I should be used to this by now. Caleb and his thousand-dollar suits and seven-hundred dollar shirts, his weekly haircuts and close straight-razor shaves that evolve into an incendiary threat to my fair skin with each point of contact. He activated the fluttering early in my hands by pretending to miss a cheek kiss and landing it just under my earlobe, a calculated, successful attempt to throw me off guard while he murmured appreciatively that my dress and killer heels were very pleasing to him. Ironically I chose that outfit specifically to throw him off, and as usual, I was lagging early on in the power struggle that we've come to define our adult relationship with.
I was an observer yesterday. Holding hands, ready with hugs and tissues as Ruth acted out quietly in the way she does when she doesn't know quite how to act, Henry checking and then mimicking her lead, hoping for cues to tell him what to do because he doesn't know. Perfect Uncle Satan deflecting everything smoothly with the promise of having phoned ahead to his favorite restaurant, securing a private dining room and arranging for an ice cream sundae bar, dropped just at the right moment as an incentive to find some happy in a sad day and they would toast with their silver spoons to giant pieces of their lives that are gone forever. I tried not to roll my eyes. He forgets the fallout from these kinds of extravagance. The sugar highs that only serve to magnify the hurt later on, that ice cream is a band aid, just like anything else.
But it wouldn't be important because he said he would stay until they were asleep and he kept that promise, even when Ruth came wandering downstairs close to eleven to make sure he was still there and he was, suit jacket flung over the back of the big easy chair, sleeves rolled up on now-wrinkled shirt, nightcap in one hand, Blackberry in the other. We've boiled life down to the occasional good dessert and keeping promises. Relationship dynamics and trust. The point people, a chart with retro-astro stars made of circles connected by straight lines to see how our own galaxy appears on paper and in our hearts.
I waited all day for the fear to trickle in and it didn't because he knows better, oh does he know better. Medicated just enough to not be able to hold my breath and yet still able to walk in those shoes was a nicer choice than trembling through the harder parts of the day without the lifeline of my guys, who were clutched in my hand in the form of Ben's old phone and Caleb only asked twice if I was ever going to put it down and I never answered him nor did I ever once put it down.
Sometime around four in the afternoon as the kids expressed their interest in more movie time, watching their father larger than life on the big screen, Caleb smiled and said he would cook, that we should keep watching. His excuse to round out the day, spending more time watching me than even I am used to and I'm sure every eyelash on my face and every freckle on my skin was inspected, catalogued and filed away for his future use. That's what they don't like, you see, the way he looks at me.
It's the same way Cole used to.
I know what he wants and he's not getting it, and we're going to be old and white-haired someday down the road and still doing this dance and I will win because he'll get tired first. I can get what I need, and not from him, and he's not having that same kind of luck and frankly I don't care. I left the focus on the kids and on the good parts of our memories of Cole and the rest can go fuck itself.
Last night it didn't seem like it's been only three years. It felt more like fifteen years, maybe that's because everything moves slower with Caleb. He's walking nerve gas to me and I have to fight to stay conscious because he brings out this horrible, animalistic craving in me to just give in and get what I need straight from God and Bridget's biggest enemy, only because it will be that much sweeter and I can just pay for it later. But now the tab is too high and I find myself working it off but not making a dent in the balance and at some point there will be an emergency plan invoked to help get it consolidated into something else but for now, for now it's still manageable. He is manageable. It's either the calm before the storm or the rare mellow Caleb that I could adore, save for the fact that he is probably the only person left on this earth who can destroy me without lifting a finger.
I don't like that, but I like that I'm done with yesterday and the children with their heads and hearts are still intact and the boys haven't killed Uncle One and I didn't add to Caleb's bag of tricks and eventually even this fluttering will go away.
Like Cole did.
Except not forever.
Today I have breakfast to go to with August, who was suitably Jake-angry last night when I cancelled our dinner plans with seconds to spare, because the Big Master Plan included his classic deprogramming, which consists of his counselor-rhetoric that I never really hear and his Jake-accent and Jake-sensibilities that helps bend me back the other way from exposure to too much Cole. I didn't get that because at that moment I needed more Cole and I wanted to be swallowed by the dark but I didn't, I just stood near the hole and looked down but of course I couldn't see a damned thing anyway, just the absence of light. And so I made another date because the delicious thrill of ice down my spine is enough cause for alarm and enough reason to explore why I'll put myself on the ledge for someone who isn't good for me and I'll have some crow for breakfast, choking on bones and feathers and being looked upon with horror.
It's funny, really. The pain is going to kill me, and my honesty is going to kill them. I told them I didn't care that they were angry so that they would know. I sounded my own alarm so that they would know and I endured the eight extra hours with the devil because I know.
You don't know.
The choices are not mine to make.
I don't know why I wrote this out. Maybe just because people wondered if I went off the deep end again and wound up with Caleb as monster, like after Jacob flew. I didn't, okay? Well, not that monster that he can be. I got the garden-variety everyday Caleb-monster. So you can relax.
