The whispering of the world faded and was replaced with silence of the room. The room had walls made of nothing and a ceiling to match; a space made of an endless weight that threatened to crush him with non-existence.
“What did you remember? Who do you remember?” The words were formless and soundless; were they memories? “Come here.”
Joe remembers a man, a huge man shorter than himself, someone younger whom Joe loved from childhood; a familiar stranger with a smile that brought joy.
“Why?” Joe asked the man.
“Because its time…” The man replied.
The room looked like a hospital room, but it wasn’t one. Machines breathed and machines beeped and to Joe it sounded like a sad song of life. Joe knew that it was all a fabrication, he sensed inconsistencies on the edge of his vision, things that seemed real when he looked at them but writhed like mist when he looked away.
In the room was something that appeared to be a bed and in the bed was a shape that resembled a woman. Joe moved towards the shape and beside him another shape fell into step.
“Patricia…” The shape beside him said and Joe’s feet carried him faster.
Joe leaned on the edge of the bed and the sheets were soft under the palms of his hands as he investigated Patricia’s face. Her face seemed real, she was there, and he could not half-see the image trying to pull itself apart.
Then around him things reordered in a flood, his feelings a torrent. Joe felt himself shake and his fingers grasped the sheets as they would in pain or passion.
There was once a sunlit day on a faraway field, a picnic had been laid out on a chequered blanket and those present recognized it as a cliché and enjoyed it as such. The grass whispered and sprang back after every step. We may be small, the blades of grass say, but look how many of us there are!
The woman would seem at rest if it weren’t for the slight look of consternation caught in her brow as if she was frozen amid a troubling dream. In the hollow of her throat is a crucifix hung from a fine chain. It was of a simple shape, but its silver had been etched in tiny curves and swirls.
“Mother…?” Joe called to her. “Mom…?” He asked of the man beside him.
The man’s chest heaved as if under exertion, and that may be, but it wasn’t exertion of the physical. Unable to answer for a moment the man just nods.
“She’s not going to answer.” He whispers.
The man was real too; he could see the pain in the lines of his face and hear the anguish as he spoke.
“But…” Joe muttered.
“We don’t all go to the same place; she… Turn over her hand.”
With gentleness he wouldn’t think himself capable, Joe reaches and turns over her hand. On the inside of it is a thick bloodless wound running from wrist to elbow, amid the parted flesh Joe thinks he can see bone.
“We make our own purgatory.”
“I don’t understand. What are we doing here?”
“She won’t listen to me, perhaps she will you…”
“What do you expect me to do?!”
“Just talk to her…”
Mud is smeared over his hands and the grass rolls on forever, singing as it does. His mother hums the same tune to herself, and the grass reaches upward in a salutation to the sun. Joe wipes his filthy hands on his trousers and sees the twin smears of brown on the dark blue fabric. He feels his mothers’ eyes on him and when his gaze meets hers, he sees her resigned happiness.
Images assault Joe: they are alien and comfortable and makes him want to weep for all the loss.
“I don’t know what to say…”
“Yes, you do…”
“I don’t…”
“Yes, you do…”
Joe’s mind is blank; the non-room seems darker, the non-walls closer, the non-ceiling lower and he wants to curl up and slide under the bed.
“…There was a time…”
Under the summer sun he feels Patricia’s eyes on him and when his gaze meets hers, he sees her resigned happiness.
“…When I was little. I think it was one summer… a really brilliant summer. I was watching a woman…”
Patricia sits on the grass in a long skirt and sleeveless top. Her fingers work dexterously on the fabric, a sewing needle dipping through it as easily as a baby taking a breath. She looks up and smiles. Beside her in a chequered blanket and on the blanket is a basket filled with food.
Joe smiles in return.
“I always thought it was a dream, but now I think it was you…”
Patricia smiles, and then continues sewing. The needle disappears and reappears magically, two pieces of cloth melding together; a rip in reverse.
“Who else would it have been?” She says.
“I don’t know…”
“Oh, little Joe… What are we going to do with you?”
Joe feels smaller, he looks at his hands. The discoloration’s he had learned to live with in his old age has gone, his hands were smooth and un-calloused and were awaiting life to give them purpose.
“Your head always in the clouds… Your father always said there was too much of me in you…”
Joe’s smile falters: he looks over to the man.
“You always said there was too much of her in me…?”
“Why would anything be wrong with that…?”
“You don’t believe that do you? It means something…”
Patricia smiles at Joe, continuing her sewing.
“That’s silly, most things mean something; to someone; somewhere…”
“But that means something… special.”
“Oh, this is what I mean with you. Just accept things Joe, all digging brings up is dirt…”
She reaches out and strokes his cheek with the palm of her hand, it is cool and smooth and the essence of love. Joe takes it and looks down at her unblemished wrist.
Joe’s eyes are drawn to the bloodless canyon of flesh in Patricia’s arm. Beside him the man’s eyes stare at her, his face in anguish.
“What did she say?”
“You can’t hear her?”
“She doesn’t speak to me.”
“And why would that be?”
The moment stretches out, silence accompanied by the beeping of barely seen machines, they work on the corner of his vision, blurring into the background.
“Tell her I’m sorry.”
“I know…”
She smiles sadly, placing her sewing aside.
“I know he is. I always hear him… I’ve never been short of the voices that keep me company…”
Patricia looks at Joe a long moment.
“At some point he just stopped hearing me…”
The man stares at his feet; his hands gripped white on the foot of the bed.
“She knows you are. She always hears you… She’s never been short of voices that keep her company… At some point you just stopped hearing her…”
“Voices?”
The man stares at his feet; his hands gripped white on the foot of the bed with his eyes deep in shadow.
“They started just after you were born… and they just got worse… One night she sat upright in bed and started to scream… And I couldn’t stop her… And then the baby – you – began to cry and it wasn’t long before I was crying too.”
He looks up and Joe sees tears in his eyes.
“I didn’t know what to do, so I shut it out.”
“You still are, aren’t you?”
He shakes his head, its half a nod and half a shake; he doesn’t know.
“When you were a baby you’d point and do baby things, but Patricia thought she saw something else.”
“What?”
“Angels… She thought you were speaking to Angels… And one day she decided she wanted to meet them…”
The man’s eyes move to the deep wounds; and then he looks away.
Joe feels his lip twist into something resembling a snarl.
“She never stopped talking to you, you just stopped listening.”
Without answering he nods and drops his gaze.
Joe sits on the grass beside his mother. He looks up to a spot some way in front of them, as if to the face of a man we cannot see.
“Earlier you said that people make their own purgatory… But you never said whether this was hers; or yours?”
“I don’t know… I… I’m sorry…”
Patricia looks up, as if startled by a sudden noise. She looks past Joe to a person who wasn’t there.
“What are you sorry for?”
“For not listening, for not being there for her, for not understanding, for not trying to find her help, for everything; for letting her think the Angels needed her more than I did.”
He stands in silence shedding silent tears.
On the expanse of green something emerges, a shadow of movement. The grass chorus expands in anticipation of new feet to cushion and new songs to hear.
Patricia sits and feels the softness beneath her, grass cushioning her as if it were the soft linens on a bed. Somewhere insects chatter and for a moment she is reminded of her childhood. She sits up in the hospital bed, her arms are unblemished and whole, her eyes wide and bright. The sun above her is bright and almost hides the approaching figure from view.
Under the bright sun and over the green grass Patricia and Joe’s father embrace and Joe looks on. Around him the remnants of the hospital room fade in tendrils of mist to be swallowed up by the thick blades of grass.
Joe watches as Patricia’s hand entwines with her husbands, and his hand tightens on hers.
The blue sky is clear and unbroken in a comforting blanket of blue and the clouds are idyllic and sparse.
The family pick a direction and begin to walk.