by Maia Walczak
And with this sudden flashback I felt a weight start to press against my chest. It was a weight I hadn’t felt for days, weeks even. I wanted it to go away but it was there, growing, reminding me of everything, of why I was running away, why I was even here in this stream all the way up in Canada. I had to stop swimming. I left the water, wrapped my shirt around my shoulders and sat down on the rocks, resentful and angry. This pain, these memories, they were always ready to greet me.
‘What’s up?’ Jack asked.
And I told him. He left the water, dried himself off roughly, grabbed me by the hand and got me to my feet.
‘Come,’ he said.
I had no idea what he was doing and where he was leading me, but I followed him. We walked upstream.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘You’ll see.’
He pointed at some flowers I hadn’t seen before. He commented on the song of a bird I hadn’t noticed. I heard the breeze run through the trees, the low drone of summer insects in the grass, the call of birds near and far and the rocks slip and crunch beneath our feet. The smell of wildflowers flooded my nostrils and the blackness started to drift away.
We carried on walking upstream for another minute or so, when Jack suddenly climbed up some rock cliffs above the stream.
‘What the fuck are you doing Jack?’
But I followed him. He took me gently by the shoulders and turned my body around so I was facing downstream, out across the valley.
‘Looks pretty from up here, doesn’t it?’ he said.
It did. Of course it did. The view from this height emphasised the magnitude and beauty of the place even more.
‘So what were you saying about your mom?’ he said.
‘Is that why you brought me up here? To ask me about that?’
‘Well, I just thought it’d be easier to talk about stuff up here,’ he said.
I was silent. I closed my eyes and breathed the alpine air deeply into my lungs. I felt my skin tingle as drops of water evaporated from it under the sun. I sensed the sun’s bright light through my closed eyes and without turning to him I sighed and smiled.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
We stood there for a while, in silence, looking out from our viewing spot, with only the sound of each other’s breath between us, and the slow soothing flow of the stream a few metres below us.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
I nodded.
He put his arm around me, looked down at me and smiled. And although I no longer needed to, I felt reassured. But his caring smile quickly turned into a mischievous grin and, before I got a chance to ask him why, he jumped.
‘Oh my god!’ I looked down and when I saw his face emerging from the water and smiling up at me I didn’t know whether to laugh or to shout at him. ‘Fuck Jack, that fucking scared me. You idiot!’
‘That,’ he said, ‘that is why I took you up here! Do it!’
I stared down at him for a few more seconds.
‘Fuck!’ I said, ‘fuck it!!’
And although I’d never done anything like that before, without thought and without fear, I jumped. I fell those few metres through the air and hit the water like a bullet. I opened my eyes before rising and a wash of white bubbles danced around my face. I think even under the water, whilst holding my breath, I was grinning. I surfaced, breathed in and yelled with excitement. I felt invincible.
‘Amazing,’ I said.
Oak had followed us and was now barking at us from the lower bank. I motioned for her to join us but she didn’t even attempt to venture in by herself. I dove under as far as I could with my eyes open. Under the water, with that strange silence in which sounds are warped, it felt like a different world. I kept dipping in and out of that world, rising up and diving down, until I didn’t know which world I belonged to.
Later, when the stream had taken us back towards our clothes and our packs, I climbed out and coaxed Oak into the shallows, splashing her fur gently at first to ease her in. She was reluctant, but after a lot of coaxing she was doggy paddling around with us in the deeper parts, under our watchful and protective eyes.
I melted into the moment.
‘Jack,’ I said, ‘I want to go to Alaska.’
And so it was decided. I was determined to see more of this beautiful world, and not knowing what the future held no longer scared me. After that one decisive and fearless jump I’d made into the stream, I was now ready to dive further into the unknown.
All we had to do now was figure out how we would take Oak across the border. Because, we’d decided, she had to come with us. It turned out that hiding a small dog would be much harder than hiding a human. But we still had time to think things through.
*
On our last evening in Whistler as we passed by families, couples and lone travellers sitting at dinner tables I salivated as wafts of delicious food met my nose. I turned to him and said,
‘Let’s eat out tonight.’
He let out a laugh, but didn’t say anything. We’d been very careful with our money so far, not knowing how long it would need to last.
‘It’s our last day here,’ I said, ‘let’s just allow ourselves this one last treat, ok? Come on, we’ve had such an amazing time, right? It’s on me.’
He turned to look at a couple eating oysters by candlelight, and then at a family devouring three large pizzas between them.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘yes.’
It took us a while to decide on a restaurant, hovering from menu to menu. Despite our decision to splash out, we knew we couldn’t be too excessive. We settled on a lively but welcoming Italian joint that would allow Oak to come and sit under our table as long as she was well behaved. The place was bathed in the light of candles and oil lamps. I imagined the warm golden glow. The smell of fresh garlic, olive oil and baking dough made my mouth water. It was teeming with people but we managed to find a table for two tucked away in a quiet corner and we felt pretty cosy there. I guess it was our first proper date. I didn’t mention that to Jack and kept the thought to myself, but I couldn’t help but feel excited by it. I wondered what kind of questions I’d ask him if this really was our first date, the first time we were meeting each other properly, and if I was a normal person with nothing to hide. Impossible, I thought, if I was normal, we’d have never met. Fuck normal.
A waiter came to take our order and we decided on a bottle of red wine and a large goat’s cheese pizza to share. The thought of it made me drool. I excused myself and went to the bathroom. I didn’t have anything on me, no hairbrush, no make-up and no pretty clothes, just the same frumpy gear I had worn hiking that day, but I tried to arrange myself somewhat. I let down my hair and ran my fingers through it. I bit my lips to let the blood run to them and I pinched my cheeks so that they would get even more colour in them. I noticed for the first time what a healthy glow my skin had acquired from all the hiking in the fresh air and sunshine. I ran a wet finger along my eyelashes and my eyebrows and I rinsed out my mouth. I unbuttoned the first top buttons of my shirt to uncover my chest more. Then I thought that was far too obvious, and I buttoned them up again. I made myself laugh alone in that bathroom in front of the mirror. I stopped and just looked at myself. It had been a while since I’d really just properly stopped to look at myself in a mirror like this.
‘Oh Silvia, Silvia, Silvia… look at you… who knew all this would happen?’ I whispered, smiling at myself.
It was too much to comprehend. In the last several weeks since leaving San Diego, so much had changed, and here I was now, in an Italian restaurant in the middle of Whistler, British Columbia, an illegal entrant, smiling at myself in a bathroom mirror, while a few metres away, behind a wall, a beautiful man and our beautiful dog waited for me. I could have never predicted any of this. I loved this new story.
I looked deep into my eyes. Oh Silvia, Silvia, Silvia, who are you?
*
We sipped on the wine, relishing the taste, as we waited f
or the pizza to come. We reflected on the day, talked about Alaska, food, Oak, mountains and waterfalls. We toasted our glasses and somehow, we simultaneously managed to blurt out ‘to us’. My heart stopped for just a second and a tiny moment of fleeting awkwardness ensued, in which I think I blushed, but that soon passed as we tucked into our delicious meal. We didn’t talk about our past. We were consumed by the present.
*
That night I felt warm and glowing, and merry after the wine. We stopped off at a shop and bought a couple of five-litre bottles of mineral water for the journey that was ahead of us. The last few days of hiking and sunshine had left us craving more water than usual. When we turned a corner after leaving the shop I saw Jack pull out a small dark elegant box of Victoria chocolates from the sleeve of his jacket.
‘Would you like one?’ he said, opening the box and grinning over at me.
‘How did you—?’
‘Well, you know, in my experience there’s nothing quite like letting a delicious Victoria Deluxe truffle melt on your tongue… their luxury chocolates are divine,’ he grinned, putting on a posh accent, ‘but they do cost a fortune, and I think we’ve spent enough money as it is today, don’t you?’ I looked at him, my face of disbelief slowly subsiding into a smile. ‘Besides,’ he said, squinting to read the back of the box, ‘they’re made by Agra Kraft. Who on earth would want to give money to a corporation like that? With their track record.’ He turned to me once again. ‘Perhaps a hazelnut praline truffle,’ he continued, ‘…or a salted caramel?’ Finally I burst out laughing, grabbed a chocolate, and put it in my mouth. Butterscotch walnut. God, they really were good. It didn’t take us long to empty the contents of that stolen box of chocolates. And as we walked back to the van a few drops of rain fell from the sky and the air felt electric.
While we lay in the van that night, with our bellies full, a huge and powerful storm passed over us. Every now and then Oak would howl and we had to comfort her, until finally she fell asleep, curled up in the passenger footwell.
The sex that night was unforgettable… the sound of the rain, wind and thunder, the smell of the air and earth, the whole atmosphere of the storm made it feel otherworldly. We drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms, with Jack still inside me. During that last night in the Whistler area I awoke a few times and felt how the storm shook the van. The rain pelted down onto the metal and the sound was hypnotic. The rumbling thunder reached somewhere deep within me and resonated with my whole being. It spoke to my very core.
A Few Minutes
The next day we were on the road again. The sun was back out as if the storm had just been a dream, but the wet earth confirmed to us that it hadn’t been. We left late morning after breakfast, and we drove for hours. We stopped only to refuel and freshen up at a gas station. I was in a delicious daze, watching the views go by outside. It was like a trance. I’d taken it upon myself to make sandwiches for the journey that morning, so that we’d be able to just keep heading north for as long as we could. We drove on and on, mile after mile. I didn’t pay attention to signs. I didn’t know where we were, and it didn’t matter.
In the early evening Jack turned off somewhere and followed a number of smaller roads for some time. Within no more than half an hour we reached a place that felt like it was in the middle of nowhere. Totally isolated from any signs of civilisation. Through a vast, wild, forested valley a wide river carved its way through rock. The sun hit the water and made it glimmer. Jack said the river was the colour of aquamarine.
We went to relieve ourselves in the forest and then we carried the stove, food and a rug upstream to prepare our early dinner. We’d made some last minute extravagant purchases before leaving Whistler, including a bottle of wine, which we drank with our pasta dish. Olives, cheese, sundried tomatoes, pesto and the white chanterelle mushrooms Jack had found the day before. We sat on the plateau of rock and listened to the river. I opened a can of dog food and served it up for Oak. She devoured it, then curled her little body up into a ball, nuzzled herself into a dip in the rock and fell asleep. To finish our meal off, Jack went to collect some water from the stream and we boiled it on the stove and made hot chocolate.
The wine had made me sleepy and I drifted off into a blissful doze, with the evening sun shining on my face and warming my body. I woke up with a shiver. The temperature had dropped but the sun was still shining. Jack was standing over me and smiling.
‘I’ll take all this back to the van,’ he said.
We wrapped and packed everything up and together we carried it back.
We sat in the front seats. We were like two zombies after the food, the wine and the long drive, but it felt good. I wanted nothing more than to curl up with him now, arms around each other, his body heat… but he was determined to go for a swim before the sun set. I pouted as he pulled on his wetsuit. And finally I asked him what I wanted to know.
‘Jack,’ I said, ‘why did you come here?’
‘Because we’re going swimming,’ he laughed. I shook my head.
‘No. I mean, why did you decide to up and leave with me in the first place?’
He was silent for a while, looking out at the valley through the windscreen.
‘Really,’ I said, now looking out at the valley too, ‘why? Why did you do it?’
‘Well, like I told you, your case is important to me,’ he paused. ‘And when things suddenly got so weird… we had to leave. You know that.’
‘Yes. Of course. I know all that. But, I mean, surely there was something else… you know… another reason?’
‘I suppose,’ he said and he paused and hesitated a bit before continuing, ‘I’ve always wanted to do this trip. I’d always wanted to go to Alaska with Isabelle. But you already know that.’
I nodded. What I was getting at now, however, was something completely different.
‘Yeah, I know that. But it wasn’t just that, was it?’
‘Probably not.’
‘You know, for me, it’s like I agreed to come here with you before we even officially had to. That time when you first said hit the road it’s like in my mind I was already on the road. Maybe,’ I paused, ‘maybe I was even already decided about it all before that, when I first decided you’d be the person I’d tell everything.’
I stopped. Perhaps it was the wine talking.
‘I… I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m saying all of this… I don’t even know exactly what I’m trying to say.’
He was nodding. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘it’s fine, I know.’
‘The point is Jack, I think I’d finally come to realise I had nothing to lose. Nothing. That’s why I decided long ago that I was leaving. I just couldn’t live like that anymore… so something had to change. And it’s like the decision wasn’t even mine. It all just happened.’
‘I know,’ he said, still nodding.
‘I realised that the only thing I’d lose was a life that didn’t feel mine anyway. And the only thing that felt right at the time was to do something that maybe seemed insane. And that’s why I packed my bags when you told me to, without hesitation. That’s why I’m here talking shit to you now,’ I laughed.
He laughed too. ‘No. I know all that,’ he said.
Yes, it was true, we’d been through this stuff before.
‘Yeah. No. Of course you do,’ I said. There was silence again as we both carried on staring at the world outside. Then I half laughed and half sighed. ‘I guess,’ I said, ‘my point right now is that I decided to tell you everything.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and I wanted to do this trip with you even before I knew we’d ever have to.’
My heart started beating faster.
‘Hmm…’ he said, with mock awkwardness.
‘Yeah, hmm…’
We laughed.
‘So…’ he looked at me, shaking his head and grinning. Then he made to get out the van, ‘are you coming for a swim?’
I was far too comfortable in the warmth of my dry clothes
. I looked at him, pretending to be pissed off because he was so clearly avoiding the continuation of The Conversation.
‘What?’ he said, smirking.
‘Say it.’
‘Say what?’
‘Just say it!’ I laughed, shaking my head.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about…’
‘You fucking liar.’
My jaw was starting to hurt from all this stupid grinning. I was totally sure he knew what I was getting at.
‘Jack!’ I said, trying so hard to keep a straight face.
He slid out the door.
‘Sorry, what was that?’ he said peering in, joking that he hadn’t heard me, and immediately he slammed the door so I didn’t have a chance to reply. I could see him laughing to himself as he made his way to the front of the van. He looked back at me and waved for me to come out and follow him to the river. I looked back at him still grinning and shaking my head. I got out the van.
‘You little shit!’ I shouted after him, ‘You fucking little immature teenage boy!’
I chased him down towards the water, Oak following us both and barking.
He reached the water’s edge and started climbing down some step-like bits that had formed in the rock.
He touched the water with his toes.
‘Woah, it’s freezing,’ he said, turning round to look at me.
‘You’re insane!’ I shouted back.
‘You not coming in?’
‘No way! Fuck off! You know I’m not!’
‘Okay fine,’ he said, ‘I still like you though,’ he said, and for some reason his own words set him off into more fits of hysterical laughter.
