Sheila's Dribs 'n Drabs

The last time I saw her she was smiling. The tears in her eyes dried after a while. She lay down and her voice faded to silence. I tried to get her to explain, but she just smiled at me. You remember the Joker in Batman? She was smiling forever.

There’s a china snail on the mantel, next to the phone-charger. It’s green, like a frog, but he knows it’s a snail because of the whorls on its shell; and because she says he’s slow. The phone-charger has a green light too, but she’s gone off to China without him.

Will he lay flowers over my dead body Vile worm, eater of soil, despising me Devouring days of homemaking, of toil? Then I who’ve stood for him so many times Will sit in judgment. He no more Shall eat my dinners till he says He loves me and he’s sorry.

If he’d stayed, their children might have played on the slide, climbing high on the frame, screaming loudly to be saved. If he’d stayed. Since he’d gone, nobody shared her tears, except the sky that spilled them down as rain. No children played, just memories relayed in shades of gray.

Beat of the music—she’s dancing—he’s prancing around her and holding a ring. They’re playing his tune. Beep of alarm clocks, remember our wedding day; wake up; it all goes away. Beep of machinery keeps him alive; last breath stirring. She sleeps and they’re dancing again; gone too soon.

When she looked in the corner Where shoes used to pile Under chairs – they’re all gone now – So’s he Then the thought crept behind her And pin-pricked her mind Unawares she was startled to find That she didn’t just miss him She missed the despair Of his shoes under chairs.

I liked that clock. I liked the ticking that beat the passing seconds one by one. I liked the dong, always out of time, a quarter-hour with twenty minutes gone. I liked its telling of the hour, random numbers just for fun. “What will we do with Granddad’s clock?” I asked after he died. Mum sighed. “You know he always hated it.” “Why?” “It was all his parents gave him for a wedding present—a second hand clock, he said, for a second-hand-life.” “Poor Granddad.” I still like the clock but it stands all alone and stopped, silent like him.

“Grandma never loved me,” said Jen, wiping laceworks of dust from her face as they emptied the attic. “Why d’you say that?” “I wasn’t good enough. She always said…” Jack would’ve called it Grandma’s way of caring but didn’t dare. A hidden suitcase of photos only served to prove Jen’s point. “See. She didn’t even keep my pictures on display.” Downstairs they watched a passing breeze set Grandma’s chair to rocking. Sunlight fell on a photo of Jen. “She loved you,” said Jack. “She never even framed it.” But written on the back: “My Jen, best part of my life.”

One moment was all it took, and the future was lost. She crossed the road, smiling at him, then the truck tossed her body away. One moment; he spent the rest of his years on research. The history of memories, déjà vu, dreams, unknown particles, and mothers who seem to know in advance when their children are going to cry. (She, of course, would never be a mother. The children she’d’ve bourn with him would never live or die.) One moment, and he finally got it right, went back and stood by the road. “Don’t run Suzanne!” “I’m coming Tom.”

They walked the shore, side by side not hand in hand. The aches and pains of old age decreed it was easier to stride alone. She slipped behind while he climbed up the sand. Then she was gone. If he’d known what was coming he’d have stayed with her. If he’d known, the lure of ocean beyond the crest would never have called. His memories would be waves of love pulsed through their finger-tips, her tiny hand forever held in his. The children remember their parents walking apart, but Daniel’s heart remembers his bride, and he cries, walks on, alone.

The last time he saw her she walked backwards away, slim body swaying, hair like mist round her face. He cries for her. Some memories never fade. The last time he saw her she gazed with tears of love lingering in her eyes. But her father told her no and she couldn’t disobey. She stepped away. The last time he saw her the truck barreled into her body and flung her aside in a red mist of pain. He turned his back because her father swore he mustn’t touch her. Memories find him still wishing he’d stayed by her side.

I remember silence: sent to my room for misdeeds as a child; college dorm, desk piled with books; worlds outside a window where voices played; nursery dreaming, sleeping breaths; a house filled with chores and meals to be made; feet that clatter, chattering voices that vanish out the door; pattering paws that patter here no more. I remember silence’s old acquaintanceship. And when the furnace roars, and squirrels skip and jest across the yard, I wish my Meg were here to pester me. I’ve put away the water-dish, the dog-bed, cleaned the paw-prints where she fed… And I've remembered silence.

It’s like archeology, thought Cassie, digging through the layers of a life. On top were postcards from a recent vacation, older letters underneath, and down in the depths the fractured treasures of years forgotten and gone: Grandma’s memory box. Dust drifted in the cold attic air, making her sneeze. Easier to throw it all out. Just forget and move on. But she sliced her finger, paper-cut bleeding on the page, then wrapped a Kleenex over it like a Band-Aid on the past. Archeology takes the details apart. But Cassie was digging through memories so she could put them back together.

The record player hid silently in its cupboard. But today Janet tugged finger-printed glass to run her fingers over serried ranks of discs still standing to attention. “Those were the days.” “Yeah, right Mom.” “Well, they were.” But the music was gone. Janet’s daughter clicked the mouse on another choice as it scrolled on her computer. She tapped her fingers to ragged sound and bent her head to studies. Meanwhile Janet continued to clean, ears filled with memories, waist circled lightly with arms still holding tight, his breath brushing her smile. If only he’d lived as long as the song.

“The drums; the drums,” he wrote. “The natives are restless.” The drums were humming traffic; the natives his family, that long hot summer before they were engaged. Then they married. Their children had saucepans and ladles; wind-up monkeys with tambourines; plastic drum-sets, then a real one in the garage. Their daughter loved the note. Father died and the only drum remaining was a mother’s beating heart. It thumped and slowed, to the rhythm of time running out, to the gathering of those awaiting her beyond the veil. The heartbeat slowed till one long note remained. She calls the music love.

The wall was made of wind-worn blocks of stone, some standing safe and others tumbled down. Their solid squareness gave a sense of purpose to the shape, a certainty that other hands besides the wind and rain and fate worked here. The mother climbed, her shoulders stooped, a boulder slung in her arms. She chipped and cut, fitting the new square block into a gap. Then another stone fell. Meanwhile a small ghost watched from a corner of the room, fingers drifting, words to tell. The carving on the floor declared, “Born 1801; died 1802; I’ll never let you go.”

These weren’t pearls. Gran’s pearls were creamy pale, and her wisdom like a candle in the wind. But this was Gran’s black and white necklace with separate strands that Jen liked to twist and tie between her hands. Gran wore them with the white dress for weddings and black for funerals. And Jen dressed in them secretly, sneaking peeks in Gran’s bedroom mirror. At Gran’s funeral, “Can I borrow them?” she asked and was given them to keep. So now she wears them with white and black, twisting the threads of joy and sorrow together like wisdom in the wind.