Inside and Outside Reunion

For two days Big Bertha was denied the comfort of her rocking chair. She would push back from her sewing, assume her upright weight, and set a course for the other room. And there would be Little Mac, rocking away in her chair.

On the first day she said nothing. She was flabbergasted. He had never sat there before, except to see if his frequent repairs to the chair were effective. It was her place of rest, just as rowing in his dinghy on the ocean was his. They didn't have much, but what they did have was portioned out appropriately. She would have been no more surprised had she come upon him dressed in her nightgown. However, there was that about his dress that did add to her consternation. She was used to him wearing a tea cosy as a thinking cap. It was an eccentricity she had come to appreciate. She had even made him a cosy for Christmas, a yellow one, so their teapot in the kitchen could retain its usual way of staying warm. As a show of solidarity, she had made herself a red cosy and had worn it on that day. Now he was wearing both the yellow and the red one.

On the second day she asked him what the hell.

"It's getting harder all the time," he said.

She left it at that. Yes, it was getting harder. She had become accustomed to the long slow slide of memory leaving him bare and exposed. But now he was forgetting physical things, innate things, like how to walk. She had witnessed his recent attempt, with two canes, at making the shortest of sojourns down the snowy lane in front of their house. It had been a success, yes, and she had congratulated him with all the enthusiasm of a fan at the Olympics. But she had been terrified. He had slipped and it had seemed to her that he was diving off a cliff.

So for the second day, she left her rocking chair to him.

The third day there was no one there.

The tracks in the snow from the front door to the boathouse led her to him. He had hauled the dinghy ahead of the last storm and he was sitting in it, there in the boathouse in the shadowy light, now wearing all three cosies, including the one set aside for the teapot.

"Oh, it's you, Bertie," he said, shading his eyes from the bright light of the open door. "I thought it might have been a different angel, one that was comin' for to carry me home. I thought it might have been Gabriel, set on auditionin' that goldurned horn."

"No, hon, it's just me," said Big Bertha. "And I'm not carrying you anywhere. I am wondering if you intend to do your chores today. You've been a little lax lately."

"I have," said Little Mac. "I have indeed. There was something I had to work out."

"I see. And rowing your dinghy in the boathouse, did that get it done?"

"I believe it did. I believe it did, actually."

"That's good. Now will you come back in the house? It's cold as a meat locker in here, and you're not a side of beef."

"Will I tell you first, Bertie? Will I tell you how it is?"

"It can't wait till we're back by the fire?"

"I might lose it, Bertie. And it's prime. If you can help me remember, that would be a great kindness."

Big Bertha agreed, and though she was true to her word and did not carry her diminutive husband back into the house, she did help him up out of his dinghy, into which he felt frozen in place, as if he had become one with it, as he put it.

***

In her white leather diary with the shining brass lock, that Little Mac had given her for Christmas just a month ago, Big Bertha wrote, "He went on for a while, because he loves to talk, but it boils down to this. He says inside and outside, he can see they don't really exist. Take for instance a house. Before you lay down the floor and raise the walls and clap a roof over all, there is no inside and outside. There's only space. And afterwards, really, there's still only space, only then we call it outside and inside. But those are just words, just ideas we have from our perspective. Space itself never changed. Nor does it change later when the house finally falls down. We could say that there's been a reunion of inside and outside, but we're only entertaining ourselves."

"And he said...he said living and dying were like that. So there's no need to be afraid. And so I shouldn't miss him when he's gone."

That was all she felt able to write without it breaking her heart, so she closed and locked the little book. But she did not put it down. Nor did she join Little Mac upstairs in bed that night. Instead she rocked and rocked till there was light in the window again, all the while clutching her precious diary to her chest.


31 January 2018
Texas Jim
Prospect, Nova Scotia
www.granitecoast.ca