The Worlds Within Her (54 page)

Do you remember, my dear, the day you and I went down to the water's edge — a grand excursion — and sat on a bench enjoying the sunshine and watching the boats sail by? I felt old that day. Do you remember? We realized that neither of us had the eyesight left to see — not just to know, as if in theory — but to positively
see
that there was another side to the lake? I know there is, but I'm no longer certain whether it can be seen with the unaided eye. I thought I would ask Yasmin, but my anxiety has prevented me. I suppose I have learnt to distrust even what I see. Seeing, after all, is not necessarily believing.

And yet, neither you nor I will be around to see the final gathering of the shadows — so why should I be saddened?

Oh, but listen to me! I am going on, aren't I? Never mind me, my dear. It's a mood. It will pass. After all, despite everything, despite the coming dusk, it has been a day of brilliant sunshine.

SHE DOES NOT
know what she expects to find within the urn — a vague notion perhaps of ash scooped from a cold fireplace — yet she is mildly surprised to find a bag of transparent, heavy-duty plastic secured with a red band. Carefully, but with more curiosity than reverence, she lifts the bag out and holds it suspended before her eyes — a grey assemblage, powder smoothed against the plastic.

She lowers it into the palm of her other hand, letting it settle, assessing its weight, and she finds she is reminded of picking Anubis up by the belly. The weight is the same, as is the way the mass slides into its own limp equilibrium — only the bag is
not warm. And when she places it on the top of the dresser, it reshapes itself once more — into an oval, inert and objective.

The tie, not tightened for posterity, twists off easily. She peels the bag open, folding the top down, and after only a moment's unthinking hesitation dips her index finger into the contents.

Some are slender as toothpicks, others broader, the width of a pencil. It is these larger slivers of bone — interiors finely textured in a pointillist pattern — that have retained colour, some ivory, some suggestive of henna. They are fragile, and after one turns to dust between her fingertips, she handles them like butterfly wings.

Foraging through the dust for corporeal remains of her mother leaves a grey residue on her hands. She holds her fingers up to her eyes, and is suddenly overwhelmed with a closeness — a sense of intimacy — never before experienced with the woman whose ways and manners cultivated warmth from a prim distance.

She brings her hand to her lips, licks the tip of the index finger, then places its length against her tongue. The dust is without flavour, but gritty. Then, closing her eyes, she slowly licks the dust from her other fingers, from her palm, from the back of her hand.

In the holiness of the act, she feels the distance between herself and her mother close forever.

For the first time in many years, she cries for her daughter, hot tears not of despair but of release.

She cries for her mother, hot tears not of longing but of farewell.

And she cries for herself, hot tears not of fear but of relief. Thus she knows that her journey may continue.

THE THING, MY
dear Mrs. Livingston, is that we all dream of making a neat package of our lives — don't we? Closing the circle, squaring the square. When that final full stop is penned in, we want to be satisfied that all the “i”s have been dotted and all the “t”s crossed.

Curious, isn't it — that I should suddenly be littering my language with clichés? I, who have for so long avoided such linguistic shorthand …

But to get back, if I may, to this notion of the neat package: Have people always felt this way, do you think, or is it a consequence of the art we practise? All that neatness we find in novels, biographies and films, where everything fits into a larger pattern, everything is linked, and anomaly proves to be just the logical outcome of something that has gone before. Has art invaded life, offering us, if you will, a new arrogance — or perhaps merely new despair?

But of course, it may be only me. You, my dear, if I dare say so, have never worried about such things, have you? All this nonsense has left you untroubled, hasn't it? And it may be that you are far better off for it.

Be that as it may, though, this urge to impose order — for that is what it is — on something we know to be messy seems integral to my being. But no one's life truly allows that, does it, my dear? Disorder is the design of the package. Even the quietest, least eventful of lives is a messy affair on one level or another.

After all, one is left with so many unanswered questions at the end of it — not to mention so many unquestioned answers.
One feels quite overwhelmed at times. For instance, I will never for the life of me understand …

Never …

Oh, my!

The sunshine, Mrs. Livingston!

Look at the sunshine!

Dawn already? It can't be.

Oh, dear me …

Dear me. I —

Mrs. —

SHE IS RELIEVED
, when she goes to fetch the box with her father's affairs, that the dining room is deserted. No awkward questions will be asked, no awkward explanations given.

Back in her room, she shuts the door and places the box beside the urn. Then she sits on the edge of the bed, in the silence.

So here they are, her mother, her father and herself. All the pasts, all the worlds, that they have created. All the pasts, all the worlds, that have created them. Together for one last time.

She wonders briefly what it all means, if anything. The distilled essence of these two powerful people runs in her veins, a river of thought and emotion. But that, she knows, is not all she is, for she is not a prisoner of their worlds. Hers is, even now, a future still to be made.

And she sees, after a while, what it means: that she will return lightened to her world, to Jim and the marriage that is theirs.
She knows she cannot predict the future. Jim, after all, has his own worlds floating around within him. Some will collide, some will attain harmonious orbit. But whatever comes, she returns ready.

A few minutes later, Penny calls to her from the door. It is time to go.

The river awaits.

YASMIN LAY STARTLED
under the blankets, the ring of the telephone sharpened and magnified in the darkness.

Jim wrenched himself from the bed with an energy uncommon in his first waking moments. Something clattered and fell in his wake as his bustling shadow glided through the grey rectangle of their bedroom door.

Yasmin's tongue lay dry and heavy in her mouth. The shrill of the telephone late at night, its brutal wrenching from sleep to a disorienting darkness, was so terrifying she would not have a telephone in the bedroom. And yet, the distant ring still held promise of terror — and that terror, funnelled through the wild fluttering of her heartbeat, began to shape a cry she did not wish to voice.

Jim answered the phone halfway through its fourth ring. He spoke in a voice of summoned composure.

Yasmin leapt from the bed, senses abandoned in a lightning shear. She did not feel the carpet beneath her feet, saw the doorway glide by her, saw the corridor doubling in length. Saw Jim planting himself before her, his arms opening. “Yas,” he said,
his face shadowed, indistinct.

She stopped abruptly, two paces from him: a beat of empty time, her senses scrambling, then rapidly reassembling themselves in an impossible silence.

“Yas, it's your mother.”

“What does she want at this ungodly hour?” The tightness in her chest was suddenly released; the intake of air made her giddy. “Is it poor Mrs. —” But even as she spoke she realized her own mistake.

“Yas, your mother's had a heart attack — or something.”

Another beat of empty time: mind examining each word, searching for its meaning, finding a multiplicity. “I see.” And the two words, the two syllables, began a marking of the empty time: seconds counted down through a readying of the self. “And …”

Jim stepped up to her, his hands grasping her arms. “She didn't … She isn't …” His lips parted as he sucked at air: a gruff inhalation. “It was massive —” He tugged her to his chest. She fell into an embrace that felt captive and airless. “Hold on, Yas,” he said. “Hold on tight.”

But she could not, she lacked the strength. And in the sudden enfeeblement, in a darkness immediate and crackling, Yasmin felt her body contract, muscles contorting — and heard a voice not her own but issued of her throat wail
Ariana.

SHE TAKES THEM
for a type of lemon — the shape is similar, the smaller ones green, the larger ripened to a bright yellow — but she sees that the ground is littered with them, and that those
which have broken open reveal a red meat and dozens of small white seeds. She says, “A nurse found her.”

Penny presses her palm to her chest in a sign of distress. “She was a'read …?”

Yasmin nods. “At first they thought she was asleep. She'd put her head on Mrs. Livingston's bed and they found her like that, still sitting in her chair.”