Our brain’s predilection for storytelling may be why, even now, every time I cross the Bay Bridge, that 4.4-mile-long arc spanning the Chesapeake, I imagine my car breaking through the safety rails, going over the side, or the pavement giving way beneath my tires.
When the kids were little, they would voice their own ideas about surviving a plunge from the bridge and speak loudly of the brave and clever things they would do to save themselves.
My son, at age five, would escape from the car as it sank and hang onto floating debris—although he mulls over for quite a while whether he would hang onto a dead shark if it were the only thing available.
My daughter, eight, would float on her back when tired and do the sidestroke to the nearest beach. There, she would build a small fire and arrange shells in pretty patterns.
I remained quiet as they played this game, intent on formulating my own plan—a strategy similar to my daughter’s, amended by swimming with two awkward burdens.
It was a silly exercise, but we seemed compelled to do it, and I found myself pinioned in the grip of my own imagination on each crossing. Could I break the windows as we sank? Get seatbelts unbuckled in time? And it was always my heart that broke instead, knowing I could not save us all.
My son discards his shark dilemma and thinks he will meet the water in a perfect dive. But sometimes we fall too hard to be rescued, which is why I still seek a contingency plan.
It was a sweltering, humid July afternoon, and friends and I were swimming off the Magothy River’s north shore near two small landmasses —Dutch Ship Island and a smaller island, nearer to shore, we called Little Dutch. We could swim to Little Dutch, but usually skied around it instead, as it was privately owned, and we were intimidated by the fact that there was a house on it.
This particular afternoon, we decided to ski. I can’t say for sure who was driving the Whaler, but the older, better skiers went first, kids 15, 16, and a couple of grades ahead. After refueling at Gray’s Creek, it was my turn to give it a try.
I rose from the water on my second attempt, having only learned to ski that summer and the Whaler swung wide, out toward the island. The air that had been so oppressive on the beach was soft and sweet on the water, an offshore breeze that carried with it the smell of honeysuckle at its peak and the pungent counterpart of dried seaweed lacing the shore. I was aware of every detail: the towrope in my hands, the drone of the motor, the cliffs of Big Dutch, where shadows moved in the underbrush.
We had circled the island once when the driver of the boat motioned toward the beach. It was clear he wanted to change course. Nervous, I knew I would have to cross the wake if he turned. He gestured again, and I suddenly saw myself as I must appear to my friends, inexpertly trailing the boat, a boring and inexpert 14-year-old. At that exact moment, the Whaler entered a tight turn.
My skis bumped over the first two ripples of wake streaming back from the stern without incident, but I was skimming over the water sideways much faster than when I had been directly behind the boat. Glancing down, I saw the river beneath my skis had become the blur of solid pavement, and I was accelerating way beyond my ability to stay upright. Doomed by my own panic, falling was as inevitable as the compulsion to touch a knife, to test the sharpness of the blade.
It was a spectacular fall, even witnessed from the beach. I slammed into the water so hard my body bounced off without breaking the surface several times, carried forward by unstoppable momentum. I knew I was hurt, but the ski belt kept me afloat in the murky river water until I was picked up, and it was several days before I saw a doctor. My injuries were minor by medical standards, healing in a few weeks, but it cost me a week in Ocean City with my best friend.
Now, when I cross the bridge untested, I look back and see the high cliffs of Dutch Ship where the river meets the bay before the suspension cables fade like Camelot in the haze behind me. The cars streaming over it, briefly visible in the back window, look like the die-cast matchbox variety I tossed into the toybox in the years I made myself prepare for the worst possible loss. In the years I believed in contingency plans.
No one is dependent on me now. I take quick glimpses at the massive, sparkling expanse beneath me. At the I glory, the immensity of all that water and all that sky. At the grandeur that whispers surely there is something more.
I decide that just for today, I will trust that if the bridge ever collapses, I will be caught, carried, and delivered safely to the opposite shore.
Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.
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