A Call To Arms by Julian Walker

It was her father who first showed her. If you pointed your arms straight at two very distant points, features in the landscape, or clouds, or stars, you made yourself the centre of the universe. Everything was drawn into you, you were the fundamental point of a triangle, whose hypotenuse, a funny word at first but easy to remember once you had said it two or three times, could shift between any pair of objects, the sun and the moon, two trees, the chimney on top of the neighbours’ roof and the tv aerial on the top of her parents’ house, any two things, anywhere. It really didn’t matter, it was still a triangle, because of the one fixed point, and the two others.

And then her mother showed her how if you looked up when you were standing next to a tall building you could sense the earth moving. For her mother this was liberating, she had always wanted to travel, and a moving earth was a way she could feel she was not tied to one place. But for her daughter this was more disturbing than fulfilling. On one day when the wind was pushing clouds along fast against a clear blue sky, it made her dizzy, and even afraid she might fall off. She felt sick as she lay on the ground, her cheek pressed to the tarmac. How could she anchor herself as the still point of a triangle, the triangle might turn out to be a catapult, throwing her off out into the sky through the rushing clouds, away from what she knew.

Who could she talk to about this? Always her father seemed so sad.

– Daddy, are clouds wet? she asked. – Are they really wet like water, or just damp? If you were in one would you be able to get out? Would you come out wet or dry?

– I don’t know dear, he answered.

– Is it like mist? Would you crawl or swim?

– Daddy doesn’t know much nowadays, her mother interrupted, as she brought the food to the table. – Except how to avoid things.

Was it too much to ask of your parents, fundamental questions about the place of the earth in space, the clouds that surround it, and whether you would live through them? It seemed it was. Her parents either ignored each other, or argued. But never about clouds, or water, or the sky.

As she watched the distance between them grow, she wondered why they did not divorce. They did not even separate. She watched as the line between them, like the fluctuating hypotenuse, wavered, stretched, became faint, and sometimes straightened out. Why does it not break, she asked. Why does it never break?

– We are going to reaffirm our wedding vows, her mother said some years later.

– What the ? she managed to stop herself. By now she was used to swearing, but still not in front of them.

– Yes, it’s ok at the moment. We’re doing ok. It may keep things that way.

– Well, good luck to you. Am I involved?

– We hoped you would come along. We know it hasn’t been easy. Maybe if you had been less distant as a child it might have been easier.

– Distant? Are you sure you want me there?

– Yes. Of course.

On the day the sky was clear. There was a little haze in front of the sun, but you could see the moon way over in the opposite direction, almost transparent, a drawing in white on blue.

– See that? her father asked. – You remember that thing we used to do? The triangle?

– Yes, she said, holding out her arms, one to the moon, the other to the sky.

– It shows where we are in space, he continued. – Where the earth is.

– Yes. Where I am. Terra firma, except that it’s always moving.

– But firm, he said. And then – Be firm for us.

I could point my arms at these two people, she said to herself. I could point my arms and be a still fixed point for them. But the hypotenuse is always only the line drawn between them, not me. She kept her arms by her side and looked up at the sky.

Julian Walker

Image: pixabay.com – white fluffy clouds on a blue sky.