Friday, 27 May 2011

Hum.

If you could feel my fire reach for you
flames draw high out to you
streetlight shines through my window,
it trembles for you
take my heart, there you go.
He never listened to anything much harder than Tool, and tends to look vaguely pained when I twist up Sepultura or Motorhead, squinces a little for Breaking Benjamin and kind of wonders aloud where he went wrong in raising me when Type O Negative pounds a steady beat through my skull.

He tried.

He drew on what I was born listening to-The Eagles, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, CCR, and then when I was more sophisticated (at a whole ten years old), he and Caleb began to feed me a steady diet of Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. Queen.

You can blame Lochlan for my musical quirks. He sings new songs or plays them in the truck until I follow him around begging for the artist name or even title and then off I go to memorize the words. Like my intense love for all things Switchfoot. Like Toto's song Africa. Like for this freakish new attachment to The Midway State's Atlantic.

(Such a tiny pleaser, if you will but loathe to let anything new slip past her because don't forget her hearing is set to a timer that is counting down the precious years left. She is still working away diligently filling up her head with the most poignant music she can find, be it hard OR soft. She doesn't care, though she is very specific if she doesn't like something, and incredibly possessive if she does. So every band she loves is her favorite and every song she likes is the Best Song In the Universe.)

Little changes decades later. He is even still characteristically pissed at me every time I mention the 'terrible' circus portion of my upbringing in public. Which is funny because it wasn't terrible. Well, most of it wasn't but now when he grates against my personality landmines or intensive shortcomings it's never clear who he is more disappointed in, me or himself.

He beams with pride when I do something well, or something surprising, but he is the most impatient teacher when it comes to reiterating things I can't retain at all because I don't really care. Why work at swimming long distances when I can put my arms around his neck and get a lift into shore? Smooth shifting in a standard? Never going to happen. Why get street directions when I can just wait for him to take me there and then I have my favorite company along for the ride? Survive a day without trying to stick myself to him like a barnacle when he's very very busy? Nope. Give up already.

Failure is not an option. Now turn up the music and just pretend I'm not even here, okay? Well, maybe just move over a little bit. Yup. There.

Thursday, 26 May 2011

Preoccupied.

I wrote cheques for yearbooks today, following cheques written for field trips, school supplies and the dentist. We didn't order yearbooks last year, since the kids had only been in their new school for a couple of weeks when the order forms came home.

Now they are firmly entrenched: band, track & field, floor hockey, french club, and fistfights in the schoolyard at lunchtime (well, Henry anyway, but the good (okay, well not so good) part is he took the punch. He did not throw the punch. I know, surprise!). They eat pears while they mentor the younger grades and they plan afternoons at friends' homes without asking first, leaving me scrambling to find addresses, moms and good pick-up times. They have learned chess, and not just basic chess but kick-ass chess. They have worked their way through all of the clothes we bought in the fall, every bottle of sunscreen and band-aid in the house and all of the food the boys didn't finish yet. I can no longer keep up. With anything.

Suddenly classmate crushes, puberty, Katy Perry and Warcraft have replaced Bugs Bunny, Lego and the biggest thrill in life being fresh blueberry muffins when they get home from school. They regularly steal any headphones they can find and disappear with our devices to listen to music on Youtube. Thank God for 6gb data plans.

Who in the hell are these teenagers and what have they done with my children?

They want me to watch TV with them but leave them alone too. They don't want to be nagged to check for cars or to wear their jackets. They want to go up the hill for slices of pizza or candy at the store but they don't want me along (yes). They want to watch the Saw movies (no). They want to ride bikes in the rain but they don't want to walk the dog or put away their laundry or set the table. They still want their allowance for the chores they don't do, and they want to spend it the moment we step inside the doors of the shopping center. On junk. Chocolate bars, video games, Hello Kitty stuffed toys.

They are all over the place with feelings, fashion and personality and every now and then I get a glimpse of the younger child they used to be along with a preview of the adult they will be in the not-so-distant-any-longer future. It's exciting and a little scary and a wonderful welcome distraction for all of us.

It's really weird too. I keep looking at them and seeing how violently different their lives are from mine when I was that age, and I thank my lucky stars that we are in this place where their biggest complaints are that they have nothing to do.

They are typical. Healthy, privileged, stimulated, active, responsible, caring and adventurous too. Everything I wanted, everything I could have hoped for and more.

(I know you must be so irritated that I'm not currently telling you anything remotely dramatic. Kiss my ass.)

Wednesday, 25 May 2011

(Bear with me, here. I need to drop out of order for a spell. The upside for you is getting to find out what happened, or didn't happen, as it were.)
Don't act like an angel
You've fallen again
You're no superhero
I found in the end

So lie to me once again
And tell me everything will be alright
Lie to me once again
And ask yourself before we say goodbye
Well goodbye, was it worth it in the end?
He even used the word.

Intel.

What the fuck, are we spies now? And please please please pinch me. This is not what I hoped for and I'm not even going to make stabs at sanity anymore. I have the meat hammer out and I've beaten it to a pulp. So excuse me if I don't reply to your fucking emails and excuse me if I get all of this out of order. I still can't feel my eyes.

The 'intel' Caleb gathered (motherfucker) was that he was living in a tiny outpost, fishing and looking after a church without a congregation, and that he does not speak when spoken to, only growls at those who come too close, and that for purposes of mail, whiskey and food deliveries he goes by Thom Finn.

Because Jacob Thomas Finnian Reilly would have been obvious.

And if you've been paid off no one cares, you're still perpetuating a fraud and you still can't just check out in this day and age, even though if anyone ever was good at that it was Jake, who traveled the world for months and years at a time and is somehow adept at existing on nothing.

Maybe you get what you wish for. Especially when there are children involved. Ones that cry for you night after night. What a risk. What an asshole. So many nights I wanted to drag that razor right across my life and cut off the access to it and that would be it. Somehow I didn't and this is such a bad joke. Such a bad time.

I found the church first. An old man was painting the railings and I went past him and tried the door and it was locked. So I kicked it in because I swear only the bolt was holding the outside from the inside. The old man started yelling but I couldn't hear him and Ben managed to tell him it was an emergency. I don't think Ben's hands have stopped shaking since Toronto. That was around the time I stopped speaking.

The old man points down the hill further. On the water side, there's a tiny little white house. I don't even think it's a house. I thought it was a storage shed for lobster fishermen or something. There are hundreds of them here. That one isn't with the others.

I take off in a run. Fuck the rental. Fuck everything. I know he will be there. Halfway there I can't run anymore. My side has a stitch. I'm coughing. Ben catches up and tries to somehow lend support. He pushes a water bottle in my face and holds me still. I take a drink and then he motions that we go. There are no last minute instructions, there's no comfort I can give to him.

I am at the door now, it is weathered and unmarked.

And I don't even bother knocking, I just grab the knob and push.

Inside is a man sitting at a table fixing nets. But it isn't Jake and I don't know who it is and I ask him for Thom, and then I ask him for Jacob and he just shrugs and I ask him if he's blind and can't he talk out loud but Ben is pulling me back out and he pulls me all the way back up the hill to the truck and I am fighting him and crying and trying to get away. It must have looked amazing. City people.

Maybe she's being kidnapped.

Yeah, well, maybe she just lost her mind. Along with someone she loves so much it still hurts.

I tore that village upside down and I didn't find my Jake. I tore the neighboring ones up too and I went to places that looked like they might be places Jacob would go and I went to places that were nothing like places he would go, just in case and then Ben pulled me up the steps and onto the plane and we were home. Home where Caleb's lies unraveled once again, sending me in a different direction. Lochlan wasn't Ruth's father. Maybe Jacob isn't real anymore. Maybe I have become the game, and I don't like it. Not one bit.

Sunday, 22 May 2011

Forty-eight hour vacations require forty-eight hour adventures. See you Tuesday afternoon!

Saturday, 21 May 2011

Lead-lined lip gloss.

This morning sees Bridget poking one little black-stockinged foot out from inside her black cloud, testing the temperature, seeing if the fabric of the sky might hold her after a week of sunshine drove her inside in all her pink-tinged, sunburnt glory. Overwhelm choked off the smile and she frowned, retreating to the curtain from where she peeks out now, unsure, hesitant.

I see you.

You don't see me.

Oh, yes I do.

Well then what do I look like?

Like a beautiful scowl with legs.

Dammit, you do see me.

I told you so.

Stop looking!

But still she smiles slightly. A little light escapes from around the curtain itself, spilling into the black, turning it shades of saturated, nuclear grey. The smile threatens from behind the facade of grumpy, bringing hope and possibilities to petulant nonsense, the stuff of invisible problems and wow, to be in her shoes proclamations. She takes it to heart. All of it. Every last thing.

Her heart is huge and fractioned now, crammed full, up to the rafters. More space needs to be rented but nothing is suitable and so they turn and press their backs up against the bulk, pushing with their legs, shoving it in and then slamming the doors tightly, the lock threatening to burst open, bending metal, straining bolts until the squeeze liquifies solids and they begin to run down her sleeves. She wipes her little hands on her cloud and pretends she can't see her heart but it's there, and boy does that ever bring relief on a dark rainy day like today.

Friday, 20 May 2011

Red for the clown.

Sweetheart, sweetheart are you fast asleep? Good.
'Cause that's the only time that I can really speak to you.
And there is something that I've locked away
A memory that is too painful
To withstand the light of day.
Sitting on the edge of the cliff, the wind roaring through my head, it occurs to me that my lipstick, bright red for a fresh change, is not grabbing the long curling tendrils that have already worked their way loose from my ponytail like the candy-pink lipgloss usually does. But the mascara is hurting my brain. Due to an incredibly busy day on Ben's part, I'm only going to get about another twenty-minutes to see him today and I want to make that event a little nicer than the twenty-minutes we had this morning, me in my dog-walking clothes from yesterday, complete with the most incredible bed head you've possibly ever seen. He might have been horrified when he left, that's how amazing my hair was, but don't ask him about it because he is too busy to tell you one way or another anyway. He will not work on Victoria's birthday and I am looking forward to that with the uncanny grasp of someone swinging a thousand feet in the air without a net but only a hand up.

I am alternating between watching the sea and watching Lochlan practice. Take away this house and we would be circa 1984 right this moment. My stomach rumbles, and I have to look away every six minutes or so when the black dots start to dance in my eyes because the sun is directly behind him.

He is working on his farmer's tan. He won't ditch his shirt until the bitter end of this afternoon and then his pale Scottish skin will reflect the light like a mirror until at least mid-June. Then he will change, almost overnight into a toasted Virgo with blonde curls instead of red. I believe he might be the only shape-shifter in the group, come to think of it, and that's okay too. He looks good in his summer form. It's what I am used to most, I think.

He is using five batons now and I can feel the heat on the back of my head but I am afraid to look up in case he drops one on me and I burn to a little crisp on contact.

But he won't drop any. The second time he ever picked them up he dropped one and then he collected the errant one, said something to the effect of, oh, that's it, then and never made a mistake ever again.

I'm sure PJ and Daniel and Duncan, Gage, August and maybe New-Jake are all standing up in the kitchen at the window swearing blue streaks and cringing at this but someday maybe they'll stop that. Someday they will be used to it like I am. There's just such a huge gap between the show days and the now that this is still an incredible treat and it never bothers me that he practices right over my head. I was never allowed to stray very far from him, always sitting in front of him and a little to the right, so he could keep an eye on me while I daydreamed off steep ledges and into forbidden places, places where Lochlan's fire did little to push back the shadows.

It works now, mind you, but now is clearly too late.

Thursday, 19 May 2011

Louis Vuitton at the thrift store.

(In spite of all of the changes in the past year financially, I still have an anticonsumerist (and minimalist) streak a mile wide.)

I popped into a few vintage, antique and thrift shops on my travels today. The only thing I bought was a set of teeny-tiny feng-sheeshish (NEW WORD) wooden primitive celestial mirrors for the children's bathroom upstairs and a honey pot. No, really. It's a little ceramic pot with a matching lid and the lid has a built-in honey dripper. It's perfect for when Ben and I have our late-evening tea and then I am forever not having to deal with sticky jars of honey from the cupboard.

But that isn't the cool part.

Oh no, the cool part was the Louis Vuitton handbag at the thrift store. That was freaking amazing. It was a black Multicolore Alma satchel, I believe. I don't even know what they retail for, I've never had the guts to actually go in to the store all the way. I like to loiter in the vestibule an awful lot though. In case I wind up liking something that costs more than my car, I should just stay out. Besides, I have issues with paying what things are worth, and that is why I top out at $25 for a lipgloss and $300 for a handbag. Not three thousand. Holy sweet Jesus.

I can't even believe I said that but in all honesty, I am not the one buying the handbags for myself. Ben is buying them for me, because he says I have spent enough years without anything nice. I'm sure that's a massive slight against the other boys I have dated/married/killed/maimed, but really the bags are SO PRETTY.

(The $25 gloss was a huge mistake anyway. It dried out my lips. FAIL.)

But anyways, there I am, perusing the shelves of goodies and I saw the Multicolore and I snatched it off the shelf and sort of squeeged a little but then I realized the condition of it was terrible. It was ruined, all of the piping broken, a huge hole in one corner and the inside lining was shredded. But it seemed to be real and I thought, maybe I should get it and then send it back to LV to have it repaired. Then I got with the program. Probably fake. How would *I* know? I don't know anything. I passed it to Daniel wordlessly. Daniel will know these things. He's gay! It's on the test!

Daniel's eyebrows went up to the roof and then beyond. Oh, Bridget, what do you have here?

I have no idea. Is it real?

I think it is. Just in case we should get it.

It's destroyed.

I'd carry a battered Louis Vuitton any day.

Then you buy it and it can be your manbag.

In the end we opted to leave it in the store. As far as I know it's still there, and if it's real someone gets a treat, if it's fake then someone got their money's worth! In any case, I was thrilled with my mirrors and the pot and I spent a whole $6.50.

***

A postscript to last night: I did not 'attack' my brother-in-law, I merely possibly lunged in his direction and Duncan was anticipating my every move so basically I was thwarted before I could even put together in my mind the damage I might do, which would be none at all. Caleb works out, I do not. I cannot high-five people so that they feel it. You only think I'm kidding.

I acted out of frustration. I don't get mad easily, and this was going too far. Don't think he didn't keep and then trot out that painting on purpose, oh no. Caleb is measuring out his revenge on me piecemeal. The only reason I was even there was because he invoked some clause in our custody arrangement that requires us to pre-approve the environments in which the children will be spending time in advance. I didn't think painting a room and moving some furniture qualified as a new environment but I am not the lawyer. I do have it duly written in my notes for when I do see my lawyer next so no worries.

And Ben brought the painting home with him last night. He asked Caleb very carefully if Caleb had any more pictures/paintings/surprises/bullshit to throw at me and Caleb, not surprisingly, said no. What, is he going to say yes with Ben breathing down his neck? I doubt it.

This is one piece I am happy to have. I don't have a place chosen for it to hang, however. PJ said he would like it for his bathroom. I said I was tired of being shit on. He said he would put it in the shower then. I didn't get that for just long enough to spent the entire rest of the evening at the wrong end of most of the jokes, just so you know. PJ is gross like that.

But she's back.

I'm back.

Yay.

Wednesday, 18 May 2011

Solution.

It was an elaborate typeface and I stood in the dark, in the wind outside of a sticking wooden door and read the label over and over and over again. Fitting, I thought. Serves me right. There was no bravery to be had here in this place, no courage to uncover, no rest for my wickedness. No pansies growing on the hill and no rain visible until I realized I was soaked right through. Just the wind, it never ever stopped and it forced me back inside my head because I couldn't hear him and that drove him into an unfathomable rage.

The door clattered open, Cole having shoved it hard from the inside. I wonder if he even realized how close I had been standing, for the edge of it grazed my nose and my toes as it flew open and smashed against the weathered clapboards. He stood in veritable darkness, a lantern in one hand.

Could you find it?

Yes, here. I passed him the bottle. He read the label and passed it back to me with a dark smile. He is exhausted and driven. He has been here at the shore house for nights and nights painting with no food and no rest.

Nice job, fidget. I'm going to finish cleaning up and then we'll celebrate. He pulled me into the dark with him and then reached back and pulled the door shut hard. My world is dark, save for the light he carries in his hands, and I follow him up the steps slowly to the second floor when he keeps the brightest room as his studio.

This painting was commissioned and constitutes the most money we have ever had and so I was instructed to go to the store and choose a nice wine from somewhere off the continent. I am anxious, the buyer was incredibly specific and demanding and Cole has been sending sketches regularly since the first of the year, now the summer is almost over and if all goes well we will be able to pay for the beach house and still have enough to get through what is generally a tight autumn. If not, then I guess Cole moves toward the shadows and I step into Caleb's focus. Either way we will manage the bill whether Cole prostitutes himself for his client or I do for his brother. Either way I somehow continue to count my own worth in dollars and cents.

Two more lanterns are burning in the studio. The power has been out for almost an hour. Cole turns after setting down the lantern he had been carrying and smiles wide. I am staring at the flame contained within the glass instead. I don't like this place at night. Odd, since I adore this house in the mornings right up until the shadows grow long and the traffic dies down and the birds begin their evening song and then the homesickness settles over me. Coupled with the storm tonight it seems as if the dark will never end.

He touches my hand, placing a full glass in it. I am staring at the red liquid now, reflecting nothing. Wine makes me sick but Cole is a poor artist and we can't afford any more than this yet. First the painting will be delivered and then the cheque will come, with a handwritten note on very good stationery tucked into an envelope that probably costs more than our wine.

He takes his own glass and raises it against mine.

To change.

To change. I take a sip. He drinks half the glass. He puts it down and then takes mine too. Are you ready?

Yes.

He pulls me over in front of the canvas and grabs the lantern, holding it high. It will look different in natural light, he cautions.

I am stunned. This is easily his best work and now I understand how his madness complements his efforts. How he is driven. We would lie in bed and he would describe what he wanted to achieve on a canvas or in a photograph but rarely could he translate it sufficiently in practice. Rarely was he pleased. Tonight was an exception, indeed. Only it wasn't what I was expecting.

Amazing.

You like it?

I can't even believe it.

But do you like it?

I love it. But, this isn't what he asked for, is it?

No, that one is on the table. This one I did for you.

We can keep it?

You can do whatever you want with it. He laughed and finished his wine in one long swallow. Except don't give it away. The laughter drained out of his face. I made this for you, Bridget. Don't give it to anyone.

I won't.

Promise me.

I promise.

A week later we were home from the rental and still unpacking. The cheque had been delivered by courier, too large to put into the mail, and no sooner had the courier left the driveway of the beach house then we were running out the front door with our suitcases and the easel and the half-empty basket of pears we had picked from the trees in the front yard of the house. We arrived home, threw our belongings in the front door and rushed down to the bank to deposit the cheque before closing time.

The whole week I had been waiting for Cole to unpack his paintings and I figured out a nice spot on the wall for mine, somewhere between two others, since we were seriously out of wall real estate but perhaps we could relegate some less-important works to other areas. My painting would have a place of honor.

I finally went looking for it but in thumbing through the works standing up against the wall in his home studio, I realized it wasn't there. I asked him about it and he shook his head, not speaking, and I knew better than to keep bothering him when he was working. I would ask later, maybe, eventually he would volunteer the answer.

He did not.

I figured it out this morning as I stood in Caleb's library, finally finished the transformation from austere masculine office with the dark walls and expensive furniture into a lighter, more friendly place with comfy furniture placed in the center of the room conversation-style, and new custom built bookshelves across two walls. The huge monolith of a desk is gone, the filing cabinets replaced with pull-out drawers under the shelves, a huge nubby area rug for the kids to stretch out on and read his prized second editions of Treasure Island and Stuart Little when the mood strikes them. Large floor lamps and light-diffusing blinds round it out, as does new artwork on the walls.

Like my painting.

MY Painting, the one Cole made for me, of me, fifteen years ago. A painting that should have been returned when all of the photographs and other works came back to me but it wasn't.

Why did Cole give that to you?

Give what? Oh, the painting of you? I asked for it.

When?

When? Jesus, probably fifteen or thirteen years ago, I don't remember exactly. Why?

Did he say no and you talked him into it?

Bridget, what is wrong with you?

It's mine. He made it for me. It was supposed to be for me and he told me not to give it away and then he gives it to you? Why would he do that?

Caleb lets his head roll around his shoulders as if he has an ache in his neck, as if he is reasoning slowly and simply, with a child.

I don't know, Bridget. Maybe Cole had a bad habit of giving away everything that was precious to him with little persuasion. I mean, look at you.

There would be more to this story but Duncan had to pick me up and carry me out of the condo over his shoulder. I was going for Caleb's heart. It's the weakest part, after all.

Tuesday, 17 May 2011


Shhhh. Someone is sleeping. With a bunneh.

Me. Haha. Hahahahahaha.

Monday, 16 May 2011

Cake people.

Gage.

You have to say it real slow, like in Practical Magic when Nicole Kidman's character Jilly is describing her new boyfriend to Sandra Bullock's Sally. Jimmy. Jimmy Annnnnnngelov.

Only Gage is no vampire cowboy, and yes, this is a fine time to point out there don't seem to be any Steves, Bills or Eds in my collective.

Hello no. We are children of the seventies, and our parents were determined to be different. It could be worse, I went to school with a lot of flowers, but instead my gypsy parents rebelled and named me after a French movie star and an Irish Saint (equally says mom), (hell no, it was the french starlet only, says dad).

Gage is Schuyler's brother (okay half-brother but good enough for me).

It all makes sense now, doesn't it?

Gage is here and I don't seem to have space for him, which is um, a new issue. Updates to follow as I think of something.

Update as promised: Gage gets the CAMPER. What a lucky duck. I would live in the camper but then everyone would complain and accuse me of living in the past blahblahblah. Snort. We actually had decided on him staying on the futon in Daniel and Schuy's living room but then Gage asked why there was a perfectly good house in the driveway and Lochlan said it was his to enjoy if he wanted it. Everyone is settled at last, just in time for sunset.

***

Yesterday while driving to get Thai food, we passed a cupcake shop. One of many we have seen and tried, which led to an interesting discussion on just how viable all of these cupcake shops are, considering we had no interest in returning to any of them, honestly. We're used to very good full-on cake or very bad cake sometimes too. Trendy designer cupcakes are interesting but the storebought (or boutique-bought ones, as it were) are generally too rich for my blood sugar and my wallet, sadly. They aren't worth the toothache for the price, in other words and in pointing out my curiosity at how they stay in business, Ben pointed out that someone is always having a birthday.

But what if they aren't?

What do you mean? It's always somebody's birthday.

But what if it isn't? What if there was one day that no one was ever born on?

There's multiple babies born every minute, Bridget.

Imagine though! The day no one was born. The darkest day that no one celebrates.

What would you do, then?

I would buy cupcakes just because and we would celebrate Happy Nobirthdays.

That's very emo of you, sweetheart.

Maybe they could make black cupcakes with black icing!

Gothcakes?

YES. Maybe with tiny white-icing filigree. Something really pretty. Because no one deserves it. And still the day needs something. Something to mark it as different.

Uh-huh.

You're just so stunned at my idea, you don't even know what to say, right?

Yeah, that's exactly right.