Fiction by Michele Annable
She’s so cold that her teeth smash together, and the wind creeps up her sleeves and pant legs like little ice imps. When she looks down, she sees the pink rosettes of her slippers. It’s a winter’s day. December, she thinks.
Who dressed her this morning? It was one of those women, always pushing her: “Here, take your pills, Joan. Brush your teeth.” That’s what started it, the constant hurrying when she didn’t want to. How simple it was, after all. Just push open the big glass entrance doors and walk right through. No one yelled. No one followed.
It’s very bright in the world outside. She has to hold up her hands to her eyes. The sun hits the salt on the road, shatters into rays of light. On both sides of the street, people are dressed in puffy winter clothes, like big colourful balloons. Everyone looks happy. The trees crackle as their remaining leaves turn in the wind. She wants to keep walking forever, as long as her legs will carry her, but she knows she should get off the road somewhere, to be safe. They will come after her.
A bright red hand floating in mid-air tells her to wait, wait, wait. She sees her small self in the window of a passing car. Face all scrunched up. Her eyes meeting eyes behind the dark glass. Frightened, she crosses the street against the traffic. Cars blare their horns, and she freezes in the middle. She scuttles across the busy road, her slippers sliding, and reaches the other side. The dark park looms ahead. There, only the treetops are brushed with light.
She knows this park. Knows that on the path ahead there is a suspension bridge she has been visiting all her life. As a teenager, shrieking with excitement as her boyfriend shook the cables at one end. He made her bounce and wobble as she tried to balance in the middle. As a young woman, she came with her kids, always so anxious about them. Later, she came with her seniors’ hiking group.
Inside the park and out of breath, she sits at the base of a huge evergreen, her back against the solid trunk. The tree whispers to her. “Where to? Where to now?”
Small knots of people move past her, stare and look away. No wonder. Look at the way she is dressed! They probably think she is a…what’s the word? There’s a word. She can’t get it. It slips away into the darkness of her thoughts like an arrow.
Her mind deserts her now, and she is like the tree, breathing in, breathing out. She has a sharp pain somewhere. Is it her stomach? Or her legs? A crow toes its way across the path, looking at her with one eye and then the other. He’s big and shiny and frightening. Her heart thuds.
“What are you doing here?” he asks in a hoarse voice. Terrified, she stumbles forward onto her hands and knees, then scrambles down the stairs onto the suspension bridge. This is the only way to cross the ravine.
She starts out, heel, toe, heel, toe, hands like claws clutching the cold steel railing. The swaying begins. She can’t catch the rhythm, her steps too slow, too heavy. She grabs the mesh with her frozen hands and gasps. Down below is the river. The rocks. The rushing torrent of water. Should she let go and let herself fall over the edge? Falling through the air, one last moment in the world. Air, water, rocks, body.
Halfway across, she looks back. Then ahead. She is suspended above the cold green river. Her mouth opens to call for help, then clamps shut. They would put her back in that place and she would never get out again. She takes one small step, then another, and she is across. Tears slide down her frozen cheeks.
Under a cluster of trees, she finds a patch of leaves and needles untouched by ice or snow, like a blanket. She sits and stretches her legs. Sees that she has lost her slippers, and that her feet are now purple lumps. She digs them deep into the soft needles, pulls her jacket tighter around her, closes her swollen eyes.
Slowly and almost imperceptibly, she feels vibrations passing into her from the tree, as if it were nurturing her. Bit by bit, her body ceases to matter. She remembers the things of her life that she has forgotten for so long, recalls them fondly as if saying goodbye. Husband, kids, love, sleep, sex, skin, ocean, sand, mountains.
She lies back and gives in to the enfolding warmth.
Michele Annable is a writer and teacher living in West Vancouver. She is an emerging writer with two short stories published in Room and Prairie Journal Online.
