I must be called Heather. She must be called Heather. I’ve been repeating these sentences over and over for months without managing to figure out what they mean. Little by little, they’ve lost their clarity and become an obsession.
I must be called Heather. She must be called Heather.
Fall was nearly over when these few words showed up and imposed themselves on me like an injunction, like some kind of obligation I’d be skeptical about if I were able to think more calmly. I was walking on the gravel road I’d known since childhood, keeping an eye out for furtive movements in the undergrowth, a rustling of leaves or a cracking of branches that would indicate the presence of an animal other than myself in the shifting shadows. With all my senses alert, I was imagining a novel in which I would convey the mysterious power of this undergrowth when suddenly I stopped right in the middle of the road, dumbstruck, murmuring, “I must be called Heather, she must be called Heather.”
For a few moments, I was nothing more than these two interchangeable sentences, I must be called Heather, she must be called Heather, as if some truth buried under the weight of years had resurfaced in the sweet October wind. And then I felt something bubbling up in me, the sort of relief that follows a long period of waiting, and I was finally able to relax. I had just sketched out the beginning of the novel I’d been seeking in the undergrowth.
I don’t know how long I stood there, but the sun was setting when the noise of a car coming over the hill behind me forced me to step back toward the ditch, where soggy leaves lined the thin trail of a stream that widened out a little further on.
The car slowed down when it reached me, the woman driving it probably curious as to why I wasn’t moving and suspecting some problem, a situation demanding that she stop and help me there and then, by the rapidly darkening forest. When our eyes met, I tried to convey the smile I felt blooming in me, as a feeling of peace filled me at last. But my smile quickly vanished when I realized the eyes looking back at me were my own.
Stunned by the resemblance, I retreated another step and raised my arms, as if to touch the face I was backing away from — the face of the woman scrutinizing me with widened eyes that were blue, just like mine — wanting to feel its features the way blind people do. And then, seeing her panic-stricken expression — the clichéd image that sprang to mind was of a doe being chased by a pack of wolves — I lowered my arms and signalled to her to carry on, that everything was fine. When her car disappeared around the bend, I went down to the stream, my quaking legs crumpling to the earth, to try to see my reflection in it. Kneeling down at the edge of the water, the trickle of which was too thin to reflect anything more than my fear, I dipped into the surface of the water with my fingertips and murmured a name, Heather, because I had understood, when our incredulous eyes recognized each other, that the woman in the car was called Heather, that she had to be called Heather, and that henceforth our fates would be inextricably linked.