The door was unlocked and the cottage, although empty, felt smaller, the air, dust mote quiet. You can't prove a negative nor can you find a note not left behind. Trev looked with one eye, the other fixed firmly on guilt, the kind of guilt that wanted to find a note and equally did not. At least he could admit it.
When one is alone and wet and cold, and the distance between foot and cottage is not the distance feared, one has thoughts, some heavy like old iron, others light as hummingbirds and still some like the wasp. With a real wasp, one can run or one can swat, or if stung, one knows a life was given in the act. But when the wasp is inside and the sting within, well, one has thoughts best not shared.
I played in my mind what I would say. Then I played it again and I knew, what sounded so good in my imagination would remain as separate from the act as the play from the audience, as the reader from the book, as the ink from the idea. So, I took all my words and I kicked them before me as the rocks before my raisined toes, my anger shielding the pain, for what could a toe know of the woe of heart, the rend of soul, the dull ache of mind turned on itself.
The night air was warm and humid and I breathed the fire of salt into my dry nostrils and the burning brought tears to my eyes, salt to salt as dust to dust. That's when I saw a sight I will never forget and felt a burning in my failed lungs. Like that, they were gone and for all the running and yelling I might as well have been in a dream. The cottage was not the same and the emptiness of wall was but a pond to the empty ocean of my heart.
Wearing his customary pristine white tunic, hair disheveled in a turbulent sea of grey swells and shimmering whitecaps, face warm bronze to match hands aged and weathered in the love of all things outdoors, shoulders symmetrically sloped displaying the strength and beauty of mountains in winter, Zeke listened with the patience of the sparkling ocean that glittered before his pale blue eyes. He leaned back, wooden chair kissing wooden desk like timid children out of teacher's sight, while the voice on the other end of the line spoke of matters important and urgent.
Questions sat, not asked. Just talking and listening. What the hellocks could be said that had not already been said? Words had been poured forth from father to son as water to stone. Familiarity bred not contempt, but accepted weariness, the kind of weariness that existed between husband and wife in the morning when love was a memory long faded and questions of endearment no longer offered nor expected. So the questions just sat, unopened, ignored, gifts forever unknown.
When the call ended, Zeke stood, drawing breath of brass and bergamot, wood old and leather worn; his hands held behind his back, softly, one into the other, fist into palm like ball into glove. He looked upon the waters of Valla as if in the looking a sign or signal would appear, and he could take his hands and do something. To do something to hold at bay thoughts of what had been done and, thoughts be damned, what had not. Take what you want, then pay for it. Is that how it is? Reluctant, with belly full, to pay for the meal. Blame the cook need only a mirror.
His son had succeeded, at work. Won prestigious awards, stood in the world on his own merits, had married and had two beautiful children, Kyra and Emily. Something changed when Emily died. He withdrew. Episodic bursts of anger as unpredictable as infrequent. His wife looked on with dead eyes, leaden tongue, their marriage held together by professional ambition; and the storm.
They had chosen Emily over Kyra, second born over first. Had taken her with them on their travels. Said that Kyra's schooling was the reason she was left behind. Damn the lies, the pretense. Parents tended to favor one child over the other, but the art of parenting was never to let either child know which was which. Perhaps he succeeded. Kyra never questioned or if she did, never gave voice to the doubt. Yet, still, the child seemed, at times, melancholy beyond her summers. What do we ever really know of the inner life of another, forever sifting clues and forming assumptions, drawing conclusions, forgetting that what we know pales in comparison to what we don't.
The call talked of things important and urgent. The planet was in peril. Changes had to happen now. Those in power were in denial. Zeke listened. Not once was the question asked. How is Kyra?
__________
A few years earlier . . .
"Papa," asked Kyra, "why are you crying?"
"When I see you, I see the most beautiful thing in the whole world and the joy from my heart expresses itself through my eyes."
"Is that why Grand is crying too?"
Papa looked over his shoulder, his beautiful bride leaning against the worn door frame, her hand wiping her nose. "Yes, Kyra," she said.
Drawn by a light she knew should not be there, Grand returned to the kitchen. She could have sworn she had secured her nook, yet, casting a glow candle soft, the oven light. "Zeke, did you turn the oven light on?"
"I did." His tone, Tao smooth she called it, implied query asked and query answered. Nothing more needed, nothing more forthcoming.
"Kinda late to be cooking."
"Wasn't planning on cooking."
"And the light?"
Zeke put his book down and looked over his glasses, his tawny face glowing warmly in lamp light like a lion facing twilight. "Feels like home when the light is on, that's all."
When I took the leap, arms outstretched, chest bowed and head held high, I can say without any doubt, for the first time in my life, I felt free. The leap itself, although mere seconds, remains to this day, the single most defining memory I have. Imagine a waterfall and you are standing behind the cascade and all that you see is vague, fuzzy, ear pounding and colorless. You fear the water until pushed and on the other side is peaceful quiet, vivid color and where there was wet cloak heaviness, now, only the lightness of a bird in flight, bones hollow, wings spread, endless vistas verdant and lush.
I had heard, and I expected, to feel regret. Instead, as strange as this may sound, a rebirth. The world I knew could not leap with me, would not dare to dare as I had dared and I felt a smile I could not repress, a joy I could not contain, a happiness as water to the fish, as air to the bird, as wisdom in the child. I won't say that time stood still. I was well aware of falling, but to fall without fear, to embrace death and in the embracing of death to experience life on a plane beyond my previous comprehension effected what I can only describe as an internal expansion, as if before I had to define the world with only a handful of words, now I saw with the eyes of a thesaurus, my mind burning in a light seen without eyes.
Then I hit the water (laughter here), and, I shite you not, I felt like a baby yanked from the womb, the sting of life upon me, my sentence served. Took three days to get the taste of salt out of my nose and I would by lying if I didn't say I enjoyed every sneeze and snort and ache and throb, which, much to my dismay, began to fade as the color from a rose plucked from the bush.
He sat, head in hands, heavy as stone. His eyes looked without seeing, the glitter of the night ocean lost before his mind; the wind, picking up as the moon rose, mute to his ears. Nor did he feel the goose pimples on his arms. The balance of one's life, what is taken and what is given, a question without an impartial answer. Worthy, what did that mean. To be worthy, the question felt as horn on horn, one falling upon the other, neither giving way, haunches sprung, necks swung, two rams banging heads.
And there was that sound again. Bruit was the technical term. Turbulent flow. No stethoscope necessary. Would they know? Would they care? He stood, expanded his chest and listened. No denying the sensation. Divine justice perhaps. But then, the question returned. Worthy? One would have to be worthy for the divine to give a frail. Kyra had said something similar. Staring into death, she saw a great nothingness. And it dawned on her, that all her beliefs could be nothing but lies. Worthy of what? Worthy to what?
Whether the ocean was listening or beckoning he could not tell. His eyes felt dry in the salt air, the flesh of his orbs paper thin, the light dimming from within. Numbness sat in his fingertips like lead weights, only his hair moving, dancing in the breeze, highlighted with moonlight. He took a step toward the edge of the outcrop, toes like claws grasping rock like bird. Could he fly or would he drop. Accident or intentional. Wouldn't be his frailing problem to solve. His shirt billowed like a kite and his legs appeared as a diver, arms outstretched, chest bowed out. As toe kissed rock goodbye, he expected regret and smiled. Even in his final act, he would be denied.
Trev ran. From Em. From Mairi. But mostly, from himself, or, as he might rationalize, to himself, whatever the hell that meant. The sand under his feet, between his toes, burned with coarseness or friction or heat or all the above but he ran anyway, ran till he felt his heart in his chest, heard it throb in his ears till even the surf sounded distant. Then he ran more, ran to extinguish the pain through sheer exhaustion as if his mind, like an old sludge-filled engine, simply needed to spin, to rev, to burn the gunk of regret through physical exertion.
For all his effort, he might as well have tried to kill the fly on his forehead with a sledgehammer. Perhaps then his bastard memory would reveal what was real and what had only been a dream or, maybe, just his over active imagination. Em asked the wrong question at the wrong time and Janus damn her for pushing the issue, an issue he himself couldn't reconcile, his memory a puzzle, complete it seemed except for those extra pieces, pieces she demanded an accounting and he but a mumbling idiot had not an answer. Not one frailing answer. Remember she had said. Remember frailing what. Remember frailing what.
Climbing wet rock, the air turned cooler in the aestival evening. A tide pool, calm as glass, reflected herds of cotton-ball clouds roaming a sky pristine. Trev leaned over, his face unrecognizable. His smile, a grin; his eyes hollowed. Indignation rose from gut to throat, stuck, lacking object to strike. Curses, ugly, tremored his cracked lips, held within to stew, for the stewing resonated a delicious pain, one familiar, welcomed as enemies joining hands against a common foe.
He played the events over in his mind, what he said, what he didn't say, what he wished he had thought to say. She looked so beautiful in her hurt, like a little girl discovering a cherished belief was nothing more than a lie, and the liar had nothing but excuses that belied not care and concern or even wisdom; rather, a glimpse, a look into the void, an opening into the chasm they called adulthood--code language for, we don't have a frailing clue and neither will you in time. She had that kind of look on her face and the image, static, unchanging, bore a hole between his eyes like a bullet, one he had fired come around the world, and in perfect symmetry stuck him dead stupid, tongue ripped from moor, throat afire, surrounded by water he couldn't drink. Licking his cardinalate lips, he could not deny some perverse pleasure in the taste.
