The Names

by Florence Knapp

Cora’s mother always used to say children were whipped up by the wind, that even the quiet ones would come in after playtime made wild by it.

what disturbs her more is that she must now pour the goodness of her son into its mold, hoping he’ll be strong enough to find his own shape within it.

“Careful not to get your coat dirty,” Cora says. His words. Her own instinct is to encourage Maia to lie down, to breathe in the rich, musky scent of the earth, to imagine herself as a fox cub curled up nose to tail. She’s nine, on the cusp of being too old to want to do these things.

Perhaps she has unwittingly sent a message that their lives are destined to follow the same path, when her real hope is for her children to tread their own.

face closer to her brother’s, and is elated. She knows this will be a defining moment in Maia’s life, a moment when she was given a voice and wasn’t asked to fit into the shadow of her parents’ marriage.

And now, all these years later, she feels the floor again. She feels all of it. She recognizes its grip, its support, and knows the floor—this earth—has her. That it rises imperceptibly to meet her, and will catch her if she falls, because she has done the right thing. Cora is used to

tradesman. She lives trying not to set a match to Gordon’s anger, but still she spills petrol about her, dripping it over shoes she has forgotten to polish, sloshing it across a particular shirt not washed in time. She races from thing to thing, tending

to whatever might spark, but it’s always something behind her, just out of sight that she hadn’t thought

She thought of Lady Macbeth and wondered if her neighbors did too; the washing-away of blood somehow synonymous with a woman’s guilt.

She sinks down into her chair and stares at this beautiful thing resting in the flat of her palm. It is queueing in the school canteen; Mrs. Radley handing over babysitting money—hers, if only for a while. It is England, which is Mum and home. And now, it is Cian taking care—bending over his workbench to make something just for

She suspects that, to be a good parent, she must pack away the mothering part of herself into a box and gently close the lid on it. She had not realized this is what would be required of her, had not seen it coming. And yet she will do so willingly. Would you lay down your life for your child? the world silently asks. Yes, she’s done this. But she hadn’t known there would be a second reckoning, where this would eventually mean laying

down the arms of motherhood: caution, foreseeing, checking, reminding, nurturing, openly caring. Because a switch has been tripped, and rather than keeping the child safe, if left in sight, her love might implode. Might overwhelm him. So, she must seek to diminish her own presence in Bear’s mind, make space for others to move into the foreground. What will be left of her then? she wonders, and immediately chastises herself for the thought.

The kind of night where the sense of ending and possibility is as heady as the jasmine that sprawls beneath the window ledge.

“Look at us. All pining over that boy. God, it’s been glorious, hasn’t it?” And everyone knows exactly what she means.

One day, as Julian was doing his accounts at the kitchen table, someone interviewed on the radio compared the act of running to a wish to escape something. “Will you listen to that,” she’d scoffed. “I’m running toward my life—the three of you—not away from it.”

brings back a pot of tea, a plate of toast and honey. Sílbhe rests back against his chest as they eat, and they laugh at the quiet decadence of covering the duvet in crumbs and the luxury of having found a home in one another.

few weeks ago, when he’d arrived early for a meeting, Gordon had sat in some nearby gardens, beside a lichen-covered reproduction of David: nose sheared off, a limb hewn away. And ever since, he hasn’t been able to shake the image of a shattered statue—not just a missing arm, but a literal pile of rubble; disembodied lips and fingers, a jumble of barely distinguishable body parts. Gordon has the overwhelming feeling that what he’s doing here—at group, with Rob, in every part of his life—is attempting to use those fractured, misshapen pieces to build something new. And the realization dawning on him is that it’s simply not possible to keep the cracks from showing.

The school days are long, and Pearl emerges exhausted. Away from the gates, she asks for a piggyback, and even after a shift at the library, Lily plows up the hill, Pearl’s warm body draped across her back, empty lunchbox banging gently against her side. Her hip burns beneath their combined weight, but it makes Lily feel more alive, pulled back into her body from the stupor of grief.

They are planning on getting a cat. “It’s not instead of Papa,” Pearl clarifies when she tells Cora about it. And Cora nods approvingly, realizing they are inviting a creature back into their lives to maintain the trinity of animal, vegetable, mineral. That there is a strength in deciding not to hobble on forever without that animal energy in their lives. Bear would be so proud.

“He was his name. Sort of soft, and cuddly, and kind. But also brave and strong.”

Cora has noticed a rawness about him, sees that his nerves, like hers, are close to the surface.

And later, Felix’s offer to walk Cora home, and her acceptance of it, is unthinking; they are already absorbed in a conversation that will continue to slowly unspool across all the years they have left.

Cian says there are ghosts there too. Julian wonders if they’ll meet some of his own. If he hasn’t melded a few into the metal as he’s crafted this shipment.

Maia tells Meg the things she’s never spoken out loud—not even to family—and Meg says, “Oh, you poor darling,” and holds

her, and somehow that is enough. And on Sundays, they drive to the beach and walk along the wet sand hand in hand, wind whipping at their coats, hair tangling, as Meg takes Maia’s face in her hands, cherished.

place. He sits with her through the night, not ready to move into the next phase he knows must come. One of phone calls and condolences. And her absence. For now, for just a little longer, it will be just the two of them.

A clarity exists amongst them, that they have shared their lives with someone quietly magnificent.

When the coroner’s report comes, they learn she’d lived with a hole in the heart. That she probably never knew, but that, still, it is a miracle she lived to see eighty-eight. And they wonder again at what she gave to them. How she lived for them, and because of them. And in spite of everything.

As he jogs, he feels his own hope catching like a kite on the wind, and he runs faster, wanting to send it higher, wanting to believe in happy endings. Wanting every grandiose, heartfelt thing he’s seen in films to course through his life with Orla, and to feel it all. To really feel it. He wants to serenade her with a boombox. To stand in the rain for the moment when they come together, water tracking down their faces. But then—like a stylus being pulled across a vinyl record—these thoughts screech to a halt and he feels suddenly ridiculous. He can almost hear Maia’s and Meg’s laughter. But then there is Cian’s voice willing him on, “Pack it in. Just go for it, son!”

because, yes, he wants to live a big and fearless life. He wants to argue because they have something worth saving. He wants to kick a skirting board in protest, and for both of them to laugh at his stubbed toes and petulance, because neither of them is scared. Because he is nothing like his father and these things will not unleash a monster hidden deep inside. Instead, he is love, and fury, and sorrow, and euphoria, and all the things that will make their story continue together.

And she nods against his chest, the dust already falling from her finger, its particles dispersing around the room, as she grips the fabric of his jacket, feels the warmth of his neck, the spring of his hair, the glorious burn of being fully loved.

Films made it seem as though love was hidden in the petals of red roses and a view of the Eiffel Tower, but he’s relieved to find it sitting side by side in the trapped warmth of a glass potting shed in Willesden, nestled in the steeped scent of compost and the first green globes of fruit on the vine. He’d told Comfort

The audio explains how contemporary art movements—even literature and cinema—have roots in this work, created in isolation, without self-censure. It goes on to discuss how the mythological god—Saturn—can be seen as the personification of feelings such as the fear of losing one’s power; that he is said to have consumed his children out of a terror of being overthrown. And then, almost as an afterthought, the narrator says that one of Saturn’s sons—Jupiter—escaped. That Jupiter’s mother protected the child, kept him safe. And that as an adult, he returned and made good on the prophecy. That the boy did indeed overthrow his father.

Gordon crouches down, touches his hands to the cool black floor and breathes in the scent of oil and aging canvas that permeates the space. He’s not sure why the painting resonates so much, or why he’s so willing to draw parallels with his own life. But he feels relief in discovering the more recent part of his story—that freedom, for him, for his mum—was hidden in it all along.