Martha...from Act III

by Elizabeth Aharonian Moon

Author's  Note

 ACT III, a work in progress, is a collection of cameos, short literary sketches
which define a character in a dramatic moment in time, and a novella. 

The themes of  Endings, Beginnings, and Musings connect the cameos, while

the novella, yet untitled, explores the ties that bind and the ties that break between parents and their adult children.

Martha is one such cameo.

She found him dead in the chair. She knew it—the swollen silence, the slanted shadow of the afternoon sun on the oriental—he was clammy to her touch, deaf to her question. So this is shock, she thought, so this is being stunned, stilled, unable to move from this spot of her discovery. And yet she did. Shaking her head , ruffling her graying hair , she reached for the phone, pressing 911 hard and then calling the adult children, their work numbers already programmed in (in case of an emergency, Ma).

In that next instant, she had to go to the bathroom; there she saw the knobs every which way on the counter, the screw driver in the sink. Had he finally gotten around to the painting project that she had nagged him about for weeks? Quickly she shoved the knobs aside, lifted the screwdriver and covered it with a towel and noticed the unopened paint can in the corner. 

 Life interrupted. A still-life.

  After the 911 people—the firemen, the police , the EMTs and the ambulance (what for?)--after her sons’ arrival and departure, all in such a hurry of duty , she sat in the chair and tried to invent the sequence of the day: how did he get to this chair to die in it? What had he been doing before the knobs or after the knobs? She hadn’t been gone long, maybe two or three hours in Monday’s routine: deadhead the petunias at the railroad station flower boxes, stop at the market, pick up a birthday card at the dollar store for the grandkid, end up at her downtown community garden to pull weeds and water what needed watering.

 Her mind flitted; she had been gone two hours, maybe. If that. She didn’t think it would be like this. Often, she worried that he would fall down in the wooded preserve he walked almost daily, whatever the season. He’d have some stroke and lose his sight completely, and maybe the use of his leg or his arm. They’d find him on the path and this would be how their lives shifted. Other times she thought they would have at least ten more good years, what with his ailments and her family history of heart trouble. How she had imagined it was not how it was. Dead in the chair. 

 The quick and the dead.

 Had he been filling the bird-feeder? Got dizzy? Came in? Why was that nearly filled glass of water on the kitchen table? Did he get thirsty from the knobs and then suddenly get tired, exhausted..I think I better sit down.... Where did his mind take him as he walked to the chair? Did he walk? Did he just close his eyes for a nap? 

 Is that how he died?

How long she sat in the chair, she did not know: not an hour, probably just minutes, because suddenly the racket in her head stopped and there were real, out-loud voices in the room. The sons had returned with the funeral director (why would they call him that?) She knew he was the undertaker, and for an instant she totally and ironically comprehended the meaning of that word. He undertook everything, and she was left to the task of asking Father Leary to say a mass for this, her very dead, Protestant husband.

And, what would she wear?