A reimagined ending to The Hours, written by Michael Cunningham*, imitating the style of the novel (also one of the assignments back in uni that I never got to publish on my personal blog). Three story-lines start at the turning point of the three protagonists' stories in the original book: Laura Brown – after her stay at the hotel; Virginia Woolf – after her attempt to runaway from home; Clarissa "Mrs. Dalloway" – after Richard's funeral.
*The Hours is a reimagined story based on Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway.
Laura Brown
Seven days have passed, recalling each detail of the hotel room is starting to seem like a laborious task for Laura’s brain. The aroma of flowery soap gradually turns into the familiar scent of cigarette and coffee that always linger on Dan’s shirt. Cool and clean bed sheets that sent shivers down her spine whenever she touched them are replaced by the fuzzy unmade bed she’s sitting on. Next to her are the couple’s blanket and the small quilt her mother sewed her when she moved in with Dan which she covers herself with sometimes. Sometimes – that is when the warmth radiating from her husband’s chest is too much to bear. It is mid-afternoon and Laura has pulled up the blinds to let the sun in. She goes to the kitchen to pick up the book she has misplaced. Everything in the house is so familiar. Too familiar. She notices the seams that are coming apart in the cushion on the stool and thinks of running an errand to get a new set for all four stools in the kitchen. The plates in the sink that Richie and Dan had the first eggs Benedict with (made by Laura in the morning) are still tainted with yolk. One edge of the stove appears to be rusting. All these novelties are too familiar to Laura. There are duties for her to do even not of her own will and there are obligations for Dan to fulfill to keep the family comfortable. Laura understands how things work. She understands too well. Just like how Dan signed up for the army, Laura signed up for a life that the women working in the grocery store downtown have waited their entire lives for.
She makes herself a cup of coffee and dumps in two sugar cubes. She has tucked Richie into bed for a nap. Laura stirs the coffee with one hand and holds up the book in another. She sits on the cushion that will soon be replaced and turns to the page with the bookmark Dan gave her.
But they beckoned; leaves were alive; trees were alive. And the leaves being connected by millions of fibers with his own body, there on the seat, fanned it up and down; when the branch stretched he, too, made that statement.
Laura takes a sip of the coffee but the hot liquid burns her lip. She puts it down in a reflex. She goes to the cupboard to get a mug and pours herself some cold water to relieve the pain. She passes the fridge and catches a glimpse of the photograph she took of Dan and the cake she made for him – his grin identical to Richie’s when she picked him up from the babysitter after coming back from the hotel. Her gaze falls upon the blue icing on the cake. It seemed perfect then. It looks slightly crooked in the photo now. She thinks of Virginia Woolf’s many attempts at the paragraph so beautiful that made her forget to blow on the coffee before drinking. Has Virginia ever attempted to bake? Laura shakes her head at her own thought. How silly! Baking a cake is too trivial for an intelligent woman like Virginia. Baking a cake is too trivial for any woman who has not a single clue of her limitless abilities. She drinks the cold water and goes back to reading.
The sparrows fluttering, rising, and falling in jagged fountains were part of the pattern; the white and blue, barred with black branches. Sounds made harmonies with premeditation; the spaces between them were as significant as the sounds. A child cried.
A child is crying. Richie is awoken from a dream. Laura goes into his room and holds him in her arms. “It’s alright baby, mommy’s here,” Laura wipes away the sweat on Richie’s forehead. “Go to sleep, mommy’s not going anywhere.” Laura takes the book to the room and sits next to Richie’s bed. She puts her hand on his hip and brushes on his baby clothes. “Mommy,” Richie raises his arm and tries to touch Laura. She holds his hand and brings it to brush his hair with her finger until Richie can no longer withstand the weight of his eyelids.
Laura pulls the blanket over Richie. As she is standing up, her elbow hits a sketch book and it falls onto the rug. She picks it up and opens it. The sketch book is almost empty; only the first two pages are filled with messy and sticky red lines of the crayon Kitty gave Richie for his birthday. Next to the box of crayons is a photo of Laura’s first birthday with Richie. He was sitting on her lap while Dan was bending forward to the birthday cake with his hand on the back of the chair she was sitting on. They had the celebration in Dan’s parents’ house. The golden frame refracts the sun that slips through the drawn blinds onto Richie’s face. Beams land on the contours of his eyes, nose and cheeks. His lashes are tinted with the gold that resembles the color of the candle lights in the photograph. Laura turns the frame to a different angle so that the light does not disturb Richie’s sleep. She places the sketchbook on the bedside table and turns to a blank page and starts writing with a blue crayon.
Richie rubs his eyes and stretches. It has been three hours since Laura sits down beside her son. She has only been able to come up with six lines, barely a stanza. Rhyming is easy, she learnt that in school. Maintaining the meter is quite challenging to Laura. There is so much to express but so little room in a poem to make possible.
Her life in silver chain
Counted in candle flames
Past the bars is a child’s
only glimpse of the wild
A lion without the mane
None but an oblivious reign
Though she has stayed in the same spot for hours, Laura feels as if something inside her has wandered up and down the whole neighbourhood, even so far that it reaches the hotel room she rented last week. She looks at the photograph and at Dan’s grin. It is the same grin as that one on the fridge. She tears off the page and folds it in two halves. “I want to wee wee,” Richie murmurs. Laura carries him down from the bed, and he walks clumsily to the bathroom. After she loses sight of her son, she takes apart the frame and slips the paper into the back of the photo, then puts the components back together. Laura opens the drawer and lays the frame down, with the photo and the poem she has written, neatly along the vertical edge. She gently closes it.
Virginia Woolf
The day after Leonard found out about her escape to the train station, Virginia wakes up to a more settling feeling that her husband is planning the move back to London. She enters the kitchen and sees Nelly’s apron covered in flour. “Good morning, Mrs. Woolf,” Nelly turns to Virginia and tries to wipe her hands on the white cloth hanging in front of her body which only results in dusting the powder onto the floor. “Morning. Have you seen Leonard?” Virginia looks at the dough under the rolling pin, avoiding eye-contact. She forces herself to bring her gaze on Nelly, as she convinces herself that there is nothing to be embarrassed about making the decision to run away to the train station. “He has gone to the post office,” Nelly turns back to flattening the dough. Virginia sits down at the table and drinks her tea as she watches Nelly pressing at the bread she’s making with all her force. Virginia has never learnt how to bake. She can cook, but she is not good at it. She sips at her tea quietly as she tries to block the birth of the idea that Nelly holds contempt towards her for not being able to bake or to send the mails herself. She imagines Vanessa paying her a visit and joins Nelly with the baking. Her sister is so different from her. Virginia understands the importance of making food, gathering leaves and picking rotten tomatoes. She understands that there are things to do that seem to have little impact at the hours that she does them, but will eventually build up to influence the next hours tremendously. Virginia thinks that everything domestic is associated with pragmatism. And she is not pragmatic, she hears voices and sometimes believes them. Leonard though, he is practical. He listens to the scientific, and arranges a new life for her here and soon in London that somehow will seem to work out perfectly. He sorts out editorial matters when Virginia is too busy with selecting the pieces of imaginations that run in her head; that run in that dome of suffering. Virginia contemplates the social expectations of men and women. She thinks of her character. Mrs. Dalloway will not abide by the limits of the world she exists in. She will be both notional and practical. She will be feminine with people and masculine with her everyday responsibilities.
Clarissa “Mrs. Dalloway”
The flowers are still there next to Richard’s tombstone when Clarissa visits him the week after the funeral. Editors and old friends showed up that day – even Walter and Evan who’s in a wheelchair. Laura was there too. She sat alone in the front seat silently throughout the ceremony. She did not weep. She looked smaller than she did at the party that night after Richard leapt out of the window. The mourners; all of them black; came with different kinds of flowers; a bunch of colors. Dead yet vibrant with life. Clarissa gathered them in a bundle; they had left their soil and they had come here to rot with him. The flowers had their hours. The flowers, such an important triviality that we always remember to bring, will eventually sink into oblivion when the mourners leave.
“There’s no more voices, Richard, there is only peace now,” Clarissa whispers as she touches the carvings on the tall concrete. She brushes her finger across the little dash between the two years – the tiny horizontal line that contains Richard’s hours. She removes her hand in a split second because the heat of the sun that has radiated at it is too much for her to bear.
Clarissa goes back to Richard’s apartment to tidy up his belongings. This room is still familiar; too familiar to her. But like Richard, this place will disappear in the coming space time. It will be rented out to someone new; probably a foreigner who is on a business trip. The chair will be gone and the wallpapers will be taken down. An immense ache hits her in the chest when she’s piling up the drafts. She suddenly feels reluctant to carry on with what she has been doing. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we’ve been. Clarissa’s mind keeps replaying Richard’s last words. They are so persistent. She wishes she had been able to say something in return, something to make him stay. Has she really been happy? Had they been? Happy is not happy unless juxtaposed with sorrow. But God, she tries. She tried so hard to show Richard, too. And she knows that he knew. He called her Mrs. Dalloway; said she had the heart of a mother and the soul of a fighter. He admired her efforts at life, at living.
One morning when Clarissa visited Richard with a new coat, she found him sitting beside the window shedding a tear. Clarissa laid the coat down on the bed, almost as if she was throwing it. She rushed to him who was sitting so sternly on his favorite chair. “Is everything okay?” Clarissa asked with concern, while closing the window in front of him. “Leave it open, love,” Richard demanded. She followed the direction of his gaze and her eyes fell upon a tree across the street. Its leaves were red and yellow, like maples. But there weren’t maples where they lived. It was only a withering tree telling the neighborhood of the arrival of Fall. “Why haven’t I seen this tree earlier? Such a beauty, isn’t it, Mrs. D?” Richard asked Clarissa in awe. “Yes, indeed,” she noticed the details of it. The gold-plated leaves swayed in the soft wind and the tree was dancing, as if it had a mind of its own. “What a pity if it was left with no one to love it after I die, isn’t it?” Richard’s voice trembled as his eyes were growing watery again. “Oh, don’t be silly,” she put a hand on his shoulder. It was just a tree. Its leaves would fall and new leaves would emerge when Spring came. The gold would be gone and green would take over. It’s a cycle of life. It’s inevitable. It’s just a tree with golden leaves at this hour; it wasn’t Meryl Streep whose hours would go on and on even when her entire face was covered with wrinkles or when she’s dead.
Clarissa lets out a long sigh and brings herself to continue with piling up the drafts. She wonders if Richard would want her to publish these raw sketches or their edited versions. She wonders if Richard would want her to publish them at all. Amongst the messy handwritten paper, there’s a thick one with creases – almost as thick as a drawing canvas. There’s a poem on it but the first few lines are written with a fading blue. It’s almost like paint but thicker. The lower half of the poem is scribbled with thin lines of a pen. These handwriting look different. Perhaps they’re written by two different people.
Her life in silver chain
Counted in candle flames
Past the bars is a child’s
only glimpse of the wild
A lion without the mane
None but an oblivious reign
Her grasp of an open sky
Trapped in the child’s eyes
Fire will yield to the rain
Sorrow runs in our veins
Beyond the cage is pain
Our gold will not remain
Clarissa folds the paper along the old creases and slips it into her pocket. She decides to send it to the publishers after showing it to Laura. The gold will not remain, but Richard’s hours will.
