Jump

Jump

            I jump, and in that split second, I know everything. Every moment, everything, everyone. The before, the after. The what could have, should have been. It all spins together like a Catherine wheel, whirling towards something. Whirling towards forever.

Mid-air, a small moment of joy

            Summer. A woman stands by an open window, watching the people on the street, the night humming around her, warm with the low buzz of voices and easy happiness. These are the days she loves most, long, balmy, the sound of laughter echoing through the night. She always welcomes it inside, likes the way it fills the empty rooms.

            ‘Something to be a part of,’ she thinks.

            It’s a good thought, comforting, and if I could, I would tell her to keep a hold of it, unsullied and true. Separate this thought from what this moment will become.

            Because what it will become is this:

            I jump.

            From the corner of her eye she catches sight of me, mid-air and she smiles because I am broad shouldered, young and strong, and she sees the grace in my muscles as I am held there in the air, and thinks: “Beautiful.”

            The drop from quayside to pontoon is short. I gauge the distance, jump and then …

            … She isn’t sure but she thinks she hears a whoop, though it could be something she imagines, or perhaps it is simply someone in the crowd. Later, she will tell herself she did hear it. Later, she will think, “Let him whoop. Allow him this small moment of joy at least.”

            It only takes a split second, this jump, my jump. And if she could fix the moment there, mid-air, she would, because it’s the last moment, though neither of us knows it yet.

            For now, all we know is this: it is a warm summer night and the carnival is in town. At the riverside a crowd has gathered, and the air is noisy and alive with the buzz of excited voices.

            And me? I’m just one of the crowd come to watch the fireworks, come to enjoy one last hurrah, before summer begins to dwindle.

            If the woman at the window had spotted me earlier she would have seen me wrap my arms around the waist of a girl with long blonde hair, seen the girl’s head fall onto my shoulder, her face turn towards me, smiling and laughing, as I fold around her for a kiss.

            She would watch us, the woman, then turn away, feeling she is intruding upon a moment that is not hers.

            But I would tell her not to worry or care, ‘It’s a warm sunny evening and the carnival is in town, so why bother about such things?’

            All I care about is this girl. I have imagined the moment many times, holding her by the river, cheering and laughing as the sky explodes in bursts of green, and red, and gold.

            I have thought that, maybe tonight I’ll tell her how she makes me feel. Like fireworks. All boom! boom! boom! every time I see her. And I’ve hoped, that maybe, just maybe, I make her feel the same.

            ‘Let’s get closer,’ she says. And she jumps first then turns to watch me and I want to jump down there and grab her and spin her around and laugh and yell, because there it is again, all boom! boom! boom!

            The sky explodes as I leap. It whoops, “Ooooh!” and in the light, as it flashes red, green and gold, the woman at the window can’t be sure. Did he jump? Did he?

            I am on the quayside, smiling. I am mid-air, leaping. I am there.

            And then, I am not.

            Between the wall and the pontoon is where I fall. Between the wall and the pontoon is where I go under.

            Above, the lights are blazing, the air is popping, the crowd cheers and the boats on the water toot their horns as the Catherine wheels spin.

            But below, between the wall and the pontoon, there is only blackness and silence.

The woman who remembers laughter                                                                 

            The memories feel like glimpses. Vague, snatched moments that unravel, so that the pattern of the thing – the form and shape you would call a life, she supposes – disappears. All she’s left with is a string of unconnected events. Not even that. Just a sound. Just the sound of him.

            As a boy, he never did listen. Stop! Wait! Don’t! Careful! All words he never paid much heed to. After a while, she got used to it, this wayward child who collided with life with a shrug, and a smile, and a ‘what the hell’.

            And maybe this was a mistake, is what she thinks now. Maybe she should have taken him in hand. Shown him that sometimes, caution is required.

            She tries to imagine it – doing things differently – but all there is, is the unravelling, and the sound of laughter. His.

            He climbs a tree, pulls himself upwards, higher and higher, reaching for branches that cannot support his weight and when she shouts, when she tells him, ‘You’re not a monkey, come down out of there’, he laughs.

            He walks his bike to the top of the hill then pedals back down as fast as he can, legs gyrating like pistons, before freewheeling to the bottom, legs akimbo. ‘Use your breaks,’ she yells, that laugh of his, mixed with the rush of air as he flies by.

            He gets in fights, he chases cats, he breaks windows, steals sweets, and all the while he laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

            And she learns to say nothing, because she knows this chaos is not all there is.

            She knows about the tea he brings her in bed some days, the silly songs he sings in the bath, the way he runs to the door when his father comes home.

            She knows him, and because she knows him, she joins in. When he laughs, she laughs.

            He jumped from the quayside, whooping and laughing.

            ‘Well of course he did,’ she thinks. ‘What else would he do?’

            And she wonders if she should take comfort from this.

The memories are where I will insert myself                                                   

            He wishes there was a word for it. Some name. Some way of identifying himself that would explain everything. But what is the word for a parent who has lost a child? He cannot think of it.

            Father. Can he call himself this anymore? Because in his mind, every time, before he uses that word, he hears a precondition. Used to be. I used to be this man. But not anymore.

            To imagine differently brings only torment, he knows this. And he wants to be like her, he wants to let the laughter rise to the top, to let the echo of their happiness, be the thing which remains. But he can’t stop imagining. He can’t stop wishing for the ‘what if’ scenario to be true.

            The ‘what if scenario’ goes like this.

            He jumps and lands on the pontoon, stumbling a few steps into her arms before grabbing her and laughing, and looking up at the night sky as a waterfall of gold shimmers in the darkness. He kisses her and clinks open a few more beers, then heads home, unaware that an alternative scenario existed there for a second. He was this close.

            But life goes on and they all keep laughing.

            Even afterwards, when he stands at the river’s edge, faced with the absolute truth of it, even when he looks down into the water, he has his doubts.

            ‘This didn’t happen. It just couldn’t happen,’ is what he thinks.

            Because the surface of the water is so calm and flat, and when the sunlight hits, it has a pale, forest green tinge to it that is strangely comforting. There’s nothing treacherous about it, nothing dangerous. If anything, it’s rather beautiful.

            But as he thinks this, another thought floats to the surface and he as to push it away, push it right down. ‘How dark that water must be, at night when you’re caught underneath it, how cold. Stuck between wall and pontoon.’

            And he realises another truth then, one which is far worse than any denial.

            He doesn’t have enough memories. And if this is it, if this really has happened, then what he wants more than anything, is to go back and insert himself into a few more moments. Just be there.

            And if he’s ever had a worse thought than this one, then he cannot remember it.

Sunflowers                                                           

            They throw flowers into the river, white roses, that catch in the ripples and the current, then fall apart immediately. From the window, she watches the delicate petals disintegrate and float away and wonders, ‘why roses?’

            If they signify something, only they can know what it is. And she feels it then, that she stands apart from their grief. A witness to it, but not a part of it. Intruding again.

            And she  remembers him, that glimpse of him as he leapt. A rose is not what he is, though it takes days of pondering before she settles on sunflowers.

            And if something exists beyond all of this, call them ghosts if you will, then she thinks she can hear him laughing. She thinks, if he was sat here beside her, he would shake his head, as bemused as she is at the sight of those delicate petals collapsing in the waves.

            ‘Roses?’ he’d say. And she’d smile and shrug and say, ‘I know, what were they thinking?’

            They’d talk, and he’d tell her how his father has it all wrong. There are plenty of things to remember, it’s just that now, he needs to forget. It’s a way of softening the blow. The comfort of nostalgia only comes when you’ve had time to forget.

            He’d tell her how glad he is that his mother let him run wild, because it meant they laughed together so easily, and it’s a feeling she can keep within her forever.

            He’d tell her not to think about it too often, because whatever it is she imagines, it’s all wrong. There’s nothing she can know about him for certain, save for that last moment, save for that fateful jump. He’d tell her, all she needs to know is there was more than this, and that it was enough. Was good.

            He’d say, ‘Forget about it. Go, buy some sunflowers, if you must, and throw them on the water for me. Then walk home and wait for summer to return. It’s better this way.’

            And she would turn towards him, with a question. ‘How can you know so much?’

            But there is no-one there. Just an empty room and the whisp, the echo of a thought which is not her own.

Jump

            I jumped, and in that split second, I knew everything.

This story won third 3rd prize in the 2018 Sunderland Short Story Award and is available in the winners anthology