Shuffling, scratching, picking, smoothing, stroking. She sits across from me, staring intently at me and smiling; concentrating. Her face is all cheer but her body betrays her smile.
Behind those blue eyes, dulled by time, lies a dying fire. I watch for the rare flicker but I am forced to wait longer than usual. I am forced to ask about the weather. The topic is stretched beyond its capacity and snaps.
Silence.
I ask how her day has been when I know what the answer will be: “Oh, the same – always great. Yes, good, fine!” Confused, scared, lonely.
Silence.
The silence lapses on and on… Her fiddling engulfs us like a roaring wave.
As she opens her mouth and reaches for the words she needs, her hands become the aftershock from her fumbled broken sentences. Smoothing her skirt, shaken and scattered, she smooths out the rubble left over from her mental earthquake.
And then our eyes meet.
Suddenly, we both smile and laugh but we see through the others fake cheer. We pick ourselves up and struggle on through the leaden silences. The staccato sentences.
The worst part is knowing that this has made her day.
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