The Lost Fairy Tale

‘Knock knock.’

‘Who’s that?’ A woman’s voice hoarse and caustic and rusted with age came through the other room. ‘Is that my knight in shining armour?’ 

‘No, Blondie, it’s just me,’ I carried the bags in, keys in mouth, flicked the switch with my hip, and let loose the contents of my arms in a heaving piling lump by the kitchen table. The curtains were closed and the electric glower of the bulb flickered in the gloom. 

‘Oh, I thought you were my knight in shining armour,’ the voice said.

‘No he comes Wednesday,’ I said. 

I spread the shades above the sink and let the sunlight trickle in. The kitchen was small and unkempt. A small clatter of plates, crumbed with biscuits and cake, piled on the table and a line of mugs, unwashed and stained with tea and coffee, waited along the rim of the sink. The murky smell of dust and cake had draped itself on everything. I turned the sputtering tap and let the sink slowly fill. Motes of dust hung on the slants of light that streamed in through the window and when I pushed on it to air the room, it eked out mutteringly by degrees. Trapping light, the dark arches by the door threw concrete shadows along the kitchen tiles that stretched like still and slumbering snakes into the living room, and I treaded carefully over them to pull the blinds open opposite. They hissed away in the light and ceased to exist as a glowing warmth spilled in, pooling in white and yellow puddles.

‘What are you doing back there?’ The voice called.

‘I’m just letting some light in,’ I called back.

‘Don’t bother. You’ll have to put it all back the way it was when you left anyway. Save yourself the time and leave it as is. Now come over here and say hello.’

‘You say so.’ 

I swept the scattered crumbs off into my hand and dropped a fistful into the bin. I propped the other window open opposite the kitchen and let the air vent between them. It wouldn’t hurt to let in a bit of the outside world. I went into the parlor. 

Similar to the kitchen, the parlor was basked in a thick mopey twilight in spite of the day outside. The curtains drooped like a funereal shroud, the heavy velvet wrapping dolefully all the way down to the floor, and cloaked the room in its totality from the midday sun. She was there reclined on the sofa, swaddled in her swarthy mauve bathrobe, her head rested on a pillow, looking up at the shadows printed on the ceiling. Deep dark shadows as still and stagnant as a muddled pond stained the plaster. 

‘You want the lights on?’ I asked.

She waved the idea away. I went to the wall panel and flickered the switch. There was a brief electric groaning whir as the lights turned blinkingly on. The shadows swept away from the corners and dived into the crooks of the room as the glowering light filled the room.

She rolled her head towards me.

‘There’s my granddaughter,’ she said. She raised herself slowly up with her elbows and sat up to get a good look. Her cloudy blue eyes were faint, pale, and subdued, but beaming behind it all. ‘Where’s your father?’

‘Arthur’s coming Wednesday.’

‘What do you mean Wednesday? What kind of son doesn’t have the time to see his mother every day. He lives only there.’ She motioned somewhere vague behind the dark satiny curtains, which slumped under shadows that gathered thick like tar in the folded pockets of fabric.

‘Arthur moved a little while ago, remember.’ 

‘What do you mean he moved?’ 

‘He moved a while back now. After the split.’

She rested back on the sofa, her eyes searching the lambent room for a trace memory. The warm effuse from the lamp spread a warm circle on the wall. 

‘Oh yes, of course, I remember,’ she said. ‘Anyway, how did you get here? Didn’t he drop you off? Should’ve come in for a mug of biscuits and a tea.’

‘I drove.’

‘How’s that? You’re too young to drive.’ Fugitive shadows passed like dusky clouds over her blue eyes.

I pulled up next to her and sank myself into the armchair, smiling half-heartedly. 

‘Hey Blondie. Look here. It's me.’ 

She tilted her head and squinted at me down her nose. Her gaze went through me and didn’t register. Pale eyes like blue semi-precious stones long-tossed undersea regarded me and I saw the white froth breaking in the waves of a greater tempest and tumult behind them. The waters calmed and flattened.

‘Oh, it’s you, oh, I’m sorry. This aging business isn’t doing me any favours. You sound so very similar, you two, and you look terribly alike. Do forgive me. I got a bit muddled. I thought you were her.’ She pressed my hand in both of hers then sat back again.

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘They’re coming Wednesday, remember. He said you all have plans to go to Whistler’s garden?’

‘Hah,’ she snorted. ‘Not a chance. Go tell that to Gothel and she’ll put that notion to rest. I’m not going anywhere, and I’ll stay right where I am.’ 

She crossed her arms and silhouetted shadows crept silently into the contours of her robe. Gray shades clung to the grooved wrinkles on her face, gathering in dark circles under her eyes, and flattened themselves on the matted straits of her hair. Billowing down her robe, a tangled knot of hair, felted and uncombed, furled and unfurled and eventually balled into a lumpy dark shape like a fat cat in her lap, its once golden sheen rubbed away with the years.

‘Well, I heard everything’s blooming around now,’ I said, ‘the gardenias especially. And they finally opened up that butterfly room in the greenhouse by the lake.’

‘I don’t care, I’m not going out there.’ She placed a faintly tremulous hand on the pile of hair in her lap.

‘But doesn’t that sound nice, Blondie? You could have lunch on the waterfront then go walk through and see all the butterflies. Arthur said he had a plan and wanted to surprise you, but I think you’re okay knowing. Better that way, I think. No nasty shocks. Doesn’t that sound like a day.’ 

‘No good,’ she shook her head. Her lips quivered as she spoke and her hand trembled within the mass of hair. ‘Can’t go outside. It’s too dangerous. Gothel would never allow it anyway. Tell your father I’m not leaving. Where is that man anyway? What kind of son won’t come in to see his mother?’

I sighed. She had a clump of hair in her hand and she was shakily winding it one by one around each of her fingers on her left hand. The light from the bulb shone harsh and electric on her hair and made it look like straw, it deepened the furrowed creases on her forehead, and made her look older. 

I started again gentler this time.

‘Like I said, Arthur’s coming on Wednesday. He’ll be really disappointed when you tell him you don’t want to go. He got time off work and a day with your granddaughter to take you there. I know you don’t like going outside, but this will be good for you and everybody.’

She looked at me from behind a tuck of flaxen hair. ‘And you? You’re coming?’

‘I’m afraid not. Wednesdays I work the care home on Waldengate. But you’ll be in good hands. I promise you that.’

She looked pensive for a moment, her head rested in the pit of her knuckle, almost tempted by the idea. The light from the bulb shimmered distant and far off in her eyes, fragments of half-formed thoughts crystalising in those lucid blue wells, illuminating her face with a softer feature. But the bulb flickered and the light faltered and for a momentary glance it returned to her face those graven and wearisome marks of age, and she shook her head free of the notion.

‘I can’t,’ she whispered, staring off into the wall. ‘It’s not safe.’

‘Blondie,’ I put my hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t notice, ‘it’s all cleared up now. You remember your jab, that nice doctor with the hair and the beard, I know it was a little while ago. Well, everyone’s got it now. It’s safe to go outside.’ 

‘Gothel wouldn’t allow it,’ her mind was transfixed and her glare held the wall still. ‘Go and fetch her, would you. She’ll tell you it’s no good. I can’t go out there.’ She gestured off towards the bedroom. 

The door was ajar and the room was dim. I walked over and closed the door. Humming overhead, the lamp sent a lazy halo of light around the room. She looked up as I returned. 

‘Did you get her?’

‘Blondie, we can’t do this every week. It’s not good for you. You need to get outside, let your hair down. The gardens are truly beautiful this time of year. I told you how the gardenias and the carnations and the daylilies are all flowering, didn’t I?’

‘Where is she?’ Her voice quavered and the shadows in the corner of the room crept their way into the hazy glow and twined themselves in her knotting hair. ‘Where’s Gothel.’ 

I said nothing.

She began tugging on the sandy strands in her lap. Clenching and stretching repeatedly, her fingers pulled at the ends of hair and loosed a thin straw-like puff from her curly locks. The light played starkly on her tortured glint of her eyes, crinkled in tears, and cast her pained features a terrible sight. 

‘Where’s Gothel? Get those lights off!’ 

‘Hey now,’ I lifted my palms up, ‘it’s okay. We can talk about something else if you’d like. Here, let me turn the lights off.’ I hurried over and flicked the switch. The lambent glow rescinded.

The dark shades kept by the curtain-fold loped back into the room and poured from the pitted corners into an obscure murk. The darkness filled the room once more with its gloam.

‘Where’s Gothel?’ Her voice was distant and her eyes, black and crow-like, were lost in the sinking shadows of the room. Darkening in the gloom, not an ounce of light glinted off the faint strands of gold concealed within the matt of hair, and she held it tight like something long lost. The old blonde ringlets were a far memory from the dim messy tussle that now took seat, as dire and strange as a black cat, in her lap. She looked calmer in the darkness, more at peace.

She didn’t look at me and just stared ahead. Parting the hair that gathered softly on her robe, she frowned, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t really know what’s happening to me. This moment and the next. I can’t do with light anymore. It’s too much like a spotlight. I can’t do that anymore. I want to be alone.’ 

‘It’s okay, dear. That’s the way it goes for some.’

‘It’s getting worse you know.’ She raised a wavering hand to her cheek. 

‘I know.’ 

Shadows crawled over the creeping walls and tugged on the faint patches of light that came from the kitchen. Shapes indistinct formed and unformed in that chaotic black, and a black mist of darkness at once indivisible and universal stuck thick in the room.

Her voice was a murmur, ‘Gothel’s gone, isn’t she?’ She wiped away a glassy tear. ‘It’s just me now.’

‘I’m here,’ I said, ‘and your son and granddaughter are coming on Wednesday.’

But she didn’t hear me and only kept staring off at the wall.

‘It’s just me now,’ she whispered.

We sat in silence, the deepening blackness around us settling to a placid stillness. The light round the corner from the kitchen cast our forms in a cold pallid way and our silhouettes, sturdy and unchanging, were wrought like pale statues against the black pitch of the room. The dynamism of the moment was lost, but there it remained, latent in the room’s basking shadows, implicit and reworked in the fabric of the dark. We were stuck in a sort of shadowy loop and her condition was not getting better. The blackness around us felt thicker every time, more oppressive, and it felt all the while as if she were disappearing into it. Her features blurred in the vague fumbling dark and she looked different, where once her hair had brandished gold and resplendent, stark and distinguished, the years trapped inside had sallowed the gilded strands and eroded them to sand. 

She was losing her edge and the slow descent was inevitable as she faded into the black. I had no doubt she would not go to the gardens this Wednesday. How could she? At least here she was safe, swaddled as she was, content in the gloomy darkness, but how would she fare when the sun was up and the spotlight glared with its revelatory light. 

Sometimes I guess it's easier to accept the darkness as a whole than to shine a torch through the deepest and darkest chasms.  

A long time passed and I resolved I would come back tomorrow and try again. 

I got up to leave.

‘Going already?’ she asked, looking away.

‘Yes, I will be back tomorrow, though.’

‘Okay. Have Gothel make you a tea on your way out,’ her glassy eyes were beaming. 

I nodded soberly and walked away towards the light of the kitchen. 

‘Turn those lights off on your way out too, if you could,’ she called behind me. 

I flicked the switch, closed with windows, and drew the blinds. The room sank once more into darkness.