Carve Our Names
At Cherry Beach we untie the kayak from the roof of the car, haul it across the pebbly shore, and place it down near the water’s edge. Carmen turns to face me, her green eyes hidden behind sunglasses, her teeth flashing brightly as she grins at me.
“Catch!” she says, tossing a paddle at me, but I miss it because I’m watching her instead of the paddle, thinking about how sexy she looks. She’s standing on the beach with her sneakered feet planted firmly apart, wearing her cut-off jean shorts with the frayed edges—all those little threads trickling down on her brown thighs—and her favourite baby blue hoodie, the one that says ‘I Run Like A Girl’ on it.
We climb into the double kayak and push off into the lake. The sun is sparkling on the grey-green water, bright little flashes like twinkling Christmas lights, and I can feel its heat beating down on my cheeks, and on the backs of my hands and bare arms. We’re skimming along the surface of the lake, the blades of our paddles dipping and pulling through the water with a steady synchronicity, and as we do, a burst of clarity flashes through me, brighter than the sunlight glittering on the water. A fleeting moment of wild faith hits me – I can be happy again! My daughter, Maddie, is gone— dead over a year ago now, on the day she lost her first baby tooth—but today I’m happy. The thought is like the tiniest plink of a pebble dropped into the lake, the pureness of that sound, followed by rings of water radiating out in wider and wider circles, echoing back at me: happiness, happiness, happiness. The feeling falters and then dissipates, but it leaves me with the taste of sunshine in my mouth.
As we kayak across the bay towards the spit, Carmen points out terns wheeling overhead, killdeer running across the mudflats up ahead, which she imitates with a perfect shrill dee-dee-dee, and a great blue heron standing on stilt-like legs in the shallows. As we paddle closer to the shoreline, I realize that the stark white rocks dotted across the water are actually swans, at least twenty or thirty of them, gliding elegantly across the bay in groups of two. I have only ever seen a single pair of swans before, never this many together in one place. And the cormorants! There’s a colony on a nearby peninsula, large dark birds feathered in an oily blackness that shines almost green in the sun. They fly low down, skimming close to the surface of the water. They swim, their long thin necks curved into a crooked ‘s’; they perch on the branches of the trees with their wide wings extended. Most of the trees are stripped bare and their naked branches support not just the birds, but large crude stick nests as well.There are so many of them, filling the air with the sound of hundreds of wings rustling and flapping, calling out with guttural urgh-urgh-urgh’s.
We pass the cormorant colony and pull the kayak up onto a narrow strip of sand that’s bordered by bulrushes, their dark brown cattails standing tall amidst clusters of stiff strap-like leaves. There is Queen Anne’s lace and purple loosestrife, milkweed plants with seed pods bursting open, bright goldenrod and pale-brown grasses. Scattered everywhere throughout the wetland are poplar trees, their autumn leaves fluttering bright yellow in the breeze.
“It’s so beautiful here,” I say.
“It is, isn’t it?” Carmen says. “I knew you’d love it.”
“You found such a perfect spot.” I flop down on my back in the sand, and glance around from this new angle. I know that there must be some other trees around, willows or aspens, but all that I can see are the poplars, standing tall and thin, their leaves of green and gold dancing in the sun and wind. I close my eyes and listen to the sound that they make as the breeze flutters through them, the leaves flapping against each other, a fluctuating pitter-patter, like the sound of rain drumming down on a tent.
When I open my eyes, I focus on a single yellow leaf that is vibrating hesitantly in the breeze, just off to the left, above my head. It’s shaped like a heart, with a wide base that tapers off into a sharp tip, and there are tiny veins that trace their way across its waxy surface. The edges of the leaf are scalloped, one sharp little tooth after another chasing their way around the border in an undulating wave. The surface of the golden leaf is mottled with small brown spots, like archipelagos dotted across a yellow ocean. The leaf hangs by a long, smooth, yellow stem. It looks so tenuous. As I watch it quiver in the breeze, I think that I know what it feels like, to be that leaf. I reach my arm up towards it at the same moment as Carmen slides my top up over my chest. She traces a single finger up the middle of my stomach and then veers off to the side, tugging my bra up and then circling my breast, spiralling inwards with smaller and smaller circles towards my nipple. My hand stops reaching, falls back onto the sand above my head, but I keep watching my little leaf.
As her hand travels back down across my stomach, I think about the tracks that Maddie’s body has left on mine: the faded stretch marks rippling across my belly, and the softness of the stretched skin there; the deflated sag in my breasts; the firm ridged scar that runs along my perineum.
Carmen bites down on my bottom lip and I reach my hands up, slide them over the curves of her upper arms. A wave of heat rushes through me and I think about the crickets that are chirping nearby, the way that their wings rub together, faster and faster as the temperature rises. Carmen’s open mouth is against mine and I picture the first time I met her, the half-smile that she gave me.
I look back up at my leaf, mottled with spots and fading into autumn, and I wonder if anyone else has ever noticed it before, and then I see a monarch butterfly, brilliant orange and black, flutter down and land on it.
I’m back in my body, feeling Carmen’s hot skin against mine, feeling her fingers slide into me, and I think, please, oh please, don’t be too tender, and then I give a tight inhale as Carmen’s teeth graze off of my nipple and she looks up at me, her green eyes wide, pooled with seaweed, and I think maybe I have said the words aloud. I hear the tiniest splash, the sound of droplets spattering across the still water as something breaks through the surface of the lake, and I feel my happiness rippling towards me in swelling circles. My mind’s eye sees the glittering lake, the white swans dotted across it.
I think Maddie would love the swans, and then I correct myself and think, Maddie would have loved the swans. I’m gone and then I’m here again and I think simply This is Carmen, and I clutch tightly to her back and dig my nails into her skin. I think the hollow guttural sounds that I’m hearing are the cormorants, flocking close, but it’s me, shattering open, with jagged sobs that wash over me like a tidal wave.
As I wake up, I hear my name, Sophie, said with such familiarity that it makes me feel like Carmen and I have had years of accumulated tenderness and joy and sorrow together, and it makes me think that maybe we won’t untangle from each other’s lives that easily. My eyes flutter open and I see Carmen tugging her white undershirt back on. She leans over me and brushes something out of my hair, then smiles down at me.
“We should head back,” she says, touching my cheek. “You’re so sunburnt. And your eyes are all puffy.” She looks at me for another moment and then pulls her undershirt back off, dips it in the lake and wrings it out. “Here,” she says, handing it to me, and then she pulls her sweatshirt, which is lying in a crumpled ball on the beach, on over her head. I sit up and shake the sand out of my hair, then press the cold wet undershirt against my face. I feel strange. Everything feels intense: the hot tingle of the sunburn on my cheeks; the brightness of the sun on the lake; the sound of the water lapping against the side of the kayak; the way my bare feet perceive the ground when I stand up, as if I can actually distinguish the individual grains of sand beneath them. I glance over at Carmen, who is leaning over the kayak with her back to me, tethering the neoprene cover into place over the hatch in the stern of the boat, and the words of devotion that are ricocheting around in my heart, thumping against my sternum with the same brilliant intensity, spill out from my sunburnt lips.
Back at Cherry Beach we head over to the chip wagon stationed in the parking lot. “Best fries in Toronto, I promise you!” the chip guy says in a thick Greek accent, as he hands us the shallow cardboard trays, overflowing with chunky golden fries. “Here, here,” he adds, handing me two tiny flat wooden forks with pointed prongs that look like cat’s ears. We wander back over to the picnic table where we’ve left the kayak, circumventing a dog-walker who has five dogs.
“We should go get the dogs,” I say, because I suddenly miss them, and she nods her head yes, tells me we’ll go after we eat.
He’s right, the chip guy, the fries are the best ever, although it’s probably more the tartness of the vinegar and the little clusters of clumped salt that make me think that, or the fact that I’m incredibly hungry from the kayaking and the sex. Or maybe it’s because as we sit there eating them the wind picks up, whipping little strands of hair across my face, and Carmen reaches over and traces a single finger across my sunburnt cheek to move the hair away, and then she murmurs, “Is this a pixie wind?” and I can’t help but feel that she knows me, remembers the stories I’ve told her, seen inside my heart.
I watch the dog-walker load the dogs into her van and drive away, and then I see a woman walking in our direction with a little beagle puppy pulling energetically at his leash. His nose is to the ground; his long ears are dragging across the sand; and his thin tail, which is curled up and over, is wagging rapidly. I follow the leash up to the owner and realize with a sudden start that it’s Carmen’s ex-girlfriend, Linn. I’m about to avert my glance but she looks my way at the same moment and our eyes lock with recognition, Linn’s widening. My eyes flicker back to Carmen, who’s licking some ketchup off her finger and looking out over the water, oblivious. She takes a swig of iced tea and offers it to me.
“What’s up?” she says, tilting her head at me quizzically. I look back over her shoulder, hoping that Linn has turned away, but she’s sauntering towards our picnic table, her eyes now narrowed into little slits and her mouth tightened into a matching straight slash. I nod my chin in Linn’s direction and Carmen swivels to look just as she arrives.
“Linn!” Carmen says. She glances briefly back at me, then down at the puppy, who wags his tail in greeting and strains against his leash until he’s pulled himself to the picnic table, where he shoves his wet nose against her calf. Carmen smiles and reaches down to pet him. Linn rolls her eyes, and then looks down at the kayak that’s sitting on the beach beside the table.
“I see you got yourself a new one,” Linn says disparagingly, as she gives the kayak a little kick.
“Yeah,” Carmen responds. “What did you do with my old one?”
“I kept it for a while, but I never used it, so I finally sold it,” Linn says. “I didn’t realize it was such an expensive boat,” she adds, laughing lightly.
Carmen opens her mouth, looks like she’s about to say something, but then changes her mind. She looks at me, but I can’t quite read her expression, and then she looks down at the picnic table, where she starts tracing her finger along the letters carved into the wood—KENNY AND LOLA FOREVER—and pretends to ignore Linn.
“So,” Linn says, turning to look at me, and I can tell that she’s about to say something cutting by the way her lips curl back as the words start to form. “You know she brings all her girlfriends here, don’t you? Did she take you to see her beloved birds, or to fuck you on that little beach?”
Carmen stands up so abruptly that she sends the can of iced tea flying, but she doesn’t notice. I look up at her, because I think that something precious is about to flutter out of my grasp and I need her to help me catch it before it’s gone. I open my mouth to say her name, but then stop myself. Linn has taken a single step backwards, away from Carmen, but her eyes have stayed trained on mine, watching, a look of victory seared across her face.
“Jesus, Linn!” Carmen exclaims with fury, the words forced out between clenched teeth. She disentangles herself from the picnic table bench, grabs Linn tightly by the arm and starts to steer her away from the table.
“Whaa-aat?” Linn says, laughing a little and tossing her head so that her ponytails dance. She tries to shrug her arm out of Carmen’s grasp but doesn’t succeed. As they walk away from me, Linn looks back over her shoulder and gives me another saccharine smile. I turn away and look out over the water. There are small white caps now, and the sky has clouded over. Everything seems so ephemeral. The fickle sunshine, Maddie’s too-short life, Carmen’s devotion. A darkness pulls at me, like a dense flock of cormorants descending.
I look back at Carmen and Linn, watch them talk—soundlessly because they’re out of earshot— Linn jabbing her finger into Carmen’s chest as she drives her words in, Carmen flinging her hand up with a sudden jerk, knocking Linn’s arm away. At one point they both look over at me at the same moment and I have the ridiculous urge to stick my tongue out at them, but I don’t.
Eventually Linn calls for her puppy and he goes tearing away across the sand, his green leash trailing behind him. Carmen watches her walk away and then turns back towards the table. She sits down without looking at me and then starts to run her finger along the letters again, but when she gets to ‘LOLA’ her finger stays there, tracing the same four letters over and over.
“Sorry about that,” she says with a swift little shake of her head, but she still won’t look at me. I study her face, watch the muscles above her wide jaw bones tighten into little knots as she clenches her teeth. She rubs the back of her hand across her mouth, and finally looks up at me. “It’s not like…it’s not how she made it sound,” she says.
“Yeah? How did it sound to you?” I ask. “I thought she made it sound like we just spent the day at your favourite make-out spot.”
“It’s not my…” she starts to say, but then her lips quiver with the hint of a smile. “It’s not my favourite make-out spot, it’s just my favourite place.I love it here,” she says, gesturing widely at the lake and the spit of land across the water. “I started coming down here when I was a teenager. Mostly I come by myself; I like to run the spit, especially in the evening. Once last fall a Gray owl swooped over me. Its wing span was like this!” she exclaims, extending her arms straight out. “And sometimes at twilight I’ve seen the coyotes.” She pauses, looks down at her kayak and then back out over the water. “And you saw what it was like there—all those birds flocking around you. I know a lot of people come here, but I’ve always thought of this place as mine.
“I only ever came here once with Linn, last summer. It was sort of funny, actually,” she says letting a rueful laugh escape. “I knew her mom worked for the government, but I didn’t find out until afterwards that she was with the Ministry of Natural Resources, doing wildlife management. One of her big projects is the cormorants, trying to get them culled because their population has expanded so rapidly, and they’re supposedly depleting fish stocks and killing the vegetation. And Linn’s dad is a big sports fisherman, so it’s some big family pet-peeve, all those cormorants nesting on the spit. ‘They’re ugly birds that barf up fish, and their shit is killing all the trees,’ is what Linn said when she saw them. We ended up having a huge fight afterwards, and I never came back with her again.
“I never should have brought her here in the first place,” Carmen murmurs. “I brought her because I really wanted to give her something real, this little piece of myself, not the me that she thought I was, or the one she wanted me to be, or even the one I wanted her to see, but…” She trails off and then suddenly smacks her open hand down on Kenny and Lola. “Fuck!” she exclaims angrily. “I’m really sorry, Sophie, about what she said. I’m sorry if it made you feel…” She trails off without finishing the sentence.
“It’s alright,” I say. “It doesn’t matter.” I swallow back the sour taste of my words and avoid looking her in the eye.
“It doesn’t?” Carmen asks, with a hopeful little catch in her voice. A seagull swoops down and lands in the sand near our table, bobbing its head at us and opening its yellow bill, releasing a throaty cry. Carmen tosses a French fry in the air and the gull runs towards it on its webbed yellow feet, snatching the fry up swiftly and swallowing it whole. She looks back at me and studies my expression carefully.
“Yes it does,” she says softly.
“I went to high school with a girl named Lola,” I say, pointing at the name on the picnic table. “She was one of those bad girls that your mother warns you to stay away from, but I really wanted to be like her. I cut my hair short so I’d look more like her, started dressing like her, sitting near her in the cafeteria.”
“You could never be a bad girl,” Carmen says, laughing at me. “Never in a million years. You’re just too nice.”
“I know,” I say. “I discovered that when she slammed my head into a locker. But that’s a whole other story.”
“Ouch,” Carmen says.
“She carried a switch blade in the back pocket of her jeans.” I throw a few more fries down on the beach for our seagull and three more gulls swoop down to join him. “Are you one of those dykes who carry a knife with them?” I ask. Carmen grins. She jumps up and pulls the cover off of the hatch in the kayak and reaches inside, pulls out a Swiss Army knife.
“Carve our names there,” I say, pointing “beside Kenny and Lola.” She etches out my name first, then starts to work on hers. “It doesn’t have to say forever though,” I add. Her hand freezes momentarily before she finishes carving out ‘Carmen’ and then a little plus sign between the two names. After a pause she carves a heart around the whole thing.
“There,” she says, brushing the shavings aside. We regard each other across the table for a long moment.
“You seemed so happy today,” Carmen says, and the precious thing that I’ve been trying to find flutters back and lands on the picnic table between us.
“C’mon,” she says. “Let’s go get Friday and Thisby, take them for a walk at Taylor Creek.” As we strap the kayak back on her car, I glance back at the picnic table, thinking about Kenny and Lola, wondering how long their forever lasted.
Photo by Olena Bohovyk on Unsplash.
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