Picking up Hemingway.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
~Ernest Hemingway.

Last night, Ben again went for the big coat, but I was ready for him this time, dressed differently, prepared to plead for warmth in leaving everything on this time, dreading the cold but certainly not the thrill.

Only once again, he chose surprise.

When we got down to the beach Ben encouraged me to sit against the logs and then he walked to the water's edge, turning to face me, his back to the sea. He pulled out a book and began to read from it, watching me somewhat nervously. I knew the style before I knew the name of the book.

Hemingway.

To Have and Have Not.

Across the River and into the Trees and The Snows of Kilimanjaro were the two other tattered, dog-eared books found among Jacob's belongings in the hotel room that were returned to me in a Fedex global shipping box. The remainder of our Hemingway collection is on the bookshelf in my bedroom. It's been a really long time since I looked at any of it. Years, which in Ben-terms is a very long time indeed.

I suppose there are people who have never seen the archives here. I took them away. Jacob used to read to me. Out loud, every night on the porch after the children were asleep. I loved it so, and now Ben is doing it.

Ben.

Ben who has positively zero desire to walk in anyone else's footsteps because he is busy walking through broken glass and lightning strikes for fun. Ben does not require conventionalities, he defies logic. He throws up his middle fingers and flips off rationality and he rips the head off predictable romance and flushes it. He'll do things his way, he tells me and I believe him. He's weird and wonderful like that.

He's going to take up this torch because he knows I won't scream in agony, twisting out of his arms when the words sink in but the voice is different. He knows I will sit and strain to hear over the roar of the midnight surf while the wind follows the labyrinth of ruin into my ears until it can cool my brain into a satisfied stasis, until I have absorbed enough of the story for one night, told in such a way that eclipses a night spent rocking on a porch swing with a hot of cup of tea listening to the crickets in the tall Prairie grass in spades. Ben lives viscerally and everything will be loud and dark and violent and felt until you just can't feel it anymore and then, and only then are you living, thank you very fucking much.

Only Ben could make a Hemingway novel into a full-on metal experience, with the waves crashing and the moon blazing on through the night. Only Ben would dare to bring this particular pastime back to life. Had anyone else done it I would still be screaming. Instead I feel like I have a little more of myself back.

Jacob can listen in, probably reciting the passages word for word. Probably impressed with the delivery and maybe even our progress too.

Yeah, that guy. (Hi Mom, you can skip today.)

Last evening after the hockey game ended Ben shrugged into his big coat, the winter one that kept him warm in the Prairies. The children were long asleep, the boys drifting off to their favorite corners of the house to listen to music or watch movies or work late into the night. Ben and I don't often get time alone, it is a gift that we look for and take with gratitude.

He took my hand in his and led me outside, across the yard and down the treacherous cliff path in the dark. It's borderline dangerous but at least the skies were clear enough to have the moon and a few stars to provide some ambient light, and the rocks were dry. Once safely on the beach we walked until we reached the bigger rocks at the end of the property line. The boys have laid out huge logs facing the beach and it's become a good place to sit and draw or just to watch the waves, on finer days.

He took off the coat and sat down on the sand, leaning back against the waterlogged wood. I was about to protest when he pulled me down onto his lap, wrapping the coat around me, hitching up my dress up, pulling my tights down. Fighting everything I had on until the only thing left was his coat pulled tight around my shoulders and held against my knees by his arms. He pulled himself free and bit into my lip as he grasped my hips and guided himself in. I didn't know it was possible to be so cold and so warm at the same time. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and held on as he rocked against me violently, unending. Numb took me over and I put my head down against his ear, begging him not to stop. I cried out when he did and he brought his hand up to press my head against his shoulder and pulled me hard against his flesh with his other arm wrapped around my hips.

We remained like that until the blood in our veins took on a fresh painful chill, and he managed to pull the coat away long enough to slip me back into my dress, stuffing my tights into one of his coat pockets, rescuing my boots from high tide. He took my hand once again, kissing it firmly, pulling me back up the path and into the house where we let the heat wash over us like waves, sending our nerves endings screaming with effort.

He smiled at me but he never ever said a single word.

This made my day.

Actual post to follow whenever my brain decides to join me. It's still off watching the sunrise, I believe. Or the aftermath of the Royal wedding.

Ben is working late tonight and so I am hanging out in the overly-bright kitchen waiting for him (who keeps leaving all the damn lights on anyway?) with Lochlan and Dalton. Lochlan has been showing me how to use his new tablet. It's an Asus e-slate or something. A whole bunch of the boys got them but so far I haven't had a lot of chance to play on them so tonight was my chance. The topic was suggested by you-know-who. 1984. So I drew 1984. When I was thirteen* and Loch was just about twenty.
He is mad because I didn't draw us happy. I'm not sure why he's taking cartoons literally, you'll have to ask him yourself.

Tomorrow maybe I'll draw Ben.

Oh lord. Hahaha.

*(Note: Clearly I am standing on a box in the picture. The top of my head falls just under Lochlan's chin, and for some reason I always draw myself tall. Wishful thinking.)

What are you doing, princess?

Holding my own. Just don't judge me.

I'm not judging, I am asking questions.

Evaluating your own reactions, Jake.

Maybe. To be honest, this surprises me.

Like those ex -cons. 'They do what they know', you said.

You are so far from what I meant.

I'm doing what I know.

You are playing with fire and you're going to get burned again. He doesn't love you. He wants to win.

Oh but that's where you're wrong. No one keeps a game going this long if they don't really want the prize.

It becomes something else after a while. It has taken on a life of its own and you're not being careful.

He won't hurt me.

But he does. They all do in their own ways.

I didn't come here to talk about this.

What did you come for then, princess?

It's Easter. It's spring.

And?

I just needed to see you. It's been a while.

The synergist.

(Oh, look. I'm going to add to what I started with this post. Don't say I never finish anything.)

When Lochlan returned, it was dark. He walked through the door of his apartment, letting it crash against the wall. He threw his keys on the table and walked straight to the couch where he sat down with a loud sigh and took another drink from the open bottle in his hand.

When is it?

He knew I would still be right where he left me. Spinning in the dark in his desk chair.

This summer. Labour day weekend.

Christ, my birthday? Come on, Bridge.

Everyone will be home.

He stared at me for a moment and then realized, glassy-eyed, that I was right.

Don't do this, peanut.

I'm not your problem anymore.

I only needed a break. Three years is long enough. You're going to be related to that monster.

Cole won't let anything bad happen to me.

Come back to me. We'll get it right.

It's too late to be right, Loch. I stand up, turning on the lamp and begin to walk slow laps around the room. He finally gets up and pushes me back down into the chair. He hates it when I pace. I hate trying to have a battle of wits with a twenty-five year old with freshly impaired judgment.

It's not. We start over. Just you and me.

It's too late, I repeat. What are you going to do with your life, Lochlan?

I don't know. He says it quietly and looks away. I know I'll be watching him.

I'm not going to report to you.

I didn't ask you to. Everyone else will. He smiled. He's halfway to drunk.

Lochlan-

Just hear me out okay? I'm going to win you back, even if it takes the rest of my life.

It might.

I have nothing better to do, peanut. His head is pressed against mine. I am pinned in the chair, he has his hands on the arm rests, and short of slithering out underneath his arms, I'm trapped.

So I kissed him.

I'd like to say I was young and stupid, or that I didn't know what I was doing, or hell, maybe it just happened, but I did it on purpose, because I wanted to know if it would still feel like it used to before we broke up. (Lochlan, against all odds, is the most affection person, after me that is, on the planet. He doesn't seem like he would be but he is and he keeps it all for me so maybe that means he isn't. I don't know. Let's just keep going, shall we?)

He kissed me back and turned the light off again. I had orange polka dots dancing in front of my eyes and the taste of secondhand whiskey on my tongue. I took the bottle from him and swallowed a long drink, the burning fire spreading down into my fingertips and toes. Yep. Still feels the same. Really, really good.

I have to go. Cole's going to be off soon. Cole worked nights at the same restaurant as Lochlan to pay for film. He said he was going to be a chef because he could afford a good knife but not a good camera. It was a travesty no one planned to put up with for very long.

Lochlan backed off and I got up and walked to the door, grabbing my bag off the table.

I wouldn't want to be in his shoes.

Gee, thanks.

No, he's about to marry someone who doesn't love him. And I'm sure he knows.

I walked back over and slapped him. Hard.

You don't get to tell me how I feel!

But I'm right, aren't I? He picked up the bottle and took another drink in the darkness. I didn't stay around to answer. I heard the bottle hit the door and smash to bits after I closed it as I walked down the hallway. An uncharacteristic response from him. He doesn't usually allow himself to lose control.

I should have put more stock in that realization but I didn't. I was too busy trying to figure out how I was going to marry Cole without getting any closer to Caleb, of whom I was deathly afraid by this point.

I had waited for Lochlan long enough. I couldn't wait anymore.

Cancelled noise.

One long experiment is over, and I have gracefully disengaged myself from the weight of conventional expectations to keep to my own path. Not a popular choice, sometimes not a pleasant one, but you have not walked in these shoes, and you do not know what it's like.

I'm going to leave my hearing aids in the drawer. Maybe I will pull them out again when I'm very old and frail and tiny, testing to see if I can still discern the chickadees from the general wind, maybe I will hear the train whistle too. But for now, they're going to go back into their case and become neglected, on purpose.

I don't want to flinch away from your voice. I don't want to be so distracted by a muffler or a passerby that I miss the horse braying softly from the fence. I don't want to catch the inflections in your voice when you censure my longings and I don't need to hear snow falling so quietly, ominously.

I don't know what an echo sounds like. I don't think I have ever heard a real one. Only in a movie, I suppose, and that's okay too. Really.

Take me to the ocean, standing right beside the tide and I can hear the waves crash into the planet with a ferocious comfort that engulfs me in bright and utter darkness. Send me for a walk in the early hours of the morning and I will hear the robins waking up their neighbors obnoxiously, efficiently. Leave me be with the big headphones and I will hear Ben breathe as he sings. I will hear nails on the strings and I will finally, once and for all, hear the rhythm guitar in any of the songs at all, because that is the most difficult part.

I will persist with my whimsical, apocryphal stories for when the children press upon me new epic tales while facing the other direction. I parrot back what I think I hear, to their utter delight and boundless frustration. We will take these new stories and expound on them until we are breathless, in fits of laughter, because I missed another somber bit of information, thrown haphazardly over their shoulders for me to catch.

I missed. Maybe I'll get it right the next time.

I can hear the rain. It's so heavy and lush, it pours all around me and I know it well, like the roar of a waterfall but so much deeper. Give me a voice and I will catch all of the emotion within it when it speaks. Give me a note and I will recite the lyrics from beginning to end. Audible gold. A richness beyond mere treasure.

Keep the sounds selective, and don't dilute them with the pedestrian bedlam of every day. I don't commit to hear what everyone else does. I am saving my sound allowance for the extraordinary now.

We are out in the orchard, dressed in our Sunday best.

The children are playing bunny-tag with some of the boys. It's a game we invented when they were very small. They're given baskets and they must find and collect all the eggs before the bunny catches them. The bunny is one of the boys, wearing a suit and a giant creepy bunny-head from an old video shoot. He runs in a nightmarish gait, almost in slow-motion, otherwise the kids don't have a chance. I know that this must look like a dream from the water side, a scene muted in pastel colors and nervous glee, soft-focused with lots of noise added for grain. I'm not really paying attention. My eyes are closed.

Ben has my hand, held tightly in his. We are standing closer to the water, so I can hear the surf crashing upon the names of the dead, so I can enjoy one of my favorite places in the reality safety of his hold. I am not allowed here otherwise. This is such a gift this morning in the hazy sunlight before the rainclouds rolls down the mountain again to soak us in sin.

I open my eyes and look at him.

He looks at the ground, considering his words and then he looks out to sea, squinting in the brightness. I am struck by the unforeseen congruities with which I focus on their gestures in order to soften their impending words. We agreed on honesty, and boy, is it ever painful.

Lochlan is where your head is, but I know where your heart is. That's all that matters, and it's something that little red-headed fucker likes to forget. I'm not worried. Besides, what's he going to do to win you over? Stick you in the middle of the tightrope and expect you to make back his investment? Fuck that, fuck him. I can't fix anything, I can just keep on doing what I know is right. And that includes building you up while they take turns trying to tear you down.

I'm nodding. Tears are now dripping off my chin, staining my dress with dark spots.

See, everyone thinks I'm the one who is fucked up and indecisive and destructive but that's all just part of my plan, Bridget.

Uncontrollable laughter begins to squeeze off my tears and my whole body is shaking now. He takes off his suit-jacket and wraps me in it and then puts his arms around me.

You don't belong to him. He's a habit, that's all. You don't need to define your loyalties to me. If he needs that then he is insecure and afraid and that's his problem, not yours. I won't do that. I've drawn my lines and I keep things clear. I wish he would do the same instead of pulling himself up on your memories.

Our conversation is interrupted by the children, who run over to show us their baskets, overflowing with tiny foil-wrapped eggs. Ben scoops a handful from each and eats them without unwrapping them, making the children scream with delight and disgust. They run back into the gardens laughing and Ben watches them go with such a huge grin on his face.

Ben is regularly dismissed for being so impulsive and unreliable, based on his behavior in his own circus of a past. A mistake for sure, for he should not be underestimated.

A blur of white fills my vision and the anonymous bunny-man tackles Ben to the ground and then jumps back up, pelting him with eggs, running off again. Everyone is laughing. Ben sits up, collects the eggs from the ground and eats another handful of foil, this time mixed with a bit of moss.

When the bunny reaches the other side of the yard, he removes the head, his red curls reflecting the retreating sun.

If she wanted you she wouldn't keep choosing men to put in front of you. Don't be so hopeful.

I heard his words even from inside, carried through the window and into my ears. I wanted to unhear it. Caleb still screwing Lochlan to the wall, making sure to grind it in good so it would hurt the most, going on almost thirty years now. Lochlan doesn't need to be told things he already knows.

* * *

They gave a seventeen-year-old guardianship rights for a twelve-year-old-girl?

Eighteen. I'm eighteen now.

Whatever, kid. I hope you know what you're getting yourself into.

Lochlan turned away from the gruff but kindly house manager and smiled at me with his teenage bravado. It's okay, peanut. Just paperwork. Here, take this change and go get some juice for us.

* * *

We took off for a late bike ride. It was warm and bright out. I held on tight against his back as he raced down the highway, my eyes closed. I can be young again that way, before everything became so complicated. Maybe he does that too. We are putting a lot of miles on this bike together, it seems. We've put a lot of miles on the planet already and far too many on each other.

He is putting gas in the bike while I play with the buttons on the pump.

He's right, you know. You just keep doing it.

I say nothing. I'm not going to have the same argument we always have here. I don't want to be left behind. I shake my head and he turns the key to start the bike. Conversation ends. I can't hear him anyway.

* * *

What do people do when they don't travel anymore?

With the show, you mean?

Yes. I am finishing the salty bits in the bottom of a cup of french fries.

He sits up and stares out to see, squinting slightly. He always looks like he's about to find the flaw in my logic when he has this expression.

I don't know, Bridge. I guess they pick a place they like best and live out the end of their days. We can find a little house we like and we can sit on the back porch watching the sea and trading our favorite memories. When the midway comes to town we'll go and ride the rides and eat cotton candy and have a wonderful day.

I smile into the sun, shaking my head to get my hair out of my eyes.

I need to trim your bangs again, he says and the moment of warmth is over. He is parental again. Worrying too much. We fight. I don't want bangs anymore and it's my hair.

* * *

Why didn't you just stay with me.

I don't answer, since it is less of a question and more of an accusation, a regret. I could point out that he was the one who freaked out and left me, so coldly so he wouldn't have to feel it, knowing I had a place to land, foolishly thinking he was doing the right thing.

You keep..you keep doing this. Just out of reach and I can't hold on to you.

It's been a long day. I dump my wine into the grass and set the glass down on the table. I'm going to head inside.

Just stay here for a few minutes, please, peanut.

I don't want to fight with you, Lochlan.

We won't. Okay? We won't fight. I just like having you to myself.

I look at the moon. He has gone back into subconscious territory, where everything he thinks about comes rushing out to poke at and burn our hearts, turning tingles into stabbing agony and inklings into paroxysms.

Don't listen to Caleb when he talks to you. It serves no purpose.

I could say the same for you. You have to stay away from him.

I can't. I have Henry.

He swears under his breath and settles low into the chair, taking a long drink from his beer. I wish he would put down the beer. I wish he would put down the past.

We got our retirement, didn't we? He chuckles to himself. The expression on his face is the furthest thing from humor that I have ever seen.

What?

Remember when we talked about what we would do when we were too old to travel with the show anymore and I said we would live by the sea and sit in our chairs watching the waves? Well, here we fucking are, peanut. I should have been the fortune teller. This is to the letter. Maybe we made it after all.

Yeah. I can't think anymore. My eyes filled up and drowned out the thoughts in my head.

Only you're bound to someone else. Someone who doesn't even fucking deserve you.

Lochlan, don't. (My mouth moved but no sound came out.)

You belong to me.

I stand up so fast, I knock over my chair.

I know. It wasn't what I meant to say, though and I clapped my hands over my mouth, horrified.

* * *

I hand him a coffee, automatically. I have set out nine different cups out this morning. His is blue. I always pour his first and I don't know why. Oh yeah, he is always closest.

Thank you, gorgeous.

He's in such a good mood. I almost drop the cup on the floor between us.

Loch-

Don't, Bridget. Just leave it. Whether it's true or not, just leave it. Please. It's all I have now. I wanted things to turn out differently, I take too much from you now but please, whatever you do, don't take that sentence back.

What sentence? Ben is behind Lochlan suddenly and I startle and then I do drop my full mug of coffee on the floor.

You need a keeper, little bee.

She has one, Lochlan says, to no one in particular.

I want to tell you my wedding ring is still way too big and crawls off my finger every chance it gets. I have a rough bump where my ring finger meets my palm because of always clenching my fingers to keep it in place. It's a full time job. I should get the ring re-sized but I don't want to leave it anywhere anymore.

If I tell you that, in addition to telling you I refuse to eat prawns with their armor still on and that I can be a skeptic but still miss a nuance a mile wide, then I won't have to tell you that everyone is here today.

Literally, everyone.

Well, except for Cole and for Jacob because they're dead but everyone else is within reach presently and it's not been easy, but maybe that's because Joel is watching me because he can read my face in spite of my ability to charm him into ruin and absent servitude, Nolan is watching me because he cares about us and really he wants to do everything he can to make our lives easier if he can, and Caleb is watching me just because...well, because he covets, and there is no way of sugarcoating that to make it sound like anything else anymore.

Be careful what you wish for was an early tattoo, a reminder that I failed to heed. His favorite quote, not mine, and when I read it my brain says it in his voice and that makes me want to snatch up a dull spoon and scoop out the contents of my mind like pumpkin guts on Halloween Eve. Carve a scary face on the front, light a candle and let's get this night underway.

We took the costumes off. After a while things become so uncomfortable you no longer care to remain in character. We have stopped playing nice. So many years and it feels like yesterday and he left and made a go at life in the hot potato and I got married and got a job at the bank and every chance I got I would take leaves of absence to join the closest show and warm my freak blood under the big top and everyone complained and lowed against that but I did it anyway. I dropped out of university at the age of twenty-one because I don't know what people wanted from me and at the show I knew for certain. Sometimes Lochlan would join me but more often than not I was alone just because once the worst passes you begin at the bottom and you don't have to worry so much about things. They have already happened, the only direction is up.

And I was in harm's way because I don't know how to be anywhere else, clearly. And I'm not anymore but it still feels the same. The sun is warm on my face, the promise of summer is just within reach and I want to pack light and hit the tents now, because I can make a spare few dollars and escape into unreality, where I fit in best.

I suck at real life, Lochie.

You just think you do, Bridge.