there will be something I’ve built.”
As time wore on an irritation began to grow and Amelia stared down at her watch repeatedly. Five minutes late. Ten minutes late. She began to fidget in the seat and found herself craning repeatedly to look out of the rear window. There was no sight of him; in fact, on this arctic winter evening there was no sight of any movement at all. As always, at any inconvenience, her agitation began to rise.
Her softly spoken whisper became menacing. “I’ll wait here for another ten minutes and if you don’t show up, that’s it.” Already she began to put her mind into a state of leaving. There were other things that were far more important to her than this petty indulgence.
It was then that she happened to glance through the momentarily open automatic doors as an elderly lady with a walker paced with tiny steps out onto the footpath. As the doors began to snap shut again, she caught sight of a flash of yellow, before the shape retreated into one of the aisles again.
Amelia frowned. “You strange little man, how long have you been skulking in there?”
She was sure Jared hadn’t walked past her and she was also sure there wasn’t another entrance into the supermarket. Amelia climbed briskly out of the car and tried to focus through the reflections on the sliding doors. Once inside she craned her head in every direction but couldn’t see any sign of him. Not trusting that he wouldn’t try to slip past her, she walked quickly but covertly over to the farthest aisle and waited.
After a moment she realised this was a ridiculous subterfuge; she’d left the car in plain view and she obviously wasn’t in it anymore. Amelia walked past the long aisles, knowing it was next to impossible for him to traverse their length and make it outside without being seen by her. At the third canyon of perishables she spotted him; facing the tall stacks of breakfast cereals, he ran his hand along a packet, obviously reading it without interest.
Able to approach him without his knowing, she noticed several subtle but distinct differences about him. Firstly he wore the same jeans, but they showed the light creases of having been washed recently. Secondly his hair glistened rather than hanging limply across his forehead and ears. She smiled and her pulse quickened; he’d tried to neaten his appearance for her.
As she neared his shoulder he spun around sharply. For a moment his eyes were wild with alarm and she felt he was on the verge of fleeing. They stood in complete silence for quite some time before Amelia smiled and spoke quietly. “If I hadn’t noticed your jacket through the doors I would have left.”
Jared edged away from her and looked down. His voice, when he finally spoke, was a distant rasp. “I. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
Amelia prompted the distressed young man further. “Why didn’t you just not show up?”
“I didn’t think you’d come, and when you did I didn’t know what to say.” Something within him seemed to solidify and his shoulders straightened slightly. In a slow gesture he reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out a small fabric bound book. In a tentative gesture he handed it to her. “I wanted to show you I could do something.”
Amelia took the offering gingerly, and looked at his now downcast expression. “Jared, I already think you can do something. I think you’re very talented.”
His reply was quiet but quickly voiced. “You don’t think I did them, you think I got them from somewhere else.”
“That’s not true. I knew Ted had nothing to do with this, and what you came up with I haven’t seen anywhere else.” She touched his forearm. “I know they’re yours.”
He shrank away from her hand, and Amelia tried her best to brush aside the momentary pang she felt. It was obvious that Jared wasn’t just painfully shy, his was a deeper and more insidious isolation. She gave him a weak smile. “Come on, just coffee this time, nothing tricky.”
There was no immediate response in his expression and she spun away from him and walked towards the entrance, without looking back. If he didn’t follow, she’d leave him alone. It was wrong to keep pushing somebody into something they weren’t capable of. She finally turned around as she reached for the car door. He wasn’t behind her. Another tinge of loss hit her, but it immediately vanished as Jared tentatively emerged from the store, an exposed and flighty cast to his features.
Waiting a moment before she started the ignition, Amelia glanced towards him in the passenger seat and let a brief smile cross her features. “You’re getting better.” There was no response; his expression was unreadable as he very calmly and carefully fastened his seatbelt.
Not wanting to push him, they drove in silence, Amelia playing an orchestral score quietly to alleviate what could have become an uncomfortable silence. After a few minutes, Jared spoke hesitantly. “I don’t know this.”
Amelia responded quickly. “It’s the score from Edward Scissorhands.” He simply shook his head. “It’s a film, this is the orchestral score. I like this guy's stuff; it’s always very emotive. You’ve never heard of Edward Scissorhands?”
He breathed deeply. “I don’t watch television.”
She knew a lot of people that couldn’t deal with commercial television, who resorted to broadband or pay television. She suspected though that he didn’t do either. “Do you ever go to the cinema?”
Jared frowned. “No.”
Amelia left it there, waiting until they sat down, in the exact table they'd had last time, to focus on him.
“You read a lot and you draw,” she said then. “I’m betting reading would give you enormous perspective, but the inspiration to draw... Where do you get that from?”
His reaction was unexpected. A series of emotions seemed to momentarily war over his face before he froze in position, his eyes locked on her with an uncommon intensity. Only one word finally emerged, barely more than a whisper. “Books.”
Amelia frowned. “Books?”
He nodded, obviously relieved that she’d directed the conversation. “For objects, and places, everything.”
Sitting back and nodding at the waitress as she delivered their coffee, Amelia thought about this man’s tiny window on the world, how it might be if he actually experienced the places he saw on paper. Would he grow? Would a confidence emerge?
They spoke quietly for some time, and Amelia was invigorated that slowly, steadily, his single word answers became collections of thoughts. Still, his language, posture and mannerisms were stilted and ungainly, almost as if he wasn’t used to any form of conversation or interaction at all. Frowning, she corrected that perception; he used some sophisticated words, and she wondered if, rather, he had such a narrow group of people that he interacted with that somebody new threw him off balance.
It was by no means an unruly flood though; he was extremely guarded and hesitant in the way he spoke. He waited for Amelia to volunteer what they should speak of and then he responded. Jared kept his eyes cast downward and only fleetingly looked up to see if she was still engaged in the conversation.
Amelia slowly began to identify his personality below the layers of what she assumed was repression and perhaps emotional pain. She was very careful to stay well away from anything to do with his personal life or history lest she disturb this tiny window into him. What she did sense though, was that beyond his drab appearance there was a deep mind that observed everything that went on around him.
Leaning forward across the table, she looked up at him briefly before asking a question that continued to intrigue