Glow

Jessa could hardly contain her excitement as she rode on the number eighteen bus. She had travelled this route so many times with her summer friends when she was just a girl. A contented kind of nostalgia washed over her as the familiarity of the streets, sun washed as the last sun of the afternoon began to dim. It was a beautiful summer evening, like the kind in romance movies in Italy or Spain. A June day in high summer, just like the halcyon days of her childhood. Her linen dress was flowed softly over her slim figure in aquamarine waves. On her feet that she kept shifting nervously, she had little blue Mary Janes she had bought downtown at Picklers department store specially for the occasion. Her anticipation to see her old childhood friend, Jerry, again made her feel fit to burst. It was a date.

  Bumping into him on the street was the last thing she had expected on her ordinary Thursday afternoon, but there he was. She had not seen Jerry since that last summer in the house at the edge of Glow Forest. She was fourteen and half then with no breasts and braces. That was not the forests real name. It was really called the Carnegie Fulham Wildlife and Wetland Reserve, or something along those lines and everyone who ever went to school in Cedar by the sea and anyone who ever went to the weeklong summer camp experience at sanctuary lake went on walks around the reserve, reading all the plaques covered in illustrated facts about this duck and that bug and the habitat once for every year of their school careers. I bet most high school kids from Cedar heights high could recite the boards because they had taken the tour so many times, by memory. Jessa had taken the tour in Camp. Camp Columbine.  The great camping experience every catholic kid from a hundred miles around attended. 

Those summers near the forest were magical. A child’s fantasy. They roamed the forest, and creek crawled the up old York mine creek all the way to the boarded-up York Mine, finding rock and bone treasures, snakes and toads to talk to and followed the sun to the heart basin where we all had joked and laughed and swam and giggled about the naïve dreams of our gang In the cool faster part of the stream where the waterfall had carved a deep smooth basin into the sandstone. There was a natural slide through the 6-foot falls into the azure deep pool. All health and shining in the summer sun of the rainforest afternoons. All of us, gleaming tanned brown examples of the potential within us. Everyone.

Jerry was there and Jessa, Sean the fearless and the Jonah kid who was always losing his glasses. Where were they all now? All off to their respective colleges and real-life school towns. They didn’t keep in touch when they were kids, but inevitably saw each other plenty on holidays and the likes. Until the summer Jessa turned fourteen when her grandmother who she visited all summer every summer suddenly died in her garden tending her roses.

On the day her grandmother died, Jessa was there for the summer. She had dawdled home from swimming at the local pool with her gang and a couple of local girls that hung out with Jerry. Daydreaming and dawdling all the way home, as teenage girls do. shuffling and swaying to her own song as she slowly made her way past the town to the last street before the edge of the wood.  It was a perfect summer night then too, like so many of the days at her grandmother’s. A dream lifetime ago. The sun was going down over the houses and she noticed something she had never seen before, and never really thought about again. A strange green light from the wood. Somewhere near the old well. It was known that if you looked into the well at a certain time of day, you could see the sunlight just get caught in a certain way and the surface of the water, down what seemed ancient well to us, glowed, a fairy light her grandmother had called it. She said she had seen it first when her mother died, and she could see it ever since. But she saw it that dinner time, right before she found her grandmother dead, face in the dirt of her rose bed, ass up in the air. Dead.

Jerry lived here in Cedar year-round. His mom and dad had a big house with lots of land on the coast. He didn’t live on the tiny street at the edge of the forest.  His was and old house across town, down a dirt road to far to walk to town and was full to the briming with last chance foster boys.  We knew all their names and there were rarely any more or less of them. They stayed there with Penny and Brian. They would never let those kids go. Jerry was their own son though. He was the oldest one. The apple of his daddy’s eye. The golden boy and no wonder too. He was a beautiful child like he is a beautiful man. Tall and strong with lots of shiny wavy chestnut hair.  He was brother to all the lost kids. 

When she saw him in the street, last Thursday, he was wearing jeans and a nice purple button up shirt. With him was his dog, Duke of Earl. A wiry shaggy white and brown spotted terrier thingy, who sat obediently as he put some large box into his car trunk. 

“Jessa”, He called out, “Holy crap is that you?”

Jessa couldn’t believe her eyes. She recognised him instantly even with his stubbly face and grown-up aspect.

They had chatted, for a few moments on the street, “Oh my Gods”, and “how long has it been?”. Open mouthed amazements and a big hug.  Then he slipped his hand in his shirt pocket and pulled out a card, then a pen and gave it to her.

 “Write down your number Jessa, I am in a big rush, but I really want to catch up. “

Jessa wrote her cell number on the card and handed it back to him. 

“Call me” she said, “I would just love to.” And that was all. 

He opened the door of his silver car and the dog just automatically jumped in with out being told , Jerry jumped in and he drove off into the afternoon. 

Jessa was pleased meeting Jerry by chance. When he called her after a couple of days, they talked a lot about the old days, old friends, family, college. Jessa talked to him about her art and triumphantly was about to have her first show in a gallery down town. About her studio where all her newest best works were.

 He told her about his parents’ deaths and the foster kids who had all grown up with varied results. All spoken of with love just as a man would speak of his own real brothers. Some of them had ended up broken. One had even Oded in Vancouver during the fentanyl crisis. She thought how so much time had gone by, but some thing about it had not changed. The friendship they had know those early summers was unchanged, like an innocence grown, unspoilt, unchanged from naïve laughing at the Creekside. 

After two long phone calls, Jerry asked her over for dinner. He promised to cook something nice and not to disappoint, He had chefed his way through college. After they set a time, Jerry told Jessa to just come in when she got there. He would leave the door open for her. Jessa jumped at the chance to see him again and they made a date. A first date. It felt like a date anyway. The phone calls were warm, and both were single. And even after all these years they had a good time chatting. Who knows where it could go from here?

Jessa sat upright in her seat, red hair tied in a blue bandana looked wild and unruly. Her eyes too were wild, the colour of the green ocean in any place where it is deep and you can see the sand on the bottom, and as she saw her twinned reflection in the double bus window, she gasped a little. And after trying to smooth down her unruly locks with a few strokes of her left hand she surrendered to it and gave her cheeks a little pinch to pink her pale complexion. She stoked her forehead and tried to push a lost lock of blazing red hair out of her eyes.

She noticed then that she was driving near the edge of town past her grandmother’s house. Long sold and now filled with the summer lives of other children. While the sun was settling down, she remembered her grandmother’s face. A clear vision smiling and young. The way she saw her in the dreams after her death where she was young and in the garden. Smiling and letting her know somehow everything was going to be okay. One of those dreams so vivid it happened. And maybe it was real. Who knows what lies beyond the veil?

It was then she saw the green light lift up over the houses from the forest behind. Only the tiniest glimpse in the fading light. It was the fairy light, and she at once thought of when she had seen the light the perfect summer evening, she had found her grandmother ass up in her beloved roses.

Jessa pulled the string above her head for the bus to stop, even though it was a few more stops to get where she was going. There were only a few people spread out on the bus, but Jessa watched them all do the sway forward and back dance bus passengers dance every stop. Feet shuffle about and the door shhhhes open.

Jessa stepped into the soft evening, into that time just before the dark and just after dusk. The air was scented with the wisteria that has climbed the wall of Edgar Olson’s house since the beginning of time. the windows seemed to glow with the strange green light in that blinding way the sunset shines in your rear-view mirror.  Suddenly it occurred to her she would be late to Jerry’s for what she had so looked forward to and dug in her bag for her phone. It rang once as she stepped out into the street.

Jerry heard the bus door shhhh open too. He didn’t look to see her coming, not wanting to seem too eager. He was afraid he couldn’t hide his excitement. He counted slowly, turned around and walked slowly out into the hall where he saw her, looking a little awkward in her Mary janes. It occurred to him she looked a little ethereal with the evening light shining into the tiled hall, casting a long green shadow across the door. 

“Come in.” he almost whispered, “I have a surprise for you.”

After he smiled a bright smile at her, he spun around on his heel and he was gone into the kitchen to grab the photos he had collected in the now well thumbed almost ragged album of many summers. Sharing the photos had been the one thing he knew she would love.  Mostly they had those summers in common. That innocent time without the complications of being older than fourteen. 

Yes, he thought. She will love it and he spun around on his heel again ready to really get to know this interesting girl he always knew, but just met.

Just as he was about to spin on his heels, the phone rang. Gently, he set his gift of photos down on the table and pressed the green button on his phone lying there next to it.

“Hello” he barked, he was annoyed by the phone in this moment, but there was no one there. Still annoyed, he took a deep breath and gathered up his gift and turned to where he had left Jessa in the hall to start what he hoped would be a beautiful reunion, but she was gone. Vanished.  Jerry searched the downstairs rooms and called out to her.  Outside, he tramped around the yard calling out a questioning “Jessa?”, not understanding what had happened. Maybe she got afraid and ran away he thought.

Forty minutes had passed. Jerry had turned off the dinner disgusted, confused and sat down at the table and cracked open a beer and just as he lifted the can to his lips, and a few drops of the cold amber liquid poured past his lip tickling his tongue and throat, the phone rang again. 

“That will be her now” he exclaimed out loud to the spiders in the corners, but it was not her, it was a policeman.

Hello? Jerry asked, after seeing the Police department flash on his phone display. 

“Hello Jerry”, the policeman on the other end said. 

“My Name is Sergeant Delso from the Cedar by the Sea police department. I am here on wildwood st with Miss Underhay. Do you know Miss Underhay sir?”

“Yes, as it happens, I do know Miss Underhay. What is this about? As a matter of fact, she was just here.”

“Oh, well I have to tell you Miss Underhill has had an accident and she was calling your number when it happened. I’m so sorry to tell you. She was killed in the street here at wildwood street when she got hit by a car about an hour ago. We thought since you were getting a call from her at the time, she died that you would want to know.