pond

March 2003

Delivering a baby in January means a long winter. My best girl friends liked to joke about the white sweater I wore in the last weeks of my pregnancy, saying I looked like a big, round snowman teetering on the ice like a penguin. I definitely felt about as coordinated as a snowman as I tried not to slip and fall.

I actually did fall on my way to the school bus one day, as my family's long driveway had a large ice patch (which became a muddy lake in the rainy months) to cross in order to reach the street where the bus waited for me. The school bus full of troubled teens watched me fall, then struggle to my feet with a giant watermelon-sized pregnant belly weighing me down. Yeah, it was a good day.

The weeks following the delivery were cold and cloudy, spent inside the house with a newborn, so the coming of Spring that year felt especially exciting. I was on my feet again, the pain of an episiotomy finally gone, and it nearly killed me to stay in school that first Spring day. The sky was just too damn blue.

Leaning against the wall of windows which made up the front side of our school, chatting with New Guy (we'll call him Marshall, by the way) the sun shone in around us, and I just couldn't stay inside another minute. Somehow I got the guts to invite him to ditch the final class period with me. My parents had given me their old, red 1992 Plymouth Voyager when Joshua was born so I didn't have to take the little guy on the school bus, and I was feeling the mighty freedom of having my own car in the parking lot. Even if it did have a rope holding the hood down and the windows didn't roll down anymore. Having to slam the side door as hard as you can just gave it character anyway, right?

We didn't know where to go. We drove and talked and listened to the AFI album I kept in the portable CD player, which was plugged into the van's cassette player. There was easy conversation between us, and he smiled and laughed like no one I'd ever met. Like he had something hidden behind the sparkle in his brown eyes, something exciting and adventurous, something innocent.

Things were not going well with the boyfriend, and I was feeling the affects of the many nights I'd waited for him to show up but had rocked my baby to sleep alone. I no longer felt trapped by the impending doom of childbirth, that was behind me, and Joshua and I were doing just fine without his help. Mostly.

After driving and driving, finally Marshall led us up a hill I'd never noticed before, and suddenly we were driving down into a small parking lot off the shore of a pond I didn't know existed. I'd lived in this small town for seven years, and the new kid was showing me around. I unbuckled Joshua's car seat and found him sleeping. That sweet baby always fell asleep in a moving car. Marshall insisted on carrying the car seat to the dock, which made me feel uncomfortable and really special all at the same time. It was very important to me not to give the impression I was interested in him for the help he could provide, and I was completely unaccustomed to a man acting like a gentleman toward me.  Boyfriend wasn't a jerk, but he was clueless in the realm of chivalry.

The breeze was perfect and we had the pond completely to ourselves. At least that's how I remember it. I suppose it's possible there were fishermen that day, but I certainly didn't notice anyone else. I remember the way the water rippled, the way Marshall talked about growing up poor and worrying about the little brother he left behind when he made the choice to move to our little town. I remember rocking Joshua's car seat with my foot and the feeling of peace I was feeling for the first time in so long. I remember the slight movements toward each other on the bench, the ones we pretended not to notice until we were just barely touching.

I don't remember leaving the pond. I don't remember what happened in the following days. I don't remember anything except the perfect peace of the pond, and the way his brown eyes saw straight into the depths of me, and how nothing was ever the same again.