Jacob is on the wall in the rain with his guitar. I can see him from here but it's pouring in sheets, turning the grass to mud and the skies to graphite and if I open that glass door the chimes will sound and they'll come running so I am content to sit in the big easy chair and watch him from the great room. From this chair I have a wider view of the backyard, and can just see the lower portion of the rock wall. He's just up from the platform where we set up the telescope on clear evenings in the summer, and I'm guessing his guitar is probably so far out of tune it's not in the genre he's playing any more which would be something by Stone Temple Pilots, Billy Joel or maybe Joe Jackson. Maybe a love song I no longer listen to, maybe a Beatles arrangement. Maybe some unconnected notes, like the song between us now that has been forgotten, no longer played on the record player or radio, no longer in the back of my mind, a soundtrack for a film that's over and been remade already.
Or, 'reimagined', as it were.
I look over at PJ on the big couch. He is nodding along to whatever's in his headphones and reading, swiping down the screen of his phone, content, coffee cup in his left hand, feet up on the tabletop, warm by the fire. He looks up, feeling my gaze and I look away. He is in charge this morning while everyone else sleeps away the rain after such a busy day yesterday. He didn't come out with the group and yet he's thrilled the rickety, warped screen doors are soon to be history. We also cleared out an extraordinary amount of things over the past several months from previous lives, a cobbled collective history of belongings that were redundant and copious. It's a spring-clean for our souls, and he is a big part of what keeps us organized and productive, though he is always perpetually worried that I might find things move too fast and regress, or worse.
I'm doing okay. Things are good. He is cautiously optimistic for that, that the darker period now ebbs once more and we come out into the light. I take a deep breath through my nose, exhaling through my mouth. I take a sip of my ever-present water bottle and meet his gaze again with my reassuring smile, but only with my eyes. He winks and goes back to his reading. It's a content Sunday so I don't know why they let Jake sit there and play. They were supposed to banish him from my existence. That was the plan, I know now.