Jacqueline: apple/ending

"Jack, is that you?" All she can hear is static.  She waits.  "Jack?" 

The crackling on the line goes on, and she strains to hear his voice because she knows it's him.  Reluctantly, she presses 'end call'.  She walks back into the studio, phone on hand, wishing she'd brought it in with her when she'd started.  How long did the phone ring before she'd heard it?  If she's got there quicker, the bloody line might have been better.

She looks at the clay form, turns it slowly on its turntable.  It dawns on her that it looks like an enormous apple, which it patently shouldn't.  She picks it up and feels its weight.  She hasn't hollowed it out yet, and it's satisfyingly heavy.  She holds it in her left hand and with the other, feels its dry, carved smoothness.  She places it back carefully on its board, picks up the phone, and carries it back through the kitchen into the hall, and listens to the silence of the house for a few moments.  A photograph hangs above the hall table.  It's a scene of almost impossible beauty: mountains bathed in gentle evening light; a green slope of vegetation, and a familiar figure standing at its edge, above him three small words written in black.  "Peru and me!"  She  looks at the photo and smiles at his disbelief.

She thinks for a moment about going back to the clay apple, but instead, begins the walk upstairs.  The truth is that she doesn't know what she wants to do.  She's waiting, of course.  Halfway up, the phone rings again.

"Jack?"
"Hi Ma.  How's it going?"  She laughs in relief.
"Great!" she says, though of course it isn't true.  "How are you?"
"Good!", he says.  "..can't stop though.  Taken me ages to find a phone that works, then I couldn't get through..."  The line begins an ominous crackle.  "...email you....get to.......tomorrow."
"OK!" she shouts, not really understanding, and the line goes dead.

She sits, phone in hand, on the top stair, and thinks about Jack in Peru until evening gloom envelopes the house.  She hauls herself to her feet, pads into the main bedroom, and flicks on the light switch.  She walks to the oak chest, opens the top drawer, and rummages through the loose photographs until she finds what she wants.  She switches off the light, and goes downstairs into the studio, finds sellotape, and tapes the photo to the wall facing her workbench.

She sits down, and in the near dark, concentrates on the face of the man in front of her.  She remembers taking the photograph.  It had been a conscious act.  She knew that one day, she'd want to remember.  Today was that day.  She picks up the clay form in her hand, and feels its weight again.  She breathes deeply, whispers "Goodbye Robert.", then hurls the clay with such force that it explodes into fragments.  Bullseye.  She allows the laugh to escape, then pulls a new piece of clay towards her, picks up the carving tool, and begins work.