A Matter of Letting Go
BY Claire Chippindale
Photography by Steve Payne
Even as he watches it unfold, he pictures his decision with the clearest image of what he should have done, and didn’t. But he continues to watch, because it is easier and he has no effort left in him, no will to decide. He regrets already what he knows he will not do, as though he has been launched years ahead.
He stands at the edge of the water absorbed by the fine details that will revisit him, sometimes trickling in when his energy is depleted and his defences are down, sometimes leaping out in contrast to a particularly positive mood.
Beneath his feet, the pebbly beach crunches softly, even though he is standing still. One small, round, speckled stone grinds against another under the minute shifts and sinking of his weight. The black water of the lake graduates to slate and then to crystal clear where it glistens over the little rocks on the beach. The ripples grow, their gentle slaps amplifying as the minutes pass.
About 150 metres away, reflected imperfectly on the surface of the lake, a ragged stand of cedars crowds the top of a rocky little island. The far side of the lake beyond this clump is a jagged dark line torn into the grey sky. Everywhere, the bright, cold November light presses itself against pale surfaces and slices shadows out of the landscape.
The splashing sound that rang out across the water seconds ago has subsided and the air encompassed by the great ring of trees around the edges of the lake seems to have expanded upward. He pictures the noises rising indefinitely. They’re not gone now, just far above him, continuing out like the ripples breaking against the toes of his brown leather shoes. His feet are wet and cold.
When Margaret called on Thursday, he was smoking again.
“I knew you wouldn’t stick it out,” she stated without accusation.
The steps to his current fall are clearer to him now, as they are every time, but also tangled together in an indecipherable mass. He can pick one out, and it unravels another and another. There’s no particular order anymore. He missed an important deadline, but that didn’t happen in isolation. He wasn’t sleeping and was repeatedly late for work. He was drinking again.
“Alcohol is a depressant,” Margaret reminded him.
He knows. Each day he slouches through the door of his tiny bachelor apartment, lugging the weight of every problem he foresees, every error he has made that has not yet been found out, but no doubt will be. These failures, past or future, settle in his stomach. If he focuses on that queasy ball, it expands and his heart quickens. Two beers quell the beating, and after that the dullness is a pleasant alternative to thoughts darting in and out of his consciousness.
Margaret was the first in a cascade of breaking points. She’s so perfect for you. And he is angry that she could not distinguish between the way he has been behaving and the person he is. He has been through this before. It will get better—he has to remind himself. She couldn’t see that he isn’t this dark cloud that settles on him now and again, or maybe she could.
Now, standing by the lake, he can feel gravity moving through him. His arms hang from his shoulders like strings holding lead weights. He is only vaguely aware of the rest of his body as a field of vibrations. Everything outside of him—the lake, the trees, the sounds of splashing—has seemed like a distant recollection until now. He is only now drifting back into this setting, snagged on the thought—a rock in a stream of thoughts—that in years to come he will feel this way again and this very moment will be the trigger.
He came to the lake on the way back from Jack and Trudy’s for brunch. Dear old friends, patient friends he has ignored for months. He was supposed to go with Margaret, but it did not surprise them to see him alone. Trudy tilted her head a little and sighed sympathetically. Jack offered him a beer.
He had wanted to cancel, to stay home and watch a Star Trek marathon in the darkened living room and not shower or dress all day. But Trudy called to make sure he was coming and he hoped he would absorb some energy from the others.
It was too much. Other guests sparkled around him so focused and content that he couldn’t make eye contact. He drank two beers and found himself slurring unexpectedly. Embarrassed, he withdrew to a seat by the window and watched as the grinning, nodding heads floated around the cheese plate.
When the gathering wound down, Trudy asked him to stay for dinner because she hated to see him go home to eat alone. He lied about having a very busy schedule and needing to get right home, but he really wanted to be off the road before dark.
Now it’s four in the afternoon or so. The light is fading quickly.
The winding road back to town slithers around many lakes. He wanted to get back to his TV and his couch and his beer. Most of all he wanted to be safely inside. He is not afraid of the dark itself, but it seems best to be close to a phone. The night raises too many questions.
He saw the sign for this lake poking through some skeletal bushes. The sign was ill-tended, unlike the sharply lettered ones for the bigger lakes. The steering wheel seemed to turn on its own under his hands, guiding his beaten-up car over the bumpy path to a small parking area. He pulled the lapels of his corduroy coat up around his neck and pushed his hands deep into his pockets.
The lake was glassy and deserted. There was no wind, no sound. He stared across the surface, wondering how cold it was and how long it would take.
He stepped toward the water’s edge. The crunch underfoot disturbed him—he wanted stillness, not a ripple on the sheen of black, only the cool sliding in around him like an embrace, and darkness.
In the distance, he heard a gentle sound, at first hardly noticeable, then increasingly distinct and rhythmic. He stopped moving toward the water to concentrate on the light splashing that glided to him. From behind the little island he saw the point emerge and then the low, sleek blade of a canoe through the water. It turned slowly to circumnavigate the clump of rock and cedar. The woman in the boat paddled awkwardly, and he realized she must be new to this, practising very late in the year.
She paused as she came parallel with the beach, about 100 metres away, and just then an out-of-place wind picked up. The gust grabbed her hat and tossed it into the water behind her.
He watched her stand and turn around in the narrow little canoe, rather than steering it in an arc to go back. He thought of calling out to her not to stand in a canoe that small, but the sound of a shout would break the quiet and he didn’t think he even had the energy to raise his voice enough to reach her. So he watched.
The canoe rocked, she teetered; she bent to grab the edge, the canoe rocked faster. The splash shattered the air, the bottom of the canoe rose from the surface like the back of some great amphibian and her arms flapped among showers of diamonds.
What day is it? It will be important to remember.
It’s November. The ground is cold and the leaves have fallen. How long would it take in the water? In some parts of the ocean, if you’re not pulled out in under five minutes, it’s too late, but here there was surely time.
She is not wearing a life jacket, which is strange for such a bad swimmer. The shock of the cold must have made her panic, the slippery back of the canoe offering no handhold, the drag of her heavy clothes. She splashed wildly but did not call out. Now the splashing has stopped. He has been staring at his feet and he looks up. It’s only been a minute or so, but she is floating face down.
At this distance, he can make out the swell of her jacket and just a subtle intimation of her brown hair spreading across the surface where it breaks the reflection of smooth sky. The canoe is only a metre away from her, a red slice between the black water and the black trees. She seems to have given up so easily. Maybe, he thinks fleetingly, this is what she came here to do. No, not her. He’s grasping now in a desperate bid to shape the events into a salvageable story so that when he tells it to himself again—never to anyone else—it will perhaps seem there was nothing to be done.
Her head lifts from the water and slowly she glides toward the overturned boat. She struggles with it, her loud animal gasps travelling across the water. She was only resting in the dead-man pose to gather strength. Her fingers grasp the centre rib that runs along the bottom of the canoe and she is turning the craft over. The stillness is gone and the water covered with closely spaced ripples that lick at his toes. The air is filled with the slaps of her hands on the fibreglass, her sputters and grunts, the clear tinkling of drops falling, the rasp and gurgle of heavily clothed limbs churning the icy water.
How cold is it? How far is she from home?
She’s trying to roll herself into the canoe without tipping it.
The frigid water will have penetrated her muscles by now. Her heavy coat, too, is drenched and her shoes are dragging at her feet. Each movement seems to her impossible, but she continues to try.
When she rested for that minute, holding her breath head down, did she open her eyes? Half sinking, half floating, she would have felt the volume under her arms and chest buoying her up, while the weight dragged down on her legs and hips. The thump of her heart would have resounded in her ears as the blood rushed to warm her limbs. Tingling skin, aching ears, icy bones, a thousand thoughts coalescing around two metres of red fibreglass.
Did she look down into the silty depths? Just enough light to see the cloudy space below filled with a galaxy of swaying particles.
That time of rest to regroup would have been long enough to grow numb, body and will sinking together. They say it can be pleasant, just a matter of letting go. He still can and considers it, but he can’t concentrate on his internal argument while she is sputtering and scraping to hold on. He thinks that he is too fascinated by the intensity of her conviction, her refusal to see what is easier. Maybe he’s just tired, too tired for anything, even giving up.
It’s quiet again, except for the gentle lapping at his feet, and far away against the sides of the boat. The sun is dropping quickly behind a streak of clouds above the far bank. The water closest to him glows in the diffused grey light.
He watches the plume of vapour rising from the belly of the canoe.
