Beneath the Red Balloon

Kate Letheren

continued... 

Felicity continues to cry and I absentmindedly pat her arm, I feel almost as if it’s happening to me all over again. Not the divorce, but the searing emotional pain. It had been three years ago, in a blazing summer and I had been staying with my boyfriend David on my family’s farm up North. We were strolling by the lake at dawn and I knew he was about to propose. I swelled with anticipated joy, but as I looked into the water I suddenly knew I wasn’t for him. He was just too wonderful, too much for me – I knew that if I loved him I’d hurt him just this once so that he could go and find someone else more worthy. Nevertheless, my heart felt as if it was being ripped from my chest as I turned down his proposal and asked him to leave me forever. I shuddered and returned to Felicity’s wracking sobs, then moved to envelop her in a sympathetic embrace – that memory was all in the past now, lost beneath the surface.

The waiter came bustling importantly up to our table and politely averted his eyes from the noisy, miserable Felicity who laid face-down on the table, with me stroking her hair gently behind her ears. “May I take your order Ma’am?” he said with a fleeting glance at Felicity as she lifted her face to see what the intrusion was. “Two coffees,” I mumbled, then added; “Black coffees.” The waiter scurried away gratefully and left me alone with Felicity again. She didn’t need to talk anymore; she just needed to cry, so that’s what I let her do. I glanced around the café, hoping for distraction, and found it in a sharply familiar smell of cinnamon wafting from two fresh lattes at the table behind us.

The smell took me back to a time only a year ago, to a neat little office above a bakery. The smell of cinnamon buns had been wafting in on the cool morning breeze and my interviewer had leant back contentedly in his chair. “Everything seems to be in order Ana; you are the perfect candidate for this job…We at Harpers Papers would love to have you join our staff as events journalist. So what do you say? Can you start Monday?” I remember how pleased I was, this was my first real job as a journalist, it was like my dream was being laid out before me and all I had to do was reach out and take it… “I’m sorry Mr Harper, I’m afraid something else has come up and I won’t be able to take the job.”

“What?” he‘d spluttered, “But five minutes ago you said…”

“Yes,” I interrupted, “but I don’t think I’m right for this job. I’ve made up my mind and you can’t change it. I’m sorry.” Then I’d leapt from the chair and ran down the stairs, clutching the cool metal railing and regaining my breath, cursing the flash of the red balloon that had made me remember what I longed to bury beneath the surface.

I flicked my gaze back up at Felicity. She’d stopped crying and was staring into her coffee. It was cold and she hadn’t touched it. Then again, I hadn’t touched mine or even noticed it yet. In fact, it was starting to get colder outside, a few people who’d been there before I’d slipped into my memory were gone and I pulled my shawl tighter around my shoulders and shuddered for the second time that afternoon. I wrapped my fingers nimbly around the coffee cup and let my eyes drift back to the horizon, following the outline of the trees, the passage of the afternoon buses and my gaze coming to rest upon the kindergarten across the road from the café.

It was four thirty and the kids were pouring out gaily with their mothers and fathers guiding them. It looked like there’d been a birthday in the class today; some of the kids were carrying lollipops or colourful iced cake. I felt a sharp pang of remembrance but resolutely ignored it. It was so long ago now; it was time I moved on.

Then I saw it. The birthday girl had come prancing down the stairs with her friends, and one of them released a handful of red helium balloons with a shriek of glee. I was feeling giddy at the sight of them. All at once the children’s faces were twisted, grotesque and unfocused. I could hear the rumbling of the buses and the soft sniffing of Felicity, but it was like another life, all I could see properly were the balloons. And I knew I had to catch one.

I rose shakily from my wicker chair and moved gracelessly towards the edge of the road. Two of the balloons had escaped, but one was half deflated already and was trailing its tail invitingly across the middle of the road, reflecting the red traffic light behind it. I could feel my breath catching in my throat, like my lungs were shutting off slowly. And it had gotten a lot colder, though I was sweating and shaking so badly I could barely walk. But I had to walk; I had to reach that balloon at any cost. Not that there were any costs, it was just me and the balloon, in the whole world. I started across the road towards it, fleetingly aware of Felicity calling me, and of activity from the waiters behind me and the children in front of me. I was moving relatively quickly, I was almost there, but I was sinking to my knees already, shaking like a leaf. I reached out toward the tail of the balloon, not understanding the green light reflected in its curved surface, nor the screams from either side of me, nor the rumbling of car engines, I felt the plastic tail of the balloon slip into my sweating fingers, and then there was only blackness and terrible pain, I was drifting…

“Look after your sister Ana,” slurred Mum as she and the other adults trouped inside at the end of Nelly’s sixth birthday party. I’d glanced up from my magazine for a moment at little Nelly, batting a half-deflated helium balloon around the farm, just inside my line of vision. “Sure Mum” I’d called as they all disappeared inside, leaving us alone. I went back to reading, enthralled in an article about journalism. I didn’t notice Nelly’s voice die away until she had left my sight. I called to her “Nelly? Nelly, come on, get back here now!” When she didn’t answer I’d gotten up with my little torch and headed across the lawn, thinking she’d gone to visit her geese on the lake or something. Then, when I was about twenty metres from the lake, I heard a splash. I started running, cold sweat erupting on my arms and legs, I was shaking and barely able to breathe. When I reached the waters’ edge I couldn’t see Nelly, but I could hear her, she was somewhere in the middle of the lake where some stepping stones from the opposite bank led, and she was screaming. It was so dark; I screamed for help again and again and tried to find the stones with the meagre light of my torch, but to no avail. I have never known such fear as I did the moment the screaming stopped with a final splash. In desperation I ploughed into the water, still screaming, calling my Mum, calling Nelly, calling to anyone who could hear me. But it didn’t help, nothing ever would again. When I’d swum to the place I’d last heard her voice there was nothing there anymore, nothing but the plastic tail of the balloon she’d pursued, which tangled itself around my throat like the growing numbness I felt.

Apparently I’d called out her name right before the car hit me. I’d screamed; “Nelly, for you!” and an insane happiness had struck my face like lightning before…well, before the pain and the darkness. I can still hear Felicity crying, I don’t think she ever stopped. I look down at her, red-eyed and clothed in black. Poor Felicity, she should learn to use a little detachment, like me. I sigh and look to Nelly, eagerly waiting for me to catch up, a red balloon dangling from her tiny hand. Reluctantly I glance one last time at my own pale body, before I move to take little Nelly’s hand and walk on with her at last, into the sun.