The thought never entered my mind until I saw her dangling there.
This time, at least.
There had been a hundred other times over the years when I might have thought, what if I just let the car slip into reverse as she unloaded the groceries from the trunk, or pulled out her air piece when we were scuba diving in the Caribbean.
But then I’d stop myself. Like maybe how the rest of the world brings themselves back from fantasizing about someone they find attractive they’ve been staring at. I fought against those kinds of thoughts all the time.
And it wasn’t just Kathi. It could be anyone. In the middle of a golf game. Or during a committee meeting. Or peeing next to someone in the men’s room.
My thoughts just went there.
But then I’d always bring myself back. Remind myself of how crazy it was. I was a public figure. She was the mother of my kids.
Or a committee member who could help me pass a bill. Or the guy who just filled up the car.
It could be anyone.
But watching her there, latched onto that branch, seeing her helpless, her life in my grasp, everything came hurtling back.
The things that held me together fell away.
My first instinct was to pull her up. And I tried to at first. She clung to the roots of a small tree, her feet grasping for traction on the slippery rock. Nothing below her but the slashing current of the rapids. “Frank, oh my God, quick! I fell!”
I ran over and took her by the hands. Her palms were slick and wet from the soil and rain. I set my feet to steady myself. I even yelled out, “Help! Anyone, Jesus, is anyone there?”
I wanted to save her.
But no one heard me over the thundering roar of the falls and the echo of the rapids.
“Pull me up! Frank, pull me up, for God’s sake, please!” Kathi begged. Fear lit up her eyes.
I had her in my grasp and started to pull. “Just hang on.”
Then something came over me. Something I always tried to push away. Banish.
I looked around. Through the trees, I could see specks of bright-colored jackets back at the point where everyone was observing the falls.
“Help me, Frank. Pull me up. I’m slipping. Please, don’t let me fall, Frank. Don’t.”
I just looked in her eyes. That’s when I knew that this time was different.
I know I gave a hoist, Kathi whimpering, her legs cycling to catch some footing on the rock, which made it harder for me to lift her up.
I felt it again.
Like a fingernail brushing ever so slightly across my skin. A tingling down my arms and into my thighs. I knew it would put everything I’d built in my life at risk. Completely wrong, self-destructive. The devil talking.
Yet as I watched her dangling there, her life in my hands, I knew it was the one course of action I would take.
I just snapped.
“I’m not gonna make it, Frank. I know it,” she whimpered in the grip of panic. “Please, pull me up. Please . . .”
She looked down.
It was as if a hypnotist had snapped me out of a spell. I tried to push the thought away, but this time it didn’t leave. Until I was no longer Frank there, the architect of this new, successful life. The father of these kids. With my beautiful wife.
But John.
John. Who I was before. And all the things he had done.
“Frank, what are you doing? I can feel myself falling. I—”
Our eyes met. Hers white and large with fear. Mine, I knew now, filled with something else. I felt her slip. Suddenly I stopped trying to pull her upward.
In that moment I think she saw me. She saw me for the first time. Not Frank.
But someone she had never met. Or even knew existed.
She screamed, “Frank, can’t you see I’m—”
I just let her go.
There was a shriek, a piercing, stretched-out “Noooo . . . !” as she toppled out of my grasp and disappeared into the foam. I watched her come to the surface, her red Windbreaker sticking out from the white, frantically trying to grasp something as the river carried her away. People no doubt seeing her now, pointing.
Over the falls.
And I felt something as I watched. Watched her disappear. The sensation far too brief, too short-lived.
Not a thrill. Or what you might call pleasure.
Or a sense of horror at what I’d done. Or even remorse.
All of that came a bit later; it just took time.
What I felt was something that I hadn’t felt in years, maybe since that hot August night on Staten Island in the shadow of the Goethals Bridge. My blood racing. My heart alive.
And it brought the tiniest smile to my lips as I saw people running, shouting, pointing toward the falls.
I felt like myself.