He Fell Off A Cliff.
A short story of aftermaths by Robert Cormack.
“In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind.” Nora Ephron
We were renting a cottage from a family that didn’t exist anymore. It wasn’t that they didn’t actually exist. They’d simply disappeared one by one after the father died. He fell off a cliff hiking in New Zealand. Rumours persisted about some wrangling over the estate. Who knows? In any event, after years of neglect and indecision, the cottage came up for rent.
Ann, my wife, found the advert in Cottage & Living. The estate agent had written “Six-bedroom rustic on private island, nine hundred a week.” Then he’d added at the bottom” “Don’t expect too much. Comes as is.”
That was my cue to run. Ann, on the other hand, is an optimist. She’s never seen a dark cloud in her life. She called and booked the cottage on the spot. Three weeks later, we were sidling up to a crumbling concrete wharf in a motor launch. It was piloted by Johnny Whitefish, one of the locals who ran the marina for the band council. He even wore a baseball cap with the band council’s insignia, his ponytail trailing out the back.
Johnny’d been running the launch for over thirty years now. He knew every inch of the bay, the islands, even the gull islands sprinkled around the inlets. As for this cottage—or what was left of it—he said he’d known the family since he was a kid. He and his father had helped maintain the place, the cottage itself going back two or three generations.
All that was missing was the creepy music.
“It’s seen better days,” he said, breathing heavily as he lifted our bags up onto the wharf. “You’ll get used to it.” What were we getting used to exactly? Well, to start with, the elevator didn’t work. By elevator, he meant the two rails running up a steep hill surrounded by scrub oak. We’d have to shlep our stuff up these wobbly stairs. So we schlepped everything to this big barn-like structure that looked like something out of the Amityville Horror.
All that was missing was the creepy music.
At the top, we followed a stone-bordered path leading to the cottage itself. There were large windows on three sides giving a full view of the the bay. Off to one side was a sheltered inlet with a leaning boathouse. “Is there a boat we can use in there?” I asked Johnny, and he said there were a few.
“I put one of the rowboats in the water,” he said. It was tied to a ring hammered into the rock. He said it was still leaking, but the seams would swell. “It’ll be fine by tomorrow,” he said and winked. “If it doesn’t sink first.”
He led us through the big kitchen, to the living room and the den. A two-way radio sat on an old desk. Next to it was a plaid couch. “This pulls out,” he said, “The couch in the living room pulls out, too. Better than sleeping upstairs.” He was right about that. Upstairs was nothing but bare rooms with rolled up mattresses on metal frames.
After Johnny left, we put our groceries in the cupboards, and started poking around. Ann did most of the poking. She noticed the bookcases were full of photo albums. There must of been over a hundred of them, all stacked in no particular order. Ann took some out and put them on the coffee table. Then she got a coffee and sat down on the couch.
That was Ann all over. We’d drive two hundred miles, and she’d sit on a couch. I decided to explore outside.
“Don’t fall off a cliff,” she said as I went out the door.
“Very funny,” I said back.
I went down a set of stone steps to the boathouse, pulling open a door that barely hung from its hinges. Inside were these peeling cedar strip canoes hanging from ropes. Cobwebs were everywhere. There was the same mustiness I smelt in the cottage. It stayed in your nostrils. I went out and checked the rowboat. There was about a foot of water in the bottom.
Going back up the stone stairs again, I found Ann still curled up with her pile of albums. “Look at this,” she said handing me a photo. It was the cottage going way back, the wood freshly varnished, shutters bright green. More importantly, there were people. Everywhere you looked, kids ran around in bathing suits, parents sat in lounge chairs.
There was more happiness than a jamboree.
I kept trying to find the father, figuring he’d be some stately old guy. He’d have to be with all those kids ranging in ages, some young, some teenagers, a few practically adults. Not that all of them were necessarily his. But many would’ve been. For that reason, I figured he must be stately.
“This is him, I think,” Ann said, pointing to a well-built guy with greying temples. He was in a lot of the pictures. Most showed him in a black bathing suit. It seemed that’s all he ever wore. He wore it in the canoe, he wore it playing stick ball with the kids, he even wore it sitting down to dinner.
One page showed them on a canoe trip. Everyone was in hiking boots and work shirts. But there he was, standing on the rocks at some campsite, back in his black bathing suit again.
The albums had letters, too, mostly from guests, saying they’d had a wonderful time. Some were postcards. I said to Ann “Any of New Zealand?” She gave me a funny look. Ann always did if she thought you were being sarcastic or morbid. “What are you expecting, action shots?” she said.
The headline said: “Stockbroker Killed in New Zealand Hiking Tragedy.”
I went out to the kitchen and started dinner. The stove was an old Algonquin. While I was figuring how to get the stupid thing started, Ann came into the kitchen. She was holding an old newspaper article. The headline said: “Stockbroker Killed in New Zealand Hiking Tragedy.”
It wasn’t very long article. Essentially he and his wife were hiking in Fiordland National Park. He fell off a cliff and died. She returned home.
Stapled to the back was the obituary. “Cosbourne family mourns death of James Cosbourne. He leaves behind beloved wife, Clarissa, five children, Sarah, Tina, Chad, Arnold and Betsy, and six grandchildren…”
“Mystery solved,” I said to Ann, but she was into it at that point. Going through more albums, she identified Clarissa and the kids. The dates on the back confirmed the kids were all adults now. Then Ann went searching through the closets, pulling out one thing or another, until I heard a squeal from one of the bedrooms. She’d found the black bathing suit.
Hell, it barely looked like a bathing suit anymore. It was stiff, for one thing, the lining all yellow. I don’t know why Ann thought it was such a prize. She kept looking at it, holding it up, even examining it in the light. It was like she’d found a Van Gough masterpiece.
Remember in The Shining when Jack Nicholson kept throwing the ball against the wall in the big foyer? Ann was going the same way. She kept fixating on that bathing suit, saying things like, “All year long he’s in a shirt and tie. Then he comes up here. He goes primitive.”
Okay, the guy thought he was Tarzan. It was his place, his island. He could do what he liked. Only Ann was beyond that. She was into cause and effect. Like what turns Gordon Gekko into Johnny Weissmuller?
“Put it on,” she said to me.
She had to know, in other words, and if she’d had two mice, she’d have put one in a suit and one in a bathing suit. We didn’t have any mice, so she did the next best thing. “Put it on,” she said to me.
“I’m not putting that thing on,” I replied, but Ann wouldn’t give up. She kept saying,”Why not? You Tarzan, me Jane,” but I didn’t see her putting on an old moth-eaten bathing suit. “I’ll wear my black bikini,” she said, which was some consolation. Ann did look good in a bikini.
So I finally put the bathing suit on, and suddenly Ann’s looking at me like I’m somebody else. I sure didn’t look like that James Cosbourne character. He was all tanned and muscle-bound. I looked like I hadn’t seen the sun in years.
Thing is, though, wearing that stupid bathing suit made me feel different. I started chopping wood. At night, I tore into chicken legs like they were antelope.
Anyway, it had its moments. Ann was happy. As long as that bathing suit didn’t give me testicular itch, what did I care? Fuck it, I was Tarzan.
Then Saturday arrived and Johnny Whitefish showed up. He came in the cottage, puffing away from the climb up the stairs. First thing he saw were the albums all over the place. We’d forgotten to put them away again. Ann had, anyway.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “My wife’s coming by to clean up.”
Then he’s looking at me. “You got some sun,” he said.
Ann started giggling. I don’t know why. Neither did Johnny, for that matter. He went and grabbed some bags, still puffing. On the stairs going down to the boat, he said, “Mr. Cosbourne never wore clothes the whole time he was up here.” Then he winked at me. “Started looking like one of us.”
“What’s so funny?” I asked, and she said she’d made a decision. She said we were going to stop being us.
Ann and I rode in the stern back to the marina. All the while she kept smiling with one hand on my leg. “What’s so funny?” I asked, and she said she’d made a decision. She said we were going to stop being us.
“Who are we going to be?” I asked.
“Them,” she said, giving me a look.
I said to her, “You didn’t — ” but I knew she had, and when we got home, she pulled that stupid black bathing suit out of her suitcase. “Bloody thief,” I said, which didn’t bother her one bit. If anything, she looked more craven than I’d seen her in years.
“I’m not wearing that around the house,” I said.
“C’mon, I thought you were my Tarzan,” she replied.
“Well, I’m not,” I said. “I don’t have the upper body strength, for one thing. Besides, even Cosbourne didn’t wear that thing in the city.”
She was twirling the bathing suit around on her finger.
“Stop twirling that thing, Ann.”
“Put it on.”
“Not a chance.”
“I can stand here all day.”
“So can I.”
“You know I’ll win in the end.”
She was still twirling that stupid bathing suit.
“At least wash it, for chrissake, Ann.”
“Not a chance.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Robert Cormack is a satirist, novelist, and blogger. His first novel “You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive)” is available online and at most major bookstores. Check out Robert’s other articles and stories at robertcormack.net
