There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.

~Charles Baudelaire

Rubgy nation.

Every man should have a beard like Adam Kleeberger.

Doesn't he look like he wears a kilt and carries around a broadsword on his days off?

Why, yes. Yes, he does.

(I'm sure I will pay for this with every conversation of my afternoon beginning with "Hey Bridget, you know what every woman should have?" but that's okay. I hear enough of that anyway.)

I am the battle line.

Let the kick drum kick one time
Breathe out, let your mind unwind
Eyes on the ceiling, looking for the feeling
Wide open let your own light shine

Yeah, where the fight begins
Yeah, underneath the skin
Beneath these hopes and where we've been
Every fight comes from the fight within

I was busy. I was busy giving him a lap dance.

He reached up and pushed my bangs away from my eyes, tracing his fingers across my head, around to my back, down the faint line between my shoulder blades. I was pulled in for a kiss, somewhat reluctantly and then my stubborn streak was erased as he tried to melt me into his arms. I pushed him away again but his hands remained on my hips. A beat marked with the music by his thumbs as I reached down and lifted his shirt up. He took over, pulling it off and then grabbed both of my hips and pulled me down on the sheets. He hooked his thumbs under ribbons, pulling my clothing off. Such a rush, always such a rush.

Except for this time.

He stared down at me in the purple-yellow light of the waning sunset.

I asked what he was waiting for and he smiled, barely a hint of a raised corner of his mouth and I swore at him and laughed. My breathtaking insolence was rewarded with a kiss. He held himself up, both arms locked, keeping his weight off me while I writhed and squirmed away from him. I sat up and he threw me back down. I turned over and tried to crawl away but he pulled me back in, turning me over, crushing me down beneath him.

You're not going anywhere.

I have nowhere else to go.

Then give in, Bridget. Please.

I let him force my knees apart, more ribbons snapping along the way. Baby-pink satin shredded and dropped to the floor. I threaded my fingers through his long red curls and let go. I gave in to him. Just a little. Just enough.

The song is on a loop inside my brain.

Eyes open, open wide
I can feel it like the crack in my spine
I can feel like the back of my mind
I am the war inside

"I came into music because I wanted the bread." ~Mick Jagger.

A few weeks ago I tweeted (twittered? twatted?) a picture of a loaf of Jake's bread.

Ben said no way in hell could it be better than Ben's bread. Ben's bread is a Halifax staple. So much so that when my parents said they were coming out to spend Thanksgiving with us we asked if they could fill a suitcase with Ben's bread. That's how good it is, once you leave Nova Scotia you have dreams of spreading a thick layer of smooth peanut butter on this bread and eating it for a meal. Repeatedly. For the rest of your life.

I think Ben was having a my-dick-is-bigger competition with a ghost. Or I did, that is, until Lochlan came in and asked what we were talking about. Ben told him it was too bad he didn't have a bread named after him like all of Bridget's husbands do. And he started to laugh because it's such a comical subject. The whole thing was just dumb. What a dig. What an ass. But I didn't have to worry, Lochlan was a good sport and won the pissing contest by a landslide.

I do have a bread named after me, so it's all good, he said.

Ben finally stopped laughing. Oh yeah, brother? What's that?

Wonder bread.

I am still laughing. Under my breath, behind the door, but laughing nonetheless.

Under takers.

Hello, Poem.

He is behind me and I still jump out of my skin. I put it back on slowly so his eyes can linger on the scars. He reaches out and smooths my hair back from my ears, down the back of my neck. I had it cut. It stops at my shoulders now.

Hallo, Caleb.

He leans over me now, taking my words as affection, resting his chin on the top of my head. It hurts and I bounce upward once to make it known. Too hard. Don't actually put your weight behind it. He settles for poking his head in beside my face.

What are you doing?

Filling out the information forms for the school.

Don't they have this information already?

Yes, but since it's changing we need to update them.

I see. Maybe I can have a greater interest in this sort of thing now.

What sort of thing? Your child?

His hand came down on my wrist, squeezing it until we both heard a crack and I cried out. Then abruptly he let go. Funny how the unpredictable temper remains the sole common bond between Cole and Caleb. After me, of course.

Well, it isn't funny, actually. Let's call it interesting instead.

Sorry.

I pick my wrist up and rub it gingerly. Ben walks into the room and I drop my hands into my lap.

Caleb.

Benjamin. Caleb walks around and sits down in the chair opposite me. Bridget is showing me the school forms. I've never seen so many invasive questions.

They need to know custody arrangements and what's going on at home so they can work with the kids.

I meant the list of emergency contacts. There are ten listed, but space for only two.

Bridget's afraid she'll miss a call. Ben says it matter-of-factly.

I can' t hear the phone. I concur.

Maybe you should wear your hearing aids.

Maybe you should mind your own business. I covered my mouth. Pissing him off won't help matters.

Caleb smiled generously. Since Henry, and you, are my business I'll let that go.

Ben stopped walking and looked back at him.

I mean, I won't take it personally. Caleb corrects himself.

Ben frowns but keeps going. He will stop in the library and find something on his phone to make him look preoccupied, just to keep an ear out for me. See? It's already working. Caleb is forced to come to me now. No surprises, no privacy, no locked doors keeping the knights out and the evil in.

Do you have our budget for September?

No, sorry, I'll have it by the end of the week.

Maybe you can just take out whatever you need. I really don't need to sign off on it, do I?

You just finished saying you want a greater interest in what's happening.

I trust you.

That's not the point.

Noted.

Oh, he's just going to lie down and take it, now. This is awesome.

Also, you're going to have to ignore Lochlan for a while, he is still warming up to this whole musical houses thing.

Caleb looked at the floor. Then the ceiling. Then out the window. I kept staring until his eyes met mine.

Do you really think this will work?

That depends.

On?

Are you afraid of Lochlan?

He grinned and shook his head at the floor. Then he looked back at me defiantly. Not particularly.

Maybe you should be. I wasn't smiling when I said it.

There's only one thing I'm afraid of in this world, Bridget.

I waited, saying nothing. I expected him to answer his own question with Benjamin. I looked into his blue eyes. They had softened, filled with water, unabashedly, abruptly moved.

Your emotions. They are so strong. They bring...(he is fighting for control now and losing) They bring all of us to our knees, Bridget.

I nodded. I'm aware of what I can do. I'm not sure he is, not truly. Then don't make me regret this decision. You wanted to be on the inside, I'm giving you one chance to fix everything you broke. You better not let her down.

He looked up, dazed, still teary-eyed and clued in. He knew who I meant.

I won't. I promise. I'm not going to let her down again. It was a whisper. I'm still not sure I can believe him but I'm going to try.

Deireadh Fómhair

It's October today (above, in Gaelic, if you are so inclined.)

The first day, to be exact.

October conjures up thoughts of pumpkins, corduroy and woodsmoke, to me. Decadent coffees with caramel or spice and mulled wines. Pot roast and chicken stew. Baked apples and scarves. Walks through the neighborhood that is sprinkled with brightly colored leaves and children plotting their Halloween costumes in earnest.

The ocean is still warm but the sand turns cold, and the light changes radically. It's my favorite time of year on the beach, in sweaters and jeans with bare feet, the wind still braiding my hair, my eyes still scrunched up to see beyond the sun.

Penalty killing.

No hockey this year.

Last year's experiment of buying private ice time so that they could safely beat the shit out of each other holds little appeal this year for Ben and Lochlan. They are listed on a local league as alternates but otherwise I do believe they will stick to beating the shit out of each other in the yard/kitchen/library/theatre sans blades. Possibly still with sticks and gloves, however.

***

Even though I have leveled a self-imposed embargo on posting here about wedding details, I will tell you this. Caleb's condo is officially listing this week. Daniel and Schuyler move into their new home November 2nd. They actually have four days to paint prior to that. Busy busy. PJ will be moved in a few hours, or as fast as they can carry his things up the hill so Caleb is aiming for November 4th. Then he'll be freshly installed in time for anniversaries and landslides.

I know.

And Lochlan is holding a grudge. I bet it's heavy. I bet it burns. He's warming back up slowly. I find myself following him, throwing myself at his mercy verbally while he shoots warning fireballs out of his eyes to drop it or he'll change his mind. While he is pleased to have a closer eye on me overall or maybe what will amount to permanent, ironclad supervision, he's mortified and angry and completely betrayed that Caleb is going to be living here.

And I understand but sometimes things are the way they are for a reason and we're all already irrevocably tied together forever so what the fuck is the point of schlepping back and forth downtown anymore? It's ridiculous and so I made a decision this time. Me. Bridget. The one who doesn't even get to pick out her own lingerie for the day.

I did something on my own and I'm fine with it. They will warm up, just as we all adapt and evolve and get used to things. Everyone in one place. Everyone within reach.

I don't know if this is the best thing. It's safer. It's more transparent. It's easier. It's better for Henry's development. It's reassuring, somehow and it's done anyway so they may as well stop trying to talk me out of it and start rolling up their sleeves to help Caleb move all that stuff into his new digs.

I'm kidding. He already has a service booked. I should know, I booked it. Right, not a moving truck, a whole planned operation. Thousands of dollars for white-glove service. For twenty whole kilometers. He's going to find it very interesting living in the land of real people again. Of course, maybe he'll hire a butler and blow my hopes for reality to smithereens.

Maybe he should hire a Fortune Teller instead and then he would see that his future has not become some sort of obstacle-free path back into my good graces, in fact, I'm hoping that instead he will now have a front-row seat to the only love triangle I care to validate. And maybe he'll see that you get more flies with honey than you do with hellfire. Maybe he'll come to all sorts of realizations and life will be better now.

Or maybe they'll all go back to playing hockey. Because the extra padding helps when you're in the mood to cause damage. And we have health insurance again so we can pay to have their teeth replaced.

Resuscitated soul.

I want to tell you that I tried
To live it like a song

I keep poking my tongue out of the corner of my mouth to unstick the lock of hair that has become glued to my lipgloss. I am trying to smile seriously at the same time. I fail and start to laugh. Jacob sticks his head out from one side of the camera and frowns at me.

You aren't making this very easy.

Jake, it's too windy for this.

It's fine. Stick your goddamned tongue back in your face and smile like you mean it, princess.

Like I mean what, exactly?

Like you love me. Smile like you love me. He grins and I lose my nerve and my stomach starts to twist into cold knots and the smile falls off and drops into the water. High tide. Now with abandoned smiles to bring it even further up the rocks tonight.

Maybe we shouldn't do this.

What, I'm not allowed to own a photograph of you now?

What if he sees it?

Not sure if you've noticed but the odds of me sharing a photo album tour with your husband seem really small right now.

I nod and stick my toe out, swirling the foamy water. I'm standing in the surf up to my ankles. The saltwater is stinging the bug bites on my legs. It's freezing. I'm just about numb from the knees down and the neck up but he is determined. One good picture. Just one with no goofy expression or extra faces in the frame. Just me. Just for Jake.

***

Five months later Jake threw a New Year's Day Levee for all. A drop-in afternoon wine and cheese by the sea. He spent two days painstakingly cutting cheese, with the phone jammed under his ear, head pressed to one shoulder while he cursed and swore and asked me for tips on how to make it go faster.

Run the cheese knife under hot water, Jake.

There's a knife just for cheese? Are you fucking serious, princess?

Maybe you can stop at the deli and get some pre-sliced?

Maybe I'll stick with fruit. Would fruit be good?

We arrived late, with maybe an hour to spare. Cole had to be physically pulled away from his work, he was framing paintings and had lost all track of time. I waited by the door in my good dress and the only pair of heels I owned, rocking Ruthie on my hip. She was teething and fussy. Cole was oblivious until I offered to go alone and suddenly he was pulling off his shirt, heading for a dress shirt draped over the chair, asking me while he buttoned it if we needed to bring anything.

No, just us. I'm sure he's got it figured out. How many people throw something like this and need guests to bring things?

Yeah, true. Okay, but I'm not staying long. I'm so behind.

The others will be there.

Half an hour. That's it, Bridget.

Half an hour.

We arrived with ten minutes to spare. Everyone had been and gone. Construction traffic had us sitting on the 103 for almost an hour. By the time we arrived I was frazzled and Ruth was needing another change so after greeting Jacob with a quick hello and a peck on his cheek, I left the two men together and slipped into the bedroom to get a clean diaper on Ruth. When I came out with a now comfortable and content baby the two men were standing by the fireplace talking quietly. It wasn't until I walked closer and Cole turned around that I could process the expression on his face.

Jacob was suddenly loud. Too loud. Jovial and falsely attentive to us as a unit. Too late I realized why.

My picture, framed, on the mantel.

His prized possession and he had forgotten all about it. I ate my umbrage. I swallowed it dry, sick at the thought of what Jacob had done. I would pay for his blatant negligence. He was so unsophisticated. So simple. Black and white, no shades of grey. All or nothing. Honest to a fault. This is not a stance you want to take with Cole but Jacob wasn't about to conform to our sick games.

He stood up in the boat, and he started to rock it. I screamed. We're all going to fall out and drown but he doesn't care. He reaches over and grabs the side and it's every man for himself now, he's going to dump us all in the sea.

And I am the weakest swimmer of all.

***

I stand in the living room this morning looking at the mantle. It is littered with candles, a string of LED lights, a handful of uncategorized sea glass I pulled out of my handbag and haven't come back for yet and several picture frames, containing photographs of the faces I have loved the most.

And me.

Smiling in front of the sunset, the light bouncing off my face after Jacob waded into the sea after me to get a shot with the water, wind and light cooperating for those precious few moments. A moment captured that marks the dividing line between secrets and revelations.

When my head went under I took on water. I gasped in surprise at the shock of cold and involuntarily I cried out. Instantly my mouth and nose filled with stinging, filthy saltwater and I had two choices.

Sink or swim.

I swam. I put my arms up and began to push the water out of my way, pressure crushing my breast bone against my spine, light teasing me with thoughts of release. God's hand appeared to help me but I pushed it away. I knew it wasn't real. I knew I was dying and yet I also knew I couldn't let that happen. I had to see how the story ends. I fought harder to get on top of the water and finally when I thought I couldn't lift my arms again my head broke the surface. I choked on air mixing with water and I coughed and coughed and finally I could fill my lungs.

Strong arms had appeared, hauling me up over the side of the boat to safety. I was lowered into the bottom and my eyes filled with tears when I saw the sunset again. It's so beautiful. How dare Jacob take the chance with my life like that? He had to have known I wasn't a good swimmer, I mean, any number of summers at the lake had made it obvious that in spite of the boys efforts to teach me and train me and force me to get better I was still only marginally capable in the water.

Only he wasn't there to see that. He was new. There were so many things he didn't know about me. Things he railed against and didn't understand, things he forbade and watched carefully, the scrutiny squeezing my head together painfully. A history set in stone, unmovable, words screwed down onto a rock visible only at low tide, the only time I am allowed down to the water. When it only comes up to my ankles and I can't drown for a second time, ghosts pulling me down, their names weighted in bronze.

Every morning I walk into this room and put that photograph face-down on the mantle so I don't have to look at myself anymore.

Every evening I return and it is back in place among the other photos.

I like to think Ben is saving me by doing that, just like he did when he pulled me back into the boat. He continues to deny both but I am smarter than that now.

C is for cookie.

Andrew is reading my journal. This one. The one you're reading right now.

What an apt description of your childhood. You slay me sometimes. Everything is so pretty and ethereal and storybook and then you bust the mental picture wide open by throwing something in like the broken cigarettes.

Sorry.

No, it just floors me how easy it is for me to remember things when you put them there because of the way you describe things.

Heh. I should describe the time you put the fistful of sand on my tongue and gave me that look.

What look?

You know, the one toddlers give when they can't understand why you wouldn't want their pretend cookie? All that pent-up nursery school angst and post toilet-training rage.

Yeah, that rage. Wow. Hard to keep a lid on it. I think I made it up to you though with the proposal. I will always be number one.

You asked me to come live with you in your treehouse.

And to bring your blanket. I was planning ahead. It was going to be forever, Bridge. Until you said no.

Dinner was ready. I could hear my mom calling me.

Oh, yeah. I forgot.

It was a good dinner, Andrew. Like spaghetti or something.

There's always a better offer on the table. Literally, in this case.

I'm sorry. In my defense I was four years old.

Don't be sorry. I get warm flashes of memory when I read what you write about our childhood.

That's gross.

Not those kind of warm flashes, Bridge.

Right. I wondered why that treehouse stayed up until you were eighteen. Now I know.

Aphorisms and epitaphs.

Sophie called this morning. In her own magical way she expressed her displeasure at the fact that Caleb is giving up his autonomy for proximity. And then true to a fault she asked me if I needed anything.

This was not about giving me anything I might need, it was an effort to assert herself and whatever place she feels that she has in Caleb's life. I'm not sure she has a place right now.

He is focused on three things: his son, his health and atonement.

Everything else has ceased to be of any importance. Wealth, status, reputation, his day job testing the faith of mankind, and pretty much everything that used to consume his days has fallen by the wayside. He hasn't even had the Porsche detailed this week. Usually by now he would have already been in twice.

Maybe she should be asking what he needs.

I know what he needs.

This.

Humility. Supervision by the others. Real life in a real house instead of existing in his mogul-star life of glass condominiums, lines cut on the glass, signatures scrawled on lines, handshakes, shaking hands holding loaded weapons, and suitcases full of cash. Maybe I exaggerate (but maybe not) and maybe it's all a cruel ruse but I can't help but think Jake brought something out in Caleb that is finally going away. Maybe his incredulity and outrage at my betrayal of his brother is finally softening and he will be less devil and more human. Maybe he's getting old. Maybe time is slipping past us and he sees me as an equal, not as a child, a conquest and a curse.

Maybe pigs are fl-oh, look, there they go now. Oink, oink, like big fat pink geese.

Maybe he isn't as healthy as he told me he was. He's doing everything right: diet, exercise, as little stress as possible, he's given up drugs, alcohol and weapons. He's wishing immortality had a price tag, he would spend whatever it takes.

I know that feeling.

He has said there will be surprises along the way. That he isn't a monster, he just finds self-control the hardest lesson of all in the face of getting everything he wants. Were the devil to practice self-restraint, it would spell the end of sin as we know it.

In the beginning Caleb was oldest. Always automatically in charge, the one with the most privileges, the one the others looked up to. He set the bar high for self-expectations and never once did he express a doubt about a single damned thing ever. He was confident and laid-back, quietly narcissistic and vaguely sinister. It was the perfect combination to lead the group, and stay on top.

We would grow up and become The Outsiders and maybe someone would write about us someday, detailing just how long Lochlan's hair would get over the course of every summer when he wouldn't cut it between May and November or Cole's intensity when his painting didn't go well. Pointing out how hard it was for me to keep up, stumbling along through the woods behind the boys, tripping, sniffling along in the dark until Christian or Caleb or Cole would turn around and notice and then come back and get me, pulling me up into a piggyback-carry and I would fall asleep with my cheek pressed against the warmth of a sweaty t-shirt, listening to the loons call across the lake.

And then everything changed.

Lochlan didn't want to stay in town, he wanted to escape. I wanted to go with him. Cole was busy trying to keep his car running, hating his job, disappearing into himself. Caleb was putting himself through university, trying to get into law school, the first in his family to have white-collar aspirations.

The day came where I was less of a charge, less of a burden and more of a target, the object of their affections. The apple of too many pairs of eyes to keep anything fair. It tore them into so many different directions that allegiances were broken and friendships exploded. Naked desire became an expression I ignored for as long as I could because I knew everything about them. I had witnessed their tears, their punishments when they got yelled at by their parents, their D grades in math and their hopes and dreams, shared drunkenly on the hood of a car, wrapped in a blanket, watching the stars. Caleb's dreams were the most cohesive and detailed of all. We continued on a course into the future, into the certain disaster and uncertainty of adulthood, a place where you must be held accountable for your mistakes and your monstrosities alike.

And now, abruptly, after thirty years he has a new dream.

He wants us to be friends again. All of us. He doesn't want to be the bad guy, the devil or The Outsider anymore. He doesn't want to be the boogeyman, or the one I turn to when I feel self-destructive or vindictive or smug. He wants to be back on top where he was before he made a choice that changed everything.

I can't imagine how close we all would have been had he not torn everything apart the way he did but I also am old enough now to understand that even if I did forgive him nothing will ever be like it was back then ever again. We're not children anymore. It's too late for that.

The path back to that closely-knit brotherhood anchored by the beautiful little fair-haired princess who dances along the path behind them until it gets dark, and then runs ahead and tucks herself under an arm, falling asleep with her hands full of wilted daises and broken cigarettes is so overgrown and fraught with thorns and hazards we're just better off trying to find another way.

If there even is one. It might all be gone. It might be too late. It depends on who you ask.