Rachel Davey
The Last of the Geese
June 2020:
I return to my grandfather’s cabin, hoping I won’t burn upon entry. It’s a sacred place, more peaceful than any incense-burning church. The scents here are more subtle: the elusive vanilla of the white oaks, the hidden honey of the dogwoods. But I haven’t come out here to worship, only to hide, or maybe to punish myself. A life-sentence of loneliness well-deserved.
The cabin is dustier than I remember, but none of us have been out here since my grandfather died earlier this year. I’m lucky none of the forest animals have decided to make a home of it. During one of my long summers out here as a child, a black bear approached the cabin looking for food. My grandfather hooked his gun over his shoulder, but he didn’t shoot. He only sat me on his knee and made me watch as it padded up to our windows and sniffed at the food inside. I curled into his arms, tried to hide my face in his chest, but he pulled my chin up.
“The moment you’re seen,” he said. “You’re dead.”
I froze, desperate not to draw attention to myself. Suddenly, something grabbed my shoulders from behind. I screeched. My tin mug clattered to the floor and tears burst from my eyes, but I only heard my grandfather’s bright laugh. He released me, and the bear ran off into the trees, frightened by the noise. I sobbed and sobbed, while my grandfather laughed.
“Oh, come on,” he said, patting my back. “You’re braver than that.”
But I don’t think I ever was.
Last year, everything was so bright. I didn’t notice it then, didn’t notice the effervescence weaving its way through every moment. Looking back, I see it so clearly I can almost touch it, but every time I reach out, I fall through time again and land back in the gray.
I can picture Katie sprawled out along our broken couch, a glass of red wine clutched in her fist. She always drank it like that, hanging onto the thin neck with a white-knuckled grip. She was forever worried things might slip through her fingers. I was careless though, and spilled my wine that first night on the floor, a dark red blood stain that would never come out.
“Christening our home,” Katie said through her laughter.
“It’s like the ‘euphoria,’ or whatever that church thing is,” I replied, touching my hand to my lips then to the floor.
Katie sat up. “You mean the eucharist?”
“Yeah, that.”
“Holy shit, Jo. My parents would kill you if they heard that.”
But then she laughed, and I did too, and it was always like that: when we started laughing we couldn’t stop. She was my best friend, she was everything to me. We smoked a joint on our back patio before falling asleep on the hardwood floor of her room. We hadn’t put our bed frames together yet. We didn’t even own any mattresses. When I think back on that moment, I don’t know if I’m picturing Katie’s room as it was on the first day or the last. The empty closet and the spotless shelves. Two boxes waiting by the door.
Endings and beginnings look so similar, don’t you think?
It’s silent those first days in the cabin. I’m too scared to leave. I sit in my own sweat, refusing to buy an air conditioning unit. Part of my self-imposed punishment, or maybe I just don’t want to spend any money. I don’t trust my own intentions.
On the third day, I find a dress under the bed. It must have once been my grandmother’s. She’d lived out here for a short time before the divorce, before my grandfather refused to leave. I toss the dress over my head, though it smells like moth balls. I tie my hair back too, and decide that today I will find the pond my grandfather used to take me to.
My feet tread the path as naturally as they once did, bare in the sticky summer. The water is murky, and the shores are all mud with reeds sticking out of the ground like a trap set for barefoot walkers. I tiptoe through them. A gaggle of geese honks from the other side of the water, and I put my hands up in a signal of submission.
“Keep to your side and I’ll keep to mine,” I say to them, and I like the way my voice sounds among the noises of the forest. Quiet and unimportant, I almost blend in.
I dip my toe into the pond.
You’re so natural, Aidan always said to me. He’d like this dress. The loose fit of the fabric, the delicate pattern of the flowers, both rejecting femininity and embracing it.
I tear it off and jump into the water.
So spontaneous, he whispers in my ear. Not like anyone else I’ve ever met.
I used to skate on this pond in the winters I visited my grandfather. The first time he taught me, my foot caught on a snag of uneven ice. My body keeled over faster than I could put my hands up to stop it. Everything was suddenly so cold, except for a warm stream of liquid at my lips, overflowing. I still remember it. The drops of blood, red and thick on the surface of the pond, and how I worried it might melt the ice, and I would fall through, but my grandfather only scooped me up in his arms.
“I knew you could do it,” he said, and I went back out on the ice the very next day.
Everything was mine: the forest, the pond, the world my grandfather unveiled to me, the bravery he instilled in me that I clutched to my chest like a precious secret. Mine. Mine alone.
Now, a stranger comes with me wherever I go like a watchful shadow. He is an every man, blends into every crowd. He has no defining features. Often, when I turn back to look at him, he dons a mask of Aidan’s face. He opens his mouth to speak to me, the black of his gums thick with gloppy drool, canines elongating into savage fangs.
I always climb, for better or for worse, into the mouth of the beast.
Fall 2017:
We met Aidan sophomore year. He was a film student; he wore black denim jeans with a carabiner latched onto one of the belt loops. He had a gelled mullet of dark curls and would say things like, That’s so Wes as if he knew the director personally, or, I’m waiting on someone to really inspire me as if the whole world were in auditions to be cast as important characters in his life.
Somehow, despite the absurdity I found in it, I’d catch myself trying out for the role of Muse. I would slightly alter my appearance when I knew he was going somewhere with us. I’d loose the perfect strand of hair, spend hours on a “natural” makeup look. I’d laugh harder with my head tossed back when I spotted him across the dining hall.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” he told me one day.
“Oh, there are lots of people like me,” I said, baiting the explanation:
“You’re just different. You have that aura about you,” he said, words as natural as scripted lines. “When someone meets you, they know you’re special. It’s a magnetism.”
I thought, even then, that the only compliments men had to offer were isolating. If I wanted to keep his attention, I had to be distinct from my peers, special, and yet, I also had to keep up with them. I could not be friendless, unattached, but I must always keep a small distance, glow just a little brighter.
“Thanks, Aidan,” I said. “I’ll be sure to not let it go to my head.”
“You should,” he told me. He reached across the table and squeezed my hand with higher meaning. When he left, I smiled, rolled my eyes.
“He likes you!” Katie shouted later that night.
“He has the emotional intelligence of a six year old,” I spat.
“That’s why I only date seniors,” Katie said. At 19, a 22 year old seemed to us the height of maturity. Katie brushed thick mascara against her eyelashes, adjusted her silver dress. I tugged the strings of my sweatshirt so the hood framed my pale, miserable face. I’d told Katie about Aidan as a sort of brag, See! Our friend likes me. I’m the special one.
It felt silly now as I watched her get ready for a date. I was always so obsessed with being unreachable, but Katie was warm and open. I was somewhat pretty, and people liked me at first for my scorn and sarcasm, but they loved Katie eventually.
How can you like me? I wanted to screech at Aidan. You hardly know me!
But even in my own mind it sounded more like resignation than a battle cry.
You don’t know me, I’d say, because what good was there to know?
Fall 2020:
I try calling Katie on Thanksgiving, selfishly hoping she’ll be in the mood to forgive me. The phone rings on and on until I hear her voice and my heart jumps—but it’s just her voicemail.
“Hi,” she says, then she giggles, and I hear my own laughter in the background too. “This is Katie, and if you’re calling to offer me a job, then I gladly accept.”
More giggling. Her father had nagged her for years to make a professional voicemail greeting, and senior year, this had been her response. Katie had always known what she wanted to be: an actress, and she was good at it, a natural. She’d never cared for a real job like her father wanted for her, and this had been her final fuck you before moving to Los Angeles. Aidan would have moved with her, but I ruined that for the both of them.
“Thanks so much,” she says. “I’m sure we’ll talk soon.”
The voice message cuts out just after another round of laughter, but I hang up before I have to say anything.
The air is growing cold here. I sit by the space heater, wrapped in a blanket, and think of the winter my parents left me here over the school break so they could ski in the Alps. My grandfather wrapped me up tight in parkas and scarves and blankets. I slept like that, unable to move in all the layers of protection. My grandfather stayed up all night, tending to the lonely fire.
“What if you come home for a while?” my stepmom asks on the phone. I hear the worry in her voice. “Los Angeles is still warm. Invite Katie to stay and you girls could go swimming. We’ll have a vaccine soon enough.”
“No, no,” I reply quickly, imitating the forced lightness of her tone. “I’m okay out here. Next Thanksgiving I’ll be there.”
“I don’t think your grandfather would want you out there all alone. Aren’t you scared?”
Only of my shadow, I think. I feel his breath on my neck, and I almost lean into it. A chill runs up my spine, tingles in my ears.
“Grandpa’s dead, so.” I pause. She doesn’t reply. “I’m fine, Jane. Really.”
There’s movement in the corner of my eye. I glance quickly over my shoulder, but it’s only an old tree dancing in the wind, its branches crooked and reaching toward me like the gaunt arms of a skeleton. No one’s watching me. No one cares.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay, sweetie. I’ll call you tomorrow. I love you.”
“Love you too,” I say, but I’m already distracted again.
I stare at the tree, and its last lonely leaf falls. It held on for a good while, never quite ready to let go of the summer glow, but it’s mid autumn now. It’s time. The leaf tumbles and sways in the soft breeze. How tenderly it touches the ground. How gently they rest against one another. Completely at ease, there are no questions asked, and so, there are none left unanswered.
If my back had been turned, the leaf would still have fallen. It would still have done what it’s supposed to do, which is to die and then to be reborn. Watched or not, every year the leaves surrender to the cycle of the seasons. It could be so simple for me too, if only I could cease my desire to be the tree.
Spring 2018:
I started seeing Aidan everywhere. There—at the Boylston green line! I hurried to catch up with him, even maneuvered myself into the same train car. As the train took off, I looked around to find him, but he wasn’t there at all. It was just another melancholic brunette with his hands tucked into the pockets of a Carhartt coat.
When I was at the dining hall, I’d only half focus on the other people at my table. One eye was always fixed on the crowd of passersby, but he rarely appeared. I’d spend an hour picking out what to wear to a party, knowing he could possibly be there, wondering what he’d think of this black tank top versus another. Should I wear the dress, or was it trying too hard?
My laughter quickly became his too. When I felt it bubbling up my chest, that natural expression of joy, I’d think of telling him about this time I laughed, or this one! I read more in public places, choosing books I thought might pique his interest if he found me casually splayed on one of the library’s couches: Otessa Moshfegh, Emily Brontë. I went on a hike with Katie, and as she stared silently at the great landscape of fire-leaved trees, I took photos to show Aidan the next time we saw him.
It reminds me of my grandfather’s cabin, I’d say, casually warping something sacred. My parents used to leave me there with him all summer.
But when Aidan actually turned up, I felt oddly disgusted by him. I’d picture his hand wrapped around mine, that embarrassing admission of affection. I’d been a distant thing, I thought, untouchable. A figment of his imagination, someone who was ever interesting, untainted by the monotony of a real life. I’d wanted to remain mythical, illusive, an image through the smoke, but he’d reached his hand through it. He’d touched the real thing, and now when he looked at me, I recoiled.
He was hopeful like a child, wanting our love story to play out like the movies he’d seen, like the movies he wanted to write. It was a thought that both endeared and repulsed me. It was as if all my previous casual flirtation had been a test to see if he would fall for the false image I’d presented. He’d passed with flying colors. He’d failed pathetically.
“Maybe he’ll write a movie about you,” Katie said to me. I found the idea flattering, embarrassing.
“I hope not,” I told her.
“Seriously? You wouldn’t like to be written about?”
“You’re the actress.”
“That reminds me! I got a role in a film.” She showed me an email on her phone, and I skimmed it, unable to stop the quick burst of jealousy in my chest.
“A Thousand Red Ponies?”
“It’s one of those pretentious student films.” Katie nervously bit a nail. Looked up at me. “But it’s something, right?”
“It’s amazing!” I said, and I hugged her. “I’m so proud of you. Really.”
I was both gratified and perplexed that she needed my encouragement. I was an odd sort of self-conscious egoist in those days, imagining myself with a great power over Aidan, yet inconsequential to everyone else. It seemed impossible that someone could remember what I looked like, and it was always a bit of a shock when someone recognized me, when someone cared what I thought. I felt as though I could stand in front of a friend all day and they’d always be looking at the distance just over my shoulder. I could punch an acquaintance in the face at a party, and they’d wake up without a bruise.
Oh, I get tired of going over and over it in my head. Is it like this when everyone is young, insecurity ruling their every interaction? Back then, I liked to believe this kind of misery made me special, that the payoff would be enormous, when really, all I ever did was hurt the people I loved in my desperate attempt to be seen.
December 2020:
Katie and I used to tell a story about the man in the mirror. It was a rip off of another one we’d heard about a man who lived in the attic of a family’s home. He used to come downstairs when they were out, eat their food, read their books, watch their TV. He’d act like it was his home. For a while, he hardly bothered anyone. A missing apple, the remote left not on the coffee table but between the couch cushions, a spill in the kitchen that no one would own up to. But as time went on, the man grew confident. He’d come downstairs when the mother was home, tiptoe around her like a ballet dancer. He traced her every movement like a shadow, and all she could feel was a little thrill at the nape of her neck.
In Katie’s and mine version, the man lived inside the mirror of our first apartment. He watched us while we brushed our teeth, and we danced for him to whatever pop song was our favorite at the moment. He was a joke to us, he just wanted to be our friend. It was a warped version of the fear that we were always being watched, by the men we knew, by each other, by ourselves. It was a satire, a parody, the only way to control our own perceptions of ourselves.
It doesn’t feel so funny anymore. I feel him with me as I watch the first snow from the cabin’s windows. His face presses into the crook of my neck. A second set of eyes, always more important than my own. My hand twitches for my phone automatically, and I take a photo. I could upload it to my social media, wait for Aidan’s icon to show he’s viewed the story.
“No phones!” my grandfather would snap when I got older. I took videos of myself in the cabin, making sure to include my journal and pen, the ceramic coffee mug on the desk by the window. I made a playlist of my grandfather’s old, rare records to play when I returned to school. I wore ridiculous outfits on the ice, my phone leaning against some dead tree on self-timer mode, snapping photos as I traced paths along the pond.
“My grandpa taught me how to light a fire with a flint,” I told Aidan once, and he laughed.
“You’re one of a kind,” he said. “Can you teach me?”
I only shrugged. I’d forgotten how.
I throw my phone on the bed and march out into the forest. My feet crunch on the dead grass beneath me. I wear tennis shoes, shorts and a sweatshirt, but I don’t feel the cold. I take one step, then another. My pace increases until I’m running, desperate to lose my shadow in the trees. I can smell the dead rot of his breath, he’s that close, he’s nipping at my heels.
The wind whips against my face. Flushed cheeks, pink ears. Katie and I used to love the winter, like free blush, she’d say, and I loved the feeling when the door opened to wherever we might be going, and that frigid wind blew into the heated room, and everyone would stop and look at us. I always adjusted my hair just before we went in. I was a natural at faking natural.
My breath is heavy when I get to the pond, but I’ve not yet spent my energy, and so I run a lap around it, another. I taste steel in the back of my throat and swallow it thickly. For the first time in a while, I don’t think. I just run.
I only stop when I see the goose. She sits alone at the edge of the water, wings tucked closely to her side. I wonder why she hasn’t flown away for winter with the rest of her flock, unsure if it’s normal for one to be left behind.
She doesn’t take an interest in me as I near the pond. I tap my foot on the edge to gauge how solid it is. The moment I touch the ice, it crumbles into tiny flecks of snow and melts. I smile as I watch the water ripple out and away from me. It's slow and thick like dark syrup, and I think of my grandfather, how we used to come out here everyday of my winter break to test the ice.
I miss him less here than I did in Boston. Here, there are still traces of him that will always remain. In the snowfall, in the wind song, in the chill at the end of my fingers. He is all around me. He is beside me, a comforting presence rather than a watchful one. He knew how to be alone, my grandfather. Everyone pitied him all the years he spent out here after his and my grandmother’s divorce, but he never seemed tragic to me. He seemed at peace inside his own body, inside his own mind.
He used to walk with me every morning to the only supermarket nearby. He’d buy me strawberry milk and we’d spend an hour there while he meandered down every aisle, picking out the right ingredients for whatever meal he would make for us that night. I’d never seen anyone take their time like him.
A tear slips from my eye and I catch it in my bare hand. The remnants of it freeze on my eyelashes, and I feel the cold again. My shadow catches up with me. I wish someone could see me now, how beautiful I look with snow-framed eyes. A delicate snow princess, a deranged damsel in distress—who runs out into the cold without a coat? I’m different, I’m special, I’m beautiful, and, most importantly, I’m in pain.
Fall 2019:
I didn’t know, even by senior year, who I wanted to be, and I didn’t think anyone felt the same way. The problem with a liberal arts school was the congestion. People’s dreams oppressed every room. Their hopes hung in the air like e-cigarette clouds, and I never had any room to breathe. I hyperventilated any time I opened my mouth to speak.
Every poet already had three pieces published, every actor had a scene, and every artist had a show. I was a measly English major with no propensity for creative writing. I simply enjoyed reading and overanalyzing; I had no dreams of grandeur, no ideas for the future.
“I’m worried I don’t have a passion,” I told Katie. We were sitting on the back patio of our apartment, passing a joint back and forth. It was a Saturday night, but we couldn’t be bothered to go out. It seemed as if we had many weekends before us, and the ones behind us were all busts anyway. We were in that great middle ground between growing up and being grown. It was a treat to remain in the present for just one night, though I did notice Katie kept glancing at her phone and smiling.
“What do you mean? You love skating,” she said.
“Yeah, but skating’s not an important life skill.”
“Okay. But what really is?” She took a long drag on the joint then handed it to me.
“I mean, it’s not a career. At least not for me.”
“You like reading too.” She sat up a bit straighter, tapped a finger against her chair. “What about editing books or something?”
“I guess.” I sighed, unsure of what I meant. It wasn’t career advice I wanted, or really, anything logical. What I wanted was reassurance.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Katie insisted. I stubbed out the last of the joint and watched the smoke swirl up into the cool night.
“It’s just not a purpose. Everyone I know, they have a purpose. For you, it’s acting. For Aidan, it’s screenwriting. For me, it’s what? Reading? That’s not a purpose. It’s a hobby.”
I wasn’t like Katie, I thought. She was different: her life sprawled ahead of her like the great open fields of the Kansas she was born in. The landscape of it was so flat and the sky so clear she could see years out ahead of her. I imagined my future as more of a dark, mountainous terrain, with the stars and moon shrouded in fog so I couldn’t see the way.
“Acting is not my purpose.” Katie laughed. “It’s something I love, but it’s not like I was sent here to do that. People who claim they were made to do something are idiots. You just do it. You just do what makes you happy, and that’s that. There’s no hierarchy in it. Reading is a fine thing to make you happy. It’s a fine purpose if that’s what you want to call it.”
“Maybe I’m not meant to be happy,” I said. Katie paused for a moment, looked at me, and then she laughed.
“Shut up!” she said, and I broke half a smile.
“It’s just graduation blues.”
Katie laughed again and shook her head.
“I swear, Jo,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like you want a chip on your shoulder.”
“Why would I want that?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Just so you have something to fight against.”
There was an awards show our school hosted every fall, and that year, Katie was nominated for four honors. She took me as her date, and she won and accepted each of the awards with that grace of hers that seemed so rare to me. I stood and cheered and smiled like the good friend I wished I was, but all the while I was somewhere else. Mostly, I was listing possible careers in my head, possible things I could be good at. What did I even like to do?
Marketing? I didn’t have the charm. Writing? I didn’t have the discipline. Teaching? I didn’t have the motivation. Each one I listed roused a flurry of anxiety in my chest as my options for the future dwindled and dissipated like sparks off a fire. They blinked out in an instant.
After the show, Aidan met us at a bar on Commonwealth Avenue. He’d dressed up for the occasion and gave Katie a card and flowers.
“Hey,” he said to me, and I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. He looked at Katie. “You want a drink?”
She stared up at him through her eyelashes, and to my surprise, she blushed.
“Gin and tonic, please,” she said. When he left, she took a long inhale of the roses he’d bought for her.
“Guess you’re the object of his affection for the time being,” I said bitterly. I wanted it to come off like a joke, but I didn’t mean it that way.
Katie’s eyes flicked up to mine. “He liked you so long ago, Jo,” she snapped. “It was actually just really nice of him to get me something. Not everything has a deeper motive.”
“Okay,” I said. “Jeez. It was a joke.”
“Not very funny,” she muttered under her breath, but then Aidan came back, and he’d bought me a beer, and I downed it quickly and bought another, because I was suddenly embarrassed.
I felt again that disdain from so long ago, the same variety I’d held for Aidan’s crush on me. This time, I felt it for myself, because as I watched the two of them—Katie with a flushed face, Aidan running a finger over her wrist—I realized I was no longer the axle on which the group spun. The distance that had first pulled Aidan toward me had now done its work in pushing him away. Right into Katie’s arms.
I felt betrayed for no good reason, and I wanted to go home. I told them I didn’t feel well and walked out alone. I thought to myself that they didn’t seem to care. They’d moved their chairs close so that their knees could touch. Maybe Aidan had been the one Katie was texting the other night.
On the way home, I played sad music in my headphones. I wanted to feel like I was in a movie, like my purpose would reveal itself to me if only I let it play out. I wanted to be watched, too, wanted the camera to move in close, close enough to see the moon reflected in my tears, the trails of mascara streaming dark, dramatic lines down my face. That was the only way any of it mattered, I thought. What is a tear when no one sees? What is a laugh? A smile? Nothing, I thought. Nothing but a yelp into a pitiless oblivion.
I cried all the way home and took photos of myself in the mirror. I’d send them to Katie later with the caption, not this again! I swiped through the pictures. How blue my eyes looked in contrast to the red. A notification rang out into the silent apartment and I clicked on it without thinking. My dad had texted.
Call me when you can, sweetie. Grandpa passed away.
December 2020/February 2020:
On New Year’s Eve, I try on my old skates in the dark, empty cabin. The only light is the orange glow from the space heater I’ve set a few feet away from me. I can still see my breath in the air. Maybe I'll have to leave here before it gets too cold, rent an apartment in Chicago for a few months with an old metal radiator. I unlace the skates and instead pull on my boots. I can’t sit still anymore.
The moon is bright tonight, so I don’t need more than my phone flashlight. This area of the forest is all familiar to me now, anyway. It’s unpopulated this time of year. I am alone. Alone except for the goose. I swear I see her sleeping in the shadows.
The pond is dead quiet. I tap my foot on the edge of the water; it’s solid. I step onto it; it holds my weight. I take another step. If the ice cracks, if I fall—I don’t let my brain go any further. I back away to the shore, but I don’t return to the cabin. Instead, I lace up my skates. I set an alarm on my phone for midnight: twenty minutes until the new year. Aidan will be drunk and morose by now, searching for a girl to kiss before the gong; Katie will be at some party full of strangers. I wish I could go to her, steal her away. I wish I could tell her I was sorry again, and this time she’d believe me.
I take a step onto the ice, and it reminds me of the first time with my grandfather, how I refused to skate until he turned away. I didn’t want him to see me fail. I didn’t want to let him down. I grip a tree now, stabilizing myself. My breath puffs in front of me. There’s a thrill in my stomach, the delight of doing something I shouldn’t, something no one will ever know I did. I let go of the tree, push out onto the pond.
Aidan’s on his seventh beer, and he finds me alone in my room.
“Why do you always do this?” he slurs.
I play along. “Do what?”
“You’re always going off somewhere. You never stay.”
The ice is smoother the farther out I go, and I’m headed for dead center. This is the kind of thing the girl in the movie would do, skating at midnight in front of the cameras for everyone to see. The shadow on the shoreline, Aidan across the room. Can they still reach me here?
“Do you need me to stay?” I ask. I consciously want him to say one thing, subconsciously another.
He doesn’t answer my question. He just steps closer.
“I liked you all those years ago.” He laughs, shakes his head. “I was fucking in love with you.”
“Shouldn’t you be calling Katie or something?” I ask, but I don’t sound like I mean it, and I don’t move away.
My feet wobble beneath me, not as expert as they once were. Like when I used to skate all the time as a child; I didn’t even think about it, I just did it. Everything is tainted by perception; the moment you’re seen, you’re dead. I make a promise to myself: I’ll never tell anyone this happened, never tell anyone where I was when this year became the next. I’ll keep this secret for myself, untainted. Free.
“Hasn’t it always been you and me?” he asks.
“You’re with Katie,” I say, and when he steps even closer to me, I tell myself I’m as drunk as he is.
I wish I was born alone in the forest, watched over by the trees. I wish I never knew anyone or anything except the brush of the wind. I wish I was unchangeable, untouchable; I wish I was carved out of stone. But I know I melted when he kissed me. I know I took his shirt off. His belt too. I know what I did, know none of this changes things.
“I liked him forever,” Katie whispered when she found out. “And I finally thought he was mine.”
“I’m sorry—” I try. “My grandfather, he—”
“You never told me about all that. I would’ve helped you.”
I cut a furious path across the frozen water, and when I get to the center of it, I don’t think about it, I just spin. In a tight circle, with my arms spread wide; no one will ever know this happened. I squint my eyes against the memories.
That golden dress I wore on the floor of my bedroom. When he kissed me—oh, when I let him kiss me—the worst part was: I felt nothing. Nothing at all.
The alarm goes off in my back pocket. I’m so shocked by the sudden noise that I spin out and thump against the ice. I tense up, waiting for the first crack, but nothing happens. Midnight has come and gone; nothing has changed. I’m alone in the wilderness, and I’ve ruined everything.
I’m the last of the geese on the frozen pond, with no one to take me home.
April 2021:
In April, I see the first blossom and I slow to a stop, breathing heavily. The breeze skips off the pond, burning my cheeks with the cold, but there! On a small tree: a flower. Just around the bend, I find another, then another, and another. Katie left our apartment around this time last year. The news of the virus kept getting worse; everything was dying. This year, the flowers have come without my noticing. I touch the edge of one of the petals, and it’s soft against my skin. I smile, and I do not feel my shadow.
I pack up the few bags I brought with me. I’m struck once again by how similar it all looks to when I first arrived. The dusty floor, my grandmother’s old frock hanging in the corner, my grandfather’s boots waiting by the door. If I look outside, though, I’ll know that things have changed. I feel it in myself too. A tear falls and nobody else sees, but it colors the hardwood floor. It will always have been there.
I drive into the city with the truck my grandfather left me. The windows are open and I feel the spring coming.
“There’s a different kind of warmth in spring than in fall,” Katie said to me once.
“Yes!” I shouted, and she laughed.
“You seem very passionate about this.”
“I’m not sure what it is, but in the spring, there’s something in the air that… you just know it’s getting warmer instead of colder. I’m not sure how else to explain it.”
She bumped her shoulder against mine. “It’s weird. You and I always think the same thoughts.”
There are some things I’ve lost that I can never get back. I drive on anyway.
I used to dread this part, leaving my grandfather’s. I’d cry and I’d cry as I watched the outlines of the buildings grow taller and taller. I think I felt small beneath them, like I was supposed to matter, but I didn’t. At my grandfather’s cabin, I wasn’t supposed to, and that was okay. I was only as important as the next leaf, the next fox, the next lonesome goose.
“Look!” he would say, pointing out some small, fantastic creature. “You and me, we get to be a part of this.”
I’m not special, I think, and the relief is instantaneous.
I’ve got no place I need to be.
