Page 13

2007

Sarah slipped outside the back door into the cool spring evening and flipped open her phone. Black-on-gray digital print glared back at her: Thursday, May 10 . No calls. No messages.

Nothing. Just a date mocking her. She would have laughed if she hadn’t felt so pathetic. It had been two weeks since she had last heard from Matt.

When he’d shown up at her apartment in a sleet-storm nearly three months earlier, Sarah promised to wait for him while Matt went out west to help his friend, Kwan, after the death of his wife. Until a couple of weeks ago, they’d melted into coupledom with everything that entailed: shared daily lives and a dinner date every night. Now Matt wasn’t answering his phone or her messages.

Sarah walked back into the building, inhaling stage dust and preshow frenzy, an hour before curtain opened. The theater company—her theater company—was staging its first production: a modern version of Euripides’s Medea . It was a stretch to call the warehouse space, draped in thick black velour and promises, a theater. A strip mall in a suburban industrial park was well outside traditional theater circles. But there was buzz. And parking. And in theater, that could just be enough.

Sarah had lobbied hard to open their season with the Greek tragedy. Felix, her cofounder and the company’s reluctant, though brilliant, stage manager, felt a play about a murderous mother was too depressing as a starter, but Sarah believed audiences wanted a darker story.

Sarah and Felix had met during their first year at university, where they bonded over a love of Tony Kushner plays and late-night nachos. Both had tried, and failed, to join the university’s theater group, so they downed their disappointment in too much sambuca and advertised in the school paper for “new and notable actors.” Thus, the name and soul of their company—Notable Actors—was born.

They never imagined their fringe troop would be on the cusp of becoming legitimate. Two years of relentless networking, begging, and rehearsals were all coming together for opening night. Advance ticket sales had boomed. Sarah and Felix were betting everything on tonight’s production, and it would make or break their careers. It was her theater’s coming-out party, and Sarah was preoccupied with why Matt hadn’t returned her messages.

“Twenty minutes to curtain,” a voice announced. Sarah closed her eyes and pulled in a breath. She held it until her lungs burned, releasing it into the cacophony coming from both sides of the stage curtain. The audience was building. Angry with herself—and with Matt—Sarah tossed her phone onto the makeshift backstage desk and made her way to the washroom to change.

She had, of course, invited Matt to opening night. Over dinners in cozy restaurants or pints in boisterous pubs, he had been a sounding board for staging and music ideas. He’d seemed interested in the play and in her. But in the last ten days, the only communication from him had been a short email: Had to get away for a while. Be in touch soon. Her subsequent emails and phone messages had been left unanswered.

A rap on the bathroom door startled her.

“Sarah. You in there?” Felix said.

“Ya, just getting dressed.”

“Okay, let’s get this show on the road then.”

Sarah slipped into her only black dress. With its simple cut, she knew it hugged her in all the right places. She stepped into the dim backstage area to see Felix jittering with nerves.

“Come on. Time to get your game face on,” he said. Felix wore an impeccably tailored dark gray designer suit with a label Sarah could never remember over a crisp white shirt. He referred to the look as “power and substance.” His dark hair was cropped, and his clean-shaven face was highlighted with a dab of rouge at his lips and cheeks.

“Felix, you look amazing.”

“I know.” He winked at her and spun to show off his good side. “But you need a little help. We can’t have you looking washed out and miserable. We have just enough time to get you to Sue for some makeup magic before curtain.”

“I’m fine. I don’t need to bother with all that.” Sarah ran her hand through her mess of auburn curls. She’d dyed her hair the week before on a whim and still startled herself when she passed a mirror.

“Oh, honey, if I am going to look this good, there is no way I can let you look that bad.” Felix pointed his finger accusingly from her head to her feet. Though the words seemed harsh, Sarah knew it was his way of heaping her with affection.

“Sarah, I love you and I mean this in all earnestness: no man is worth this hot little mess. Wherever he is, whatever game he’s playing, you’re too good for it. Give him time. I know men, and that one will come crawling back, then you can decide if he’s worth it.”

Sarah gave a forlorn look in reply. Felix took her hand and led her into the night.

Sarah didn’t see Matt until two days later, when he showed up at her door late on a Saturday afternoon. After several days of springlike weather, the temperature was hovering around freezing. She imagined Matt surfing in on the final wave of winter like an oversize Jack Frost.

“Hey there, beautiful, how about some dinner?” A chill slipped into her apartment behind him.

“I can’t. I’m busy,” she said, though her sweatpants and ratty old T-shirt told a different story.

“Come on. Pretty please. I know you could go for some butter chicken right now.”

“No thanks. Maybe send me an email.”

Sarah blocked his approach into the living room.

“Okay, I’m a little lost. What’s going on?” Matt said, his arms up in surrender and a befuddled look on his face that almost made her laugh.

“ Medea opened to fantastic reviews the day before yesterday.”

“Oh my God, Sarah, I completely forgot. I’m so sorry.” Matt stepped back as if dodging a punch.

“Really? ’Cause I know I sent you about a dozen emails over the last couple of weeks, so I’m pretty sure that’s crap.” The last word came off her tongue like a spear.

“I was off the grid—”

“Bullshit.”

“I still haven’t caught up with all my emails.” Matt stepped toward her. She moved back, straight armed, head turned away. It was infantile, she knew, but she thought of the “cooties” game she played as a kid.

“It’s 2007, Matt. No one is off the grid.”

“It’s easier than you think. In my case, I ran a river.” The chuckle in his voice was like lemon juice on her tongue.

Silence seemed her best response. She could feel his explanation scratch at her porcelain anger. Though he worked in IT, Matt resisted the digital world in his personal life. He proudly called himself a Luddite.

“I know it may sound like a line, but I literally disappeared into the woods. It was last minute, and I know I should have told you. I’m sorry, I didn’t think I’d be gone so long.” He moved around her to sit on the couch. Waning sunlight from the window caught dust motes in the space around his head. Matt explained that he had spontaneously set out on a trip on the Mirabelle River. He had a couple of weeks between contracts, so he decided to try a solo kayak trip. Take some time to get his head sorted.

“After Kwan and Lian and everything that happened there,” he said, “I just needed some time, without distractions. Just me and the river, you know.”

Sarah chanced a glance at him; Matthew jumped through the opening.

“It was only supposed to be a few days, maybe a week. I’ve done the same trip dozens of times and figured I knew the route well enough to manage higher spring waters. You should see it this early, Sarah. It’s like the river’s slipping off a veil. Life coming back after the death grip of winter. I saw snowshoe hare already speckled back to brown. And so many deer grazing along the shores. It was like the river was calling them back.”

Sarah heard a longing in his voice she would never understand.

“What I didn’t count on,” he said, “was how much I would have to portage. The water was higher than I’d ever seen it, and the ice jams made it even worse in some sections.” The story came out of him as if he had pulled on a thread that was now unraveling on its own. He had planned a sixty-mile route, which would have normally taken him five to seven days, but he didn’t finish until day eleven.

Sarah listened, not yet willing to show the story was cracking through her exterior. She sat at the other end of the couch, staring ahead as his words spooled out.

“I should have found a way to call you, to check in, but when I was out there, Sarah, all I could think about was getting downriver and making sure I had enough food. I was rationing the last two days and supplementing with some lucky catches in the river. Let me tell you: Catfish? Not that great a meal.” As he spoke, twilight filled the apartment and his voice dropped to match. “I thought a lot about life. About us.”

A fault line cracked open in her chest.

“And?” she said. Sarah reached over to turn on a floor lamp beside the couch, illuminating the space around them. She looked directly at Matt.

“I’m in, Sarah. I’m ready for more. And I think you are too.”

She let him hang in the air as she took in the last few months with Matt, his canoe trip story, the success of Medea and what that meant for her future.

“I’ve got a condition,” she said, her eyes unflinching while a sliver of a smile spread her lips. “Next time, you take me.”

Matt’s laughter filled the apartment before he crushed her in a hug. She felt the heat of him against her pulse. She wondered if she hadn’t just stepped onto the celluloid of some cheesy romantic comedy, especially when he whispered “I love you, Sarah Dix.”

At the restaurant that evening, they talked over jasmine-scented rice and creamy butter chicken until the staff stood by awkwardly, waiting for them to notice. After dinner, they stepped into a crisp night and let their armor fall away into a new level of intimacy, revealing themselves through childhood stories and embarrassing secrets like fumbling teenagers as they wandered quiet streets. Matt spoke of his family, his dreams for the future, laying out a path that had twisted but was straightening as he approached thirty. It all tumbled out of him, a torrent of stories about his past and his dreams for the future, with her. He talked about the difficult relationship he had had with his mother, the pain of her loss—and how hard it was without siblings. He sang the praises of Vancouver: the mountains, the ocean, and the serenity to be found in the places in between. Sarah opened up about her loneliness since her parents’ death and how she clung to her sister. She regaled him with stories of her university days—preferring dress rehearsals to study halls—and her failed relationships. It was almost dawn when they finally found their way to her place, chilled and spent.

Sarah felt the drag of exhaustion; even the few stairs to her apartment were a slog. She dropped her boots and fell face first onto the couch with her coat still on. In the back of her mind, she recognized it was Sunday, the knowledge like a distant church bell. She closed her eyes, felt the weight of sleep, almost tasted it, heavy and saccharine at the back of her tongue. But a stubborn thought tethered her to consciousness.

Sarah. She thought she heard her name. Sarah.

She jolted. Sweat poured off her under her wool coat. She looked around, noting a gold slip of dawn at the window. Reaching for her phone, she stabbed at the first of only two numbers programmed on speed dial.

“What the hell?” Sarah heard Izzy’s groggy voice. “Whoever you are, do you have any idea what time it is? On a Sunday? Someone better be dead.”

“It’s me. Don’t hang up,” Sarah said in a rush. “It’s real.”

“Sarah? It’s six in the bloody morning. Tell me this couldn’t wait until at least coffee o’clock.”

“It can’t. I think I may have found him, Izzy. I think Matt’s the one.”

Sarah could hear Izzy wrestling with the covers. Involuntary grunts skidded down the phone line.

“Jesus, you sound serious. Not that it couldn’t have waited for a respectable hour. This is the IT guy you’ve been seeing?”

“Ya, that’s him. Matt. I know it’s early, and I’m sorry. But I had to tell you. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep until I did.”

“Sleep? What have you been doing all night?” Izzy’s voice dripped with implications.

“We didn’t have sex, you perv.” Sarah laughed. “Well, at least we didn’t last night. I mean, we’ve been having sex for months. Last night, we just talked; that was all. We spent the whole night walking and talking. Can you believe it? We just talked. And we merged, Izzy. I mean, really, like we were one. I know it sounds cheesy, but I can’t explain it any better than that.”

They spoke for a few minutes more, both agreeing to chat later. After coffee.

Sarah sat up to shuck off her coat, letting it drop to the floor, before tipping over onto the couch. Finally able to let sleep take her, she drifted off to the thought of family and how nothing was truly real until she’d shared it with Izzy.

Two months later, Sarah found herself placing a foot into a flat-bottom canoe that bucked with even the slightest movement of her body. Matt held the boat steady from the dock as she shimmied into position on the bench seat at the front. The boat pitched slightly when he stepped off the dock into the rear of the boat, and Sarah’s hands dove for the gunnels. His assured movements kept them upright, though, and Sarah let her body ease into the surroundings.

Smooth water mirrored the early-morning sky. Though still cool, there was a promise of warmth as sunshine soaked into soil and granite. Soon, trilling birds and the splash of Matt’s paddle were the only sounds.

And yet, for all its beauty, Sarah was intimidated. The water was like a bottomless stain. She looked back over her shoulder to the unbroken line of trees on the shore—the path they had followed to the water no longer visible. Everything she knew seemed to have been swallowed by forest.