Cold water pressure.

This morning the bright yellow grey sky heralds summer in a campground by the sea, the cool damp air seeping into the cracks of the trailer but hunger and the need to pee precludes burrowing deeper under the covers. I grab my hoodie and shrug into it quickly while I search for my jeans, finding shorts instead. I pull them on and zip up the hoodie and head outside.

I smell burned coffee and pine trees and salt. The ash of last night's campfire is fragile and has already blown over the grass. I ignore the beer bottles stacked against the steps and head toward the row of outhouses out on the bluff. What a dumb place for them. It's only when you're exiting that you really get a sense of the wonderful view of wide open Atlantic.

When I return to the camper Lochlan is awake. He has his threadbare white t-shirt on inside-out and his jeans on but the buttons aren't fastened. He is filling the kettle for his coffee. I am too young to drink coffee still. His curls threaten a revolt as he smiles at me. He drinks it in one gulp. He's always been a fast coffee drinker. Breaks are short. It becomes a habit.

Want to go out for breakfast?

It's an old joke. We never have breakfast here. We don't have any food. We get on the motorcycle and drive to the diner once or twice a day and sit in a booth with a scratch-polished table and ripped leather seats and the waitress always frowns because we sit on the same side, Bridget on the inside. And I don't speak even when she asks me a direct question, which if she is anything like me, leads her to believe that he is my captor and I am his unwilling victim, instructed to remain silent lest I give away his crimes.

For my compliance, hash browns. And when we leave he'll turn to me, pull up the hood on my green sweater and make sure the zipper is all the way up, because it's still cold, you see. Especially on the bike.

Friday gloss.

This week I'm well on my way to being organized. I have almost finished Full Dark, No Stars and a Revlon Creme Gloss in cherry tart. The kids and I decorated cupcakes and made some plans for spring break and I've been to a birthday party, parenting mediation and a tsunami warning.

I think this weekend we may go out for Chinese food and see Battle: Los Angeles, which I keep calling The Battle of Los Angeles as if it's a Rage Against the Machine album title (it isn't, just close).

I printed out reams of concert tickets too. Rush and Switchfoot, to name a couple. It's going to be as good a spring for shows as it is for films (Suckerpunch, Fast Five, Thor, Super 8, Circo and that's just for a start).

I have stifled memories, burst into laughter and held my tongue, hanging on for dear life, sitting on it, tucking the bits back inside that threaten to stay out, shoving, sweating, pushing and swearing and throwing latches as quickly as I can catch air. That's hard for me. I am stubborn, but sometimes waiting them out is the only way to travel light.

I have listened to the lawyers when they told me not to write about the devil, because the devil stands to burn everything I know and love down to cinders and the only thing left will be a faded poster still flapping against a power pole in town, held fast by a single rusted staple.

I have tucked myself under Ben's arm as he sleeps unaware, putting my head down against his heart, wishing he had forty-two hours in the day instead of twenty-four, and I have memorized his heart beat so I can play it through my skull when I miss him, even though we have grown fresh skin over the raw open wounds of a year ago, skin that stretches uneasily and bends to accommodate his long days and my penchant for using proximity as a emotional weapon in taking one too many hugs from Lochlan. Too frequent and too long in duration, too close. Enough time to match breathing patterns and unlock muscle tension. Enough time to forget that aching wedge with its twenty-five years of moss, rain and circus flyers stacked up, making the weight unbearable.

I have dutifully sat in the desks of Ruth and Henry's classrooms and listened carefully as their teachers assure me they are doing well. I have exclaimed with delight as their marks have risen dramatically since last term and they both are labeled voracious readers and creative writers. I beam with pride. I can't ask for more from them and yet, this is nurture, not nature. Nature does not beget small humans of this caliber and I can lie awake at night wondering if my choices and my behavior stunt their emotions or perhaps set the stage for decades of therapy when they join adulthood and for now, I am content that so far things working out very well, which means I will earn a temporary reprieve from Caleb's ever-present threat of English boarding schools.

I have admitted to Sam that I really don't want the stress with Caleb's company and he arranged for the decisions to be revisited in the fall, on my behalf. I booked Nolan on a flight here for Easter and I spent a small fortune on new umbrellas. Good umbrellas, because when you pay $25 for a single umbrella it works better and doesn't fall apart within days and I can get on board with that, even though sometimes the boys tell me I am cheaper than a tin can in a one dollar grocery.

Hear it with a soft, slight Scottish accent and it sounds better, believe me.

I have made decisions about things I want. Bucket list stuff. Stuff I really wanted to do before I turned forty or maybe just before I die but no one's listening while they decide what I should do instead so sometimes I wait out my own life with the patience of the sphinx. Only I still have my nose. The rest of me is disintegrating in the elements and across the street is a Pizza Hut. It's a tourist wasteland. Come and visit, always remember.

And I'm melodramatic without even trying, as I'm actually rather content right now.

*rolls eyes*

I don't have a coffee craving or a imminent narcoleptic event brewing and the boys are beginning to trickle home in a slow river of beards and total utter decompression disguised in flannel and denim and tattoo ink, resplendent in the knowledge that I still have my shit together. Something I somehow manage to do better than most people, even when I can't string together the simplest of words.

No one will claim this masterpiece that I found on the table this morning. I wonder who the drawing represents. She looks rather stunned.

Tying up loose friends.

My apologies. I didn't make it back in time to write anything. The day tilted up dangerously on an axis I wasn't prepared for and I hung on with the tips of my fingers until things straightened back out. I don't feel like I did much more than set my mouth in a determined social expression and withstand and wait. That leaves me under the impression that it would be best, just now, if I don't say anything more. Just call the day done and go to bed.

Maturity! A rare thing, like the Aurora Borealis or Daniel singing out loud.

Goodnight.

Long gone.

And when I'm gone
Who will break your fall?
Who will you blame?

I can't go on
And let you lose it all
It's more than I can take
Who'll ease your pain?
Ease your pain

I am heading out into the rain to practice scuba driving and also to shop for umbrellas. Because they all seem to self-destruct on the same day. The very very very rainiest one. Actual post to follow later.

Priorities.

As per this recent post, I did indeed find a coat this morning. And I learned I can't find curtains at all unless they're very generic patio-door-sized rod-pocket panel jobs in the dullest colors on earth, which is how people decorate their homes, I am guessing.

I wouldn't know. I don't seem to harbor any decorating skills at all. And I'm creative but when it comes to the house I don't want neutral, I want....

Carnival.

But you can't dress a house in circus. No one would come to the show. Boo. Hoo.

I'm okay with that for now, I'll leave everything white. What isn't white is beige. It's so neutral it's Switzerland.

As for my coat, I got EXACTLY what I envisioned in my head. That doesn't happen so often. Visions, people! I have a vision in my head of how I would like this house to be decorated and not a sweet clue of how to go about accomplishing that. I just...well, my incredibly...er.. minimalistic/proletarian/gypsy formative teenaged/early adultood years preclude the ability to do ridiculous daredevil things like pay $15 for a coordinating bath mat because what a waste, we already have a bath mat, it just doesn't....match, but at the end of the day when death, drama and dues take up so much of our precious time, who the fuck cares if the bath mat matches the shower curtain?

(The shower curtain is clear in the bathroom I am speaking of. I told you I can't make decisions on such dumb things.)

However!

I can make decisions on big huge things.

And so I quit my job again.

You see, on Saturday we threw a birthday party picnic for Caleb, at Henry's request. It went very well. Everyone had fun. (Civilized! Co-! Parenting! FUCK!) Apparently time with Bridget wasn't plentiful enough and so Caleb sent along a pewter envelope later in the evening. I accepted for us (because I am immature, remember?) and then Ben declined for us and we stayed home and made out with Lochlan instead (because I could say just about anything and that's all you ever think about anymore anyway). Sunday Caleb attempted to reach us once more and I ignored my phone. Monday I attended the board meeting he called as he moves to finalize his retirement and I don't know if it was low blood sugar, fear or just general immaturity (ding ding ding!) but I'm afraid I didn't last very long and I walked out in the middle of the meeting and embarrassed the fuck out of him and accomplished nothing since undoing this will take a lot more than just leaving the building, I'd have to spend another ninety minutes signing papers at the lawyer's office. I hate the lawyers. They have no senses of humor.

Maybe tomorrow I'll do that. Today I am busy picking colors for the circus/beach house, and enjoying my new coat and temporary Pretty Vagrant status. Oh, and making out with Lochlan.

Yes, this is totally working for me.

Those are great, princess.

What are?

Your sneezes. They're just orgasmic.

What are you talking about?

The breathless buildup and then climax and then the afterglowish bless-you thanks.

Wow.

What? I appreciate them, that's all.

Are you that bored?

Yup. Can I play with your phone?

Yes. On second thought, no, don't touch my stuff.

Why? My hands are clean.

I know your hands are clean, but your brain is positively filthy, Padraig.

The maudlin rum.

One of these days
you'll break me of many things
Some cold white day,
but you're crazy if you think
I would leave you this way

You should wake up before the wrath comes
(me and you) could take off before the wrath comes
soon

And one of these days
I pray it will be sometime soon
On a day like today
you'd be crazy not to want me
to teach you the way

Moments into the game last night, Lochlan skated too close to Ben and Ben gave him a shove that sent him to the ground, knocking his helmet off. He came charging out of the net, fast for such a big guy and the others threw themselves between Lochlan and certain death, since Ben never put down his stick.

But Ben had no intentions of hurting Loch. These are simply reminder knocks. Caleb got his later in the game and I'm still not one hundred percent comfortable with him taking Cole's spot, which was occasional player when enough others don't show, because Caleb is the furthest thing from a sporting man that I can envision unless it involves horses, or perhaps water polo or croquet.

Croquet. Yes, when we are all a hundred years old, the swings will come slower, the insults will be unintelligible for hearing loss and the sidelong glances will be ignored on account of dementia. Who is this person and why are they looking at me? I cannot wait for that suddenly. I will sit under a huge umbrella on an old quilt I haven't purchased yet and watch the waves since they will not change over the next fifty years as remarkably as I will.

Mark this day, as it's the first day I have written about a future action, something Sam is always pushing me for, something I am usually too skittish/superstitious to manage since if I jinx it now, then what, Samuel?

He has no answers. He will, however, have a big smile.

Ben brought me flowers again last night. Huge chrysanthemums, a lily or two, what seems to be eucalyptus and something else, a beautiful creamy-pink arrangement that made me smile, for there's nothing quite as striking as a man walking toward me with a giant bouquet of flowers. I needed both arms to hold them as we came into the house, and I feared the biggest glass vase might not be big enough. He would have sacrificed the water pitcher but my plan was to divide the bouquet into smaller arrangements and have flowers in several different rooms. When I said this he simply said he would start bringing me flowers every night, and then the house will be filled.

Long after we left the flowers behind on the main floor, the dark came to claim his generosities, leaving behind his greed as I was held down, stretched out and stung. Turned raw, made whole, scratched smooth. Worn out, to be regenerated in sunlight for the next moonless night. I fell asleep marveling at how badly my limbs trembled, while Ben slept already, one arm tightly wrapped around my frame, weighing me down against the storm so I could not be ripped away from him by bad fortune. Consigned to a welcome oblivion for two.

Sleep came for me and I didn't have a chance to bring my dreams. It spit me out on the side of the road just before five this morning and as I picked myself up and dusted off my skin a light was shining, just around the next bend. Instead of heading toward it, I walked the other way, back into the dark. Toward the place where I have no narrative to cloud my perceptions, no inevitable death to scare my heartbeats into double-time and no flimsy camper-door lock to alter my existence forever.

On not giving in.

When I returned home, I walked straight into Lochlan's room and dumped out the contents of the bag on the desk in front of him.

What the fuck, Lochlan. You could have said something.

What did you want me to say, Bridget?

Maybe that you were serious?

Would it have made a difference? Would you be married to me if I had produced a ring? Is the ring really that fucking important?

No. I don't know. I can't think.

Right. But thankfully the rest of us still can.

I don't make decisions lightly.

So you thought real hard about sneaking out to go see him tonight. Did you touch him too, Bridge? Do you want to show your husband another set of bite marks and crush Ben just a little more?

The only one crushing people around here is you with the weight of YOUR history coming down on all of our heads. I can't even breathe anymore, Lochlan!

Whoops. Touched a nerve. He swiped his hand across the desk, taking the tiny white box in his fist and he stood up, coming around the chair to meet me face to face. He was about to say something awful I'm sure when we both realized Ben was standing in the doorway.

Hey guys.

Lochlan nods. I run over and throw myself into Ben's arms.

What's wrong.

Caleb had a ring that belonged to Lochlan that was supposed to be for me in high school.

And?

And we're fighting over why he never mentioned it.

It was fifteen years ago, bee. Let it go.

Then he kissed my head and turned and left the room.

Ben is like that sometimes. All or nothing at all. Won't give the other boys an inch but he'll give me miles and miles and miles in between.

(It's a Heretic's Fork, and it hurts like hell.)

It's Caleb's birthday today and he has a present for me. Suddenly he has all the time in the world again as he prepares to formally retire at the age of 48, not as old as he looks, for in my mind 48 is grey hair and more lines, more acceptance of the way things are and less resistance to stress, drama, life's bumps and jolts.

He is still frighteningly handsome in the wind and otherwise, and I find myself back on the docks for the second time in two days, wishing I had worn a warmer coat today, wishing I had my scarf instead of hunching my ears down into my collar to avoid the worst of the cold gusts. I find myself daydreaming about Jacob. Jacob was the perfect antidote to Caleb and to Cole, by default. Don't get me wrong. The similarities between Caleb and Cole were few while Cole was alive and now that he's gone it's almost as if they have become the same person and Caleb is now some sort of a romantic half-dead historical figure launched into my present to act as a barrier to any and all happiness that I pursue.

He smiles reluctantly and I am impatient. I need to go. I'm not feeling well. I don't want to be alone with him but he was insistent upon a solitary trek out past the boats jostling one another for purchase against the waves. Ben is working. The boys are home, the children are home and I have driven out under the guise of needing to clear my head and run some errands, replete with promises not to do what I'm doing right this minute. Curiosity is my weakness, I'll admit it. It gave the princess to the devil and it killed the cat too.

It probably killed some grown men I know of, but we won't get into that, because Caleb's going to play this out slowly, appearing to have some sort of five- or perhaps ten-year plan to reel me back in. Some sort of death wish, only it's for me, not for him. They're all so heavily invested in being certain there's no double-meaning and no doubt that I am left collecting breadcrumbs all along the trail through the woods and just as I manage to outrun the wicked witch with her candy and gingerbread house, I find myself face to face with the big bad wolf.

He stands too close. I smell Armani and Irish Spring. He's shaved so recently his skin is smooth enough to touch but I don't. His lips are smooth enough to kiss but I won't and he hands me a bag.

It's your birthday, I tell him. You're supposed to get the presents. Henry will have something for you on the weekend. (Henry is plotting an elaborate birthday picnic lunch for his father. We're going to freeze to death but nine year olds cannot be talked out of their grand plans.)

I think this is something you should see, Bridget.

I take the bag from him and peer inside. Ancient tissue paper has been flattened in folds around another box. A set of stapled notes and receipts is shoved down beside it.

Caleb? Why don't you just tell me what it is.

Just look at it. Please.

I pull out the paperwork first. It's a layaway form from 1986. Lochlan's name is repeated nine times. Eighty dollars each month. Jesus. I'm sure there were months when he didn't come close to making that unless he held some over from the winter working at the garage.

There are several blank spaces and still more spaces where the store appeared to make notes attempting to contact Lochlan for a full year and then Forfeit to Caleb C____, paid in full is written in a different hand, dated August 1989.

I'm not getting it.

Open the box, Bridget.

I don't want to open the box. I think right now I'd rather vomit on Caleb's bespoke shoes or maybe run screaming straight into the Pacific but oh, there's that curiosity again and I'm reaching in.

The box is cream-colored satin. Slightly aged but still crisp. I really don't want to know.

Caleb grows impatient and takes the box from me. He opens it and turns it around so there is no mistaking what's inside. So that I see it, plain as day.

A diamond ring. A beautiful gold and diamond engagement ring. Delicate. One of the nicest I've ever seen. And holy, my head is pounding now and I am beginning to look for an escape route because I don't like where this is going and Happy fucking birthday indeed, your present is you get to fuck with Bridget's head a little more. Just the way you like it, Satan.

Lochlan was afraid that Cole would propose to you before he could pay this off. He was hoping to win you back with this. Amazing the things you find out when you hang out at the circus, dirty as it is. Sadly, Cole beat him to the prize, pardon the pun, and Lochlan let the deadline on his next and subsequent payments pass without acknowledgment. He never even bothered to try and get his money back. He just walked away from it all. Isn't that ironic seeing as how he used to be so poor?

I am dizzy and he grabs onto my arm, tightening his fingers around my elbow until I hold my breath. He bends down so that his eyes are level with mine, his nose touching mine. His lips moving and disturbing the air on mine.

You know what the really ironic part is, here, Bridget?

His eyes are so blue now they have turned black but hey, what do you know? So has the sky, the water and the rest of my soul.

The really ironic part is I wouldn't have let you marry him anyway.

Then why are you showing me all this now?

Because he's gotten too close again, and it has to stop.