The Shadow Catcher and the Word "Beautiful"

I am there, in the round chair in the thin room, the day coming in through the slender screen, and I am reading—finishing the final pages of Marianne Wiggins' odd and remarkable The Shadow Catcher (a WG Sebald-like melage, a tour of the early lives of the photographer Edward Curtis and the woman he married, an inverted commentary on the making of a novel, a discourse on sound). Outside it is still, save for the bounce-echo of the ball that my son sends up and down the driveway.

I don't know how much time has passed. I think, perhaps, too much. That I went away inside a book and that I need, somehow to return to the day. To my responsibilities.

So I call to my son, through the screen, "Hey there."

Which must, to him (the distortion of distance, the ruffle of tree limbs between where I sit and where he stands), sound like a question, for he calls back, "Yes, Beautiful?"

And I sink. And I have nothing to say. He has disarmed me, the way that he does. Using a word so rare and heartbreaking.