Rain, Dust, and Final Chimes

From the grandfather clock in the hall, the one technically stolen despite family lore of it having been loaned, came the first chime at the hour of three o’clock.  The resonant sound, a G sharp that was supposed to be an F, echoed nicely over the oak floors downstairs despite their growing blanket of dust, spreading into the rooms in turn.  The living room.  The entryway.  The dining room.  The kitchen.  The small study off the kitchen, a room full of windows that should have been full of light.

An overcast day robbed the reading nook of its potential glory and offered only a dull, gray illumination to Madeleine’s perusal of the aged text.  At the sounding of the bell, her lids slid coarsely over dry eyes, their pale skin wrinkled and paper thin.  Ever so slightly bowed the head that had bobbed along chilled mountain streams in the time before the second world war.  Gracefully parted lips that had kissed the same man, Philip, through sixty-three years of marriage, right up until that last kiss before parting at his deathbed a decade ago.  Without leaving their place upon the text peacefully relaxed the hands that had held seven children, thirteen grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Did the light falter in that instant?  Perhaps the world paused, some energy taken away or held at bay a moment, like lightning in reverse.  A wink of darkness, and then a silence, every so brief.  Perhaps it was a stray density of clouds moving in front of the waning winter sun.  Perhaps a figure, looming and dark, graced the presence of this solitary study.

Within her frail breast the diaphragm caught, paused for half a second.  An unnatural moment, or you could call it the most natural moment.  Not a hiccup.  Not a prelude to a cough.  A caesura, if you will, in the lifelong push and pull of life’s breath within waiting and eager lungs.  Only her lungs were not so eager, taught and withered, a little extra ragged from that decade of smoking in her thirties.  As midlife crises go, that hadn’t been so bad, but maybe the flirtations with the pool boy went too far.

Again, the clock struck, the same slightly discordant G sharp, reminding again that it ought to be fixed or ought to have been fixed long ago.  Fixed after being set down rather roughly, trudged up the street under the cover of night as a first anniversary present, at a time in their marriage when a box of chocolates would have been more in keeping with their finances.  A very small box of chocolates.  A chocolate, but a nice one, like a truffle or cordial cherry with liqueur in it.

The pause in breathing lingered, just long enough to make itself known.  Within her mind, Madeleine knew what this meant, felt its chill omen upon her soul.  This lack of breath, a harbinger of a greater nothing.  The greatest nothing.  Or the next something.  She never had decided on that, though Phillip had held doggedly to his Presbyterean roots through the lean years as much as through the worldly temptations of the fat years.  Frankly, his faith seemed to fare a little better during the lean years, as is often the case.  Thick and thin, she had remained steadfast in her indecisive agnosticism, somehow managing to win every argument about religion or at least leaving it at a draw.  

As suddenly as it had stopped, the pattern resumed, a short rasping breath that crept up her throat, barely having the strength to cross the threshold of her mouth.  Defiant to the end, the corners of said mouth tensed into a shadow of a grin, a smile goodbye.  Eyelids fluttered, an all but imperceptible twitch as she wished they were open, to read one more line or more morbidly to see the passing more clearly.  She chided herself inwardly at the folly of it, to see the coming of nothing.  Absurd.  Ridiculous.  So childish for a woman her age.  How terrifying.

Eyes that were dry turned damp.  Tears flooded the space between the tired eyes, once sparkling blue like captured stars, now faded gray like stones in a creek, and the lids so resistant to command.  The salty water did not escape, whether for lack of volume or in one final nod to a lifetime of stoic perseverance through the sordid travails of life.  The child that didn’t make it.  The years apart while Philip paid his dues with the company.  The defiant daughter storming away, though returning many years later.  The secretary.  The slow fade into old age, all beneath the spectre of possible dementia.

In the oak outside a crow cawed, a weak rejoinder to the sounding of the clock.  A small bird huddling from the rain under star shaped leaves declared its existence, frail and black.  It would be a portent if it were larger, a raven or a magpie.  It would tell of things to come or not to be.  Being what it was, all it could do was declare its own existence from the damp shadow of a backyard tree.

The clock chimed for the third time.  Coincidental to the events in the other room, the chime would be the clock’s last.  A grandson’s efforts at refurbishment several years before had run their course, dust and evaporating oil leaving one critical pin locked in place, aged and miniscule gears unable to move, to turn, to fulfill its purpose.  Dead.

Outside a distant flash of lightning registered as a faint turn of pink upon closed eyelids, a muted vision of nature’s fury.  Energy unleashed, taken back, consumed and dispersed.  Though full of potential, to destroy or to move the world forward, so often the brilliant surge of electricity comes to nothing, just an exchange between heaven and earth.  Seen.  Noted.  Allowed to pass.  A searing of the air in startling white to be followed by a clap of thunder that today would go unheard.

Shoulders slumped another inch, chest deflated as another breath did not come.  Within that chest a heart beat, determined against the coming tide, an ebb tide, slack water receding away from the shores of the living.  As determined as it had been through chasing toddlers across the park, nights of renewed passion after fights with Phillip, and against the ache of loss each time another child moved out, another friend passed away, another bit of her world faded to dust.  One.  Two.  Three.  Done.

In the space of three strikes of the old clock and a little after, three measly seconds between each chime, Madeleine had gone from alive, a bundle of memories and thoughts, to not.  A form without function.  A discarded thing.  A forgotten figure.  A pile of well organized dust just waiting to return to the source.  Now was the time for her to rejoin Philip, see which one of them was right.  Or maybe she would slip into nothing as he had.  

For now the rain continued to fall outside, undeterred.  The book remained open, a treasure of knowledge now inaccessible to eyes and a mind past knowing.  Or off to full knowing.  Or done knowing.  Either way, not here.  Gone.  Forever gone from the fickle embrace of a world cold and exciting in turn, invigorating and depleting.  The world remained; Madeleine was gone.