Right and Left

The river was a place of safety. The two old sycamore trees that hung overhead shielding them from the world with their draping branches. The lapping of the water was a calming, familiar melody. Even the single raven’s caw was reassuring to Catherine as she tried to walk to the edge of the river bank.

She used to come to this clearing all the time, but it had been many months since she had last ventured to the water’s edge. Weeks had been spent contemplating how close she could get before the memories flooded her senses to the point she had to turn back.

And there were oh so many memories.

At seven years old, Catherine walked along the riverbank, the wind blowing through her golden hair and tickling her outstretched arms. Her parents had warned about the rough currents, so she made sure she kept her balance.

“Hello,” a curious voice said from behind her. Startled, Catherine almost lost her footing, but quickly regained it before she went tumbling into the water. “I was exploring and saw you. My name’s Thomas.”

A few feet in front of her stood a boy, brown hair swept across his face that nearly covered his pine green eyes. Catherine thought if they had been standing next to one another she most certainly would have been taller.

“I’m Catherine,” she answered while stepping off the rocks. Her parents had always said if she was not paying attention, she should not stand close to the river. “You can stay and play if you want.”

Thomas took a few steps forward so they were standing nearly eye-to-eye. Catherine had been right: she was taller.

“I just moved here. My mom and dad bought the big house on the hill,” Thomas said proudly.

“That’s cool. I live in the yellow house over there.” Catherine pointed through the trees in the opposite direction of her house, though neither was aware of that fact.

“Yellow’s my favorite color!”

“Mine too!” It had not been until that very moment, however, it would be for the rest of her life. “We should be best friends.”

“Definitely.” 

At ten years old, Catherine and Thomas stood by the water, watching the current intensely. 

“How do we put them in?” Thomas asked, looking at his paper boat with a calculating expression.

Catherine didn’t answer, leaning over the water and staring down. She held up her boat, positioning it above the rushing river.

Without a moment of hesitation, she dropped the boat. It landed perfectly between two of the rocks, bobbing slightly as it rapidly sailed away.

 “I guess that works,” Thomas shrugged, copying her motion. His boat mimicked what hers had done, drifting a short while before stopping. While Catherine’s boat had gone swiftly through the crevice, Thomas’s boat got stuck. 

“How do we get it out?” Catherine asked, searching around for a stick or branch they could prod the boat with.

Thomas sighed. “We don’t.”

At twelve years old, things started to change. The pair were no longer children who could hide from the world outside their river clearing. But they weren't adults either, even if they were expected to act like it sometimes. They were stuck in limbo. Too old to be naive of the world around, but too young to change it.

Catherine tried to run from it anyways. She saw her dad putting his suitcase in his car, along with other necessities. At first, she thought perhaps his job had called for an impromptu business trip. But as the car drove out of view, she had a strange feeling in her gut that she wouldn’t see him again.

So, she ran. She went right to the riverbank. She found that she could always somehow clear her head when she was there. 

“Catherine?”

As she often didn’t, she hadn’t heard Thomas’s footsteps as they trailed behind her. As he often did, Thomas caught her off guard in a flashing moment where all she could think of was the boy who suddenly stood near her.

Catherine sucked in a breath, steeling herself for the flood of words she knew would come flying out the second he sat down on the rock to her right. That was how it always was; Catherine on the left, Thomas on the right.

“He left.”

“Your dad?”

Catherine didn’t have to answer. Thomas knew her enough to see when she didn’t want to answer a question because she didn’t like the answer.

She met his eyes for the first time that day, and he found them to be unreadable. It was rare he couldn’t read her emotions, and it worried him.

“He left,” Catherine repeated, unable to form any other thought in her mind. All she could see was the comforting pine green of Thomas’s eyes.

“You still have your mom. You still have your sisters.” Catherine blinked at him, the words rolling off her like waves on a shore. Once they were gone, it was like they never even touched. “You still have me. I’ll never leave you.”

And then Catherine let her dam open. A single tear turned to two until the shoulder of Thomas’s shirt was stained, not that he cared. Neither of them cared for much anything except the steady crashing of water against the shore of the river.

“I’ll never leave you. I’ll never leave you.”

At fifteen years old, Catherine and Thomas had their first kisses. It wasn’t exactly how either had ever imagined a first kiss, but it was still one they would both remember for the rest of their lives.

“Hey Catherine, can I ask you a question?” Thomas inquired. They were skipping rocks along the riverbank, which they wouldn’t be able to do for much longer this year. But once the water froze over, they’d be able to do other things like skate. 

Catherine hummed, indicating that he could go on, before throwing another rock. 

“Have you ever been kissed?” Catherine paused. She was glad the cold air had already numbed her nose and cheeks, otherwise, she’d be turning bright red. She and Thomas had never talked about their romantic feelings before.

“Um… no?” she responded, though it sounded very much like a question. “I haven’t.”

“Well, I have a date with Patricia Diaz in a few days and I was… well if she expects me to kiss her at the end of the night… I don’t know but I thought… maybe I could try and… practice?” By the end of it, Thomas was mumbling, but Catherine could still make out what he was asking.

“Practice? Like with… a tree?” Catherine tried to make a joke, but it seemed to go right through Thomas’s head.

“Ideally with a person. You, I was hoping… that we…”

“Oh.”

Catherine felt like a deer caught in headlights, unsure how this conversation could possibly proceed without being awkward. Thomas regretted even bringing it up.

“I’m sorry, this is weird, isn’t it? I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, it’s fine,” Catherine found herself saying quickly. “I mean, if you want to I’m willing to practice.”

Thomas hesitantly took a step closer, putting a hand on her cheek as he frantically searched her clear blue eyes. “Are you sure about this?”

Catherine nodded, not trusting herself to speak. They stayed like that for a moment, faces closer than they had ever been before and still getting closer.

She had to look up to keep their gazes interlocked. Thomas had certainly grown in the eight years they had known each other as could be expected. As a child, it was her greatest pride to say she was taller than him, but looking at them now she couldn’t say she minded being the shorter one.

Catherine was the one to lean in first, lips brushing gently and clumsily. Thomas’s other hand came to rest on her waist while hers remained limply at her sides. 

Thomas pulled her in quickly, attempting to deepen the kiss. All they succeeded in was harshly knocking their foreheads together, pulling apart like they had just escaped some type of trance.

“I think you did pretty alright. I’m sure Patricia wouldn’t be put out,” Catherine said, running a hand through her hair.

“Right, um, yeah. Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

Each of them was acutely aware of how much warmer they felt. Normally the cold chilled them to the bone, but today there was a newly formed fire in the pit of their stomachs.

At eighteen years old, Catherine and Thomas were met with a rude awakening. They had always known one day they would have to separate, but it always seemed to come sooner than one would think.

The two sat on the rocks by the river; Catherine on the left and Thomas on the right. 

“Do you have to go?” Thomas asked quietly, knowing he would get the same answer he had for months, but still hoping maybe there would be a change of heart.

“It’s a great school. It’s a great opportunity for me, for my future.” Catherine’s voice sounded numb. Everything about her was numb, torn between her heart and her head. 

“What about our future?”

For just a moment, Catherine’s heart began to win, screaming at her that she had to stay. How could she walk away from the only man in her life who had always been there for her? It was selfish.

Thomas regretted the words the moment they came out of his mouth. As much as he meant them, he could tell they weren’t helping Catherine in the slightest. He couldn’t ask her to choose between him or her future. It was selfish.

They were quiet for a long time, simply enjoying the presence of one another and listening to the river as it rushed past them. Just like their lives, the current was flying by and sweeping sticks and paper boats alike off with it.

“I don’t want to leave you,” Catherine whispered late into the night, neither daring to leave the other behind. 

“I know,” Thomas said sadly, “but you have to. I’ll be right here when you get back.”

So the two selfish kids spent the entire night by the river, for kids were all they really were. Children tasked with decisions that changed their lives and the forceful hand of fate that never let them look back.

At nineteen years old, Thomas sat at the river alone. He knew if Catherine had seen him there she would have scolded him, telling him to go out with a group of friends or something else that was not sitting on the riverbank and moping. The problem was, he didn’t have many other friends, nor did he want any. It had always just been the two of them.

Thomas also didn’t protest sitting alone even if he did have friends. Sometimes being alone was the best time to think. And he found he had a lot to think about.

He still clutched the paper in his hand, looking down again whenever he couldn’t remember a word. That had made up his last half hour: committing every part of her letter to memory. Even if they were her words, he had to read them over and over again to hear them in her voice. 

It wasn’t until they were apart did Thomas realize how much he depended on that voice. How grounding it was and how safe it made him feel. 

He thought back to the time they kissed four years ago, the unfamiliarity had made it feel strange, but he had found himself wanting to do it again. The soft hum of her voice in his ears was like drawing in a moth to a flame.

A few days later Thomas had found that kissing Patricia Diaz couldn’t compare to the sparks that flew when he kissed Catherine. At first, he thought the intoxicating yearning was the common side effect of kissing someone, but he had yet to feel anything like that again.

Seeing Catherine at holidays or whenever she came home was hardly enough; not standing where they stood. Even side by side at the river, she felt more distant than she had in years. It was one thing to be friends, but it was something entirely more difficult when he longed for something more, worlds that were so close together but never close enough. 

Perhaps that was why Thomas and Catherine never said goodbye when she left again because Thomas always knew there was something amiss. So many more words that had to be spoken before they were confined to written correspondence. He always failed to speak them.

Even when she left for the first time, she hadn’t said goodbye. Their nights at the river always felt like enough. Each time she was away Thomas was left hoping the nights were enough to bring her back.

At twenty-one years old, Catherine came home for the last time. It was June, the summer she graduated, and Thomas had waited by the river half the afternoon for her to finally come back. He dropped the rock he’d been fiddling with in the water, close to giving up on her. Things could change so quickly, thoughts coming and going from one’s head. Would she remember their plans to meet at the river the night she got back?

“Hello,” a voice said from behind him. Thomas dropped another rock into the water, but this time it wasn’t intentional. He turned around, a smile already forming on his lips. A familiar blonde woman with bright blue eyes grinned back at him. 

“You startled me,” Thomas said simply as Catherine sat on his left.

“Payback,” she answered proudly, tipping her head back as she laughed.

They were both quiet for a short while, neither knowing how much to say.

“I missed you,” Catherine whispered after some time, watching as the sun set over the trees.

“I missed you too,” he replied equally as soft. The words felt insufficient, but they were all he could muster. 

“You know, I thought of you every day when I was gone,” Catherine said, uncomfortable in the silence that had always been her safe haven. “About what I would say when we were together again.”

“I did too. What’d you come up with?”

“Nothing. There was never a single thing I could ever say that described the things I felt,” Catherine paused, staring down at the river. “What did you think of?”

Thomas followed her gaze to the rushing water, trying to find the motivation. The water pressed on, tearing past the rocks. Pushing, pushing, pushing.

“Two. The number always came in good things. The two rocks we sat on, the two trees above us, the two of us. And how lonely it felt when there was only one.” Thomas felt his chest tighten as he got closer to the purpose of his words.

“Goodness, that’s a lot more poetic than mine,” Catherine mumbled. 

Thomas smiled at her statement, pressing on. “When you weren’t here, I felt wrong, incomplete. Did-did you feel that too?” 

“I did. I couldn’t place what it was until just now.” Catherine slid her hand over to grasp Thomas’s. He tore his eyes away from the water and into hers. 

Neither would ever be able to say who moved first, a swift, longing motion that each had been waiting six years to experience again. Fire spread through their fingertips as they cast away their need for two. As faithful as the number had been to them for years, they discovered becoming one was far more enticing.

Time crawled by, or maybe it had flown; neither was very aware of what was happening. After a while, they pulled back, gasping for air.

Thomas pressed his forehead to Catherine’s. “Please never leave me again.”

“I won’t, my love.”

But now she was twenty-seven again. Standing next to the river for the first time in months, and she was very much alone. Instead of now being one, she was a half. 

She should have been dressed in her wedding dress, the train flowing over the dirt path. Her mother had told her and Thomas they should pick another venue because it would muddy her skirt, but she had been selfish. She would want to be nowhere else as she walked down the aisle and smiled up at Thomas’s face.

The concept of marriage had been sullied the day her father left, yet when Thomas asked there was no other answer but yes. There was nothing she could want more than to be with him forever.

But she was not dressed in white. She wore a short black dress, as opposite of her wedding dress as she could be. She stared at Thomas’s face, she was always staring at Thomas’s face. It showed in the corner of her vision when she was awake and behind her eyelids when she was asleep.

Now it looked at her from the depth of the river, thrashing violently as she imagined he had the day he died. Her parents had always warned them about the rough currents. 

She leaned against the sycamore tree, the left side of it, trying to support the weight. Her own physical weight, finding it harder and harder to carry herself these days. The mental weight that always existed to remind her of her mistakes, the force of fate’s hand crushing her as she tried to fight it. She had failed.

The weight of never saying goodbye. She moved forward, dropping to the ground as she brushed her hand over the rock on the right.

“You left me. You left, but I forgive you.” Catherine pulled two yellow flowers from the pocket of her dress, laying one on each of their rocks. “I’ll see you soon, my love.”