The Towers of Love by Stephen; Birmingham Page B

knew what the quivering light meant. In her room there was a movie projector and a screen. She was running the projector. There was only one reel of film that she ever watched. It was the reel of Billy, the only reel of him she had. If Billy had lived, he would be twenty-eight now, but he had been just fourteen when he had died—killed in that senseless accident in a soccer game on the playing fields of Exeter. He had been kicked in the head (just lightly, lightly), as goalie, and the boy whose toe had accidentally struck him when he had fallen, leaping to block the ball, had never been able to believe that he had done more than to knock Billy out. They had called time in the game and waited—waited for Billy to wake up, but he never had. “I just tapped him in the head with the toe of my shoe, lightly , so lightly …” he could remember that other boy’s pale face saying; saying it to them when they had arrived; saying it to the others in the school; saying it to his own parents, who had also come; saying it to everyone, to anyone who would listen. (“So lightly, so lightly.”) But that light, light toe-touch had killed him, and suddenly there was nothing left of Billy but a reel of home-movie film taken the summer before he died.
    The film lasted barely five minutes, and Hugh had seen it so often that he did not have to be in the room any more to see it. Watching the flutter of changing light behind the curtains, he could see the film’s action clearly in his mind. Its only sound was the clicking projector’s sound. It began with Billy running down the wide stone steps of the house. It was not at all a good movie. His mother’s hand had wobbled badly while she was taking it. Billy’s fair face—he had been blond, like his mother—advanced and receded in focus so that in one instant it was clear and in the next it was blurred. Shafts of jagged white light pierced through the film in all directions as his mother had let her lens drift into the sun. The image moved up and down with his mother’s hands on the camera; it bleached out, became strong, disappeared, but still it was Billy. At the foot of the steps Billy stopped, smiled, and waved at the camera. Then his mouth worked for a second or two, forming words with his lips that his mother had never been able quite to make out, and that she had never been able to remember from that summer. (“I think he’s saying that he has a new filling in a molar. See—see how he’s opening his mouth very wide, to show. I’d taken him to the dentist that week. I’m sure that’s what he’s saying”; then she would stop the projector, rewind the film a little way, then play that part again: “See—see how he’s opening his mouth?”) Then Billy lifted one leg high in the air, reached out for it with his hand and touched his toe, spun around twice on his left heel, showing off for the camera. Then Billy seemed to stoop, as if to pick up something, some object on the ground, and in that instant the screen went inexplicably dark and, when it burst into light again, it was a different scene, a different day, another part of the summer, and Billy was on the beach at Chatham in a pair of yellow-and-white-striped swimming trunks. He stood on the sand, his chest rising and falling as if he had been running, arms akimbo. He noticed the camera, smiled, and waved at it again. Then he ran towards the surf, and the camera followed his run, bouncing up and down, as he made it all the way to the water, stopped short as the water touched his feet, winced, turned, and said something that was very clear—“It’s cold.” He kicked a wave arrogantly, scornfully, then turned, and started up the sand again, running. And there, with Billy running towards the screen, it ended.
    Hugh walked across the terrace and into the house. He went up the wide front stairs and down the hall to his