She went back to the sofa, plopped down and worked her way down the pint, spoon by spoon. As she did so, the tiny kernel of glee she had been cultivating reasserted itself. She grasped and nurtured it, seduced by its promise of relief. She was going to get it done, how she did not yet know, but today it would get done, by hook or crook.
She descended to the carpet and snapped open her stamped metal Hello Kitty lunchbox, scratched and dented from a hundred travels. She inverted it over the coffee table and out spilled the characters of her fantasy worlds from kindergarten to junior high, who had kept her company across the voids of long vacations and friendless weekends.
She took muster of her old friends: PlaySkool farmers and mechanics, PlayMobil princesses and peasants, Lego dragons and unicorns. She lined them up along a precipice of walnut veneer.
Twice rescued from the trash, occupying a disproportionate slice of her heart and suitcase wherever she had traveled, this morning they meant nothing to her. They stared blankly, dead and inert, inspiring none of the sentiment that had preserved them into her adulthood.
She raised her hand to swipe them onto the floor, but caught herself. Instead she went to the door, glancing back at the figures, noting one little plastic arm raised in goodbye.
***
It must have been eighty degrees out, a lovely Indian Summer day. Aerie walked barefoot down the front walk, clad in plaid pajama bottoms and a rising sun T-shirt. She didn’t bother to lock the apartment behind her.
She walked through neighborhood after neighborhood, stopping at the bridge over Fall Creek staring up at Ithaca Falls as it plunged from one of the gorges that cut through Cornell’s campus. It tempted her, but she heeded instead the call of Cayuga Lake.
She passed the high school she would have attended had her family remained intact. A band practiced ‘Satin Doll’ in the auditorium. A gym class played field hockey on fake grass.
She crossed Route 13, not bothering to look both ways, feeling a bit surprised and unlucky that she had made it across unharmed. She strolled through Stewart Park, past the swing sets and slides, heading for a graveled, weed cluttered cove, passing a little boy with a toy dump truck full of grit. She stepped straight into the water across the slimy stones. The boy stood and watched her, gaping until he plugged his mouth with a thumb.
His mother came scurrying over and took his hand.
“Mommie. That lady’s swimming in her clothes.” His mother shushed him and led him back to the playground.
Aerie strode out until she was chest deep. She pushed off and swam for the center of Cayuga, a mile wide down here at the tip, and forty miles long, a hundred meters deep at its deepest. A skin of sun-warmed water clung to surface. Aerie swam at the interface, the chill of Cayuga’s depths lapping at her limbs as she dug with each stroke.
She kicked and stroked like an automaton, not thinking about what would happen, focusing just on getting farther out into the deepest, widest parts of the lake. She was never the strongest swimmer, but she did alright. When she tired, she rested by rolling onto her back, and letting the acid burn in her muscles dissipate. Eventually, she would fail and nature would take its course.
Drowning seemed like one of the more gentle ways to go. She expected some initial panic and discomfort, perhaps, but it wouldn’t last long. Maybe all of this exertion would rob her cells of oxygen and help her blank out more quickly. How bad could it be compared to drinking cyanide or being hit by a truck?
A nugget of regret took hold as the weeping willows of Stewart Park grew small behind her. Her line of travel drifted west, closer to shore. She kicked back towards the center, but found herself drifting left again. As the sting in her muscles grew and her stroke degenerated into the rudest dog paddle, something inside of her took over and sent her clawing towards a row of boulders and a dock.
She came dripping out of the lake, feeling even more a failure. She passed a perfect little cottage of periwinkle blue surrounded by tidy little gardens, wondering what sort of creature lived in such a place. She made her way up their long, graveled drive, past a flowery, hand-painted mailbox, out to Route 79.
She looked back towards Ithaca, and the hills and clefts backing it. She considered going home, but the thought of being back in her filthy apartment, with the specter of Aunt Sadie possibly waiting for her on the porch, filled her with dread.
She remembered Taughannock Park, its gorge and spectacular waterfall just up the road. How many miles was it? Five? Six? She didn’t care. She turned right and began walking along the shoulder.
Déjà vous crept over her. Memories of her suicide attempt in Shinjuku came seeping back, as if a secret chamber in her brain had been unlocked. She recalled the thrill and relief of slipping that loop of cable from a bicycle lock around her neck: like starting off on a new adventure, like the promise of much needed rest.
Route 89 had a speed limit of 55 for much of its length. Even at that speed, Aerie captured snapshot glimpses of passing faces, some oblivious, some surprised, some displaying flashes of concern.
One car even slowed abruptly, as if the driver thought of stopping to help her, but reconsidered. Why would anyone stop, with her looking like a crazy person in her muddy pajamas and bedraggled hair?
Mile after mile she walked, past summer cottages, a children’s camp all buttoned up for the season. For a time, the road slanted up the hillside, diverging from the lake, visible only on occasion in glimpses through the trees.
She noticed so many things she never noticed traveling by car: a sign for the town of Ulysses, a yard filled with bizarre objet d’art—twisted mushroom shapes, cast in resin or concrete and garishly painted. The restaurant perched on a height near one of the few overlooks told her when she had reached the halfway point. The nature center and its open fields brought her ever closer.
Her feet held up well on the pavement and gravel. She had always prided herself on the toughness of her soles, though frankly they were feeling quite numb at the moment, though frankly, if she had trod on the brown and green shards of beer bottles she regularly had to avoid, they may have been too numb to notice.
She became so caught up in the trance and rhythms of her journey that the State Park startled when she finally reached it. She passed the gorge road, and the parking lot leading to the trails, heading for the low bridge over Taughannock Creek itself.
She gazed up into the gorge, its mysteries concealed around a bend. The creek was but a shallow trickle after a nearly rainless summer, but an angry, grey bank of clouds angling in over the hills promised a remedy.
She turned and looked at the lake. It was much wider here. The wind had conjured a million toothy wavelets that caught the sun like so many twinkling mirrors. A grim line of shadow slanted across the lake, advancing and snuffing the light that brought them life.
A sailboat raced past Taughannock’s little delta. Aerie had never ridden on such a craft. It struck her that those who possessed them were some distinctly different race of human and Aerie was a mere visitor to their planet.
She sighed and doubled back, turning into the parking lot, heading for the trail leading into the gorge. Her pajamas had dried and were caked and crusted with bits of mud and pickerel weed. Her hair, moussed with algae, flew every which way in the swirling gusts.
Thunder rumbled. A young mother with two squealing pre-schoolers and a muddy golden retriever dashed for their car, giggling. The woman did a double take when she saw Aerie, but kept at her task, strapping her children into their car seats, toweling off the dog. Aerie walked right by them, half-hoping the woman would say something, ask if she was okay, if she needed any help, although Aerie knew that nothing the woman could have said would have stopped her.
She passed through a thick stand of hemlocks, branches entwined, choking the light. The confinement made her anxious so she veered off the trail, seeking open sky overhead. She climbed down to the stream bed, a broad avenue of slate, stepping up layer by layer between the sinuous walls of the go
rge. Lazy cascades dropped over each step.
A small piece of Aerie resisted, but resistance was futile. She didn’t buy the argument that this was some chemical imbalance in her brain, some fixable distortion in her thought pattern. The truth was, she was not fit for this world.
She felt like a deep-sea fish stranded on a beach with the atmosphere of Jupiter pressing down on her. She knew the feeling well. It had been much the same in high school, and in Tokyo after Hollis left. The pills had helped conceal it for a while, but the feeling had never gone away. It had always been there, lurking somewhere deep behind her ribs.
The recent bad turn of events had helped it bull its way to the fore, but it would have found its way out eventually anyway. The truth always did prevail. No single factor had set it off—not the arrest, the firings, the aborted music, her missing friends. She couldn’t even blame it on the accumulated insults. Restoring any or all of those things wouldn’t make a speck of difference now. It was too late for that. The monster was out of its cage.
But maybe it was a good thing. The fates had rewarded her with yet another glimpse of the fiasco behind the curtain, at the big lie that made up most people’s lives and got them through their days. All of these people struggling all of their lives, only to have everything fritter away in the end. Life was like a lottery that nobody ever wins. A scarce few receive a consolation prize or two to show for their efforts.
The gorge opened into the massive bowl harboring Taughannock Falls. The waterfall was but a pathetic dribble compared to the thundering column she had remembered.
The dark ledge of the storm front muscled in overhead. Both trails, at creek level and along the rim, were vacant. Thunderstorm or not, it was odd to find the gorge devoid of hikers on such a fine October day. She would have expected someone to be here, leas peepers, retirees. Someone. She wasn’t sure whether to feel glad or disappointed about the lack of witnesses.
She picked her way up the first of a number of layered ledges as shreds of wind-swept rain raked the gorge wall. Flakes of shale crumbled under toe. Handholds broke away under her grip. Her heart pounded, less out of fear for her own safety than for the realization that a fall here, ten feet up, would only break limbs, rendering her immobile and at the mercy of paramedics, doctors and nurses, not to mention her mom.
She worked her way over to a chute where the stone looked more solid, and that cut through the undercuts and overhangs impeding her ascent. The higher she climbed, the calmer she became, choosing holds with confidence and grace, as the chances of surviving a slip diminished.
Normally afraid of heights, she marveled at her newfound courage. She thrilled at the feeling of all that space dropping beneath her. The synapses in charge of self-preservation were on strike, leaving her with an exhilarating sense of freedom. She felt invincible.
Rain came down in spits and bursts. Grey threads reached to the now steely lake and scuffed its surface. Aerie climbed around to the notch that brought the creek to the lip of the precipice and sat down, dangling her feet over the ledge, surprised to have made it this far intact. Her body parted the feeble stream, making twin jets.
Her stomach grumbled, informing her of its craving for pepperoni pizza, which was ludicrous and pathetic because it knew as well as she did that there was to be no more pizza, no more eating, ever. She had transcended such needs. Her decision had finally quieted the turmoil in her head and lifted the shroud of lead that had oppressed her.
Sure, mysteries remained, but even those who live to be a hundred left loose ends undone, places never seen, relationships never resolved. She was so close now. She couldn’t turn her back on this opportunity. She had worked hard to get here. Relief, in the form of a hundred foot drop, lay just over the brink.
Gobbets of rain pelted her. Swarms of mist swirled around the bowl of the gorge. She released her finger hold on the slick, slate capstone, and let the water nudge her back. A giddy thrill arose with the realization that her torments would cease.
Lightning split the sky overhead, thundering a split second after each flash. The heart of the storm was at hand. The rain fell in cold, hard strings. Rivulets poured off the ledges and the creek began to rise. The force against her back increased.
Her bottom gave way and began to slide. Exhilaration turned to panic. She clawed at the slick slab, seeking the crack she had clung to before, finding only seamless stone. Calves, knees, thighs projected over the edge. Heart thumping, she twisted around and lunged for an overhanging shrub, rooted tenuously in the wall of shale. It arrested her slide momentarily, but she could already feel it giving way as the water shoved her back towards the precipice.
The torrent grew, shoving at her chest, splashing up and over her head. Her fingers found a root and clenched. She wedged her fist into a gap. Reaching upstream for another notch, she pulled herself flush against the side of the channel and against the flow until her feet met stone. She lifted herself and climbed a crumbly ladder of stone millions of years in the making, out of the grasp of the suddenly turbulent creek. She crawled through brambles atop the ledge and collapsed, panting, letting the storm have its way and pelt her with hail as her heart bashed her ribcage.
When the darkness had passed to the other side of the lake and the rain gave way to a chill wind, she bushwhacked to a hiking trail and made her way along the rim of the gorge and down through hemlocks to the parking area below. In the gathering dusk she picked wine berries, filling the lifted hem of her T-shirt, and began the long walk home, feeling neither defeated nor victorious.
Simply alive.
Chapter 30: Traps
John burst from the unemployment office, stinging with humiliation from a session with a counselor who understood diddly-squat about his profession. She had badgered him into arranging an interview with a paving company that specialized in parking lots. What part of electrical engineer could they not understand?
The front that had borne yesterday’s thunder had stalled and left Ithaca buried under a bank of clouds that hovered low like a fog. The soupy air made it hard to breathe.
October thunderstorms in Ithaca usually heralded frostier weather. Strange, how this anomalous, fetid air mass refused to yield, as if something were amiss in Heaven’s machinery.
John clomped down the sidewalk, gaze focused on his parked car. He had felt antsy and desperate ever since leaving home that morning. He couldn’t stop thinking about Aerie.
In the waiting room at the unemployment office he had scoured copies of the Grapevine Weekly and the Ithaca Times hoping to find a listing for the next performance of her band, but there was no mention of them, or even of the other band, Vida.
In the daily newspaper, stories covering the incident at the Arts Coop had dwindled to nothing after two days of front page attention. Though many questions remained unresolved, the affair had been shunted under a rug, the incident too weird, perhaps, for local journalists to digest.
It was ten-thirty, not even close to lunchtime. Yet, he had a burning urge to go to that veggie place, the restaurant where she had said that she worked.
This was insanity. Chores waited at home. Laundry was piling up. The rugs needed vacuuming. He had left the kids with Jerry and Rand, overgrown boys themselves, hardly the most dependable babysitters, obsessed and distracted by every flutter in the hedges, every smudge of green pixels on their EMF monitors.
He reached his car, fished out his keys and stood by the door jangling them. Beads of sweat rolled down his ribs beneath his loose shirt. He shoved the keys back into his pocket and pulled out a quarter, adding thirty minutes to the meter.
As he doubled back towards the restaurant the floodgates of guilt broke loose. But what else could he do? He couldn’t rid the images of her from his mind—her piercing eyes, her face agitated and aflame as he helped her load up the van, her silhouette framed in the oncoming headlights.
Maybe he didn’t have to order a meal. Maybe he could just pop his head into the kitchen for a brief word with her, see h
ow she was coping. Maybe that would suffice to calm his heart.
He walked as fast as he could without breaking into a run, darting across the street against a red light, trotted down the stairs and into DeWitt Mall, heading straight for the entrance of Moosewood.
He paused before entering to gather his breath. This was going to be awkward.
The restaurant was nearly empty. It took a good minute for the greeter to even notice him, and come rushing over.
“Table for one?” She gave him a round, open smile.
“Um. Actually, I was wondering if I might be able to see Aerie … Aerie Walker … for a moment? I could wait, if she’s got a break coming up.”
She blinked at him. “Are you … a relative?”
“Not quite. I mean … no.”
“Hang on.” She ducked into the kitchen. Another woman emerged. She was somewhat older, thirty-something with kindly, almost sad brown eyes. Her hair was twisted and woven in thin strands into an intricate braid.
“I’m Regina. How can I help you?”
“Yeah, um, I’m a friend of Aerie’s and I was wondering if she was around. I just wanted to have a brief word.”
The woman dipped her chin and gave him a probing look. He slipped his hand in his pocket to hide his wedding band.
“Aerie doesn’t work here anymore.” She rocked on the balls of her feet. “How is it … that you know her?”
“I’m just a friend. I just hadn’t seen her around in a while. I wanted to touch base, see if she was okay.”
“Haven’t you tried calling her?”
“Um….” The woman looked deeply into his eyes. John felt hot blood seeping to the surface of his face.
“I … I was passing by. Thought I should check on her. I was … worried.”
The woman frowned. “You don’t have her number, do you?”
He shook his head.
“Aerie doesn’t work here anymore.” Her eyes flickered. “She could probably use a visit from a friend, but I’m afraid I can’t give you any contact info. I mean, you seem nice enough and all, but it’s against policy. I hope you understand.”