Catch Me When I Fall

by Westerhof Patricia

  “And you’re doing a great job supporting him.”

  “I am?”

  “Of course you are!” The doctor was now sorting through a box on the floor.

  I’m doing a good job, Valerie thought. The words were a chinook after months of cold.

  The doctor produced a somewhat-tattered piece of paper. “You need to sign this form and then we’re done.”

  “So this is it—the end of his treatment?”

  “I’m here if you need me. But I think he’ll be fine. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

  • • •

  She walked into the waiting room feeling a bit dazed. The way she felt in high school when she had participated in that trust exercise—she couldn’t remember what class it was in. She had to fall backwards off the stage into the waiting arms of her classmates. She knew she would get hurt, probably badly. Why had it felt impossible to opt out? She stood on the edge of the stage, silent and resolute, while her classmates called encouragement. Finally, she let her body go, gravity wrenching her downward. But then they caught her. Her classmates caught her. As they helped her to her feet, she’d thanked them, surprise and genuine gratitude in her voice. A classmate had laughed. “As if we would drop you.”

  • • •

  As Valerie and Danny arrived at the elevator, a man in overalls lifted an electrical panel back in place over the wall. “All done,” he called cheerfully to a man in a suit who watched him. “You shouldn’t have any more trouble with it. If it breaks again, though, don’t call me.” He turned and winked extravagantly at Valerie. “Hell, if it breaks again, Jesus Christ hisself couldn’t fix it!”

  “Should we take the stairs?” Danny whispered.

  “No,” said Valerie. “I think it will be okay.” She put her hand on his thin back and guided him into the elevator. “Let’s see what happens.”

  Probability

  ELLIE PICKED UP a flat stone and flicked it across the sluggish surface of the Blindman River. It skipped across the water, two, three, four times. “Lucky!” Ellie said aloud. Then she thought about Will, the reason she was back in Alberta, and imagined him next to her, his plodding voice explaining that it wasn’t luck, just the shape and density of the rock, the angle and speed of the throw, gravity, wind velocity and direction, and the surface of the water. She tossed another stone. It sank at once, the little plop like a scalding jar of preserves sealing itself tight.

  She glanced at her bulky sports watch. Four hours till Will’s funeral. Four hours to write the eulogy the minister had asked her to deliver. He’d phoned yesterday afternoon, almost as soon as she’d arrived at her parents’ house.

  “I know you haven’t kept in touch with Will,” he’d said, his voice warm, “but Will’s mom said you were his closest friend when you were children.”

  “I guess so. I don’t know what I’d say though—I haven’t seen him in about eight years.”

  “Just share a few of the good memories,” the minister said.

  Ellie had laughed a short, harsh laugh. “Okay.”

  Now she took a pen and a pad of lined paper out of her leather backpack. She doodled a tiny maze in the margin. What to say? The only thought in her head was, How? How could Will, of all people, die in an accident? Rock climbing, her mother said when she phoned with the news. Impossible, Ellie had thought. Impossible.

  The watch, waterproof and shockproof, jutted from the pink cashmere sleeve of her sweater, the enormous black face covering the top of her slender wrist. I could begin with the watch, she thought. I could say I bought this watch because of Will. I wanted a delicate gold watch or a silver one with a pearl-beaded band. But when I went shopping, I heard Will’s voice in my head warning me that I might fall in . . .

  Her eyes moved upstream and focused on the jagged rocks and steeper bank there. She remembered the spring she and Will were thirteen. She was afraid his growing peculiarity and unpopularity were contagious. So, though they were in the same eighth-grade class and rode the school bus together from their neighbouring farms, she ignored Will at school and avoided him on the bus. But, after school, when the bus lurched to a stop halfway between their long driveways, she and Will would clamber off, cross the road, and scramble down the path to the river, putting off the chores awaiting them at home.

  On those afternoons at the river’s edge, Ellie jumped from rock to rock while Will paced on a shale outcrop a safe distance from the water, watching her. She recalled the narrow face and alert green eyes, his plaid cotton shirts and his jeans—the wrong brand. And in his back pocket, she remembered with a queasy shiver, he kept a notebook circled shut by a fat rubber band. An ordinary little lined notebook that travelled with him everywhere.

  It’s uncanny—yesterday on the plane to Edmonton and then the two-hour drive in the back of her parents’ car, she kept trying to picture Will but couldn’t—at least not clearly. But here on the shore it was like he was with her. She could see him pull out the notebook. Hear his voice—cracking that spring, beginning to deepen, a bit nasal. Intense. When he found the right page, he’d read her a question, a new one each afternoon, all concerning potential calamities. If your house was burning and your mother and your baby sister were asleep, and you only had time to rescue one of them, which should you choose?

  Both, she had said.

  Will had sighed and waited. He always gave her time to think about the questions. While she thought, he took off his glasses to clean them or to adjust the safety strap. If he turned his head, Ellie could see the dented line in his hair from the strap.

  I’d scream and wake up my mom so that she could run and get Sandra from her crib.

  But what if your mother couldn’t hear you? Will would say. What if your house was really big?

  Ellie remembered her anger rising. Her home, a grey stucco farmhouse, was average-sized, and Sandra’s room with its crib and rocking chair was right next to her parents’ bedroom. Will’s scenario couldn’t happen, at least not in her house. But then, Will hadn’t really been interested in her opinions anyway. Though he made her think up answers, it was only to test her replies against his own answers, those he recorded in his notebook after hours, or days, or even weeks of hand-wringing reasoning. How she had loathed his assurance and his proprietary hold on the right answer. Yet she had stayed, and came back the next afternoon and the next one too. The problem was, once he posed a question, the crisis seemed not only possible but imminent; in this case, the house had blazed in her imagination, and she needed to hear his reasoning. So she’d given in. What would you do?

  Well, most kids would want to save their mothers. But that’s not right. Will had looked earnestly at Ellie, his mouth curling into a quick, grotesque grimace. This tick appeared whenever he got tense—it happened often at school, especially during recess and gym classes. The other kids called him Prune Face or Creepo.

  Ellie crouched down now and picked at some green-grey lichen with her pen. Was he tense when he answered his questions because he was second-guessing his reasoning or because he had to imagine the scenario as he talked through it? And what motivated all that worry, all that logic? Maybe it was living alone with anxious, doting parents. They were conservative, churchgoing people, a farming family who belonged to that Dutch Reformed Church on Third Lane. Maybe the certain answers of his faith made him feel there should be certain answers for everything. Or maybe it was simply Will’s intellect or an overactive imagination that prompted the reasoning. I’ll never know, she thought.

  Her eyes moved to a rippling pool between two rocks. For the first time since hearing the news, she sensed death’s permanence. It was a fleeting impression, like seeing the damage of a car wreck as you shoot past in the opposite direction, but she felt unsettled nonetheless. Magpies were squabbling in a poplar above her, and a cold breeze rattled the remaining leaves on an aspen tree nearby, a dry sound like nervous hands rubbing together.

  She stashed the notepad and pen in her backpack and climbed the narrow, sandy
path toward her parents’ farmhouse. It had been her dreams, she realized, nightmares really, that kept her following him to the river all those days after school. So often that year she had tossed in her narrow bed, dreaming of accidents and disasters. If only she knew what to do, she could save her family, or herself, or the strangers on the sinking ferry, the children in the burning school. But always she was missing a crucial piece of information. At the end of each dream, she’d wake with the sickening awareness that people were dying because of what she didn’t know.

  • • •

  At her parents’ well-polished dining room table, Ellie read over her draft. Maybe I can do this, she thought. Describe Will in a way that’s based on truth, but lighter. The way she described her life in Toronto to her mother. Leave out all the uncomfortable bits.

  Maybe some people would chuckle if she recounted anecdotes of Will at driver’s ed., asking the kids during break, If you came around a corner and a child stood on the road in front of you and you had to choose whether to hit the child or drive off the road, which would you do? But then again, Ellie considered, maybe no one would. They would probably stare at her, numbed by the excruciating irony that Will, who took every precaution, who thought about every eventuality, was lying dead in the coffin in front of them.

  It was a freak incident, one the Alberta Alpine Club had already classified as “bad luck.” She felt vaguely comforted by this. On the way home from the airport her mother had said, “What I heard was that Will did everything right—stuck the wedges deep into the rock and attached the rope with those things that close around the rope. The weather was fine; they had all the right equipment—his climbing partner said Will followed the rules by the book.” Her mother had twisted her purse strap as she reported the details to Ellie. “A rock fell, broke off a crest above him. It was the size of a sofa—he never had a chance.”

  Ellie had seen only one dead body, her grandfather’s. That was different, though. He rested in a coffin, carefully preserved on blue satin, more placid and composed than he’d ever been in life. The only other funeral she’d attended had a closed casket. Kevin Welland, a classmate, had been killed in late September of their senior year. He had been plowing his uncle’s field and the tractor had tipped, pinning Kevin beneath the massive tire. A day or two after Kevin’s death, Will had sought her out at school. Strange. By grade twelve, they rarely acknowledged each other anymore. Yet, Will spoke to her that day as if continuing a conversation only just interrupted. He found her near her locker and thrust a sheet of looseleaf paper on top of the binder Ellie had in her arms. Look at this. His face twitched. Ellie had looked around to see if any of her friends were watching before steering him into a small corridor between two sets of lockers. The sheet he had given her contained notes from that day’s English class. They were studying Hamlet. “What is a tragedy?” They had copied the note from the board. Beneath it, Will had scribbled, “The readiness is all.” Vaguely, Ellie remembered Mr. MacMillan, their English teacher, talking about that line in the play. What? Ellie demanded. I have these notes.

  No, not that. Will had been impatient. My calculations. Here! He’d tapped his finger frenetically on the pencilled equations at the margin of the paper.

  I don’t know what it means.

  Will had grimaced again. It’s about Kevin’s accident. Look.

  v=speed of tractor

  r=radius

  µ=coefficient of friction

  g=acceleration due to gravity.

  The calculations, in his meticulous printing, marched down the margin.

  Value=9.8 m/s2.

  Assume µ=1–a, since tractor is in a field.

  If r=5 m, then v=7 m/s (25 km/hour).

  If r=2 m., then v=4.4 m/s (=15 km/hour).

  Will stood close. His sweat had soaked through the blue T-shirt he wore, the smell rank. Ellie looked near the bottom of the page where there were words instead of equations. If the turn was gentler, r would be much larger. Do you see? It wasn’t an accident! If Kevin knew how fast he could go for turns, or what the angle could be, he wouldn’t have tipped!

  Ellie had shoved the paper back into his hands. Well, he did. Fury swelled inside her, but she didn’t know why.

  You don’t get it. Will slipped the paper back into his binder and walked away.

  The last time she saw Will was at their high school graduation. There was punch afterwards, and Will’s dad tapped her shoulder. Let’s get a picture of the two of you, for old time’s sake, eh? Will looked uncomfortable, but Ellie, buoyed by the evening, by her sleek silk dress under the graduation gown, and by nostalgia for what was already becoming the past, had smiled brightly and taken Will’s arm. She never saw the photo.

  The shrill bell of her parents’ old phone startled her. It was the minister with the details about the service. “I’ll read a Bible passage and give a short reflection,” he said in his gentle voice. “Then a song—‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’—and then you’ll speak.”

  “Okay.” Ellie played with the springy telephone cord. She hesitated. “I’m having some trouble writing this. Knowing what to say.”

  “It’s hard when someone dies this way. I’m going to talk about God’s care for his creatures. I’ll use the verse about God seeing the sparrow fall. You know—though the death was tragic, we can take comfort knowing that Will fell into the waiting arms of God.”

  “Oh.” She had been winding the long phone cord around her wrist. Now she untangled it, noting the pattern it made on her skin. “Okay. I mean,” she faltered, flustered as his words registered. The waiting arms of God? She switched the phone to her other ear. “But I don’t know what I can say. We weren’t really that close.”

  “He was an intense fellow,” the minister said. “Do you know he kept notebooks?”

  Ellie’s throat caught. “Notebooks?”

  “Plans and records of his climbs. The police found one on his body. Interesting—looks like he researched carefully before each climb. Wrote equipment lists, made sketches with heights and angles and potential pitfalls—”

  “Sounds like Will.”

  “Every time he started a new climb, he wrote at the top of the page, ‘The readiness is all.’ Hamlet, you know.” The minister spoke calmly. “So maybe he was ready for death. Ready for whatever might happen.”

  “For God to catch him?”

  The minister didn’t hear the sarcasm in her voice.

  “Who knows?”

  Ellie hung up the phone and returned to the table. Her mom had placed a fried-egg sandwich and a cup of tea next to her pad of paper.

  Into the waiting arms of God. She considered this. Impossible. Or at least improbable. She picked up the sandwich, then put it down. She shuffled to the kitchen, feeling lost.

  “Mom, what if I moved back home for a while?”

  Her mother shut the oven door with a clatter and set the timer before turning around. “Why, honey? You have a good job in Toronto, and your smart little apartment—I thought you loved it there.”

  Ellie thought of the bright, cheerful reports she gave in her weekly phone calls. Her mother scrutinized her. “What would you do here, love?”

  “You know,” said Ellie with a defensive shrug. “What everyone else does. Maybe get married. Have some kids.”

  Ellie’s mother pulled out a kitchen chair but did not sit down. “I thought you made your choice.”

  “Maybe I’m changing my mind.” It couldn’t be that hard to find a husband here and settle down. Like her friend Helena had done. And then the rest of her life would be planned. Predictable. The twice-daily milking, the chores, the routines. Planting and harvest. The rhythm of a farm.

  “I’ve always liked the name of that company you work for,” said her mother, moving back toward the oven.

  “‘No Worries?’ It’s just an expression, Mom,” said Ellie, startled.

  “Yes, but good. Appropriate for an event-planning company. Your clients pay you to worry for them.” />
  “We don’t worry, Mom. We plan.” Ellie’s voice had an edge to it. Why was it being home for more than an hour made her feel about fourteen again?

  “Worrying, planning. I’m not sure you can untangle them.” Her mother opened the oven door a crack and adjusted the temperature dial. Her earth-brown eyes found Ellie’s. “Are you ready for the funeral, honey?”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  Here, back in her childhood home, back in Poplar Grove, she felt as if she’d stalled after hurtling down the road for years. From this vantage point, stretching behind her and before her, she perceived what she’d sensed on the riverbank with Will so long ago: the endless possibilities in a life. The opportunities, plans, and decisions. The risks. Like hundreds of crisscrossed lines on a foreign street map.

  I’d like to stop where I am, she thought. Stay put for a while.

  Her mother patted her arm. “Say something nice, dear.”

  Ellie nodded slowly and got up. It was time to move, in one direction or another. Make a choice. Take a risk. Maybe, she thought, God will catch me if I fall.

  Shepherd’s Pie

  THROUGH HER KITCHEN window, Cora watched her neighbour Vicky wave at her kids, then turn to walk up Cora’s long driveway. As the school bus lurched away, Cora rushed to the bedroom mirror, managing to pull her dirty blonde hair into a severe ponytail before the doorbell rang.

  A cheery “Good morning” flew at Cora with the chilly wind. She invited Vicky in, with what she hoped looked like a smile. Vicky pulled a small Tupperware dish from the tote bag she carried. She had brought her many shepherd’s pies over the years—especially when Cora and Samuel would return from short and then, at the end, longer stays at the Red Deer Regional Hospital. Back then the pies came in round dishes big enough for two.

  Cora ushered Vicky into the front room, then sank into an armchair, suddenly exhausted. A film of dust lay on the coffee table and a few dead flies dotted the windowsill. She was dressed, at least. Yesterday she had stayed in her bathrobe. Curled into the corner of the sofa, Vicky looked like an advertisement for aging well, her rosy skin and auburn hair highlighted by a tangerine sweater. She was chattering about the weather. “I’m going to pick whatever is ready today, what with the frost warning. But I don’t know how I’m going to get everything put up. I still have all the tomato sauce to make.”