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Whenever I'm asked about Emily--and it's always the American reporters who ask about her the most--I tell them that we were childhood friends who grew up together and fell in love. The men write down this answer almost perfunctorily and then they'll return to asking about brush strokes or obscure points of art criticism.
Some of the female reporters ask whether or not my wife is the inspiration for whichever female studies I have showing in the current exhibition or the current magazine serial that has taken the world by storm. Of course I answer in the affirmative, relating the story the first painting I did that old Great Aunt Nancy "stole" from Emily. I only say enough to keep their hearts full with sentiment and the laughter light on their lips while nudging the conversation back towards next question on their list.
That is all I'm ever asked about Emily, and we're content with that. One day, however, I'd like to be able to give a different answer.
I want to talk about the dark night where I heard her calling me from miles away, as a storm was rising over a darkened church. A dark corner of a lightning-washed ediface where a girl was terrified out of her mind--and into someone else's.
Or the time where a boy who had been lost, was found by that very same girl. She was a bit older then, with the presence of mind to cover up the fact that her mind had gone wandering into and out of houses in search of a missing boy. How many houses did that mind enter that night? Whose secrets did she see? What other mysteries were revealed? An old pencil drawing of a house she had seen only once before is the only testament to that night's wanderings. I'm certain she breathed a sigh of relief when Mistress McIntyre died, taking her intimate surety of the knowledge of Emily's "sight" from this world. To the eventual reader of this lost document I add that thankfully she is Murray enough to want that kind of anonymity regardless of how high she climbs that Alpine Path of hers.
Or the day where I turned around to see her before me. There, right in the station waiting room, when she should have been safe in her home, an ocean away. I remember that moment as if it were five minutes ago. I turned, and then she appeared before me. Her eyes glowed with an inner light, her pale white hand outstretched to me. "Come Teddy," she said, and I ran after her. All of my dreams had come true in that instant. She loved me. She would finally be mine. We could finally be together. The ghosts of old loves dead were banished, the phantom of an older man's love exorcised. But she is the one who vanished as like a spirit, and then the train left the station, and later both a ship and my heart sank.
It is because that was the moment when I knew that both she would and would not be mine.
She will never be wholly mine, so long as she has this "gift." I sometimes fear that it is her gift that grants her such power over words, enough to make the people in her novels more than just the efforts of a fanciful imagination. I toil at a canvas for hours while she toils at her words. In silence we toil side by side, the crackle of the fire and the faint scratching of her pen the only counterpoint to the sound of my brushstrokes through wet oil. We both put effort into our fancies, and yet her work always seems to have a ring of reality that cannot be imagined. They are not mere words on paper, nor even the product of a bright imagination. No, it is borrowed life.
Worse than this is the notion I fear that if she ever had to choose between myself and her gift, then she would choose it over me. I am just a man, and "it" is the whole world of existence.
I can almost imagine the look on a reporter's face, that first burst of nervous laughter over hearing a modern Canadian man admit that he believes in spirits and witchcraft. But I would have more stories to tell. Of how she knew before Ilse and Perry did that their first child would not last the night. Of Ilse's mother, and how Emily knew where that body lay. How she shared Dean Priest's pain as he lay dying in a hospice on the other side of the world.
There are thoughts I cannot express to her. Yet I fear she knows already how I can be afraid of her. Already she prefers a lonely walk under the stars to a cozy embrace in front of the fire. We do not have children, and it is not through a lack of effort or passion on our parts. Strangers have always been drawn to her and repulsed by her at the same time. It's the usual Murray standoffishness, folks would say; but now I color those encounters with a malevolence of which I never thought her capable.
It is probably on the day that I lose her to "it" that I will leave our little home and board a train bound for to Toronto. I'll flee across the border to America, and find the first reputable reporter who is interested in such stories.
I will betray her secrets to the world, for her own good and her own safety. No, I will betray her for everyone else's safety.
Because when I look into my heart, I know that I have been ensnared by her, body and soul. It will be my betrayal that will set both of us free.
I have to be content with that.