Mother
Tonight, I lie beside my mother and listen to her imitate the slow breaths of one who is fast asleep. She knows I am not fooled. Neither of us speaks. We both prefer to maintain the illusion of dormancy - her the sleeper, I the watcher.
I will know when she truly begins to doze. Her breathing will become more natural, for a time, and after that the shakes will follow. Slowly at first, then growing in violence until I rouse myself and hold her steady. It is a routine in which we are well-versed.
For now, though, she is still. Quiet. Outside the surf is a soft boom against the cliffs and the black rocks at their feet. Silver moonlight falls through the gap in the shutters and glides across the bare floorboards.
In her half-wakeful state, Mother conjures the spirits of fishermen long drowned to walk the periphery of the overgrown garden. Their heavy boots crunch along the gravel path. I expect the slither of moonlight to darken as each one strides by the window, for their shadows to blot out the light, but it never even flickers. The moon’s eye pierces their ghostly forms.
I reach out and cover her cold hand with mine where it rests on the blue quilt between us. The footsteps die away into nothing. Once more the only sound outside is that of the sea, and the odd gull returning to its cliffside-nest.
In the morning, cold and grey, we walk the length of the dour strip of sand and loose stone we generously call a beach. It is our daily ritual. An attempt to blow away the metaphorical cobwebs, but my skin always feels so thick with them that only the fiercest gale could ever cleanse me.
I pause halfway between the wrecked ship to the south and the rockpools in the north to take in the bleak view. Mother walks on, eyes downcast. She stops now and then, stooping to scoop up whatever oddity she has found among the shingle and the driftwood and the sand. I watch her from the corner of my eye. For every ten, shuffling steps she takes, I take one to make up the distance. If I let her wander too far, I will lose sight of her in this grey landscape. With her slate-coloured clothing and her hair like smoke and just as intangible, it does not take long for her to blend in with the world. That is something I have been battling since childhood - my mother’s tendency to just…slip into the air around her without realising. One day soon I know she will escape reality for too long and be lost among the grey dunes, perhaps scattered by a stray gust of wind off the sea.
I keep her in my sights for good reason. Still, I allow myself a few moments here and there to look out over the pewter and iron expanse. Away from the cacophony of the rest of humanity, and with nothing on the horizon but endless cloud and cold water, it is easy to feel like I am standing on the edge of the world. Perhaps I am. It seems madness to think there would be anything beyond that hazy, grey line.
This stretch of sand is surely all there is. The rush and sway of sighing waves are the living lungs of this place, the standing stones along the clifftop its broken bones, and the sound of unworthy pebbles dropping through Mother’s fingers its heartbeat. It is disjointed, discordant.
I shake these thoughts from my head and turn back to find my mother gone. My heart leaps into my throat and the waves come in faster in my mind. I blink. Then the breeze catches on her frail figure, and I can again distinguish the grey of her ratty shawl from that of the sand.
She remains with me, for now.
Dead flies lurk behind the curtain. Their curled bodies pepper the sun-bleached wood of the windowsill. Mother counts them every day after our walk. It is a safe activity - or so I thought, until one day I realised their number had dwindled. It happened gradually, starting with seventeen. I knew there were seventeen because she told me so every day, and I knew it remained seventeen because she would make a great fuss about sweeping fresh bodies out of the window for the cat we did not have.
Seventeen. And then suddenly there were only nine. I passed the window one day while Mother was dozing, and chance bade me look behind the gauzy curtain. There were too few bodies. I counted them to learn the damage. Eight flies gone. Eight worlds my mother has swallowed like Chronos eating his ill-fated children, except this time there is no younger brother to cut them from his belly.
When Mother wakes, she knows I know. She says nothing, as always, and shuffles to the chair beside the window to resume her counting. I remain in the room, forgoing the time I usually reserve for staring at the grass sea beyond the garden in favour of watching the fate of the flies.
Mother organises them into neat rows of three, nudging them gently with crooked fingers that bear no strength in their brittle bones. After a time, she forgets that I am there. Or rather, she forgets to remember. I watch her pluck a black body from the sill and pop it in her mouth. She is gone. Her chair becomes one of those chairs you are utterly unable to use, despite it being seemingly unoccupied. I can still see the impression of her in the thin cushion that supports her back.
The moments pass. I have no fear. The body of a fly has little power as a means of transport between worlds, between this grey illusion and the numerous others my mother has scattered herself across. I wonder if she will return with some lost piece of herself, or whether she will have left another behind.
The wait is brief. She is back as quickly as she went, as soon as the fly’s body gives out. Without missing a beat, she returns to pushing its gravefellows around the windowsill.
I watch the faint traces of colour leech out of her thinning hair. Whatever world she visited, it was clearly filled with life and dreams. I hope she has left no grey nightmares behind.
I leave her to her travels and step out onto the porch that wraps half-rotted arms about the cottage. I stare out across the waving grass towards the cliff edge and beyond, to the horizon where clouds heavy with rain are gathering over the sea. It will storm tonight. The thunder will keep Mother from her nightly wanderings – that at least is a blessing.
A fly zips past my ear and through the open door. I wander absently if Mother has called it to its doom.
When the chill at last overtakes me and the first fat raindrops strike the ground, I return inside. Mother is rising from her chair. I ask her how many flies there are today.
“Seventeen,” she says.