Freefalling

© Marianne Paul

“It's indescribable,” Elijah told Maxine one fine spring day. 

They walked along the Ottawa Canal. Tulips blossomed in sheets of red and yellow along the route, gifts from Queen Beatrice of Holland, who sent the bulbs to Canada in appreciation for giving her refuge during World War II. “What a rush. You jump from the plane, delay opening your chute, and sail through space.”

“You're mixing metaphors,” Maxine said. “Sail implies yachting. You sail on water. Jumping out of an airplane, freefalling through space, that refers to insanity. Try a better word. How about, plunge. You plunge through space.”

Elijah laughed. His exuberance was catching. Maxine laughed, too.

“You plunge at the beginning,” Elijah said. “But then you sail.”

Elijah was a friend of Ben. That's how Maxine met him. Elijah and Ben often went drinking at the Rotters Club, and underground punk hangout on Bank Street, literally underground, existing in the basement of a restaurant. It was an underground culture, too, a place that stayed open all night where youth wore clothes that said they had rebelled, did drugs, danced, and listened to music by up-and-coming bands.

“You should take more risks,” Elijah told Maxine. “You're too safe.”

Elijah took risks. Lived life on the edge. Then jumped off.

Maxine lived life in the middle. Sometimes ventured to the edge. Peeked over. Took a look around. Then withdrew.

“We're just different types,” Maxine said.

“You'd love freefalling if you'd just try it,” Elijah told her.

He had this way of speaking not only with his voice, but with his whole body. To demonstrate his next words, he pulled his arms into his chest, and hunched his head and shoulders. “You plunge if you make your body compact into a ball.”  Then he stretched his arms wide, his head back, and stood spread-eagle, just like that, on the path. A jogger, jolted from the rhythm of her run, skipped sideways to avoid bumping into him; Elijah oblivious, free falling in his mind. “If you spread your arms and legs wide, you'll sail through space,” he said.

Elijah was a Renaissance man. He parachuted. He scuba-dived. He did karate. He ran marathons. He sailed. Bought a mortgage for a boat instead of a house when he got to the age to think of settling down sort-of.  Sort of settled down by throwing out the anchor and harboring in a bay off the river for a while. Maxine loved him. For his abandonment. His ability to freefall.

“You can actually control your direction,” Elijah told Maxine.

He lifted one arm slightly higher to show Maxine what he meant, and zoomed around her like an airplane. “You can do acrobatics. Somersaults and flips,” he said, his mind in the sky. “There are no words to explain the sensation, spinning through space, no words at all.”

Sometimes, Elijah jumped with others. They’d jump out of the plane separately, then by controlling their movements, come closer and closer, until they touched fingers, locked hands. His favorite formation was the circle. They collectively resembled a bicycle wheel slowly turning on its side, their outstretched arms and legs, the spokes. Their heels lifted up behind them, their knees slightly bent, their bellies parallel to the ground.

“We push the envelope,” Elijah said.

“What do you mean?” Maxine asked, thinking she knew, but wanting him to explain, not by nature an envelope pusher herself.

“There's a point in a freefall when it's too late,” Elijah answered, rather casually to be describing death, Maxine thought. “Even if you open your chute, there's no time for it to billow, to catch air. Pushing the envelope means taking yourself closer and closer to that point, getting the maximum out of the freefall, extending the sensation, the rush, to its ultimate moment. And living to tell the tale.”

Maxine felt horrified.

She must have looked horrified, too.

“Oh, it's all calculated,” Elijah assured her. “Very controlled, actually, a balance between ecstasy and restraint, experiencing the rush and watching the rush from outside yourself, losing yourself to the jump but still knowing exactly when to pull open the chute.” 

“I wouldn't have the guts,” Maxine said.

“You'd surprise yourself,” Elijah responded. “What guts you'd have-”

~ An excerpt from the novel, Freefalling