Dreaming of the Bones

understand the expression for the first time.
    Flying back from afternoon lectures with the sun shining and the east wind nipping my face, there was the post in my box in the JCR. Sorting the letters as I climbed my staircase, I saw the familiar envelope at the bottom of the stack.
    There is a necessary ritual for these things. The sanctuary of my room, and the putting away of books, and the making of a cup of tea, and then the paper knife. I saved the magazine’s envelope till last—I always save them till last—and opened it with only half my attention. I was thinking of the paper I’m writing on some obscure eighteenth-century poets, and doing a fairly good job of ignoring the knot that always forms in my stomach, more dread than hope. But finally, I slit the envelope with razor neatness, unfolded the very ordinary letter, and carefully smoothed out the creases, and had no further excuse for delay.
    ”What an odd rejection.” I thought as I read, then had to read it over twice more before the words penetrated.
    I’ve sold not just one poem, but three! And to Granta, no less. ”The Huntsman,” and ”The Last Supper,” and ”Solstice.” And they like the English myth series (”Huntsman,” ”Solstice”) so much that they want to see the rest.
    How is it possible to feel numb and ecstatic at the same time? Haven’t told anyone yet, not even Daphne, as I wanted you to be the first to know.
    I realize you’ve been concerned for me these last few months, but I seem to have got over the sticky patch, and the sale of the poems confirms to me that I have been going in the right direction all along. I have to admit I had doubts this last winter, wondering whether I had the courage and the stamina to succeed as a poet, and the truly awful thing about it was not being able to imagine doing anything else.
    But it seems that I have made a beginning, and now I must live up to it.

    Your loving
    Lydia

    The front door creaked and Vic looked up from her desk, listening. She glanced at the clock. It must have been the wind, she thought—she had half an hour yet before Kit should be home from school.
    When the second supervision of her Monday afternoon schedule had canceled due to flu, she’d taken advantage of the opportunity to come home early and put in an extra hour’s work. She’d cleared a space on her desk and laid Lydia’s manuscript pages out like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, shuffling and reshuffling the order of the poems.
    That they were good she had no doubt—brilliant, even— a final step in the evolution of Lydia’s work. The poems reached back, integrating elements from her early, mythically themed poetry with the later confessional style, and in doing so achieved a new balance. And when these missing poems were added to the ones published in her last volume, the book gained a wholeness, a sort of unity not evident in her work before.
    Vic would see that the book was published as it should have been, a testament to Lydia’s talent.
    But there was something more, she thought as she swapped two of the poems again, a feeling that there was a sequence, a pattern to them that kept shifting just out of her mind’s reach. Perhaps if she read them once more, in a slightly different order—
    The door slammed, Kit’s signature, and a moment later she heard the thud of his backpack hitting the floor outside her study. ”Hi, sweetheart,” she said, not looking up. ”How was school?”
    No answer. She turned and saw Kit standing in the doorway, face set in a sullen scowl. Although he suffered from the occasional preadolescent mood, he was normally a good-natured child, and particularly boisterous when let out of school for the day. ”What’s the matter, love?” Vic asked, concerned. ”Are you all right?”
    He shrugged and didn’t speak.
    All right, thought Vic, try another tactic. She took off her glasses and stretched. ”Bad day?” she asked mildly.
    Another shrug. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
    ”Me, too,” she said as if he’d answered. ”Maybe we’d both feel better if we took a walk. What do you say?”
    This time she thought the shrug looked a bit more positive.
    ”Want a snack first?” she asked, and received a sharp, negative head shake. A bad sign—he was usually ravenous after school. ”Then let me get my coat.”
    She heard him stomp through the kitchen as she stopped in the loo, then the back door slammed. Oh, Lord, she thought, leaning against the sink for a moment. One