Rower’s Waltz
Zach extended his right leg out into empty air, his left foot firmly planted on the less than firmly planted pontoon dock that shifted from side to side in the lake’s gentle current and the day’s soft breeze. He wavered with his leg over the water and considered pulling that leg back to the relative stability of the shifting dock, waiting for things to calm down before trying again.
The uncertainty and new fear made him angry and he silently resolved to make it this time or fall in trying. He extended his arms straight out to either side, found a new balance in the pose, then slowly but confidently lowered his foot till it touched the side of the wooden rowboat below, then reached his leg out even farther till his right foot was fully and squarely on the middle of the boat’s stern seat. The dock was a veritable Rock of Gibraltar compared with the floating, spinning, drifting small boat; and Zach wondered again if this hands-free stride into the rowboat was such a good idea.
But now that his foot was on the stern seat, he had no choice except to go forward—the rowboat would not offer enough support for him to push off and get his foot back onto the dock. He frowned to himself, shook his head once, and pulled his left leg off the dock and out into the air over the boat. With all his weight suddenly on the stern of the rowboat, it sank low in the water and pitched away from the dock. To keep from falling backwards and maybe cracking his head on the side of the dock, Zach threw his arms and upper body forward toward the front of the boat. He half-fell, half-stepped into the ribbed bottom, spun around on his left foot newly planted in that bottom, and sat with a graceless thud on the oarsman’s bench spanning the middle of the boat.
He looked up at Becca standing above him with their cooler and knapsack at her feet and the oarlocks in her hand. He raised his arms and extended his hands palm up as if to say, “No problem.”
Becca was still miffed at his refusal to accept her offer of a steadying hand as he’d begun to step off the dock, a gesture she understood to be a token punishment for her scarce presence these last couple months. She shook her head once and frowned. But she couldn’t remain long angry at his sheepish grin and finally had to laugh. “If I had a video camera, you’d never live it down.”
“What do you mean? Graceful as Baryshnikov.”
“On a greased skateboard in an ice storm.”
“That’s what I meant.” He stood on wobbly legs in the rolling boat and took the cooler then the knapsack and set them in the bow. Then he took the oarlocks in his left hand and helped guide and steady Becca with his right as she sat on the edge of the dock then slid slowly down onto the boat’s stern seat. Zach couldn’t help but note that this was the longest they’d touched—skin to skin—in what? at least ten weeks.
Once securely and comfortably situated, Becca released his hand. “Thank you,” she said, before smoothing her khaki shorts and white T-shirt and pulling the band holding her ponytail tighter to her skull. Then she looked up at Zach still standing between her and the oarsman’s bench. “Well, onward James.”
“At your service, ma’am,” Zach said, and sat on the bench, set the oarlocks in their holes, then pulled the long wooden oars up from under the bench and set them in the open notch of the oarlocks.
Becca said, “Whoever thought of taking the oarlocks for security rather than the oars ought to get a raise. Can you imagine trying to get into the boat carrying those oars?”
Zach laughed. “Might be a good balance pole.”
“You could’ve used one,” she said.
“Made it, didn’t I?”
“Barely.” She reached out and slid the rope tether’s loop off the hook on the side of the dock.
Zach made two strong paired pulls on the oars and the boat glided away from the dock and out toward the middle of the lake. Zach lifted the oar tips out of the water by pushing the handles down into his lap. The boat, powered by no more than those two pulls and whatever invisible currents and breeze assisted, slid silently across the clear water sparkling in the day’s brilliant sun. Zach closed his eyes for a moment, letting his mind float free along with the boat and the day, let the tension ease from the taut muscles in his neck and back, let the sun warm the crown of his head and his shoulders, slowly inhaled the late-spring pond-scented air, then offered the air back in a long slow silent sigh.
When he opened his eyes, Becca was staring at him. “New man?”
He nodded. “Out here, always.”
“So I see. Thanks for letting me come along.”
“You’re welcome.”
By then, they were near the middle of this narrow part of the lake. Zach pulled hard on the left oar to turn them right, toward the channel south, into the sun.
Zach often rowed by himself on this man-made lake, a reservoir for the town’s drinking water that meandered for miles across the largely deserted fields and woods of what were once farms, fingers of pure blue water extending up former valleys and gullies that once held barns, dirt trails, moonshine stills. Zach’s muscles had grown well-accustomed to the whole-body rhythms of rowing—the rower’s waltz he called it. His feet would brace against the bottom of the boat, his calves and thighs would contract and push his torso up and back, his arms and shoulders and chest and upper body would lean out at a steep angle toward the bow of the boat, steadily leaning away from vertical and toward horizontal, as his hands holding the oars came toward his face and under his chin, thrusting the far end of the oars submerged in the water in the opposite direction, pushing against the water and propelling the boat forward, even as he was facing the rear of the boat, looking in the direction he’d just come, watching his wake. Then, with the oar handles up close to his chin and the oar tips at maximum extension away from his body, his hands holding the oars would drop toward his lap, lifting the tips out of the water, and he’d reverse the former sequence—raising his upper body toward vertical, loosening his calves and thighs and shifting his body toward the rear of the boat as he extended his arms away from his center of gravity and the oar tips floating above the water angled toward the bow of the boat. Then he’d raise the oar handles up, drop the tips back into the water, tense his thighs and calves, and begin the cycle all over again in this whole body exercise, this rower’s waltz.
Over the next half hour, they glided without speaking steadily away from the docks and toward the remote center of the sprawling reservoir. In that long silence Becca again avoided confronting those questions about their relationship that lurked ever at the edges of her consciousness, choosing instead to focus on Zach’s body, the graceful interweaving of all his parts with the oars and the boat and the day a more appealing draw than reflection on their past or speculation on their future.
The little boat pushed onward across the broad lake, passing both wild and domesticated animals on the shore and oblivious to their presence—a heron unmoving in the shallows, a deer threading through brush, cattle grazing in a field, two mules stone-still on a hill. In the steady back and forth rocking of the boat and the warmth of the sun on her face and arms and legs, Becca drifted into an enticing daze. She opened her eyes when the rhythms suddenly stopped.
Zach smiled at her from his seat a few feet away, the oar tips in the air, the boat drifting. “Sorry to wake you.”
Becca smiled back. “I wasn’t asleep, but it does feel like a dream—one huge, warm, seductive dream. And all our own.”
Zach nodded. “Not many boats out here on weekdays.”
“Lucky us.”
Zach nodded. “Want to find a quiet cove and tie off for lunch?”
“We could eat right here.”
Zach looked in all directions—not a building or boat or human visible. “Nah, too crowded.”
Becca laughed. “The recluse speaks.”
“Besides, the sun’s getting hot. We can find a little shade close to shore.”
Becca didn’t mind the heat but said, “You’re driving.”
Two seconds later, he was—pulling hard and fast on the oars this time, stretching his mus
cles and legs and arms and lungs and heart. The oars groaned in their oarlocks, nearly jumping out of the metal holders at the furthest thrust of each beat. In less than two minutes Zach had them close to shore. He slowed his pace and turned the boat to the left and ran parallel to the shoreline, maybe twenty feet or so out in the water, looking for a suitable cove to tie off in. He remembered an especially picturesque inlet somewhere along here, with a tall weeping willow reaching out over the water in a natural canopy. He’d begun to think he’d already passed it when they glided around a fallen tree and there was the cove with the willow. He turned the boat into the cove, checked the depth of the water, looked for possible submerged hazards, and glanced over his shoulder to gauge the distance to the shore. He gave one last gentle thrust to the oars, then lowered the handles down into the bottom of the boat, stood and turned and caught the lowest willow limb as they glided past. Becca handed him the rope, and he tied them off to the limb.
The air was at least ten degrees cooler in the shade, and noticeably less humid. Along the bushes on shore, songbirds jumped from branch to branch, calling back and forth, trying to determine if these unfamiliar intruders were a threat. On a half-submerged log jutting at an angle into the air, a line of pond turtles stretched from where the trunk rose up out of the water to the tip of the log some five feet above the water. While they watched, the lead turtle at the end of the log was nudged forward by the line of turtles following and fell to the water’s surface with a loud splash. The songbirds were suddenly silent; somewhere farther inland, a crow cawed once then stopped.
Becca looked around the canopied cove in wonder. “So this is why you come out here.”
Zach nodded. “One of the reasons.”
“It’s amazing—like something out of The Lord of the Rings.”
“Better.”
“How?”
“It’s mine.”
She looked closely at him. “Thanks for sharing it.”
“Plus none of those stupid little people rooting around in the dirt.”
Becca laughed. “If you’ll hand me the cooler, I’ll serve lunch before those little people steal it.”
Zach swung the cooler from the bow onto the seat beside her.
She unpacked a small feast—pimento-cheese sandwiches on thick slices of fresh-baked whole-wheat bread, hummus on pita wedges, and banana bread with peanut butter for dessert: and all of it except the peanut butter made by Becca’s own hands. She handed Zach a heaping plate, then offered him cola in a bottle or beer in a can. He took the beer.
After quickly consuming more than half of his meal, Zach looked up at her and said, “You’ll make someone a hell of a wife.”
She bit her bottom lip lightly. “You can cook circles around me, Zach.”
“That doesn’t change my assertion.”
She nodded slowly while nibbling on her sandwich. “Then thanks, I guess.”
They ate awhile in silence. Water bugs skittered across the surface of the lake. Another turtle tumbled into the water with a splash.
“It’ll be a long time till I marry, if ever.”
Zach said, “Why?”
“England this summer, then my last semester, then work somewhere, maybe travel some more.”
“Grad school?”
She shook her head. “In what? Nothing I want to learn. Well, actually, everything I want to learn—just no one thing needing more school.”
“I know the feeling.”
“And you?”
“Marriage? Been there, not looking to go back.”
“No, grad school.”
“Like you—no one thing worth pursuing.”
“Not even your writing?”
“Don’t need grad school to write—only gets in the way: an exercise to avoid the loneliness of writing.”
“Doesn’t sound like fun.”
“It isn’t.”
They finished their lunch in silence. Zach took the plates and rinsed them in the lake, then set them in the sun to dry. Becca repacked the cooler and handed it to Zach to stow in front. Zach sat down again on the oarsman’s bench and looked around the cove and fiddled with the oarlocks. Another turtle fell into the water.
“Maybe we should head back,” Zach said. “It’s a longer row against the current, and I’ve got dinner plans with Barton and some of his friends tonight.” He grabbed the oar handles.
At first Becca nodded agreement, but then stopped and asked, “Can we stay a few more minutes. It’s so beautiful and peaceful here.”
Zach shrugged. “Sure. No rush.” He set the oars back in the bow.
Becca watched him for a few minutes. He kept looking at the shoreline, or up the hill through the dense underbrush, or out toward the lake—anywhere except toward her. “Can we stay a few more minutes with you looking at me and maybe just a little closer?”
He looked directly at her for the first time that day, maybe the first time for weeks. She was the same girl he’d fallen in love with nine months earlier, the same girl he’d poured his whole heart into in a reckless risk his heart was now paying the price for. She was that same girl. What’s more, his love for her was as strong as it had been from the start, not one iota diminished. But his heart was deeply bruised, and that pain held him back now. “If I sit on that seat with you, we’ll swamp the boat.”
“Zach, can’t you let me be nice to you? Can’t you at least let me try?” She took her beach towel and spread it on the bottom of the boat at her feet. “Sit here please.” She pointed at the towel.
He laughed. “You’re cute when you’re mad.”
“Don’t push it. Sit!”
He slid off his seat and sat cross-legged on the towel facing her.
“That looks uncomfortable,” she said.
“It is.”
“Then turn around, stretch your legs out toward the front of the boat, and lean back against me.”
He followed her directions, rocking the boat from side to side, but finally getting settled with his legs stretched forward under the middle seat and his back and shoulders leaning against Becca’s knees.
Becca cradled his head gently in her hands and eased it onto her lap.
Zach felt all the hurt rising up in him again, pain rising in a crescendo. But he also knew he was helpless to resist. She was Becca; she was the love of his life.
“Zach, I care for you more than anybody in the world. I respect and admire you more than anyone I know. I wish I could be with you all the time.”
She lightly massaged his temples as she spoke. He was dying in joy.
“But I can’t be with you all the time. Your love, your whole personality, is so big. It takes me over. It’s not your fault; it’s not my fault; it’s who we are. And who we are is too much if we’re together too much, if we get too close.”
“Not for me.”
“Then for me. And I think for you too, even though you won’t admit it. You’d throw away everything for me—your scholarship, your writing, your friendship with Barton, your future: all of it.”
His eyes stayed closed, but he said, “You’re right. I would walk away from all that if it meant being with you.”
“That’s insane, Zach. People don’t do that.”
“I would.”
“People shouldn’t do that.”
“I would.”
“You’re wrong.”
They were at a familiar impasse. He wasn’t sure why Becca had to hear it one more time. He didn’t have to hear it anymore; he lived it every minute of every day.
“But thank you, Zach, for giving me the space I need and still letting me see you. Thank you for still loving me even if it’s less love than you want to give.”
Zach hardly heard her. All he felt was her hands on his head—how wonderful her fingers felt lightly rubbing the skin of his forehead, how absolutely heavenly they felt. His mind, his heart, his whole body leaned toward those hands, folded itself into those hands. His mind, his heart, his whole body longed for whole touch aga
inst her again, longed to merge their two skins into one flesh again, make themselves again into the single entity they’d been. Then suddenly he knew he could. The water bugs skittering on the surface of the water wouldn’t care. The turtles tumbling, the songbirds twittering, the crow up the hill cawing wouldn’t care. In fact, they’d bless the union. This cove, the lake, the grand beautiful day would bless their union. What’s more, he suddenly knew, Becca longed for that union—as much as he, even more than he. Every fish in the lake, every creeping thing upon the ground, every bird in the sky, every leaf on every tree, every star hidden in the heavens pointed them toward one more merging, one more link in their golden chain of love.
Which is precisely why he sat up suddenly, then stood, turned in the boat, sat on the rower’s bench, pulled the rope’s knot loose from the limb, took up the oars, dipped their tips in the water, and made a couple shallow pulls toward the broad center of the lake.
Becca, her eyes bewildered and hurt, pulled the rope out of the water and into the boat.
Then he began his rower’s waltz, the pulls strong and unbroken, the rhythms sure—thrust then release, thrust then release—not pausing once in the hour-long push to the dock, knowing with each firm oar stroke that he could not bear, would never accept, the universe’s blessing of a last union with the one who would always carry his soul.