Toes

One shoe was tipped over on its side, halfway down the dock. The other shoe dropped, standing up on its heel for a moment before it wobbled down beside its match. It was a pretty good throw, especially without looking, but the girl's attention was out, across the lake, and she didn't even notice.

An early summer heat wave had driven her to the water's edge that afternoon. Twenty-seven degrees with no mention of humidity, and the temperature was supposed to keep climbing. She stripped off her socks, one at a time, letting them drop without much thought. One rolled right to the edge, stopped only by a large metal ring that would soon be used to tie an assortment of watercraft to the little port's only floating dock. The other tumbled over the side and was caught by a wave. The sound it made was so soft that, had it been heard at all it would have caused no alarm. But the girl didn't hear it fall. Her mind was occupied elsewhere. Out... across the lake.

The wood of the dock had worn smooth from years of running children and their pacing, nervous parents. She walked out to the ladder that hung into the lake. It was an old aluminum frame, the kind with tall handles that arc from the dock to the water, the kind that made backwards somersaults so easy. The girl balanced herself against the rusting metal bars, memories pulsing through her with every heartbeat. The ladder was strangely cool to the touch, just like it always was, just like it had been. She ran her fingers over the freckles of erosion, the red-orange spots that betrayed the age of this much-loved place. She sat down. With her legs swinging gently below her, her spreading toes almost grazing the surface of the lake, the girl drew in a deep, slow breath and closed her eyes.

It had been three years.

The water lapped against the dock and rippled back again. She couldn't see this with her eyes closed, but she could feel the air changing direction if she focused intently on the pads of her feet. It was extraordinarily light, the wind, like the breeze of a fan from another room that you only perceive because the wisps of hair that frame your face are moving gently, as if by a will of their own. Very slowly the girl pointed one foot, extending it according to the muscular instruction she had received in her one-and-only dance class. She lowered her toes towards the water until they hovered, motionless, barely an eighth of an inch from the surface.

Two summers past, she and a friend had borrowed a paddle-boat from the little marina, if you could, in good conscious, call it one. Three canoes, one flat-bottomed rower, and the vessel they had set out on were the sum of their options -- unless you counted a stack of Styrofoam flutter-boards propping up one of the shack's side windows, which they did not. The girls dabbled out on the water for hours that day, talking about everything and nothing all in a moment. They took turns dozing off in the sunshine, rocked gently by the undulating rhythm of another's wake. Once they both woke up only to find that they were drifting not ten feet from a fisherman, quietly casting his line almost right over them. They tumbled into laughter as they pedaled as fast as they could back to the paradoxical safety of open water.

The same water had been the cleansing agent of a messy heart the summer just past, when she and her depression took a literal dive. She floated in the lake for hours until her anxious feelings seemed to seep out of her, down into the dark sediment, down to the deep. It took her days to unwrinkle from the water's raisining effects, but by the time her skin smoothed again emotions had followed and the rest of August passed by without another tailspin.

She was dragged back to the present moment by the flickering dance of a dragonfly, flying back and forth from knee to knee, never allowing itself settle more than a second before flitting off again. There was a canoe of people over by the cliff, a few half way up the rocky path, and one at the top fighting the battle between fear and thrill, deciding whether or not he should leap into the water. Even standing so high was a brave thing. As she listened, she could hear his friends taunting and encouraging him to jump. The climbers had reached him now and seemed to be threatening to toss him, if he wouldn't step out on his own. He was signaling boldly and with the determined stiffness of anger just before the boil. He harnessed it, and jumped. They cheered.

So much of this place felt the same: the wood as smooth, the air as hot, the flecks of rust as red. But something had settled into its essence that was unfamiliar to her now, and it seemed to wash her reveries with a pastel of commonplace. The lake had memories of its own; hers were significant only because they were hers... but that knowledge didn't dull the memory nor undermine it's importance, especially not today.

Three years had past since she had sat in this space and watched him run off the dock, sprinting and leaping like some wild deer, then diving underwater with the grace of a loon. Three years since they had spent the afternoon hauling a sunken fishing boat out of one of the little bays. With the help of some friends they had hoisted it into a tree in the little public park downtown. Their prank had made the front page of the little daily newspaper twice -- once upon the discovery of the boat (and one strategically placed home-made mannequin), and again when the police uncovered a stash of fifty dollar bills sealed in Ziplock-safely in one of the tackle-boxes tied under the front bench. The second article announced that the reward proposed for those individuals who had found the money would exactly balance the threatened fines for the crew responsible for the prank. The reporter called it a clever truce; the giggling teenagers who met up at Pizza Pizza to watch the show called it forgiveness, and were never turned in by the all-knowing store manager for their shenanigans.

That spring and summer had been a beautiful gift for the pair and they had become a couple by the time the first leaf had fallen. But her blue sunshine skies thundered into rain the day he didn't knock on her window. He had knocked every morning from May through September - he would wake her up, and together they would walk down to the shore - but the morning he didn't, another knock roused her from dream. It was heavy, determined to be heard throughout their small country home, and loud enough to wake everyone. The Sheriff, and yes, some small towns still have one, was talking to her mother in low whispers at the front door. The sky and her emotions crashed simultaneously with the weight that comes from shock and grief. She ran through the deluge to the dock and fought against the urge to let the water swallow her whole, resisted the clawing desire to find a place as dark and cold as she felt. She screamed out her pain at the roaring waters. She stayed at the ladder all night, slowly calming as the clouds exhausted their store. The gales hushed, the thunder rolled on and the dock rose and fell steadily, setting pace with her own breath, coaching her soul with what was left over of the wind-piled waves.

Three years ago she had taken her place between their families, standing beside his sister at the far east end of the little graveyard that overlooked the lake. She could see the spot from her perch; it was a fitting space for his body, she thought, but his spirit spent much more of its time haunting her here, at the dock. Either he was in heaven, as he had believed, or he was with her, as her heart was inclined to hold true.

She had only returned to this place on a handful of occasions in the collapse of time between past and present. On each visit the lake had reflected her state: tempestuous, numb and lifeless, foggy, grey, covered in ice... and this time was no different. As she sat by the water in the early summer heat wave, barefoot with toes hovering just over its surface, the lake reflected something new. She had found peace. She was content.

She was not overwhelmed by the welling of tears today. One shaky breath in, one out, repeat. Despite the temperature she shivered slightly. The tremor was the only thing that betrayed any hesitation or residual fear. Her heart was healing; she was finding peace.

She opened her eyes to the sun and smiled, out, across the lake.