Photo by Duncan Adler on Unsplash
Aliana stood on the levee when her arthritis kicked in again; a spark of intense pain shooting up from her left knee to her thigh like Texas lightning flashing on a hot summer’s thundrstorm. Since her last wipeout five years ago, each spasm seems to get worse in its intensity, rippling through her muscles, shredding delicate nerve endings. Once, relief was only a bottle of downer-induced numbness away--and her brain devoured and accepted the chemicals, eventually destroying their effectiveness. To Aliana, there was no point other than to bear it and scream silently.
But, she thought, for what it's worth, at least I've gotten used to the situation. Every circumstance is a reminder that I'm alive, and I know that I shouldn't be. Sure, I can't climb stairs most of the time without either a cane or my husband or whoever happens to be around to give me a helping hand, but at least I'm alive.
At least I'm alive. Shit.
The bridge was to her left; a riot of bolted metal and concrete pylons, spanning the father river, the Mississippi, the green murky waters painted with streaks of shit lines and oil smears floating languidly southward toward Aliana's hometown of New Orleans, and beyond to the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Aliana guessed the slicks will dissipate into molecular fragments, the remainder either washing up on the banks and bayous along the way, or settling on the sandy bottom, joining decades of crap that survived the dredging and the natural movement of the currents.
The distant fog had obscured the opposite bank, so all Aliana could discern were a few top floors of the Memphis skyline and a tugboat lugging a barge slowly up the river. She took in its environmentally tattered beauty with an air of superiority that surprised even her. I've made it, she murmured silently without parting her lips, I'm on my way, damnit.
Aliana and her husband Eddie drove without stopping from San Antonio. After a brief rest here on the banks of the river, she'd wake Eddie up and he'll take the wheel, taking Interstate 40 through to Winston-Salem, then north on I-95 to Richmond. There, Aliana would take over again and finish the drive to New York--Brooklyn--where they would park the truck in front of their new apartment.
“I got what it takes.”
The river didn’t reply; not that Aliana expected or intended it to. The father river spoke to Aliana in other ways--she learned that as a child when Dad would take her to the levees near their house in Algiers, having her listen to the ancient waters spin its tales. Of course, the river spoke to you because on the way her mother dosed the sodas with acid, allowing Aliana the opportunity to have a more colorful childhood than her contemporaries.
A smile crossed her lips when she remembered her mother and father and her tripping on the sandbanks. She remembered the blue, the dirty mud, the pretty ferryboats that sang to her in a tuneful cadence. That was about all she remembered, after years of therapy she still couldn’t see her parents wandering into the water, never to return. Aliana guessed that she had already wandered off by then.
But twenty years later, Aliana stood arrogantly, ready to say good-bye. Even as she grimaced from the throbbing in her leg, she was happy to cross it and leave it behind, forever.
Figuratively, she amended. I'll be back for visits, sure. I have my roots down here.
Aliana carefully shifted her weight to lessen her discomfort, shivering in the morning breeze that kicked up off the river. Her foot, permanently bent slightly inward with a steel rod inserted in lieu of an ankle, slipped slightly on the sand base of the levee and she winced when her body reacted to this sudden change in movement. Aliana could feel her swollen knee joint grind bone against bone and wondered how long it would be until she could afford the next operation.
The doctors said that she should have had it done shortly after the second accident, this time on the Moto Guzzi, yet Aliana was adamant that she could deal with the physical suffering. She wanted to finish school, and the settlement with the jerk who blindsided her on the highway took forever to come.
She mumbled a curse under her breath, air blowing out her mouth like a pump. Who would’ve thought that she’d be arthritic in five years?
She shook her head. And I thought this shit happened to old folks, she mused, not to the healthy, vibrant soon-to-be-successful young geniuses like me.
Take that left at the light, dear. We’ll be waiting on the corner for you.
Aliana shivered again in the breeze, which blew with slightly more force, enough for her to notice. She brushed her hair out of her face as she turned to stare at the bridge again.
She had a fascination with the bridge. No real reason why; it looks just like any other suspension bridge. There was no imaginative design to it, nothing that would set it apart from many other bridges; just another soulless piece of American design and WPA era craftsmanship. If there was a sentimental pull to it, she didn't know where it came from within her heart. She had never seen it before.
But she wanted to really see it, to photograph it carefully in her mind, an image that she wanted desperately to have for the rest of her life. The bridge symbolized the final break--it was the gateway to the unknown. The Mississippi was the proverbial Rubicon of her dreams.
When she crossed, Aliana hoped it would make the memories go away, hoping they’d fall like debris into the, to drift away--either to wash ashore at an unknown destination or to sink as deep as deep can be.
Aliana bit her lip. Now the ankle was acting up. Better get down from here before it gives way.
“It is here,” she began to chant. “Here I wash my troubles away.”
I wash my troubles away. And I’ll wash yours, too.
The fog continued to roll in, now it was beginning to envelope the bridge in its ghostly embrace, wiping its gray, rusted span with the panache of a steady hand holding an airbrush. The bridge dimmed in her gaze, several seconds later it was hardly discernable to Aliana's stare; only the summits of the towers were visible, and soon they too disappeared in the fog's embrace.
The wind blew harder, whistling now. White caps began to appear on the surface of the water and thundered against her ear. Aliana gave up trying to keep her hair out of her face and allowed the wind to blow her curly hair freely, distorting her vision more.
“There was so much I need to forget!” she pleaded. “And you're reminding me.”
Aliana bit into her lip again, this time drawing a stain of blood, tasting metallic to her tongue. Speaking up in a calm, measured--almost conversational tone, she told the wind: “Stop. I don't want to remember.”
The wind refused to answer. Instead, it only increased its force, a gust blew up over the levee, nearly succeeding in blowing Aliana off. She rocked back in another spasm; this time the nerves in her lower back snapped to attention, releasing a welter of pain that almost brought Aliana to her knees.
Aliana swung her arms out to balance herself, and she bent her good leg towards the sand. The boiling pain and a second gale-like gust was too much for her to handle, however, and Aliana fell to one knee.
She tried to break her fall by holding her right palm out, but the heel gave way in the slippery sand and Aliana fell on her side. She cursed repeatedly while grabbing and throwing handfuls of sand. Tears began to well up in her eyes and soon she was crying.
“I don't want to remember, goddamnit! I don't wanna.”
Idontwannaidontwannaidontwannaidontwannaidontwannaidont
* * *
She wondered if her yells woke Eddie up, but she doubted it; Eddie could sleep through a war. The fog was around her now, surrounding her like a wedding veil. She could see only as far as the edge only two feet in front of her, but she could hear the wavelets splashing against the base over the roar of the wind.
She felt comfortable, though her face and hair were covered with sand, her sides and her legs too. The pain had lessened to a dull throbbing around her bad knee, enough to remind her that it was there. Aliana guessed the joint was going to ache all day. She made a note to tell Eddie to ice it down after she fell asleep if she managed to do that simple process.
In those two minutes Aliana remembered everything, and she was satisfied. It wasn't that bad after all, and she believed that it did her a whole lot of good. For the first time, Aliana felt she was complete--whole again, after two accidents and...
We’ll be waiting, dear. Waiting to wash your troubles away.
“Just one more thing,” she said, smiling. “Just one more thing to remember.”
At that, the colors returned, replaying the scene. She was riding on the Moto Guzzi, through the Texas Hill Country, free, taking the curves angelically, her body whole, her life complete.
Aliana slowly got up, swinging her legs in front of her, directing them towards the edge of the levee. Pushing herself gently, she was able go over the edge, sliding down into the water.
The water was up to her neck.
She drifted the Moto Guzzi to the shoulder around Cat Mountain.
Mike Lee is a writer and editor at a trade union in New York City and the chief blogger for Focus on the Story. His work appears in or is forthcoming in Drunk Monkeys Flash Boulevard, BULL, The Quarantine Review, and many others. He was also recently nominated for Best Microfiction by Ghost Parachute.