Lochlan's back. Next time he has strict instructions to bring the sun with him.

Eight dollars and sixty cents, plus tip.

That's how much I permitted myself to indulge, apparently.

I seem to be incapable of spoiling myself. The plan was, after a long week celebrating Ruth's birthday, the hastened death of summer proper and the whole chaos of back-to-school, that I would treat myself to an afternoon of shopping and lunch and all kinds of solitary expression. I cleared the boys out of my hair (the few still in town, I mean) and struck groceries and laundry and dog walking off my list before lunch. After they returned to school, I hopped in my car and took off.

And came home empty-handed.

I was standing in Sephora holding an Urban Decay lip gloss and decided rather suddenly that I didn't want to pay $22 for it. So I went around to the next aisle and found the Sephora line and decided I didn't want to pay $14 for that. Went to the home store and found one valance that I liked for the kitchen but didn't love it enough to buy it. Ditto the new bath mat or the juice glasses that were lovely, vintagey-looking. I am down to three of the small glasses in the cupboard, so it's time, I just hit the wall of self-sacrifice that prohibits me from spending a dime. I've been poor. So very poor. The post-traumatic stress of that must run deeper than I ever seem to realize.

Maybe I need therapy.

Are you done laughing?

I decided I would get a new coat, then. Fuck this miserly nonsense! No one had what I was looking for and I found out my favorite dress store closed down. You would think they would have called me. I think I was their best customer.

I resorted to texting the boys to see if they wanted or needed things. They were all busy.

Huh.

Not really very good at this, am I?

I supposed I could have gotten a coffee and milled about for a while, checking out clothes and new perfumes. But I had just gone to lunch before my shopping trip, something I did manage to pull off without guilt or trauma, and I wasn't in the mood for anything else, really. Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll spend $4 for a single cup of coffee and enjoy the hell out of it. I can justify food, just not stuff, I guess. I'm not very sentimental about things, but you know that already. You've been with me for a while here, as I go through the ups and downs.

I'm going to chaulk a weird, tired week up to absences, change and the goddamned night train. If you've ever heard it you'll know exactly what I mean. The lack of sleep clouds absolutely everything.

Oh. That's it!

Sleep. I would buy sleep. Too bad no one has any in my size.

Unitarian taskmasters and really old heavy metal.

I tried to give you consolation
When your old man had let you down.
Like a fool, I fell in love with you,
Turned my whole world upside down.

Break time. I'm in the midst of eating a bowl of fresh chunks of pineapple and melon and am halfway through the first water thermos of the day. I'm horrifying the workers here at the church playing secular power ballads at top volume. They keep looking to Sam for salvation and they aren't getting any. I had no idea he would know all the words to Layla and to Lost in the Ozone, even.

Gives Lemmy a run for his money, I tell you.

He recruited me after a miserable phone call brought him to my kitchen just after midnight, fresh off a round of exhausting hospice and in no mood for me. He took off his jacket and hung it in the hallway and proceeded to make us some toast (toast, Sam) while he regaled me with all the things I could be doing instead of wallowing and being difficult.

I wasn't difficult. He was just sad that he had to deal with someone who could talk back. It's okay, I told him that to his face and he laughed briefly and told me I was sad. I nodded.

I am sad, sometimes. We wound up sitting on the floor against the kitchen cupboards eating antipasto on crackers until almost four am and then he walked me upstairs, checked the kids and said that I had to sleep because he would be back in two hours to wake me up so I could work for him today.

Nice.

I'm not much good here. Lucky for me there's a huge new coffeemaker here. I plan to drink all of it in between the waterboarding. I plan to get a lot of hugs too. And the next time Ben, PJ, Andrew and Lochlan all plan their departures for the same day? I...well, I don't know what I'll do.

I guess I'll hang out here.

With God and his best bud, Sam. Who can exist on absolutely no sleep. Perhaps he's the vampire in the room and it isn't me. After all, he's turning out to be an incredibly proficient Motorhead fan, there must be all sorts of other surprises under that thick skin of his.

Figment of my own imagination.

I'm not me today. I don't know how I am but I always feel just a little bit lost when the children go back to school. I had planned to take the day easy, to spoil myself just a little bit. A manicure, maybe some shopping. Coffee or lunch out. But I couldn't do it because I figured I was alone for the first time in a couple of months I should probably get some things done, so I did those things, and I accomplished as much in one day as I was averaging per week so I feel pretty good and I may just give myself a manicure now with an hour to spare and then I'll be all set.

For those who wanted a coffee update I am holding steady at 16 ounces a day, twelve on weekends. The narcolepsy isn't so bad and the quality of my sleep seems to be improving. Our bed is six inches higher now. I may need a ladder to get in soon. I cannot reach down and pet the dog on the floor and if you remember the minimalist me of high school and university I always eschewed beds proper for a mattress on the floor. Even Cole and I had our mattress set on the floor. Now it's almost at waist level. I feel like I sleep in Gulliver's bed. Fee-fi-fo-fum.

New to the equation that is life is eighty ounces of water a day. Yes, I said eighty. Ounces. I am mad, aren't I? It's easier to pull off than I thought and the benefits are immediately obvious. Dumb health issues seem to be evaporating (Or maybe I have drowned them) and I am almost good with not having to pee every fifteen minutes. I'm up to twenty-five minutes. Haha. This will make everything better and has the added bonus of killing my appetite ten times over. Possibly into the future, even.

The children like their classes and mates, that was a worry I can put to rest now. Check.

Dog is down to five walks a day and doing great. For a while there I beat a steady path out the back door and down into my perennial garden where he would pee and then thirty minutes later we would do it all again. He's just like me except possibly I look much cuter on the end of a leash.

Oh, for heaven's sake. Lighten up.

Ben goes back after dinner tonight. With those empty promises in hand and more distractions and pressure than ever and he's fine with all of it. I'm hoping it doesn't take another milestone to get him home again because he is terrible with giving me his schedule, when I have everyone elses', collected as they scrawl with a half-empty black papermate pen into the dayplanner we use, writing with the dusty bumper of the van as a hard surface while I stand on the gravel on the shoulder of the highway and they always take my face in their hands and kiss me on the lips and tell me they will call often and miss me tons and they'll be back in exactly x-number of days and my hair is blowing all around my face and the dust is oppressive. I've got the dayplanner clutched against my chest as I wave until I can't see the van anymore. Dust mixed with tears makes a mess and I always come home and stick my face in a basin full of icy-cold water and promise myself I will mack on the ones who are here until they go and by then someone else will be home again.

I always hope it's Ben, but it never is. He goes the furthest, and stays the longest and it's the hardest.

Waiting for Indian Summer.

And I will find you although I wonder
If I will climb through this rock I'm under

I'm turning the page for something new
I'm finding my way through life in bloom

These hairpins are digging in to my neck.

I opted for a low chignon today, fastening my sterling hairpins just so, and forgetting I should give them a little twist to keep them in now that my hair is shorter than it used to be, now just dusting against my collarbone again instead of almost to the waist which is when these pins really come in handy. I can pick locks with these ones as well. Well, I could if I needed to, I mean. I really should have worn the pins with the poppies instead.

Next time I plan to cut my hair to my chin, hold me down so I can't get to the hairdresser. It's been over a year, I still have regrets.

This is the final day the children are home before they begin school. We're having hurricane-like weather with bright skies, wind coming from every direction and episodes of torrential rains. It's kind of sad that their last day wasn't nice enough to go for a long walk and play outside in the sun but it just didn't seem to be that kind of summer, with only a handful of days with which to soak up the warmth and squint our eyes tight against the blazing sun.

Oddly, fall is still my favorite season. An endless autumn would be the perfect match for your Bridget but it always has to rot, degenerating into winter without so much as a backward glance. Turning cold, just like I do.

I have paid for the tree-banding and the school supplies. We've packed their gym gear and snacks. We've brought down the hanging baskets and brought out the mitten basket. The gardens seem to be in final bloom and some plants have already gone into dormancy. The garden tools have been cleaned and put away and most of the heavy fall cleaning has been done now, thanks to a magnificent effort yesterday to rearrange the entire ground floor of the house to make it more liveable and people-friendly and get rid of several large items that no one had sentimental attachment to, namely, Bridget. It took hours, but it's finished and with it I have a fresh outlook going into the next season.

It's inevitable. Fall comes, then winter comes. The children begin grades 5 and 3 in spite of the fact that I'm going to miss them dearly. My days are my own again to keep up with chores, errands, work and the care of fragile miss b. In the rare moments when there's no one around I'll have the dog to talk to. We'll walk out by the tracks again like I used to do with Butterfield and I'll let my head off leash, marinating in the isolation of train whistle while the dog trots along with a stick in his mouth like a prize. The house will always be clean, I'll have less guilt because the kids will be too tired to be bored for another ten months and more worry because they are just big enough to walk together but alone to and from the schoolyard, something that has me checking for them down the sidewalk for several heartstopping moments twice a day as I wait for them to come home for lunch and then home again in the afternoon.

I'm getting used to it. This will be the fourth year for us, and it's been beneficial in the way that homeschooling never would been to introduce them to the actual abrupt and exciting roller coaster that life is. I haven't gotten used to it yet. It always takes a few weeks of change for change to sink in for me. It takes a few precious days of not doing much of anything to get to know myself again and how I function with everyone away and busy.

It'll be okay.

That's what everyone keeps telling me. I hope they're right.

The external fall preparations are complete, excepting anything that will be affected by Indian Summer which had better serve to redeem the entire year all by itself. Now it's time for the internal preparations. Somehow not everything gets done. I do what I can though. I work hard at it. I have my hair put up so it's off my neck when things heat up and I'm ready for just about anything.

Waylander and the devil.

A restoration, absolution dinner invitation was made and accepted. A simple yes thrown out because Ben was home and the devil was anxious to look over his pawns, inspect them for wear or damage and re-roast them in flames of regret before sending them off to endure a little more of the world outside of hell.

When we arrived we were let in by one of the staff, ostensibly helping out with final preparations or perhaps working on a Friday night because people do that nowadays, especially when their employers have just flown in and decided to have a late engagement and needed some things done on a timely basis. She told us Mr. C was still preparing and would we like a drink? Ben said he would look after it and after enquiring as to my well-being she asked if we needed anything else and I told her to go home, to have a lovely weekend. I'm not sure if she wondered if I could actually do that in Caleb's absence but she looked somewhat relieved and happy to escape a bit early. We can carry our own plates in from the kitchen. I do it three times a day at home.

I walked down into the living room and straight out to the balcony where a table was set for three. Black roses in the centre made me stop and catch my breath. Black. It's so rare to see them in real life, I always stop and admire them when I do. It doesn't matter if they are real or manufactured, they're just beautiful. All rose colors are beautiful but black ones just resonate that much louder to me.

I exclaimed rather sweetly, excited to see them and bent forward to stick my face into the closest bloom.

This is how you say hello?

Caleb was standing in the doorway. He shot a cuff and checked his watch. The new Breitling that someday I will pry off his wrist and wear forever even though it's very large and will provide me with all the gravity I will ever need. If I'm not mistaken I'll guess my initials are already carved into the back with the rest of his family as his good luck charm. BRC. Because he still refuses to indulge in any subsequent last names I take on.

You're early.

By moments, only. Traffic was light for a Friday night.

Punctuality is one of your charms, princess. Where is your pet?

He's getting us a drink from your kitchen. You would have passed him to get here.

Touche.

The roses are beautiful.

I'd like you to take them with you when you leave in the morning.

Ben appeared just then, holding two tumblers of ice and cranberry juice. Caleb thanked him for accepting the invitation on such short notice and asked about work and Ben talked a little of some reorganization they had gone through lately and some pre-predictions for numbers based on a Christmas release (an industry kiss of death, no less) and one Benjamin doesn't really care about at this point. He told Caleb that he has concrete plans to switch gears in the near future and things will be vastly different a year from now. I listened and worked to keep my expression neutral while Caleb watched me fail. I didn't know any of this. We had talked about things before, at length and I had asked Ben not to give up a damned thing. That he needs it.

I think they both sensed that I was become vaguely agitated by all the business- and future-talk and quickly brought the subject back to me. Where it belongs. Compliments on my hair, my skin tone of all things, still the alabaster pearl-white after an attempt to turn myself pink at the beach resulted in the massive loss of the color from my flesh within a week. They both seem to like me pale. I was annoyed so I asked Caleb if he had spoken to PJ and he said that he would leave PJ alone because here I was and it was the verbal confirmation I was seeking that no matter what happened this evening, he wasn't going to fuck with PJ's heart even though he succeeded in proving that he can fuck with anyone at any time, if he so chooses.

If I do not cooperate.

Oh, but I am. I'm sitting here on this beautiful balcony, framed in black roses and cool and lovely in the little black slip dress with the embroidery he requested and the shoes that have tiny highest heels that catch in the pattern on the iron balcony floor and so I walk on my toes a little. I twisted my hair into a low knot but let a wealth of tendrils down because that's how he likes it and I'm hoping against hope that tonight he doesn't poison my food because that's not in the rules.

Do you think I give him a hard time? Have you met Satan?

Oh, but Satan has made a history out of underestimating Ben and I together and that is what saves this to grace from certain unrecoverable debt. And that is what leaves me squarely in the crosshairs between Satan and my boys. PJ can protect himself. He shouldn't have to.

I don't put anything past Caleb, and yet I struggle with doubt when he tries to please me. I wore my best charm and I thanked him for his thoughtfulness and then as if on freaking cue, the servers I didn't see arrive advanced with our first course.

The pattern goes like this, without deviation: I eat, and listen well, because I hear so poorly, and take very small bites and even smaller sips and express appropriate interest for the topics at hand. The men talk. They eat with their hands. They ask me for my thoughts. And they watch me. I'm not sure if it's still the fascination in kind or merely because inevitably one's eyes will be drawn to the brightest subject nearby but they seem to take turns losing their focus in gazing at me. I feel like a human buffet or a delicate and rare artifact to be admired and touched (if you dare). I feel like meat sometimes and sometimes I feel like I must be the most special person alive.

I don't remember what we had for dinner. I do remember everything afterward, including leaving the half-begun raspberry truffle cake for a move to the balcony railing where Caleb pointed out the latest construction on the museum and several constellations I couldn't recognize if I tried. He and Ben remarked on the first geese migrations we saw earlier in the day. Pleasance to a fault. Charm to a bitter, inevitable end.

Caleb murmured to one of the servers that it would be fine if they would clear the table and take their leave and we retired to the living room with coffee and some pastries that remained untouched. As usual it would have been too much.

With Caleb everything is too much.

We talked about the children and their upcoming schedules for school, swimming and friends. We talked about Cole, for a time, and about my plans for writing over the fall. We didn't speak again of Ben's decisions for his night job nor did we touch on the expectations Caleb held for his return on leaving my boys alone. We never do. We don't have to say the words, they are simply there. He exploits me and I don't like it. I may like him but I hold a monstrously fearful disdain for the appetites he brings to our encounters. He thinks he is spending Cole's legacy but I still believe Cole would have been horrified.

Ben is never horrified, Ben has seen it all. Ben does it all. And if I can put some beauty on the horror that is Ben's life and extract some of his own worst cravings in the process to give him some peace of mind then I'll do what I can and live long enough to be able to block out the rest before I fall asleep at night. In a way it's a succinct and total distraction from missing Cole and needing Jake. In a way it's a fitting end to a game I have played too long, winning round after round knowing that soon the piper would come over the hill or around the bend and I would be the one paying him. In a way it's a need that I would never speak of out loud that I found a way to fill, with just a little thrill and sickness mixed in to make it something that doesn't occur very often.

In a way, my life is bespoke, designed and tailored to fit me and only me and those who can't stand to be apart from me. I don't deign to discuss it with those who wouldn't understand. Those who won't expand their minds to understand that everything is not as it appears and it won't conform to your ideals nor fail to insult your own good graces.

I brought my roses home. I earned them with good behavior. It was still dark outside and not even far into the next day as Satan predicted it would be. Because sleeping in his presence? That's something even I won't do.

And I will do almost anything.

Almost.

Don't assume.

Fine, assume away. I don't care.

Lists.

I like grapefruit or orange juice with handfuls of ice cubes. I like old VWs and new Bugattis. I have a traveler's heart but the head of a tree stump and will hardly move unless you light me on fire. I like handbags. Big bags mainly so I can carry lots of things. Like a pear and a good book and my library card and the one for Mountain equipment, too and sometimes a sweater, but only if it's cool. Every pocket also contains a bobby pin, sometimes two, and you'll find two or three more in my hair if you look hard enough.

I don't like shoes but I have a few pairs that stand out. Shoes with skulls or angels and cowboy boots in unconventional colors.

I like the inside of my brain and have never said out loud that I was bored. Ever. I can go anywhere inside my head, with no fear of the unknown. If it's unknown I can simply reimagine it to be perfect. I love wooden hair brushes and men in white button-down shirts and I like cotton candy. I love the thrill rides at the fair but only at sundown and I will never jump out of plane again because I figure I have already beaten the odds by surviving the first jump. I like pasta al dente and trying new foods and surprise get-togethers. I love growing ivy in my north-facing kitchen window and I love bath bombs from Lush, the sex bomb the most. I've been in love with Brigitte Bardot since I first laid eyes on her and Naomi Watts too. I get crushes on some unlikely fellows as well but the list is too long and you would proclaim I am bored and move on to someone else's words. Let's just say some of them might surprise you and others will downright scare you. I don't care what they've done, be good now. I don't judge people except based on how they treat me.

I love music. Not all music. I'm not prone to fits of ecstasy over country music, pop, or slow chamber orchestras, but if it's loud and qualifies as any kind of metal I am there with bells on. I can bang my head in the car at stoplights or dance under my seatbelt and make people smile. I'll wave because I don't care. I wish I could get real fruit juice in my slurpee and I wish bubble tea came without bubbles. I like pocky sticks and red strings and drawings of the hand of fatima because I think the hand means stop! You will have good luck from here on out. I'm superstitious and I carry a rabbit's foot everywhere I go. A St.Christopher's medal and an evil eye too. A keychain that says Princess. That's me.

I like farms, I like the smell, the work and the taste of vegetables fresh from the garden. I like old telephones and having to walk to the post office and the bed that everyone falls into the middle of and the wood-burning kitchen stove. I like the animals though they are always bigger than me and I liked the noise from the sawmill nearby because it meant everything was right with the world. I liked daylight there. Crickets make me terribly sad so let's focus on sunflowers which do not.

I can boil the perfect four-minute egg. The yolk is soft and moist and a rich yellow. I can also bake a banana bread that won't last twenty-four hours and I have had five difference cellphones in the past three years because if it lights up and fits in my hand I'm happier than if you give me diamonds.

I could live out of a backpack. The simpler things in life drawn me in. Hanging laundry to dry. Cooking raw. Drawing. Reading a book by candlelight. Music played around the living room or the dining room table. Smiling. If you see me out you would think I'm a fool because I wear a smile and I ask people how they are, because I used to be a scowling-troll and now I don't see the point in not Making Contact. I don't waste a lot of precious time on self-help or on risking my life when I feel like, here at halfway through, a quiet existence forgotten in a city of hundreds of thousands of people is possibly where I belong but I will always be somewhere else, someone else, inside my head.

Dumb domestic things that make me happy.

Household tip #3475853477, but not from me, for I just figured this one out today.

Fold a matching fitted and flat sheet together, place pillowcase on top, store inside the second pillowcase. Three sets per bed if you're listing toward extravagant, otherwise two sets per child, one on the bed. I would go the hardcore minimalist route and just wash and return the same sheets to the bed and only have one set per, but every now and then the puke fairy will visit and remind me that I need extra sheets.

Now my cedar chest is organized and I don't have to unfurl fifteen sheets before I find the ones that fit a big bed versus a twin.

Okay so you all do it already and I'm slow. I realize this.

Extras? Dropsheets, baby. I am the messiest painter alive.

Because every freak show has one.

I'm the voice inside of you, that says there's nothing you can't do.
If you could open up your eyes and lay your heart out on the line.
I'm the voice inside your head, that brings your mind back from the dead.
I hope that I have served you right, even if only for one night.

After twelve days away, Ben arrived home just as I was beginning the final head count in preparations to begin dinner. Ruth may enjoy the company of adults more than children, but that didn't mean she didn't choose homemade macaroni and cheese as her birthday dinner of choice. Or that I didn't cry into the roux, since I've never made a roux before and when you're cooking from scratch for twenty-six people, you really need to concentrate and I almost fled the kitchen when Ben walked into it, unannounced. Backpack. Messy hair. Flight clothes. Beard. Cigarettes. That grin. A huge gift bag for Ruth even though we had already shopped for her presents weeks ago.

I know, I said beard.

Couldn't take my eyes off him all evening. He looks so strange with it. Like a wild man. Undomesticated. Feral. I love it. Seriously. He grows a beard so very rarely. It was a sound distraction from the whole twelve days of spare to no communication with not a single inkling that he would arrive in time for the big day yesterday. I wanted to yell at him or shove him out the back door and slam it shut or give him the silent treatment.

I didn't.

I waited until the evening was complete, the children were in bed and every last dish was washed and I pointed out his communication skills sucked big time. I know he's not used to being accountable to anyone but you give up those kinds of attitudes when you get married and furthermore, when you have stepchildren with hearts and minds far more fragile than yours are. Just because children are resilient doesn't mean you can blow them off indefinitely. (And just because things change doesn't mean people change, Bridget.)

I'm not religious or fanatical, but I'm a motherfucking miracle
You knock me down and I get up again.
So hit the lights out and let the show begin.

After breakfast this morning he took off. To get a haircut and a shave. And when he comes home I know he'll look like Ben. He'll feel like Ben. And surely enough, he'll act like Ben.

Lochlan pointed out we were both doing what we do best. Ben disappears in an effort to force concern in everyone so that he can have that reassurance that we care about him even when he's away, and Bridget becomes the martyr, figuring that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket and that no one must care at all. Ben's ego strokes take all of the energy from my efforts at independence and unrequited happiness and that's something we are working on. Very hard.

In between kissing.

Sorry but DAMN. That beard is so awesome but gone by now, I'm sure. Very late last night he kissed me in the shower, and I said that kissing a wet beard is probably one of my favorite things on earth. He smiled and said it probably felt just like when he kisses one very specific part of me. I promise I did throw the shampoo at him, and I connected squarely on the chin. Problem is the beard deflected the contact and we deemed beards to be facial force-fields that protect their wearers from harm.

Maybe he should have left it alone.

And maybe I should grow a beard.

Beautiful Girl.

Today is Ruth's tenth birthday.

There is swimming to be enjoyed and books to be considered at the library, balloons to admire and then explode, cake to consume by the spoonload and presents, which I may need a forklift for, there are so many. There are also guests coming for dinner. Twenty-three of them, as a matter of fact. My child didn't want a birthday party with her peers. She just wanted all the people she loves around the same table treating her like a princess.

Sounds like someone else we know, doesn't it?

Well, that's not quite accurate. See, Ruth is her own person. She's got self-esteem and confidence and presence. She knows what she likes, she knows the difference between right and wrong, and she'll say what's on her mind with very little prompting. She's a really, really amazing girl. I can't say little any more, can I? She'd be annoyed by that, because she's not in the single digits anymore, mom.

Oh, I know, sweetheart. I just can't believe it. It happened so fast.