Heading home.

And I wonder day to day
I don't like you anyway
I don't need your shit today
You're pathetic in your own way
I feel for you
Better fucking go away
I will behave
I'm doing the best I ever did
I'm doing the best that I can
Now go away

I don't need to fantasize
You are my pet all the time
I don't mind if you go blind
You get what you get
Until you're through with my life
I'm doing the best that I can
Now go away

More later. We might even make it for supper.

Drowning Halloween.

At midnight we opened the gates to the sea and threw the pumpkins into the ocean (okay, not really, pumpkins are heavy so they pretty much landed at the bottom of the cliff). Overhand, underhand, two handed and at one point I really thought the pumpkin was going to bring me with it when I lost my balance and was steadied by unsteady-Benjamin, who had this bright idea in the first place but wouldn't have been able to save my life in the condition he was in anyway.

Smashed, like the pumpkins on the cragged shoreline.

Within hours we were on a flight. He drank through that too and drank through breakfast and will now probably drink through lunch. Not uncontrollable, falling-down drunk, just a little bit too confident to be my Benjamin. A little too loud. A little too know-it-all. A little too rough.

He fits right in down here. Everyone's an asshole.

Let me love you too
Let me love you to death
Hey am I good enough for you?
Hey am I good enough for you?
Am I?
Am I?
Am I good enough
For you?

Smokescreen

I'd like to go for a coffee and a cinnamon roll at some cozy little place, curling up in a comfortable corner chair, watching a fire I'm not responsible for, watching people who aren't responsible for me, being visible and invisible and maybe just normal for once.

Instead I am packing for LA. The keeper of angels in the city of angels. Why? Who the hell knows? I don't run this show anymore.

Wallace and Bridget.

The room is a pale sea glass turquoise-green, with bare wooden picture frames and a bed frame that was stripped and sanded and left natural, because it looked so amazing he couldn't paint it again. A bowl of shells is on the desk. Hints of his favorite ocean are everywhere but it isn't kitschy, it's home. The only giveaway is the set of vintage midway photographs on the wall and the photograph of a teenage Bridget on the desk, embraced by that rusted Ferris wheel from four lifetimes ago.

My skin is cold from being outdoors early, as the sun was rising. I snuggle into the blankets and his arm slides down around me, pulling me in against his warmth. A sleepy kiss crash lands against my ear and he whispers Good morning, beautiful. I return the greeting and close my eyes. The house is quiet, the waves are quiet outside his window, thrown wide open, wind twisting the curtains.

I reach up and press that imaginary button again. Time stops, but only for as long as it takes me to exhale a single breath.

I sleep.

Surprisingly I wake up closer to a reasonable hour and he is nowhere to be found. The blankets are tucked tightly around me, my covered coffee mug on his bedside table, beside his glasses and a copy of Infinite Jest.

And a note that says Sleep in for a while, Bridgie. Just for once. Love you.

For crying out loud.

He didn't ask the question out loud. Jesus, people. After thirty-odd years together we don't have to say everything out loud. It's just there but I don't respond. Stop skimming and actually read the words. If you're in a rush, come back when you have time.

Otherwise you miss things. Trust me. You miss things.

Every chance I get/Nine days out.

Would you, Bridget? Would you miss me if I died?

Lochlan's arms go around me and his fingers are over mine at the keyboard but I block him and push backward until I am away from the desk and he is far from my words. Hurt films his eyes. He waits for me to go first.

You can't have that. That's Jacob's.

A sentence?

Yes. I'm sorry. Wait, no, I'm not. Please don't do it again.

I am formal and that would hurt more than anything else. I fight his stability, his unwillingness to follow me into the velocity of my emotions. I turn around when it's safe and he's not there. It's not a question of needing him to do it, it's a question of him not being so fucking perfect all the time. The only time you ever see a hint of imperfection is when he's frustrated. It isn't fair. I fell for his maturity and I stayed for his curls. He always has his arms out for me but he also always thinks I can do better.

My response to that is to do less well, just to be a little shit.

It changes with the weather. He is the fair-weather boy, after all. Make hay while the sun shines, Bridgie. Count the stacks later when there's no more to be had. Smile big and they'll empty their pockets. Smile big and you won't be hungry tonight.

He won't ask the question of me. He wouldn't dare. And yet it sits there between us like it sits between every boy I know, Ben included. Men who want to leave behind someone who loved them so much they cease to function properly, forever broken. It's an ego thing. It's a wonderment.

I don't answer that. I can't tell them how it feels. I don't know yet. It's not the same for Cole and Jacob. There's no equal division of grief there, honestly. Doesn't mean it hurts any less, it just means it's different for everyone. I don't plan to find out for sure though. Not for another fifty years and I'm too deaf to hear the news. Should I be so lucky as to make it that far.

* * *

Caleb arrived mid-afternoon. Clearly I am in trouble. I contacted his usual pilot to enquire after some flight times, specifically hours to prepare, the shortest notice I can give him, and how much involvement Caleb needs in my plans.

What I don't realize is that the boys have grown smarter over the years as I dumb right out and they are ready for this. The pilot calls Caleb and relays most of my conversation and most likely will receive a well-deserved bonus for his loyalty and I am clearly grounded. The upcoming week will be spent here as much as running away from my head and running from their faces would somehow make it easier because then I am distracted and I don't have to watch my mind inflict more punishment on my heart.

This is one of the first times they beat me to my own plans and I am rather surprised and completely speechless, as I have been able to slip between them and take off running as long as I can remember and suddenly I'm the one being stapled to the floor and they've checked and rechecked the locks on the door and there isn't even any point in fighting. I'm not going to be able to run.

The fluttering is ramping up. I am self-checking, watching my hands when I talk, when I clear the dishes, when I'm walking to the table and back. Lochlan is too and he really really hates the helpless fingers in the air searching for something to hold on to. He grabs my hand when I walk by and pulls me into his lap. Squeeze. I'm resistant. It's been a long day. Hell, it's been a long fall and we have as usual only gotten along when we can touch only I haven't touched him because I look for focus and that isn't Lochlan and the words aren't either right now.

I'm giving myself permission to be okay with that. Cut me some slack. I could have been in New Zealand by now. Still might, if I can find a break in the boys to slip through when they're looking the other way. Problem is, they never are.

You're such an inspiration
For the ways that I will
Never, ever choose to be
Oh so many ways for me to show you
How your savior has abandoned you

Fuck your God, your Lord, your Christ
He did this, took all you had and
Left you this way, still you pray, never stray, never
Taste of the fruit, never thought to question "Why?"

Pretty violent.

Jacob and Cole would watch each other eat. You could have cut the tension and served it for dessert as far as I was concerned but the others would simply ignore it and mentally prepare to step in, because they would invariably resort to their fists to solve every last perceived insult. To me a fist is a symbol of desperation. It screams 'I've got nothing left. Let's go visceral.'. It screams 'I don't want to listen to you, I just want you to hurt.'.

Both Cole and Jacob are somewhere else now, but the violence stuck around.

I've thrown punches at the boys before. I'm not proud of it, in spite of the fact that it's akin to hitting a rock but I'm even more ashamed of how much they all fight with each other. The primaries (for lack of a better word) always seem to be the worst, as if it's some badge of honor to give a good friend a black eye and put him in his place. As if that one small, violent victory is going to hold. As if Bridget will be impressed with your ability to protect, defend and wound.

Bridget is not impressed, for the record. I've been begging them for years not to ruin my evening, my table, my perception of safety. I've been rearranging seating plans and screwing things to the floor and refusing to cook big dinners because eventually someone says the wrong thing or hell, with Cole and Jake it would be a look. Cole was so good at facial expression, Jake would read them and blow up. The laws of physics dictate that when someone over six feet sits close to a table and stands up abruptly they will pull a top heavy table right up with them. Chair goes backward, table goes forward, and Bridget goes upstairs.

I don't buy breakable dishes and I stopped putting candles on the table a long time ago. I feed people in shifts, trying to group the least combative ones with the most to decrease the odds and I have leveled ultimatums that should have kept the peace but didn't. I have distracted, deflected and orchestrated food fights instead of fist fights. I have spent hours on my hands and knees flicking shards of broken glass out of the cracks in the floorboards with a dull knife because nothing else would draw them out. I have mopped floors and wished for a crew with better manners.

I have accepted apologies and hugs for the mess. I have forgiven.

I have watched as they never change.

I have learned something new recently. Instead of feeding the children first so they can go and play or go to bed, depending on what time we want to have dinner, I set two extra places and the children eat with us now. It's been a nice surprise.

Moments that would have sent the table sailing into the air and all of my dishes crashing to the floor previously now only served to signify an abrupt subject change and a very long conversation about the merits of store-bought cookies versus home baked or something equally benign.

I don't actually believe the boys will change but it's been a nice reprieve to collect the dirty dishes from the table instead of the floor. Or so they tell me. I make them clean up now.

The boys, not the children.

HA. Payback that goes way back (with credit to PJ for the poetry.)

Part two. (Or: I never really did learn to read a map or pay attention to the landmarks when in unfamiliar territory, or familiar for that matter.)

And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make.

(I raised the bar and it held, strangely enough. I could step back but I kept my hands up just in case. I could still catch it, maybe. Possibly. Well, I'll just stand here and wait and see what happens next.)

Well, then.

I said I listened to Caleb's offer. Caleb was far less interested in seeing that I was well-fed than he was in having me for himself. Even at twelve I think I understood that but in spite of my daydreams about older teenage boys and especially boys with cars, money and charm, I only ever had eyes for Lochlan.

I wasn't about to consider anything else. Some days I wish I never had.

Lochlan was the sun and I was mercury. I revolved around him in a small circle, never far from his reach. Beginning with trailing behind him at the age of eight to wishing madly for his romantic attention at ten to running screaming from him through the cornfields at twelve when he found out that I had gone to Caleb's motel room and come home with all that money. Money I had not earned yet.

But Lochlan didn't know that. At twelve years old you shouldn't have to running from anyone. He caught up with me just as I reached the end of the row (I was slow from a beer and a half) and threw his arms out and I went down, face first into the dust. He turned me over and I started to fight. He has no right to make me scared. I'm throwing fists and he's ignoring them. I couldn't hurt him if I wanted to, but he's hurt nonetheless.

He's trying to talk to me but I can't have a conversation flat on my back in the dirt while I'll fighting to get away and so I cease to struggle and play dead, turning my head to one side, staring straight through the corn. He puts his head down, resting his forehead on mine.

Stay away from him.

I nod.

I mean it, Bridget.

He relaxed his hold and I turned, crawling away from him until I could get my feet under me and then taking off again. I remember hearing him screaming my name. I remember not knowing which way would take me back. It was getting dark and I couldn't hear Lochlan anymore. (Oh shit oh shit oh shit. Help me Lochie please I'm sorry I didn't know this would happen I just wanted you to stop yelling.)

I ran until the sun went down and then I ran some more.

He was folding it. Paper airplane, fan, sailboat. I couldn't take my eyes off it while he talked, couldn't remember what he said, all I saw was the faded red and white fifty dollar bill being turned over in Caleb's fingers while he talked in those soothing tones he mastered from high school.

It was the biggest bill I had ever seen and I don't know what it is about him with money, he has always had it and I have always been fascinated, almost hypnotized by him with it. I'm ashamed of that but at the same time I have accepted the choices I have made. Hell, I've had to defend everything I have ever done at this point, may as well check everything off, or as much as I can before I step off the curb and that truck comes along and I fail to hear them yelling and BOOM.

Game over, princess. Oh, I should be so lucky as to never see it coming. However, with my luck I know there will be no such thing.

Oh, right, Caleb was talking about food, some place in town he had gone to with some of his college friends and how good the chicken was, and the mashed potatoes and endless bread. My belly growled, my mouth was wet. The thought of actual hot food was something that I thought about twenty-four hours a day, salivating over and I tried to understand when Lochlan would spend money on beer and he always told me it had a lot of calories, because that's the wisdom of seventeen-year-olds. That's the priority of seventeen-year-olds. Beer before food. Only I wasn't going to be seventeen for years, and I was still growing. I was still needing more than I was getting and I was always gaunt and sickly and tiny and tired. So tired all the time. If only I could just have toast with butter and honey and maybe a big glass of cold orange juice I would feel so good but then he would hold me and tell me next town maybe we would stay in a motel and order room service and maybe three plates because the next town was rich and everyone came out to the show.

The next town was always a lie. I wanted this fifty dollar bill. I would take it to the place Caleb told me about and get the food and bring it back to Lochlan and we wouldn't be hungry. Plus there would be enough change left for maybe two more nights and we would be ahead instead of always behind. Maybe I would have a second beer even though not only did it cost extra but it put me to sleep and then I would wake up with a headache and the whole next day would be harder and slower and fuzzyish and awful.

I'm daydreaming again and I'm so hungry and I almost miss what Caleb is saying.

What?

He repeats himself and this time I am listening closely. There is this money and then there is more. All I have to do is NOT tell Lochlan where it came from.

I am nodding. I'm so hungry I would have agreed to anything. He is incensed things have gotten this bad. I went from a nice little middle-class girl to a circus rat, an always dirty, hungry, poor, wild, slightly feral girl who can pick pockets and has to be dragged off the Ferris wheel when it's time to shut off the lights. Oh, and I am not permitted to actually pick pockets, Lochlan is scared that someone will catch me and he will never see me again.

I finish the first beer and Caleb passes me a second one, smiling. I get to work on it too. It's better than nothing in my belly. That much I have learned, along with the fact that it's William Lyon Mackenzie King on the fifty.