You can't catch me

The snow has piled high on my car. Like icing, as my father would say, when he used to dollop it on my mother's homemade butter cakes. A blanket of it has swept all over the small brick cottage and its withering garden behind me. With spring just around the corner, this must be the last snowfall of winter. The world was sparkling, glistening in its elegant new attire. It was practically posing for a photograph. It was crisp and white and fresh and felt like fresh beginnings. A blank page for a new life. I would not be working today. A day like this cannot be wasted on such trivial matters. Besides, snowed in as my car was, I didn't expect to be going far today. 

A flit of red dances in the corner of my eye. I turn. A cardinal is perched daintily on the picket fence, just barely visible above the snow. I feel for my camera in the deep pockets of my coat and hold it up to my eyes. I focus in of the cardinal, and it gazes back at me, doe-eyed, almost mocking me. You can't catch me, it seems to say. 

I decide to take a walk out to the lake. My legs take me along a path that winds through the trees. Their snowy coats sparkle and glisten, making the lifelessness of winter come alive with light. Everything is silent but for birds occasionally flitting between the branches, and the odd squirrel scurrying across the newly fallen snow, leaving tiny footprints in its path. I find it almost dreamlike, the stillness and beauty of the woods at this time of year. I flick through my camera roll. Mother. Father. My garden back home. The cardinal. Flick. Flick. Flick.

A few minutes pass and I come out onto the lake, frozen over, and covered with snow. On the far side of the lake, the snow has been cleared, and tiny coloured dots dance about the ice. I smile, and quicken my pace, making my way along the path around to the other side of the lake. I shiver with the biting cold.  

The park by the lake is surprisingly crowded for a cold winter's day. Men and women walk hand in hand along the lake's perimeter, rosy cheeked and in cheerful conversation. Shivering mothers and fathers watch as children bundled from head to toe in colourful winter attire build fortresses and snow men and roll around in the snow, their laughter echoing through the trees. An elderly man sits on a park bench, looking out over lake, violin in hand playing (insert song). I retrieve a gold coin from my other pocket and place it in his hat and he chuckles good-naturedly. Out on the ice, kids with hockey sticks shoot a tiny black puck to each other, weaving through other skaters, who meander across the ice. 

I've never been too good at skating. It's a bit of a sore spot actually, considering ice-hockey was all the rage in my hometown. Some of history's top players grew up in the same streets as I did, yet I still wobble like an uncoordinated giraffe every time I set foot on ice. I gaze somewhat wistfully at the people gliding around on the ice before me. I have never really mastered the art of coordination and balance, yet I have always been transfixed by the grace in which people can move on ice. 

It's then that a hand taps me on the shoulder. I know it's her before I even glimpse her fuzzy red coat. I know as I stand still, temporarily paralysed, before slowly turning to look into her deep blue eyes. Her face is shaped like an upside-down raindrop, her face pale, but her lips red and her cheeks rosy with the cold. White, blonde curls fall on the side of her face, and she has the sort of smile that seems to radiate warmth and make everyone in her vicinity feel like everything is going to be okay. 

 "Joe!" she cries. "You're back!"

"L-Lucy..." I stammer, barely able to believe my eyes. A warm rush of relief washes through me. “God, I’ve missed you.”

She throws her arms around me, pulling me in with such force that I am feel I might suffocate. I wrap my arms around her and rest my head onto her shoulder, breathing in the smell of hot chocolate on snowy days. As I bury myself in her embrace, I feel all the cold flood out of me to be replaced by the warmth of her presence. It’s quite surreal, being in her presence again.

She steps back, beaming, and sets a drawstring bag down on the bench to our right. She pulls out two pairs of well-worn, cream-coloured skates, hands me one.

“I brought spares - I thought I might find you here.”

“Lucy, you know I can’t skate – “

“That’s the fun of it. I get to watch you wobble around like a baby giraffe on skates.”  

“Hey! I’m not that bad. I’ve been practising actually,”

She laughs, lacing up her skates.

“What, so you don’t think – “

She cuts me off. “Let’s see what you’ve got then, Mister.”

She drags me onto the ice, and I feel my feet sliding uncontrollably beneath me. Lucy glides out the middle of the lake, and I stumble after her. She makes it looks so easy, moving to the violin’s melody without a second thought. She spins and leaps and twirls to the music, fast but graceful, every move intentional yet effortless. I pull out my camera. Click. Click. Click. Red on white. A painting on a blank canvas.

“Come on, Joe!” she calls, “Catch me if you can,”

I race after her, but I don’t have a hope. I will never catch her. She laughs and I smile.

Before I know it, the inevitable occurs and the ice slips from under my feet and I plummet. I throw down my arms, reaching for the ice, but it never comes. A pair of strong, warm hands wrap around my torso, suspending me just inches from the ice. 

I look up and her lovely face looks down at me, grinning. She helps me wobble back onto my feet. 

"You’re lucky I was here to rescue you," her eyes dance.

I smile back at her.

“Yes,” I reply, “Very lucky.” 

Her dark blue eyes gaze into me, as if seeing right into my soul. She leans forward and presses her lips to mine. I can feel her kiss in every corner of my body, and we melt into each other. For a moment, the time stops and it’s as if everything is right with the world. But then she pulls away, not meeting my eye.

“I can’t come back to the house with you tonight. Mama needs me.”

“Don’t worry – I’ll come with you.”

“No, Joe, she doesn’t want visitors. She’s getting worse.”

A tear runs down her face. “I’m sorry.”

As I’m walking back around the lake, I flick through my camera roll. Mother. Father. My garden. The cardinal. Blank. Where is Lucy? I flick again. Blank. It mustn’t have saved. I’ll take some more tomorrow.

The snow is falling again as I shovel my way to the front door of the house. Inside is cold and empty. I wonder if Lucy has been here at all while I was away. It feels grey and desolate – a stark contrasts to Lucy’s bubbly warmth. The radiator isn’t working. That night, I sleep on couch by the fire.

Next day, the snow has begun to melt away, and we agree to meet at the coffee shop down the road. Sweet scents of warm milk and cinnamon waft through the small space, where ornate little stools crowd around wooden tables. The clatter of dishes in the cramped kitchen and the chatter of customers almost drown out the classical music playing in the background.

She greets me with a kiss, and we sit. I brought my polaroid with me, and I take her picture while we wait for our hot chocolates. Seconds later it prints out, and the colour comes into focus. She’s wearing a cool blue sweater today, and her hair is drawn up in a messy bun as if she came here in a hurry. There are dark circles under her eyes and her skin is drawn out over her face, yet she is still by far the most beautiful person in the room. She gives a small smile, but her blue eyes are frosty and cold.

The café is crowded, so we take our hot chocolates out to the park where find a bench and drink them, looking out across the lake. We sit in silence for a long time.

“Luce? Is everything all right?”

She sighs and buries her face in her hands.

“No, Joe. It’s not. Nothing is all right.”

I take her hand in mine. “Talk to me.”

“Mama’s getting worse by the day. She needs me more than ever. All the time now, every minute of every day. And you. You’re always away. I barely see you.”

“You didn’t want to see me yesterday.”

She clenches in her hands, her knuckles going white.

“I’ve wanted to see you every other day, Joe. But no – you’re off in the city, or wherever it is you go these days. The house is empty, my Mama is dying before my eyes, and I have no one. No one Joe.”

My face hardens.

“I know this has been really hard on you with your mother, but I need the money and I don’t choose to be away from you this much. I want to help you, but you can’t blame all this on me.”

“You have no idea what it’s like for me, Joe. You would have to be here to know that.”

Her eyes shine with tears as she stands up and leaves, disappearing into the wind and snow, her hot chocolate left untouched.

I feel a strange numbness sink over me, as I walk back and enter through the front door into the empty house. Cardboard boxes are piled high in every room, filled with all that we own. Our life together packaged neatly away. I spend the rest of the day by the window, looking out at the dazzling façade of winter. Lucy would say the trees are bejewelled.

I flick through my camera. Flick. Flick. Flick. My father. My mother. My garden. The cardinal. Blank. I reach into my pocket for the polaroid of Lucy. It’s gone. I check all my other pockets. Nothing. I must have left it at the park.

Outside, the snow is melting. I suppose the lake will too, soon. A bitter cold wind whips through the trees. I decide to go back to the park before the wind picks up and the photo is carried away with it. I make my way through the slush, along the path through the trees. I trudge around the lake and all the way back to the bench where we were seated just hours earlier. The photo is gone. My heart sinks and I run my hands through my hair, thinking of Lucy. Beautiful Lucy. Kind Lucy. She doesn’t deserve this. Any of this. It’s all my fault I should have been there for her, and I wasn’t.

A mist has settled across the lake, but I can just make out a dotted figure on the other side. I start back towards the house, and as I get closer, the figure comes into focus. A coat the colour of roses. A milky pale pace. White, blond hair. Dancing like an angel. Lucy. I stop to watch for a moment. The violin is no longer playing, yet she is dancing to a song that no one can hear. A song of the wind and the mist and her pain and my longing. I stand and I watch her. I stand a moment too long. I stand there as a deep crack splits through the surface of the lake, making a sound like a gunshot. I watch and thousand more cracks splinter out, and the ice is shattered to a million pieces. I hear her scream, shrill and ear-splitting in the cold winter air.

“LUCY!” I cry.

I am running. Running out onto the ice, my feet slipping as it shifts under my weight. Lucy screams again. She is slipping. And she’s falling. Falling. Falling.

“LUCY!”

There is small splash in the distance. So small it seems almost anticlimactic, as if Lucy’s end should be something everyone is alerted to. Like it should be more than that. She doesn’t deserve to die. She can’t die. I love her. Whatever spark was left inside of me burnt out at that moment. I couldn’t catch her. She would never make it in the cold. And I was too far away to save her.  

It is then that my mind leaves my body. I don’t know where I’m going. What I’m doing. My feet slip and I am falling too. Into the cold, dark depths of the lake.

My body is frozen. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. It is dark. so very dark, but for a thin line of light that I fell through. I close my eyes. This is the end. For both of us. I feel a strange sense of relief, at knowing that I won’t have to survive this world without her.

But then a cold, bony hand grips my own. Pulling, pulling. I can’t move. I don’t want to move. I feel the air on my hand, my arm my face. I gasp for air, but my throat is clogged with water. Two hands on my chest. Breath in my mouth. Air. Sweet, cold air. I’m shivering all over. A face I can’t quite make out swims above me. The hands lift me. And put me down and lift me up again. I see floating pieces of ice beneath us. And then we are ashore, and I am lying on the bench, wrapped in a threadbare brown coat.

The hands feel my pulse and the face looks down at me with concern.

“Yeh were bloody lucky there, Son,” his voice is rough but gentle.

His eyes come into focus, dark brown like chocolate, with wrinkles of laughter around his eyes. The violin man.

“I was out for a stroll, see, and I sees yeh splashin’ about in the water. Yeh would’ve died.”

“L-l-lucy…” I rasp, “need to save… Lucy.”

His snow-white brows furrow in confusion.

“Lucy Yates?” he asks.

I nod.

“Why, she died 3 years ago, she did,” same as you almost did. “Fell through the ice.”

I let the tears run freely now. Hot and fresh, pouring down my cheeks. “But I saw her! She was here. She’s not dead. She’s still out there! I have to help her…”

Sorrow flashes across his face.

“I’m sorry Son, can’t help yeh, she’s gone.”

He pulls something out of his pocket.

“I think yeh dropped this,”

He hands it to me. It’s my polaroid photo. I turn it over. A steaming mug of hot chocolate. An empty chair. She’s gone.

I choke out a sob. Understanding grows in the man’s wrinkled face.

“She’s never coming back, Son, I’m sorry. But she was loved. I know that. And love like that never truly disappears.”

The next day the cardinal is perched on the fence again, eyeing me mockingly. You can’t catch me. I shovel the snow off my car, and I clear out the driveway. I pack the boxes into a trailer and lock the door to the house. I flick through my camera one last time. My mother. My father. My garden. The cardinal. Lucy. Dancing in the ice. Red on white, like paint on a blank canvas. The cardinal flutters away, and I turn to watch it go. When I look back at my camera, the screen is blank once more. Lucy is gone. And she’s never coming back.

I drive for hours that day. I leave behind the dazzling white world with its splendour. I take that life, package it in boxes and head home, never turning back. But somewhere inside me Lucy is still with me. Because she will always be with me in memory.

It’s then that I see it. A dark, jagged line, across the ice. The sound shatters my ear and terror courses through my veins. Seconds later, more lines spiral out across the ice. In another world, I might have wanted to take a picture. Crack. Crack. Crack. No. This can't be happening. 

GOTTEN RID OF

My heart hitches into my throat. I can’t breathe. The world is spinning. She is spinning. Spinning away from me. The ice slips from under my feet and I plummet. I throw down my arms, reaching for the ice, but it never comes. A pair of strong, warm hands wrap around my torso, suspending me just inches from the ice. 

I look up and her lovely face looks down at me, worry flitting across her features. 

"Joe," she looks into my eyes with concern, "What happened?! Are you okay?"

She helps me wobble back onto my feet.  

I look frantically out at the ice, but the cracks are gone, vanished into the white of the snow. 

"Did you hear that?"

She raises and eyebrow, looking puzzled.

"Hear what?" 

"The ice! It's cracking! We have to get everyone off!"

She laughs, but her smile doesn't quite reach her eyes. 

"Don't be silly, Joe," she says, "The ice isn't cracking.”

But she sees the look in my eyes and hooks her arm in mine, leading me back to the bench, where we remove our skates. 

“I’m sorry,” I say, “It must have been my imagination. I haven’t been out on the lake for a while.”