Frail (Act II)

A seamless sky grey-white floats over an ocean milky green like well-worn jade, the yellow white sand rippled, wind-swept, empty. The big picture window specked with dead raindrops. She sits in a recliner angled back, staring out at it all, legs wrapped in a rug made from rags in colors from old magazines. A cardigan buttoned up to her chin, her head leaned against the heavy shawl collar. Every now and then she closes her eyes as if she has finally fallen asleep, but sooner, later, they blink open again, she shifts a little in the recliner, folds her arms about herself more tightly, tucks her hands back under her elbows, or under the rug, stares out at the ocean through mud-colored eyes.

A huge figure of a man comes into the airy little room, soft blue denim shirt and a moleskin vest, his face a couple of dark eyes, a daub of forehead in an explosion of wiry hair all grey and peppery black and coiling sprigs and shoots of white. In one hand a thick yellow mug that he sets steaming on the tray table by the recliner. His other’s not a hand but a hand-shape, cast in bronze and beaten with whorls of puckered dots. Standing there a moment he watches her as she does not lift a hand for the tea, and then with something like a shrug he turns to walk away.

“Wish we could open the window,” she says.

He stops there by the low shelf buried under a great bouquet of chrysanthemums, heavy heads of yellow and gold and bronzey orange. “Yis builden,” he says, a roughly woven voice, “it’d fall. Yon light’s’ll can be mannered.”