5 Mile Loop Around Memory Lake
1
Let’s start a little ways from town, at Mickey’s house. It will not be easy; the altitude after all these years will get you.
You know Mickey’s house is on the right as you’re coming up the road into town: grey shingles, with a porch swing and pansies in the window boxes. This is where I first saw you, ducking through the front door on the fourth of July with a six-pack slung over your shoulder. I was surprised you were there; I felt bad for you, floating from group to group, looking for an opening. You were too old, too tall, too awkward.
I must have known you before in passing. Remember, this was the kind of town that kept its doors unlocked. We still used our landlines. There was one restaurant and one bookstore and you had to drive down the mountain for gas.
Running jostles old thoughts from their hiding places:
[An old Facebook message, for example]: Hey! If you’re around, let me know. I owe you an apology and shit for last year.
Maybe the cops came or the speakers died or Mickey’s parents kicked us out. Maybe the weather turned; maybe it hailed like it did once every summer, raining cloud-polished pearls from the sky. Either way, we’re out of there, cranking up the hill towards Schafer Fields. We all ended up in cars, and I ended up in yours, me in the backseat and Josh in the passenger. “I’m sober,” you said, and we thanked you.
[A response I don’t remember typing]: I feel partially responsible.
[And another]: Thank you so much. It means more to me than you know.
When I read it now, I hear my younger sister’s voice, accommodating.
No problem, Abbey. I owe you that at least.
At the top of the hill, the macadam changes from black to the older red shale. That’s how you know you’re almost to my house.
That night, you passed it without a word. “That’s me,” I said, but you kept your eyes on the road, taking the right onto Lake Drive. I remember looking for Josh’s eyes in the mirror, but his gaze stayed fixed to the window, to the dark streak of hedges outside. He had always been so shy.
I remember how my fear rose unbridled down the hill and over the bridge where the bullfrogs slept beneath, and past the muddy pond that swallowed paddles in daylight. It swelled up the other side to Josh’s house on the crest and crashed like a wave as he slammed the door and left us alone.
2
On foot, this part is hard but it goes by fast. The trick is to focus on getting up and over. Sometimes, I imagine there is a rope around my waist and someone is standing at the top, pulling in the slack. You watch your heart accelerate and surrender to its pace.
I remember laughing breathlessly, climbing over the console to sit beside you when you said, “C’mon don’t make me feel like a taxi driver.” I remember silence and streetlights and the stretch of lake with no houses lasting forever, my heartbeat all the way up in my ears. One loop and I’d be back home. You pulled into a parking lot halfway around.
Let’s stop here for a minute. Don’t look away.
The car faced away from the water, looking out over the field where I played Capture the Flag. I can’t remember if we heard crickets, or if it was raining, or if you kept the headlights on, but I remember my eyes fixed on the line where the field met the forest. You cut the engine. The doors, were they locked?
“Why are you stopping?”
I remember your face: long, like a horse. It made you look sad. Your freckles made you look young.
I remember you saying “one kiss and we’ll leave,” and I said “no, take me home,” but the keys stayed hanging in the ignition and you leaned in with hot breath I can still feel but cannot smell and you asked, how come I let Tommy touch me like that, back at the party, in the lamplight, in the back bedroom, with the door cracked open, and why couldn’t I let you too?
I remember sitting on Tommy’s lap. I remember the red dress that was really a skirt I had pulled to my armpits: American Apparel, stretchy, short. It was the summer before college and my brain was all sex. I fucked Tommy in the bathroom or outside in the grass. I can’t remember which.
Maybe you reached over and lowered my seat.
Maybe I pulled at the handle or maybe I just kept my eyes on the green field called The Field of Dreams that looked gray in the dark. Maybe the treeline sunk beneath the windshield on our way down.
Maybe I said take me home one more time, and when you didn’t answer I shifted my mind.
Maybe I glanced at your long thin thighs,
Felt the curve in your spine where it arched to the sky,
And when I couldn’t watch more, I went inside your mind,
Saw myself through your eyes.
Maybe I was a slut like you said. I remember you said “Your tits are perfect” and I crooned “Not too small?” And you said, “No, they’re every guy’s dream.”
I remember a single sliver of light from the parking lot, how it illuminated me — not you — and I thought, I’m a dream. I remember the ceiling of your car, so low, so soft on my fingertips. I remember I whispered “come for me” in your ear and I made sure not to look at your face. I think you opened the door and came on one knee on the gravel, but I’m not sure. I am sure that the rush of cool air felt like shame.
We are done here. Gather your legs; they are shaking.
3
I think you offered to drive me home, but I said I’d walk back on the dirt road, the one that parallels the main one. Let’s take it; it’s out of the sun. It smells like nostalgia and pine sap and wind. Today, we are wearing sneakers but if you close your eyes you can hear the slap-slap of my flip- flops in the dust. Maybe I needed to cry. Maybe I took huge heavy breaths to wring tears from my eyes, but I couldn’t get a single drop. Do you think I was faking it?
Up ahead is Sarah’s house: blue paint, screen doors. You know the place, I think, but you’ve never been inside. That night it must have been too late to go home. I must have let myself in through her side door, always unlocked. It must have been very early morning when I told her: “I’m so embarrassed.” She must have rolled over, her hair tangled with sleep, to meet me with wide eyes. I am certain we laughed.
[You said]: Just give me a time and place and we can talk.
Like that, we’re back in town. You scooped ice cream here that summer. I thought you looked stupid in your uniform. You might have been engaged to be married. Your son wasn’t born yet. I still remember the chocolate lines on your forearms from the edges of the tubs. You filled up cones with Birthday Cake Swirl for kids. Could they tell?
My house is just up the block. Pass it, again. We’re running this twice.
4
Take Lake Drive towards the pond. Your lungs are burning. You taste metal in your mouth. This time, I’m driving.
I remember it well. I cried the whole way there to meet you. It loomed on my tail: this wisp of a thought you might do it again. You would be sitting on the steps by the water. You would rise to greet me and your hands would be shaking. Our feet find a rhythm, hammering the downhill. If this hurts your knees, find the soft gravel on the shoulder. Keep up with me.
In the parking lot, we face the lake. In the field behind us, kids in pinnies are playing soccer, but I can’t bring myself to watch. I remember I checked my face for tears in the mirror. I jiggled the handle and it gave in my grip. I opened the door. The keys were cold, solid in my pocket. Look. You are waiting for me, apology stretched over your brow. This is where I leave you.
5
Last mile. In the shower, I will scrub the salt from my face. I will rub the skin behind my ankles; it will slough off like a snake’s. My body: purified.
[Instructions for evidence-gathering:]
Avoid bathing or showering
Avoid using the restroom
Avoid changing clothes or if you do place clothes in a plastic bag
Avoid combing hair
Resist cleaning up the area
My body: a shadow, a vessel, a stride. Alone, I have found a rhythm, matched steps to breaths. My awareness is somewhere out in front of me, a soft flare on the horizon. The ground moves beneath me, but my focus stays fixed. Almost home.
I always send the last mile. Speed trips the rhythm, and the bottom falls out. The sensation becomes too strong to hold out in front of me; it careens towards me, taking on the shape of my body. At first, it catches beneath my ribs. It can feel like fear, but it is a tide, rising through my feet. It becomes its own rhythm: warmer, redder. Sweat pools in the bends of my arms and drips from my elbows. It swallows me. Stay calm, and it will hold me. I will become my attention, embodied.
At the end, I can feel my cells shimmering. I peel off my shirt and socks and leave them on the clothesline. There is a bird’s nest in the gutter. Bare feet creak across the front porch. Inside, pasta for dinner. My mother’s embrace. My made-it-home-safe.
Abbey Cahill (she/her/hers) is a new voice, based in the Greater Boston Area. She is currently working on her first book, a series of essays on what it means to have faith while coming of age in the 2020s. In 2022, Abbey was selected for the Kenyon Review’s Summer Residential Writers Workshops in the category of non-fiction. She has a degree in English and creative writing from Dartmouth College.