The Wake

You were asleep, and I lay on the couch beside you, staring at you, my brain trying to comprehend that I loved you. And for some reason I thought of a day three years ago, before I ever meet you.

It was the last summer that my friends and I all lived in the town where we were raised. It was after our first year away at different universities. In church one day, Charlie saw Ahsley, still in high school, and wanted her. That was one of the last times I ever went to my parent’s church.Later in the summer, we went canoeing for Charlie’s birthday. No one was supposed to know Charlie and Ahsley were dating, so Courtney, Charlie’s best friend, and I were invited along, to cover the fact that this outing was really an excuse for Charlie and Ahsley to be together Charlie’s parents drove us to the stream and helped us load up the canoes with food and the booze that they didn’t know about. We left most of our clothes with Charlie’s parents, who would pick us up downstream a few hours later and climbed into the canoes wearing only our swimsuits, hats, sunscreen, and sunglasses.

Courtney and I ended up in a canoe together. He was afraid I’d think that meant we were supposed to be together too. He complained about my paddling and the questions I asked, so I let him steer the canoe by himself. In the next canoe Ahsley and Charlie were getting successively drunker. Midway through the trip we came to an island, or maybe it was just a sandbar close to shore, and pulled up to it. We spread out our picnic, but really the food was only a pretense for the alcohol. Charlie and Ahsley snuck off to another part of the island. Courtney and I feel asleep, in the shade where the sand was still warm from the sun earlier in the day. I can’t really sleep anywhere except my own bed, so for me it wasn’t really sleep, it was slipping into a world between consciousness and unawareness. I could feel the sand under my hair and I wondered if any bugs would get into it, but I didn’t care. The sand gradually molded to my form, the way your foam bed would do years later, when I convinced you that the couch was too small for us to spend all night trying to sleep on. You could have slept there all night, but I can only sleep in a bed. I heard Charlie and Ahsley wake Courtney up, but I was content to say in my in-between state until they had loaded the canoes. Ahsley wanted to ride with me this time, so Courtney shared a canoe with Charlie. Ahsley and I had never really been friends. I didn’t dislike her, but I don’t assume that someone’s my friend the moment I meet them. I still don’t really understand how friendships happen. I guess Ahsley just needed another female to confide her secrets in.

We came to a small rapids. It seemed like hundreds of canoers were milling around there. We took our canoes through and then tied them up to shore and then slipped out and into the water, so we could swim back and forth through the ripples ourselves. My canoes kept coming, each one full of groups of people loaded up with alcohol. It appeared that we had become part of an impromptu party. And there, in front of so many people they didn’t know, Ahsley and Charlie kissed, not caring who saw them. Charlie’s voice got low when he talked to Ahsley, the way that men’s voices do they’re talking to a woman they’re attracted to. I’m fascinated by that lowness, even when its not addressed to me.

“Baby” he was whispering. I hate it when grown people are called “baby”, or “darling”, or “sweetie”, or “hon” - nicknames I associate with children and animals - but sometimes, I wish that, just once, you had come up with a term of endearment for me.

Soon the alcohol was gone, so Courtney and I started on the food, but even that didn’t occupy us for long. We gave the leftovers to the revelers near to us, and climbed back to our canoe, dragging Ahsley and Charlie’s over to them. They tipped us out of our canoe.

So the four of us swam along, dragging our canoes behind, occasionally stopping to try to climb back in, but either our own clumsiness or another’s interference would cause our attempts to be unsuccessful. I became so tired, and my limbs were so heavy. Eventually we found sandbar to brace the canoes against. By that time we were less than 20 minutes from where Charlie’s parents were going to pick us up. We were content to let the canoe drift there on its own. After we dragged the canoes out of the water, we found hidden places to dry off and change. Then we climbed into the van for the journey home. I didn’t come home the next summer, and Charlie and Courtney weren’t home the summer after that. I went rafting in Minnesota with someone who spoke to me in low tones. This stream had changing rooms at the end of the trip. He saw me crouched in front of a mirror, doing my hair after I had changed. And then we got back in the car, where were nothing to each other.

We went to a dance, each arriving separately with our groups of friends. At the end of the night, everyone paired off, leaving one of my friends without someone to go home with. On the walk alone, while everyone else was part of a couple, he removed himself, said a stick he was playing with was a light saber, and chased his fantasies off into the night. Ahsley and Charlie got caught one night, turned in by Ahsley’s older sister. She knew Ahsley had snuck over to Charlie’s in the middle of the night. Charlie sat there speechless as his and Ahsley’s parents interrogated the two of them. Ahsley never forgave him for that. He told me later “I just couldn’t think of anything to say.” I spoke to Ahsley once in church after that. She said “I gave him something I can never get back.” It seems like every relationship ends like that, trying to recover the parts of ourselves we gave away and can never make whole again. You’ve taught me the meaning of regret. I don’t regret the gift I gave you, but I wonder if you will.