The Femme Fatale Hypothesis by David R Roth

Author:David R Roth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Mother’s Day

Sunday, May 10

Kel folds his section of the New York Times in half and tilts the picture of a breaching orca toward Rose. “This is a sad story,” he says.

She looks up from her crossword puzzle. “Do I want to hear it?”

“Maybe not.”

“But you want to share.”

“It’s up to you.”

“Give me a hint.”

“It’s about a mother orca.”

“And?”

“Her baby died.”

“That’s it?”

“She grieved for seventeen days.”

“Grieved? An orca?”

“That’s the point of the story. She carried her dead baby girl a thousand miles before letting her go. After growing inside her mother for a year and a half, the calf lived for just thirty minutes. The mother balanced her dead daughter on her head and swam up and down the Salish Sea, diving into the darkness to retrieve the calf whenever it slipped off.”

“That is sad,” Rose says.

“At one point, the other mothers formed a circle around her. They sang to her, soothed her. Eventually she was able to release her daughter.”

“Hmm,” Rose says. She returns to her puzzle but wonders to herself if the mother orca believed in miracles? Does she have an omniscient, benevolent orcan power she prays to and in which she places an irrational faith; one she trusts would never inflict such fierce pain on a subject as faithful and obedient as she? And has her loss shaken her faith in her omniscient? Strengthened her trust in her sisterhood? No one circled around me. No one sang songs to release my sorrow so it could drift in perfect peace to the bottom of the world. But then mine was a lima bean. Less human than a mama orca’s baby. Did I even grieve? Do I still?

Kel says, “Sorry to interrupt your puzzling.”

“Hmm,” Rose says.

***

“The bouquet my son sent me,” June explains, “is bigger than any of my vases can handle, so I divided it and brought half to you.”

“I don’t qualify,” Rose says.

June places the bouquet on the sunflower table. “Just sharing the wealth,” she says. “Spreading the joy. I know you’ll appreciate them.” She fluffs the flowers and adds, “You’ve never told me about yours.”

“Mine?”

“Your mother.”

“My mother?”

“Yes,” June says. She removes one broken stem, pinches it off at the appropriate length and threads it through Rose’s hat band. “I don’t mean to pry, but your mother’s absence in your life story is so conspicuous.”

“Conspicuous absence,” Rose says under her breath, and thinks, If she only knew how appropriate her casual observation is. Mom was here and then gone and then me and my dad were gone and then Mom was farther away…and all the time I thought I was somehow the cause of all the distance, all the going. Dad insisted that leaving was my mother’s thing. He told me he couldn’t remember a time when my mother was actually with him, even when they were together in the same room. He said it was one of the things that attracted him to her. Her flyaway personality absolved him of any responsibility to be where she was. By the time he’d get there, the slightest shift in the wind could have carried her off.

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