This Bright Life

He doesn’t like it. You could float off into the air when you go that way. Dissociation. That’s the word they telt him last time he saw a therapist. Are there times when you feel your body doesn’t belong to you, Gerard? It might manifest in other ways too. What about gaps in your life that you can’t recall? Why do they speak all posh like that? To a kid? Really brainy folk have so much cleverness crammed into their heads they have to show it off. Or maybe they forget other people are not like them. Ha. Maybe they have it too. Dissociation. It’s a difficult word to remember, but he’d seized on it immediately, grabbed it hard because it seemed to make so much sense. To have a word like that, which said someone else knew how you feel – and that other folk felt it too – had astounded him. To have doctors give a name to a feeling that was so big and scary it drowned you? Man. For the first time, he’d seen how words might be useful, might hold power that could help instead of threaten.

The night air is delicious. Honeysuckle, mixed with the frondy herbs in the planter. Margaret only came out for a sprig of mint, but the evening is so beautiful, she’s been sitting this past while on her new bench. Longer than a while, perhaps. She emerged when flares of deep orange and bands of purple-gold hung across the sky. Now the air is soft, and navy blue. The novelty of her garden is snapped-stem fresh. There are still patches of dark earth, but they’ll soon fill up as the plants bulk and grow.

Albert insisted that nature was healing; Margaret never believed him – well, she’d never experienced it for herself. All the times he had her hoeing and weeding, she’d smiled, and felt happy, but it was because she saw him being happy. Albert held a profound sadness within him. Being outdoors, being active, lit his face with a kind of peace.

‘I do want you to make a will,’ Margaret says suddenly.

‘OK.’

‘I want everything to go to Stephen and wee Paul.’

Claire nods. ‘Would you like me to see if I can track them down too?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Can I think about that?’

‘Of course.’

‘Alright. Good.’ Margaret blows her nose.

‘And what do you want me to do about the shop? I’ll need to speak to the solicitor who drafted Albert’s will.’

‘Can we not talk about that just now please? I’m founert.’

‘Founert?’

‘Yes. It means wrung-out. Spent, you know?’

Founert. A guid Scots word that Claire will henceforth adopt because it describes perfectly how she’s feeling. She has no conversation left in her. Pity the poor man who sits beside her tonight.