The Marble Collector

31

I wake up feeling like I’ve lived a thousand lives in my dreams. Fragmented memories linger in the moment I first open my eyes then delicately disintegrate like a morning frost in the sunrise. The ghosts of the past and present and their voices begin to diminish as I take in my surroundings. It’s not Scotland where I have images of green and grass, lakes and rabbits, my da’s hunched shoulders, sad eyes and the smell of pipe smoke; it’s not St Benedict’s Gardens where I woke up every morning as a child with another brother’s feet pushed up against my face as we sleep top to toe in bunk beds. Not Aunty Sheila’s bungalow on Synnott Row where we woke up on the floor of her house for the first year after arriving in Ireland, not Gina’s ma’s home in Iona where we slept for the first year of our marriage while we saved up enough money to buy our own, and not the home we lived in during our marriage. It is not the apartment that I lived in alone for so many years that for the first time in a long time is now so vivid to me and I can hear the calls and shouts from the football field beside me as I lie on on a Saturday and Sunday morning. Nor is it the bedroom I slept in with Cat, the one that feels orange and warm, sweet and glowing when I close my eyes. I’m here in the hospital, my home for the past year, the place where up until some time yesterday I was content to be in, to stay and call home. But I have a feeling now, no not a feeling, an urge, to leave. This is an empty place and outside is full, whereas before I felt the opposite. There has been a shift in my mind, something has moved ever so slightly, but that slight movement has had seismic implications. I feel hungry to know, where before I felt full. I want to hear now, where before I was deafened. In fact I had deafened myself. Self-imposed, for protection, I assume. Dr Loftus will tell me. We have a session this morning.

This change does two things to me. It makes me feel hope and it makes me feel hopeless. Hope that I’ll get there, hopeless that I can’t get there now.

My mouth is dry and I need water. I look around for my glass of water which is usually on my bedside locker, on the right side so that they make me practise moving my right arm. Where there is usually just my glass, I see a marble. A large, beautiful royal blue marble. It is lit up by the morning light coming through the window and it takes my breath away. It is a sight to behold, its beauty, its elegance, its perfection, such a rarity.

It is a sphere of the world. Within its royal blue ocean there lies a map of the earth, created to perfect proportions. The land, mountains, in browns, sandy and honey colours, every continent, country accounted for, every island. There are even wispy white clouds in the northern hemisphere. The entire world has been captured inside this marble. I reach over with my left hand to pick it up, I will not risk using my weakened right side, not at such a moment, for such a task. I turn it around, inspecting every inch. The islands intact, the ocean seems to glow from the inside. There is not a scratch, not a scuff. It is perfect. What a marvel, what a marble. Larger than usual, it is 3.5 inches in diameter, I let it sit in the palm of my hand, it’s big and bold. I sit up, pull myself up, heart pounding at the discovery, I must get my glasses to see. They are on the bedside locker to my left, easier to reach for. I see, once they are on, that there is a note. I place the marble on my lap carefully and reach for the note with my left hand, a strain to reach so far and I must be careful not to knock the marble to the floor, which would be catastrophic.

I reach for it and settle back to read.

Dad,

You have the world in the palm of your hand.

Lots of love,

Sabrina