Permanence

The stars faded in the center of her vision as the storm clouds blew out towards the east. Candace, like everyone at some time she supposed, marveled at the vastness, the clarity, the brightness. She wondered at the distance that made big things seem so small. Clichés played through her mind, the only thoughts that formed with any kind of clarity tonight: Everyone everywhere is looking at the same moon. There are millions of stars in the sky and none of them just the same. That star you’re looking at might have already died and the light is still traveling here.

Sigh. Just like the rest of the day’s events, platitudes and pleasant notions became meaningless when confronted with harsh reality.

“Candace?” Jack broke into her reverie with his head poked out the back door. “Isn’t it raining?”

“No. It stopped.” She paused and did not seem to have anything else to say. Her husband had just resigned himself to letting her be, pulling slowly back inside, when he heard her apologize. “Sorry, I just had to get out of there.”

“I understand,” he replied quickly. She didn’t need to apologize, not today. “It’s fine. Stay out here as long as you need.” He wondered if he should stay, comfort her, say something, anything. Or should he just retreat? That didn’t seem to be right, but whatever was right hadn’t shown itself all day.

“It’s just…” she started, followed by another painfully long pause which he felt like he should fill but didn’t have a clue how. “…she won’t…” Candace stammered, triggered by referring to her mother, even in the pronoun. With a deep breath she could clear her eyes of tears, but she couldn’t clear her throat of the painful knot that kept reappearing. “She won’t see these stars. I know she saw these same stars, these same constellations, and before I could fool myself into thinking that we were connected by things like this. I would tell myself we were looking at the same stars, or some shit like that. But the stars she saw yesterday are gone, and somehow these stars show up tonight and I know she’ll never see them!”

By this point, the emotion was pouring from her voice in a weird whisper-scream as she tried to keep her voice low enough not to attract attention from the mourners that still filled their house hours after she’d started wishing they’d go home.

“Shh. Shh. Shh,” Jack repeated, trying to pull her head and her sobs against his chest. But she wasn’t ready to fold into him yet. Her body was rigid, unyielding. Her grief poured out as anger.

“I’m okay. I’m okay,” she insisted, pushing back from his embrace but not breaking from his touch entirely. She knew he was waiting for her to break down so that she could begin to break through. She didn’t feel either of those things coming. All she felt was raw, teeth-gritting anger.

Yes, she was sad. But it didn’t feel like crying-sad, even though her eyes had spit forth their fair share of salty tears at the funeral service today. It didn’t feel like Hallmark-commercial catharsis. Nothing about it felt finished. It was as if she were trying to breathe deeply only to have her lungs short-circuited before the cycle was complete. Grief and sadness were thwarted by the razor-sharp spikes of rage.

“Jack, I think,” she began, taking a deep, stuttering half-breath half-sob, “I just think I’m so mad her! Does that make me an awful person?”

“No! I get it. You’re mad she left you. That’s normal!”

“Yeah, see, I’m not mad she left. I’m relieved she’s gone. And then I’m guilty that I’m relieved.” She shook her head, turning away from Jack and looking up at the clearing sky, now half-concealed with pools of water in her eyes.

“I just want to see all the fucking stars! Is that too much to ask?” she wailed to the universe, fully confusing Jack with the irrational subject change. She grasped her head with both hands, shook it back and forth, as if she could physically rid herself of misplaced anger and ill-focused thoughts. She thought for a moment that she could feel the synapses jumping across her brain matter, and she knew that they weren’t so much trying to make connections, to form thoughts, to reason and understand, as they were bouncing with physical energy intent on avoiding landing on a real thought, a real memory, a real understanding of her complicated relationship with her mother in a game of internal mental leap frog. No sooner had that thought manifested itself in her brain than the same thought that always followed came along: Don’t let it be happening to me.

Anytime she became too introspective, anytime she let herself indulge in a little nonsensical meta-cognition, thinking about her own thinking, she would worry that her mother’s genetic code was erupting inside her.

“I’m sorry,” she unnecessarily apologized again.

“Honey,” he reached for her again, “you don’t have to say you’re sorry to me. It wasn’t easy with your mom. I know that more than anyone.”

She pushed away her first instinct to reject his empathic maneuver, rising above the temptation to lay claim to anger with her mother as though she were the only one with a right to complicated feelings about her. Jack had seen his mother-in-law’s actions for the manipulations they were and still managed to be supportive and even covert with his redirections.  When her mother had convinced her to quit her job at the garden center downtown to take lower-paying position at a floral shop in the suburb “to spend more time with your kids instead of driving through traffic,” Jack intercepted the floral shop’s call for an interview. It would be months later, during a two-bottles-of-wine date night, when Jack would sloppily confess his well-intentioned secret.

“I know how much you love being hands-on. You didn’t get a degree in horticulture just to deliver overpriced roses to yesterday’s girlfriends on Valentine’s Day.”

“You’re sharply poetic with a little Merlot in you,” she had offered with as much drunken flirtation as peevishness. “But don’t tell me you weren’t thinking about my paycheck more!”

It was true, he knew they needed her income to maintain their suburban lifestyle. But he also knew Helen wanted to call the shots with her daughter as she always had. She didn’t see it as selfish. She didn’t see it at all. Helen’s mind jumped from one idea to the next before most people had a chance to catch up. Her mood swings were wild and severe. Jack learned quickly to anticipate the next turn. If she was sullen today, that meant there were blue skies on the horizon. And if it was all sunshine and roses, you better take cover tomorrow.

But as far as he knew, Candace never caught on to the predictability of her mother’s unpredictability. She was always reactive to her mother’s whims. She could neither go with the flow of the waves nor protect herself from the inevitable shoreline crash.

Tonight, he watched Candace for the anticipated crash. How would her mother’s death affect her? And we she, he feared, no he couldn’t let himself think it…

“It’s just that, she was such a permanent force in my life,” Candace went on, staring up through eyes that were finally clear to a sky that was finally clear. “I’m glad. I’m glad to not have the pressure, the struggle. I’m glad for the opportunity to do things without wondering what she thinks about it. And yet I still stand here and wonder what she would think!” She laughed, but it sounded like more of a choking than a laugh.

“She won’t ever stop. She won’t ever be gone. And, I still just want her back, you know?” She looked to her husband with sad, innocent eyes. She may never feel the comfort, the grounding of a guiding force again. But she also wouldn’t feel the weight of that anchor.

“Jack? Do you know what really scares me?”

“I think I do. But, why don’t you tell me?”

“If I say it out loud, it makes it true,” she said, stalling, knowing he already knew what she needed to say.

“Do you want me to guess?”

“No.” She knew hearing him say it would only serve to make her hate him. She didn’t want to be unfair to him. She didn’t want to hate him, because she really needed to love him right now. “I’m afraid… I… I mean, it’ll happen…”

“You are not like her,” he graciously offered. But she knew even he had his doubts.

She would fight it, she told herself. She would push that part of her down. She would embrace all that was normal, treasure all that was typical, and keep herself on an even keel at all times. Balance, structure and stability were her holy trinity.

“I don’t have to be,” she affirmed. She would stop thinking about light traveling through the solar system, or balls of radiating gases. She would think of shining stars twinkling across the sky. She wouldn’t think about what it was like to watch her mother slowly descend into madness. She would mourn her, grieve and cry and move on, like a normal daughter. She wouldn’t overthink or over-feel. She would just let her go.

“I’m so glad I have you to lean on, especially now.” He smiled the gentle smile of the only one who knew her so well, and took her hand to lead her inside.

“Candace? Who are you talking to out there? Honey, it’s cold out. It’s been storming.

"Honey… are you talking to your ‘friend’ Jack again? Come on in. We’ll work on it,” Helen said, as both women glanced at the clouds moving eerily to block the moon and the last of the twinkling stars.