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Kate
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ERIK WHIPS THE truck into the gravel lot next to the clearing. Rob Funk-Abel pulls his Audi up beside them. They hadn’t called the Heathrows, gambling that this was all a simple misunderstanding, but halfway through the drive, Anita texted that Maddox was not answering his cellphone.
Even without headlights, the lookout point of Maiden Leap is much brighter than the last late night Kate had been here, what with the streetlamps next to the Gainsborough manse and a nearly full moon.
As the parents emerge from their cars, a rocking guitar blares from the turret room of the old home. The music stops and starts over and over again, reverberating from inside. Lucy must be writing.
At first it seems no one is at the lookout point, but as Kate, Erik, Rob, and Anita ascend the clearing, they make out two figures at the very edge of the bluff, out past the fence, struggling.
All four sprint forward, Erik leaping the fence.
Maddox has Jamie by the wrists, trying to pull her up, yelling, “Come on, push!”
Jamie is bent in half, her belly on the main slab and legs standing on an outcropping a couple feet below.
Erik drops and scrambles out onto the craggy rock. A scream rises in Kate’s throat, but she pushes it back down.
“Oh God,” Anita says. “Oh shit. Oh fuck. Oh God.”
Erik grabs Jamie by her armpits while Rob grabs Erik’s legs to steady him.
Kate gingerly steps out onto the rocks and as they drag Jamie up, she helps hoist Jamie by the belt hoop until her feet can find purchase. Anita goes to her son, who stands mute.
As Jamie clambers onto the relatively level shard of stone, Kate looks out and down, knowing it’s probably the only time she ever will take the opportunity. Through the brush, the road and river below seem to rise up at her. And, of course, no Wicasa or Chelee to be found. Her vision tilts and she turns away.
Jamie scrambles up onto her knees and collapses back down sobbing, her butt on her heels.
The men stand up panting, hands on knees.
Maddox bends down, softly apologizes to Jamie, and she smacks his hand away with a low growl.
Kate pulls Jamie up to her feet. “Are you hurt anywhere, honey?”
“No.” Jamie sniffles. “Well, maybe my arm.”
“What happened here?” Erik demands.
Rob violently pushes his son in the chest. “What the fuck were you doing?”
“We were just playing and got too close.”
“I wasn’t playing anything. I could have died!”
“Oh, you weren’t going to fall.”
“Fuck you!”
“I said I’m sorry!”
“Everyone calm down.” Kate piles her hands on top of her head as she catches her breath.
All is silent. Even the stop-starting song from the Gainsborough. The light in the turret is out.
A dark figure walks quickly toward them and then slows. “What the hell—?”
Jamie runs to Lucy, weeping and mumbling into her shoulder. Lucy turns her away from the group and walks a few steps, brushing Jamie’s hair back and searching her face; imploring her to repeat herself. Jamie whispers quickly and then quiets.
Lucy turns back, her eyes sharpening on Maddox. “Thought she was fair game, eh?” She fake laughs. “Thought she’d be eager to become a woman? You think you’re the only guy to get his rocks off pulling this pathetic shit?” She looks at Rob with a scoff and shakes her head. “It never ends.”
Lucy pulls Jamie to her and walks her up the path to her driveway. She helps her into the passenger seat of her sportster and they drive off down the bluff.
Rob yanks his son down the gulley by his arm, Anita trailing behind in tears.
All grows silent on the clearing. Save for the boil of insects. Twenty generations of crickets and cicadas. Thousands upon thousands.
“This place is cursed,” Kate says.
Erik rubs his beard growth with shaking hands. “Or maybe people just suck.”
Kate goes to lean against him.
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AT HOME, AFTER speaking to the kids and calming Samantha down by omitting just how close to the precipice they actually were, Kate and Erik crawl into bed.
It’s well past midnight. He is still shaking.
Kate holds him tightly and rubs his scalp with her nails until he is snoring. She stares at the popcorn ceiling. The man had thrown himself at the bluff with only a millisecond of calculation, simply assuming he wouldn’t go sailing off—for someone he wasn’t even related to.
She envisions the empty space just beyond the bluff and how it beckons. How it pulled on her that night so long ago and how her parents just left Lucy standing near it in the dark, Lucy’s red face shrinking in the taillights. How easy it would have been for Lucy to simply jump and cause the biggest uproar imaginable. And how has Kate not even thought about this possibility until just this very second?
What was the invisible quotient that stopped Lucy, but not the boy in the 1950s?
Maybe Lucy had already been too strong to give up, too strong to give in. Sure, it might have made a good legend to leave behind, the Leap was due for another suicide people had darkly joked. But no, Lucy would have wanted to see how it all ended. Maybe, if she could have faked her death like a magician, she certainly would have tried. But to actually jump to her death? No way. She would leap someday, but Evel Knievel-style all the way to Paris.
The only real lovers you’ve ever had can hurl themselves right at an edge without a thought, while you’ve done your best to skirt it.
Kate whimpers a sleep sigh. Just as her mind tumbles forward into slumber, she wonders if the Robeson boy didn’t jump either, but was pushed like Jamie nearly was.
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THE NEXT DAY, the Heathrows file a police report. As suspected, Maddox had tricked Jamie up to the bluff and had tried to get her to perform oral sex. When she had refused, he had dragged her to the edge, made her promise not to tell or he’d throw her off. He hadn’t meant it really and Jamie hadn’t thought he had either. He was just embarrassed. But then she’d slipped.
Like any self-respecting small town family, the Heathrows don’t press charges. Jamie won’t let them and they easily concede. None of them want the mark on the family reputation, even as victims. It’s enough to bear witness to an official in a government building.
As far as Samantha is concerned, they do something much worse. They begin house hunting in Minneapolis.
B L O G G I N G M Y S O J O U R N
One Woman’s Journey from Gay to Straight
This town knows how to hold onto its secrets. And if those secrets don’t play nice, it flings them off the bluff. Good-bye! Even the victim is in on the game. Complicity. Complacency. Fear. Shame. Same as it ever was, right?
When the school forced me to come out to my parents, I told them I was leaving town. My mother cried for a bit, but went cold. My dad? He shrugged. So go take a flying leap like the black fairy, he said. The black fairy was the boy from his class who had committed suicide off the bluffs.
And right then I learned so many things. The boy hadn’t just jumped because he was bullied for being black but also being gay. I learned my dad might have had something to do with it. And I learned that if my dad hadn’t been so drunk and ashamed of me, it would have stayed a secret forever.
If our cells truly do regenerate every seven years, then I have shed my past—I have shed my entire body—at least two times since I was flung from the bluff. So, if I’m a different person nearly three times over, why is it I still dwell on this stuff and my feelings for Vicky still cut so deep? She is the river that runs through this town. An honest woman. A giver of life. And me? I am but a logjam.
I think it’s time to move on down that river.
Praise Jesus
Posted by Liesl ~ 2:00 PM ~ 1 comment
Patrice commented:
Yes. It is definitely time to move on. I pray for you every night Liesl. Do not squander it.