Words, Still

“Do we remember what page we were on?”

“Yes… Big Daddy and Brick!”

“May we have the page number please?”

The ever obliging Aiden:  “Page 47, second section. Mortality.”

Words keep crawling back and start bearing meaning. She wears her flamboyantly careless manner of  enunciation as she takes the stage.   Short jerky moves and a  crisp  smile before words flow , open, make soft gestures as  eyes settle down and respond to the voice that ascends or becomes a  husky whisper depending on the need of the mimicry filled two hours. She rises, she flows. Now, that is style. A conscious buccaneerism, a way of saying: “That’s me’. A pair of ragged jeans and a shirt rolled up to the elbow. Passion, fury, sarcasm.

Swagger.

Stances change though, as in an evolving script. Friday evening is muted. Silent. A glass of wine, a way of fathoming music or the silence, for silence too has its range. A casual settling down with the laptop and tapping on Netflix. An accidental hit on a film that looks interesting, synoptically speaking. Things change and the mirror is cracked, yielding images that are only partially at a tangent with reality.

“why did I forget my cell phone on the kitchen counter and go looking for it in my drawer…why can I never remember the page I am on? Is that just a stance, or is it a …?”  The crowfeet, the age marks are prominent. The lipstick a bit too glowing. Even trite.  The hair needed fixing.

Julianne Moore is good.  Alec Baldwin tolerable. Kristen Stewart passionately real (“it is good to see Kristen Stewart can act, Ma. She is usually atrocious”). This, next Friday with a second  member among the audience. Because it is Christmas Eve and she wanted to step into her son’s world and give him a gentle nudge: “Get real; Life is not all about video games.” Why is she watching it a second time? Because she has decided to teach it next term?

__ “is there Alzheimer’s in our family, Ma?” a furtive pair of hands checking Google for definitions.

__ “No. Not that I know of. On neither side, yours nor mine.”

Fear is infectious.  It wraps around a mother and a son in the darkness created in the family room to feign the effects of a theatre.

— “I want you to know the signs. It is about me. Not about you.” As she walks off for a refill.

–“She wet her pants, Ma. She did not know the washroom anymore”

–“Yes. Loss of the familiar landscape. That is a sign of non-reversible progression.”

***
“I used to know how the mind handled language, and I could communicate what I knew. I used to be someone who knew a lot. No one asks for my opinion or advice anymore. I miss that. I used to be curious and independent and confident. I miss being sure of things. There’s no peace in being unsure of everything all the time. I miss doing everything easily. I miss being a part of what’s happening. I miss feeling wanted. I miss my life and my family. I loved my life and family.”

‘Things’ was bad style.  She did not need things, not yet.  She ran her fingers through her already disheveled hair in an absent minded sort of way.   She needed snap shots in words. Where should she begin? She needed to  make furious  love with words, coerce them to yield to her and make permanent what threatened to be flirtatiously transient…so where should she begin?

The oven beeps. The chicken casserole is done. The unmistakable aroma of chicken baked in mozzarella and broccoli is not sufficient to make her unaware that poetry has just started making a different sense for her.
Begin, where?  Begin when?

I think we are in rats’ alley          

Where the dead men lost their bones.   

 

                                              “Do         

You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember        

Nothing?”          

        I remember

                Those are pearls that were his eyes.       

“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”

It is possible to discover metaphoricity even in the literal. And vice versa. She will have to talk about this in class tomorrow. She makes a mental note with a smirk.

 

–“The film is over, Ma …can we eat now? What’s for dessert?”
–“The apple… (Tart…Pie?  ) is not over yet…needs polishing off.”
“I have just polished off two glasses of wine; therefore, the rest of the world is spinning around me at something approaching the speed of light.  Therefore, I am probably slightly drunk.”
Semicolons, transitional words and phrases, things, page numbers…connections are of the essence. She tipped her glass back, swallowed until there was nothing left at the bottom.

 

She looked at her hazy reflection on the polished stove top with a dull fear in her eyes.She smiled at herself and made an arrogant gesture with her hands.

She opened the oven door.

 

 

***

Cover Photo: New Yorker