Very important, useless conversations.

I have been back now for over twenty-four hours and I've caught up on laundry and boys and stories and even painted my toenails robin's-egg-blue and have all my plans ready to devote to a long weekend full of firing and glazing and firing and maybe some gardening, though I popped out today and planted more tomatoes, peas and sunflowers everywhere I could fit them in, so there isn't much left to do now but wait. 

The brief getaway was much needed and though it was short we accomplished so much. And no I wasn't drunk. Borjomi is just a brand of sparkling water and it's oddly addictive and I can't buy it here so I get it when I can. It's also a place, where the water comes from but I didn't have time to go there, sadly. 

I had a debriefing by Sam and then by August too, I ripped out all of my earrings (every last one) and I'm having my medications adjusted again. We are slow and steady, though I had two panic attacks this week and I couldn't get control of either so odds are more medication will be in my future. Chemical Bridget is a necessity, not a preference, trust me. Things were getting weird and I did this willingly. As long as I hear the right reasons I will agree with you. As long as it's for the right reasons I will agree to it. 

I still do not have my phone, I don't have email. I don't have television. I do have the ipod for music and I have my fifteen puzzle and my fidget ring (it's from myconquering and it's the best. I actually have five from here. Not an ad, just a rec) and I'm not for want of things to do, I'm just trying to take it easier than normal. Apparently I go way too hard. 

Ha. 

Me? 

Of course I do. That's how I roll. And if anything, I fight the lethargy and low-key motion sickness by going super hard and that's where I falter. It's just a bad idea. But not doing anything seems worse. 

I went for a walk with Caleb. Down to the sea where I couldn't hear him all that well but I tried. It was better as we walked back toward the stairs so that's when we had our brutally honest heart to heart and we're going to take it one day at a time and see how things go. 

For how long? 

I don't know. A few months, maybe a few years. 

Do you want me to leave?

Do you want to leave?

If you want me to I will. 

No, but I understand if there's nothing to stay for. 

My friends are here. You are still here. In whatever capacity, it's better than being away from you. 

This isn't a healthy response. 

You sound like you just left August's chair. 

I did, matter of fact but that's not the point. What we never go back to what we had? What if I simply move on?

Then I will wait for you until I die. And then beyond. 

Will you haunt me like your brother does? 

Yes. But probably more often. Would that be okay with you? 

Caleb-

Don't worry. I'm not the type, in case you're worried. 

I nod, suddenly unable to speak for the lump in my throat. 

You do care. 

Of course, I choke out.

Then I will stay here for the rest of my days. In case you change your mind.

Yeah, whatever. I ran.

 I'm so tired of hanging on
To everything I thought we had. I was so wrong
There's nothing left here to fight for, we've both been bled dry
Stop wasting time, yours and mine, cause God knows we tried

I don't wanna hold you back anymore, no
And you don't wanna live with the guilt of leaving me behind, oh
You know I'd be lying if I said that we were meant to be
So let's just move on and say goodbye to you and me

It was after I choked back a third glass of Borjomi that I looked at Caleb level, eye to eye and said I needed a break, that it started now. That he could fly home without us, that we were going for a few days in Montauk before returning to the West Coast, and that he didn't have to try hard anymore because there will be nothing to try for. And my heart was breaking the whole time because all I can picture is him falling backwards off a building in slow motion but that isn't a likely end to this love story and instead I know he will shore up his resources and begin a new campaign the moment I get home.

So here I am, home at last and I haven't seen him yet. Haven't seen him since Brighton Beach where I found the best way to spend all that money (on rent control of all things), that he could put something good out into the world and keep it that way and we would call it even. The most recent thing, that is. Not the whole of our history. That's a different weight all together and it's not going to be fixed by filling Bridget up on potatoes and sausages (oh my God SO GOOD AS ALWAYS) and I had a few furtive glances at Coney and an empty promise or two to come back in the fall and then the fairy tale slipped into the sea and real life returned. I did a favour for a friend, as it were, because I promised. 

I should have stayed away.

Harder than it seems.

My peonies started opening today and the poppies were gone in a flash. Too late, too wet for them but also they were too crowded and I had put a cage around the plant for the winter and then forgot to take it away when the growing began in earnest. It's fine. It was a small cheap plant that I was stubborn about and it's spectacular some years and ugly others. 

Like me. 

I have an enamel fifteen puzzle I can't solve. Ha. You'd think it would be easy. My fingers are down to the bone sliding tiles for hours and I can't do it. It's worth the twelve dollars and the boast that it's from the thirties. Pretty sure it will be ninety years before I can solve it, truth be told. I'll be like a hundred and forty something and blathering on about this little puzzle that fits in my dress pocket and is the stuff of kinder, gentler nightmares. 

Lochlan holds me while I sleep, which is the best way and so the nightmares have to go through him first, and so I know he is exhausted, catching some and setting them on fire before they can reach me, others he dilutes in seawater to make them less sharp, some he lets slip through his fingers gently into my brain and others he bricks into a room, covering the door and they'll never see the light of day again. He's always been so good at keeping the monsters away, there's only one he can't read, one he doesn't know what to do with. 

We're working on it though. 

I hold him while he sleeps, softening the alarm, anchoring him to me through the night so that he can find the light of day, keeping him focused and reassured that we're doing good. We're okay. We'll be fine and we'll be stronger afterward. It's been a multi-decade mantra and we are superhumans at this point but then why do I still feel like wet paper in a strong wind? 

What's written on you? 

My whole heart. 

It's such a long read. 

With no ending. 

It will be happy though. The fortune teller said so.

Twos.

Okay, phone is sorted (turned out to be a twenty-five year old extension cord that was the issue) and I spilled my coffee two days in a row, as it turns out. Actually we got take out coffee and I was distracted and brought it up to take a sip and the hole on the lid was turned around so I got no coffee in my mouth and instead it poured down my cheek, flowed across my shirt and puddled in my lap. Luckily, as always, it was already cold because as I've said before, I forget. 

I also forgot yesterday, as I was busy organizing, and I got a grocery list from Ruth and headed out this morning with Lochlan to get them all stocked up and now they have lots of groceries and are on the mend at last. Tired and easily worn out and easily discouraged but on the mend and it could have been worse. Thankfully it wasn't and so we move on to the next thing this week. 

For many reasons, the 9th through 16th is going to be a big of a challenge but we will figure it all out and technically it will be okay. I worry too much, as always. I'm kind of looking forward to it, but at the same time, a challenge, as I said. I will say more after the fact. 

Also I splurged today and bought a new dog leash. A pretty one.

Jesus, Apple.

My phone had a checkup and her battery was good (even at lowered health. I am what they call a power user) but something was wrong with my software because it would not charge past a certain low threshold. This is what I told them but they needed to prove it or something, so I was given some instructions on how to fix it and they offered to do it in store but I took my nudes and my secrets and brought everything home and did it all and guess what? We are back to one hundred percent charged. 

If only they could do the same with me. Actually, I know my hardware problems and I also know my software problems. The only thing is none of the fixes ever work. Too bad. At least my Bridget Care will never expire. 

Ben thinks it's hilarious. Especially the part where they told me if I wanted to restore from a backup that it would only take a few minutes. He understands. A restore takes a whole weekend for my phone due to the sheer expanse of music on it, and a restore for Bridget takes even longer still. 

He cupped his hands around my head this morning, pressing it against his chest (as one would when preparing to throw a football) and made a pretend twisting motion and I laughed so inappropriately Jesus (and Sam) rolled his eyes and gave up on the spot. Ben has picked me up by my head enough times to make everyone on the point cringe in fear but it's actually funny and feels kind of good. Besides, it's for a split second. Even my chiropractor didn't have an issue last time I went and had a good old crack session, which everyone swears will cure my headaches but after eleven million visits over the past twenty years, um, sorry but no. 

(The only thing that helps my headaches is mummy-sleep and Lochlan's lips pressed against my forehead for an eternity. Then I relax and breathe. It's a soothing trick he's been doing since I was eight years old and it still works. I didn't even have any really bad headaches until fourteen or sixteen or so. 

Mummy sleep is when you wrap up tightly in a sheet, arms in, swaddled, if you will and sleep hard, packed like a sardine. The temperature has to be perfect in the room, cold even, and there can be no light. It's probably like being dead except you can wake up later and go do things.) 

Ben has a third (fifth?) summer job helping some new bands dial in their sound, acting as an advocate between managers and record labels so the band doesn't get shafted, and being the tiebreaker on merch designs and single covers, something he lets us all vote on and we love every second of it. He's doing it for a percentage of a actual income, more as a favour to their fathers and to some of his friends in the business and so he is busy and in his element. With this and the eleven million other projects he is too busy to notice it takes him an extra minute or two to remember which drawer holds batteries and which holds ziploc bags and that's enough for me. He has a lot of support out there in the world and it makes me happy to see it continue even after he technically retired. Everyone needs an army. Mine is tight and local. His is scattered but more global. He would argue that we all know his army is my army too but it isn't the same.

So this morning we made an email to let the Collective vote on some items for accessories and designs  for picks and then we went for a long walk around the grounds to smell every lilac flower we could find before coming back and making camp coffee. Ben took his favourite chair and I took the hammock because nothing says good morning Sunday like feeling carsick and spilling my coffee within the first sip, right? 

I never learn.

(But you didn't want to.)

August is trading off Kelly Clarkson and Avril Lavigne playlists this morning when I come downstairs and I know damn well he has a little Christina Perri mixed in there. Just what we need, a slide back into the Jar of Hearts season that almost saw the implosion of this whole Collective. 

Avril is listenable and catchy and I think I know most of the words and I'm doing great today, thank you for asking. Sam poured us each an orange juice and we went for a walk to see the beginnings of the garden, see the beans popping up through the soil and the poppies almost opening already and the lilac scenting the whole point with their sweet smell of memories long past. Lilacs remind me of Ben though, and he is sitting in the shade on the patio with a coffee and Duncan and they are having a lovely talk. 

I handed Sam my glass and bent to weed some interlopers out of the burgeoning lavender plants and then he handed it back carefully and waited for my report. 

I am breathing again. A tenuous week, to be sure but we navigated it, no one fell overboard and kind, windy seas loom ahead. 

Ruth has covid. So does her husband. It's a good time to have it now that the wedding, honeymoon and everything else is behind them right now and they are doing okay. I was over this morning fully masked to drop off test boxes, croissants, and juice and a few bags of fruits and veggies and soups for them. 

(This is one of the reasons Caleb came back. The kids are on the other side of it though now and begin the long road of regaining their energies.)

My iPhone stopped charging again. When I wake up it's on sixty percent and after trying a week of different things she's getting a battery replacement today at Apple. I never know what to do. Should I delete the nudes first? Remove all of Ben's in progress songs? Delete all the secrets of everyone I know? Haha, of course not. By the time things get to me they aren't secrets as I am the last to overhear, as it were. 

Unfortunately. 

(Fun being deaf and all but I still adore the shit out of my phone and so I need it fixed. I have 276GB of music on it.)

I really just want to take the world, lick my finger and blur off the parts I have no interest in and sit and watch the radishes grow. Sam doesn't believe in escapism. I remind him the only one here who does is gone and he frowns. No one likes it when I talk about Jacob. They'd rather pretend he never existed which is escapism, IS IT NOT? 

Of course not, because it's majority rules and Bridget isn't a queen, just a princess. She gets no say. 

We survived and I didn't have an overwhelming amount of panic or fear, even with Caleb coming back. Even with Lochlan breathing on the top of my head perpetually. He is sleeping in, exhausted. I think he keeps watch all night so Sam has promised to be my forbidden sidekick today. Maybe he'll let me take some nudes for the Apple geniuses later. Maybe if I ask real nicely. 

But probably not, and that's how things are shaping up today.

I can hear August belting out Already Gone as we return to the patio. Ben is just listening. 

Should have put him to work. 

He's offered. I remind him. 

I want you to know that it doesn't matter-  

Wow. Those NOTES. I hate to interrupt but I want to put the glasses inside and get busy with my plans for the day, which don't include casual archaeology on my brain, uncovering years of regrets and misfiled memories. My thief is a dreamboat, not a crack administrator and so some things are inevitably going to be in the wrong spot. I need to make kiln cookies and test tiles for glaze so that I have a reference catalog. I need to beg for my email back, as I still don't have access. It's been six months. Do they care? No. Why would they care. It's just a 'blog'. It's just the record of my entire life as a mother and as a wife to four different men in the span of twenty years which sounds really fucking stupid. 

Those of us who read it and the one who wrote it, know differently. Don't we?

Ohhh noooo. Almost made it. Here's Jar of Hearts now.

Preservations.

What did you do with the money? Caleb is trying to make conversation as I empty the dishwashers. I don't really carry on discussions while doing it, it's loud and clanky and everyone ends up repeating themselves so I wait until I'm finished and by then he has decided that I am freezing him out, or angry at such a question or worse, simply ignoring him. 

Nothing. It's still wherever you put it. I didn't look. I'm guessing it's in the trust account he uses to send my money. Every time I get some I hope eventually it will add up and I will buy my dream house somewhere else. Today it's a cottage just on the other side of the little causeway between the lake and Queensland beach. It's perfect. It's a little weird and it comes fully furnished for just under half a million. 

Other days I want to take twenty million, fly to Europe, move into a moss-covered moldy castle and never be seen again. 

Some days I want to encase Lochlan in bronze or resin and preserve him forever but I think my brain already has done that for me on my behalf and so he is forever eighteen. Sixteen. Twenty-one. Doesn't matter, really. 

You should let us do these things. Caleb has been very all-in, very helpful since he's been home. On his best. No teeth. No fists. No fetishes, no frights. For now. I've been keeping my guard up though, otherwise he uses his charm as a vacuum to suck me right in.

I'm good. You have your list, I have mine. I smile but not with my eyes. And he doesn't push.

Dear.

Yesterday I was refreshing and repainting the mural on the side of the boathouse and so I spent all day on a ladder with two two-hour breaks and now this morning I am all but in traction, a twisted pretzel with aching limbs and core and a blistering headache to boot. I had my big floppy hat with the chin tie and I was in shade for most of it but that still doesn't change the sheer effort, especially since the previous day I cleaned up the entire perimeter of the stables, pulling out endless giant weeds and keeping a quick check somewhat regularly over my shoulder for the bears. I saw three deer up at the top of the glade nearer to the road and they took my breath away and then ran with it back up toward the mountains. I don't even want to think about where or how they cross the highway. I've seen the dead ones and it breaks my already broken heart but there isn't much I can do about it and also sometimes they jump into traffic out of the trees and it's just simply too late. 

I also, without any guilt whatsoever, ate PJ's croissant for breakfast this morning.

And never ever feed him after midnight.

My rules were much the same as Caleb's, truth be told. No alone time unless someone is very nearby. Outside is fine. No trips. No overnights. No lies. No defending the Devil from the actions he takes, only to be excused away by my practised, immature inner voice. She will let him get away with anything. He made sure of it with threats that she once believed and doesn't anymore, but it all happened at such a young age that it made something grow crooked inside her. 

(Spoiler: It was her/my brain.)

Loch made me pinky-swear to him and I did easily and then we had a picnic on the windy beach below, egg salad sandwiches, tonic water and baked chips. A favourite meal. We watched the logs bump on the shore and the foam ice the tops of the waves and he asked me what I would change. 

I want to be like everyone else.

How do you mean?

I don't want to have to need pills to function properly. I don't want to be taken at face value. I want to be deep and mysterious and together-

I look at him and he is shaking with laughter. Of course I'm not offended. Just fatally curious as ever. 

What's so funny? 

You are who you're supposed to be. I don't like hearing you doubt yourself. The pills are-

They make me thirsty and I can't concentrate-

For now and we'll deal with later in a little while. You are deep and wonderful and beautiful. No one here wants a robot or a superwoman. We just want you. Safe. Happy. Not hurting. Not being hurt. Not suffering. Not being tortured or in distress twenty-four hours a day. You promised you would trust me but I see the way you look at me. 

I don't-

You do. It's as if I have become the enemy. And I never will be, Bridget. We'll get through this. Even if it takes the rest of our lives. But I'm not going to let Caleb consume you slowly or try and tear you away from me. 

He can't.  

But you can't let him go and I understand that but he's going to do some real work on himself too and we're all going to get to a healthier, less-fucked up place. Or die trying. 

I nod. Is it hyperbole? No. Is it encouraging? Maybe. 

A little, anyway.

Hands inside the cart at all times.

I woke up to shouting this morning. Caleb was back first thing and PJ sent out a heads up which is interesting because PJ sleeps in on Sundays and to wake him takes an army. Maybe that was it, the army's sole dissenter rode up and PJ snapped to, and before I woke up I guess some of the others tried to get him to quietly go again and he was having none of it. 

Because he knew I was taking two steps forward and three back. The usual. Things seem okay, make a little progress and then turn around and let go and slide all the way back to the beginning. It's a human game of snakes and ladders and grief is the snake and life is the ladder and he doesn't want to be left behind. 

Ha, like me on the stupid log in Call of Duty. That never gets old. 

Jacob didn't stay. It's fine, I think Caleb learned his lesson too, I point out to Ben but Ben is watching body language and keeping me from moving forward (three steps back, Bridget) while Caleb and Lochlan get further away. They walk down the driveway and I am left wondering if Caleb is going to shove Lochlan next and maybe he'll fall and hurt his head and forget me or I'll have to feed him for six or eight weeks while he learns to use utensils again, helpless and weakened in the space of one calculated moment of overwhelming emotion. 

Which is why we are always stuck right here in that before moment. 

Jacob gave me a gift and I'm not squandering it, I swear but my curiosity is a lethal mistress, always and I strain to read their expressions as they return. Caleb hurries ahead of Lochlan and sweeps me into his arms in a hard hug, my feet off the ground. 

I missed you, Neamhchiontach. His voice breaks. Lochlan is allowing me back early. He has some rules I can easily agree to if it means I can see you. He touches my face, my nose, my ears. I just want to know the rules. 

Tell you later, Lochlan says as he brushes past me when I look to him for confirmation. I'm sure there will be another set of rules for me to listen to later when it comes to the devil but what good is an army with missing soldiers? What good is an angel without a devil to be the foil? And what the heck is the summer going to look like now that there's no countdown and a velcro-ghost, stuck like static on a fine silk shirt to my skin, inside my heart, all over my face, written like a letter I never read?