Winter 2007 Read Online Free PDF

something vital, some sense of
perspective. He sat on the rocks drawn in on himself, huddled for warmth. I
hated his questions. I hated his attitude.
    Even though it was I who
pined for the woman, who so desperately wanted her to come to gasping life, to
rise from the sargassum, reborn.
    Everywhere I went, I saw
those frozen blue eyes.
    ***
    Once, before I left home,
in that time when I was arguing with my parents almost every day, restless with
their world and my place in it, there was a pause because each of us regretted
something we had said.
    Into this silence, my
mother said, “You’ve got to know who you are, and even when you think you’ve
been treated unfairly still be that person.”
    I said something sarcastic
and stormed out of the cottage—to feel the salt air on my face, to look
across the water toward distant, unseen shores.
    I didn’t know that I would
one day find so much more so close to home.
    ***
    The fourth night Lucius
refused to go with me.
    “It’s pointless,” he said.
“Not only that, it’s dangerous. We shouldn’t have done it in the first place.
It’s still a crime, to steal a body. Let it go. She’ll be taken out to sea or
rotting soon enough. Or put her out to sea yourself. Just don’t mention it to
me again.”
    In his face I saw fear,
yes, but mostly awareness of a need for self-preservation. This scared me. The
dead woman might have enthralled me, but Lucius had become my anchor at medical
school.
    “You’re right,” I told him.
“I’ll go one last time and put her out to sea.”
    Lucius smiled, but there
was something wrong. I could feel it.
    “We’ll chalk it up to
youthful foolishness,” he said, putting his arm over my shoulders. “A tale to
tell the grandchildren in thirty years.”
    She was still there, perfectly
preserved, on that fourth night. But this time, rising from the sargassum, I
saw what I thought was a pale serpent, swaying. In the next second, breath
frozen in my throat, I realized I was staring at her right arm—and that
it was moving.
    I dashed into the water and
to her side, hoping for what? I still don’t know. Those frozen blue eyes. That
skin, imperfect yet perfect. Her smile.
    She wasn’t moving. Her body
still had the staunch solidity, the draining heaviness, of the dead. What I had
taken to be a general awakening was just the water’s gentle motion. Only the
arm moved with any purpose—and it moved toward me. It sought me out,
reaching. It touched my cheek as I stood in the water there beside her, and I
felt that touch everywhere.
    I spent almost an hour
trying to wake her. I thought that perhaps she was close to full recovery, that
I just needed to push things a little bit. But nothing worked. There was just
the twining arm, the hand against my cheek, my shoulder, seeking out my own
hand as if wanting comfort.
    Finally, exhausted,
breathing heavily, I gave up. I refreshed the preservation powders, made sure
she was in no danger of sinking, and left her there, the arm still twisting and
searching and alive.
    I was crying as I walked
away. I had been working so hard that it wasn’t until that moment that I
realized what had happened.
    I had begun to bring her
back to life.
    Now if only I could bring
her the rest of the way.
    As I walked back up into
the city, into the noise and color and sounds of people talking — back
into my existence before her — I was already daydreaming about our life
together.
    ***
    The quality of the silence
here can be extraordinary. It’s the wind that does it. The wind hisses its way
through the bungalow’s timbers and blocks out any other sound.
    The beach could be, as it
sometimes is, crowded with day visitors and yet from my window it is a silent
tableau. I can watch mothers with their children, building sandcastles, or
beachcombers, or young couples, and I can create the dialogue for their lives.
How many of them will make decisions that become the Decision? Who really
recognizes when they’ve tipped the