Falling

Falling
by Barbara Saxton


I. Falling into Love

"Mom, can you drop me at the airport Monday morning on your way to work?"

"Sure, why not?" This was spoken in the breezy, I'm-not-at-all-curious-about-where-you're-going tone mothers try to adopt, even when curious or worried out of their minds. The life of a 23-year-old, even one who is, at present, living rent-free in your home (not to mention eating great quantities of your food) must not be assumed to be an open book. At least not if you want him to open up, really talk to you, ever again.

"I know you’re dying to ask, so I’ll just tell you,” Sam continued. “I'm going to Seattle, to see Emily.” He must have known what this slight opening, a chink in the wall, would elicit from me. I was far from the prototype of a disengaged, disinterested parent. Besides, it hadn't been that long since I'd helped him reassemble the various and sundry pottery shards of his heart, after Emily's abrupt departure from Belmont.

"Oh, really?" I uttered nonchalantly, proud of my calm, breezy tone, considering almost every bone and muscle of my body was shrieking: "Don't do it! Don't go! You'll get hurt!" If body parts were prone to elaboration, they also would have whined, "Can't you find some other girl who isn't about to disappear halfway around the world in three short weeks?"

To distract myself, I mentally replayed a conversation I’d had with my new co-worker, Greta, a week or so before. Through the office rumor mill, I'd heard she was recently widowed, but had no details. One day in the coffee room, thought, I asked her to tell me what had happened to her husband.

"Oh, I don't mind talking about it," Greta assured me. "I prefer that to the pitying, sad looks a lot of people give me! It was about this time last year," she began. "Joe took off one morning for a short jog on the beach. Then, he suffered a massive heart attack, collapsed in the sand, and died before the EMTs could even reach him. That was it. Twenty-one years, all gone in a moment."

I nodded sympathetically, in that way people do when they are inwardly horrified, wanting to run away, but trying to make things worse. Which was worse? To suffer that totally encompassing and unexpected pain, which months later, still dominated the landscape of Greta's face? Or, might it have been better to have never loved this man, much less marry and have kids with him? I honestly couldn't answer that question. What would I do if Eliot left our house one morning, then keeled over dead before morning tea, without either of us getting to say goodbye?

"OK," I reassured myself. "Greta and Sam's situations aren't similar at all!" But I was nevertheless tempted to tell him Greta's story, and carefully delivering the punchline: "And after experiencing so much pain and loss, she knew it was worth it, because she did have over twenty years of happiness with this guy. But YOU--you're facing the prospect of hitting bottom again, and for what? Ten DAYS of bliss?" But something told me Sam had already made up his mind: no matter what, he would be with Emily again, and he didn't give a damn who might have to put him back together again once she was gone.

So, only few short days later, there we were in the car, barreling toward the airport, chatting about who'd pick him up in Seattle, choking on the smoke from the forest fires burning all over the state at that time. As always, I was running late, eager to drop him at the "departures" curb, then go on my merry way. As I maneuvered into outgoing traffic, I glimpsed him in the rear view mirror: his usual rod-straight posture, backpack slung over one shoulder, assessing his next move. Was the expression on his face a little sad and uncertain, or was I as usual, reading too much into it? What depths of despair would that face reflect in a week and half, when I returned to pick him up at "arrivals"?

II. Falling Down Mountains

"Why, exactly, are we heading down this Black Diamond run?" Lynn asked, between labored breaths in the thin, icy air.

"It snowed so much last night," I replied, more cheerful than I felt, then kicking off before we had more time to think about it. "We can just fall sideways if it gets too hairy."

And fall we did. Lynn and I collapsed mid-mogul, hot dogged (and fell face first on) steeper hills than we'd ever attempted, rammed snowbanks so hard our ski tips should have broken, sideslipped on the really impossible bits (and still fell, sometimes quite hardl!). When we finally reached bottom, the hill was totally pocked with our sitz-marks; some depressions so large it looked like fully grown hippopotami, not reasonably slender, twenty-something young women, had been barreling down the hill, falling every ten feet or so. The "real" advanced skiers whizzed past us (cursing us under their breaths, I'm sure), but we were laughing too hard to notice them.

It wasn't until we were safely at the bottom that I muttered, "Well, you'd think that would have done it."

"Done what? Made total fools of ourselves?" Lynn panted. "I think we just managed that on the first try!"

It was time to admit my surreptitious goal to my best friend, especially if I was going to be involving her in more life-threatening exploits. "I'm pregnant," I blurted. "If I do enough runs like Gunbarrel here, I just might miscarry." I didn't want to meet her eyes, even through the goggles I was wearing. I could tell she was sizing up the situation, and I fully expected her to launch into some diatribe about my total lack of morals and judgment. But a few moments later, all she said, in that quiet and level voice of hers, was, "Well, we'd better get back on the lift if we're going to make it down The Face before lunch."

Despite Lynn, for whatever reason, being on board for Mission to Miscarry, we managed to ski the most challenging runs at four downhill areas in three days without that poor, unwanted fetus losing hold. "Jean-Claude," as we had endearing started calling it ,was having none of my attempts to accidentally destroy him. Quite to the contrary, a temporary cessation of the morning sickness that had plagued me for weeks indicated that he was thriving on all this alpine abuse.

Over wine (which I paradoxically told Lynn I shouldn't be drinking, prompting us both to lose large amounts of chardonnay through our noses), I explained that an abortion wasn't covered under my health plan, the baby's shit head father was both clueless and penniless; besides, I said, I was averse to having my insides scraped with any utensils. "I just can't have a kid right now," more to convince myself than Lynn, who seemed increasingly sympathetic. "I mean, can you imagine me talking to coke-head brokers in New York at five in the morning, with Jean-Claude here alternately screaming and tugging on my boobs?"

"Yes, that would indeed be intolerable," Lynn opined, between sips of her wine. She seemed wary about bringing up any of the obvious ethical or religious issues involving my decision, which had apparently already been made, and qualm-free to boot. I couldn't tell if I had fallen several rungs down her esteem ladder, or she simply didn't care. I knew her well enough to see that I was feeding into her love of the quirky and unexpected, and Lynn had never been privy to a sports-related demolition derby of this sort before.

After dinner, we retired to our shared bedroom at the lodge. The next day, Lynn and I would drive back to the Bay Area, and she planned to put me on a plane back to Seattle, where my “procedure” was already scheduled to happen in less than a week.