Grayling Junction - Chapter Seven and five sevenths

Now They Are My Company

In thirty-one years the tears have never stopped.
At first she had attempted to soak up the flow with a handkerchief embroidered with floral motifs. Tears quickly flooded the intricate lilies and neatly rendered primroses and dahlias. She had wondered if real flowers might have offered better absorbency.
Her tears found a steady rhythm, not quite reaching the force of a rushing torrent, but never drying out either. She wept in her sleep, pools patiently gathering over the fabric of her pillows. She awoke each morning with damp, brackish hair plastered to her brow.

The summer of '91 had seen seven weeks of unbroken high temperatures that had caused the surrounding land to burst into flame. The Randall City Fire Department had told her to wait on standby. Even in this rumbling heat still the tears trickled from the corner of each eye, her lachrymal glands seemingly unstoppable.

Her name is Bethany. A long time ago, sitting in a reception room awaiting the halitosis-tinged prognosis of a tear specialist, she had picked up a magazine from a table the colour of biscuits. She had drifted through a feature about the origin of names, discovering that her name translated as ‘she of the house of figs’. She had worried that she should have eaten figs, if only to see if she liked them.
She doubted whether she would ever eat figs now.

The tears began on a Tuesday. Tuesday – generally a flat, lifeless day of the week, more than capable of producing tears. A day where even time cannot be bothered, grinding almost to a halt.
It had been early in the evening, as the sun sinking low had curled untroubled shadows across her kitchen. She had been making herself a pot of tea when she felt the first tear as a splash on her cheek. Automatically she brought a hand to her face and wiped it away assuming that the kettle had splashed her.
She had taken the tea outside to a small paved area pretending to be a garden. From her ground floor flat at Pelican Point she had a broad view of the Sticks Estuary. Determined to reduce the tedium of the concrete yard she had cluttered the area with pot plants. Grateful for the arrival of evening the plants had been giving off a fresh scent. A coiling fragrance of jasmine welcomed her as she had settled into a blue plastic chair beside a blue plastic table. She had set the tea down and stretched her head backward. As she massaged the nape of her neck with her hand the spare plastic chairs around her table seemed emptier than ever before.
Unseen organisms had combined to produce a persistent droning that seemed to belong to the dusky air itself. Another tear had wriggled free, followed by another. She was sure the sky had never looked quite so blue, a tangible azure that spread forever in each direction.
As the tears continued a gentle stinging slithered over her cheeks. The instant she had accepted the awareness of her tears her mood had darkened. An ache had arrived in her chest, around the region where her heart was buried like a cough inside of her, a constriction of muscle that belonged exclusively to the tears.

Nowadays she dresses each morning knowing that by lunchtime her sodden clothes will need changing. She has tried waterproof clothing but the tears, running awry over the shiny fabric, simply gathered on the floor. Within three weeks the carpet was soaked to the touch.
She now understands how to collect the tears in a bowl of fine china that she keeps under her chin. It requires patience and strong wrists as the bowl fills slowly. Once it is brimming she will carry it carefully outside and empty it into a bucket. When this bucket is full she carries it to the water and tips it into the sea.
Her tears top up the ocean so that it may never run dry.

Inside her flat is the room where she cries:
Shelves moan beneath the weight of rocks, shells, pebbles, stained glass, pieces of wood sea-stripped of bark, a majesty of feathers, assorted paperback books, plates of differing sizes, mugs containing only dust, waning photographs in varied frames, decorative ornaments from around the world, bamboo pipes, tin whistles, ethnic prints, paintings with uncomplicated brushstrokes, miniature portraits, ladybird pin cushions, ceramic animals, wood carved animals, a shelf displaying a series of heavy glass boxes inside of which are a series of stuffed creatures – a tiny mouse, a magpie wearing a look of surprise, and a reclining otter.
Dust holds regular meetings in the air – fired upwards as she sits heavily in her chair – glittering here and there before fading.
The door to the room is held open with a green-painted, plaster bust of Honoré de Balzac whose stout jaw juts as a peril at ankle level.
This stuffed sitting room overlooks the estuary and it is here the majority of her days are spent, watching the comings and goings on this small, sour strip of water. Some days she might see Amon as he guides a rusting hulk of a craft over the water. He only takes to the water on days when the fog has fallen heavy across the water and she soon loses sight of him. Other days she spots a decrepit wooden fishing boat making steady progress from the estuary.
As custodian of this stretch of sea she waits for it to pass again hours later, straining from her chair to ensure it has a safe return.

And so Bethany remains, measuring her days tear upon tear as she adds to the tides. In the summer months she waters her plants each evening, hanging her head over each pot for a full minute. In the winter her cheeks are heavily jewelled with icicles.
The inevitable progress of one day melting into the next, the spinning wheel that brings seasons by her window, the passing of time as shadows creep indoors, the gazing of the moon, fringed wingtips glimpsed in sudden dawn descent, these are hers; hers to hold steady long enough to fasten her future to.
These are her company.