Monday, 5 July 2010
Sunday, 4 July 2010
Sunday review.
Ben pointed out this morning that the only competition he considers real is the ghost in the copper box.
And then he laughed in Lochlan's face.
He tells me I will give up secrets when I'm good and ready and not because the boys demand to know. He tells me everything is okay and if the rest of them don't understand how my head works than it is their problem and nothing more. He tells me I should just delete the emails that scold me and that I don't actually have to answer to anyone other than the girl in the mirror.
As usual, I'm not sharing anything with her. She looks like she carries her own burden. Besides, she's never even told me her name.
Ben puts out his arms and pulls me in close to his heart, squeezing me against his shirt. Kissing the top of my head. My ear. He'll drop one hand down to my face and he'll pull my chin up until it's resting on his chest and I'm staring up at him while he stares down. He smiles at me. Only at me. Then he bends down, gives me a kiss and he's gone again, off to the studio to work his fingers to the bone. I cry out in protest and he tells me not to worry about a thing. Soon. Soon he'll have more time off and we can catch a little bit of a break and spend some more time together.
Until that happens the inappropriate protocol is to molest Daniel beyond belief, to the point where I piss off Schuyler for my impositions, cry when no one is looking because I miss Ben so much and to yell at the girl in the mirror to grow the fuck up because she has it good. I can play with the little bird on the copper box and consider opening the lid with a screwdriver or a blowtorch or something but I don't because Sam had it welded shut and I don't mess with Sam's temper or Sam's rules.
I miss Sam. He's away on some sort of men's retreat for the weekend with his new church group. He figured it was safe to go, figured I was telling the truth when I lied and promised him I wouldn't go to Satan for anything, figured it was a good break from the endless questions I always pose to him. The heartbreaking, unanswerable ones I throw out like birdseed at a public park. Catch, Sam. Tell me why. Tell me how this happens. Tell me God's address so I can go give him a piece of my mind. Tell me what Jake was thinking when he set me up for this fall. Tell me that Ben will live forever so I never have to add to this pain.
Tell me why I'm still here when I begged to leave them behind and go in their places. Tell me what's so special about me.
Sam looks a little bit like that girl in the mirror. A little like Ben. A little like Lochlan. Tired. Haunted. Worn through to the point where the light shines through the cracks now and just about blinds you, as if you were driving into the sun. You can still put your hand up to shield your eyes but soon even that isn't going to work.
August patiently follows me around listening to me ramble when Ben is busy. Holding out his arms and trying to minimize his accent so it hurts less when I ask to be held and not so quietly diagnosing me repeatedly against my will. I defer. I protest. I rail at him to cull up the boys and make a row and I will duck behind it, the ribbons on my dress trailing out behind me as I run. I will duck down behind Ben's back and slip out the other end of the row and head straight for the mirror. One foot over the edge and then the other and for a split-second I will balance on the lip before jumping down into the reflection.
Oh, that's who you are. You're me.
Jesus Christ. You look awful, Bridget.
And then he laughed in Lochlan's face.
He tells me I will give up secrets when I'm good and ready and not because the boys demand to know. He tells me everything is okay and if the rest of them don't understand how my head works than it is their problem and nothing more. He tells me I should just delete the emails that scold me and that I don't actually have to answer to anyone other than the girl in the mirror.
As usual, I'm not sharing anything with her. She looks like she carries her own burden. Besides, she's never even told me her name.
Ben puts out his arms and pulls me in close to his heart, squeezing me against his shirt. Kissing the top of my head. My ear. He'll drop one hand down to my face and he'll pull my chin up until it's resting on his chest and I'm staring up at him while he stares down. He smiles at me. Only at me. Then he bends down, gives me a kiss and he's gone again, off to the studio to work his fingers to the bone. I cry out in protest and he tells me not to worry about a thing. Soon. Soon he'll have more time off and we can catch a little bit of a break and spend some more time together.
Until that happens the inappropriate protocol is to molest Daniel beyond belief, to the point where I piss off Schuyler for my impositions, cry when no one is looking because I miss Ben so much and to yell at the girl in the mirror to grow the fuck up because she has it good. I can play with the little bird on the copper box and consider opening the lid with a screwdriver or a blowtorch or something but I don't because Sam had it welded shut and I don't mess with Sam's temper or Sam's rules.
I miss Sam. He's away on some sort of men's retreat for the weekend with his new church group. He figured it was safe to go, figured I was telling the truth when I lied and promised him I wouldn't go to Satan for anything, figured it was a good break from the endless questions I always pose to him. The heartbreaking, unanswerable ones I throw out like birdseed at a public park. Catch, Sam. Tell me why. Tell me how this happens. Tell me God's address so I can go give him a piece of my mind. Tell me what Jake was thinking when he set me up for this fall. Tell me that Ben will live forever so I never have to add to this pain.
Tell me why I'm still here when I begged to leave them behind and go in their places. Tell me what's so special about me.
Sam looks a little bit like that girl in the mirror. A little like Ben. A little like Lochlan. Tired. Haunted. Worn through to the point where the light shines through the cracks now and just about blinds you, as if you were driving into the sun. You can still put your hand up to shield your eyes but soon even that isn't going to work.
August patiently follows me around listening to me ramble when Ben is busy. Holding out his arms and trying to minimize his accent so it hurts less when I ask to be held and not so quietly diagnosing me repeatedly against my will. I defer. I protest. I rail at him to cull up the boys and make a row and I will duck behind it, the ribbons on my dress trailing out behind me as I run. I will duck down behind Ben's back and slip out the other end of the row and head straight for the mirror. One foot over the edge and then the other and for a split-second I will balance on the lip before jumping down into the reflection.
Oh, that's who you are. You're me.
Jesus Christ. You look awful, Bridget.
Saturday, 3 July 2010
The heat merchant.
Let go it's harder holding onI'm lying in bed fighting to stay awake while Jacob fusses with his post-it notes, the ones he uses to mark his bible because he's prone to going off on tangents in the middle of his sermons, which would always be written out longhand, agonized over and then discarded in favor of a village talk, an informal version of his pulpit-pounding shouting matches, where he would rivet everyone silent, still, fixed on every movement. He would instead stroll around the sanctuary talking to people as if they were the only one present. It was incredibly intimate.
One more trip and I'll be gone
So keep your head up
Keep it on, just a whisper I'll be gone
Take a breath and make it big
It's the last you'll ever get
Break your neck with a diamond noose
It's the last you'll ever choose
I am I am I said I'm not myself, but I'm not dead and I'm not for sale
Hold me closer, closer let me go let me be just let me be
It was staged, proof positive that Jacob could handle Bridget-duty, circus duty, carnival life. That he was a better man than Lochlan because he had God on his side and through God he could protect me from Caleb, and from the ghost of husbands past and from everything that could possibly go wrong. He thought he could steal kisses and then hearts and he thought he could make everything better with his super Jesus powers.
He thought wrong.
The boomerang effect was earth shattering and I have done nothing but fly in the face of everything he ever wanted and why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I defy him until he's on fire under God because he broke the promises. He lifted them up over his head and smashed them at his feet. He left and I stuck it out even though it's been frightening and at times impossible.
I keep finding post-it notes everywhere. In with my taxes from 2006. Tucked into my Good Housekeeping recipe book where I go for notes on times for pies. In Lochlan's sketchbooks.
When I have enough they will be word-feathers and I will glue them together to make huge 3M wings and then I fly down and visit Jacob again.
You're falling asleep, Bridget.
I'm awake.
Right. Who won the Stanley Cup?
Blue. Seventeen. Chocolate-chip.
Goodnight, beautiful.
Goodnight pooh.
A lot of the notes I have found lately have little quotes on them. Things I said that made him laugh or things that he wanted to never forget.
Things like:
Find out what Lochlan is hiding.
Yeah. Ones like that.
I need to ask God if it's okay sometimes to be relieved that someone is dead in order to keep secrets. I need to ask God what happens next.
I need to ask God why he lied.
Friday, 2 July 2010
Everything but this girl.
When the doorbell rang I went and opened it because no one else had jumped, and there was John. In black dress pants, black leather shoes and a rumpled white dress shirt. A far cry from the lumberjack I used to live down the street from.
He looked pained, hands behind his back and so I spoke first.
Formal visit, then, is it?
He passed me a pewter-colored envelope. Caleb color codes everything. Financial is manila, travel is blue, invitations requesting my company come in a rich dark silver, the color of the envelope John is trying to give to me and I don't take it.
When?
As soon as you can get away.
I nod and my brain starts spooling up. What do I wear? What does he want? I know but I ask nevertheless.
Is it work, John?
No, Bridge, it's not.
He turns, defeated, and walks back down the path to the driveway.
I close the door and turn to go see what everyone is up to, see if it's safe to slip out and go into the city for a while. I run straight into Ben, who takes the envelope from me and walks away. He stops halfway across the room and I can see the muscles in his shoulders freeze up.
No, Bridget.
What? What is that? Taking a page from Jake?
He was smart.
Not as smart as Cole.
Oh that's rich, princess.
It's true though. Jacob ran on heart.
And what would you have me do?
Not change anything.
Not change anything? What the fuck, princess, I can't deal with this. I can't deal with you being gone, I can't deal with percentages and jealousy and the pressure I see you caving under.
I'm fine, Ben.
Where is normal, Bridget? We promised each other normal. I could stay healthy and you would be happy.
As soon as I find the sign for it, we'll turn off.
We've passed SEVEN FUCKING EXITS, Bridget, and you pretend you don't see them.
I can't take any more change.
I can't take him touching you.
You don't seem to mind when you're getting something out of it.
Yeah, well, maybe those days are done.
Come with me. We can talk about this later.
The invitation came as a bit of a surprise. We had just arrived home after spending most of the day downtown with Caleb. We took the children to the sad parade and then walked around watching people decked out in red and white while we painted the picture of a perfect family. I guess it wasn't enough, only this time Caleb wasn't interested in the 'family' picture of his dreams, just the Bridget part. He never really cares if Ben joins me. He doesn't get the choice.
By eight we were having dinner at a restaurant. I picked at the lobster and gulped my champagne. Oh, look, they put courage in my glass. Need that. Please give it to me and then get some more.
By nine we were strolling along the boardwalk. I had my wrap around my shoulders over my dress and Ben's suit jacket on and I didn't want to say I was cold but oh hell, I was so freezing I couldn't speak, I figured it would all come out in chattery, fogged breaths.
By ten we switched to wine and music and light conversation in the warm penthouse which is how Caleb unwinds from his workday. He sits back and tries on various expressions and extends his finer curiosities.
By eleven the wine was being poured slightly higher in my glass and the familiar hungers had begun to appear in their eyes. Ben had relaxed slightly, no wine for him, just water. He had a guitar out and was quietly playing along, watching me. Waiting.
By twelve I was slammed up against the door to Caleb's bedroom, my dress yanked up over my hips and Caleb's face in the crook of my neck, leaving a burn as he drove into me while my husband watched. Cole, don't hurt me, please. I can't take it anymore.
By one I was just falling asleep when Ben came for what he needed at last and it was such a relief to be safe again. I was sure Caleb stood just back from the doorway in the shadows and watched. I didn't care. I just said I love you, over and over again to Ben in an effort to make the distinction so that Caleb could hear it and know that he has won exactly nothing.
By three we were in the back of the car, being driven home, not talking to each other or to John. Staring out the window, at the lights. My skin is still red and raw, my life in someone else's hands, my history being spent in a genre I won't even look at without wine and darkness and want.
Lochlan opened the door when we got home and I walked past him and I felt his eyes burning into the top of my head all the while and Ben's tired eyes burning a hole into my back and I turned around to finally meet Lochlan's eyes and he shook his head, tears in his eyes. Aghast at my bravery, or maybe at my recklessness.
This isn't what you meant for it to be, is it, princess?
No.
Then why?
I just pointed at Ben. Ben will pretend up and down that this is all about me, but rarely will he admit that he needs this as much as I want it. He needs it to feel dangerous, he needs it to get high. Chasing this has become somewhat of an albatross to him, and he's loathe to admit it. But it's there, right between us, an obstacle I keep tripping on as I try to juggle in front of an audience. The harlequin. The whore.
It leaves me with a question this morning, since Ben and I are going to spend the day talking. Which is stronger? A man's appetites or his convictions? Jacob would have had an easy answer for this one.
Ben? Caleb? Lochlan, even?
Not so much.
He looked pained, hands behind his back and so I spoke first.
Formal visit, then, is it?
He passed me a pewter-colored envelope. Caleb color codes everything. Financial is manila, travel is blue, invitations requesting my company come in a rich dark silver, the color of the envelope John is trying to give to me and I don't take it.
When?
As soon as you can get away.
I nod and my brain starts spooling up. What do I wear? What does he want? I know but I ask nevertheless.
Is it work, John?
No, Bridge, it's not.
He turns, defeated, and walks back down the path to the driveway.
I close the door and turn to go see what everyone is up to, see if it's safe to slip out and go into the city for a while. I run straight into Ben, who takes the envelope from me and walks away. He stops halfway across the room and I can see the muscles in his shoulders freeze up.
No, Bridget.
What? What is that? Taking a page from Jake?
He was smart.
Not as smart as Cole.
Oh that's rich, princess.
It's true though. Jacob ran on heart.
And what would you have me do?
Not change anything.
Not change anything? What the fuck, princess, I can't deal with this. I can't deal with you being gone, I can't deal with percentages and jealousy and the pressure I see you caving under.
I'm fine, Ben.
Where is normal, Bridget? We promised each other normal. I could stay healthy and you would be happy.
As soon as I find the sign for it, we'll turn off.
We've passed SEVEN FUCKING EXITS, Bridget, and you pretend you don't see them.
I can't take any more change.
I can't take him touching you.
You don't seem to mind when you're getting something out of it.
Yeah, well, maybe those days are done.
Come with me. We can talk about this later.
The invitation came as a bit of a surprise. We had just arrived home after spending most of the day downtown with Caleb. We took the children to the sad parade and then walked around watching people decked out in red and white while we painted the picture of a perfect family. I guess it wasn't enough, only this time Caleb wasn't interested in the 'family' picture of his dreams, just the Bridget part. He never really cares if Ben joins me. He doesn't get the choice.
By eight we were having dinner at a restaurant. I picked at the lobster and gulped my champagne. Oh, look, they put courage in my glass. Need that. Please give it to me and then get some more.
By nine we were strolling along the boardwalk. I had my wrap around my shoulders over my dress and Ben's suit jacket on and I didn't want to say I was cold but oh hell, I was so freezing I couldn't speak, I figured it would all come out in chattery, fogged breaths.
By ten we switched to wine and music and light conversation in the warm penthouse which is how Caleb unwinds from his workday. He sits back and tries on various expressions and extends his finer curiosities.
By eleven the wine was being poured slightly higher in my glass and the familiar hungers had begun to appear in their eyes. Ben had relaxed slightly, no wine for him, just water. He had a guitar out and was quietly playing along, watching me. Waiting.
By twelve I was slammed up against the door to Caleb's bedroom, my dress yanked up over my hips and Caleb's face in the crook of my neck, leaving a burn as he drove into me while my husband watched. Cole, don't hurt me, please. I can't take it anymore.
By one I was just falling asleep when Ben came for what he needed at last and it was such a relief to be safe again. I was sure Caleb stood just back from the doorway in the shadows and watched. I didn't care. I just said I love you, over and over again to Ben in an effort to make the distinction so that Caleb could hear it and know that he has won exactly nothing.
By three we were in the back of the car, being driven home, not talking to each other or to John. Staring out the window, at the lights. My skin is still red and raw, my life in someone else's hands, my history being spent in a genre I won't even look at without wine and darkness and want.
Lochlan opened the door when we got home and I walked past him and I felt his eyes burning into the top of my head all the while and Ben's tired eyes burning a hole into my back and I turned around to finally meet Lochlan's eyes and he shook his head, tears in his eyes. Aghast at my bravery, or maybe at my recklessness.
This isn't what you meant for it to be, is it, princess?
No.
Then why?
I just pointed at Ben. Ben will pretend up and down that this is all about me, but rarely will he admit that he needs this as much as I want it. He needs it to feel dangerous, he needs it to get high. Chasing this has become somewhat of an albatross to him, and he's loathe to admit it. But it's there, right between us, an obstacle I keep tripping on as I try to juggle in front of an audience. The harlequin. The whore.
It leaves me with a question this morning, since Ben and I are going to spend the day talking. Which is stronger? A man's appetites or his convictions? Jacob would have had an easy answer for this one.
Ben? Caleb? Lochlan, even?
Not so much.
Thursday, 1 July 2010
Wednesday, 30 June 2010
Special effects.
Sam is here this morning keeping the coffee and the Baudelaire in full swing. I have nothing if I didn't choose one hell of a group of educated men who can quote with confidence and creativity. He brought his guitar. Hopefully he also brought a pocketful of nails with which to finish sealing my fate because if I have to listen to singing preachers today I may as well just stop breathing now and prevent the inevitable stabs of remembrance. Not that I could tell Sam that it hurts. He knows it hurts but really I would no sooner wish them to stop with the music than I would ever want to stifle a good memory.
For the first time in the history of Henry, something else also happened today. I ran out of cookies. On purpose. Henry is very surprised because Mommy is usually better prepared than this and what the heck, mommy?
No worries, there's fruit, granola bars, fruit bars, bran bars, popcorn and crackers. He won't starve, I just want to see if he can get through a day without cookies. Yes, I realize I may be scarring him for life, I don't care. He needs to break the cookie cycle. He's soon to be as tall as me, if he outweighs me by the time he's ten what the heck am I going to do then?
In other news, Sam's quiet confidence inspired me to get the ball rolling and make an appointment to get my tires fixed. Fucking car. Drives me nuts but at the same time, I don't take it for granted. I even cleaned it last week, including the steering wheel and the shifter knob, which meant Ben almost lost control just starting it up and called for a soapy cloth and a towel to clean the shininess off both. I try. Did I mention I try?
You all think I'm some sort of spoiled playboy centerfold who sits in her turret eating grapes and reading Nietzsche while my knights fight over me...
Okay, well that's besides the point.
I have nails in my tires. Know why? I'm magnetic. We've been over this before. The same freakish power that enables me to kill car key fobs, Xbox 360s, and laptop computers just by virtue of my very presence also enables small, pointy metal objects to skitter across the road and fling themselves into the treads of my tires in their bid to be close to the source of all melancholy.
Whatever, go with it now, okay?
Melancholy is a superhero and she has long blonde-white hair and a black tutu dress, black garters and high-high black stiletto boots on. It's always windy and raining outside when she's around. Her hair whips around so fiercely you can hardly see her eyes, but you feel them on you. The room feels heavy when she's there but you can't take your eyes off her. She has dust from the cemetery caked under her nails and her lipstick is smeared from being kissed and left. She never smiles, she just stares, and her power isn't so much the magnetic anomalies but the power to absorb all of the sadness around her.
She's a giant grief sponge.
Yes.
Marvel will never hire me. That's okay. I'm not looking. I'm busy trying to morph, so I don't have to listen to Sam.
For the first time in the history of Henry, something else also happened today. I ran out of cookies. On purpose. Henry is very surprised because Mommy is usually better prepared than this and what the heck, mommy?
No worries, there's fruit, granola bars, fruit bars, bran bars, popcorn and crackers. He won't starve, I just want to see if he can get through a day without cookies. Yes, I realize I may be scarring him for life, I don't care. He needs to break the cookie cycle. He's soon to be as tall as me, if he outweighs me by the time he's ten what the heck am I going to do then?
In other news, Sam's quiet confidence inspired me to get the ball rolling and make an appointment to get my tires fixed. Fucking car. Drives me nuts but at the same time, I don't take it for granted. I even cleaned it last week, including the steering wheel and the shifter knob, which meant Ben almost lost control just starting it up and called for a soapy cloth and a towel to clean the shininess off both. I try. Did I mention I try?
You all think I'm some sort of spoiled playboy centerfold who sits in her turret eating grapes and reading Nietzsche while my knights fight over me...
Okay, well that's besides the point.
I have nails in my tires. Know why? I'm magnetic. We've been over this before. The same freakish power that enables me to kill car key fobs, Xbox 360s, and laptop computers just by virtue of my very presence also enables small, pointy metal objects to skitter across the road and fling themselves into the treads of my tires in their bid to be close to the source of all melancholy.
Whatever, go with it now, okay?
Melancholy is a superhero and she has long blonde-white hair and a black tutu dress, black garters and high-high black stiletto boots on. It's always windy and raining outside when she's around. Her hair whips around so fiercely you can hardly see her eyes, but you feel them on you. The room feels heavy when she's there but you can't take your eyes off her. She has dust from the cemetery caked under her nails and her lipstick is smeared from being kissed and left. She never smiles, she just stares, and her power isn't so much the magnetic anomalies but the power to absorb all of the sadness around her.
She's a giant grief sponge.
Yes.
Marvel will never hire me. That's okay. I'm not looking. I'm busy trying to morph, so I don't have to listen to Sam.
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
I don't think I'll write about the pictures so here.
(Pictures. Yesterday I did another photo shoot for a band that Caleb has interests in. That is all.)
I am here.
Just unimaginably tired as of late. Trying to keep the running around to the minimum. Trying to engage the children in helping and having fun when I'm dealing from a deck missing so many cards we're down to faces and twos of clubs. The children started summer vacation today, too soon on the heels of a six-week spring vacation for the move and I am sort of out of sorts for the time being while I figure out what to do. I'm in bureaucratic heck for a bit trying to organize our city membership for the pool. I was hoping to jump the children right into daily swimming lessons.
Honestly, I'm at a loss to know where to begin entertaining them in this fresh new environment, but thankfully they are a bit older as to not need constant entertainment and I was never the kind of mother to fill their dance cards. Instead I always allowed for a lot of imaginative, free time in which to just play. They're going to take turns again each night helping me make dinner. They're going to continue with their chores which are augmented when they are not in school. They're going to unwind and be kids, make God's eyes out of sticks, poke at slugs and pick berries.
They're going to do math, too. A textbook came home from school. Math is not our strong suit. We can draw you anything or write you into a corner but we can't divide fractions and Roman numerals are a fun pastime when confronted with graphics from the Super Bowl only. We'll get there. Every child has something to work on, every grownup too. I'm just eternally grateful they are happy and healthy and adaptable and they are grateful mommy buys them cookies and video games and can pump up a bike tire and start a food fight because some parents don't.
They're going to be kids. There's not enough of that these days.
I want to be a kid. I want to stay up too late, outside in the heat after dark and eat sour gummy bears until I feel sick and read with a flashlight in the tent and turn brown from the sun. I want to count the stars again. I want to grab a hot dog at the beach and call it dinner. I want to rejoice in the fact that I have enough change for the salt & vinegar chips AND the new Archie comic.
That kind of kid. The kind I was when I was Henry's age. He's going to be nine in two weeks and it wasn't until I saw his 'promotion' to senior elementary that I realized my youngest child isn't even in a primary grade anymore, and how strange it feels that they are racing past me on the way to their own lives and I am still stuck here so awkwardly between doing what Satan and Lochlan tell me to do because I will forever be a child to them, and thinking outside the box as a mother, because there are things I want my children to experience, and things I hope they never go through.
I can't live my life through them, and I can't live their lives for them. It's not an easy dance but I will learn the steps I'm sure.
Maybe I'll do some math too. You know, just in case I ever need it. It will come in handy when I gamble. I hear you get further by counting your cards anyway.
I am here.
Just unimaginably tired as of late. Trying to keep the running around to the minimum. Trying to engage the children in helping and having fun when I'm dealing from a deck missing so many cards we're down to faces and twos of clubs. The children started summer vacation today, too soon on the heels of a six-week spring vacation for the move and I am sort of out of sorts for the time being while I figure out what to do. I'm in bureaucratic heck for a bit trying to organize our city membership for the pool. I was hoping to jump the children right into daily swimming lessons.
Honestly, I'm at a loss to know where to begin entertaining them in this fresh new environment, but thankfully they are a bit older as to not need constant entertainment and I was never the kind of mother to fill their dance cards. Instead I always allowed for a lot of imaginative, free time in which to just play. They're going to take turns again each night helping me make dinner. They're going to continue with their chores which are augmented when they are not in school. They're going to unwind and be kids, make God's eyes out of sticks, poke at slugs and pick berries.
They're going to do math, too. A textbook came home from school. Math is not our strong suit. We can draw you anything or write you into a corner but we can't divide fractions and Roman numerals are a fun pastime when confronted with graphics from the Super Bowl only. We'll get there. Every child has something to work on, every grownup too. I'm just eternally grateful they are happy and healthy and adaptable and they are grateful mommy buys them cookies and video games and can pump up a bike tire and start a food fight because some parents don't.
They're going to be kids. There's not enough of that these days.
I want to be a kid. I want to stay up too late, outside in the heat after dark and eat sour gummy bears until I feel sick and read with a flashlight in the tent and turn brown from the sun. I want to count the stars again. I want to grab a hot dog at the beach and call it dinner. I want to rejoice in the fact that I have enough change for the salt & vinegar chips AND the new Archie comic.
That kind of kid. The kind I was when I was Henry's age. He's going to be nine in two weeks and it wasn't until I saw his 'promotion' to senior elementary that I realized my youngest child isn't even in a primary grade anymore, and how strange it feels that they are racing past me on the way to their own lives and I am still stuck here so awkwardly between doing what Satan and Lochlan tell me to do because I will forever be a child to them, and thinking outside the box as a mother, because there are things I want my children to experience, and things I hope they never go through.
I can't live my life through them, and I can't live their lives for them. It's not an easy dance but I will learn the steps I'm sure.
Maybe I'll do some math too. You know, just in case I ever need it. It will come in handy when I gamble. I hear you get further by counting your cards anyway.
Monday, 28 June 2010
Bumblebee.
Remember how Bumblebee used songs because he no longer had a voice? Yes, that.
It's evening, you're tired
You sleep walk, a robot out to the street
Are you crazy to want this even for a while?
you're driving, it's rush hour
The cars on the freeway are moving backwards
Into a wall of fire
Backwards
Into a wall of fire
We're done lying for a living
The strange days have come and you're gone
You're gone
Either dead or dying
Either dead or trying to go
Good morning
Don't cop out
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Spinning unrefined sugar.
(Filling in the holes for you, I tend to leave out a lot of things sometimes.)
The smell of burnt fireworks and sweet corn, fresh hay and cows filled my nostrils and was chased with Lochlan's sweat as he paced slowly in front of me, smoking, smiling.
Good show tonight, hey?
Late summer is always best, I think.
Yeah.
He stopped and leaned against the back of the wagon where I sat with my brown legs and bare feet dangling over the dry baked dirt road. Dirty feet. Tired girl. My braids were all apart, my hair was filthy. I was down to three t-shirts and two skirts for free time and I figured the tan would cover most of the dirt. Some towns allowed for open fires and on those nights Lochlan would heat some water and pour it over me. That was as clean as we got most summers. I would come home on the final day in rags, voice hoarse from calling to the crowd, the sweet that offset the harsh from Lochlan playing the man. He wasn't a man yet, he wasn't even twenty years old. It was a joke but we played off each other well. I could predict his dares. He played up my sweetness to the crowd. They ate it up and we made hundreds of dollars. Enough for a carton of cigarettes for Lochlan and a new bikini for me, maybe there would be a beach within walking distance at the next town. Maybe we could eat for a whole week straight. Maybe not. He had to buy parts for the truck. Tires. Gas.
Nights we slept curled together on the single cot in the camper we borrowed for free. We had a box of cookies on the floor and a six-pack of warm beer underneath the truck. Sometimes I would sleep in the cab of the truck at the drive-in, flushed against his shoulder, my head absorbing his heartbeat. Lochlan would act out the movies for me later on, with his own interpretations. To this day Ladyhawke remains a favorite just for the fact that I laughed so hard at his dialogue I wound up on my knees in a field of strawberries throwing up blue cotton candy from the effort to stop.
I never said Lochlan wasn't a romantic. He pulled it off before there was money, and group dynamics and children. Before there were portfolios and educations and careers and debt. Before we had fifty dollars to spend without having to worry about more than a week in advance. Back then the future involved counting towns and bottles of beer and sneaking into other people's trailers to borrow marmalade and bread that we wouldn't return and picking nickles off the sidewalk in town and charming the older people into buying me two ice creams which I would then take and walk back to give one to Lochlan who would be fixing trucks and trailers all day when he wasn't posting signs ahead of the shows.
Eat fast, baby. It's melting.
My favorite nights were the too-hot ones we spent sleeping in the truck bed so that I could look up and see the shooting stars. We could claim them if we said we saw it first. He let me win. He taught me the constellations and how the weather worked. He showed me how to fix a two-stroke engine and how to steer an ox. I learned how to make a barbecue out of a tin bucket and some charcoal and I can open a beer bottle with my teeth.
But mostly he worked with teaching me how to use my pretty looks to get things from people. How to charm them into doing what I asked and how to keep them from realizing they'd been had through until we were long gone.
And it worked, for a time. Time, it turns out, was our enemy.
Only the most hardcore, hardened people can make a life out of that circumstance and we were neither. We were two dumb kids along for the ride, killing our beach country summers, loving each other, letting history write itself while we held each other in the heat and promised each other the stars above.
Time was pushing us along, pulling us out of the present and into the future. Lochlan needed to go to university. I needed to start high school. He had to get a steady job and have a shower more than once every four days. I had to be domesticated and learn to stop stealing things for his approval.
We needed to take our secrets and bury them in the center of a cornfield and then we needed to forget that location forever and leave them there to become part of the land. We needed to get along better and stop fighting.
We couldn't manage it.
I walked away from him and he turned the tables on me, deciding that he would be the one to end it first because of my stubbornness. Telling Cole that we were no longer together was his ace. Cole was still in high school and suddenly I had a ride every day in his car. Suddenly I wasn't a child anymore to him either but an equal and we spent our time listening to more music and working on the boys' cars. It was stable. It was good. On purpose, the implicit opposite of life with Lochlan, who wound up being the most stable person I will ever know, ironically.
Lochlan engineered Cole's interest so that I would still be close by and still looked after.
Cole asked me questions sometimes about Lochlan and I would lie easily. That was part of the deal Lochlan and I made in the fading sun and the dirt, in the coming darkness. I could hardly see but I could follow as Lochlan explained why some things were wrong and why we shouldn't tell and I knew he was right and it was easy for me to agree because I took half the blame. Cole died not knowing. He died and Lochlan was not his best friend by a long shot and Jake didn't get all of the history and neither has anyone else. What they understand is that Lochlan wins, every time and he keeps a sure confidence in that knowledge because of history and really when Caleb gives me a hard time it's NOTHING compared to when Lochlan and I are at odds because there are so many years and so many memories to feel my way through before I can hit on some socially acceptable and presentable way to respond.
It's the only thing I can do.
I told you when I admitted that Henry belonged to Caleb that I still had secrets. I told you I would never share them and I keep that promise because it's important to me, it's important to Lochlan and no matter how far he goes and no matter how many people I marry he is my own personal albatross and I feed and pet him daily because I don't mind having a permanent anchor to earth in him. I need him because he makes up part of who I am. We joke that he raised me, because he was trustworthy enough to be entrusted with my supervision as a child and then suddenly I wasn't that child anymore but I see him in the mirror when I look at myself. We have the same visceral reactions to things and the same habits collecting shiny things and things of value and then needing nothing but air to actually exist on. We still pour water in almost-empty shampoo bottles to make them last and we both prefer food cooked outside to anything else ever. We both drink our beer warm and pick our colors for cotton candy (blue, always blue) when everyone else says they don't care what color they get, and we both dream of those nights asleep in a field at the end of the dirt road that leads to the ocean, the road littered with ticket stubs and pieces from the first time I ever had my heart broken. Don't you ever question my loyalty ever again. You don't have that right.
What are you looking forward to most this summer, Lochlan?
The fair. Late summer. The usual. You?
Same.
Fumbling through your dresser drawer forgot what I was looking forThe hottest nights were the ones I looked forward to the most.
Try to guide me in the right direction
Making use of all this time
Keeping everything inside
Close my eyes and listen to you cry
I'm lifting you up
I'm letting you down
I'm dancing til dawn
I'm fooling around
I'm not giving up
The smell of burnt fireworks and sweet corn, fresh hay and cows filled my nostrils and was chased with Lochlan's sweat as he paced slowly in front of me, smoking, smiling.
Good show tonight, hey?
Late summer is always best, I think.
Yeah.
He stopped and leaned against the back of the wagon where I sat with my brown legs and bare feet dangling over the dry baked dirt road. Dirty feet. Tired girl. My braids were all apart, my hair was filthy. I was down to three t-shirts and two skirts for free time and I figured the tan would cover most of the dirt. Some towns allowed for open fires and on those nights Lochlan would heat some water and pour it over me. That was as clean as we got most summers. I would come home on the final day in rags, voice hoarse from calling to the crowd, the sweet that offset the harsh from Lochlan playing the man. He wasn't a man yet, he wasn't even twenty years old. It was a joke but we played off each other well. I could predict his dares. He played up my sweetness to the crowd. They ate it up and we made hundreds of dollars. Enough for a carton of cigarettes for Lochlan and a new bikini for me, maybe there would be a beach within walking distance at the next town. Maybe we could eat for a whole week straight. Maybe not. He had to buy parts for the truck. Tires. Gas.
Nights we slept curled together on the single cot in the camper we borrowed for free. We had a box of cookies on the floor and a six-pack of warm beer underneath the truck. Sometimes I would sleep in the cab of the truck at the drive-in, flushed against his shoulder, my head absorbing his heartbeat. Lochlan would act out the movies for me later on, with his own interpretations. To this day Ladyhawke remains a favorite just for the fact that I laughed so hard at his dialogue I wound up on my knees in a field of strawberries throwing up blue cotton candy from the effort to stop.
I never said Lochlan wasn't a romantic. He pulled it off before there was money, and group dynamics and children. Before there were portfolios and educations and careers and debt. Before we had fifty dollars to spend without having to worry about more than a week in advance. Back then the future involved counting towns and bottles of beer and sneaking into other people's trailers to borrow marmalade and bread that we wouldn't return and picking nickles off the sidewalk in town and charming the older people into buying me two ice creams which I would then take and walk back to give one to Lochlan who would be fixing trucks and trailers all day when he wasn't posting signs ahead of the shows.
Eat fast, baby. It's melting.
My favorite nights were the too-hot ones we spent sleeping in the truck bed so that I could look up and see the shooting stars. We could claim them if we said we saw it first. He let me win. He taught me the constellations and how the weather worked. He showed me how to fix a two-stroke engine and how to steer an ox. I learned how to make a barbecue out of a tin bucket and some charcoal and I can open a beer bottle with my teeth.
But mostly he worked with teaching me how to use my pretty looks to get things from people. How to charm them into doing what I asked and how to keep them from realizing they'd been had through until we were long gone.
And it worked, for a time. Time, it turns out, was our enemy.
Only the most hardcore, hardened people can make a life out of that circumstance and we were neither. We were two dumb kids along for the ride, killing our beach country summers, loving each other, letting history write itself while we held each other in the heat and promised each other the stars above.
Time was pushing us along, pulling us out of the present and into the future. Lochlan needed to go to university. I needed to start high school. He had to get a steady job and have a shower more than once every four days. I had to be domesticated and learn to stop stealing things for his approval.
We needed to take our secrets and bury them in the center of a cornfield and then we needed to forget that location forever and leave them there to become part of the land. We needed to get along better and stop fighting.
We couldn't manage it.
I walked away from him and he turned the tables on me, deciding that he would be the one to end it first because of my stubbornness. Telling Cole that we were no longer together was his ace. Cole was still in high school and suddenly I had a ride every day in his car. Suddenly I wasn't a child anymore to him either but an equal and we spent our time listening to more music and working on the boys' cars. It was stable. It was good. On purpose, the implicit opposite of life with Lochlan, who wound up being the most stable person I will ever know, ironically.
Lochlan engineered Cole's interest so that I would still be close by and still looked after.
Cole asked me questions sometimes about Lochlan and I would lie easily. That was part of the deal Lochlan and I made in the fading sun and the dirt, in the coming darkness. I could hardly see but I could follow as Lochlan explained why some things were wrong and why we shouldn't tell and I knew he was right and it was easy for me to agree because I took half the blame. Cole died not knowing. He died and Lochlan was not his best friend by a long shot and Jake didn't get all of the history and neither has anyone else. What they understand is that Lochlan wins, every time and he keeps a sure confidence in that knowledge because of history and really when Caleb gives me a hard time it's NOTHING compared to when Lochlan and I are at odds because there are so many years and so many memories to feel my way through before I can hit on some socially acceptable and presentable way to respond.
It's the only thing I can do.
I told you when I admitted that Henry belonged to Caleb that I still had secrets. I told you I would never share them and I keep that promise because it's important to me, it's important to Lochlan and no matter how far he goes and no matter how many people I marry he is my own personal albatross and I feed and pet him daily because I don't mind having a permanent anchor to earth in him. I need him because he makes up part of who I am. We joke that he raised me, because he was trustworthy enough to be entrusted with my supervision as a child and then suddenly I wasn't that child anymore but I see him in the mirror when I look at myself. We have the same visceral reactions to things and the same habits collecting shiny things and things of value and then needing nothing but air to actually exist on. We still pour water in almost-empty shampoo bottles to make them last and we both prefer food cooked outside to anything else ever. We both drink our beer warm and pick our colors for cotton candy (blue, always blue) when everyone else says they don't care what color they get, and we both dream of those nights asleep in a field at the end of the dirt road that leads to the ocean, the road littered with ticket stubs and pieces from the first time I ever had my heart broken. Don't you ever question my loyalty ever again. You don't have that right.
What are you looking forward to most this summer, Lochlan?
The fair. Late summer. The usual. You?
Same.
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