Open Water, Caleb Nelson [best summer books txt] 📗

You allow yourself to break.

27

It’s quieter, here, on the other side of freedom. You could be elsewhere. You walk beside the dog, entering a gated community, the door swinging shut behind you. The soft gloom falls off your shoulders in the warm evening. Earlier, the dog had nudged your stomach, clambering beside you on the corner of the sofa you were curled up in. You held on tight while your mind spir­alled in its noisy confines. But it’s quieter here. There’s no one but you and the dog. You watch it bound across pedestrianized streets, writing its own story. You decide freedom might be a narrative. Freedom might be in the place beyond the fence. Freedom might be inviting others over the boundary. You take photos of the dog pounding around and think of sending them to her, but it’s far too late for that. It occurs to you this freedom might be temporary but you’re here, in this world.

It’s been a long time since you wore your hoody on roads. It snowed heavily for a week in the past winter. Every day, you would finger the threaded cotton of your black hoody, until the smell of her began to disappear. Your life with her unstitched in the same way, becoming more undone with each passing day. You stood to the side and watched your relationship fall apart. It was easier to do this. It was simpler and cowardly. To love someone like that, to know how beautiful and wholesome and healing such a love is, and to turn your back on it required no strength at all. You have always wondered under what conditions unconditional love breaks, and you believe that betrayal might be one of them.

Six months have passed since the day she confronted you. Six months have passed since the day she said she could see you and asked you to see her too. Six months have passed since you were unable to offer your own vulnerability; she made the decision to walk away and you did not chase. Today, you have decided to pull on your hoody, for comfort, and speak your truth. You do not want to hide any more, even if it hurts.

This morning is the first in a long time you have woken with a funk in your step. James Brown would’ve been proud. You are sure you all have the scream in your chests, waiting to emerge. You are sure these screams don’t have to be pale and bloody but full and vital.

Speaking of James Brown’s scream, you want to riff, and talk about a Friday evening, long ago, before the fracture and the break. Uncle Wray and his Nephew making an appearance. Asking the smart speaker to play rapper Playboi Carti. It’s said he’s mumbling but you hear something else. He too is filling the pocket, darting in the space between the 808 and the glittering melody, closing the distance with his short lines and ad libs. Just as on that first night, when two strangers closed a distance, held close by melody. Anyway, regarding ­Carti – less heady, more from the chest; less thought, more honest, more intention. They say he’s mumbling but you hear something else. It makes you move.

You came here, really, to whisper in the dark, like when you used to turn the lights out, and you were twisted in her covers, seeing nothing but her familiar shape.

You want to tell her of your parents. Your father on a Saturday afternoon bent over the sound system, scrolling until he retrieves the memory captured in song. Sweet croon, daytime lullaby. The words we have for this feeling are not enough but perhaps the melody? Perhaps the bass, slapping, thudding. A heartbeat. Perhaps your parents grooving in their own living room, slow croon. Your mother asks if and where they play slow jams in the city. You promise to find a place as they ­two-­step in unison.

You want to ask her if she remembers what song was playing when you were on the train home. You had been dancing all evening in a basement full of jazz musicians, both dancers and performers improvising, separate and apart. When you boarded the train, a handful of these musicians sat in the adjacent seats. You began to gush to each other. Someone referred to the night as a spiritual experience. The frequencies were right. There, gathered together, the energy spilled over. One of them began to sing. The percussionist procured a shaker and kept you all in time as you all moved, alone in this train carriage, together, improvising, dancing in protest, moving in joy.

You want to ask her if she remembers such freedom.

You want to tell her of the young man you saw, opposite on the Overground. Shoes the colour of a clear sky, tattoo clasping his bicep. He drinking from a black can, you from a glass bottle. Headphones atop both your heads. He caught your eye. You nodded to each other and raised your drinks in joyous greeting. The gaze required no words at all, no, it was an honest meeting. You want to tell her that, in this instant, one which was filled with the fullness of time, you loved this man. Loved him like kin. You had no intentions of making a home in each other, but only to stay for a moment, only to feel safe for a moment.

You want to tell her there are some things you won’t heal from, and there is no shame in your hurt. You want to tell her that in trying to be honest here, you dug until shovel met bone, and you kept going. You want to tell her it hurt. You want to tell her that you have stopped trying to forget that feeling, that anger, that ugly, and instead have accepted it as part of you, along with your joy, your beauty, your light. Multiple truths do exist, and you do not