Here, Here

     She was stuck. Really stuck this time. All the loose chatter that had poured from her mouth as long as she could remember had dried up.

    She knew she'd been a talker and was almost embarrassed by her ability, nay instinct, to go on and on, to fill every empty space with stories--some of them true . . . and then, and then. . .

    But now she was done. She'd said it all--nothing left to say or think. The words had stopped coming. No more descriptions of glorious meals, hilarious accidents (or mere mis-steps), no recitation of every memory, all of it now cut off in mid-thought . . . not even mid-sentence.

    She was all that was left now, too old for anybody to want to listen to her, and her throat scratchier than ever. Her voice had made the transition from sultry and sexy to parched and worn without her permission.

    So, nothing to do but watch, croak uh-huh when somebody asked her a question, to smile when smiled at, to not recoil when that unrecognizable woman claiming to be a relative--cousin of some sort . . . a dime a dozen those kind--patted her arm and whispered, "There, there."

    Yes! That's what the woman actually said. Ethel couldn't believe it, but after the third there, there, she repeated it herself, slowly, as if taking in each letter, t h e r e  t h e r e, not that easy with a one-syllable word, but she'd always been good at making something out of nothing.

    "There, there," she repeated softly, softly and shyly, then shifted cadence, went from there, there to here, here, where, where  . . . and then a there there in her best imitation of Maria Callas.

    Soon a child was singing with her, singing, "Where?" --a where that brought out Ethel's there, there more powerfully and eventually led to everybody singing, "Here here, where where, there, there--all of them clapping, harmonizing, laughing, making music, all of it nonsense, but at the end, when the chanting died down, and after the last laugh, the final sigh, somebody said, "What was that?"

    But there was no answer, just the warm feeling mammals sometimes get when everything they are part of fits together. Not bad, Ethel thought, not bad at all.