"On Still Waters"

Kyle Blankenship

It was early morning when Daniel sprung him his bed after hours of frenzied longing,
threw on a set of rumpled khakis thrown halfway under the bed, grabbed a shirt from the top
drawer, a green one, slipped his feet into a pair of laceless tennis shoes, tossed over himself the
grey sweater from a gym he hadn't been to in years and ambled through the door of his apartment
and out onto the damp street below, hoping that she would be sitting expectantly on the park
bench twelve blocks away, although he had no reason to see her there, feeling that she was there
waiting for him now, remembering a faint whisper of a time before when they had sat there late
into the night waiting on the early morning birds to start singing, shrieking loudly the calls of a
new day, though, in truth, they had never sounded to Daniel like something soft and romantic,
but blaring and demented, horrible cries into the dark.
He was there, crying into the darkness, waiting for something, although, after hours of
rolling between unwashed sheets, he couldn't retrace his steps back to what caused his hopeless
longing and now wondered, as he took his first few steps down the street, whether he would have
arisen so haphazardly if he had a moment to think; but what he been doing but thinking before?
His chest had stopped hurting and he decided to try walking.
He didn't recall his memories, didn't find them in his mind like a dusty reel sitting
unforgotten in a cabinet built somewhere in his head, but was instead struck, like a jolt, by their
immediacy and strength. Flashes came through: an endless procession of lilies on a river, a man
pouring coffee into a series of mugs along a counter top, her answering a cell phone somewhere,

but all of those things, in reality, hadn't been together; only in the dim twilight of memory could
those recollections have been dreamed into some time where they all sat, like friends, together.
She had been pale skinned, he thought, but in memory she sparkled transparently, a
specter that haunted his mind, pacing in repetition from one room to the next. She was lonely, he
remembered, and he often found her sitting on that same park bench, the red-painted, wooden
one with the word 'shit' scrawled onto one of the back slats, and looking hopefully at the ducks
fly away, wishing in the worst times that she could be like them and have that freedom to carry
herself away. She didn't know where she wanted to go, or what she wanted to see, she had never
really gone anywhere. She had a book, she told him, as a kid that listed hundred of animals with
their scientific names and locations, just red pinpoints on a map, and she had no way of knowing
where they actually lived, they seemed to exist on the page itself, in the pictures that both
seduced and terrified her. Photos of lions jumping from the bush, teeth bared, and elephants with
ears flared storming towards her. It was there, she said, that she wanted to go. Not to Africa or
India or Indonesia, but into those pages, where time was frozen and those animals had the power
only to terrify, but that was still some kind of power. She felt, in those days, like that.
He was only a few steps down the street when he stopped walking and wondered whether
he should turn back. He had calmed down a bit and had remembered that he hadn't put on any
socks before he left and his feet were cold. The streets were empty and he knew he wouldn't be
embarrassed by going back in because no one had seen him leave in the first place. He stood
there and gathered himself, looking around the street for any sign of life, even a lounging cat
might have sent him back on his way, but without eyes trained on him, he sat frozen, not
knowing what to do with himself. He didn't want to make a decision, it didn't feel necessary, just
stand there until something happens. He couldn't stand there though, if someone were watching

he would scare them being out this late, hovering back and forth, but, then again, what sort of
person would stay on the street this late and watch people leave their homes, seeing what they
would do next? It was fine, he thought, to keep going. Just a second of waiting, if someone
were actually watching, and then back on his way.
On her 27th birthday, he remembered buying her a set of postcards with printed pictures
of Cairo and the pyramids at Giza (the person who had touched them up changed the contrast so
the structures themselves cast unnaturally dark shadows on the sand below, and a single man
walking in a flowing white robe breathed a sigh of relief in their shade), and she said she loved
them but regarded them sadly, as if looking at photographs of another life, as if there was
something in those photos that she had lost. She would put a pot of coffee on, Sundays he
remembered, and would sit on the window ledge in the front room, looking out onto the street
below and watching the people pass by, each of them with their unique ways of dressing and
walking; it was like a much grander aquarium. She had said once, when he walked over to her
on the ledge, peering through the glass, that it was better to watch people on the weekends, in
moments of free time, because it said much more about who they were. But he wondered,
recalling her, what she had really thought of them, whether their lives intrigued or distressed her,
the actions and the emotions and the responsibilities, as she sat in the quiet morning.
He was walking down Third now, and the streets were still quiet and slick. He felt at risk
in the city now, without the protection and strength of youth, and every shadow felt dangerous to
him; people whispering, he thought, from secluded alleys. With age, mystery slowly dissolves
into something known, and with knowledge comes the deep fear of things known and outlined.
There was Bruce's on the corner, the butcher shop, with the curing meat hanging up in the front
window and the blinking floodlight over the door looking like a forgotten lighthouse, but he

couldn't eat there anymore because, years ago, a man had become near fatally sick from a
package of ham that had sat out only just too long on the serving counter, and the risk had lost its
attraction. There, just across the street, was Third Street Books, the shop that she often visited
after lunch, falling asleep in one of the back chairs as she read about this or that. He found her
there, once, asleep, and in her lap was an illustrated history of America, the book set open on a
page for the Industrial Revolution, and massive caricatured, factories belched deep, black smoke
into the unnatural skies. She had pulled a sticky note from her bag, and scribbled a brief note
which she attached to the page: no birds.
They were 16 again, the two of them, and he thought of her as strange and unattractive, as
she would sit motionless, for hours, her hair unbrushed and hanging lank, her nose dug into a
book and her mind miles away in some dream, hoping that everything real had at one time come
from the imagination. She had hated youth, she told him, because of the unknown aspects of
everything. She had looked tirelessly for experience, but not in reality, only in books: the true
chronicles, she assured him, of reality. Being absorbed by these books, she had reasoned at once
within herself that the world was an ordered, balanced place, with room in the cracks, she had
faith, for revolution and miracles. She told him of her favorite book, written by some South
American author, in which a girl, simple-minded but pregnant with supernatural strength, rose
one day, like any normal day, through the roof of her home and up into heaven, or somewhere
else in the sky. It was hard to find her reasoning for life, where she found clarity and how much
faith she gave reality: it all seemed like a passing dream to her when she was young. She couldn't
listen to music, it was too romantic. The idea of loving someone, of giving them everything,
seemed impossible to her, she often said she never had enough love for herself.

There were those times, as he began to know her, in which she didn't seem real, and the
recollection of her now only seemed to exacerbate her incorporeality, her bodilessness and
transparency, she had become a shade of some other time, not even of a person who lived and
breathed. When she was 42, she had their third child. It was a Monday, or maybe a Tuesday,
and he came home to find her laying naked on the living room floor, the oldest daughter gone at
school, and the third, so small, wailing in the back room. My dear, he asked her, are you hurt?
She didn't say anything, she was as white as a ghost, and looked upon him as though he weren't
there. After the third, Elizabeth, came, the home felt haunted by the presence of a girl that
neither of them had ever seen, a young adult with black, braided hair, hands clasped in front of
her as she paced, knowingly, through the dark halls of the apartment. She had never recovered.
He had turned now onto Kingdom Boulevard, and his pace slowed as a cold chill swept
down the street. He wrapped his arms around himself and looked for a place to sit down, if only
for a moment, and stamp his feet, which were beginning to feel frozen and fragile. But there was
nowhere to sit now, and so he stood, for a moment, still and looked up at the apartment buildings
to his left and right, not a single light left on in the whole vast expanse. The night sky was black,
and roiling clouds moved from his left to right. It was a time for shadows, and he felt one then,
without substance, and, he thought, his toes were beginning to feel numb. It wasn't smart, he
knew, to stand there freezing, but he didn't want to walk again, it had become painful, but the
soft numbing of his toes gave him a bit of a boost to keep moving on. He could make it to the
park bench before dawn if he hurried.
He could outline her, but the defined edges of her memory had begun to fade with
passing years. She was a certain way, he remembered, but she very well could have been
different. He often felt that memory was like a piece of furniture that's colors and shape have

bent, broken and faded over years of use and disuse. A new chair, art in its original form,
changes into something somber and ill-defined with age, but beautiful in its own, broken down
way. It was hard to see her for what she was, radiant and shining, when that may only have
seemed to be her, off in the distance, her voice an echo of the past.
She played her part in the mystery, she was resolved to secrecy and cloistered her
emotions and her feelings from the world and fancied that she had lost the key. Meeting her as
an old woman was to see through placid waters as she was in youth: distant, retreating within
herself and spinning around the darker moments. That was both her mystery and her attraction,
he remembered, she cut through expectation and responsibility and felt as hard to catch, up to the
last, as wind between your fingers. It was loneliness that defined her, the type that smothers you
as you sit, smiling, in a room filled with friends and family; she was always forlorn in that sense.
They named their first daughter Margaret, and she had loved the girl as well as she had loved
herself, and maybe that had been the problem.
He was 24, with her, when they came to the city for the first time and she had loved it for
what it was: a place to lose yourself and feel like one of a handful of oddly shaped puzzle pieces
thrown into a box. It was then that she felt a longing to watch birds, and before long she found
that solitary red, wooden bench that looked over that serene pond and watched ducks, in landing,
disturb the waters, rest and depart again. As they walked one morning down a street that he had
long forgotten the name of, they had heard a blaring sound of disparate honks, tweets and
screeches, and she had grabbed his hand and run laughing around the corner where they stopped,
breathlessly, in front of an aviary whose name he had forgotten, with cages strung up in the
window and birds of all shapes and colors sitting on perches inside, singing frenzied gibberish.
She grabbed him by the shirt sleeve and pulled him into the shop, the metal bell on the door

twinkling softly as they entered, but he had felt somber entering, as though something ominous
and dark hung over the doorframe. As the birds blared and the two walked through rows and
rows of cages of all shapes and sizes containing white cockatoos with sharp beaks, parakeets, the
orange-billed lovebirds, blue and green macaws that stared at them out of the corner of their
eyes, finches, wrens, songbirds of all kinds, and one black, old parrot that had gone blind with
cataracts, a sadness seemed to pass over her, and each bird seemed more twisted and old as they
gazed crazed from their small, latched cells. An old man sat on a small wooden chair in the back
of the shop, near the bags of seed, with a newspaper open, sprawled across his lap as he slept,
with his head craned backwards and resting against the off-white walls, his eyes opened just so,
peering out at them as he dreamed, and she had asked if they could leave then.
He had always thought the city was haunted, and here, now, on the street as he walked, it
seemed to exacerbate his fears. Darkness was palpable, it had weight, and he felt as he walked
that the dark and the buildings and the loneliness and the memories sat, like a bird, perched
heavily on his shoulder. He was beginning to lose recognition of the places he passed, the park
bench seemed forever in the distance, and the bubble of their apartment, the butcher shop, the
bookshop, seemed to be stretching almost to its limits of popping, the air crackled as if it were
electric. He wondered, looking around, where everyone was, sleeping somewhere warm and
quiet, and he felt the weight of the empty streets grabbing at his heels, pulling at his sweatshirt
and pleading with him to slow down and walk down that alleyway, that one, filled with darkness
to its brim, and lay down and sleep, and for just a moment he thought he would listen.
They had spent a fourth of July together out near the coast, and had watched as boats
lumbered by and the sun sank, slowly, into the yawning abyss of the sea. They sat in silence as
darkness surrounded them on the sand, and slowly turned out towards the boardwalk as the show

workers prepared the firework display, scurrying back and forth along the pier. A seagull circled
high above them, cawing loudly, dipping and diving through the wind as the last tide came in
and the sparkling ocean sank into deep blue. It was there, on the beaches, that he most felt at
home, felt the gentle embrace of the earth as he stood perilously on its edge, fantasizing himself
jumping from cliffs into the tumbling crescent waves and sinking to its bottom. She had never
shared his fever for those points where the world and the unknown met, it was just strips of sand,
more cold and lonely as the sun began to fall, and the moon, hideously pale, sprung from its cave
into the night sky. That night in July their waiting and their silence turned into something
eternal, sitting wrapped up together under a blanket, the crowded emptiness of the night sky
slowly bearing down on them as they sat, miniscule, under the heaven lights. He had taken those
moments for granted, when time seemed to stand still and the world seemed filled with spirits
and wandering things. He had only shared those moments with her, and he felt safe holding her,
holding on to anything, when it felt like everything was rushing away from him. She had always
wanted to fly, to fly away somewhere, and he wanted to swim, to throw himself into the
tumbling waves and feel swept clean. As a child, he and his brother had run down to a creek
behind their home and picked rocks from its bed, skipping them across the water, or throwing
them at one another, but would always spend a moment admiring each perfectly rounded stone
they plucked from the bottom, holding them up in the sun and watching the bits of mineral
sparkling in the afternoon sun, acknowledging without recognition the deft hand of time and
pressure that formed them from amorphous hunks into finely crafted instruments. The sun was
down on the beach, and time stood tensely, expectantly, as if the arms of the universe were held
still by the single forefinger of an immense clockmaker, and the earth and sea crackled with
energy, she grabbed his wrist, she felt it too. A tremor began deep in earth and the air around

them seemed to vibrate, warping the call of the seagull above into a high vibrato, the sound of
the sea lapping at the shore into the constant beat of his heart. The vast stretch of sand seemed to
revolt under them and tremble, quietly at first and then violently. They sat woven together, he
feeling that life was a building and building of moments of rules, expectations and
dissatisfactions that climaxed in an explosion of the physical and supernatural, a breaking of
bonds between the body and the soul, and as he held her, with the earth shaking and swaying, he
felt that he was holding onto himself, holding onto a piece of himself that he had hidden away,
the freedom of flight, innocence and, opaquely, the brilliant light of a undomesticated and
unperturbed soul, it was to hold to tightly to a wild horse's mane as it madly bucked beneath you,
and it felt a fulfillment of purpose, a granting of meaning, to stare directly into the eye of the
world and feel it staring back at you with a harsh laugh and a reassuring, "keep going," holding
you as tightly as you held it and whispering back and forth to one another hints of desire and
loyalty, and in a moment it was gone. The earth was calm again, and she was crying softly. He
looked to his left and the pier had crumbled into the sea, people yelling for help as others threw
themselves into the water to salvage those that had been lucky enough to avoid the falling
lumber. He was in a daze and picked her up and ran out towards the pier in the dark, listening to
the soft cries of those still in the water, sounding like distant caws of swooping birds. A man
stopped him in the sand. Did you feel it? the man asked. Feel what? It was an earthquake, the
man told them, a big one by his estimation. He looked out at the sea, whoever was left alive had
been pulled in and the rest, looking like planks of timber rolling in the dark waves, were shifting
back and forth in the surf. Did you hear that? Daniel asked her, an earthquake! But she was
wandering, watching the seagull circle in the sky.

The walk continued, and he felt as he trudged on, with all the weight on his shoulders,
that he was lightening as his pace quickened, as if his body were beginning to reverse the effects
of time and memory. He was closer to the park bench, getting closer and closer, and in the sky
above him, the black begin to shift into gray.
It was quiet here, late December together, sitting, holding her hand in their coffee shop
down the street, him staring at her, searching for a sign that she was looking back. It is so easy,
he thought, to take every moment for granted, to assume even in the worst times that nothing will
end and every second of grace and love will repeat itself endlessly, but as he looked at her, he
didn't feel full of regret, but hopeful, silently praying that her eyes would clear and she would say
his name again. Although everything was a struggle now, dressing her, bathing her, changing
her when she needed it, it was as just as easy to get lost with her like they used to, seeing deep in
her empty eyes a gentle glow of memory, and whispering to her of days they had spent together,
reading quietly in the bookstore, laying next to each other in bed, touching fingertips. The name
of the disease, the name of the disease, it was a curse, a sign that the doctors hung from her neck,
kicking them out the door and into an unsympathetic world. It was difficult to comprehend the
breadth of it when she was first diagnosed, how much she would forget, how much she would
lose, and he knew after the third time of turning off the tub faucet as she lay prone, water running
over the tile floor, that their life truly together had ended. Their two daughters came around as
much as they could, and they handled themselves with grace throughout the process, as their
mother slowly forgot their names, their faces and then the unspoken bonds of love between
mother and child and looked out at them as strangers, cringing from them. There were still days
that things felt normal, they would sit and read with one another like they used to, but only after
hours would he notice that she had not turned the page, that she had forgotten to do so, reading

the same page hour after hour, new each time. He had stopped thinking of his own struggle to
care for her, he owed it her for her years of being their foundation, carrying their family with
dignity, and, despite her limitations as a mother, the children looked at her with respect and what
many would call love. After a cold visit, as the two of them and their oldest, Margaret, had sat in
silence for the most part, talking about the weather and her husband, Mark, the accountant, they
had laid her down to bed and gone out to the living room to have a cup of coffee before she left
back home. They talked about Margaret's childhood, about her mother, and she told him about
her own fears as a mother, how she felt limited by her own time with her, their disconnect, the
feeling that deep within herself she wasn't any different than from her and that her children
wouldn't love her. He didn't know what to say, and he had never known what to say. Maybe the
problem was within him, maybe his love for her, his appreciation of her, had clouded his opinion
of his children, had turned him from a father into a care keeper, but they knew, had known all
along, that she was the face and the heart of their family. He felt, with his children, as though he
were reading a page over and over again without comprehension.
He looked down at his wrist watch, but the display was dark, maybe the battery had given
out. His felt like a gust of air, rolling and barreling along the empty street. Up above the sky
was boiling.
They were still there, in the coffee shop, her hand in his, and time seemed slow and
fragile, memories they shared like broken glass scattered on the floor. They had been so late for
her doctor appointment that day that he felt it better, and more therapeutic, to spend a day in her
favorite places; they had spent that early afternoon in the book shop down the street, him reading
to her poems from Neruda that reflected off of both of them, though she had loved them years
ago as she dreamed of dark streets and small senoritas twirling through the narrow alleyways.

The storeowner, a small man from Brooklyn, dressed perennially in oversized, outdated coats
and pants rolled up to the ankle, smoking his pipe in the backroom, used to lead her by the hand
from aisle to aisle as she faded and point out the leather bound volumes with red indent print that
his mother would read to him as he fell asleep. This one, my dear, she read to me when I was
only four or so, the one there, with the green backing, and it scared me to death, it was a book
about pirates you see, I never understood pirates, but she always read it to me, and I loved, truly
loved, for her to read me things that she cared about, things that excited her, and she would hold
her hand up with her finger crooked, just like this, and growl out all the "arrr's" and everything,
she was a fantastic reader. Daniel would watch them pacing the aisles and sit quietly in the small
reading area towards the back of the store, with the smell of pipe smoke and dust washing over
him, the heat of the day warming the store and the light streaming in, and feel sleep overcome
him, feeling safe. Two months before, the man from Brooklyn had died, they found him in the
back room with his pipe unlit, after having slipped and fallen, nicking his forehead on a
bookshelf; he was, truly, a good man, and the store never felt safe again. He had read her
Neruda, and after she sat silently for a while, he slipped the cardigan over her and walked her out
of the store, holding back tears as they left, feeling it was the last time they would sit there
together. The coffee shop was full when they arrived and they stood for just a minute until a
small table in the black was cleared off and a waiter waved them over, with him walking with a
hand on her arm and ordering a cappuccino for the both of them as she stared towards the front
of the store and out onto the street. He didn't know how to gauge what she responded to,
sometimes moments of silence disturbed her, but she seemed at peace, at least, as they sat
quietly. They had sat for so long, looking at each other in silence that he had lost track of time,
the store was clearing out and they needed to rush to get back to the apartment before darkness

settled. Alright, my darling, he told her as he buttoned his jacket and put some money on the
table, under his cup, for the waiter, we may just have to make a run for it. They set off onto the
street, the apartment was only two blocks away and they were rushing. He looked over at her
and she was looking ahead as they went, and he had a hard time remembering, but she seemed
happy then, racing the sun and feeling free, but maybe that was just how he felt, after so much
time feeling trapped with her in the cell of her disease, that they were finally allowed a chance to
breathe, and were running, flapping their arms and laughing in a field as time and memory and
pain and suffering fell away for just a moment, and their daughters, just a step away sat laughing
in the flowers, one rolling and screaming, the other picking off the petals one by one and singing
softly to herself, a third girl, back turned with black, braided hair and hands clasped in front of
her. They were having a picnic, and there was no sun, only brightness and eternity, and they sat
together, sharing sandwiches she had made earlier in the day, and the smell of sunflowers swept
in on the wind and made them light-headed as they sat and laughed and drew pictures of bending
trees and birds singing, bright rays of a scrawled sun beaming down on a house somewhere, lost
in the woods, where they all stood in a line, hands intertwined, and laughed, pencil-scratched
together, the tallest on the right and smallest on the left and felt like a family, hearts connected in
pulsing rhythms of the wind, and darkness seeming far away and small, the grass and fields
saying small prayers in hushed tones as they sat and listened, for once, for the stop of a ticking
clock. But they were home now, and she was having difficulty breathing, looking at him with a
panicked look, and he knew he had pushed her too far then, had used her to go back to something
that was no longer there; he grabbed her hand and led her to the elevator and into the apartment,
helping her take a bath, slipping on her night gown and laying her down for bed, leaving the door
to the bedroom slightly open and taking a seat, heavily, on the couch in the living room. He was

tired and confused and lonely, and sat, staring out the window, feeling miles away and floating
listless on dark waves as they built and built towards an inevitable slam onto the rocky shore. He
woke up the next morning on the couch, walked into the bedroom, the apartment was so still and
eternal, and saw her laying on the bed in silence, her hair still braided and one hand laid softly on
her stomach. It was over.
God, how time can twist and turn and manipulate a man into something old and terrible,
longing for memories that have become as bent and abominable as the mind that sees them and
the heart that feels them. He couldn't see her face, she was a ray of light that filled his mind,
whistling over him in waves of ecstasy and sadness, and as he walked along, the bench ever
nearer, he dreamed of a time so far lost to him that it seemed like another life, another existence,
and as he floated along the dark streets, he reached his hands out in front of him as the world
began to lighten, a distant sun rose in the east, and she walked in front of him, shouting his name,
wearing a gown of woven gold and a face the color of the sea, and while he was afraid of
stumbling, he felt light and ephemeral, floating along as if driven by the wind. The bench was
only around the corner.
Lord, he would pray, give me a heart for her, and my children, and the effort to
constantly seek what's best for them. Give me the strength to support them, to give them
everything of myself and nothing in return, let me be honest and open, give me the courage to be
truthful. Give me the heart to be a father and a leader, and stability, that they can grow up to feel
that we gave them every piece of ourselves and left nothing behind. You are a mystery, and it's
hard to understand your plans, I pray you'll watch over us and protect us, give us your wisdom
and your strength, give us a reason to give and a reason to receive. Give us the gift of being
grounded, of staying away from the sea and the sky, and let us be present.

Annabelle Lee was born in the heat of July, and the pregnancy had been difficult,
midnight trips to the emergency room with crippling pain, days of howling, torturous cramps,
and it felt years. They had talked for a long time about another child, feeling after the first,
which had tested them to their breaking points, that it would be better to stay away from it unless
it were unexpected and forced upon them, that was their idea. But years passed, and as Margaret
blossomed in front of them, turning from a well of potential into a brilliant and insightful young
girl, thoughts crept back into their minds about having another child, taking that plunge again. It
had only been a moment and they had decided to try again, but Annabelle Lee was conceived in
a dark time, her mother began to experience periods of sadness that washed over the home and
swept the curtains shut and locked the family in a cocoon of shadows and silence. The crying
would last for hours as she sat in the back bedroom, the apartment darkened, with Margaret
sitting quietly in her room, staring at the walls at she laid on her side, and everything felt empty
and cavernous as her small sobs reverberated and echoed throughout the rooms, and Daniel held
still for a long time, his stomach tightened into knots, feeling that her sadness haunted her from
the future, that the time for crying hadn't yet arrived. Annabelle Lee came too soon, after only
seven months, and the doctors had said, as the mother slept in a drugged stupor, that the child
had only a shot of making it through the night and that it might be over before she could wake
up. He sat in the waiting room outside, with the smell of the sick and dying hanging limply in
the air, praying for more time, for just enough time, so she could wake up and hold her before
she was gone, that she could spend that moment whispering a life's worth of love into that frail
body, praying that life wouldn't and couldn't be so cruel to steal way something so small and
innocent and helpless and hopeless and shifting and fleeting. He had gone back that night to pick
up Margaret, they had no family in the city, and took her back to the hospital to see her mother as

she slept and pray for her and her sister. He sat Margaret in the waiting room and told her to
wait there and walked to the intensive care room where his daughter lay in a plastic crib with
harsh lights above her. Annabelle Lee lived, and the mother awoke from her sleep, but it all
seemed like a dream, days passed and mother and daughter laid together in the back room,
whispered words of wisdom and passion returned by soft gurgles and the one holding the
mother's finger as the other gently kissed the one's small, unformed toes. He felt like a phantom,
he couldn't see his daughter's face but through a veil, a deep fog of hazy memory of seeing her in
the bassinet as a doctor leaned over her, two nurses rushing in with equipment, working over her
and rushing here and there with instruments of all kinds, and he imagined he heard a blaring
beeping turn into a harsh buzz, and something had been lost, something had stopped breathing.
But there she was, too, in her mother's arms, with sunlight streaming in through the window and
the mother laughed, looking up at him, whispering for him to come to them, that he could put his
nose up to his daughter's head and smell the future, smell fulfillment and grace and feel whole
again, after all that time of feeling apart, of feeling broken, to hold on to something beautiful and
timeless, to connect to something that held on so deep to humanity, it was written into its genetic
code, into its cultures, the desire to spread, to continue on, to blossom. The doctor came out of
that unearthly room, grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away from the viewing screen and
began to speak, but that was his father, there, in the apartment, holding onto him and
congratulating him, saying he was proud, holding his second granddaughter in his arm as the first
twirled around the bright room in a Sunday dress, and the soft swish of fabric sounding like
prayer, saying that he had to apologize for the years he had been gone, the year's he had forgotten
about his son, the months he had tortured Daniel's mother, driven her to suicide, the day he had
taken a bottle of whisky with him, finished it, then hurled himself off of that bridge and into the

frozen icy waters below, his body swishing back and forth in the surf. Death was that close; it
stood in front of Daniel with a granddaughter in one arm, smelling of salt, seeming so grotesque
and so appealing, it was on the doctor's face saying no, there was nothing we could do; it was
back there, in that hospital room, as she lay quietly in sleep, dreaming of birds; it was in
Margaret's hands as she braided her hair and sat silently, wondering where her father had gone,
clasped together in prayer for her sister and her father and her mother and the doctor and the poor
and the sick and the known and the unknown and the sea and the sky and the sinners and the
saved and the boy down the street who had stomped a frog to death with his tennis shoe and
laughed and showed it to her and said it was easy; it was time itself, memory itself; it hung over
every aviary doorframe and every oceanside pier in the dark and every book of wild animals with
bared teeth, hunting; it was in adolescence and sex and loneliness and despair and happiness; it
laid on a carpet naked next to you as pain and grief washed over and whispered for you to join it;
it swam in the sea and flew in the sky and floated effortlessly on the still waters of a pond, its
feet kicking noiselessly, fishing small minnows from the shallows; it sat quietly in a chair, with
the smell of pipe tobacco washing over it as an old man kicked violently on the floor of a
bookshop and blood crept stealthily from him; it lay in the poetry of Neruda, the sharp couplets
and the poison; it came with a disease, swallowing whole the only things left to remind them. It
was over. He grabbed Margaret from the lobby and walked into her mother's room and they both
fell asleep in a side chair, the one in the corner, next to the window, with a small lamp left lit so
she wouldn't be scared of the dark, with her curled in her father's lap, and neither of them
dreamed.
It was over. He raced along the sidewalk, the morning sun was blinding and he felt
pulled, tugged along until he stood, silently, with the red bench in the distance, and a cool breeze

swept through the park, holding time still. The bench was empty and it felt as if he had rolled
back the stone and found a body, wrapped in sheer white, laying in the grave. He walked over to
it, laid his hand on it and felt unjustified, he had hoped for so long that she would be sitting there
waiting for him and saw that it was all for nothing. The bench looked like it had been repainted,
someone along the way must have seen its dilapidated state, the paint peeling and the creaky rear
leg, the 'shit' etched into the back slat, and decided that it would have been better to scrub out the
old memories and start over again. He put his hand underneath the seat, expecting to find a piece
of fossilized gum there, but only felt scrubbed and smooth wood, and the tragedy of it
overwhelmed him. He took a seat, only for a moment, and looked out over the pond.
They had gone, a long time ago, to see his brother together, saving enough money to fly
to the other side of the country, only to feel, as they stepped off the plane, that they had never left
home. Driving far up into the countryside, their conversation turned slowly into silence as the
weight of the trees and silence surrounded them, finding his brother, deep in the woods, sitting
alone, having forgotten that they were coming. He poured them cups of coffee and they sat on
his back porch and watched the sun go down behind the trees, only talking when the silence
became too much to bear. It had been seven years since Daniel had seen him, the last time, as
they dragged him away into a hospital for evaluation, saying he was a danger to himself and his
wife and children after finding him drinking cleaning chemicals in his attic and howling at the
top of his lungs. He hadn't remembered much of his brother, but as he sat and watched him
rocking back and forth slowly in that wooden chair out there alone in the woods, he saw how
hopeful the world could be, to give someone like him a second chance, to take him from what he
was, scrub him and spit him out clean on the other side. She excused herself and walked inside
to make a phone call, and the two of them sat in silence, Daniel thinking of the two of them in

the river, picking up stones to show one another, seeing without comprehending the time and
strength that went into forming them. He coughed and started to talk.
"I came up here to talk to you about something, since dad and mom are gone, and ... I
don't know, I figured I wanted to tell someone before I made the decision; to make sure it was
right."
"Go ahead, then."
"Me and her have been together for a few years now, and I know you just met her for the
first time, and I'm sorry about that, but we've been getting serious, and, to be honest, I love her,
more than I've really loved anything, and I figured it was about time I did right by her and asked
her to marry me if she wants to. Anyways, I came up more to tell you than to ask you, I know
you've had it rough, and I don't want to insult you, but I think it's about time that I made a choice
to grow up, for me, and I want her to be in my life, to show me the right way to be. But I do
want to know what you think, I want you to be in our lives as much as we both can manage, but
it's your choice, I guess. Do you think anything about that?"
He took a sip from his coffee and looked down at the weatherworn deck.
"I think you ought to do what's right for her, and, I guess, if you think that's what both
you and her want, then go ahead and make the choice. I can't tell you nothing about being a
man, or growing up, any more than dad could, but I think you've got a shot to make things right.
I never really felt like I had that choice, I just saw too much, but you've got that choice, I think.
You know?"
"Sure."
"I'm glad you two came up, it's felt empty up here for so long."

They could hear her inside on the phone, talking to her mother, who had moved years ago
to France and lived with a man that she met while working hospital rounds at the medical clinic
in London. She was laughing as they talked. The sound of laughter felt therapeutic. A breeze
had been blowing through the trees in the back, but as it slowed down and stopped, the air felt
heavy and tense, and Daniel knew it was there.
"You know ... I don't mean to bring it up, but it feels like we should talk about everything
that's happened, with Claire and the kids ... I don't know whether you're there yet or what you
think about it. We were just scared for you, I still am, and I guess, honestly, that's why I don't
come up here anymore, but I know you're doing alright, I guess. You know? I guess what I'm
trying to say is that we both have had a hard time of getting past everything, you saw a lot more
than I did, dad and all that, so I can't talk to you about things that I don't know about, but I still
think about it and it hurts me, man, it really does. I don't know what to think about it, but I guess
I'm sorry for leaving you alone, as much as I miss seeing Claire and the two boys, I know you're
out here and I can't make myself come here most of the time, to make myself remember
everything, it's a lot. What I'm trying to say is that remembering this stuff hurts, maybe it's the
same for you, but I can move on, and I want to apologize.
"For what?"
"For leaving you here, alone like this, I don't think anyone deserves it."
"I think I do."
"Well, whether you do or not, I feel guilty for not remembering you."
"Remembering me. You know, I got up the other day, and I couldn't barely remember
the two boys' faces anymore. Clay would be about sixteen, Thomas fourteen or so, and I don't
even know what they look like or sound like, I can only think about them as they might be. You

say I don't deserve to be out here alone, and maybe you're right, I don't know, but I do know that
people are shaped into things that they don't expect, people just turn different. I'm not up here
because things are unfair, but because it just came to this, maybe based on everything that I've
done, maybe not, but the thing that I have to do every day is put those memories of the worst
things to rest and move on each day, I couldn't make it through a single day if I didn't do that. I
don't remember much of you Daniel, of how you were as a kid, I sort of scrubbed my head clean
with all the shit I put into it, but what I do know of you is sitting right here in front of me, and
that's all right for me. It's alright that you're here and you've got a beautiful girl and you've got a
life ahead, and that's good. If you get married or not, if you change for the better or the worse, if
you come up here more and have to look at me as I am now, you'll be different every day, the
world will be different every day, and you have to be willing to put the best and worst, those
memories you have, to rest and be able to live with it, that's my secret. I'm not satisfied or
dissatisfied, I just am what I am, and that's all I can hold onto. Things move fast, brother, and
you can't keep holding onto the past as if it'll make you better or make you worse, you have to
choose every day what you remember and what you don't or if you'll remember anything at all,
but you do still have to live and take those steps.
The sun was behind the trees and everything was dark, he lit a cigarette and the whole
world seemed to surround that small flame.
"I want to tell you about dad, I'm not sure if anyone has told you much about him. He
and Ma had trouble for a long time, and after she was gone, he sat down with me, you couldn't
have been more than five or six, and told me that I was responsible for you, responsible for being
a man for the both of us, and after he was gone, when those fellas came and took us away, it
fucked me up; I didn't know what to do for you, I didn't know how to be a man or have a family,

every single day I felt like I failed you and then my wife and kids after that. But dad used to do
something when we were growing up that I'm sure you don't remember, or maybe you do. He
took us out to the beach and taught us how to swim, and that always kind of stuck with me, that
he could be gentle with you and I. I remember being twelve or so when he did that, and he
always said he was proud of you, that you loved the water so much. He always seemed happy
there, and I remember him the best there, actually alive and real, and I guess it makes sense he
threw himself in the bay, who knows whether he even meant to kill himself, or just go to some
place he loved. I think he was just ready to go."
It was over.
He felt better thinking about that time, and maybe his brother had been right to say that
memories were best put to rest. He had spent so much time fearing death, looking at it as the
thief in the night, stealing things of value, but it felt like fulfillment, knowing that death had
waited for him his entire life, knowing that at the very least, past the crashing waves, there was
an end and a beginning. That had been forty years ago, that night, and he had packed her up and
left back on a plane that very night, not sure whether he would ever go back up to the cabin in
the woods, but felt now, sitting on that bench there in the park, that he was there again, in silence
and peace, sitting on that bench scrubbed clean and the memories, if only for a moment, silent.
He was back in his apartment, and the sun was coming up, he couldn't remember how he got
there, but he walked to the kitchen and looked around, everything seemed clean and orderly, and
the apartment was as still as the grave. He walked to the bedroom, what a dream, to put clothes
on and start the day. But there, with the sheets thrown from him, he lay spread out on the bed,
looking peaceful and content finally, in stillness. Daniel stood quietly and stared at himself and
knew it was over. He was back on the bench, and the morning froze in vivid twilight and a deep

wind blew over the pond, stirring it into frenzied crashing waves. It was cold and he wrapped his
arms around him, waiting. Suddenly, a duck streaked in from the sky, wings tucked to its sides
and dove, hunting, into the dark, cold waters, coming out after a moment of searching with a
small fish in its beak. She was there, kicking her legs effortlessly and pushing along the waters
that had grown so still and golden light seemed to stream out from somewhere deep within. He
walked to the pond's edge and looked down into the waters, seeing her running through that
strange, green field again, strung flowers in her hair, the children only a step away, all three of
them, with Annabelle Lee, an adult with black, braided hair and hands clasped in front of her,
spinning, with her dress twirling in the wind, and off in the distance a home made of brick with
long eaves casting shadows on the bright plain, and he saw himself, young again, running in the
flowers towards something far away, a figure that stood silently, leaning over a bridge
somewhere, putting a bottle onto the cold pavement and turning away from the icy waters below,
smiling and the great weight of the dark and silence was lifted finally, deep within that pond's
waters and he smiled, he knew his daughter would find him in his apartment, content again, and
there would be peace.
"Hope, my darling, this isn't a memory of the past, but a vision of the future."