thick ice

I started a story once like this: Had I lived, I would have been a playwright. I can’t remember what it was called, I’ve spent some time looking for it just now, to no avail, it was a bit of a ghost story, told from the perspective of a missing child, maybe it’s a good thing I can’t find it.

But that story got me thinking about being a playwright, I gave it a whirl, got carried away as I almost always do, I ended up with two screenplays and the first season of a sitcom, long story short I recently wrote a 15-minute one act play and sent it to a Canadian Playwright competition, it was based on a short story I wrote called Our Mutual Bones, I wrote it quickly, in one sitting, the other night I got an email saying my play is shortlisted, they will produce six of the shortlisted entries and the combined effort will travel across Canada starting in March so that’s exciting. I get these beautiful little emails once in a while between rejections, they deliver hope and stamina, I keep typing.

Here’s a little story, it started in Thunder Bay, the first sentence anyway, I sort of forgot about it until I remembered, had to honour the source, so here it is .

Thanks for being here.

Thick Ice by Sherry Cassells

Ice comes slowly to a lake, it’s like love, and then all at once you’re head over heels – but rivers are different.

Around here where it's flat and rocky the rivers are tilted and shallow so the best you’re going to get is shelf ice, you’re not going to die if you go through, but if you want to skate skate you go to the lake where the wind keeps the ice clear all the way down the channel. You gotta fox trot the bubbles and branches, skip the stones, watch for fishing holes. The colours are gone, they’re all squeezed into the ice, acute northern lights you can feel yourself skimming them, that’s where the excitement comes from, the glee, that’s what takes your breath away, gravity is also levity.

Skating at night you feel as if you are swinging from the moon.

Winter sunrises kill me, I feel an identical science in my body but in blood and bone. I sit at the kitchen table tweaked, jonesing for the fast cold, I skate to school and then one day I remember this joy is temporary, the collapse comes, this is a summer story from now on, it’s about young love and other acrobatics, the moon is still involved, and the duplicity of a pink sky.

Bonnie was never really my girlfriend but for history’s sake she was my first.

She said she could never love me, she said she couldn’t muster love at all, she whispered that she didn’t even love her parents, her dog, her brother, and it was like she fell through the ice when she said it, like it broke her heart – but I knew better – you can’t break a heart you don’t have. She used to lie all the time. She didn’t even have a brother and her dog was long dead. I told her I didn’t mind that she didn’t love me and it wasn’t a lie at first but then all at once like a swallow I decided to break up with her, she beat me to it, my heart broke maybe in earnest or maybe in pieces of relief.

You can’t ever get it wrong, the ice I mean, there can be no mistakes, everybody remembers the drowned kids and the ones who tried to save them. You could never save them. We were taught that you don’t swerve for animals and you don’t try to save somebody who’s gone through the ice.

But I said this would be a love story, so let's make up the fading stripes of a late summer morning.

Let's say...

I was at the circus with Aunty Grace – this was the end of it, the last day – she wore a dress as if we were in a different century. I was finished high school so there was a different kind of excitement for me, Aunty Grace was teaching me everything I needed to know to take over the farm, she wanted to move closer to town.

There was a tinge of exhaustion about the grounds, the carneys sprayed toothless bribes, the acrobats drew lesser arcs, the clowns dragged their silly feet, the animal moped.

When Aunty Grace had enough I walked her to the gate but I stayed, I sat off to the side in a patch of sunlight near an elephant, she came over and shuffled her foot against me, her skin was all diamonds, I leaned into the leg she offered, she pushed back the equivalent of my weight, we shifted back and forth in a sort of conversation.

That’s when I saw Julie Golightly's long shadow spread over my feet first, my legs lap stomach heart neck mouth eyes, it felt just like skating over the northern lights.