(Welcome to our spectacle, carny rides eccentical.)*

Yes, I still go outside in the orchard with my headphones in my clown jumpsuit (no mask though, I have it but I can't breathe in a mask while dancing) and do the whole diamond clown #17 dance from this video.

Hell, yes, it's cathartic. Hell yes, I have the suit and let me tell you, it's heavy. This is a better warmup and more exercise than just about anything else in the universe. I don't want to pedal a bike to nowhere, flip tires or do reps. I want to dance. And since everyone laughs when I express interest in doing Bhangra, this is it for me. I have found my niche and it's no surprise it involves clowns, is it? I freaking love clowns. Whoop whoop.

***

The party's over now because the rain has started in earnest. I don't even want to stand outside with the dog but the woodstove is glowing red in the kitchen and the groceries are bought and put away and even the eggs are in the new egg basket in the fridge and so my chores are done and I get to draw and paint for the rest of the afternoon and drink coffee and eat fresh croissants and then snuggle in with Lochlan to hopefully finish American Gods. At least that's how I see the day in my head now that I'm too tired to think too hard. 

*(Today's title is from Tilt-A Whirl, which is an equally fun song to dance to, FYI.)

Lent: week five.

Sam's come out of hibernation with the first day of spring. Present and combed, beard trimmed short, collar pressed, a new feature on this odd bug, noted also are the matching shoes, picking up the browns in his shirt and his hair. 

Are you objectifying me? Judging me based on appearances? 

Maybe. I wink at him but it's with effort to be jovial, generous. 

How are things? I feel as if I haven't seen you but I'm trying to step back and let the others have space to work with you. 

That makes me sound like some kind of avant-garde art installation. 

I hope you'll take it as a compliment, then. 

My eyebrows go up but I don't say anything. 

You look sad and exhausted, Bridge. 

Oh, he's just going to walk in and thrust his torch against every soft, flammable surface today. I try to put it out with tears but then he yanks it back. 

I'm fine, actually. My shaky hand gives it away as I try to wipe the lone tear that's headed for the floor suddenly. 

I didn't mean to upset you. What can I do? 

Got your crystal ball handy? 

God has great plans for you, Beautiful. 

You sound like someone I used to know. I laugh bitterly. 

Things are going to get better now. 

No, Sam. We're just going to wait. And then things will go back to the way they were. 

I hope they don't. What about you? 

I wish there was an easier way. 

***

Ben's hand comes up against the back of my neck in the dark. The wind is howling through the window, blowing the curtains wildly against the glass. Blowing the flames against the edges of the night. He pulls me up against him, his head bending down against my shoulder, a kiss I can't return as I am pushed back down flat on the quilts, turned over by the hips and then crushed underneath his weight, a casualty of Ben's hunger that now looms large but more sporadically than before. My cry is stifled by his hand over my mouth, pulling my head back up against his chest. His head is against the top of mine. I wonder if I'll die this way. I tap his forearm and he lightens his grip on me by more than half and I can breathe again. 

He picks a slow and steady rhythm, pulling me down on the upstroke and up on the down and it hurts so beautifully I hope it lasts all week. His hand slides down underneath me and soon I am in a frenzy against his hold, and then again. And then again, with fresh tears as the frustrations of the week go up in the smoke from the fire. 

He turns me back over, resuming his customary gentle-roughness, his oops-didn't-mean-to-break-that barrage on through the night, his attempts to make everything better. I hold on so tight, arms around his shoulders, my face held against his heart now, legs around his hips as he scoops me up hard against him, taking me to outer space a few more times before he comes with me to see the stars before he finally gives me a long kiss and lets go. It's cold for a mere second, enough for me to catch my breath and then Lochlan pulls me in close. Ben disappears and Lochlan's practised hands take over and by the time the sun comes up I have everything I ever wanted, including sleep, having slept jammed underneath Lochlan's chin, my lips against his Adam's apple, his arm thrown over my back, my arms tucked in between us, the customary, longtime position, consummate safety.

Jesus springtide.

The regret came with the sunset, the usual time of day when everything hurts more, stings harder, feels worse. The homesick hour. Whoever named it Golden Hour never met my mind because it's a searing ache that catches my breath in my throat and leaves me in tears if I'm not busy while it's happening. It's been that way since I was very young and Bailey was suddenly too old to be sent with me to the family farm for the summer and suddenly I was the only child there, working in the sun, standing in the living room watching the river as the sun set over the hills and wishing I was with someone who understood me. The moment I hit double digits I started spending summers with Lochlan and he turned them into a magical time of day but I still fight against that weird feeling of complete and utter abandonment. Bailey and I are not as close as I wished we had been. We're too far apart in age but at the same time she was more of a parent than our parents and I miss her every day.

I miss him too. I picked up my phone and stared at it. A single word message this morning confirming safety on the other side and I haven't responded. I am to forget. I am to try. I am to follow these new rules only I don't know who they're for. Him or me? What's the point of all this again? Oh, right. Improvement in the immediate, alarming issues and then a head-start or a fresh start or a new start or whatever the fuck this is. I don't know. I don't care. 

I pick up my phone and type a reply and then I erase it. I type another and then I erase that one too and it's like he knows I'm here. Another message pops up from him. He probably saw me typing but then nothing went through. The second message is just a heart.

Oh, he's trying. This is good. I send one back, off the hook, out of the fire and the frying pan and I turn off my screen, putting my phone in the pocket of my sweater. 

***

It's dark finally and we got through a mountain of early-spring yardwork. It's a new season. It's another fresh start and I am throwing myself into doing good. Into doing better. New music, new haircut, new jacket. New mittens. New gardening gloves and new shoes. A whole new me. New church on the podcast but piped through the big speakers while we listen and eat our breakfast in the easy silence of a rainy Sunday. New season. New hurt.

Brambles (Bridget-rambles, also very thorny if they catch you the wrong way).

 I don't think he could catch Jacob, that man was always four feet off the ground, walking on clouds while we walked on the hard ground. Never had dusty shoes. Never had shoes on. Who needs them when you don't have to fight your way over broken glass or sharp rocks, never have to step on the backs of those you climbed over to get to where you are now. Never had to be a mortal because he wasn't and he knew long before the rest of us that his heaven would welcome him so much earlier. He was a VIP. Early entry. Separate doors. Credentials? Check.

He caught Cole easily enough. Cole's black wings never lie completely flat. They stick up, bent and charred, singed and ratty, easy enough to grab, folding around his solid frame, tying the outside feathers closed over his blue-black eyes so I don't have to see the frightening expression on his face and then he threw him in the backseat of the car. Company for the road. Someone to talk to when there's no one left to talk to. Someone to be present for the fast lane, an exit in double-time just to get it over with. 

Probably thinking about the ones that got away. 

I take a breath and turn back. Not going to dwell on right or wrong or feelings or sudden failure or abrupt and uncomfortable homesickness of the space now empty. I go and sit in the room. Bed stripped, desk cleared. Suitcase gone from where it was open on the side table for the better part of a week. Promises given. Times set for contact if I want it. 

I don't want it. I was so busy. So tired. So shell-shocked and then it just became habit, muscle-memory and now once again the whiplash is fierce and stinging. I'm distracting. I'm working. I'm trying to sort out a lower, softer, kinder and more bitter version of White Dress this morning but I'm just not into it,  the image of the car driving out the driveway and pausing at the top is stuck in my mind and I was hoping the reverse lights would come on but then it was gone and with him, my ghosts. 

Maybe they were only here because of him. Maybe he was sent here to take them back, when the time was right. Maybe the joke is less of a lark and more like the truth than I realized. Maybe pigs flew overhead as he drove down the highway. Maybe we set off fireworks in the form of sparks here, suddenly able to focus again for the spectre of history, the fog of war has cleared. 

Maybe I'm drunk at eight in the morning because someone else has decided for me that if the day is fuzzy around the edges it's be easier even though I just said we could focus now. By we I mean them, not me, and you agree, so you drink half of it,

 (You stupid girl, this took way too long.)

(That's how I do things, you know this by now!)

(Bridgie, who are you talking to?)

call it breakfast, call it a day, call it a draw, call it how you see it. I don't care. It's not up for debate. It's done, and it's as big an experiment as anything else, don't you think?

If you love me, you'll love me.

What would you do if I wouldn't sing for them no more?
Like if you heard I was out in the bars drinking jack and coke
Going crazy for anyone who would listen to my stories, babe?
Time after time, I think about leaving
But you know that I never do, just because you keep me believing

Indulging in a rainy, windy day, a bottomless mug of the really good coffee, courtesy of August's Breville monstrosity and the new Lana Del Rey album, because August is one of the few here who tolerates my smalltown-beach-lovesong-acoustic aesthetic or whatever it was PJ called it yesterday in uncharacteristic but complete familiar and bitter disdain.

Lochlan still sleeps, bed swaying gentle three feet off the floor. This suspended bed will never get old for me, matching the surprise I feel now when August all but encourages me to bring Lochlan. 

No, that never gets old.

Yesterday morning I watched the car go up the drive. 

You going to go back to letting me help for the time being? 

All hands on deck.

All hands on deck, he repeats. I can hardly hear it. So soft. 

I turn and look at him. I don't say anything else.

It'll be okay, Bridget. Just like before when he wasn't here.  He made me rethink a few things and I think we can keep you on track. 

We couldn't and we won't, because we (I) wouldn't/won't let us (them). Ha.

I can sabotage the very best moments, and as always nothing changed. Except for that fleeting second of relief as he left, which bled down into the rain, colouring the water with a bloom of grey.

Ran into the dark, Lana sings and I nod. Yes, indeed I did.

A little oversharing and a little esoterism, all at the same time.

(Sorry. Not sorry, actually.)

This morning sees rainclouds over the water, a Foy Vance slow-dance to Fifteen through the kitchen while making breakfast together, nose to nose. Coffee on the patio, braving the uncovered stone area, ready to run at a moment's notice but for now enjoying the cool salt air, the cloying early spring pollen and the heavy dimness that surrounds us on the cliff, in the trees. 

He is home, not this place, further to my thoughts from the other day. His crazy-long red hair, clipped words and devastating integrity always left me wishing I was cooler, older, more sure of myself and less inclined to fight him at every turn. This man who made me do math worksheets while sitting at a sticky picnic table under an awning, out of the sun in the bug-heat of August in the middle of a midway so that I would be smarter when I went into grade 6, because grade 6 was harder math than grade 5, from his recollection and that way if I did well in school I could continue to spend summers with him. Who taught me how to tie bows backwards on my shoes so they would lie flatter and not stick up, who braided my hair for me every single morning and then wrapped the braid around my head two or three times so that I looked like a Swiss milkmaid in just about every summer photo ever taken because he was terrified I would get my very long hair trapped in the machinery or caught in a door or pulled somehow but at the same time he loved it so and wouldn't hear of the suggestion to cut it even though I didn't care one way or another.

Get a room. Jesus. PJ mock-complains as he comes in and finds us trying to clean up from breakfast but mostly kissing instead. 

Did that, Lochlan mutters in return. 

Too bad you're not in it right now, PJ continues. 

And how, Lochlan agrees and then laughs out loud. It's a good day, oddly. A better day with more sleep, more perspective, and a corner turned, somewhat abruptly, to a whole new stage in life.

Burnout.

 Yesterday's rambles brought about another change, a lot of concern that flowed into concrete plans and help and company and I didn't have to run a scary errand alone, I didn't need to lose sleep without everyone else losing it too, we crossed some crazy sudden milestones around these parts and I feel like suddenly things have shifted, or maybe it's just a good day with good outcomes and happy endings.

Maybe it's the luck of my Irish. 

Second-generation Canadian, the only green I have on today is a cardigan I abandoned at nine this morning in the sunshine and my eyes, as always, like Lochlan's but much paler, more sage than olive. He has such distinct coloring and I am a cool-dramatic version of him. I had all my good luck charms with me today and things seem to be clipping alone and it's all good and I need to be thankful, here and take a moment to be peaceful too. 

I need to get some sleep. Last night there was none. ZIP. Holy. First we had a mini-emergency that woke us right up and continued until 4ish and then at 6ish we had hungers and then at seven we had places we needed to get to but now we are home and it's all good and done and I lived and now I can report to Everett but not to Jake and to snuggle in with Lochlan tonight but not with Caleb and it's definitely been the strangest Saint Patrick's Day but I can't even believe I used to wish I could go to a bar and drunk-dance all evening. That seems dumb now. Everything is bigger and holds more weight. There is more at stake and if I stop dancing and look around I see life happening all around me. I'm an adult and yet on the inside, forever seventeen. 

And I think this morning I made peace with that, oddly enough, instead of wondering if I would spend the rest of my life fighting it.

Escape artist.

Found a house in Rose Bay that I love, that I absolutely love, and I know Lochlan would love it too, and we'd love it in spite of the weather and in spite of the choppy wifi and the wind and the fact that it's a two bedroom mishmash with a questionable number of bathrooms and-a-half and a scary looking staircase and a completely untouched yard but it's also a stone's throw to some of my favourite beaches on earth and it's a stunning interior design and I could paint there and sleep there and count my minutes left on earth there, instead of here. 

Escapist fantasies, I know. The problems will travel with me. I repeat, and roll my eyes. Everett is curious and yet he really has heard it all and hasn't gotten sucked in. The theory goes that that exact reason is why I barely talk to him. Fun fact: All we've done is talk. We are sick of each other and so we break early for lunch with an open afternoon and I have a pre-St. Patrick's Day brunch with Satan planned that I am anxious to get ready for.

Only if you bring the entire Collective with you. 

Which I wouldn't anyway. 

The Collective was an experiment and when it's finished, it's finished.Whether it makes it to fifteen years or twenty on that absolute outside but I don't think it will. We're outgrowing ourselves now. This is the longest I have ever lived at a single address. Even growing up, as I moved to that house at age 8 and moved out at nineteen. I've already passed that milestone here on Point Perdition, effective this week. 

But we're all still here. Still collecting paints and pets and boys. Still figuring out cars and schedules and LED light switchovers that are actually bright enough but still nice. Still watching sentry over my tiny wraparound beach that technically isn't mine but the day I find a stranger on it for any length of time will be a strange day indeed. Still finding complete and utter privacy voids in the efforts to share our home and the property as a whole without making it seem as if it isn't everyone's home. Still keeping the rules of the roost intact because they work for everyone. We force consideration and thoughtfulness and respect for those around you and those spaces around you. Everyone is clean and tidy. No one procrastinates. Everyone pitches in. Eleven years on it seems like at one point it was never going to work but then it fell into place and I've been looking for a way out ever since. 

This is permanent, Neamhchiontach. 

Nothing's permanent, Diabhal.

The smell of sulphur and magnesium in the air.

 A warm kiss on the forehead and another firework explodes, lighting up the Midway for seconds in shades of red and green, the sound competing with the crowd for prevalence in the night. I take a sip through the straw of Lochlan's lemonade and notice it's spiked. I wrinkle my nose and swallow it anyway, tasting more vodka than lemonade but my eleven-year-old brain is accustomed to finding a surprise in his drink. He takes it back.

Take the edge off, Peanut. Besides, it's Sunday. I'll get you a regular drink. Don't touch this one, okay?

(We don't work on Mondays. That's our weekend.)

The edge off what, Locket? But he doesn't answer even though I don't understand. 

Years later I would understand. It softens the edge of the hole. So if you fall in you're not afraid. You don't get cut, you just relax your whole body and fall, landing on a black cloud. But you'll still fall in, because you took the edge away, and that was the only thing keeping you from falling head first. 

It took me a few extra years to understand that part, let me tell you. 

There are the boys. Let's go. He takes my hand, squeezing it and drags me through the crowd. Fireworks continue overhead. The music is so loud. Boston still playing through the huge speakers on the ride next to the field. It's the Scrambler and it always had the best music aside from whatever ride Lochlan was assigned to, usually the Ferris wheel. Every carny hates the stop and start and endless attention it needs to keep it loaded with the correct weight. Lochlan loves the methodical haul-and-go rhythm of it, loves the screams as people whip over the front. Especially mine.

We get to the group at the edge of the gate. They all nod. Christian says Hi Bridget, making sure to include me. Caleb asks me if I'm up past my bedtime, pissing me off right off. Cole tells me to ignore him. He's just bitchy because he's going back to school in a week and doesn't have time to babysit the rest of us. Lochlan asks who he's babysitting, that Lochlan's seventeen, thanks. 

And you're boozing up an eleven year old? Caleb asks him, watching my eyes separately focus on everything but the thing I'm trying to focus on, which was whatever Rob has. It's a harmonica. For later, by the lake, when Lochlan's off and we can go back to the camper. 

Maybe. Lochlan winks at him. This pisses Caleb off and briefly we are the Outsiders. Then cooler heads prevail and we go to our spot, best spot in town, to watch the remainder of the fireworks. All six minutes of them. 

Lochlan takes his drink away from me repeatedly and finally heads off to get me a regular can of Pepsi. Anything that doesn't have alcohol. While he's gone, Caleb tucks his arm around me, pulling me in against his chest. He is so much bigger than Lochlan I feel safe and protected. It was the last time I would ever feel like that with him, only I didn't know it then, snuggling in, resting my head against his chest, and his right arm. He's warm but not sweaty. He smells good. Like Old Spice. He lights a smoke over my head and it smells good too. I close my eyes because the finale is loud and bright and the lights are making squiggles in the sky and I suddenly feel carsick. 

My arm is pulled straight up and I am on my feet, awake suddenly. 

Jesus, Loch. It's Cole, complaining. Trying to back up his brother and stay on the crowd side. Trying to sound tough and in charge. 

Lochlan doesn't give a shit. He pulls me in against his chin, resting the cold can against my cheek. 

Let's go, he says to the dismayed catcalls of the others. We head back to the camper and he makes me drink a big glass of water from the drum on the counter. While I'm trying to get through that he's wrapping ice in a dishcloth, which he puts on my forehead, holding it there. With his other arm he reaches up and grabs a box of crackers off the shelf. You need to eat to dilute the alcohol. 

Why don't you feel like this? I feel great suddenly. Like I can fly. Or dance all night. 

I weigh a hundred and forty pounds. You don't even weigh a hundred. The smaller you are the harder you fall. 

That's not how the saying goes, Locket. 

With drinks it is. Eat, he barks. He looks so mad. He's so cute when he looks like this. I hate that I like that. 

I take a handful of crackers and shove them into my mouth one at a time while he lifts all of my hair up in one hand carefully, shoving the ice pack onto the back of my neck with his other hand. It feels so nice. 

I'm tired. Can we sleep? 

No. Not until this feeling is gone. I'm sorry. I should have paid closer attention. 

Sorry you didn't get to hang out with your friends. You can go back when I go to sleep? 

Not leaving you alone. It's fine. They're not my friends anyway. 

Why do you say that? 

I made my choice. Eat. 

What choice? I say through a mouthful of crumbs but he is busy getting our bed set up for the night. We turn it into a table during the day and at night we turn the table upsidedown and take the base off and cover the whole thing with thick cushions and it becomes a little bed. Lochlan hates it. He says he knows of a better camper for sale that has an actual separate bed and a little bistro flip down table and it has way more room. 

He never answered me but a few years later I understood that too. The choice was me over them, something the rest of them continue to resent to this day.

Brightest bulbs.

What's happening today? I slept until nine, got the sparks notes version of Sam's sermon, off the hook I am until much closer to Easter, and I can barely move thanks to the gardening. We got it all done and then some. Yard too, and then even the vineyard got some love, plus they put new ropes on the swing and gave it a light sand and a coat of wax. Last year we all but abandoned all of the gardening in August when Ben got hurt and the only thing I did was shovel some leaves in around the perennials in early November after seeing that the last tomatoes had rotted still on the vine. 

It felt weird clearing out the decay of a summer abrupted as we forgot about anything but saving Benjamin, getting him through the worst and into the clear but it was a relief to return to the routine I most look forward to. Green things are poking up all over. Renewal. Easter is coming. I wanted a head start and now I have it. Last year I think we waited until a week before Victoria Day to do anything at all. That seemed necessary then. Now it all feels different, sooner. There's a bigger push. 

But we are ready. I can't feel my hands. They all laughed at my twenty-year old rake. Supposedly all the tines broke off and I didn't notice. Now I have a shiny new one, brought home this morning. We moved the giant oregano plant (I harvest it until the end of July and then it is used for the bees to enjoy) and I hope it lives. It may be too soon. We did a ton of prep work. I can order soil now. We did a seed inventory and a rough plan for planting. 

I didn't think about anything except the garden. 

I'm not growing any ghosts, nor did they come to see how things were doing. I think actually that Jacob might be actively avoiding Everett but that's okay too. It's Everett's last week here or so I heard the hint of even though to my face they say his visit is open-ended and I guess he wasted his time but this is not on me. He and Ben had a good visit so all's not lost and I don't want to hear about it.