Rocking Back to the Cradle
Delilah stood up from the sewing machine in the middle of hemming the neckline of a scarlet satin blouse.
"It's no good," she said to Sir Barksalot, who was sitting quietly on the floor beside her, his back sprinkled with a few of her blood-coloured cuttings. "I'm not her. I can do it, but I don't want to do it. I'd rather beautify corpses for a living like I used to. At least then I had some sort of human company."
Looking up at her, the dog tilted its head to one side and put a paw on her houseshoe.
"Oh, it's not your fault, Barkie," she said. "You can almost talk. I know you would if you could."
She went upstairs to her bedroom and outside to the small balcony Cousin Emma had paid to have built for her. On the way she grabbed a coat and cap because she wanted to sit for a while, and although it was spring it was a cold and foggy Nova Scotia spring. She sat in the rocking chair she kept there, that had been her mother's and that was far too large for her since her father had made it for her mother and her mother had been a massive woman. She felt like a child again in it, having to spread her arms to rest her elbows on the far-apart arms of the rocker.
Sir Barksalot wanted up in her lap. "Okay," she said, "Ma Bertie would have let you, so I'll let you. But you have to be still. We are not here to play."
This was her favorite way to have the sea, there out in front of her and below her, at a distance, where her rocking could simulate the motion of the waves without her having to actually be on them, which tended to make her nauseous. Ma Bertie and Daddy Mac both had loved the sea and she wanted to love it too. So this was her compromise.
She talked to herself as she rocked and petted Barksalot to keep him content. "So, you are not the only one. Your mama told you so. Your papa told you so. At any moment you feel lonely, millions of others are feeling that way too. Even people in crowds. Sometimes especially in crowds. If you think of their loneliness, and send them your company, you'll feel better. If you think of your loneliness, and only your own, you'll feel worse. It's that simple. So send them your company. You can do it."
She rocked and tried to do it. The fog thickened and thinned, the sun shone through and disappeared again, the tears flowed and their trails dried and were cool on her cheeks. In one bright interim, she watched a lone lobster boat out offshore with her binoculars, how it rocked in the waves, sometimes seeming half-swallowed, and how the seagulls stuck with it regardless.
"You can do it," she said. "If you have to rock yourself all the way back to the cradle, you can do it."
She kept rocking. When the sun went down, an hour or an eternity later, she went in to see if there was anybody there who might want dinner.
11 March 2020
Texas Jim
Prospect, Nova Scotia
granitecoast.ca