I remember the day we met like the back of my hand. That phrase is funny to me, because the back of a hand looks about the same on everyone, so ordinary. Her’s was different, though, she had a scar on her right hand from a campfire incident many years before we’d met. She was a child then, scars only on her skin, not between the curves of her mind.
If we make it out of this alive, I’m sure we will both have scars to tell this tale.
…
The first time I saw her she was relaxing on a patio of a local bar, El Parapente. It wasn’t the nicest scene to look at, but it was welcoming with the warm glow of Christmas lights as a canopy over the outdoor tables.
The weather was evolving from Spring to Summer, with every day inching closer to my senior year I was desperately trying to grasp whatever adolescence remained in me. The dying sky was still emitting heat. My friends and I were up to nothing important, like any other Thursday evening when on of them pointed out this girl he’d fucked the weekend before sitting on the patio of the bar.
That’s when I saw her. Light freckles kissed her tan skin. Baby hairs that rebelled her hair tie were matted against her damp neck. For a moment, I forgot just how humid is was. She tossed her head back in a laugh then caved into the table. Her long, blonde ponytail flipping up over her shoulder revealed a black inked sun and moon balanced between her shoulder blades.
After the laughing was over, she lifted a perspiring bottle of Corona with a lime to her full, pink lips. Then she blinked her dark eyelashes over to me. I looked away in a panic. Shit, I thought to myself. I probably looked like a loser bumming around with his immature friends finding trouble to get into.
My childish friends and I were now walking by their table for the third time when she winked at me. My heart dropped to my stomach.
“Hey,” she yelled over. I looked to my left, then to my right. “You,” she said, and she pointed a red painted finger at me. “Are you gonna come talk to me or are you just gonna walk by three more times and call it a night?” I was embarrassed that she was counting how many times we had strolled past her and her friends. But she was counting, and that means that she noticed me if it even stands for anything.
Something about her pulled my timid soul from the shadows. I walked over to the cheap looking patio furniture, my heart rate increased with each step. My idiot friends were cheering me on from the sidewalk making me feel more awkward than confident.
“What’s your name,” she spoke with a rasp that suggested a long day being put behind her. She lifted the tip of the glass bottle to her bottom lip.
I find it hard to imagine that she sits at the same outdated desk, five days a week, clicking computer keys and emailing people who weren’t personally important to her. I wondered what kind of classes she was taking, if any. She looked like someone who spent a great number of days writing in journals and sketching little doodles on the corner of napkins at coffee shops. I bet that is where she spends most of her time, in coffee shops waiting for the perfect man to come along, a man that is nothing like me.
“Ben,” I said all too plain. The Corona made a soft pop as she pulled it away from her mouth. She set is down and reached a scarred right hand out to shake mine.
“Ben,” she smiled. “I’m Leah.”
…
Her hair is sticky with blood now, clinging to her smashed skull. She is too beautiful to be this broken. And she is so silent, I can hardly tell that she is suffering. The scraping and glass would suggest otherwise.
“Leah?” Nothing but heavy wheezing. “Leah, we’re going to make it out of this sweetheart, just hang on.”
…
Leah wasn’t like any other girl I had ever been with before, or even been acquainted with for that matter. She was sarcastic, she knew how to take a joke, not just try and make them. She didn’t believe in traditional dating. We would go out to dinner and she would pay sometimes, she didn’t want any gifts— ever— unless they were homemade or sentimental. I liked that about her, she didn’t spoon feed the fragile egos of fuck boys and she didn’t put up with bullshit. She had depth to her.
“Let’s go,” she half squealed. She laced her fingers with mine. It was quite uncanny how our hands fit like a lock and key. Her arm yanked mine and my body jerked to follow her path.
“ Where?” I questioned. She was always off on another adventure. I would say that she dragged me along, but I went willingly to whichever death trap she had planned for the day. There was an invisible rope tied between us, one that resembled tug-of-war. A war that she certainly won every time, I didn’t fight it, though. I gladly let her win every battle, because even when she’s wrong, she’s still right.
It didn’t make me mad, but I didn’t like it when she got her nails done. The red shellac was entirely provocative, but her nails didn’t scratch my skin the same when they were short.
We found our way to an empty space where the pavement ended, it looked so lonely at night besides our company. We parked the car and pulled out an unnecessary number of blankets from the trunk. We walked to the middle of a small wooded area and made a small fire. We seemed to have just lucked out that night because there was a clearing in the tree line that allowed us to see the night sky. She made a perfect bed of old blankets that reminded me of sleepovers as a little kid. We laid in our juvenile bed together by the fire, I rested my head on her sternum and she played with my hair like it was he only thing that was innate to her.
“Oh I wouldn’t mind,” she said confidently.
“You’re honestly telling me that you could die tomorrow and not be upset?”
“Mhm.” She bothered me, but not really. Just when I thought I had her all figured out she opens some trap door to another tunnel un-lit, filled with mystery and questions. All the signs point you back the other direction and forebode of an otherwise undesirable discovery to lie ahead, however, I found the bread crumbs in the map of her mind to be addicting.
Seconds turn into minutes of me pondering why anyone would want to die so young. She must have picked up on my confusion because she started slowing her circles on my head. “Think about it,” she prompted. “I have lived to have plenty of satisfaction with my memories and experiences… and you leave a beautiful corpse, something that people might actually enjoy seeing in a funeral home.”
After the last sentence left her mouth, I regretted not listening to the metaphorical signs. “Do you even know what you’re saying?”
“I’m not saying I want to die tomorrow, Ben. I’m just saying that if I died tomorrow, I wouldn’t mind because I would be happy. Look. Look at us right now.” I pulled my mind back to the here and now. “We are doing something so simple, but it’s so special.”
If there was an eighth wonder of the world, she would fall nothing short of it. Our conversation carried on through the soft breeze of an ordinary night. Soon we found ourselves so lost in our words that we couldn’t even trace the path back to how it had begun.
“… And if I lived in another galaxy?”
“I wouldn’t know what I was missing,” I said smoothly. It didn’t impress her. “Not because I wouldn’t want to know you— because believe me, I totally would— but I literally wouldn’t know,” I said calmly. She pondered it for a minute, then gave me her look. Completely stimulating, it made me weak. I had to look away.
“Why did you do that?”
I grabbed her right hand and ran my thumb over the maroon skin that coated the side of her hand, back and forth, thinking of the words to say. “You get to me sometimes.”
“Meaning?”
I didn’t exactly know how to tell her about her face, or her mannerisms. The structure was nice, nut it was more than that. She licked her bottom lip, then sucked it under her top one. Biting on the flesh that was fragile. But it wasn’t even the level on the attractiveness scale that her looks fell upon. She is beauty and she is grace. I knew her soul— at least as much as one could learn about something so mysterious— and I think looking at her face comforted me because it was a portal into a deeper realm of beauty.
…
Time stands still.
It’s like a dream, hazy and surreal, but I know I’m not sleeping.
Sirens slowly fade into my hearing, taking away the deafening high pitch that resonates in my ears. The wind whips my face, reminding me that it could sweep us to our death at any time. It wasn’t supposed to be this windy today, a light breeze was all that they forecasted.
Leah tries to lift her head, shattered glass falling from her shoulder makes a sound that brings me back to the reality of our situation.
“Leah, don’t try to move,” I heave.
“Ben,” she chokes.
“You don’t have to say anything, just sit still. We’re gonna get help.”
“I’m—“
“Don’t,” I say, pleading. “Please do not tell me that you’re sorry because this is not your fault.” I think I can see a tear drop from her left eye, she has always been a silent crier, I can honestly say that is something that I wish I never had to find out.
…
Leah didn’t cry much, hardly ever. Maybe when we watched a sad movie, but she would laugh at herself while crying because of how ridiculous she felt at her emotion of a fictional story.
We rarely fought, maybe three fights in the two years that we’ve been together now, but when we did she never shed a tear. Maybe it’s because she knew she didn’t need me to be happy, she knew how to be happy on her own. I envied her for that, I knew that if she ever left me I would fall apart.
She became Mrs. Benjamin Emery on a beautiful June evening. The sun hit her skin in the dying hours of the day, making it glow. When our first song came on she lit up, almost as if she had forgotten that she picked it out. I never really liked to dance, but for her I did. She laughed and smiled and spun in circles until she almost fell over. We were drunk on each other, and I knew it would be the sweetest hangover.
We had talked about starting a family a couple of times, I never pushed it even though I really wanted to have a baby. “Not yet,” she’d say calmly. “There are still too many adventures to be had.” She was right, we had only been married about a year and as anxious as I was, I knew that we didn’t need a child to be a family.
We found out that she was pregnant— unplanned— during November. It was late in the month, just after Thanksgiving, but there was still no snow. I couldn’t complain about the fall thunderstorms we were having here in Washington though, neither could she.
She wasn’t mad, but she wasn’t thrilled either. I think my enthusiasm pulled her on board because soon enough she was more excited to meet this tiny human than I was.
It was just after we made the announcement that our family of two would become three in May when she woke up late on a stormy night in a panic— she was bleeding. I had no fucking clue what to say. Hell, I had no fucking clue what was happening. We didn’t speak on the car ride to the hospital. She wrapped her arms around her tiny belly, I rested my hand on her thigh but I knew that wasn’t anywhere near the reassurance she needed in that moment.
I remember how she crumpled in silence when the doctor said that they couldn’t find any tiny swoops of a heartbeat. My heart shattered into thousands of unrepairable pieces as I held her shaking body. It was cruel the way that life teased her. She fell in love with a child she didn’t want, one that she never got to meet.
The fetus wasn’t far enough along to have a medical removal. Leah felt sick carrying around our miscarried child inside of her until it just “exited the body with menstruation”. She wanted the gender to be a surprise, and now we will never know.
I crawled into the hospital bed that offered no comfort to either of us and wrapped my arms around her. I could see her reflection in the window illuminated by the harsh, white lights. Silent tears. I locked my fingers with hers and stared down at her perfectly imperfect hand. “I love you, Leah Grace.” Her sobs gained the tiniest vocality. “We’re still a family, we’re going to make it through this.”
“Look,” she whispered. The first snow of the years was falling, it was then that we both knew Baby Emery made it to Heaven safely.
The week after, I asked her how she was doing. “I know I’m going to be okay, Ben. And so are you.” She said it free of fear, and I wondered how she could still be whole in broken pieces.
A tear escaped from my eye without warning. She placed her mulberry colored hand on my cheek and gently kissed my forehead, “Life is for the living, honey. Not the dead.”
…
“Ben,” she starts again. The sirens are below us now. “I’m so— I’m so— sorry.”
“I told you not to say that—“
“But it’s my fault.” She starts coughing, she doesn’t sound good at all. It hurts me to hear her trying so hard to apologize for something entirely out of her hands.
“Leah, please, si— sit still and don’t apologize I wanted this just as much as you did.”
“I was the one who wanted to go parasailing today,” her voice croaks.
…
I felt long nails on my bare back calling me away from my dream. I turned over to see Leah smiling gently at me. “Good morning, my sunshine,” her voice was so sweet I thought I might still be in my dream. She had one hand tangled in her messy waves, red nails protruding in several places. Her tank top slipped off of one shoulder, revealing her freckle dabbed collar bone. My eyes moved to hers. Their pigment was composed of all colors, but mostly green. Then my eyes fell a little lower, the tan tank top gapped away from her chest due to the fallen strap. Obviously, it was not something that I hadn’t seen before, but she looked different today, more alive in a way; like God himself had breathed fresh air into her lungs this morning.
Leah was not twig skinny, but she wasn’t big either. She was enough to wrap your arms around without having to strain to make your hands touch. I swiftly pushed myself up from my sleeping position and rolled over her, throwing her down on the mattress. She giggled and began to run her ruby nails through my short shags of hair. She looked like an angel of the morning. The sun shone through the large window to the right of our bed, disheveled from sleep, and illuminated her skin.
I kissed her, gently at first, then not so gently. Her long nails scraped from my shoulders all the way down to the dimples at the bottom of my spine. I kissed down her neck, then her chest, then her stomach. I found her scarred hand and kissed the violet skin. “I love you, Leah Grace.”
“I love you too,” she whispered breathlessly. Her cream tank top slid effortlessly off of her silky skin, soon clothes seemed such a foreign concept to us. I ran my hands around the curves of her waist. Her body sunk into the burgundy sheets with my weight on top of her.
There was nothing comparable to the sound of her voice. I imagined that many years into the future there will be a museum of auditory art, and perhaps her noise would be played in a room where the folk of the future could come to take pleasure in the sound the way that I did.
Leah’s lips parted at the increased need for air. My name slipped out in between breaths and while we laid holding each other in a sweaty tangle of skin and sheets, that was the only sound we bothered to make. Breathing.
I listened to the slow and steady inhales and exhales that she took, I laid my head on her chest and listened to her beating heart. I never thought that I could be so satisfied with the thumping organ of another. It seemed strange to me about how little we acknowledge our own lives. When we are healthy and vibrant, living in the moment, it’s hard to remember how it could all be taken away from us in a second.
…
“We’ve already been parasailing before—“
“Leah. Stop.”
“Ben,” he breaths are becoming shorter, I start to worry that she isn’t doing too well. When our sail flew into the building, glass cut much of our bodies. Leah looks like she’s been mauled by a bear and I wonder how she’s alive.
…
After we found the energy to leave our bed, Leah told me that she wanted to take an adventure, and who am I to deny one? I asked her what would fulfill her wandering needs, “Parasailing,” she said, emerald eyes lighting up. So we packed an overnight bag and hopped on a plane. When we arrived on the California coast, the wind was at a minimum and the men at Ackerman’s Parasail said that the breeze wouldn’t be a problem. However, they didn’t think about intoxicated crew members.
When we trudged through the slightly chilly ocean waves to get to the boat, we could already smell the beer. I just assumed it was from the people before us. We were all hooked up in harnesses and ropes like patients in a hospital close to death. Everything was connected to the appropriate pair… except for the main line to the boat.
The wind had begun to pick up by then and when the boat took off at full speed we were carried right away. Being close to the city didn’t help when the wind carried us toward the concrete jungle. Once the wind began to calm, our parasail nose dove into a balcony that hung off of glass office walls.
It all happened in about five minutes. We didn’t have any time to really comprehend that we were heading for our deaths. Maybe it was meant to be that way. So we didn’t have to use our last few breaths screaming in a panic, begging a mysterious God to spare our ordinary lives. Leah was always off on an adventure, but anything could be an adventure to her, especially the ordinary things. I wondered why she cared so much about ordinary things, perhaps it’s because that is where the most living takes place.
…
I grab Leah’s damaged hand and look through the blood in my eyes to try and find the green in hers. Everything is scarlet. Screaming sirens and officials on speakers slur into an internal echo. One big gust of wind comes and knocks us straight out of our glass nest. Humans were never made to fly, I suppose we should have headed the warning signs. We are too disoriented to say any goodbyes or “I love you’s” but we both know that the other one does.
I died young, but it doesn’t bother me because I died happy. Even in ordinary life we can find unparalleled moments of wonder, but it does us no good to linger there because life is for the living, not for the dead.
Off of the Deep End 