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“Maybe I just shouldn’t do it.” Tina sniffs, lifting her scarf with her chin to pull it up over her mouth. Her chestnut hair pokes out from under her hat and swirls around her cheeks.
“I think you’d regret it if you didn’t.” Bea responds, her voice measured and gentle.
“But would I?” Tina protests, “Who is it even for? It’s not like anyone will be there.”
“For yourself?” Bea argues, but with the same gentleness as before. “As little as you feel you have to say, it’s your one chance to say it.” Her words are marked with misty plumes of her own breath, dissipating between them. “And I know it’s not much, but I’ll be there too.” She says. The silence crackles and freezes in the air as they walk along the river, the grassy icicles crunching beneath their feet.
“I don’t know what to say.” The weight of Tina’s words, though uttered quietly, clink against the crisp silence, shattering it. “I’ve tried, but everything I write doesn’t feel true.” She turns her head for the first time to look at Bea, and Bea looks back at her. “The truth is that I didn’t know her, and she didn’t know me.” She looks back down at her feet, focusing on keeping her left foot parallel to the water’s edge.
“Then say that?” Bea still watches her friend’s face, mostly hidden amongst the fabric she’s cocooned in. “Go with your first, best idea, right?” She says.
Tina can feel Bea looking at her but pretends ignorance. She chews on her lip beneath her scarf, biting it harder to compose herself. She masks clearing her throat with a laugh before she speaks, in case her voice wavers.
“Yeah, right. And then what? ‘I’m the one that’s speaking here because tradition dictates that someone speaks, and despite the fact that I don’t know this person at all, she is my mother, so here we are.’ Somehow I don’t think it benefits her to say that.” Her face twitches, fighting back the frustration of her rant. She looks left towards the river, hiding herself from Bea.
“Well, what did you want her to be?” Bea asks, hooking her hand through the loop of Tina’s arm and pulling her to the right to avoid a frozen puddle.
“I don’t know,” Tina says, squeezing her arm to her body to stop Bea pulling her hand away, “so many things, I guess. But I realised a long time ago it wouldn’t happen, so-” her footsteps slow and bring them both to a halt. Bea looks at her friend, then follows her gaze upwards towards the skeletal branches of a sycamore tree, and the final seed that’s falling from it. A singular, perfect pirouette. It’s far too late, having clung on until all hope has long faded. And yet, however futile the act may be, the gentle grace in which it is performed is admirable and unadulterated. It slaloms left and right in a larger arc, buffeted by the breeze, eventually nestling in amongst the frozen blades of grass and disappearing from sight.
They stand together in silence watching the spot that it landed in. Tina’s lips tremble against her teeth. She blinks the tears away and they spill over past her open mouth that tries to speak in vain. Bea unhooks her arm and turns to embrace her, burying Tina’s face into her perfumed scarf and blonde hair, while she mourns for what could never be.
“It’s so stupid.” She sobs.
“No it’s not.” Bea hushes her, her arms wide around Tina’s puffer jacket, gripping her tightly.
“No,” her muffled response, followed by a big sniff, “I just mean that,” she pulls her head back, wiping the hairs out of her mouth, her breath staggered, “I know what I’m going to say.” She shakes her head, her jaw clenched against more tears.
Bea puts one hand in her coat pocket and fishes around for a moment, bringing out a single tissue and offering it to Tina, who accepts. She dabs her eyes and then blows her nose in a cartoonish way that makes herself laugh. And then Bea laughs too. Their eyes misty and twinkling.
“When I was a kid,” Tina begins, her words congested and thick from crying, “we had a tree like that in the garden. I remember the first time I saw the seeds falling and I was completely in awe. I used to pick them up and throw them over and over and over again.” She smiles, her eyes filling with fresh tears. Bea takes Tina’s hand in hers and smiles too, her face soft and sympathetic.
“My mum found me in the garden – which was rare because she never really came out of her room – and I ran up to her with one in my hand, asking her what they were.” Her smile quivers, and she raises her other hand to her face, wiping the tears away and rubbing her forehead. “I remember she looked at me confused and it made me feel embarrassed, like I’d asked a stupid question.” She sniffs, struggling against the tide of emotion. “But then she smiled, and she took it from me and held it up and said ‘When a fairy gets new wings, their old ones fall out of the trees, but because they’re full of magic, they fall like this.’ Then she threw it up between us and we both watched it float back down to earth.” The tears flow freely now, and Bea pulls her close to hug her again.
“I wish it could have been that.” She sobs, holding tightly onto Bea. “Why couldn’t it have just been that?”
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