Penitence Pier

Riding the bus is like riding a bicycle. Once you get it down, it comes right back to you, no matter how many years have passed. I stood at the chilly bus stop, sharing a shifty silence with half a dozen commuters, all of us peering in the same direction and fingering our bus passes, or tugging at the zippers of our jackets. I felt myself slip into the old routine easily as if no vast moat of time sat between now and when I had ridden this bus almost every day, years ago when I had still been friends with Caroline. When Caroline was still alive.

The news had come as a numb shock, like a poison dart taking me in the ribs. Someone posted something somewhere about a memorial service, and a few clicks later I was staring at a Facebook page riddled with posts about how much she was loved, how beautiful she was, how much they would miss her. There was a hollow lack of reality to interacting with her death through a screen. I scrolled through the posts in the same way I scrolled to the bottom of a recipe on the hunt for an ingredients list. Caroline was dead and no one had told me.

Well, it wasn’t the most surprising. We hadn’t spoken in almost a decade. Our lives, once tightly wound around each other, had segmented and split, spiraling off in different directions with only the roots left in common. But the wound festered. I thought about her at night and in my warm car and while I washed dishes and any other time my mind was given the chance to wander. It wandered right back to her.

By the time I found myself booking a plane ticket I had missed the memorial services. My hands planned the trip almost independently as if they had been conspiring with my subconscious and found themselves with a majority vote. I took a week off work and sat in my hotel room for a day and a half wondering what the hell I was doing before, again without my full consent, my legs took me down to the bus stop. I didn’t have to think. My body knew where to go.

The bus was very crowded, and I had to stand near the front, swaying next to the driver and flattening myself against the rail as people got on and off. It’s a meditative thing, riding the bus to the very last stop. You get to see all these little slices of other people’s lives—the parts that they probably won’t tell anyone about when they get home because it’s just a tunnel between places. I watched a woman laden with bulging shopping bags deflate into a seat for several stops before she clambered off again, squeezing out between the backs of other passengers. I listened to a man talk to someone very loudly on a headset about his son. I eventually got my own seat, and then I watched the streets grind by, stop after stop, shop after shop, house after house, feeling that somehow centuries had passed, and simultaneously, no time at all.

Many years ago, when I was a different version of myself, I did not take the bus alone. I had a very close friend with me, and we would make our way to the back where the seats are raised up a little and you can see the whole cabin. We would lean towards each other and laugh at the other passengers or about someone we knew, or listen to music, or draw on the same scrap of paper. It didn’t matter. It was ephemeral time-wasting while we sat in the tunnel between places. There was no meaning to the things that we said to each other or the jokes that we shared, but in the aggregate, they made up something that defined that time in my life more profoundly than the school I went to or the degree I was earning or books that I was reading.  

Caroline was shorter and louder than me. She had much better taste in music, and she always had a terrible boyfriend. She had more friends too, but when we rode out to the pier together, just the two of us, it felt like we were the only two people on the planet. I could almost feel her in the seat next to me, like an old habit. The bus was coming to the end of the line, almost empty now, and I was a lone astronaut, wandering on abandoned terrain.

The pier was not popular in autumn. The sky was a solid mass of grey and the water was angry and choppy. A solitary fisherman was casting hopefully into the black water as I crossed the boardwalk. The next bus would not come for at least forty-five minutes. A wave of hopelessness came upon me like a riptide. It had been a journey that I felt compelled to take, something my sleepless mind had convinced itself that I must do if I was ever to rest again but standing there with the chilly wind slicing at my face, I felt more frustrated and emptier than ever.

From where I stood, I could see the little strip of beach where we had spent so many afternoons sunbathing. The tide was high now, playing violent peek-a-boo with the sand. Caroline and I used to pick up little bits of broken shell and sea glass, sparkling like treasure in the salty twilight. They never seemed to glisten the same way when we took a pocketful home, as if being separated from the sea stole some magic out of them. We would walk down to the end of the pier as we waited for the last bus and drop them off the side instead, back into the ocean so that maybe someday we could find them again.

If I had been a better friend, I might have had some of Caroline’s ashes. I might have wished her a soulful goodbye and sprinkled her like treasure back into the waves. But I didn’t have anything like that. I didn’t know if she was ash or if she was preserved underground somewhere. I hadn’t even thought to bring anything with me. I wondered darkly for a moment if I should toss myself off the side of the pier and then swim to shore. That would at least give me something to do besides just standing there scowling at the ocean.

I was halfway through deciding that the trip had been a colossal waste of resources, moments from calling a taxi to take me out of that place when a swish of movement and a squeal of brakes caught my attention. Another bus was pulling up at the stop. The wind picked up again and blew my hair across my face. I felt a few drops of rain come with it. I squinted at the bus, trying to make out its route and wondering if I should run for it before I got soaked, but it was already pulling away again, leaving a lone figure standing at the stop. I glanced away, pulling out my phone to call the taxi, but then I did a doubletake. There was something about the dark hair poking out from her hood, something about her stature, and the way that she leaned a little to one side that reminded me so vividly of Caroline that I took a few steps toward her. Like she was my reflection in a mirror, she stepped toward me as well.

The wind was growing stronger and, while it was not raining in earnest, icy drops kept splattering against my cheeks and jacket. I gripped the wooden railing of the boardwalk, feeling certain I was mistaken but determined to see for sure, and the figure continued toward me, picking her way across the short stretch of parking lot and boardwalk, taking the same small steps that Caroline used to take. Her arms were wrapped around her body like her coat wasn’t warm enough and as she drew closer, I could see that her nails were caked with dark soil. A tendril of fear uncoiled itself right below my heart, but I was rooted to the spot.

The girl with Caroline’s face stopped in front of me and said, with Caroline’s voice, “Holy shit.” She separated it out into three distinct syllables, just like how Caroline used to. Ho-ly shit.

It was her.

“What are you doing here?” I said stupidly. The roaring wind, the waves, the fledgling storm, they were all conspiring to confuse me. There was nothing but cold fog inside my brain.

A small frown drew her eyebrows together. “What am I doing here? What are you doing here? You dropped off the face of the planet.”

“I thought you were dead,” I said, again stupid.

“Oh, yeah,” she said unconcernedly. “I’m buried not too far from here. Just a hop, skip, and a jump.” She took my arm and pulled me toward the ocean. I caught a whiff of chemicals and freshly turned soil. “Come on, let’s walk down to the end.”

Have you ever walked through a house that you haven’t lived in for a very long time? You still know how many steps it takes to get to your bedroom, when to twist your hips to avoid the edge of the counter, which stair is going to groan under your weight. I still knew how to walk down the pier with Caroline. It should have been strange and surreal and scary to walk out over the open ocean with a girl who just climbed out of her grave, but it wasn’t. It was like riding a bicycle.

“I’m glad I ran into you,” Caroline said cheerfully as we walked arm in arm. “But you picked a terrible day for it.” She squinted up at the squally sky, still spitting little bullets of rain in our faces.

“I didn’t really plan it,” I mumbled. “I just tried to do what felt right.”

She looked at me sideways. “Right. Same as how you ran away after college?”

 “I didn’t run away,” I protested, flustered. “I got a job.”

Caroline shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t really matter. But I missed you, you know. I wish we had stayed friends.”

Suddenly tears stung the corners of my eyes and something terrible was pushing at the inside of my mouth, trying to burst out through my lips, my nose, my tear ducts. I had missed her too, of course. Even before we stopped speaking altogether, I had missed her. Something changed, slowly, over many months. The trips to the pier had dried up in place of a dozen parties I wasn’t invited to. By graduation, our friendship was listing badly, and when I moved away it was as if it had never existed at all. Some friendships are like that, I had told myself. You set them down, but when you pick them back up again, there they are, no signs of decay.

I turned toward her, not sure what to say, or even if I would be able to say it, but Caroline was smiling. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “It means a lot that you came.”

“I’m sorry I was a bad friend,” I whispered, voice like shattered glass.

“It’s okay,” she said again, more insistently. “I’m just giving you a hard time.”

We had reached the end of the pier and Caroline leaned out over the ocean; her arms splayed out on the wooden railing. I wanted to lean out over the edge with her and share in that feeling of wild freedom we used to revel in, but I had swathed myself in a cocoon of shame and trepidation and I hung back.

She looked around at me and folded her arms. “So, what’s your plan?”

I looked at her questioningly.

“Well, you came all the way out here, I’m assuming because you felt bad, so what’s next? What now? What feels right?” There was a hint of mockery in her voice. It was the same tone she used to use while telling me I was fucking up a relationship or overthinking a perceived slight.

“I guess I wanted to say goodbye,” I said, lamely.

“You’re not doing a very good job.” There was a little smirk at the corner of her mouth. “Come on, bare your soul a little.”

I was starting to feel frustrated again. Frustrated, confused, and a little indignant that my private farewell party had been crashed by Caroline herself. But, I reflected, if not for Caroline, I might be in a taxi already. I would have given up and run away.

“Okay,” I began, “Okay, I’m sorry I missed your funeral.”

Caroline rolled her eyes. “Whatever, those are for the living anyway.”

“I’m sorry I never reached out,” I said, a little angrily.

“What are you apologizing for?” She scoffed, “I didn’t talk to you either after you left. That stuff doesn’t matter anymore.”

I paused. She was right. That vast chasm of years I had been trying so hard to breach was undeniable. It existed. It had happened. It was there. I tried again.

I took a deep breath, and then I told her about how her favorite band was still my favorite band, and about how I still drank vodka-crans to celebrate something good. I told her about how I still looked for seaglass and about how riding the bus still felt more like an adventure than a chore. I told her about how my life was infused with so many artifacts of her and of us when we had been the best of friends. I stopped knowing what I was saying and just said it, and it felt good. It felt like some poison was being extracted and my blood was finally clean.

When I was done Caroline was smiling again. “Feels right,” she said, and I didn’t know if she was talking about herself or me.

I nodded. The wind had dried the tears on my cheeks. They felt salty and raw.

“Come up here,” she said, and she hauled herself up on the railing again, bringing her legs up so she was straddling the railing, one leg dangling over the ocean.

In retrospect, I should have been nervous. I probably should have said no, but something inside me had cracked open, so I didn’t do any of those things. Instead, I clambered up on the railing too, straddling the salt-stained wooden beam next to Caroline. There was a moment of terrible vertigo as I made direct eye contact with the churning ocean, waiting to eat me alive. But as I found my balance, I started to laugh. It was like flying. I was riding the world.

The wind surged and threatened to push us off, but we stayed up there, laughing like teenagers until the seat of my pants grew uncomfortably damp and I became aware that the light was fading fast. The moment waned like melting snow, and we returned to solid ground.

Night was falling. The water was growing darker, and I could see the fisherman was packing up down at the bottom of the pier. I felt cold and windswept and raw in more ways than one, but the stone in my chest felt lighter like part of it had dropped away into the sea.

We started back down the darkening pier. In my glossy memories, the boardwalk was lined with vendors, people on bicycles, and families chasing children. Today it was a ghost town, a desaturated photograph, no life at all.

“I should come back in the summer,” I said, unsticking the backs of my jeans from my legs and shivering.

“I’d like that,” Caroline said, and then she smirked. “Do you remember that time when we got stuck out here?”

“That time those guys bought us margaritas?”

“Yes! We missed the last bus!” She was laughing.

“How did we get back? Didn’t one of those guys give us a ride?”

“That was so sketchy! God, I never drank tequila again.” We were both laughing now, remembering the nervous glances we cast each other in the back seat of a stranger’s car.

We had reached the end of the pier and our laughter faded and we were left looking at each other. I wished fervently that I could have more. More laughter, more memories, more to savor. Everything was fading.

“I can’t go with you,” Caroline said, reaching out and squeezing my hand. “But when you come back, I’ll be here.”

I squeezed back. Her flesh was cold, bones shifting beneath icy skin. I felt the sting of tears again. “You’re everywhere.”

I could see my bus down the street, lumbering along towards the very last stop. It was time to go. I jogged across the boardwalk and the small parking lot, thinking longingly of a change of clothes, my warm hotel room, even the stuffy interior of the bus. As the doors slid open with an inviting squeal, I turned and looked back over my shoulder toward the pier.

I could still see Caroline standing there at the end, silhouetted against the fading light of the murky sky.