Aloe and copper pennies.

Last night I watched as Lochlan set the envelope on fire without it having been opened first. I watched the joy and concern flicker in his eyes in time with the flames.

Last night I sat patiently on the bathroom counter as he cut my bangs. I watched the determined set of his mouth as he worked to get them straight, not too short, just touching my bottom eyelashes. Once they hit the bottom of my nose he gets irritated and anxious to keep me twelve. Keep me innocent. Bangs aren't innocent, they are hiding places but he does it anyway.

Last night I feel asleep in his arms, curled away from him toward the cool flesh of a dreaming Benjamin. Loch put his forehead down against the back of my neck, pressed my back against his chest and wrapped his hands around my kneecaps, same as ever. We sleep as if we are jumping into water. Tandem rope swings. Childhood escape.

Last night I realized history is not a hazy catalogue of memories but a list of tasks you must complete over and over again until you get it right. Our memories are our closest efforts, our almosts, our good-enough-for-nows. Pretty sure there's a reason half my life has passed and he is still making it easier for me to see, easier for me to sleep and easier for me to live.

He is what I need to get right, I think. He's burning down the bad parts one by one while I keep touching the fire, like a child, because it's mesmerizing, hypnotic and warm.

Like you, he says. Just like you.

Fifty shades of gay.

Maybe I can make them take their shirts off and fight to the death.

That would be something. But then Luke might break a nail and Jasper would become rumpled. God forbid, we can't have broken nails and rumpled girls. That's my department.

And you're wondering who these people even are.

Jasper is Batman's assistant. He does all of Batman's dirty work, except for the Epic Mafiaesque Gun Battles and Forties-style Gentleman Fistfights (Batman does his own stunts). Jasper does things like make phone calls and deliver notes and schedule meal reservations, real estate agents and flights. He picks up dry cleaning and fresh coffee beans. He warns me when Batman is in a bad mood even though personally I think Jasper truly and honestly hates my guts.

Luke is brand-new. He's still in his wrapping, this one. He's a temp, functioning as Caleb's personal assistant this week because I refuse to show up anymore and Caleb can't do all of the 'ridiculous' (his words) parts of life like running errands and keeping organized by himself anymore. Luke will need to free his hands from that plastic and peel off his price tag so he can get to work already but no, he is standing there scowling handsomely at Jasper, who also hates Caleb but has to drop off some papers because business paths still cross just enough keep 'em tight, keep 'em close.

I think it's Jasper. He doesn't seem to get along with anyone. I'm trying to play his tough angle off the fact that maybe he has a chip on his shoulder because he can't open that closet door far enough to express his love for his boss.

Because, dude. We've all been there. Batman's a catch with a capital B.

But I think Luke might have lost a bet to even get to this place where he will file Caleb's bank statements for hours on end and answer the phone that never rings because Caleb forgets and just uses his personal phone for work. That or the pay was so good and the proximity to greatness so ridiculous that maybe we should all have our guard up? The agency is very professional, the people are vetted, so they are used to working for money and for fame and for washed up bullshitters who used to be someone relevant but at the same time I don't think Luke is old enough to know what discretion even means, let alone how to wield it. Twice now I've warned him if he Instagrams one more facet of my life I'm going to eat his phone. 

Caleb called me down to ask if I would just show Luke where everything is and then Jasper showed up and it's like a reluctant secretary party suddenly.

I sweetly ask Caleb if I will be paid for my time as well and he smiles that goofy, trying-not-to-laugh smile that he uses when he wants to disarm someone completely (IT WORKS. EVERY. DAMN. TIME.) and he says that he was just thinking of that, handing me a pewter envelope.

He's like a pornographic process server. Luke wants to know what it is. Oh my God this kid is so green and curious he's practically growing moss. I ignore his adorableness and address his new boss. Jasper leaves without even saying goodbye. JUST like Batman always does.

I think we've met your quota for this quarter, Boss. 

In with the invitation is an updated print-out of my new terms and conditions. 

Don't I get to approve them before you just arbitrarily make changes? 

No, Bridget, you do not.

So what does this mean, exactly? 

You're the legendary reader of fine print. I'm sure you'll have time to go over everything sufficiently before we meet. 

What if I don't?

Then I guess, my dear Princess, you will be in for a surprise. He turns and leaves the room, pulling his ringing phone out of his pocket and putting it to his ear. I stare at his back. I don't even..I don't even know what he's up to now.

Luke comes up and stands beside me, watching admiring his physique as Caleb walks down the hall. He looks down at me excitedly. So, are you guys ACTUALLY royalty?

Oh, I remember the heavily sedated posts. He doesn't.

(If these posts make you uncomfortable, then I don't know what to tell you. I'm not a whole lot better, there's just many more days between me and the hard parts. Or something. Thanks for keeping up with everything though. It must be frustrating to be a reader of my words. Almost as frustrating as it must be to be one of my friends.)

I've been figured out, haha. The air isn't air, it's anxiety and everyone else has a helmet on into which oxygen is pumped to keep them motivated, alive and calm. Relaxed even. My helmet is broken. I'm getting no air, just pure anxiety. My blood anxiety levels are so high I've gone past the toxic range and into mutation mode. As in, I'm probably going to grow limbs out of my brain any second now. I hope they can type. And run.

Gee, that's a great description of me. If it wasn't so spot-on I'd be really pissed at New Jake for telling me it at all.

He tells me all of this as we drink forbidden afternoon coffee and he gets to be the victim of my mental load out.

This is what happens when you're a soft, friendly face who says How are you really doing, Bridget?

You get tears and the hiding of the little streaked face and blubbery sweet lies that everything is fine and then it falls apart faster than I can stick the pieces back on, licking the backs, hating the taste but determined to hold my shit together so they don't think I can't handle life.

I can handle anything.

Except when I can't.

But the other thing I can't handle is everyone standing there looking down at me with that awful mixture of adoration and sympathy. Like, yeah, you're so tough, little girl. I'd be dead by now. 

Yes, I know.

I'm trying to find the silver linings but my playbook is missing. Ben probably ate it on his way to work.

Cue more sympathy, since I knew what I was getting into but it still sucks. Especially since he's not really working, he's avoiding, which is different but he insists it's the same.

Oh, okay. Gotcha, Tucker. Carry on.

New Jake has been dispatched to try and deal with the worst of the fears today. Mostly because my panic over Sam moving in has reached a fever pitch. Because my panic over Ben's crushing, omnipresent absence is destroying me. Because my panic over Caleb and Lochlan's three-decade tug of war never gives me a moment's peace.

So it's panic. Maybe I have a panic disorder. It's so pretty. Put it in the bouquet with the other mental flowers and I will leave them on display in the front hall so everyone who comes into the house will know that I am loved.

And neurotic as all hell.

They do make some mild pills for this sort of thing, Bridget. 

(Right. Even my allergy pills, taken so sporadically I don't know why I bother, turn me into a living, breathing...brick.) Jake. You're new, right?

Relative to the others, yes. 

Ask them what pills do for me and then come up with something else, okay?

Science has advanced. There's probably something better by now. 

If Science was sitting on a risk-free emotional lobotomy for me all this time and never said anything, well, then, I'm never talking to Science again. 

This is why you don't take pills, isn't it?

What do you mean?

You're weird and wonderful this way. Maybe that's why no one pushes you. They like you all fucked up and jittery and hilarious and creative.

Yup, that's it. Hey, did I ask you if you were new yet?

Yes. 

And you answered me, right?

I tried to. 

Okay then just stop now. I can't take anymore. And please take Science with you, the bastard.

Bridget-

Helmet is full, can't hear you. Bye.

Love you, Bridget.  I just want to help you. I love it when you smile. You're so pretty.

Okay, you can stay.

Least talented soul on the point, I swear.

This is embarrassing. My parents are home from the Cape and so I asked my mom to take a picture of the painting for me. The one described in this post less than a week ago.

You people don't deserve me. Hell, clearly the entire ART WORLD does not deserve me.

Please be kind. I was fourteen! Times have changed.

Yeesh, here already.

Would you just LOOK at those waves crashing on the shore. I was just there too and it looks nothing like that.

Cold confessions.

One week left until Sam and Matt are supposed to be moving into Lochlan's old set of rooms and I have cold feet. They must be contagious. Everything is ready for them. We even painted. The only problem is the thought of Sam having completely unrestricted access to the part of my brain that I tend to keep from him. The insane, fucked-up part. The self-doubting, miserable part that he probably can see anyway, looking right through my soul and out the other side with his magical god-glasses fixed in place.

But still. What if someone starts a fight? What if he and Matt hate it here? What if he decides maybe I'm even more fucked up than he remembers and calls in the heavyweights?

Jake did. Sam remembers that well. And I've had a hell of a free pass over the last five or six years in refusing to talk to anyone formally because I like my fuckedupedness just fine the way it is. Well, I don't but they didn't help much as it was. Sam helps. If I can talk to Sam I do okay mostly.

Mostly.

***

This morning over breakfast at the boathouse (Dad's turn), Henry suggested that it would be really cool if maybe I married Caleb too and then we could all be a big family like, for REAL.

(For the record we've explained repeatedly to Henry that Lochlan isn't actually legally married to anyone. It's symbolic. It's okay, I didn't really get that at eleven either.)

Before I could say anything or even get my chin up off the floor Caleb swooped in and grinned at Henry, telling him that it wouldn't work, because if he married me, he would want me all for himself and everyone else would have to be left out.

Henry, without missing a beat or even pausing to think, said that it wouldn't work then because Lochlan and mommy have been in love like FOREVER and that can't be undone so nevermind.

The look on Caleb's face was worth it. So, so worth it.

Slowly I told Henry we're a family regardless, while Caleb glowered at me from the other side of the table. It was awesome.

(No, I don't coach Henry to devastate his father. Shit happens. Kids know more than you think they do, always.)

***

For those asking, Lochlan is doing just fine. For a fire-breathing red-headed Scottish psychopath, I mean.

No, he wasn't very happy at all that Ben took me on a little trip.

Yes, he was very happy when I came back.

But apparently before we left he and Ben had an entirely different conversation than what I was led to believe and of course no one will elaborate. I'm getting nowhere.

When we came home, Ben went right back to work (as in, so fast I had to unpack his things for him) and Lochlan cleared his schedule so we could velcro (not my word, PJ has coined my ability to stick on people until they peel me off) for a while and yet he's not talking much. He did say he's mad that I have such a huge allegiance to someone who isn't here all that much.

And of course, I thought he meant Jake and just made things THAT. MUCH. BETTER.

Fml.

(Stop sending me emails telling me you wish you had my problems. No, you fucking don't wish for this. Trust me.)

Rapid apple movement.

Consider this
Consider this, the hint of the century
Consider this, the slip
That brought me to my knees, failed
What if all these fantasies come
Flailing around
Now I've said too much

Pretty sure that Caleb left this on the stereo on purpose when he went into the other room to take a call.

Yup, pretty sure.

He already lit into me early on about how ridiculous this whole thing is.

What thing? I asked. Because I didn't sleep and I have no idea if he means the weather, the election or my master plan to turn the backyard into a huge vegetable garden.

This thing where Ben uses Lochlan and I and our collective history as a justification to keep you for himself.

Do we need to do this today?

Yes, maybe we fucking well should!

Then the phone rang so I had all kinds of time to process the swearing, the yelling and the pure unchecked frustration from someone who usually has his shit together better than the rest of us.

Just not today.

***

You said a bad word! 

I can if I want. I'm an adult now. I'm Eighteen. I bet you're not allowed to swear yet, right, Bridget?

No not yet. Dad says when I'm eighteen I can say whatever I want. 

Good idea. But if you don't want me to swear around you, I won't. I mean, you're only nine. You don't need to hear ugly words yet. 

It's not that the words are ugly. I think they're kind of funny. But when you say them you sound so mean, Caleb.

Then I won't use them around you. 

I shrug and continue trying to eat the candy apple that he brought me. I can't get my mouth open wide enough to get any of it and my face is covered with sticky red syrup.

Do you want me to cut that up for you? 

Yes, please. 

It's going to be strange when you grow up, Bridget. If you think about it, you're exactly half my age but someday you'll be closer in years to me. Like when I'm fifty, you'll be forty-one so we'll be almost the same. 

You probably won't be around when you're that old. You'll forget you knew me. Thank you, I tell him as he passes me a slice of apple carefully, since his pocket knife is in the same hand.

You never know but I won't forget you. Maybe we'll still hang out. 

That would be neat. I could cut your fruit for you because you'll be really old and have dentures or something. 

Fuck, I hope not. Oh, sorry. I forgot to say something nicer. 

Say fudge! 

Fudge it is. Though it's going to sound weird in a minute when Loch gets here and I tell him to fudge off. 

Then just leave him alone already! You guys fight over EVERYTHING. 

No, just one thing. 

What is it?

Someday you'll figure it out. When you're older. 

Edward and Bella AKA Matt and Sam (says the brat in her Team Jacob shirt. ROTFL.)

(I think something's wrong with me. I'm never this cheerful. Like, EVER.)

The only thing we know for sure is the song we're using.

Tell me! 

A Thousand Years. 

Fuck off, Samuel. 

I'm serious. 

The song from...Twilight? 

Yes. 

But you're not vampires and you haven't loved each other for a thousand years. 

We have vampire friends. Does that count?

Maybe. What about the time frame? We're not talking about a little padding to round it off, you haven't even been together for a thousand weeks.

A thousand days?

Nope. Well, maybe by the time you actually have a WEDDING, Sam. What a great song. I'm going to cry when you walk down the aisle. I will anyway but if you play this it will be my full-on ugly cry.

Maybe I'll be waiting instead. I told you we haven't figured any of this out yet. 

Oh, I have. You're the girl. 

Should I wear a dress then?

Only if you really want to Twilight this bitch to death. 

I don't think I'm up for that. I get hives just thinking about planning a wedding again. 

Why? 

Too many details. 

That's what friends are for, to help with the little things. 

So far you've trashed my song choices, told me I'm the girl in this relationship and suggested we theme the whole wedding to match a movie you hated. I don't think so, Bridge.

I didn't hate the movie! 

What part didn't you hate?

The theme song. Haven't you been paying attention? I freaking LOVE that song. So you'd better hurry up and get married or I will and use it before you can. 

Who would you marry this time?

Myself, because I'm that awesome. 

Well, someone woke up on the right side of the bed this morning. 

That's because I'm ALWAYS the girl, Sam.

Hide your fantasies.

Since I never push cake away, as mentioned last week, I have found the ACTUAL first two signs of the apocalypse.

1. The Leafs made the playoffs. (I won around eight hundred dollars in bets from that right there, PAY UP, BOYS!)

2. Jerry Cantrell CUT HIS HAIR. Which just...oh my God. What if the next time I see him I don't recognize him? Some things just should not change. Someone hold me.

If there's a third sign today, I don't want to know. Yes, I realize Stone Temple Pilots fired Scott, I kept hoping that if I refused to acknowledge it, they might take him back, kiss it better, make things right. It hasn't happened BUT IT WILL. Eventually right? Not like they haven't done this a couple of times before.

Guess who's home?

My very first scenic oil-painting attempt was in 1985. Cole was painting on the patio of his parents house and I was sacked out inside (out of the sun) clicking around the cable channels and I stopped on an episode of The Joy of Painting.

Ironic.

I watched all twenty minutes of it and then I stood up. Fuck it, I thought. I can do that.

So I went out and asked Cole if I could do a painting too. He thought that was great. Seventeen and fourteen painting together. I turned my easel around so he couldn't see it and demanded all of the bright colors. He pointed to the paint and asked if I needed any help.

I didn't. Of course.

I was finished in an hour, thanks to Bob Ross's epic shortcuts. Fan brush dipped in semicircles on the canvas? Great palm tree leaves. I used a big fat brush to blend, blend, blend until my rainbow sky was perfect. And then I turned my canvas around to proudly show Cole my tropical beach painting.

He lied and said it was amazing. I thought it was amazing too until I took a painting workshop a few years later and then came back and thought, what an abomination!

Lochlan had a whole different view. He thinks every little thing I think, draw or write is an unspoken wish that should be picked, harvested as soon as possible, fulfilled. All signs are true. She needs something, he thinks. Every damned time.

You want to go somewhere warm when you grow up? No more cold, east-coast rainy foggy seashores?

No, I'd rather be at a cold seashore with lots to see and do than lie on a beach somewhere under a cliche palm tree soaking up the rays. SO boring.

That abomination now hangs in the laundry room of my parent's house in Halifax. My mom thinks it's 'cheerful'. I'm going to have to ask her to take a picture of it so I can show you.

And that brings me to my next point, because unlike most days, I have one.

Ben does not like to do 'things' when he is not working. He is happy lying...under a cliche palm tree soaking up the rays.

Boring. Gah.

I got into it, got rested up for a whole two days before getting restless with a capital B. I was wiggly, fidgety, disruptive and distressed. I would have climbed the walls if they had been made of actual building materials instead of hard woven grass. I would have gone for a walk if only there was somewhere to go outside of the circle of sand. I would have gone for a drive but we were boated here from a larger island with an airport. I contemplated making a big SOS in the sand for a plane to take me away but then I realized I didn't really want to leave Big Ben the Sloth behind so I finally went for a swim.

Ben was dripping off the edge of the hammock, asleep in the sun. I sprayed him down with Sunblock 3000000 before I changed into my suit. Then on my way past him a second time I opted to cover him with three towels instead. He's not awake. I don't have the heart to wake him up, I don't get to see him much when he's doing nothing. Come to think of it most of the time if he's not doing something he's asleep.

The water was cold comfort. Not only was it freezing but growing up the boys left me with an incredible fear of what's under the surface. I have difficulty being in deep water because of the Loch Ness monster...which I will leave to your imagine but it's REAL and it has red hair and it can hold its breath for an eternity, or what seems like an eternity to a perpetual child so nevermind. Adding to all this baggage,  I'm not supposed to swim alone because I also have a gift for being unable to gauge how tired I'll be for the swim back.

Since I can't outswim my frustrations I come back into shore. I march as fast as I can up to the cottage (which takes about fifteen minutes in deep sand and I look like a graceless walrus doing it, thanks) to find that Ben is awake! He is inside the master bedroom pulling our things out and packing our bags.

Which..what?

Hey! I tell him. (Maybe we can do something?! Hey let's do stuff. Wanna snorkel? We should snorkel. Wanna slow dance? Maybe we should eat first. Let's play cards. My brain is doing that but my mouth is all cool and just says Hey.)

Fucking mouth. Traitor.

You don't have to say it. Our time is up anyway. 

What do you mean? (For once I'm waiting for him to talk. Like, completely.)

Three things. I have to get back to work, I am acutely aware that removing you from Lochlan for any more than a couple of days is dangerous for all involved, and yes, I've been around long enough to know the story of the tropical beach painting and precisely how you feel about languishing under a palm tree for much more than a couple of days. I just...I just needed a few days with you. Alone. Somewhere sunny for once because jesus, living in the rain forest is tough, bee. 

I shrink down to thimble size, drowning in a tiny instant sea of guilt and remorse at high tide. I don't even know if he can hear me from down here but I try anyway.

I'm sorry, Benny. 

He turns and smiles at me, picking me up between his thumb and his forefinger. Don't be, baby. I know the drill and I got what I wanted and you got some sleep and we crossed off a bucket list item and it's good. Okay? Relax. Besides, we can fight on the plane the whole way home if you want or we can just watch movies again. 

(Because NO. The plane is stocked with Tim Burton movies and just NO.)

I think I'll take a boat home, Ben.

But what about the leviathans and sea monsters and giant-

FINE! FINE! I'll go on the plane! Just no more Dark Shadows. 

Sweeney Todd?

Fuck, no, Ben! 

Frankenweenie?

Well....maybe.

(For those wondering about the bucket list item, it was not renting a private island. It was having sex in a hammock in broad daylight. So there. Yeah yeah, hi mom.)

Sober/sunburned/submissive.

So we had all of the alcohol removed, asked if we could just plan to eat al fresco for the rest of our time here, every meal,  traded bad jokes with the staff (who are AMAZING) and spend all of our time melting into the hammock. It's gigantic. Ben got up once and I was flung up over the clouds and caught on the way back down, that's how big it is.

They're going to have to burn it when we leave.

We've almost made up too. Almost. I see it on the horizon anyway. So in honor of not planning to waste another second away from that hammock, away from him, here's a rare repost, from my archives that I took down when I had grand plans to stop writing the blog. I'm still here. Still writing. Enjoy. Maybe see you tomorrow. Maybe another repost. Muhahahaha. It's cheesy and amazingly naive, given the circumstances but you can read it anyway. If I could change the past I certainly wouldn't start with revisions of my writing.

Sunday, April 20, 2008
To hold.

If there's one thing about me that you know for sure, it's that I only skip a day of posting when I am away. So, sorry, but I was away yesterday.

Getting married.

I got married, Internet. I married Ben. Sigh. Do you want to know what he said that changed my mind? He told me this:

Maybe you would feel less like his if you were mine.

He told me that the night he came home to find me sitting on the floor in the front hall covered in ashes and sobbing my heart out, and it's a sentence that I couldn't argue with if I tried. I don't want to try.

I haven't slept since forever. I haven't stopped smiling. I...I don't even know where to begin or how to explain or why I feel as if I need to continually justify this rather Elizabeth-Tayloresque turn my life seems to have taken.

A third husband, and all before I am even forty years old? Ben will be forty this December and for the record I am soon going to be a blisteringly ancient thirty-seven. Thirty-seven. Told I don't look a day over twenty-six. Do I believe them? Not on your life.

We started with prenuptial agreements and promises, through most of last week. Priorities. Me finding out that Ben started a trust fund in the children's names and they're wealthy because he didn't know what else to do with his money. And he can't touch my future earnings and I cannot touch his. We're just keeping things the way they are. His lawyers are paranoid, mine are not hopeful but we laughed anyway, after I found out he is way wealthier than I thought he was, and I have far more money than I did the last time we traded financial secrets, which would have been sometime long before I paid off his motorcycle and then to retaliate he put the money back in my account.

The ceremony took place last evening out by the creek on Nolan's farm, near picnic rock where Ben proposed. The children were there. The guys were all there. The woods were full of love and support and we recited our simple vows to Sam and cried a whole bunch and maintained a sort of incredulous joy that leaves me tearful even now.

We ate and drank and danced and cried and laughed and it was the most wonderful night ever. He...he's amazing. Giving and generous and caring and vulnerable to a fault. But instead of bringing out the worst in each other somehow we've managed to harvest the best. None of it is difficult or painful or unreal. All of it is beautiful. He's real. He's alive, he is healthy, he's forthright and passionate about the little things. He doesn't want to fix me, doesn't care if I am weak, he just wants to be with me.

He slipped his giant silver ring on my finger because he didn't have rings and told me I had to give it back, that we'd get real ones. I had to clench my fist all night to keep from losing it and when he noticed, he said we would go out and get them today. After lunch.

He asked if there was anything special he was supposed to know about being a husband. I told him I require a large glass of orange juice every night around eleven and he reminded me he said husband, not butler. I reminded him he said he would be the butler.

We've said a lot of words recently, we've dug deep and dug in hard, and a lot of that is so private I'm not writing about it, just know that we are very serious and this is very important and it wasn't a whim, in spite of our pretenses to make it appear to be one.

Ben is surprised at how this feels, far more wonderful than he ever thought it would, coming from someone who always viewed marriage as 'just a piece of paper'. It's never just a piece of paper. It's supposed to be a lifetime commitment to another person, through thick and thin, something we already have. Now we have the paper to prove it, that's all, a formal promise of commitment. A plan for a future together. No matter what.

He said he finally did the right thing. I said me, too. I'm not taking his last name and he's not adopting the kids until they are ready to have a say in the decision, though he is more than willing right now. We aren't moving very fast at all, despite what it seems.

He seems brave enough to be the man of this house, though sometimes he is as fragile as I am and I wonder how he ever wanted to be with me. He says he always wanted to be with me, that he was always vaguely sad that I didn't feel the same way before. I let him in on a little secret. I did, and quite often. I just never let it find the light of day, I never said anything. There's a ease to being with him that has never existed with anyone else. He's Ben and no one else is.

When I told Ben that he walked out of the room. Too cool to cry in front of Loch, I think. He came back and brought me with him to hold.

Everything's going to be okay.

Yeah...cheeeeeeeseballs.