Her time alone had made it difficult to form meaningful relationships. A situation not unique to her. Friendships were something that came and went with the seasons. Some cold and indifferent while others promised warmth but short were short lived. Not one held the same depth that she remembered from her own parents. Belonging to another can mean different things to different people. Her mother and father belonged to each other. Different sides of the same coin. Merged into one by the pressure of time and the closeness of space. Grace had never needed to wrap herself in that which she knew was uncomfortable to her. Some saw it as being cold, others, who knew her better, saw it for what it was, an inward existence where life was what and how you wanted it to be.
None of her memories contained images of her being physically scolded by them. No hand was raised in anger to teach lessons which taught nothing but the limitation of the parent. Anger held a different form. A mental form. Her mother struggled with the very fabric of life and relationships. Every day wounded her, tore through the sinews of her mind like an errant nail would snag and tear through flesh. The pain felt just as real. She was most at ease in her own company or that of Grace’s. Even when left alone with her husband she would struggle to feel worthy of him, struggle to understand why he stayed by her side. The mental anguish which overcame her would take the form of sudden outbursts guarded between pillars of silence. Grace knew only too well how silence as well as words could be the most powerful thing in the room.
From an early age Grace had believed that during life you were given a finite number of words to speak before death claimed you. She could not recall when or why she came to this conclusion, or how many words made up a life, however, as she got older and by her manner she secretly held onto that belief. Maybe she preferred silence, grasped for inner peace through fog and bodily desire.
Grace vanquished the images from her mind and came back to the moment, inhaled deeply, savouring for a moment the warm comforting air which filled her, and stepped over the grey precipice. Her boots dug into the dirt, disturbing the pale waves of dust left by the wind over the unseen path.
Something had drawn her back to Alonetown. Maybe it was her latest failed romance. Or the bureaucracy of life. Maybe the guilt of it. Maybe the pressure of fitting in.
Standing on the makeshift path she felt that even the empty town no longer existed. All that there was stood before her in the silent existence of the old church.
No lights surrounded the wooden frame. No light emanated from within. The shadow broke into the skyline as if announcing its own existence in a large booming voice. An unmoving object, solid in its presence, foreboding in its nature.
Grace stepped forward; Each step grateful of the small amount of dwindling light that the town radiated behind her. The wisp of each breath which escaped her nostrils the only sound marred by the moving dust beneath her footsteps. Each pulse of her heart tried to beat a path through her chest as years of being told not to walk here recounted itself. Her breathing became a conscious choice. Her steps divided.
Respectfully following the path, she stopped next to the three headstones, the writing unseen as it blended into the darkened background of each identical stone. Not that she needed to see them to know what the inscriptions were. After the burial of her father, she had stood before the three headstones statuesque, deep in thought and seeped in memories. Even in a town with no people she had never felt so alone, so singular, as if an unseen cord had been cut years after birth.
Despite not being able to make out the writing she turned her gaze to each one in turn.
The middle one was her mother’s.
‘Wife and Mother. Troubled by life. Loved by those who truly knew her.’
To her mother’s right was her father’s.
‘A man of vision. The architect of this town and the foundation of a loving family.’
To her mother’s left was an older headstone. The corners slightly worn, its unhealthy coalescence with nature taking its toll.
‘Our beautiful angel. The heart of laughter and cause of tears.’
No names or dates were engraved into the headstones. No pictures or signs.
Grace lowered her gaze as she remembered the last engraving. Remembered the piercing screaming. The fight to fill lungs caged from air. Each note penetrated as a needle into her very being. The memory blocked all others to become her first and longest. The guilt had never worn away. Had always been a moment away, a thoughts distance within her head. Never free of recourse.
Her memory started at the age of six. Everything before that was at best supposition. The accident was just that. An uncontrollable moment that changed plans and breathed life into a new direction.
Lover’s Point Beach, Pacific Grove. The small cove was popular with families and namesakes alike. Grace, her eyes searching tidepools inch by inch, bucket in hand, a pink hat pushing her thin eyebrows down, gave little notice to the other children playing in the warm water. Many times, the same bucket, the same hat. Summer pleasures.
An everyday occurrence. A short walk from their apartments, delayed by Grace’s insistence in wearing her pink hat that no one could find, to the festivities at the official city landmark of Ghirardelli Square. The walk would take them over Bay Street and the crossing on North Point Street. A distraction of a car misfire, a simple twitch of a steering wheel, three steps across, black, white, black.
The impact pulled Grace’s hand from her mothers. Her own height worked against her causing the impact between the right temple and the beveled curve of the car’s hood inevitable under the circumstances. Her lower stomach took most of the moving force from the car as her form was thrown twisted into the air her ribs pinching lungs less of oxygen. Her mother, her arm broken, a clean break, was secondary to the impact of her skull on the symmetrical paint covering the road. The next few hours for both were touch and go. A meaningless cliché to life or death.
Grace was fortunate in that death was elsewhere that day. Although it made her sleep for nine months in the event that he should change his mind and return.
Her mother suffered a maddening silence. Permanent after the swelling on her brain was released. She spent days and nights blankly staring at her daughter’s bed. Resigned to an agreement between her and God.
The doctors had almost given up. Her mother never. Her father fixated on the possibility of losing their only child. A long chance to say goodbye with each moment of life a moment remembered forever. He had always believed death was not the end of life, death was the wasting of life.
The cold November day was forgotten when Grace returned to them. Two months later and she was gazing from her bedroom window in Alonetown, longing to walk amongst the buildings, heralding her return. The talks with her mother had been replaced by silence, loving hugs and warm hands.
Grace recovered physically. Only later in life, during her early teenage years, did she feel responsible. A burden that impaled her memory with every shared silent moment.
Even now as an adult, staring at life gone by, the feeling of loss extended way beyond the date of her mother’s death.
She knew the grave remained physically empty. The singular headstone had become just another part of the surrounding décor. What could have been had manifested into a reminder of fortune and a desire never to repeat.
The toe of her boot found the overgrown wooden boards as the dull hollow sound confirmed it existence remained. Death would find her easily this time.
The air was beginning to chill as she turned back towards the town. The warmth was dying replaced by the cold air that the open night would bring. Reaching the end building, a cold, slate grey brick wall partially covered with a painted sign, Grace opened an unremarkable metal box just below head height. Inside the box a large black dial surrounded with white numbers took most of the interior. The thick pointer met with the number five. Her gloved hand turned the dial down.
The signal took but a few seconds to reach the main controls. As if a great hand had waved over the town the light being thrown out into the night sky dimmed from the buildings and shops before darkness overtook. Each store seemed emptier than before. Each room that hurled its light into the empty street now seemed exhausted of energy, forgotten, alone. All that remained was the faint glow from the streetlights which ebbed enough life to enable her to walk unhindered. She began to walk towards the crossroads.
Pausing for a moment outside the darkened cinema she looked up at the blanket of stars pricking through the blackness. The light from those stars would be millions of years old, a fact from her father that she had not bothered to check. In the middle of nowhere the stars remained uncounted. An unfathomable number at distances beyond her ability to understand. Beyond the teachable science, a young Grace had sat and stared upward and wondered. Watched as occasional tiny lights moved overhead as if part of the show. At one-time the moving lights were difficult to find. Now she could see at least five steady white dots arching across the sky in different directions, purpose and meaning to each of them. The quarter moon held the stage, its imperious being shining on all regardless of who or what they were. “We all breath the same air, our faces reflecting the light from the same Moon no matter where the night takes us.” A reference spoken to her long ago when talking about equality from someone else’s life.