The Way it Happened in the Moment

The moment was razor sharp.

The moment was as clear as glass.

In all these years since it happened, I have never stopped living in the moment.

All things were crystal-perfect, all the details writ large and perfectly remembered. The tiniest of things. The exact colour of the wall behind them - a shade that rests between teal and deep, night-time blue; the pattern of the sun as it fell across the kitchen counter; that coffee mug that hung on the edge beneath the cupboards, the one that said Monday Again. Ah, Crap!, but at an angle so that it actually said Moda, Ah, C, and all the rest obscured behind it. The tiny rip in the chair in the corner of the lounge, the way it frayed so that it looked like a tuft of purple dandelion.

The two of them. Arguing again. Always arguing. Father and daughter. Anything might set them off.

And he: always telling me not to try and smooth it over, telling me that it was like me taking her side, and I should take his, a united front was required, a parental wall of certainty and discipline…

Why couldn’t I?

Both sides shining out of the din, both making a sense of their own, and him, never seeing, never listening, and she: wild and proud with indignation, with the sense of her own youth and how it didn’t make her less or wrong or to be bulldozed over as if she counted for nothing.

She: so what? I wasn’t hurting anyone.

He: I told you you couldn’t go out. I made it clear.

She: so what? There was no reason for it. Just you trying to pretend like you can still tell me what to do.

He: You’re not that old, and you don’t pay your way. So when I tell you something-

She: That’s all you ever do! Tell me things. Tell, tell, tell-

He: And when do you listen? I’m still your father.

She: not to me you’re not.

He: what did you just say?

I: feeling it. Knowing the pattern. Like a gathering wave. Knowing he’ll be sorry, that he’ll vacillate between regret and anger, nursing his guilty fist, but still his grudge, his anger at seeing his natural authority torn away.

But she: I don’t think of you like my father. Just words. Just hurt. But I knew he wouldn’t…. You’re not my father – testing the words out – I don’t love you.

Just words-just words-just words.

Already running. Moving through air as thick as soup. The slowing of the hands of a clock that’s ivory faced, lightly cracked, with one hand reaching for a twelve, the other pointed towards a seven, one that is frozen at exactly sixteen seconds past the minute. Starting to say his name, starting to form the first syllable.

But he: grabbing her, pushing her – a single movement that’s both at once. With more force behind him than ever really meant. The way she stumbled. The sheen of that plate of glass, those two-and-a-half storeys between her and the ground. Her shoulders, then her back, then her thighs sinking into that false elasticity, then the cracks flowering out from the points of impact, growing, multiplying. The silence of the whole thing giving way, her body being swallowed by the black hole it’s making, arms last, hair last, feet last, sucked into that void.

Then sound. He: staring, heart-and-soul transfixed by the gaping, jagged hole. Screams that were hers. Mine. His. This guttural sound that erupted from his stomach as he threw himself towards the gap, to where her screams had stopped, and he, seeing what I couldn’t yet see, what I hadn’t, but what I knew: the broken body haloed in glass, fine cracks of blood making tentative forays along the hard ground, pooling around bright glass shards, dusk-sunlight caught red in them; red-orange-pink.

A matter of seconds. Couldn’t be undone. His back only, visible shoulders, vanished head; on his hands and knees at the edge. My own hands, reaching for the curve of his shirt – orange-yellow tartan, shades of olive and dun - to comfort or condemn – the intent not yet formed in my own fingers, in my mind, not even fully feeling the shock yet. The truth; the screaming sound that was and wasn’t me, existing only in theory, in a state not connected to me yet, but flying at me with speed and malice, charging me head on.

A slender, frozen hand: eighteen seconds past the minute.

That moment.

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work