If there is one thing I have learned in my life (besides don't use bleach regularly on things with gaskets), it's that funnel cakes and Xanax letdowns cause nightmares. Oh, and that Lochlan will tell me anything in the dark, anything to make a nightmare go away, anything just to make it so I stop shaking and go back to sleep.
Jacob rang the doorbell last night. He rang it and he waited on the front porch for someone to answer, sleeves rolled up, hair in his eyes, full beard and no shoes. He was a dream, a mirage but he was as real as I've ever seen him. I haven't forgotten a line on his face, the white of his teeth or the way the part in his hair always gave up early on, leaving a zig-zag of straight waves that was hard to control. Henry has the same hair. Same beard. But not the same fake charm.
Blind, like a fool, I went to answer the door when no one else did. Someone probably buzzed the mail truck in through the gate and then promptly forgot to go to the door.. Someone really needs something and doesn't have clean hands or shoes. One of the children forgot their key.
I open the door and he's there.
And I woke up screaming. Not because I miss him so much (I do. Jesus, I do) but because it's a better place if I hate him instead of love him. It's a better place if I condemn his memory to ashes instead of missing him. It's a better place if I spent all my time thinking about him calling him soft-hard names and listings his shortcomings and flaws as a human being instead of acknowledging that when he flew, my heart was with him and it shattered all over the pavement and it was never right again, much as I lie and say it's fixed.
Lochlan gets an earful between the screams and the justifications. And then he does what he always does except last night I was more awake than usual.
I told him to come back tomorrow and we'll talk, Lochlan mumbles. It's a panacea. It's a verbal benzodiazepine. It's an unhealthy crutch and a shortcut and a curse. It's dangerous, is what it is, but it works really well and we're all about getting it done here on Perdition point.
I lay there silently exploring the dark after that. Eyes open, pupils wide. Waiting. Waiting for Jacob. Waiting for light so I could get up. Waiting for the sugar in my blood to burn off and be replaced by exhilaration. Waiting for something that would never come, as it was a lie told in the dark to soothe a small child.
As always.
Today is a profoundly sad aftermath. I even went out and looked at the porch and tried to picture Jake standing there. I wondered if he would like it. If he would appreciate our point and the four houses here and the army that never stands down. I wonder if he would like that fact that the biggest gifts Caleb ever gave me besides suspicion, distrust and complete ruin were a beach and a commune of my very own because it is quite literally the least he could do. I wonder if they would still try to kill each other on the spot. I wonder if Jake would tell me I've changed. I wonder what he would think to learn he was a father after all. That's probably the biggest one right there. The irony above ironies. The straw that broke my heart over again. The thing he wanted most.
But now he is a prisoner inside my dreams and Lochlan's lies and there are no windows or doors so he can never get out and I'm making a weird peace with that, even if it's only moment by moment, instead of year over year. The tempo runs slowly. Too slowly for my liking but also way too fast, always.