The Pond

155 The Pond Jonatha Ceely After the husband retired from the investment firm in the city and the wife from the suburban medical practice where she was the claims manager, the couple established a new habit of walking for an hour every morning. Life would be healthier for them now, they agreed. He no longer rushed to board the train that trundled commuters through grimy yards, past storage sheds, along weed-grown rights of way. She no longer hurried, tense behind the wheel, to claim a convenient parking place near the sprawling, red brick buildings of the medical center. Leisure was theirs now and time to enjoy the world of nature; they had earned it. Almost every day, after a quiet breakfast, they walked to the conservation area just down the road from their suburban house. They crossed the small parking area and followed a trail that looped through the woods, around a pond, up over a low rise between meadows, and back again to the road and the beginning. They congratulated themselves that now, after years of work, of fitting home repairs and trimming the forsythia and mowing the lawn around the demands of their jobs, their choice of a semi-rural location was paying off. They would enjoy the changing seasons, the wayside flowers, the wild life, at last. Over the years they had contributed money to the town’s conservation effort. Walking, listening to the birds, chatting, bidding the occasional passerby good morning, they reaped the reward for their generosity. The well-maintained paths, the dredged pond that reflected the sky, the mowed meadow were all theirs to enjoy now. Beside the pond the town had placed a granite bench. During the first three years of their retirement, the couple walked briskly past the bench, savoring the odors of wet grass and mud from the margin of the pond in March or noting the thickening ice in December. The water sparkled blue in the sunshine, the reeds grew green and ripened into brown cattails, a red-winged blackbird flashed its colors to them. 156 Ecotone: reimagining place In the fourth spring of their retirement, they still walked; they were determined to keep life normal, but now they stepped aside to let more vigorous walkers pass them and paused at the bench by the pond so the wife could rest. Although she tired quickly, she was making a good comeback, they assured each other. The scars from the surgery were healing. By the end of April she had gained a little weight. They did not remind each other as they sat side by side on the granite slab of the bench, their jackets shielding their thin haunches from the chilly stone, that in two weeks, when she was a little stronger, she would return to the city hospital for chemotherapy treatments. All May and into June they walked, no matter what the weather. The treatments were not as debilitating as they had feared. Exercise would help her recovery; there were studies to prove it. She was determined to go out. Certainly, they believed, years of life in the suburbs, almost the country really, and their comfortable circumstances equipped them well to face nature. Their mudroom was well stocked with boots and coats and hats for all seasons. On a June morning, husband and wife, clad in light rain gear, sat on the bench as a fine drizzle puckered the surface of the pond. Young vegetation gleamed chartreuse and darker green, sunlight slanted pale gold through mist among the trees on the other side of the water. The couple sat silent. A bird somewhere to the right spilled an abrupt cadence of notes and then stopped as suddenly as it began. The reeds growing from the muck along the edge of the pond rustled. “Oh look,” the wife breathed. A female mallard trailed by six ducklings paddled along the shallow edge of the pond. Puffs of yellow, they drifted on the water like pollen. They rode their mother’s wake, gobbling at the fragments of green scum her passage scattered. “How adorable,” she said, and when the couple rose from the bench and walked on, she seemed to have...