Broken Glass

I

Leigh is not a serious swimmer. Though you might form that impression from the silver cap, dark goggles and serious expression. If you knew her, you would probably laught at the sight of her swinging her arms in violent propellor movements, while a cheeky middle eastern boy goes running by, his feet slapping on the pebble mix. But no one that knows her ever sees this. She doesnt dive. Its to shallow at this end. Instead, she slips into the water like a warm skin, and silently, she disappears.

As she pushes off the wall, scenes rise in her mind like the bubbles all around her. She exhales as she glides away, leaving them in her wake. She surfaces a third of the way down the pool's length and a slice of children's shrill, excited voices explodes in her ears. Between strokes, it is all that breaks the cocooned silence she inhabits under the water.

The first ten laps come without effort now. Cutting through the water like softened butter. The second set of ten, she begins to burn a little in the shoulders. Her calves are tightening. By the fortieth lap, she is gulping for breath and groaning heavily under the water. But her stroke is still even. she stretches out her arm high in the air and plunges it down in front of her. It cuts the water like a heavy sword. Sailing through explosions of tiny dancing silver bubbles. All her conscious energy is concentrated on the black line beneath her. The pale blue tiles in the distance growing sharper as she propels herself forward. Frayed bandaids troll the bottom, swirling like elegant jelly fish in the current created by her arms swinging by.

She lifts her head for a breath and digs her weak arm hard into the water. The memory is triggered by the half cut off shout of a child as she lifts her head out of the water. When she relives it, as she has done down here thousands of times, she cant actually recall any sounds. She only sees her fingers splayed in slow motion through the air. ( so close)

She lifts her head out of the water again and catches another streak of noise bouncing around the cavernous indoor pool. Now she can see his cheek, half turned in her direction.

For a moment, a fraction of a second, she loses concentration and swallows a mouthful of water. She is losing momentum. Her arms, legs and shoulders are burning in a furnace of lactic acid. She looks hard at the black line at the bottom of the pool, and begins to regain her stroke. There are chubby torsos, doing some kind of moonwalk ballet in the distance.

II

Leigh passes over many more bits of broken glass than she picks up as she wanders along the curve of beach. She leaves the ones that are unbeaten by the sand and surf. Preferring instead, those with unusual forms, worn smooth and round like precious stones. she picks one up and rubs it between her fingers. Once it was clear and shiny. Sharp. Part of a whole object. Crafted with purpose in mind. What ever it once was, it now lay, with a million other bits of broken glass, strewn along the shores of coastal cities. She treasures them, like small details of some expansive, universal wisdom shes trying to peiece together.

III

After leaving the beach, Leigh drives through the streets with the lingering scent of chlorine and sea air in her nostrils. She drags hard on the but of a cigarette and flicks it out the window, watching the orange sparks in the side mirror bounce and flare on the road behind her, then roll away and fade in the gathering darkness.

On the surface, her life didnt really miss a beat. She rode through all the usual waves of development. Finished high school, half finished an arts degree before dropping out to travel through south east asia and Europe. All through this phase of her life, she didnt recall ever mentioning it to anyone. It was what she referred to as an insignificant detail. She had expected it to wear away to nothing with the passing of time. As she grew and expanded her being and experience, she expected it to diminish. To be swallowed up, and eventually, disappear. But now, here she was, approaching thirty and there it lay, at the bottom of her life. the ananwered questions. The eternal why that sat on the shores of her life like broken glass. Like David.

"How is he tonight?"

"just finished his tea and had his bath."

Liegh imagines David as a four year old, splashing around in the tub.

"Sorry I'm late. I know I missed his dinner."

the nurse ushers her through the door way into his room. It is hospital white, with a big contraption of a bed that looks out of place among the cheerful curtains and family photos on the dresser. They are arranged in the same way they had been when they sat under the window of his bedroom at home.

"Sorry I missed your tea. I got a bit carried away at the pool."

She said this warmly, as she had done so many other times, even though he never answered her.

It took Leigh a long time to understand grief. She wasnt much older than him anyway, when it happened. What she did instinctively to deal with the stone like guilt was to never stop. It was her frantic attempt to some how roll back time. To do the living he couldnt.

she throws her purse, smokes and keys on the dresser and is once again confronted with the photo of him standing on the beach with dad before the accident, proudly holding up a flathead he had caught that day off the coast. She was there. She remembers.

when she thinks of it now, it was the long open silences she relished most. Just the lap - lap of the waves against the hull as they sat there, the four of them, bobbing under a dark sky. She recalled Simon, trembling with cold as he wrestled with a hook and a bit of line. And David, staring absently into the churning green water as he rubbed the hand line between his fingers, waiting for a bite.

This recollection is sharply interrupted by the other one. Like the moment of a window breaking.

Leigh slumps down in the sagging recliner with the swing arm lamp bolted to the wall behind, looking down like a sad eye. She considers her nails, biting the edges off them. She sees it playing again in her mind. Her fingers were only a hairs breadth from actually grabbing his shirt sleeve that day. Her little brother David, had stepped off the curb onto the road to retreive a tennis ball. And she had been so close to grabbing him. To stopping it. But the car didnt stop. And she cant bring herself to think of all the things he never got to do as a result of that. Actually, she cant stop thinking about it.

In her tracksuit pockets are the bits of broken glass she picked up on the beach that afternoon. She pulls one out. The cloudy oblong shaped one, and rubs it between her fingers.

Once, it was a whole thing. She cant imagine what it might have been. Leigh squints as she holds it up to the light in David's room, trying to make out its secret wisdom...