The girl stands alone on the edge of the roof. Her feet are a
quarter inch away from oblivion. The wind is coming strongly into her, and it pebbles
her bare skin, turns her pale as a ghost. The wind streams out her hair in a
long scarlet trail. Her eyes are closed. She looks like a sleepwalker, a
suicidal lunatic. Her face is very smooth and very white, but her brows are
furrowed into little crinkles like crumpled silk.
This
is what she sees:
Mirages
flicker in the darkness. Ribbons and blotches of neon green, oddly faded, as if
seen underwater. She squeezes her eyes tight and they coalesce, gather into pure
heat. She is staring into the filaments of a light bulb. The figure wavers, distorts,
becomes a woman who is dressed in long, flowing wings, who is haloed not by
light, but by warmth. She smiles. And it is a smile of such utter benevolence
that the girl gasps, shudders and nearly falls; she whispers a prayer that
sounds like a desperate oath. The angel speaks. “Sleep soundly, angel child.
May you never wake again.” The angel’s voice is melancholic, almost wistful. In
the girl’s eyes there is pleading, but the vision fades. The angel is again
only the dazzle of the sun as it meets the horizon.
She
climbs off the roof, slowly, dreading the shadows at the base of the eaves. It
is twilight now, and the street is bathed in cobalt murkiness. No one can see
her now. She wishes for silence, but the creaking of the ladder on the ancient
shingles is unavoidable.
When
she descends, there she is, standing forbiddingly in the shadows, lurking like
a mad old bat. It’s her mother. She can feel the ice of her stare through the
darkness. When her mother steps out into the flickering streetlight, her face
is haggard and lined with sharp creases, cadaver-like. Her eyes hold a
revulsion that pierces the daughter to her bones. She is too terrified to cry.
Her mother steps forward and doesn’t slap her, doesn’t scream, doesn’t
remonstrate. She only hisses two words like bullets. “Devil child.” She turns and walks with quick angry steps into the
house, and the daughter is left frozen to the ground. Then she thaws, and the
warmth comes at last, comes in waves of shaking misery. She sobs.
That
night, she sleeps as if dead, soul-weary and miserable. The dawn comes harshly
through her window, and she wakes reluctantly. She finds her mother has made
her an appointment.
She doesn’t want to be here. That’s what
the doctor thinks, first thing. The girl is a scrawny specimen—bone-thin, dressed raggedly, hair dark and straggly with rain. Her
shoes squelch on the linoleum, leave imprints of mud. Her eyes, however, are the most noticeable: a hard, dagger-like blue. They shout of resentment, and
seething below that, a chaotic swelter of emotions. It’s hard to describe, how
they pierce him, how he finds it hard to look away. She’s not the first to come
here unwillingly. But she’s the first to protest it with such vehemence, and
silently.
His
interest has been caught. She sits down stiffly in the chair across from him,
and he notices the faded remnants of a bruise across one cheek. She catches his
eye for a brief moment, her eyes still speaking, then looks quickly away and
down. Almost as if she were embarrassed. The air between them is tense, the
tension of a torrent of unspoken words. It’s up to him to break the ice, and he
does so abruptly. He introduces himself, starts a volley of questions, and it’s
strange; he doesn’t use his usual doctor voice, amiable and business-like, but
the voice in which he thinks his own thoughts. It’s almost as if he’s talking
to himself. He knows she doesn’t hear a word.
He
uses the time to study her face. She has a face, that if she let it, could be
lovely—right now, it is too starved and too sad to be beautiful. Her eyes are
still downcast. Perhaps the meaning of life is hidden in the floor beneath her
feet. The light from the window is melancholic, and it turns the line of her
cheek, the too-sharp jut of her chin, into cast porcelain. Unbeknownst to both
him and the girl, his questions trail off. There is an acute, thoughtful
silence between them.
The
girl’s gaze travels from the floor to the far corner of the room, to his left.
She seems to be observing something there very intently. He looks as well, but
there is nothing but bare, sanitary plaster. Her eyes travel like an arrow
straight past him, and her pupils make tiny, flicking movements back and forth.
She’s watching something moving there, where there’s nothing. The emotions play
out on her face like an open book, and he can read it all: alarm, curiosity,
terror. She seems to have forgotten he’s there. Something very, very
interesting is happening in that empty corner, and he is captivated as well. He
should make some notes or end the session, but he watches her watch nothing until
the hour is up.
When
the minute hand reaches twelve, she stands up, suddenly, and pushes in her
chair and leaves. It wakes him like a dreamer from a trance. He sits in the
empty office, contemplatively. He’s learned a lot from an hour of silence.
The
girl staggers down the hallway, trails a hand down the cool white wall. She
feels absurdly self-conscious, in her straggled clothes, unbrushed hair. But
the doctors in their clean white coats have better places to be. They don’t
spare her a glance, and she doesn’t know whether to feel belittled or relieved.
She is still overwhelmed by the rose.
It
hovered in the corner, a crimson blot, a bloody shadow. It started as a tiny
bud—then, conjured by her mind, it languidly bloomed, opening and unfolding.
The heart of the rose was full of water. It glistened like midnight: a
foreshadowing. The water trickled down the petals of the rose, formed small
rivulets of mercury. Each drop’s fall was a separate heartbeat. A pool formed
there, beneath the rose, and grew with every passing minute. She knew when the
water touched her skin, she would sink into the depths of another dream. The
water was up to her soles, almost soaking into her shoes, when the minute hand
clicked in place and she escaped at last.
Now
she wanders through the halls—confused, lost, and lonely. She makes it to the
front door. It is still raining. The rain races down the glass doors in clear,
cold streaks, makes nonsensical music on the windows. Her mother probably
expects her to walk home in this. Instead, she opens the door and begins to
run.
The
day is gray and cold and clean. Rain turns the world loud and silent at once,
empties the sidewalks, spells the street into rushing silver. She wants to lose
herself in this momentary freedom. She wants to become as alive and newborn as
every leaf on the trees, washed vibrant by the rain. She races through the downpour,
and is soaked in an instant—her hair darkens and curls, her clothes hang. Her
shoes splash through puddles that morph from gray into blue, impossible as a reflected
sky—and with every step, she sinks anew into dreaming. Like the rain from the
clouds she is falling, and another world rushes up to meet her. She makes it to
the meadow in the moment before she collapses.
All
she has is freedom now.
She’s
nine again, living a dream that ended long ago. She’s lying on a surfboard, in a damp and clinging old swimsuit. Every wave that washes over her chills
her to the bone, but she doesn’t feel it, doesn’t care. She’s in another world.
The motion of the waves rocks her to sleep, soothes her. She feels so at peace,
so bittersweet. The waves are growing larger, she’s drifting farther and
farther from shore, but it’s not enough. She wants each swell to become a
slope, to slide her down to Nod. She wants to be carried out of reach of everything—to
drift on the ocean forever, beneath the endless sky. She could drown. It
doesn’t matter. She doesn’t mind dying if it means she can join the sea, become
one small part of something larger. This is such a beautiful dream, and the sea
is singing to her; a lullaby. Eternity is just so close, and she’s about to grab
it, about to fly…
Someone’s
voice in her ear. Shouting. She’s awakened rudely, and she almost wants to cry.
She was so close! It’s her father. He’s yelling at her, asking her doesn’t she
know how dangerous this is, she could have drifted off, she could have drowned…
She doesn’t care. She lets him tow her back to shore, lets him take the
surfboard and sit her down by her mother, but part of her is still back in the
ocean. Part of her wishes she was still drifting.
She
lets herself dream of drowsing on the waves, letting the ocean rock her to
sleep. The water is cold and dark as blood, but the starlight warms her bones.
She closes her eyes, feeling the undulation, feeling sweet bliss…
“Wake
up.”
And
she’s awake, and just as suddenly, terrified. It’s her mother’s voice, and it
brings everything flooding back: dark night, lamp light, white walls and sterile
cubes of rooms. Her mother’s face, creased in revulsion. The voice continues:
“Wake up, girl. I’m not paying for another funeral—do you hear me? If you die,
I’ll hand you to the state and let them cremate your bones. You’ll scatter to
the winds, girl. Wake up and tell me why I shouldn’t disown you…”
Her
eyes snap open. Above her is a sterile hospital ceiling. Surrounding her, her
mother’s harsh voice, continuing its tirade. Her face is bloodless. She can’t
move her arms—are they restrained? She can’t move, won’t speak. She closes her
eyes again and hopes against hope that her mother will leave, when a door
swishes open and a breeze brings footsteps and the smell of disinfectant. “Mrs.
Upton, the doctor would like to speak with you.” The nurse’s voice is carefully
modulated, and cautious—she must have spoken with her mother before. She can
hear the sound of her mother’s teeth as they click closed, grind. Then quick,
sharp clacks of heels on tile and the swish of the door again. She’s safe. Her
breath leaves her in a sigh, and her eyes open. The nurse is above her, looking
concerned. She whispers, hoarsely: “Don’t call my mother.”
A
few minutes later, she’s unrestrained and sitting up. Her wrists have red marks
on them—she must have struggled in her sleep. The nurse hovers by her side,
looking apologetic. “Sorry, dear. You were trying to get up and walk away—you
kept ripping out your IV. We had to restrain you, doctor’s orders.” The girl
says nothing. She breathes fast, trying not to hyperventilate. She
won’t—can’t—face her mother. The look on her face…she closes her eyes again.
The nurse seems concerned. “Honey, do you want me to call the doctor? Do
you have a headache, or pain anywhere?”
“Don’t!”
The girl says, too loudly. Then her eyes widen. Her mother’s footsteps are
coming, clacking through the door. She’s terrified, frozen to the bed. Then her
mother is standing before her, appraising her up and down. The cold weight of
her gaze is upon her. Her mother speaks to the nurse. “Call the doctor, and get
her out of here. There’s nothing wrong with her—it was just another of her
fits.” The girl’s eyes flutter closed again, in relief and rumination. She
remains unmoving on the bed until her mother leaves, and the doctor comes to
release her.
That
night, her mother doesn’t come home. She sits in her bedroom alone, relieved,
but miserable. When her mother isn’t home, she can’t leave her bedroom, even to
eat, lest she have another fit. The door stays closed, the window boarded up.
She’s glad. At least this way, she won't escape and make her mother yet
angrier. She doesn’t think she can take much more of this—the fear, the guilt,
it’s eating her alive. She’s angry as well, furious at herself, and that’s worse, because
of how volatile it makes her. She could explode at any moment. It makes her
bitter, and it makes her hopelessly depressed. The only place she can escape is
into her dreams—here in this room, there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Exhausted beyond thought, she curls up on her bed, falls into a leaden sleep.
In
her dream, she walks along a beach in her memory. She came here, once—when she
was just a little kid, and her father was alive, and her mother still loved
her. When she had a family. Before everything went wrong.
This
beach, this sea—it’s all so indescribably beautiful. The sun is just about to
set, and all the sky is painted with swirls and feathery strokes of gold. Just
above her head, the sky is a blue that speaks of approaching night; a quenching
blue she can almost taste. There are cliffs by this sea, of crumbling,
weathered chalk, and they too are gilded by the sun. Everything is gold—her
mother’s eyes, the sea, the sky, each individual grain of sand scattered on the
thin strip of beach. Even the stars in the sky are golden, it
seems—even the perfect crescent of moon, sharp and pure as a slice of heaven.
This
is heaven, standing here, surrounded
by the warmth of her family. She feels as if she belongs. She feels as if
everything is in its place, at last. She faces the ocean and throws her arms
wide, tries to inhale this moment: the sea, the sky, the beach, the briny
air—as if by doing so she could carve it into her soul. She wants to keep this
moment, like a lucky charm, deep and safe in her heart. So she could savor it
whenever she wanted.
This
is just a temporary blessing, and that makes it all the more bittersweet. When
she was young and safe and naïve—when she was, innocent—she had no idea how
precious time was. But now she knows, and she wants to hold on and never let
go. To never let the days and the years rush ahead, bringing her to a time when
her mother despises her and her father rots in his grave…she wants to hold on
to this little slice of heaven.
But
even so, the tide draws in, and the tide draws out, eternally. The gold light
fades, and the evening’s rays, they turn a vivid crimson. The night creeps up.
Shadows lengthen. The blue above her dims to black…
With
no heed or thought for the girl standing on the beach, tears streaming down her
face, the ocean recedes. The sun draws its last gasp and falls below the horizon.
The night swallows all, her parents disappear, and the girl still stands there,
alone and lonely on the empty beach. She wishes she could hold on to this
moment, this day. But it’s only just a passing dream, because…
Nothing
gold can stay.
She
wakes, as she must, cold and heart-torn in her empty room. The blanket has
fallen to the floor, and her pillow is damp with tears. She’s alone. She lets
herself linger on the thought.
Because
when she thinks about it, there’s really nothing in her life—nothing at all.
There used to be. It used to be all full, of…gold. Now it’s just dust, and it’s
her fault. They all say so, because it’s true.
Yes.
She’s alone.
She
lies curled up on her bed the rest of the night, without her blanket, needing
the cold. She thinks, and she ponders, and she doesn’t dream, at all.
Throughout the long night, she lies alone in the house, and when the dawn seeps
blue and icy through her window…
She’s
made her decision.
The
sky is still dark when she steps out of bed, and there are ghosts in every
corner of the house. Floorboards creak, even when no one is there—curtains
dance in the still air, strange lights flash across the walls, and she thinks
she hears something pawing at the door. Every successive fright shakes her
nerves, until she swears her heart is palpitating. Night terrors are made real
by the threat of her mother. At any moment she could appear out of the dark,
just like a ghost, come to haunt her—or frighten her—to her grave. She’s
probably hiding in the shadows in the walls right now, and the next sweep of
car lights across the wall will reveal her, show her pale face starkly amidst
the dark…
Maybe
it’s just the wind. But in the silence, she almost definitely hears something
stealthily pawing at the door. She shudders and heads to the kitchen, not
daring to turn up the light more than a fraction. What really gets her is not
knowing, not knowing whether her mother is still absent or present, whether she
crept in silently somewhere near the middle of the night.
She
turns her gaze to the kitchen window. It’s stormy outside. There’s something
strange out there, where there should be only darkness…a gleam of light, a pale
tossing of cloth…then her mind, slow to work, realizes what it is.
Her
mother is there, only inches from her face! Any moment she’ll look up, leer
through the glass, right at her! She almost screams. Then she looks again, and
she realizes the specter is nothing but the paper lantern they hung from the porch,
tossing in the wind. She stands in the kitchen, hyperventilating, trying to
calm herself down. Then she hears a quiet, but distinct, sound—a single
scratch, as if that of a claw, on the kitchen door.
It’s
enough to get her going again. She sits down and tells herself that it’s just
the dark and the night, that she’s still half-asleep and in the land of dreams.
She would’ve heard her mother coming home, probably, very late and with malted
scotch on her breath…
Unless
her mother decided to play Cat and Mouse. She can’t stand it any longer, dark
night or no. She throws on her coat, and without bothering to take even a
single slice of bread for breakfast—she couldn’t bear the deafening crinkle of
the cellophane—she leaves the house. Best to get an early start.
When
she sees how dark it is outside, and feels the biting cold of it, she almost
heads back in. But the front of the house grimaces menacingly in the
streetlights, and the thought of her mother dissuades her further. The night
looks as if it harbors evil intent for a young, petite girl of fifteen, disorientated
and confused. Trash litters the street, and streetlights cast pools of
malevolent orange on the asphalt.
But the girl is less afraid outside, where she can escape, than she was in
her home. And now, just as she had in her dream, the girl begins to run.
The
girl is deathly pale, clothes torn, an ugly bruise blooming like a black flower
across one eye. Her skin is scuffed, her eyes wild, her lips luridly scarlet.
She is still beautiful. Underneath the table, the doctor’s hands curl into
fists. He wants to kill the man who did this to her. His face is a smiling
mask, his eyes cold behind the gentle curl of his lips. They stare each other
down across the table, and the tension is palpable.
The
girl’s gaze doesn’t waver, and suddenly he is heartbroken. He thinks, what right did he
have to hurt you…and what right do I have, to not help you? To not tell you the truth as clearly as you are telling me? He drops the mask, and behind it,
the man is haunted. His eyes search for a connection, but they don’t find it.
The girl’s eyes have dropped to the floor.
The
girl stares at the scratched linoleum, her mind inevitably drawn to the events of last
night. The pain of it still throbs, like an open wound. She can’t help herself
from poking and prodding it, just like the bleeding hole in her cheek, where she’d bitten it. There are tears seeping slowly from her eyes, and she doesn’t want
him to see.
The
doctor gazes on her slumped form, small and sad and desperate. Her shoulders are very
thin and very small under the cloth of her shirt, soft as velvet from wear. He
wants, inappropriately, to draw her close, to embrace her. In some ways, he is
just as hollow and desperate for love as she is. He should never have taken
this job. He can’t deal with this.
The
tears never fall from where they tickle her chin, never split open on the
floor, and the girl wishes they would. Perhaps they would, with their
destruction, take a little of this…impotence, with them. She relieves the
memory, again. She just can’t stop torturing herself.
It
is dark and the girl is flying down the street, her trailing nightdress
flashing intermittently yellow under the streetlights. Her feet make slapping
noises, her breath sharp huffs. She is blind and going nowhere. She is deaf,
hearing only the throbbing pulse of her heart.
She
runs into a void. She feels the anger before she sees it—senses the danger,
like smoke in the air, elusive and warm with the hint of fire. She tries to
dodge it, frantically, but she’s too late—her momentum carries her just a
little too close. Her mother’s arm whips out, and like an iron bar, doubles her
over and makes her fall. There’s a small, grunting gasp—nothing more. Then the
girl is curled, almost comatose, on the pavement, and the shadow of her mother
looms over her. She’s consumed with pain, devoured by it, to the point where
speech is beyond her. The shadow kneels, leans over her incapacitated form. Her
mother’s breath tickles her ear. “Did you think,” she says, “that you could
hide?”
The
mask is off and now he is defenseless. Emotions flicker across his face, as he
looks at the girl crouched in her chair, almost fetal-like. She seems so small,
without those eyes pinning him, piercing right through his mask. Her eyes are
the defining characteristic, like tiger’s eyes, almost feral, and omniscient in
their raw power. Without them, she could be a child—still is a child, he
reminds himself. Still a child, but both damaged and so much more. He sighs,
just in time to cover the sound of her tears falling on the ground.
She
thought that her pain could crest no higher. Her mother proved her wrong. The
first blow doubled the pain. The third debilitated her. Her mother muttered the whole time, blurred words she could not decipher, that jarred and broke with every solid hit.
There was wetness on her face, and with every blow, she shrieked
inarticulately. Then, mercifully, the girl could bear no more. She rushed
gladly into the welcome darkness.
She
did not hear or see her mother cry, or bend over the broken body—so small, so
defenseless, curled infantile on the bloody concrete. She did not hear her
mother scream and groan, animalistic sounds of grieving, that filled the pressing
night, that echoed harshly off the walls. She did not feel her mother take her
in her arms, cradle the broken doll, and place her gently by the wall. Or know
she stumbled, staggered home, singing all the way.
“Softly,
slowly, the ocean sang the moon;
Give
me a ray of sunshine, and I’ll give you this tune.
Softly,
sadly, the ocean begged the moon;
Send
me a little sunlight, and for you, this I’ll croon:
Never
was a kiss so sweet
As
sunshine from the moon.”
The
psychologist leans on one hand and thinks that he has to break the silence.
When
she woke up the next morning, aching and numb from cold, she couldn’t do it
anymore. The rage and the defiance had faded with the dawn, and with it, any
impulse of freedom she possessed. Alone in the bitter dawn, she knew herself a
coward. So she went to her appointment, regardless. Because the alternative was
going home.
He
can’t do it.
Her
tears are dry salt tracks on her face, shiny and fragile. They crack when she
moves the muscles of her face. She unbends herself, looks up. Her eyes widen.
The
girl is staring right at him. He is completely unguarded, as is she, and for
one moment there is a perfect connection. Then, at the same moment, they look
away—and the connection is broken. They are uneasy, astonished. For one moment
they looked deep into each other’s souls.
The
girl is the one who breaks the ice.
“Are
you alright?”
What
kind of doctor am I? The doctor thinks, and tries to answer carefully. “Yes,
I’m fine.” His voice breaks and roughens halfway through.
“I
don’t think so.”
Who’s
doing the analyzing here? He thinks. “Well then, are you?”
The
girl looks down. Her gaze darkens—it had been clear for a few moments, off of
her own troubles. Now her memory comes back to her. “I’m not…but neither are
you.”
“What’s
wrong?”
“Where
do you want me to start?”
“Who
did that to your face?”
“My
mother,” she says, and then murmurs quietly, as an afterthought:
“Everything is over.”
He
had taken it for a man. But that was only experience, both his and his
patients’, speaking. “What do you mean by ‘everything?’"
The
girl looks up at him. “Do you know that poem by Robert Frost?”
“Which
one?”
“The
one about transience…about passing gold.”
He
meditates for a moment. “So Eden sank to grief…So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.” He says it slowly, with a kind of somber finality.
“The
gold is gone,” she says. “It’s my fault.”
“Tell
me why.”
She
looks at him, really stares at him, searching his eyes. Unlike everyone else
she’s ever met, he doesn’t flinch away from her gaze. She remembers the
moment…the moment of perfect connection. “I’ll tell you. But in return, you
have to tell me your secret.”
“What
secret?”
“The
reason why you feel so guilty. I can see it in you, you know.”
It’s
relief that flows through him now. Touched with a tint of guilt, but
overwhelmingly positive. “Ladies first.”
“…It
seems like such a long time ago, but we used to be happy. Mom and Dad were so
in love—back then, I thought it was gross, but now I know how rare that is. Dad
and I were never really close. That was okay, because Mom loved us both.
I
started having the…visions…when I was nine. They would come at night, mostly,
and back then I never screamed. Mom didn’t know at first. But then, one
night…Dad came into my room, and I was in the middle of a bad one. He bent over
me, to kiss me goodnight, and I...I...killed him." She whispers it. "Somehow, I had a knife in my hand. Clenching it. And when I woke...blood all over the floor...and on my sheets...and the knife was still in my hand."
She
bends over the table, weeping. She hugs her arms to herself and rocks back and
forth. The doctor watches her, shocked, but more so heart-torn. She doesn’t
deserve this. But there’s something…something about the way she moves, always hiding
her face, staring blindly at the floor…
“There’s
something else, isn’t there?”
She
looks up wildly, a rabbit caught in a trap. Then she meets his eyes, and hers
soften a little, thaw. She can’t help herself.
“He
used to come in my bedroom, at night. I didn’t know what he was doing. And when
I was asleep, he’d…touch me, and…I’d wake up, and I had to pretend I was
asleep. He said…bad things. He scared me. He used to breathe so heavily…he
sounded like a monster.” Her voice is so very quiet.
“This
had gone on how long?”
“…Since
I was eight.”
He
leans back in his chair and looks at the wall. Two years, of monsters in the
dark, of forbidden visits in the night. Two years to foster nightmares. He
thought she had probably known, reading her father, that something was very
wrong. Without prompting, he speaks.
“Alison
was my fault."
"She
was so very fragile, you see: like a porcelain doll. I always was afraid to
break her, and ironically enough, that led to her death.
"One
day I said too much. I was so frusturated with the carefulness, with the constant tiptoeing—the
doll was a beast if you poked her too hard. I said so many terrible things: that
I didn’t love her, that I married her out of pity, that it was the worst
decision I ever made. It was so much worse because all of it was true. I told
her I had never loved her. I told her to go back to her parents; I was going to
get a divorce.
"The
next day, they found her body in the train tracks, along with what remained of
her car. The road she was on led to Westonshire, where her parents lived. I never could
figure if she did it on purpose, to spite me, or if she was simply very drunk
one night, and never saw it coming…
"She
went back to her parents, after all. They told me they buried her in the
cemetery there, near her old house. But I never saw her again.
“So
you see, it wasn’t your fault at all…compared to me, you’re completely innocent.
You have nothing to feel ashamed for, and your parents, everything. Sometimes
in this world, I wonder if children are secretly wiser than us.”
“It
doesn’t even matter. What is my life but darkness?.”
He
stops swinging on his chair, drops and looks into her eyes. Softly, serious and intense, he says:
“Spring
comes after winter, year after year after year. Every day dawn comes back out
of the gullet of the night. Gold will return again.”
She
looks back, and there in his eyes, she finds what she could find in neither
rain nor sea nor dreams: absolution. There it is again, the moment of perfect
communion, and it hovers between them like an unsung note.
Neither
of them notice when the minute hand reaches twelve.
Then
a hard knock on the door, and they are, again, rudely interrupted. “Mr. Gailman!
Mr. Gailman! My appointment at twelve?” More knocking.
Both
sigh, lean back. They regard each other with mutual respect. “Come back
Monday,” he says.
She
smiles, a little wistfully, a little sadly, but a real smile regardless. “I
will.”
And
on her way out the door, just before it swings closed, she holds it open at the
last moment. Looks back at him. “By the way,” she says, “It’s not your fault,
either.”
The
door swings closed. The doctor leans back in his seat, and smiles a little
forlornly. “Who’s the doctor here?” He whispers to the air.
It’s
after sunset on the mountain. The horizon still cups the last remnants of
scarlet and crimson, like blood shimmering in a bowl. As the girl watches, the
colors run out, and the day turns to something dark and drab and gray. A glass
of water after all the paint has run together. This world is worth living in,
if sometimes only barely. She knows that now.
Her
mother would not let her live. She reveals the knowledge to herself, pulls
aside a curtain of denial, and it gleams cold and sharp in her mind. Her mother
has a knife in the bedroom drawer, and she never did manage to wash off that
little drop of rusty black, right on the tip. She saw it, once, only
a few years after her father died. She had pondered using it; whether on her
mother or herself, she still doesn’t know. But she wasn’t desperate enough, yet.
She
lived in quiet desperation, once. Now she tastes nothing but bittersweet. She’s
come to terms with her life now, with this belated ending, and she’ll forever
thank the doctor for that. She knows it’s time at last. They had only been
waiting, her mother and she, for the inevitable conclusion of death. She won’t
wait for her mother to end her indecision. She’ll finish this thing herself; she’ll
have the final say. And she’ll die, if not happy, then at least content. She’ll
die amidst beauty, on her own terms.
The
show always has to end. Night will come, and with it, the stars.
Sirius
glimmers in the west, a solitary foreboding. The metal is cool and it cuts into
her feet. She doesn’t mind. The wind prickles her skin and shivers her bones.
She doesn’t care. She stands alone on the electric tower, and she is finally at
peace with letting go—with falling, with freedom. She is alone but no longer
lonely—she is complete in and of herself. The wind blows, the steel shudders,
the wire sings a keening note. She falls, and with her, the first drop of rain.
A
downpour begins.
Her
mother howls to the moon alone, in the forlorn night, in the hollow house. She pleads
for sunshine, for clear skies, for impossibility, but the moon makes no answer.
The moon only gazes with mournful wisdom on the broken woman. The moon is forever
out of reach of suffering. The moon can only orbit alone, a partner to the
sun in a cruel, fixed dance.
The
doctor looks up from his porch at the midnight sky, luminescent with wisps of
cloud. He sees her face in the gibbous moon, he sees her eyes in the thousand
stars, he sees her spirit in the moment just before dawn. He never saw her again. He’s too selfish to not
begrudge her it—too wise to wish things some other way. The woman was half-mad,
deadly, a murderess. She had killed the girl’s father, after all. She put the knife in the girl's hand--she framed her daughter for the death. He knows it, with an unshakable, unprovable certainty. Too formidable
to be challenged, too powerful to be suspected, she would have killed the girl
as well—sooner or later. He only wished it had been later.
He
tracks the movement of the stars across the treeline, bright points of light in the darkness. He
remembers her eyes, how they pierced straight through his mask. That’s gone
now, like so much else. He couldn’t save her. She, on the other hand, was the
only one who ever saved him. There in the stars, in the moon, in the silver
wind—she’s saving him still.
The
night is dark and deep as blood, but the starlight warms his bones. He can only
hope that she’s beyond this now…that an eternity of night only freed her, to
live the dream of dreams.
