Cake people.

Gage.

You have to say it real slow, like in Practical Magic when Nicole Kidman's character Jilly is describing her new boyfriend to Sandra Bullock's Sally. Jimmy. Jimmy Annnnnnngelov.

Only Gage is no vampire cowboy, and yes, this is a fine time to point out there don't seem to be any Steves, Bills or Eds in my collective.

Hello no. We are children of the seventies, and our parents were determined to be different. It could be worse, I went to school with a lot of flowers, but instead my gypsy parents rebelled and named me after a French movie star and an Irish Saint (equally says mom), (hell no, it was the french starlet only, says dad).

Gage is Schuyler's brother (okay half-brother but good enough for me).

It all makes sense now, doesn't it?

Gage is here and I don't seem to have space for him, which is um, a new issue. Updates to follow as I think of something.

Update as promised: Gage gets the CAMPER. What a lucky duck. I would live in the camper but then everyone would complain and accuse me of living in the past blahblahblah. Snort. We actually had decided on him staying on the futon in Daniel and Schuy's living room but then Gage asked why there was a perfectly good house in the driveway and Lochlan said it was his to enjoy if he wanted it. Everyone is settled at last, just in time for sunset.

***

Yesterday while driving to get Thai food, we passed a cupcake shop. One of many we have seen and tried, which led to an interesting discussion on just how viable all of these cupcake shops are, considering we had no interest in returning to any of them, honestly. We're used to very good full-on cake or very bad cake sometimes too. Trendy designer cupcakes are interesting but the storebought (or boutique-bought ones, as it were) are generally too rich for my blood sugar and my wallet, sadly. They aren't worth the toothache for the price, in other words and in pointing out my curiosity at how they stay in business, Ben pointed out that someone is always having a birthday.

But what if they aren't?

What do you mean? It's always somebody's birthday.

But what if it isn't? What if there was one day that no one was ever born on?

There's multiple babies born every minute, Bridget.

Imagine though! The day no one was born. The darkest day that no one celebrates.

What would you do, then?

I would buy cupcakes just because and we would celebrate Happy Nobirthdays.

That's very emo of you, sweetheart.

Maybe they could make black cupcakes with black icing!

Gothcakes?

YES. Maybe with tiny white-icing filigree. Something really pretty. Because no one deserves it. And still the day needs something. Something to mark it as different.

Uh-huh.

You're just so stunned at my idea, you don't even know what to say, right?

Yeah, that's exactly right.

The room at the end of the hall.

It's a tiny room, overall. It's where Nolan stays when he visits and my parents stay there too. A room bathed in full light, looking out toward the rose bushes and the evening sunset. It has no closet but a brand new bed and there is a hutch for storage that came with the house and they offered to take it when I called to complain to the realtor that a lot of things were still here but I said I would keep the hutch, just nothing else.

(I should have gotten them to take the stupid cans of hot pink primer paint with them from where the basement was finished. Yes, full-on magenta. The walls are beige, luckily enough. The cans are full, they clearly bought too much. I'll have to ask where I can dispose of it the next time we go to the hardware store. Currently I don't like hardware stores still, they remind me of the castle and so the hot pink paint sits in a box near the tools, in the laundry room. Because the laundry room is easily as large as the living room, and it's virtually empty. I think it would make a great workshop once we replace the floor with tile and put in cupboards. Oo! Derail.)

The little room at the end of the hall is now known as New Jake's room. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when company comes next. I am officially out of space.

He drove up from God knows where on that gorgeous old motorcycle, without a map or a plan or letting anyone know where he was. He said the weather mostly sucked but the roads were good and his entire worldly possessions fit in a backpack and a couple of leather saddlebags strapped to the back of the bike.

He's going to stay on indefinitely. He said he felt like he was coming home. We are happy to have him. Or have him back, as it were. I didn't think we would ever see him again, truthfully, but he kept his promise and here he is.

Talking up a storm already.

Oh, sweet magnificent surprise.

Eighteen weeks of absolutely hardly anything and guess who just pulled into my driveway on a schweet vintage Sunbeam?

The talker, that's who.

(I was given legs and I ran and ran until I become tired of that, and I stopped to consider the line in the sand, frosted glass mixed with seaweed, left behind from high tide, a trail of glass breadcrumbs to show me the way home.

I tried to hide my scales with pretty dresses. I tried to keep my long hair tied up so it would be so much less obvious. I deferred at pearls and chose diamonds to fit in. I exhaled in long hot bubble baths where I could lock the door and return to my true form.

I ate cod with a straight face and refused calamari with a laugh. I flung starfish into the air to simulate the sky above and only I could hear their squeals of glee from the ride.

I made a valiant attempt to be human, and yet it's clearly obvious I am not, distracted by the shoreline and the waves on a whim, measuring days in terms of tides instead of hours. Breathing the deep cool water beneath the waves. Enduring the silence of a thousand sunken ships. Being whole.)

To you.

When he arrived back at the camper he had a large cardboard box in his arms. I was already stressed. It was dark. I didn't know how to light the lantern, he never let me touch it and I wasn't allowed to remain outside if he wasn't handy. It wasn't often that we were apart so late in the evening but Lochlan had been recruited reluctantly to help break down a temperamental, rusty structure. The rain had finally let up after four days and we were pulling up stakes tomorrow. An unholy mess at this point. Everyone was demoralized and exhausted.

Um..okay, just turn around and close your eyes.

I can't see, it's okay.

Just do it, Bridge.

I put my hands over my eyes and began to sing. He laughed and asked me if I was peeking so I turned away and put my back to him to prove I wasn't looking.

He crashed around for a good seven, eight minutes and boy, did I ever get tired standing there listening to my stomach growl. It was my thirteenth birthday, well, for another three hours at least.

It's ready. You can look now.

I turned around slowly and opened my eyes. Lochlan had lit a candle. A single white taper but we didn't have any candle holders so he jammed it down into the center of the potted ivy plant I set outside the camper every morning in the sun and brought in every evening at dusk. Lochlan regularly emptied the last drops of his beer into it and still it persisted, sort of like we did.

He had found a small white tablecloth to cover the drop leaf table and real plates! Real china plates were on the table. On the counter was a bag that I could smell before he told me to open my eyes. Chinese take out. And a big cold bottle of Dr. Pepper and something else. A bundle wrapped in a cloth that I couldn't identify at all. Maybe his laundry. Sometimes he took it and hung it on the line behind the poker game tents to dry.

He grinned.

Happy birthday, little lady.

I smiled back. Huge. I counted four boxes of take-out. My stomach groaned at the delay.

Thank you.

A speech before we eat?

No, after. Starved.

He laughed again and pulled my chair out. I sat down and he brought over the bag and took everything out. Sweet and sour chicken. Fried rice. Chow mein. Two egg rolls. Two fortune cookies. A feast! He poured us each a tall glass of Dr. Pepper and began to dish up the food. We ate and drank and laughed until all of the food was gone as he described the men's jokes as they fought to pry the bolts loose earlier to dismantle the ride and failed at so many the torches were brought in. The jokes were crass and nasty. Carnival humor. There is no room for delicate sensibilities or offense in a place such as this. There's very little room for newly-thirteen year old girls either. But out of two different sorts of desperation I had been accepted into the fold, into the gypsy family and mostly I felt at home.

I laughed when Lochlan laughed and acted outraged when he did. And then I burped really loud and he laughed so hard he almost fell off his chair.

That was beautiful. Here, birthday girl. What's your fortune?

"You create your own stage and your audience is waiting."

Uncanny. Mine: "Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence." (He would later have this Mencken quote tattooed from shoulder to wrist.)

That's beautiful. And true.

And how. And I have another surprise for you, Bridget.

I am too stuffed for surprises now.

Not this one.

He went back to the counter and took the bundle and brought it carefully to the table. He unwrapped it slowly and then I realized why as he removed the last sheets of plastic only to be confronted with a final toothpick defense which he quickly removed, using a plastic spoon to smooth away the tiny holes. One that he licked clean first.

A cake. Chocolate cake with chocolate icing. That he made.

For me.

For my birthday. Still warm, which meant that he hadn't been tearing down machinery in the dwindling rain and light. He had been baking. Baking! My eyes filled up. He pointed out he did help tear down the machinery and then they let him off early so he could get the cake done. And then he went back out in the rain while it baked but kept such a close eye on his watch that they began to tease him for it. He sang Happy Birthday to me quite seriously. It would be the first time.

Later on, after I was so full I moved slower than usual, I sacked out on the bed, the sugar high taking over, fatigue not far behind. Best night of my life.

There's more.

I can't eat anymore. I might die.

It's not food.

I'm surprised. We must have had a better week than I realized. I am slurring sleep into our conversation. What is it?

A trip.

A trip? Different show or new one?

Not a show, a trip. Just you and me. We'll get away from it all. He laughed at the cheesiness of his own words. We were perpetually away from it all. The circus was an imaginary landscape, life in costume distilled into a freakshow and a high-wire act, punctuated with his batons, lighting the night on fire, outshining the stars.

Where will we go?

That's the best part, Bridget. It doesn't matter. The whole world is ours.

Remnants.

No one keeps a secret so well as a child.
~Victor Hugo

I was on my second cup of tea, rocking slowly back and forth in the chair that Jacob kept on his back balcony, overlooking the sand below. I wasn't supposed to be here, the balcony is only accessible through the bedroom, but he said the rocker was left by the previous owner, and he found it the best vantage point from which to watch the water and talk. Later on he would tell me that I was the only person other than himself to go out there the entire time he lived in the beach house, thus admitting he really did spend as much time talking to himself as I always suspected.

Maybe I should take you home.

Maybe I should just wait for a bit. This is really nice, Jake.

Mmm. He was non-committal. Something was on his mind and I was patient. I knew him well-enough by now to wait for him to say it, that he would eventually. Somehow we did better with brutal honestly, talking deeper, just knowing things would hurt or bring relief through the words. He's one of the few who really treat the words with the gravity and reverence they deserve.

Tell me about him, Bridget.

Him who?

Cole's brother.

***

Caleb showed up around ten last night. Schuyler met him at the front door and pointed out Henry and Ruth were long asleep, maybe he should wait until tomorrow. The warning came swiftly when he opened his mouth, slurring out a request to see me.

Schuyler went and let Ben know but Lochlan beat them both back to the front door, able to sense tension in the house, highly affected by it and unable to do anything much until it's resolved. He picked the wrong house to live in, clearly. He's a superhero without a plan. I don't know what he is aside from being classified as perpetually in the throes of a midlife crisis that's been going on since he was sixteen years old. I watch and wait, fascinated by his intensity toward what he loves and positively astounded by his careless attitudes toward everything else.

Caleb wasn't interested in Lochlan's misdirected apathy. He told him to go away, that he was here to see me.

Lochlan shook his head, not saying a word. He wasn't going to move. Ben appeared from downstairs and headed for the front door, unimpressed. The whole time I am standing in the alcove between the kitchen and the hallway asking them what's going on. I grabbed at Ben's hand as he walked past me, but instead he threw a command over his shoulder.

You stay put.

I crept to the far end of the front hall but I still couldn't hear anything so I went up to the staircase and cracked open one of the windows over the verandah instead. I peered down. Caleb is pacing on the brightly lit walkway below. As he turns to come back he overcorrects, weaving. This is an effort, this decorum. I don't even understand how he got here or why he's loaded out of the blue like this but I am severely unnerved. He rarely does this. Very, very rarely.

The roar came out of nowhere and I flinched.

BRIDGET!!!

I put my head down against the wall and closed my eyes. I could be anywhere right now, I can hide in plain sight inside my head just like I have always done with Caleb. But his voice keeps pulling me back to the task at hand. I can hear Ben's soft words but I can't make out what he's saying and Caleb keeps interrupting him anyway.

I can also feel the footfalls as Ben is joined on the verandah by the others, having made their way from different parts of the house. I know when they are all outside, the vibrations stop. Everything is still again and I know this army is ready, at the gate. This is what they do.

***

I am reluctant, mildly evasive, insolent. Jacob picks up on this immediately.

What happened to him?

He went away. Moved away. He lives in Toronto now, he's a CFO. Self-made millionaire asshole.

Does he contact you?

He hasn't for a long time.

Good.

Yes. It is. I get up and cross to the rail. I'm watching the icy teal saltwater break in waves onto the wet sand. Night has fallen on the shoreline and the beach is deserted. The wind is warm against my skin but I am chilled and unable to understand why I lied about something that was so long ago but it's been beaten into my head since forever that I am not allowed to tell people. If I tell anyone everything will change. I finish my wine in one gulp.

***

For the first time in my life I watch as Caleb makes a mistake.

She was mine. Did he tell you that? SHE. WAS. MINE. Did she tell you she ran away from him and came to me? She wanted to be with ME. Not with him. Not with anyone else. ME.

I have put my hands up over my ears now, squeezing my eyes shut tight but his voice infiltrates my senses and takes over. He is screaming my name now. I can hear footsteps on the steps and on the concrete. Struggling sounds. They're going to make him stop before the neighbors call the police. He is lying. Can they take him to jail for lying?

***

What in the hell went on between you two, Bridget?

Jake is pacing behind the kitchen chair where I sit, my hands wrapped around a glass of brandy that he poured for me after yet another series of presumptive invitations from Caleb to me were delivered in the mail. So formal, Caleb is. Engraved invitations to a party for two. He does not care that I have moved on. Cole's death was license for him to return in his truest form of evil. I thought this would be over but according to him it is just beginning. Nothing has been resolved. The past crowds into the present and threatens to smother the future.

Nothing could go on, Jacob. I was twelve years old. Jesus. The lies keep on coming. I learned from the best.

***

When I stop shaking and take my hands away from my ears the yelling is directly below me now. Inside the house. Listening very carefully I can pick out Ben, Lochlan, PJ, Christian, Andrew, Duncan. Lochlan is deflecting the questions they fire at him. No one's going to give us any leeway or any breathing space on this ever again.

Then I realize his resolve is holding. This is the only thing he cares about. Me. Us. Our memories. Maybe our secrets are safe after all.

I didn't think it would turn out like this. I never thought I would get this far from Caleb, almost home free. A child's dream, just like the one I had of living in a pink castle made entirely of cotton candy, complete with a midway at my disposal all day long, and a circus scrubbed and shining of her inevitable dark and seedy underpinnings. Light in dark places, with my knights at the ready.

Okay, so maybe that one last part came true.

***

What do you want from her? Jacob roars in Caleb's face. They are nose to nose, for Jacob has Caleb several inches off the ground and pinned to the wall. It hurts, I know it hurts, I can see it all over Caleb's face but only because I am the only one who knows what the devil looks like in pain.

I want her to tell the truth.

What truth?

I am shaking my head, horrified that they are doing this. Terrified that Caleb is going to ruin everything but he isn't that insane. If he takes Lochlan down then he goes down too. Nobody wins, he'll never get close to me again. He isn't going to risk that but I'm not so sure anymore.

That what Lochlan did was just as bad. And that I mean something to her.

Yeah, you do. You're her nightmare.

Jacob lets go and Caleb drops to the floor on his knees. Jacob storms across the room, grabbing me by the hand and we leave. I look over my shoulder but it's apparent that Caleb has given up, for now. He'll only go so far and somehow I realize that he's as stuck as I am, as Lochlan is, the three of us locked into a secret history that no one is willing to blow the lid off.

I am flooded with relief and I wonder how long it will hold. Jacob looks at me and my expression is vacant, lost in thought, overwhelmed. He thinks I have gone into shock and he panics. He pulls me roughly against his shoulder, tightly in his arm and takes out his phone. I forget who he called, I just remember eventually falling asleep in his arms while we waited. And I remember thinking nothing bad would ever happen again. I never expected the army to remain so close.

***

Ben finds me sitting on the second step from the top, arms wrapped around my knees, rocking like I did in the chair on Jacob's balcony before the past came back in a rush to destroy everything we have built since.

I looked up into his face, my eyes burning, tears eroding a path down each cheek. Unable to pull myself together, I bring my hands up to cover my face.

I'm so sorry, Benny. It was a whisper.

He put his arm around me, pulling me off the step and into his lap and he wrapped both arms around me, compressing me against his chest. Kissing my cheeks, ears, the top of my head.

I don't care, bee. I don't fucking care what happened, I don't care what's in the past, I don't care who you were with or what you felt or what you did. I love you. No matter what happens. I love you now.

That last part is still reverberating through my brain. I love you now.

Solar coaster.

Saw you crucify your mind
Your soul left unsung
Heard you death-defy your eyes
Saw you crawl inside the blind

He was walking up the beach toward the house when I arrived. Shirt flapping in the wind, the huge smile showing every last one of his big white chiclet teeth. Hair blowing all over. When he saw me he quickened his pace and I ran down to him because I didn't feel like taking my time.

What do you think?

It's nice. I'm always amazed at the pine trees, the cedars, in proximity to the shore.

We're used to bedrock.

Yes. That's it. The grin, widened, if it were possible.

You're going to get in so much trouble, princess.

That isn't my problem, Jake.

But it is, princess.

Can we talk about something else now?

Sure.

But he's no longer interested in the words, and I follow his eyes to where he is watching Caleb leave the house and quickly walk to his car. Breakfast is over, Caleb can make an easy, almost invisible exit and go home.

He shakes his head, the smile turning rueful now as he looks back at me, his hair over his eyes, which have turned dark and concerned.

Why can't you just stay away from the brothers Grimm, princess? At least with Lochlan he isn't trying to dismantle your soul, taking a piece every time.

My soul has been gone for a while now.

Jacob winces and turns back toward the water. You need to rethink this. This isn't good for you.

Caleb? I know a lot of the boys would choose dealing with Caleb over everything else. Somehow it's easier for them to manage.

Only because they can't fight me anymore.

They wouldn't fight with you.

You have a short memory, princess. Don't you remember the Zero the Hero dinner?

Yes but that was different.

How exactly?

That time I chose you.

And now?

Ben. I say it softly, with tears rolling down my face. Jacob nods. It would be bitter save for the fact that he made this decision for us. I would not have forced his hand the way he forced mine and things have changed so drastically I regularly check my driver's license to make sure my name is still the same but it isn't and yet the face is still the one I recognize.

Good. He's been good to you. He's selfless in a way none of the others are. Less controlling too. Safer.

I laugh. This has become a parody.

You should go back, princess. They worry about you.

I'm fine.

I know that and they know that. Maybe care is a better word than worry.

Do you care?

Yes, but I worry too.

You have just destroyed all of my hopes for Heaven, Jacob.

It's a different kind of worry, Bridget.

Not where you seem to think I am, honestly.

The evening is getting away from me, the house is a bit of a noisy place currently, and so in lieu of a post, enjoy some of my birthday flowers, both indoors and out. Never said I was any good with making things look pretty on a page, so excuse the miserable formatting. I will be back tomorrow. You can relax now. Smell the roses.

Scope/micro.

(Motherfucking cakes on the motherfucking train. And obviously 'batman' means [redacted].)

This morning I am at breakfast with Satan. I should have checked the forecast, clearly it was only hovering around the third degree this morning.

Flowers?

Big lilies, Gerberas in four colors, roses in three colors, huge ones, carnations and snowballs.

Presents?

Yes. Of course. I detailed my beautiful presents for him.

Very lovely. Yes, I do like that, actually. He did well. Dinner?

Deferred until he has a day off. I don't enjoy walking into a restaurant at eight o'clock on a weeknight. You know that.

So did he cook?

Yes. We both did.

Cake?

Chocolate mousse and brownie cake. There's some left, if you can believe it. (How Ben got that cake back to the house from downtown along with everything else is a marvel, to be sure.)

Did he put candles on it?

There was flame. Are you finished with this line of questioning? Does he pass? Are you the birthday police now?

I just want to be assured that Ben is looking after you in the manner that you deserve.

Unlike you, you mean?

Pardon?

Nothing. The server picked that second to refill our coffees and I stared at Caleb smugly.

Ben was the one with the butler, remember? He knows what he's doing.

Batman had staff before Ben was even a shadow across your face. Ben had a DO NOT DISTURB sign welded to his hotel room door handle for eight years running. He wouldn't know the finer things in life the way some of us do.

Batman had an assistant who was afraid of everything. I would hardly call that staff. Dude wasn't fetching his fucking tea or wiping his ass unless he was on set. Leave Ben alone.

Bridget, there is no need to be crass. I'm just trying to be sure that you had a good birthday because if not I would arrange for a small event. Obviously you had a good time.

The best. Especially the parts I didn't tell you about. Just...wow.

I am brave this morning. Coffee beans and lack of sleep or food bring about a recklessness I have no business trying on.

He frowned into his coffee cup and looked out the window. And then he looked back. He's staring and not talking and after several minutes of tension-filled silence I am uncomfortable and working hard not to squirm.

I just can't believe it, princess.

What?

You. You're all grown up.

That's something you are supposed to say when someone turns twenty-one, not forty.

I'm sure I said it when you turned twenty-one.

Yes. Right after your brother sold me to you for the weekend.

He smiled. That was a fun weekend.

How in the hell do you remember them, specifically?

You were there. I only forget the ones I spend alone.

That sounds terrible.

It is. I want to change it. I hear the hint of his accent. Not often I can catch it, it's mostly disappeared over the past fifteen years. Just like those weekends.

I need to go home. I have painting to finish.

I will see your progress tomorrow, I suppose.

Sure.

I'll take you home then.

I follow him outside and then he lets me through the door and I look up at the mountains, feeling his eyes on me.

It's astounding.

What?

How far we've come.

It's a deplorable lack of progress, is what it is. And you have all lost your minds. I have a birthday every year and suddenly it's being made such a big deal of. I'm uncomfortable with this.

Forty is a milestone, princess. And you've granted me civility. Thank you.

It's easier to pretend we get along. And I heard all of this yesterday, almost word for word, from Lochlan. Who does it better than you because he doesn't turn around and try to ruin my life with his next breath. That's why you're alone, Cale.

His eyes go from pleased to ashamed. It's like a switch and I throw it violently and with such joy. Precisely the same way he approaches me in the dark and during those times when I didn't want to be with him. The formative years. The ones that scar shape you for life.

Prime numbers.

This morning Ben pulled me out of my unintelligible dreams into his arms, holding me tightly. He sang Happy Birthday to me, kissed me and then pushed me out of bed into the dark early day.

I did not expect to still have freckles on my fortieth birthday.

I did not expect to still prefer Hello Kitty over Louis Vuitton or still be so bad at painting rooms and making myself high, like I did this morning, shut into the guest bathroom off the back entry hall, cursing out the right angles and rising on the fumes until I stumbled out, finished coat number one and wondering why there were so many freaking unicorns grazing in the back yard since it's raining.

The boys welcomed me to their exclusive club this morning. Where no one gives a fuck anymore and we have money and smarts from living that I would call character on any given day but today is different and so it's smarts today, and nothing else that might seem negative.

Lochlan looked at my face and told me I have not changed a bit from when he used to count my freckles and tell me when I was long grown up I would look exactly the same. I am still waiting to grow into my nose and for my hair to pick a color already and stick with it. He smiled and said it was part of me and not to worry about things so much like I do when I look into the brightly lit mirrors and see my soul running down into deep lines around my eyes, and diluted green irises from using up my lifetime quota of tears. I could look better but instead I think I look like I'm supposed to.

It's too late now anyway.

Caleb called me and wished me a Happy Birthday, softly, with encouragement and a deep reverence for the person I have become. Wishing for a different parallel universe in which he would have been able to do the same for Cole while I still marvel at how amazing Jacob would have been at this age and how amazing Ben became when he turned forty and Lochlan too a few years ago now, it is almost like arriving. I kind of like that I still have all these freckles and even the lines around my eyes which in all honesty have been there forever, and I like that I'm part of the club now instead of the little tiny girl always lagging behind picking flowers while the big older boys walked on ahead, yelling at me to hurry up already, Fidget, we're going to be late.

I really never cared if we were late in the first place. They didn't either but what was astounding was how they didn't care that an eight-year-old girl imprinted on the lot of them and that she is still following them around thirty-two years later, lagging behind, being goofy and difficult but so sweet and soft that the rest is canceled out. In fact, they welcome me, just as they welcome bearing witness to all the changes I have seen in myself since I was too young to count high enough to know the number of freckles I own.

Never in a million freckles did I ever think I'd see this year but now that I've seen it, now that I'm wearing it, it doesn't seem all that frightening any more.

So, so you think you can tell heaven from hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war
for a lead role in a cage?

There's something buried in the words.

Today I went and bought paint. Today marks one year in this house, and the final day of my thirties besides.

Jesus fucking Christ. I didn't really want to go there, but here I am.

Suddenly.

Surprisingly.

Total. Uncharted. Territory.

Anyway, it is finally time to paint the house. I bought a pale slate blue color called Stillness. I am starting small. Bathrooms, entryways. Trim. The lady at the paint store helped me figure out finishes for the walls (eggshell versus satin? What? The old house held the finish of 'must cover century-old cracks' and had to be the consistency of Elmer's Glue) but I think I came out okay.

After that I went to the nursery and bought some more Snow in Summer (last years disappeared), carnations, a Japanese Azalea and a dappled willow. A huge bag of dirt, too (Cole would say, It's called 'earth', baby doll). I dug up the ivy and moved it and discovered it's actually growing. More is coming up between the cracks in the front walkway. I brought some inside to root. I planted everything in the front gardens and it looks damned good.

I spread grass seed and moved half the shrubs in the backyard from under the grapevines (what was I thinking?) to the sunny edge of the yard. Under the watchful eyes of the boys who are home I replanted everything and reseeded the newly blank places and then I discovered the buds on the grapevines, already! I have net bags waiting. This year the birds won't get all the grapes. Oh no sir, not this year.

And tomorrow I'm going to be forty.

Pardon me while I explode.

If wishes were words (out of time).

Little variations on my page
Little doors open on my cage
Little time has come and gone so far
Little by little who you are

I can see the patterns on your face
I can see the miracles I trace
Symmetry in shadows I can't hide
I just want to be right by your side

(For those who want to split hairs, I did NOT leave a word out of the title quote borrowed yesterday. The original Barrie book did not feature the word star. It was added in the movie much much later.)

I have Canadian political election, hockey and boy-drama fatigue today, so pardon me if I am cranky.

And this is the second time in my sketchy memory that something I wrote here actually made a difference. This is not where I plead my case, this is simply where I sort out the leftovers in my brain. So sometimes it's weird or painful or really freaking hard to read. Sometimes it's not safe for work. Sometimes it's just dumb. Whatever is in my head is dumped out on the floor and rearranged into something palatable, and you can just leave the gristle on the side of your plate, alright?

The first time it made a difference was when the full force of Cole's death hit me. I know the week I spent locked in his study after we came home from the hospital seemed...healthy? but that wasn't really it and several months afterword I fell apart on the inside without giving much of an outside warning at all and Jacob read my words and became incredibly concerned, to put it mildly. Everything blew up at once and I don't think he would have been able to act so quickly had I not begun to write very oddly. The medication wasn't right and I was being poisoned. Luckily it was fixed and after that things were better so I'm grateful sometimes for this strange little place.

The second time it mattered was last night, when PJ read what I wrote about how he fights and he came to see me. I have since edited yesterday's post slightly, and PJ has promised to work on his discussion skills. I am to work on thickening my skin. We both plan to work on boundaries.

Today Corey picked me up on his vintage motorcycle and took me out for a quick lunch. So quick that I blinked and we were finished. Corey never says much, he just steps in and takes someone out for a meal or a walk and then he disappears again. I don't need to write about him all that much, most of the time I forget what he looks like (though that could be the significant image changes over the past eight years.)

Oh gee, I hope he reads this and sticks around for a bit, talks more, and maybe keeps the new facial hair. He didn't have any for a long time and now it just won't go away.

I could wonder if this were some sort of wishing blog, and everything I write might come true. Maybe tomorrow I will win the lottery, and maybe on Sunday I can sleep until noon. Maybe the front garden will magically begin to grow something other than moss and maybe the boys can coexist peacefully, like they were prior to PJ deciding that Ben had crossed a line, prior to Lochlan deciding he didn't a big enough percentage of me, prior to Caleb calling and extending his flaming, deadly olive branch because my absence in his life has settled in around him like a cold chill he cannot shake and he does not like how that feels.

Speaking of feelings, I do need to address some things about Caleb and what happened in Newfoundland, but not right now. Tomorrow. Right now I have lunches to pack and homework to check and dinner to start. The light is getting thin and the boys will be home soon.

Second to the right, and straight on till morning.

Did I disappoint you
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth
You act like you never had love
And you want me to go without

(Sometimes living for adventure can be tough. Sometimes I'm not even the one with the drama and I become a sticking-plaster to the boys, the ferociously affectionate soft spot where they land. The comfort-girl who will soothe their cares away. They are the lost boys, and I am their Wendy.)

Sam is going down Jacob's road of currently feeling quite out of love with his church. Railing against the hierarchy for putting administration before one's ability to be efficient in the role of a minister when one has personal needs. And yet I can see both sides here. Sam is new to this church, having been a part of it for a single year. Others can manage their midlife or existential crises without needing time off, they simply implode in and around their scheduled tasks. The church does not allow for personal reflection unless it is work-related, and what most people never fully realize is that ministers are often given a plate so full that they simply collapse under the weight and learn to operate at sixty percent of themselves and sometimes they simply walk away.

You know, like Jacob did.

Sam was gifted with a wedding invitation this week. We all were. We don't burn too many bridges. Most of the people I despise I greet quite professionally (Satan, Sophie, etc. etc.) and the boys are even better at it. But this wedding invitation came from Sam's wife. Elisabeth. Since he steadfastly refuses to call her his 'ex'. Hope springs eternal, but when their divorce went through after magnificent efforts to try and salvage their relationship, she promptly became engaged to someone else.

Sam has not reacted well. He's crushed but realistic. He's called in sick and shown up drunk and done everything people do when confronted with the concept of moving on. I hope he weathers it better this week than he did last week. He is still waiting to see if he can have a little vacation time, now that he has a year in. The problem is, he probably will not get it. And the drunk part sort of surprised me because Sam has the better part of a decade of wonderful recovery that he always managed well and spoke candidly about, besides. He was a good role model for Benjamin, and the surprise and disappointment rings loudly through my house right now.

*****

PJ has had a crisis as well this week, only his snuck up on us slowly over the weekend to the point where last time I saw him, Lochlan had him in a headlock and was forcing him to promise to go home and NOT SAY ANOTHER WORD until he was out of my hearing range. Which I suspect is around four feet, but only if you are facing me.

Because when PJ runs out of patience, I am always his target. I have been positively crushed under the weight of his feelings, bottled up and poured out quietly, after the kids are asleep or at the very least out of earshot. Even though when we moved here I specifically made him take the boathouse so that he could have his own separate life, privacy, whatever he needed. Sometimes (as I point out quite regularly), it isn't enough.

But no worries. We have a major argument roughly every twelve to fourteen months and then we settle back into step together and this particular one seems to be waning so call it a Monday and let's get on with it.

Picking up Hemingway.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
~Ernest Hemingway.

Last night, Ben again went for the big coat, but I was ready for him this time, dressed differently, prepared to plead for warmth in leaving everything on this time, dreading the cold but certainly not the thrill.

Only once again, he chose surprise.

When we got down to the beach Ben encouraged me to sit against the logs and then he walked to the water's edge, turning to face me, his back to the sea. He pulled out a book and began to read from it, watching me somewhat nervously. I knew the style before I knew the name of the book.

Hemingway.

To Have and Have Not.

Across the River and into the Trees and The Snows of Kilimanjaro were the two other tattered, dog-eared books found among Jacob's belongings in the hotel room that were returned to me in a Fedex global shipping box. The remainder of our Hemingway collection is on the bookshelf in my bedroom. It's been a really long time since I looked at any of it. Years, which in Ben-terms is a very long time indeed.

I suppose there are people who have never seen the archives here. I took them away. Jacob used to read to me. Out loud, every night on the porch after the children were asleep. I loved it so, and now Ben is doing it.

Ben.

Ben who has positively zero desire to walk in anyone else's footsteps because he is busy walking through broken glass and lightning strikes for fun. Ben does not require conventionalities, he defies logic. He throws up his middle fingers and flips off rationality and he rips the head off predictable romance and flushes it. He'll do things his way, he tells me and I believe him. He's weird and wonderful like that.

He's going to take up this torch because he knows I won't scream in agony, twisting out of his arms when the words sink in but the voice is different. He knows I will sit and strain to hear over the roar of the midnight surf while the wind follows the labyrinth of ruin into my ears until it can cool my brain into a satisfied stasis, until I have absorbed enough of the story for one night, told in such a way that eclipses a night spent rocking on a porch swing with a hot of cup of tea listening to the crickets in the tall Prairie grass in spades. Ben lives viscerally and everything will be loud and dark and violent and felt until you just can't feel it anymore and then, and only then are you living, thank you very fucking much.

Only Ben could make a Hemingway novel into a full-on metal experience, with the waves crashing and the moon blazing on through the night. Only Ben would dare to bring this particular pastime back to life. Had anyone else done it I would still be screaming. Instead I feel like I have a little more of myself back.

Jacob can listen in, probably reciting the passages word for word. Probably impressed with the delivery and maybe even our progress too.

Yeah, that guy. (Hi Mom, you can skip today.)

Last evening after the hockey game ended Ben shrugged into his big coat, the winter one that kept him warm in the Prairies. The children were long asleep, the boys drifting off to their favorite corners of the house to listen to music or watch movies or work late into the night. Ben and I don't often get time alone, it is a gift that we look for and take with gratitude.

He took my hand in his and led me outside, across the yard and down the treacherous cliff path in the dark. It's borderline dangerous but at least the skies were clear enough to have the moon and a few stars to provide some ambient light, and the rocks were dry. Once safely on the beach we walked until we reached the bigger rocks at the end of the property line. The boys have laid out huge logs facing the beach and it's become a good place to sit and draw or just to watch the waves, on finer days.

He took off the coat and sat down on the sand, leaning back against the waterlogged wood. I was about to protest when he pulled me down onto his lap, wrapping the coat around me, hitching up my dress up, pulling my tights down. Fighting everything I had on until the only thing left was his coat pulled tight around my shoulders and held against my knees by his arms. He pulled himself free and bit into my lip as he grasped my hips and guided himself in. I didn't know it was possible to be so cold and so warm at the same time. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and held on as he rocked against me violently, unending. Numb took me over and I put my head down against his ear, begging him not to stop. I cried out when he did and he brought his hand up to press my head against his shoulder and pulled me hard against his flesh with his other arm wrapped around my hips.

We remained like that until the blood in our veins took on a fresh painful chill, and he managed to pull the coat away long enough to slip me back into my dress, stuffing my tights into one of his coat pockets, rescuing my boots from high tide. He took my hand once again, kissing it firmly, pulling me back up the path and into the house where we let the heat wash over us like waves, sending our nerves endings screaming with effort.

He smiled at me but he never ever said a single word.

This made my day.

Actual post to follow whenever my brain decides to join me. It's still off watching the sunrise, I believe. Or the aftermath of the Royal wedding.

Ben is working late tonight and so I am hanging out in the overly-bright kitchen waiting for him (who keeps leaving all the damn lights on anyway?) with Lochlan and Dalton. Lochlan has been showing me how to use his new tablet. It's an Asus e-slate or something. A whole bunch of the boys got them but so far I haven't had a lot of chance to play on them so tonight was my chance. The topic was suggested by you-know-who. 1984. So I drew 1984. When I was thirteen* and Loch was just about twenty.
He is mad because I didn't draw us happy. I'm not sure why he's taking cartoons literally, you'll have to ask him yourself.

Tomorrow maybe I'll draw Ben.

Oh lord. Hahaha.

*(Note: Clearly I am standing on a box in the picture. The top of my head falls just under Lochlan's chin, and for some reason I always draw myself tall. Wishful thinking.)

What are you doing, princess?

Holding my own. Just don't judge me.

I'm not judging, I am asking questions.

Evaluating your own reactions, Jake.

Maybe. To be honest, this surprises me.

Like those ex -cons. 'They do what they know', you said.

You are so far from what I meant.

I'm doing what I know.

You are playing with fire and you're going to get burned again. He doesn't love you. He wants to win.

Oh but that's where you're wrong. No one keeps a game going this long if they don't really want the prize.

It becomes something else after a while. It has taken on a life of its own and you're not being careful.

He won't hurt me.

But he does. They all do in their own ways.

I didn't come here to talk about this.

What did you come for then, princess?

It's Easter. It's spring.

And?

I just needed to see you. It's been a while.

The synergist.

(Oh, look. I'm going to add to what I started with this post. Don't say I never finish anything.)

When Lochlan returned, it was dark. He walked through the door of his apartment, letting it crash against the wall. He threw his keys on the table and walked straight to the couch where he sat down with a loud sigh and took another drink from the open bottle in his hand.

When is it?

He knew I would still be right where he left me. Spinning in the dark in his desk chair.

This summer. Labour day weekend.

Christ, my birthday? Come on, Bridge.

Everyone will be home.

He stared at me for a moment and then realized, glassy-eyed, that I was right.

Don't do this, peanut.

I'm not your problem anymore.

I only needed a break. Three years is long enough. You're going to be related to that monster.

Cole won't let anything bad happen to me.

Come back to me. We'll get it right.

It's too late to be right, Loch. I stand up, turning on the lamp and begin to walk slow laps around the room. He finally gets up and pushes me back down into the chair. He hates it when I pace. I hate trying to have a battle of wits with a twenty-five year old with freshly impaired judgment.

It's not. We start over. Just you and me.

It's too late, I repeat. What are you going to do with your life, Lochlan?

I don't know. He says it quietly and looks away. I know I'll be watching him.

I'm not going to report to you.

I didn't ask you to. Everyone else will. He smiled. He's halfway to drunk.

Lochlan-

Just hear me out okay? I'm going to win you back, even if it takes the rest of my life.

It might.

I have nothing better to do, peanut. His head is pressed against mine. I am pinned in the chair, he has his hands on the arm rests, and short of slithering out underneath his arms, I'm trapped.

So I kissed him.

I'd like to say I was young and stupid, or that I didn't know what I was doing, or hell, maybe it just happened, but I did it on purpose, because I wanted to know if it would still feel like it used to before we broke up. (Lochlan, against all odds, is the most affection person, after me that is, on the planet. He doesn't seem like he would be but he is and he keeps it all for me so maybe that means he isn't. I don't know. Let's just keep going, shall we?)

He kissed me back and turned the light off again. I had orange polka dots dancing in front of my eyes and the taste of secondhand whiskey on my tongue. I took the bottle from him and swallowed a long drink, the burning fire spreading down into my fingertips and toes. Yep. Still feels the same. Really, really good.

I have to go. Cole's going to be off soon. Cole worked nights at the same restaurant as Lochlan to pay for film. He said he was going to be a chef because he could afford a good knife but not a good camera. It was a travesty no one planned to put up with for very long.

Lochlan backed off and I got up and walked to the door, grabbing my bag off the table.

I wouldn't want to be in his shoes.

Gee, thanks.

No, he's about to marry someone who doesn't love him. And I'm sure he knows.

I walked back over and slapped him. Hard.

You don't get to tell me how I feel!

But I'm right, aren't I? He picked up the bottle and took another drink in the darkness. I didn't stay around to answer. I heard the bottle hit the door and smash to bits after I closed it as I walked down the hallway. An uncharacteristic response from him. He doesn't usually allow himself to lose control.

I should have put more stock in that realization but I didn't. I was too busy trying to figure out how I was going to marry Cole without getting any closer to Caleb, of whom I was deathly afraid by this point.

I had waited for Lochlan long enough. I couldn't wait anymore.

Cancelled noise.

One long experiment is over, and I have gracefully disengaged myself from the weight of conventional expectations to keep to my own path. Not a popular choice, sometimes not a pleasant one, but you have not walked in these shoes, and you do not know what it's like.

I'm going to leave my hearing aids in the drawer. Maybe I will pull them out again when I'm very old and frail and tiny, testing to see if I can still discern the chickadees from the general wind, maybe I will hear the train whistle too. But for now, they're going to go back into their case and become neglected, on purpose.

I don't want to flinch away from your voice. I don't want to be so distracted by a muffler or a passerby that I miss the horse braying softly from the fence. I don't want to catch the inflections in your voice when you censure my longings and I don't need to hear snow falling so quietly, ominously.

I don't know what an echo sounds like. I don't think I have ever heard a real one. Only in a movie, I suppose, and that's okay too. Really.

Take me to the ocean, standing right beside the tide and I can hear the waves crash into the planet with a ferocious comfort that engulfs me in bright and utter darkness. Send me for a walk in the early hours of the morning and I will hear the robins waking up their neighbors obnoxiously, efficiently. Leave me be with the big headphones and I will hear Ben breathe as he sings. I will hear nails on the strings and I will finally, once and for all, hear the rhythm guitar in any of the songs at all, because that is the most difficult part.

I will persist with my whimsical, apocryphal stories for when the children press upon me new epic tales while facing the other direction. I parrot back what I think I hear, to their utter delight and boundless frustration. We will take these new stories and expound on them until we are breathless, in fits of laughter, because I missed another somber bit of information, thrown haphazardly over their shoulders for me to catch.

I missed. Maybe I'll get it right the next time.

I can hear the rain. It's so heavy and lush, it pours all around me and I know it well, like the roar of a waterfall but so much deeper. Give me a voice and I will catch all of the emotion within it when it speaks. Give me a note and I will recite the lyrics from beginning to end. Audible gold. A richness beyond mere treasure.

Keep the sounds selective, and don't dilute them with the pedestrian bedlam of every day. I don't commit to hear what everyone else does. I am saving my sound allowance for the extraordinary now.

We are out in the orchard, dressed in our Sunday best.

The children are playing bunny-tag with some of the boys. It's a game we invented when they were very small. They're given baskets and they must find and collect all the eggs before the bunny catches them. The bunny is one of the boys, wearing a suit and a giant creepy bunny-head from an old video shoot. He runs in a nightmarish gait, almost in slow-motion, otherwise the kids don't have a chance. I know that this must look like a dream from the water side, a scene muted in pastel colors and nervous glee, soft-focused with lots of noise added for grain. I'm not really paying attention. My eyes are closed.

Ben has my hand, held tightly in his. We are standing closer to the water, so I can hear the surf crashing upon the names of the dead, so I can enjoy one of my favorite places in the reality safety of his hold. I am not allowed here otherwise. This is such a gift this morning in the hazy sunlight before the rainclouds rolls down the mountain again to soak us in sin.

I open my eyes and look at him.

He looks at the ground, considering his words and then he looks out to sea, squinting in the brightness. I am struck by the unforeseen congruities with which I focus on their gestures in order to soften their impending words. We agreed on honesty, and boy, is it ever painful.

Lochlan is where your head is, but I know where your heart is. That's all that matters, and it's something that little red-headed fucker likes to forget. I'm not worried. Besides, what's he going to do to win you over? Stick you in the middle of the tightrope and expect you to make back his investment? Fuck that, fuck him. I can't fix anything, I can just keep on doing what I know is right. And that includes building you up while they take turns trying to tear you down.

I'm nodding. Tears are now dripping off my chin, staining my dress with dark spots.

See, everyone thinks I'm the one who is fucked up and indecisive and destructive but that's all just part of my plan, Bridget.

Uncontrollable laughter begins to squeeze off my tears and my whole body is shaking now. He takes off his suit-jacket and wraps me in it and then puts his arms around me.

You don't belong to him. He's a habit, that's all. You don't need to define your loyalties to me. If he needs that then he is insecure and afraid and that's his problem, not yours. I won't do that. I've drawn my lines and I keep things clear. I wish he would do the same instead of pulling himself up on your memories.

Our conversation is interrupted by the children, who run over to show us their baskets, overflowing with tiny foil-wrapped eggs. Ben scoops a handful from each and eats them without unwrapping them, making the children scream with delight and disgust. They run back into the gardens laughing and Ben watches them go with such a huge grin on his face.

Ben is regularly dismissed for being so impulsive and unreliable, based on his behavior in his own circus of a past. A mistake for sure, for he should not be underestimated.

A blur of white fills my vision and the anonymous bunny-man tackles Ben to the ground and then jumps back up, pelting him with eggs, running off again. Everyone is laughing. Ben sits up, collects the eggs from the ground and eats another handful of foil, this time mixed with a bit of moss.

When the bunny reaches the other side of the yard, he removes the head, his red curls reflecting the retreating sun.

If she wanted you she wouldn't keep choosing men to put in front of you. Don't be so hopeful.

I heard his words even from inside, carried through the window and into my ears. I wanted to unhear it. Caleb still screwing Lochlan to the wall, making sure to grind it in good so it would hurt the most, going on almost thirty years now. Lochlan doesn't need to be told things he already knows.

* * *

They gave a seventeen-year-old guardianship rights for a twelve-year-old-girl?

Eighteen. I'm eighteen now.

Whatever, kid. I hope you know what you're getting yourself into.

Lochlan turned away from the gruff but kindly house manager and smiled at me with his teenage bravado. It's okay, peanut. Just paperwork. Here, take this change and go get some juice for us.

* * *

We took off for a late bike ride. It was warm and bright out. I held on tight against his back as he raced down the highway, my eyes closed. I can be young again that way, before everything became so complicated. Maybe he does that too. We are putting a lot of miles on this bike together, it seems. We've put a lot of miles on the planet already and far too many on each other.

He is putting gas in the bike while I play with the buttons on the pump.

He's right, you know. You just keep doing it.

I say nothing. I'm not going to have the same argument we always have here. I don't want to be left behind. I shake my head and he turns the key to start the bike. Conversation ends. I can't hear him anyway.

* * *

What do people do when they don't travel anymore?

With the show, you mean?

Yes. I am finishing the salty bits in the bottom of a cup of french fries.

He sits up and stares out to see, squinting slightly. He always looks like he's about to find the flaw in my logic when he has this expression.

I don't know, Bridge. I guess they pick a place they like best and live out the end of their days. We can find a little house we like and we can sit on the back porch watching the sea and trading our favorite memories. When the midway comes to town we'll go and ride the rides and eat cotton candy and have a wonderful day.

I smile into the sun, shaking my head to get my hair out of my eyes.

I need to trim your bangs again, he says and the moment of warmth is over. He is parental again. Worrying too much. We fight. I don't want bangs anymore and it's my hair.

* * *

Why didn't you just stay with me.

I don't answer, since it is less of a question and more of an accusation, a regret. I could point out that he was the one who freaked out and left me, so coldly so he wouldn't have to feel it, knowing I had a place to land, foolishly thinking he was doing the right thing.

You keep..you keep doing this. Just out of reach and I can't hold on to you.

It's been a long day. I dump my wine into the grass and set the glass down on the table. I'm going to head inside.

Just stay here for a few minutes, please, peanut.

I don't want to fight with you, Lochlan.

We won't. Okay? We won't fight. I just like having you to myself.

I look at the moon. He has gone back into subconscious territory, where everything he thinks about comes rushing out to poke at and burn our hearts, turning tingles into stabbing agony and inklings into paroxysms.

Don't listen to Caleb when he talks to you. It serves no purpose.

I could say the same for you. You have to stay away from him.

I can't. I have Henry.

He swears under his breath and settles low into the chair, taking a long drink from his beer. I wish he would put down the beer. I wish he would put down the past.

We got our retirement, didn't we? He chuckles to himself. The expression on his face is the furthest thing from humor that I have ever seen.

What?

Remember when we talked about what we would do when we were too old to travel with the show anymore and I said we would live by the sea and sit in our chairs watching the waves? Well, here we fucking are, peanut. I should have been the fortune teller. This is to the letter. Maybe we made it after all.

Yeah. I can't think anymore. My eyes filled up and drowned out the thoughts in my head.

Only you're bound to someone else. Someone who doesn't even fucking deserve you.

Lochlan, don't. (My mouth moved but no sound came out.)

You belong to me.

I stand up so fast, I knock over my chair.

I know. It wasn't what I meant to say, though and I clapped my hands over my mouth, horrified.

* * *

I hand him a coffee, automatically. I have set out nine different cups out this morning. His is blue. I always pour his first and I don't know why. Oh yeah, he is always closest.

Thank you, gorgeous.

He's in such a good mood. I almost drop the cup on the floor between us.

Loch-

Don't, Bridget. Just leave it. Whether it's true or not, just leave it. Please. It's all I have now. I wanted things to turn out differently, I take too much from you now but please, whatever you do, don't take that sentence back.

What sentence? Ben is behind Lochlan suddenly and I startle and then I do drop my full mug of coffee on the floor.

You need a keeper, little bee.

She has one, Lochlan says, to no one in particular.

I want to tell you my wedding ring is still way too big and crawls off my finger every chance it gets. I have a rough bump where my ring finger meets my palm because of always clenching my fingers to keep it in place. It's a full time job. I should get the ring re-sized but I don't want to leave it anywhere anymore.

If I tell you that, in addition to telling you I refuse to eat prawns with their armor still on and that I can be a skeptic but still miss a nuance a mile wide, then I won't have to tell you that everyone is here today.

Literally, everyone.

Well, except for Cole and for Jacob because they're dead but everyone else is within reach presently and it's not been easy, but maybe that's because Joel is watching me because he can read my face in spite of my ability to charm him into ruin and absent servitude, Nolan is watching me because he cares about us and really he wants to do everything he can to make our lives easier if he can, and Caleb is watching me just because...well, because he covets, and there is no way of sugarcoating that to make it sound like anything else anymore.

Be careful what you wish for was an early tattoo, a reminder that I failed to heed. His favorite quote, not mine, and when I read it my brain says it in his voice and that makes me want to snatch up a dull spoon and scoop out the contents of my mind like pumpkin guts on Halloween Eve. Carve a scary face on the front, light a candle and let's get this night underway.

We took the costumes off. After a while things become so uncomfortable you no longer care to remain in character. We have stopped playing nice. So many years and it feels like yesterday and he left and made a go at life in the hot potato and I got married and got a job at the bank and every chance I got I would take leaves of absence to join the closest show and warm my freak blood under the big top and everyone complained and lowed against that but I did it anyway. I dropped out of university at the age of twenty-one because I don't know what people wanted from me and at the show I knew for certain. Sometimes Lochlan would join me but more often than not I was alone just because once the worst passes you begin at the bottom and you don't have to worry so much about things. They have already happened, the only direction is up.

And I was in harm's way because I don't know how to be anywhere else, clearly. And I'm not anymore but it still feels the same. The sun is warm on my face, the promise of summer is just within reach and I want to pack light and hit the tents now, because I can make a spare few dollars and escape into unreality, where I fit in best.

I suck at real life, Lochie.

You just think you do, Bridge.

Fair traffic control

Ok, this phone just rules everything. Not only for the epic little camera (I have not shared the good pictures with you), but for the easy to personalize interface and all the apps! Just like an iPhone, only I can have all the pink icons and heart-dotted fonts and crazy looking weather skins that I want. There are two things that bother me and they aren't deal-breakers anymore. One is the keyboard. I know it's been just two weeks or less but I'm finding it a slow process to type.

The other is battery life. I did not expect the five, six days I could get out of a Blackberry without batting an eye, but really I think this needs to be plugged in once, preferably twice a day. I can see a solar charger pod in my future for just-in-case.

And yes, I can't get past level four in Angry Birds Easter. The boys are all eye-rollie about that, saying the thrill has passed, but hey, I'm a noob. Let me haz mah flyin' birdies. There were no games like this on my Blackberries.

They think I am funny, because I'm in their faces every ten seconds with HEY! Look, I made my app drawer into a bunny (I want to say bunneh but I'm a grown woman). Or, OMG. MACRO FOR THE WIN.

This is a weird day, or possibly I might be a tiny bit excited. A three-day weekend for everyone looms on today's horizon and I will be there to meet it, waving my arms over my head, showing it where to land.

Nolan is coming up. Joel will be stopping in, since he's in town but for business. Caleb is home from la belle province and in fine form so I may purchase and register a taser and keep it in my pocket and if he gets too close to me I can just erase his memory or knock him down if I'm really lucky.

Codex fell into a permanent place in The Songs That Make Bridget Who She Is (whoever that is) and I added glassblowing to my horrible little private, inadequate, insufficient, reluctant bucket list.

I finished all the alcohol in the house and I gave myself a fucking french manicure with a ten-dollar kit and I swear I can't see the difference between my nails and my neighbor's, though hers have fake length-extensions glued on or something and mine don't. PJ says that means I can wipe my own ass. Har. Perspective AND mean. And questions! We have them.

Here beside the bunneh. Hoppity-hop.

Snort.

Victory. It's mine. Okay a little one only, but that's enough.

As a six-year veteran of gardening in less than ideal conditions, today is a momentous day for me. Behold, I bring you...microlilacs.

Or maybe they are macro-lilacs, since I had to ratchet the camera down to get anything at all and I almost missed them in my travels around the garden, having dismissed this sort of generic looking perennial that I had forgotten the name of over the winter.

I never said I was a conscientious gardener, just a persistent one. I've wanted my own scratch-grown lilacs since forever. Now I got 'em.

Yay.

This is so wholly inadequate as a post, but I don't have time for more.

Three years. That's 1095 days married to Tucker, since we are on a nickname tangent again. Three years of watching perfectly good lip glosses disappear into his giant mouth that could wake the dead (but won't, even by request) with yelling, singing, or a mix of the two (or snoring or laughing, when he really gets going). Ben is only quiet when things aren't good. Boy, is he ever loud these days.

Three years of defiance in the face of relentless pressure. Three years of awesomely destructive food fights and ridiculous laughter that doesn't cease until someone wets their pants (usually me, fine, okay). Three years of doubts and arguments and enough tears to lift a large vessel and carry it to a far-away land and an effort to build a life that is so fucking normal that castles have been replaced with chalets and fairytales with a gritty, perfect reality swept off the sidewalk that leads to nowhere. He took the crown. He put it up somewhere high. I can't have it back, I am told.

(It's the journey, stupid. Stop waiting).

Three years of growing pains and butting heads. Three years of desperate, legendary love. We're doing just fine if you call living in the garden of good and evil acceptable accommodations. We slay people in our day to day lives with our devotion and our loyalties and we worry them with our mutual infatuation. The need to shelter each other is larger than life and it doesn't erode into the sea because we put in a breakwater and everything is going to be okay. We keep testing but these bonds are holding and we are wrapped up in love, held tight by our friends and our promises to each other. They call them vows, we call them promises and promises are things you don't break.

Three years, and we are no longer newlyweds but we still have a long way to go before we qualify as long-haulers. That's okay, time seems to move quickly when it comes to happy things. We'll be there soon enough.

Ben pointed out, while he was in the shower and I was brushing my teeth, that the third year modern anniversary gift category is glass. I asked him what we should do about that. He said he knew, and he pressed himself, fully naked, up against the glass shower door. He actually put too much pressure on the door and it flew open and the bathroom got soaked. I got soaked. Ben didn't care. He pulled me against his chest and hung on until we almost broke our necks on the slippery floor. After that other things may have happened, and I'll leave those up to your imagination for now, I have a date to get ready for.

Happy Anniversary, big Ben. I love you. Still. Always.

Hot damn.

Ex-Nomads and little mysteries.

I see today with a newsprint fray
My night is colored headache-grey
Don't wake me with so much.
The ocean machine is set to nine
I'll squeeze into heaven and valentine
My bed is pulling me, gravity
Daysleeper.

Duncan is the picture of Kerouac-cool today. He's the only one that didn't venture into the depths of retail hell yesterday in search of jeans that weren't shredded and on life support. Every five to seven years I can get the boys to buy some new goods but it's a tough sell until their wallets, phones and cash start to disappear as they're out and about, thanks to the holes holding up their pockets and revealing all their secrets (no, not those secrets. We don't let it come to that.)

Not Duncan though. He travels light and holds his ground. A pack of Belmonts, an ancient moleskin notebook with the stub of a pencil stuck in the middle and his scratched-up but spotless aviator sunglasses. Matches from restaurants he doesn't look like he can afford but can over most people I have met. Two keys. One for the front door of our house and one for his truck. A black elastic looped around one wrist to tie back his hair when it's necessary to do so. His phone. That's it. I've never seen him with anything else, ever.

I have Carte Blanche to read his notebook whenever I want, since we always seem to be sharing the same page in life anyway. He is a poet by definition and a tech by necessity only he is far more seasoned and useful than Dalton, if we are comparing. Dalton is much more pie-in-the-sky and in awe of the world and doesn't get a lot accomplished, though he tries. To his credit he will drop everything and hit the road just like his big brother and so that's how I wound up playing his unofficial real estate agent for so long and why it made so much sense for him to move into the house when August decided to play musical addresses over the winter.

They are firmly on Team Jacob, if we are keeping score, but we aren't so that's okay too. I met Dalton (we call him TJ, if you want to read more) through Jacob and then later on when they met Ben they defected quickly and wound up on Team Benjamin. But Ben doesn't actually have a team because he's an independent door to door salesman, okay?

And Duncan didn't technically need a job because he's paid his dues and got a little lucky too and he and Andrew discovered they could go around the world with backpacks and knowledge and they did it for a long time and now they have settled down a little more. I think age does that, though Duncan said he has seen the world three times over and now he just wants to be home with us and that makes me really warm when he says it like that and I really enjoy having TJ living here now, it's like yet another piece of the puzzle has fallen into place and at some point here we are finally going to see the Big Picture.

Because I still have no idea what it is.

Hardly interested in your definition of how well-adjusted we are.

This is a silly day. We are having slow wake-ups and long coffees. The dishwasher is droning in my ears, the dryer one floor below thumping along with a quiet hum. I'm a huge fan of dumb things like putting the laundry in at five in the morning and then it's done and away by eight.

Ben is assaulting my ears with the latest Solid Steel podcast. I can't figure this part of him out, after all this time. He is all METALMETALMETAL and then throws in a hint of Techno or whatever it is. He says this is akin to my need to infuse classical music into my metal crushes like sprinkles on a chocolate cupcake. Quirks, we got 'em. We don't have chocolate cupcakes, however. Maybe that can be rectified soon.

We snuggled in last night and watched Hereafter. A fantastic-directed movie, and I have a huge crush on Matt Damon anyway. I thought it would be like What Dreams May Come but it wasn't. It wasn't sad or difficult to watch either, even though I have a preoccupation with death and with sad, too. A good way to spend two hours. I only feel asleep very briefly once. A coup, if you will. Because this morning I saw the trailer for 2012, I was like what's with the spaceship? And the boys were all like Bridge...you slept through it. It's an ark. Don't ask.

And I am not going to draw out the issue of whether or not Lochlan will be permitted to decide Ruth's future so you can stop emailing me about that. I'm sure we'll butt heads on that subject and a zillion others over the next decade.

Ruth will be twelve this summer, a positively bittersweet number and don't think it doesn't bring up a lot of reluctant nostalgia in everyone. Well, three of us, to be sure. And I bet it is frustrating for you to come and read and not understand the gravity of this and not have all the facts and wonder what in the hell transpired but really it's very complicated and I have always tried to structure my writing around my relationships and some total fluff too and leave out pertinent facts because it's my choice to do so.

Just like Lochlan has made his choice to return to my life under less-ideal circumstances because, like my readers seem to feel, some Bridget is better than no Bridget at all.

And now if you'll excuse me, there is a conference call to be navigated and a dishwasher to be unloaded and then the day will be fully underway and free to indulge in anything we want.

The hard way.

The circus is the only ageless delight you can buy for money.
~Ernest Hemingway.

Over lunch Ruth was extolling the virtues of her gymnastics class, bragging rights sewn down when she demonstrated some serious contortionist moves for us in the middle of the kitchen floor.

I pointed out that soon she'd be able to earn her keep with her natural talents, and maybe she should consider joining the circus.

How old do you have to be?

Eighteen.

I have a little time left to prepare, then.

Yes.

A lot has changed in the days since our run. Now there are age minimums, insurance mandates, regular health care, and on-site education. There are cross-country auditions and the Internet, and a whole faction of people who oppose all circuses based on a few bad apples who spoiled what should be a magical event no matter what age you claim as your own (the ones who used wild animals and kept them in tiny cages on the road for endless months straight, to be clear).

And still Lochlan shook his head violently, meeting my eyes over the tops of their heads, accusing me of being impulsive to willingly encourage my daughter to venture in to the land of freakshow-calibre darkness and depravity.

Only it's not an impulse. It's right there, within her blood as it was in mine and I could think of nothing better than to live by one's wits, skipping over formal education and predictable paths, running straight up the centre of foolish, making a left at ridiculous, and then coming to a full stop at impetuous and calling it home.

I'm not going to fight about it now. He can spend the next six years trying to talk her out of it, if he wants. If Ruth is anything like me, she won't listen anyway.