Page 26, Line 26 by Jayne Workman
Inspired by page 26, line 26 of 'Dancers on a Plane' by John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and Jasper Johns.
Late afternoon
‘The right hand side of the drawing shows an arm’, read the typeset line, perfectly framed within the oblong’s ragged edges. It was a new development. The tearing. Its neatness and purpose surprised May, the concentration and dexterity it implied so at odds with everything else.
A slim large-format book lay open on the tray, yellowed page corners licking up with age, pinned by a spine of rusting staples. Across it sprawled anatomical pencil sketches, bodies, in various poses; lounging, standing, arms up or down. And, body parts; a finger, ear or thigh. Captions in seraph italics underscored each with a distant authority, bracketed numbers and letters imposing a mathematician’s logic on creativity. One, of course, crucially, missing.
The images, forgotten for more than fifty years, took May back to her eight-year-old self, to the house, its particular atmosphere, to feelings life’s busyness had overlaid. There she was, rooted at the kitchen table, pencils spilling across its ringed surface, book spread wide, watching her mother draw, staring intently as her thick dark curls, forever working free, tumbled onto her wet cheeks, hiding her eyes.
“Hi Mum,” she said gently. “How’s your day been?”
Her mother sat on the edge of the bed in the small room, hair in loose waves now, silvery strands easily tethered by a single grip. Why this book, that page and drawing, those words, May wondered. In the silence, she felt the weight of grief but also saw a spark, lighting the way back, its occasional flicker connecting them to each other. For a little longer.
Jayne Workman