Along a Long Arc, in Plain Sight
“That was power too — new, fine, sweeter than the old kind.” He raises his hand — only to move a strand of hair — and a shudder goes through Simon: he’s going to hit me. Jacob knows that shudder, he caused it for years, and for one second he wants “to hold his hand there in the air. A little longer. Just so the shudder would last.” Then he lowers it “slowly, along a long arc, in Simon’s sight” — and from then on moves so that his palm is seen before it is felt. Patience sits on him “like someone else’s clothes in the wrong size,” but he wears it.
Slowly, in view, without pressure — these are literally the principles for handling a traumatized body; Jacob arrives at them intuitively, and the shudder goes away. But the author gives no room to exhale: “That was power too — new, fine, sweeter than the old kind. Jacob didn’t ask himself why.” Tenderness in which one person feels the other’s every response and governs it by tempo can be care — or a more perfected form of control. The difference lies in why he waits: so that Simon is safe — or so that the response is fuller. For now it is both, and it is more honest to say exactly that.
