The Welty Tour

In the next room, Peter’s gloved hands crack cordoned-off spines: he has been granted permission, his agent’s call his pedigree. So the tour itself is only the docent and me. He is docile, eager to please, leads me up the stairs and takes me to the bed. The coverlet is authentic, he says. He lectures me on the heating system, offers an anecdote of a broken casserole, recites all of the Welty lore he has rehearsed. She taught him when he was young, and now he serves her legend, lets me lean in toward the books—I cross the line of what’s allowed, never touching. He shows me photos—two loves lost, one a married man—then on the way down, pauses before a feather in a box, reciting Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan.” He begins to weep at Let her drop, adds, Like Welty’s loves! Now I stop— is he comparing her to the god, or Leda? He cannot bear her, her Unfulfilled Love. I cannot bear this either—how dare he conjure up for her such disappointment, such wasted longing? I want to be the mirror of her photographs, to be her figure of my own conjuring. I want to believe I, too, could be happy here, in this solitary house, in this small town, amidst the rows and stacks of books. Untouched.