The Last Paragraphs

6.01.2008

We were given the assignment in my class to write the last two paragraphs of our novel. Here's what I came up with:


For Ava there were no more questions, no more crying out. She wanted nothing now. It seemed to Randy that her face held the glow of a martyr. That soft light shone from it. The anger had bled from her, the mourning, the pain. Her face was clear and new, and terrifyingly empty. There was no cause, no music, no need to shout or beseech. There was only Ava, staring blindly ahead, bereft of hope, of even affection towards her daughter. Lenny tugged on Ava’s leg, her gaze into her mother’s face desperate and imploring. Randy knew that when it came time for them to separate, Lenny would throw a fit, howling and scratching at him with her nails. She would hate him then, indeed, it had already started. She would fester a hate for him in her grim little body. Lenny held onto Ava’s leg, shaking it softly, “momma, momma, momma.” Ava did not hear her, even this had fallen away. She stared blankly ahead, mute because there was no audience.

Ava understood then about despair. That in the one excruciating moment, when Christ arched his back, strained against the bloody metal in his feet and pulled against the metal in his hands, sucking in enough air to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” this was not despair. The very impulse to shout out, to want something to respond, this was anger and fierce hope. Despair, she knew, is the moment afterwards, when Christ sank back down and died of the silence. It’s when you know that nothing happened, no one responded, and you do not think to call out again because now you know that no one is actually there.