Chapter 6
When I opened my eyes Jack was looking outside, leaning on the windowsill. I observed him for a moment, still not fully awake from my dreamlessly placid night, and then I pulled myself halfway up, resting on my elbows. Jack turned around and we smiled at each other for a moment.
“Slept well?”, he asked me.
So well, I replied, that I had no clue of what time it was. Jack found his watch on the drawer, it was almost 7. I wondered if Fred and his wife were up already and if we should start getting ready or if we should stay in the room a bit longer, waiting for them to start their daily routine before moving around the house and making noises. I had a habit of waking up early and never lingering in bed, but at that moment there was a peace within me that I hadn’t felt in a long time, and I was reluctant to leave the room.
Jack turned to the window again. I was resting my head on the pillow and I had closed my eyes, when Jack began talking.
“I had just graduated but I was still working with Fred. We were collecting sediment samples for Lisa’s thesis. She was in her third year, and I was helping out with her project. She was Fred’s student too. Fred used to laugh about how his lab was better at producing couples than research, and how this would happen over and again to his students. Getting together like Lisa and myself, I mean. I didn’t notice there was something wrong at first, we were browsing different areas of the seabed. And when I did notice, it was too late. The oxygen cylinder was faulty, she started swimming back up too fast”.
He said all this talking slowly but continuously, with a controlled voice.
“How was she like?”, I asked.
I know there is a comfort in recounting memories, in the possibility of having someone you’ve loved relive through a shared recollection.
“She was like you, as I first saw you the first time I met you. After knowing you better I learned that there is a melancholic side to you that she did not have”, Jack said.
I understood then what had driven Jack’s initial closeness to me, before knowing anything about me. It is strange how whatever one loved or hated first ends up by marking that person’s life so deeply, leading to new relationships that are somehow linked to the past. Nobody can ever escape the past, we carry it within us no matter how hard we try to leave it behind.
“What about the boat?”, I asked.
“Fred had been there on the boat waiting for us to come back with the samples, and he had tried to intervene when he realized what was happening…but when they pulled her up it was too late.
Jack had spoken giving me the back, but now he rubbed a hand across his face, turned around and said, “There goes Fred watering the lawn”.
He walked around the bed and gave me the hand.
“What about leaving the bed?”, he said with a smile shaded by sadness, pulling me up.