Tessa Smith McGovern
The Void: A List Story
The phone rings and it’s your mum speaking in halting sentences that make no sense and it feels like air blasted onto a cracked tooth.
You take her for a drive at twilight, and she can’t remember the name of La Traviata, her favorite opera since you were a child.
She says “Pardon?” repeatedly and blames her inability to understand conversation on the incomprehensible accents of Americans.
She slags off her first husband, your beloved Dad who passed ten years ago, and doesn’t remember he was your father.
We stop at a red light and she grabs the dashboard in a panic, exclaiming, “Oh! What’s that car doing? Why is it coming over here?” about a car that’s simply crossing in front of you.
When she phoned you yesterday, the washing machine of her mind had paused in momentary clarity. “I don’t know what’s happening. I can’t remember anything. It’s like that song, ‘Bits and Pieces’, she said. “I'm in bits and pieces.”
And your monkey mind throws out the thought, I can’t stand this. Is this my future?
And you have another thought, fast as quicksilver, about how much easier it would be if she died and that makes you think of the French who, of course, have a name for random, explosive thoughts like that: l'appel du vide. The call of the void.
Then the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves reaches its melodic middle and the crescendo of sound takes her, closing her eyes, turning her expression to bliss, and she exclaims, “Oh! Just listen to that!” And in that moment, her words make sense again and the barbed wire in your heart dissolves and you are united in your bliss and the “what ifs” evaporate.
You remember that, after all these years, you’ve finally learned you are not her. You’re not your father either. He shed his skin ten years ago, and she will shed hers, as you will, too. And then the glimmer that is her will join the glimmer that is him, and in time you will join the glimmer that is them and together you will become the sun and fill the void.
If We’re Lucky
My hands are not strong enough to open a bottle of orange seltzer, even with the use of a thick elastic band, and I cannot read the slanted script on the envelope of a letter from my pen pal Rose in London, even with glasses. My sense of smell has diminished, and I no longer notice the fishy sourness of my own body. This morning, I stared at a photo of my gray-haired, grinning daughter and for a second wondered, who’s that? A month ago, I fell seven carpeted stairs whilst going up to bed one night and am now confined, for all time, to the ground floor of my cottage. The visiting nurse says it’s not safe for me to drive any more so my daughter has taken the keys and I’ve lost the thrill of getting up and out in my little red Honda to Stop & Shop on the Post Road for a loaf of raisin bread. My daughter has refused corrective rotator cuff surgery for me because of the risks of anesthesiology so my left arm is permanently disabled. But with a handheld, battery-lit magnifying glass, I can still read--I can become an outwardly assured Irish attorney or a dragon rider in the Napoleonic wars or a prodigy who plays the violin so brilliantly they lose the sense of who they are and become one with the slicing, soaring sounds.
Tessa Smith McGovern has an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and is the author of London Road: Linked Stories and Cocktails for Book Lovers. She teaches online for the Writing Institute, Sarah Lawrence College, NY, and Bloom Writers' Studio. Her flash fiction has been published in literary journals such as the Connecticut Review and the UK's Equinox. She's currently working on a fantasy inspired by British Mythology.
