The Secret World of Maya Alexander

Chapter 28

Jackie was hopeful that the train journey through the Alps would reinvigorate her daughter after a quiet few days in Lucerne where she had begun to grow increasingly concerned about Maya's distance. She had felt so much more hopeful at the onset of their journey in London. Maya had seemed more responsive than Jackie had seen her in a long time, perhaps ever.Those brief moments seemed like a farway memory as Jackie had watched the return of a much more familiar scene. Long silences, glazed eyes, a soul which seemed almost not there at all. Jackie had tried so hard to draw her daughter's attention to the things that she knew she loved. The historic buildings within the old town, with their half timber structures and their quaintly painted fronts. The famous Chapel Bridge. Constructed entirely of wood but sadly reconstructed when much of its original features were allegedly destroyed by a discarded cigarette. 'What a terrible sign of our times!' Jackie had sighed, certain that Maya would have something to say about the lack of appreciation for historic beauty, or the frenzy and pace of life which meant that people were too busy to notice or care about the world around them and the people beside them.

In fact, she remembered a time when Maya would be envirgrated with intense rantings about the state of the world and its people. A time when these passionate rantings used to punctuate her long silences. Jackie was never sure which made her feel more helpless, the cutting edge of her daughter's words or the knife edge of her silence. At the time,, Jackie had often felt as though Maya's words were a direct reference to her own inadequacies as a mother, because she had been too busy managing bills and work to be there with her daughter in her grief.

Of course Maya never said that. In fact, she did not blame her mother or anyone else for her sense of being or not being within the world. She had always felt a disconnect with people and her rantings existed during a time when she still felt naive enough to openly express that she did not understand people. A time when she still believed that this feeling she had could be temporary. When she thought that maybe one day she would understand. Or even that maybe she could change the world, or at least a few people in it, so that they could understand. A time long ago when she believed that connectedness was still a possibility and that she may even find a group of people who would hear her words and say 'me too'.

Jackie's hope that the burned down bridge would ignite some of Maya's passionate dismay at the people of the world, had instead been responded to with a silent shrug as they walked to the other side. Silent, except for the patter of their feet; over the old and the new, the ancient and recrafted, with Maya not even seeming to notice. Jackie received a similar response when they ventured to the macabre painting of the plague at Spreuer Bridge. Nothing had stirred Maya  from her single word responses. Not the wonder of history or art, not even the magnificent lakes or distant mountains.

Well, if there had been a stirring, it was not one which Jackie could perceive. Just like the holiday memories she had stored behind the half truths of photograph albums which belied a happy story of a mother and her three daughters; on a plane, at the beach, in the sea. They were staged to help with the fairytale of how things were supposed to be. No one could see behind their eyes and into their minds. The albums contained no photos of a teenage girl staring for hours at the sea, or a mother pacing the pool unable to enjoy her latest book. And if those photos had existed, what would people see? Would they see a girl staring at the ocean with eyes full of silence and emptiness, or was there something more when she looked as though she was gazing into the abyss? Was she staring into the face of freedom? Did the ocean whisper 'me too'?

In fact, Maya's silence through the streets of Lucerne was a cloak which helped her hide the voices battling to be heard inside her mind. Voices telling her what a terrible selfish person she was. Voices telling her she was weak. Sympathetic voices, arguing she had suffered. Louder voices telling her she was not the only one. And beneath all the voices a mellow hum chanted relentlessly, 'call yourself a psychologist?!' There was a point halfway across the Chapel Bridge when the onslaught in her brain became a senseless din. The voices became an incoherent ringing and for a moment Maya had heard her mother say, 'I wonder where it all started? I wonder if it is true? A cigarette burning down a piece of history?'

The moment may have gone unseen by Jackie, but at that precise moment, Maya's vision, which had until then been blurred by the cacophony in her head, became razor sharp. In the distance, upon the restored part of the bridge she saw a small bird and heard its almighty call. It was a blue jay. He stood tall and had seemed to look directly at her, as he shrieked aggressively 'look what the humans did' and spat out a discarded cigarette before darting out from the covered bridge and across the vast River Reuss, its long blue tail beckoning its silent audience of just one to follow.

Perhaps there had been no outward sign of the internal fluctuations that had befallen, as Maya walked to the other side of the bridge with her mother. It had seemed as though the same silence had confronted the world from the start to the end. Yet the silence which had wrapped itself around Maya to keep all the noise inside from spilling out into incoherent ramblings, which could never be unsaid, had loosened its grip. It was as though something had unlocked the chain which had tightened around her soul. Maya felt the voices in her head empty as she was left with a vast open space of possibility. But her mind did not make room for her mother or for the history and art of Lucerne. Instead it became filled with the image of a blue and white bird, flying across the vastness of a river, out towards the mountain. Her eyes followed the bird until it became no more than a speck in the distance.

And a helpless mother had watched on at the distant stare in her daughter's eyes and told herself that tomorrow would be a new day. Tomorrow they would take a train through the mountains. Tomorrow could be different.