Maude and Claire
by Jennifer Walker
Claire and Maude had been together forever.
“Remember when you used to make that clicking sound with your tongue while you washed up?” Claire would say.
And Maude would say, “That used to drive you crazy! I haven’t done that in eons.”
And Claire would say, “Nonsense. You were still doing it in the Mesozoic era.”
They always had silly little arguments like that, Claire sure to correct Maude on the exact details even though in the rest of her life she was so airy and vague. And Maude — solid, dependable Maude — would chuckle along self-deprecatingly and continue with diligence whatever task was at hand.
Until one day Maude asked Claire to put away the lunch dishes.
“What? Oh yes. I will in a minute, dear,” Claire said. She was busy reading an article about the devastating flooding from a recent storm.
“Never mind,” Maude muttered and she started clearing the kitchen counter with loud, brutal movements.
It became impossible for Claire to read. She threw down her paper. “I said I’d do it, didn’t I? Darling, stop. I’m just about to do it.”
“Don’t bother.”
“Stop being so ridiculous! Look. I stopped reading. But, just so you know, this is a really important article. Things are changing, and we do have to keep up. We can’t just put blinders on and pretend like everything’s going to be all right.”
“Please, finish your article. Don’t let me stop you.” Maude shut the dishwasher door with a bang that shook the counter. “In fact, take all the time you need to read your articles. I promise I’ll never bother you again.”
With that, Maude stormed out of the house and she didn’t come back.
* * *
At first Claire waited, annoyed but hopeful, expecting Maude to walk back in calmer but chagrined. Hadn’t it been the same after their first fight during the Hadean when Maude called Claire in for dinner but she just wanted to watch the moon form for a little while longer? Yes, Maude had spent all day preparing the meal but the moon wasn’t formed every day!
Or during the Paleozoic when, instead of throwing out the mollusk shells, she followed the first vertebrate as it walked on dry land. That was historic! Or during the Cenozoic when she promised Maude she’d sweep the floor but instead got caught up listening to Sappho sing. Not such a great voice but the words, the words!
And every time Maude came back, sullen for a stretch, but Claire could always start her smiling again. Claire would promise to be better, and she would, too, for at least another few thousand years.
But now time was running out. The way Earth was changing, Claire didn’t have a few thousand years. So she worked very hard to keep the house tidy and mop the floors, even moving the furniture, and she never left a dish in the sink so that Maude would see, when she came back, how much Claire had changed.
Claire focused so much on the things she usually took for granted that time accelerated, and soon major coastal cities all across the globe had flooded, then disappeared, and decades-long drought brought unprecedented famine and still arable land became too soaked by superstorms to farm, and societies collapsed around the lack of the most basic resources.
Still, Claire kept things up as the privileged sheltered behind more and more exclusive technology until they started leaving in vast airships, headed into space. Claire watched the explosions they made in the sky because they reminded her of the beginning, when she and Maude would gaze up at the fireworks of lava and ash spewing from everywhere into the air. But she didn’t let it distract her long. She had constant work to do.
Soon there was nobody left, and it happened faster than Claire ever expected. The blink of an eye! And Maude still hadn’t come home. So Claire left, and she walked along the scorched and beaten earth, so defeated that even the simplest living things couldn’t hide the emptiness left behind.
All the cars and buildings and planes and trains and roads and tracks and bridges just sat in the dust. No vines clung to steel, no weeds sprouted through asphalt, no moss covered stone. Nature reclaimed nothing, because nature had left, too. But the sea was still there, and that’s where Claire headed.
On the edge of a cliff, above a surf so tumultuous the rocks no longer waited centuries to crumble, Claire found Maude.
“You never came home,” Claire said.
“No,” Maude agreed.
“I kept everything nice. I kept everything perfect. Clean. In its place. Spotless.”
“That’s good.”
Claire sat down next to Maude on a jagged stone and crossed her arms in front of her chest.
“I tried my hardest. I did my best.”
“I believe you,” said Maude.
Claire wanted to tell her how much her heart was broken, here, at the end of the world, with time finally having run out. Instead, she said, “But why didn’t you come home? I can’t believe you didn’t even have the decency to stop by, just once, so you could see how really well I did.”
And as the Earth made a final, thunderous crack, and the sea rose up to engulf them, Maude turned away from Claire and sighed.
Copyright © 2021 by Jennifer Walker
