The Moth and the Candle

Tuesday is the day they come. Always. Rain, wind, snow, traffic, power failures. None of those things stopped them. They never failed. They always delivered. Sarah sat by the side of the road, dangling her feet over the edge of the wall as she waited for the truck to arrive. As she kicked her heels against the wall the old pebble-dashing came away and fell onto the tarmac. The flakes of paint scored the leather of her shoes. Her mother would be angry with her when she saw them. But that was later, further on in the day. Sarah knew one secret no one else did. She never told anyone about it, not even her Mum. If people were too silly to work it out then Sarah wasn’t going to tell them. Sarah knew this one secret: the future never really happened. Only the past occurred, over and over again. But the future was the only thing that people said was important, Sarah thought. No one cared about the past except for those old men who marched in those old bands every November and wore silly uniforms and sang songs that made them cry and puff out their chests like doddering cockatoos. They didn’t matter, they nearly were the past. They were the past, now. Not the future, not like the truck and the men who drove it and delivered the news every Tuesday. Sarah saw them in her mind, pictured the yellow stains on the driver’s hands. He always showed up smoking thin little cigarettes that made him cough wetly. Just like her uncle Danny.

He wasn’t really her uncle, more like an old friend of the family. He visited the house frequently, sometimes he brought little presents and sometimes he arrived empty-handed. When Sarah thought about her uncle Danny, something strange happened to her. Her tummy went all soft and her skin tingled. She remembered how her mother made Danny go outside to smoke every time he came over to visit. He smoked so much that he spent most of the time standing on the little patio outside the kitchen but he didn’t seem to mind. He made fun of her Mum through the window, complaining loudly about the rain and her treatment of guests but when he came back in he would give her a hug and a kiss. But Mum must not have liked him because she would push him away every time and scold him for smoking in the first place. She must have scolded him too much because after a while he stopped visiting. She couldn’t’ remember how long ago that was. It was difficult to tell in years and months, all she knew was that he stayed away.

Once the whole family had to go and visit him, when he was in hospital. She had never been to hospital before and she found it very difficult to pay attention to her uncle with all the doctors and nurses and other patients around. They returned to the hospital several times after that and each time they went Danny had gotten older. His skin looked like waxy paper and he smelled funny, like the old man that sat outside Dargans shop and asked passers by for spare change. Sarah thought it was odd because she thought everyone in a hospital was supposed to smell clean.

The last time they visited Father Paul from the parish was there too. He stood at the rail by the bed and prayed over Uncle Danny but that was normal. Father Paul was always praying to God, that was his job. She had never seen him this close before, though. Every other time she had seen him he was on the altar in the church looking down at the people and making sure they prayed right and believed and behaved. As Sarah looked on her mother took a handkerchief out of her pocket and silently cried into it. She was hoping Sarah wouldn’t notice but Sarah was too sharp for her Mum. She pulled the handkerchief away from her mother’s face and laughed. Uncle Danny laughed too, at her Mum being caught out so easily but he soon started coughing. His face turned red and he began spitting up thick globules of yellowy green sputum. Her mother turned away from the bed and Sarah could see her shoulders shaking. Was she laughing too? Sarah wanted to ask her uncle when he stopped coughing but a nurse had pulled a curtain around the big bed and told her to wait outside with her mother.

When the doctor finally came out to the seated room off the corridor her mother was on her knees praying again even though Father Paul wasn’t even around. He put his hand on her mother’s shoulder
Mrs. Henderson? Mrs. Henderson?
Her mother stopped praying and opened her eyes. She didn’t say anything. The doctor opened his mouth and said
I’m very sorry. There was nothing we could do. The disease had spread to too many organs. We made him as comfortable as we could. He suffered very little pain towards the end.
Sarah wondered what her uncle made of all of this. She never remembered him ever crying. He used to stick out his tongue and wink at her in church. She tugged at her mother’s coat
Mum? Mum? Can we go in and see Uncle Danny now? I want to tell him the joke I heard in school the other day.
Sarah’s mother looked down at her and said
Sarah dear we can’t go in to Danny now. He’s gone away and we won’t be able to see him again.
Why not? Where has he gone? Can we not go with him?
No dear. We have to be very brave now. Uncle Danny has gone to Heaven to be with your daddy and God.
Why can’t we go with him?
Some day we will see them both again my love but not today, she said as she stroked her hair and held her very tight, not today.

Sarah remembered the funeral and the wake, all the strangers shaking her hand and tousling her hair even though she hated it when people did that. She always tossed her head angrily afterwards but they never did anything but smile at her and say how beautiful she was. She didn’t care about being beautiful, she wanted to know why both her daddy and her uncle were so selfish as to go off and leave her and her mum behind to do all the work. How could they abandon them like this? Her Mum had no answers, at least none that satisfied her. God might have taken them but what did He want them for? Could He not have seen how much more work Mum had to do now?

As the days and weeks passed Sarah grew more and more attached to her mother. She knew that her Mum depended on her more and more too. She would ask Sarah little questions, about the shopping or the house, had she left the kettle on, did she remember to buy washing up liquid. Sarah worked hard to make sure she knew the answers and, even though she didn’t show it, got upset when she didn’t. She wasn’t entirely sure why she had to know the answers, why it was important she answered her mother’s questions correctly, she just knew she had to. Every day her mother would smile, a sad wan smile and she would reach out and put her arms around her. Sarah dreaded and loved those moments. Her mother’s embrace made her feel safe and comforted but equally, she felt responsible for the tears it seemed to provoke. It was like she was hurting her just by…by being there in the house with her. Sarah’s existence was now a boon and a burden to her mother. She lived as her mother’s comforter and memory on the one hand and as a reminder of her pain on the other. She lived this double life as scrupulously as she could because as far as she could see you couldn’t have one without the other. Every day she felt she had a part to play in the life of the house. Sarah needed to remind her Mum of the little things and her Mum could think of the big things for the both of them, the things Sarah didn’t fully understand.