Where am I? Oh yea. Movie theatre. Whose hand is on my leg, ever so subtly working his way up my thigh? Oh, yeah. Taylor. Alright. Everything is o.k. I would have been fine if I hadn’t gotten quite so stoned, but on the other hand, I might not have been able to handle this date. If it is a date. I really can’t tell yet. It isn’t a movie I’ll remember, even if I was sober, so I suppose it really doesn’t matter. Other than the fact Taylor’s hand is on my leg. How do I feel about that? More to the point, how does he feel about that? Whatever. Who cares. It’s not like I don’t sleep with them. These men with their hands on my thigh. Gently, slowly making me more aware that I do tangibly, physically exist. It isn’t just a dream. Like the one I watched early this morning. The one in which I was killing all these people.
********
I sit crouched in the corner, my head leaning back against the wall. I can feel the grime in my hair, the dirt embedded under my skin. I am beyond realizing what I smell like. Damian’s words are carrying quietly through the stench, but I’m not listening to them. I am listening instead to the timbre of his voice. I remember how it feels to hear him with my ear pressed against his chest. I wish I had known I would never hear that again.
It is all over. I know it now. The battle is sated and overwhelming. Every time I breath in, I mourn my own actions. I realize the time has come when I must answer for all I have done. I blink away the drops that collect on my eyelashes. I haven’t asked myself whether or not it was all worth it. There is nothing I can change now. And I will continue on this way until my last.
They pour into the room then as if they heard my thoughts. Damian and I are unprepared. They face me, not seeing him. One is down before he has time to realize I have a gun. The other falls on top of him, wet laundry. I wonder who will clean up this mess. What janitors and receptionists do they have in this fucking war anyway? The third stabs Damian twice before I see him, and I try to shoot him, but he looks at me. His mistake. I hesitate only to see Damian’s knife slide through his throat. It seems to magnify in front of me. The cut is clean, it doesn’t gush. It wells up and pools behind the skin until it falls in a sheet; water down a wall. His eyes glaze over in front of mine, his last vision is me. Funny, we both think we are the betrayed.
Damian hands me his knife and I leave him, climbing out the window onto the fire escape, ducking through the water dripping off the steam pipes. I know without turning around that Damian has sunk into a ball on the floor. The fire escape is the only blind spot on the building that I know of. It is blocked from sight by the wall of an unfinished building. My body is raging. That I am leaving Damian, that I am still playing in this ridiculous game. There is nothing left but fury. It is surprisingly cold. I climb the fire escape two floors. I need to see the meeting room one more time. Maybe there is one person left, one of us who is not dead. I hope Damian goes quickly, I know that’s what I want. I can only hope I have the choice when the time comes. Then I realize that time has almost come. I climb two more floors using the gutters. I am surprised at my agility. I was not a natural athlete as a child. Then, I had never even held a gun until I was 28 either. and I had always believed in peace.
I reach the window and wait outside, listening. My spirits lift, Maybe they had not found the meeting room. But the fog they used to cloud the room wisps out over my head, and I can smell the gunfire. I look in. They had shot blindly, unloading ninety rounds a minute into walls, doors and flesh. No doubt right through the window where I now stand. The air is patched with dry gas and steam rising from blood that pools over the floor. Hardly noticing what must have be there, I go into the meeting room; I am attracted by a strange light I cannot identify.
And finally it sinks in the fight is over. They have even found this, the heart of operations. Where we spent time eating and praying and writing letters home. The jars are all full, fermaldyhide no doubt. They piled them on top of the desks and ledges and heating pipes, filling every corner. Even the floor next to the boilers. Filled with pieces and parts of those whose hands I once held (we shall overcome). I walk through the stacks, unable to take my eyes away from those pieces, drained of blood. I saw again his face, the blood spilling down his neck, his eyes glazing over, watching me. I hope he knew it was only work. I hope he could look at it that way, the way I hope my friends looked at it. Before they wound up in jars.
I no longer care. I no longer care. My body is drained. How would I have stayed out of this anyway? There was no out. Even if I knew then what I know now, hadn’t I always been a fighter? You are dying because you were not meant to be a killer. You were not created for hate. I turn and head back for the window. I move slowly, my energy gone. In my mind I see one of their men, the one I bummed a cigarette from. I sense vaguely they have set the building on fire. I climb out on the fire escape and sit looking at the sky. Why did you make me kill him? I wish I could see the stars more clearly. When did I learn to kill? I will never see them again. I think of the ways out. I don’t know of any they don’t have covered. I look down before I jump to the gutter, and fall short as I try to reach the half built wall next to me. Look at what you’ve become. I am slipping and I see Damian looking for me. I wonder if I should let myself fall and end it now, while I have the choice. Why did you make me do this? I hear a gun and realize they have found me as well. Why are you making me do this? Why do you make me kill these people I love?
I am sitting upright in my bed looking wildly around me. My body is rigid. I unclench my hands and my fingers touch my face, running through my hair and over my scalp. When I bringthem down they are dripping. I am surprised to find them clean. I concentrate on slowing down my breath; willing my heart to stop racing. I look around me. I am in my new studio. Empty bookshelf, piles of clothes hang out of suitcases. Boxes, packed and unpacked, piled on top of each other. The streetlight outside my window shuts off allowing morning orange to take over the fog. I reach for my remote and turn on my stereo. I close my eyes and force myself calm. I am safe, I am at home. Everything is o.k. I hug my pillow and lay down.
********
I pick it up.
“Yeah?”
“Hey. It’s Ahmi. Um…”
“How was the show?”
“Oh, Halcyon was great, but..”
“Yes?”
“Well, the band needs a place to stay.”
“They can’t crash in Noho somewhere?”
“They’re from Ireland.”
“They came all the way from Ireland, and they have no place to stay?” I look around my apartment. It is completely trashed.
“Their tour manager got the dates wrong. He was two days off. Please?” I drum my fingers over the desk and pick at a piece of tape stuck to the surface.
“How many?”
“Six.”
“Six men? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Please Dale? Please?”
“Some are going to have to stay with you. I mean get real.”
“O.k. Some stay with me and Max, but we hang over at your place for awhile.”
“Look Dale”, on the other end of the line Max grabs the phone from Ahmi, “you’ve got the biggest pad. So don’t complain. It only makes sense.”
“O.k. But if I don’t like them, they’re not staying.”
“Oh please, Dale, get real! Six musicians from Ireland, and you’re not going to like them?”
“I mean it.”
“O.k.” Max hangs up. I sit on the desk and look around. It will take them all of ten minutes to get here. I call Pele.
“Baby, can you get down here? There’s a party on its way over, and I’m in need of some cleaning, some beer and a fire in my fireplace. Can you help?”
“I’m on my way down sugar.”
I pull out a trash bag and make a sweep through the rooms from corner to corner. Ashtrays, papers, soda cans, a pizza box. I pile all my laundry in the bathroom closet and close the door. There is a bang on the door and muffled shouts.
“Out of my way. I’ve got the firewood.” Pele bursts in and piles wood on the wall next to the fireplace. “Newspaper?” She squats down and pulls out some kindling.
“Recycling bin under my desk.” I hang the coats on the back of the door.
“So who’s coming over?”
“Ahmi and Max, with that band they went to see. Halcyon, I think it is. I guess they need a place to stay.”
“Any hotties?” Pele stops balling newspaper to grin over her shoulder. I cringe but decide on the nonchalant reaction.
“I have no idea. We’ll find out I guess.”
“How many?”
“Six.”
“All men?” Pele giggles. I deadpan my face.
“Yup.”
“Hah! Those two have to stop listening to music. I think it’s bad for their venereal health.”
“I don’t think that’s what’s going on.”
“Yet.” Pele winks at me over her shoulder.
“No, Pele, N-O- No. I am not after anyone,”
Pele breaks in, “Or with anyone.”
“Or with anyone, nor do I want anyone.”
I let the silence emphasize my statement. Pele snorts.
“Uh huh. C’moffit Dale. You haven’t had sex in over a year y’know. And you are entering the last few months of your college life.”
“I have to go get some beer.” I turn away and crawl under the desk to get my boots. “You are fortunate beer has enough relevance that I’m dropping this topic. The car keys are in the upper right hand drawer.” Pele nods her head toward the desk. I pull a sweater off the door.
“Guinness?”
“And some Double Bock. Got enough cash?”
“Credit, credit, credit.”
“Take the five in my pocket for my share.”
“Ok. See you in a minute.”
“Do you want me to tidy your bedroom?”
“My bedroom? Why would I be in my bedroom?”
“Ten people, and you want us all to fit in the living room?”
“Yup, go to it.” I swing open the door. “Hey thanks Pele.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
********
“Do any of your friends have fathers?” My boss always manages to get right to the point. I hadn’t thought about that before either. Only one, the rest of them don’t. I mention this to one of them. She concludes it is only natural to find those who are similar to you. We never ask each other. It’s not a question you ask right away. Do you have a father? So what is it we have in common? What in our natures brought us together? Probably, it’s a coincidence, a sign of the times.
********
You took her. For ten years all I knew of my real sister was a note. Mama and I come home from the shop in the evening to find “Don’t look for me. I’m gone.” On the table. I’m sure Mama still has that note. It’s not the kind of thing a mother throws away. I sit down at the kitchen table. Mama is on the phone. The neighbors and Grandma and the police. She is crying and screaming. There is no one home to take me out of the room. I am confused, not recognizing the person I am watching; this woman who is supposed to be my mother. Mama hangs up the phone for the last time and crouches on the floor underneath the phone. She does not know yet that you are responsible. The funny thing is that if she had ever asked, just said “Mom, I’m going to live with Dad”, Mama would never have said no. She sits on the floor for a long time. Just staring ahead, not saying anything. The world has stopped completely. There is nothing to do.
She was supposed to be in my life. She was meant to belong to me, too. Did we ever have a chance to play dress up? Did I ever run through the woods trying to find her secret place? Did we ever hide from Mama to have a smoke together? Did we ever tell each other stories about skipping class or getting into college? Did we ever have the chance to say “I love you” or scream “I hate you”? I knew I was supposed to have a family. I knew you had taken it from me. You couldn’t have just taken yourself. You’ll never know how much I hate you for that.
********
“Hey, grab me another one too, would you?” Max was over at the fridge again, getting the third round of beers that morning.
“Anyone else?”
“Me!” Ahmi’s shout from down the newly built hallway. She was standing amid studs that would sometime down the road be the bathroom and bedroom. “Dee, are you sure you want this thing so big?”
“Yes!” My bathroom was to be almost as big as the bedroom. Warm, dark tones, but large. My only requirement.
“Well, come out and get it, then!” Max only went so far as a hostess. There was a clank of tools being thrown in a toolchest and Ahmi emerged from the new hallway, her steps echoing against the walls.
“Time for a smoke break anyway.”
“Well, I think I’ve prepped this as much as I can. Raskin will have to take a look at it.” Max flopped down on the floor in a squat. Her jeans were covered with white putty and sheetrock dust.
“I can’t believe he offered to do the masonry work for you.”
“I know. I’m going to have to figure out a way to pay him. I can’t believe I got a chimney and fireplace through zoning in this place. Let alone our other lofts.”
“Shit we scored on this place. Big time.” There was a shuffling and banging outside the newly installed door, and the elevator gate opened with a clang. The door swung open, and Raskin’s back appeared, along with a large basket, table cloth sticking out, the foil on a bottle of champagne catching the sunlight that drifted in from the large glass panes behind them.
“Picnic, girls! Time to feast!”
“Oh my god, I’m so hungry.”
“I totally need to fill up, or this beer is going to get the best of me.” Ahmi giggled.
“Not to mention,” Raskin pulled out the bottle of champagne dramatically, “the bubbly!”
“We’re having a veritable celebration then?” A huge grin came over my face as the mad preparations began. The blanket was thrown, the brie and bread hauled out. Max hauled out her swiss army knife, I fished mine out of my pocket and Ahmi brought the roll of paper towels from the back. Soon we were sitting under the dust filled air. Streams of particles caught in shafts of light, bandanas tied on their heads, dirt under their nails, stuffing dolmas and philofel with hummus in our mouths.
“I didn’t realize I was this hungry”
“Neither did I.”
“Who’d a thought we’d be sitting here.” Raskin smiled down at the brie as he sliced it. Ahmi picked up a pear and examined it, placing it down and picking up another.
“I know I never did.”
“I dreamt it I think. But to really be doing this, it’s so…” For a moment, I was overwhelmed to realize I was in the middle of it.
“Awe inspiring?” Max completed my sentence, while chewing on a slice of apple and brie, “Amazing? Empowering?”
“Fortunate?” Ahmi broke in. Max nodded and finished her swallow.
“You do realize, that we are living in the city everyone in this country wants to live in, in lofts that will look like what everyone else wishes they had, and at the risk of being overly sentimental, with friends that many could envy.”
Raskin popped open the champagne cork on cue.
“To the very luckiest people. Thanks guys.”
And for the moment, it was quiet with only the low tones of our voices. Uninterupted by the sound of the circular saw, the hammering, the screw gun. For the moment we enjoyed the time we were spending. And it was a time.
********
Driving down the Williamston Road I feel at home for the first time. Back in the open spaces, the trees the fields. I slow down driving by the old Fiske farm. There are always deer in the field, and the view is worth stopping for anyway. My music is on, as it always is when I drive, and I am singing. It’s best to sing in the car. A song came up on the mix I made “…strange how I falter to find I’m standing in deep water, strange how my heart beats to find myself upon your shore”. A feeling I have yet to feel.
It is now that you appear, as you usually do in the quiet moments alone. I find myself talking to my true love, my one and only. Imagining a conversation between two devoted lovers. We sing a little bit together and then talk. This time the scenario is a reunion. We have been apart. Across an ocean from each other. We’ve only met once, but one glance has done the trick. We confess our undying love in all sorts of beautiful, poetic ways. As you reach for my hand across the car, I hit the brakes suddenly. A deer stands locked in my headlights. I know without looking you are no longer there.
**********
I am in the general store, making breakfast behind the diner counter. Dave comes in. The day started badly, my ‘72 VW Rabbit finally lefaving me stranded. Dave saunters over to the counter, boyish, arrogant.
“Hey babe. Make me an egg sandwich?” I whirl around and throw my spatula at him. I ask him what my name is. Like any manchild, he doesn’t comprehend. I ask him again. “Hey, Dale, I didn’t mean to… “ That’s right honey. It’s Dale. Not sugar, not sweetie, Dale. Use it. I told him to get his ass behind the counter to make his own fucking breakfast.
He did as he was told. Later that day, just after the lunch rush, this guy, a campground tourist, is standing by the counter hassling me about having dinner with him. Slicked back hair, big bad gold chains, the whole nine yards. Dave comes in to get his meatball grinder with provolone, onions, olives and red pepper. The slimy kind out of a jar, not the sprinkle-on variety. The man continues his attack.
“Honey, I’d really like to take you out tonight.” Dave walks over to where this man has been standing for ten minutes. He looks at me for the go ahead. I nod. He asks “Mr. Slick” if he knows me. The stranger says he was just trying to . Dave replies that , well, he does know me. And he’s the only man in town allowed to call me honey. I do. The man leaves. Dave orders his usual without another word. I love him. I have ever since. All six feet of his scrawny ass self. Never again did he call me anything but Sunny or Dale.
********
If you’d just left, just disappeared and vanished forever, maybe everything would have been bearable. But you hung around in the shadows. You followed me and knew my life, even though you never made yourself known. You knew what our life was like and still you would not help me. You would not show your face.
You weren’t there, you were never there. Yet I waited for you. I waited for the days you said you’d visit. I waited for the letters you said you’d send. The ones you said you sent. I waited for Sunday, every Sunday, for you to take me to the bakery to get crullers. You never came. You sent a card on my sixth birthday, a Christmas present that same year, and I never heard from you again.
You bastard. Did you really believe it wouldn’t hurt? Did you really believe that someday I’d forgive you and you’d have a second chance? Twenty years later, there are no second chances. I’ve never had a father. I certainly don’t need you now.
I am singing to my sister in my room. She is not here nor has she ever been, but I want her back. So I am singing. The singing tires. I have done this many times before, to push away the futility of wanting. I turn on my light and write a letter. It is a goodbye. It will never be read. I write that it has to stop. After ten years, there is no sister. There has never been. It am stupid to let myself ache. I close my journal and go to the kitchen for supper. I t ell Mama I have written a letter to no one. Mama look down at her plate and says nothing. I tell her I don’t expect her to do the same, it’s different for a mother, but this is for mr. Mama nods, her head still bent. She understands. Her hair hangs over her plate, the ends dip in the red sauce. I can’t see her face.
The next weekend I make a cake for my boyfriend’s birthday. I have to make the batter twice. The first batch is interupted by the phone. I pick it up, batter in hand. I keep stirring. Then I hear the voice. After all this time I know it is Her. My stomach turns and I look down to find I have dropped the phone and the bowl. It smashed on the floor without my ears having heard it. “Mama, it’s for you.” I go into my room and turn out the
********
“Let’s take this side road. I’ve never taken it before.” I want to get home: to my bedroom and my cat. But nothing stops Mama. We are already lost in the wilds of Connecticut. Unbroken woods line both sides of the road. There is a sign tucked half way behind a sugar maple. Mama has this habit of driving around aimlessly. She needs an awareness of how the ground unfolds under her. She calls it exploring. So do I when I am feeling generous and much unlike a seventeen year old. The trees start to thin out and forest gives way to farm, farm to church and finally to a small town. The sign reads “Clothing on consignment. Auto parts and small repair. Antique tools and clothing.” Inevitably, we will stop here. It could take minutes or days. I sigh against the cold glass and watch the fog creep into sight Heaps of rusted scrap metal, parts of cars and tractors, two old VW buses, and rolls of disintegrating chicken wire pass on either side of the driveway. Chimes made of flattened out spoons hang from the porch beam. TInklinfg as if they might crack and shatter in the cold. An old porch swing, in desperate need of a coat of paint and new chains hangs cobwebbed into the corner.
There is a cowbell hanging from the over-patched screen door. There is a clang and a slam as we walk in. The room is filled, first with an overwhelming must, next with racks of clothing, and shelves full of old household items which line three walls floor to ceiling. Mama starts perusing the racks. I am mildly intrigued, and wander about looking at all the gadgets, an occasional garment catching my eye. A small dress for a young girl, a red, ruffled affair. I touch the velvety fabric, my fingers becoming once again those of a child. I feel the excitement of finding a new dress. How it hung around my knees the white eyelet not quite scratchy, but enough to be a satisfying proof of its prescence. I see myself on our old brown corduroy couch. The red against the brown is at once homey and exciting. I am dressed up, waiting for his arrival. My father would visit me today. And those patton leather mary janes with the shiny buckle… I hear Mama exclaim something. I look up and drop the red velvet memory. As I start to walk over to her, she holds up her hand.
“I don’t want you to see it. It’s expensive, it would have to be for the holidays or something, but I don’t know if it will fit you.” I ask how she expects to find out without letting me see it, but I already know she will find a way. She goes to the counter and asks for a bandanna. I don’t wonder what she could find that’s expensive in this place. I try the garment on with a blindfold, my hands in the air, Mama won’t let me touch the fabric.
********
It was good to see him after all this time. We went to a concert together. It’s the one thing on which we depend. As long as there is music to share, we will continue. Being with Taylor felt foreign to me. It had been a full year since I’d last seen him. He had a girlfriend, I knew, but he wouldn’t talk about her. It was a good night. The music, the bar, the friends, everything had fallen into place. I should never have been worried. Even so, as he pulled away, I wondered why he randomly got in touch like this. His car was now out of sight. I wondered if I would see him again.
On the porch with the portable phone. The farm was empty for awhile, peaceful, no children crying, no music playing. My self, my cigarettes and Pele on the phone. That voice felt so good in my ear. I smoked eight cigarettes in that hour. That’s what we would always do though. Lay on a bed in our apartment, hiding out from crazy roommates who plagued us. Getting stoned and going through packs of cigarettes without a second thought. Forgetting for the moment our lives would eventually change. We both had dreams to follow. We would turn on tunes and talk and laugh. Mostly we would sit there and say nothing. Writing or just listening, we could be in our own worlds together. Yet there we were, on the phone, Pele in Portland, Dee in Williamston, Ma. And we talked for an hour. Never realizing, in all the time we’d spent together in silence, how much we’d really said.
********
What’s the problem?” My director was talking to me. I didn’t answer. We both knew what the problem was. I was playing the loving daughter to the role of a loving father. “Look, this has to be resolved somehow.” Why did she cast me the part? “I want you to go out tonight. I want you to walk around for awhile. go for a long walk. Do you have a friend who can go with you? I don’t want you to go out alone. You shouldn’t talk to them.” I nodded my head. I had no idea who would go with me. It was February in New England. Damp cold slush everywhere. “While you’re out there, I want you to repeat the word ‘Dad’ in your head over and over again. See if any images keep catching your eye. Signs, street lamps, ivy on buildings, whatever. Just try to find something that catches you. Come back and talk with me tomorrow. Can you come an hour before rehearsal?”
My socks were wet before I reached the first corner near my dorm. No one was with me. I couldn’t think of anyone who would be stupid enough to walk around in the sleet in the middle of the night. “Dad” I said to myself. The word felt awkward, heavy. I got the same feeling I had in elementary school when my third grade teacher had us make father’s day cards. My defensiveness rose and I pushed it back down. “I’m not a child anymore. I can do this.” I started walking, repeating The Word in my head. Trees, buildings, telephone wires. No reaction. What was I looking for? What did she expect me to find?
A woman from my architecture class was heading into her dorm. She asked and I explained to her what I was doing. She was willing to trudge with me, if I was willing to go with her on an errand. She was house sitting, and needed to pick up the keys. We walked a little in silence. Dad. Dad. Dad. We started talking. We talked about our families. Her father had abused her. I was glad mine was just gone. Dad. Dad. Dad. Trees. When we reached the house where she needed to go I waited outside. I figured if I wasn’t supposed to be talking, I probably wasn’t supposed to be indoors either. I looked around at the houses on the street.
Through a window across the street I could see someone getting a snack from their refrigerator. In another house someone was watching t.v. All I could see was the blue and flickering of black and light across the room. Many windows were dark, people were in bed. Shades drawn, some with curtains closed. One with a floor lamp next to it and a man reading. I laughed to think of my window at home that I had climbed out so many times. I wished to see a teenager sneaking out. I turned around to look at the house behind me. The one my friend had gone into. Through the nearest window I could see the mantelpiece. A bright room, but not glaring. Above the fireplace I could see a painting. It was a watercolor, very soft, of a mother holding her baby. I didn’t look away. I stood there in the slush. And I saw Lucy’s father, the man who raised me, as he shook hands with my date for the prom. Pipe in the other hand, he told my date exactly how long I could be out, what I could and couldn’t do, and where I wasn’t allowed to go. As we left he gave me a stern look through the glass pane of the kitchen door. He let it fall into a smile and a wink.
********
Faces that are new to me, passing me gently. A conversation now and then, which actually grows interesting, some eyes which attract and lips that pull me toward them, bodies I can see and adore. Waves of nausea hit and sweep as the game progresses toward boredom. Rules never broken and souls untouching, playing the devil’s punishment for vanity; to be truly alone not only in life but in death. That, in this life, is the cruelest unknown, the terrifying question of loneliness, is it always going to be this way?
********
Am I dreaming? I can’t tell anymore. He is next to me, we are almost touching. I am afraid to speak. I hold my breath, terrified that at any moment this will all fade away, and I will come back to myself alone in my room. I sit perfectly still, feeling the sun on my face, feeling his warmth next to me. We have spoken only two sentences to each other, me and this boy from Ireland. But in those two sentences, and what I saw was so perfect that I know it was not real. I sit still and absorb each moment as it passes by, knowing it will pass by all too soon and be over. As I watch the river pass in front of us, I know that this is the moment I will long for the rest of my life. The river, flowing on steadily, unafraid of fate and where it may lead her. travelling through lives and not aching at the letting go.
Memories and music and so much spinning around. We sat all day exhausted and content in the whirling. The sunlight warmth of laughter, familiar. It was beautiful. It was. And it passed. As it should. And I thank you. You won’t know what for, or maybe you will. It’s yours after all, the silence that so comforted me. The silence that accepted we would never have the time to meet. We would remember anyway the things we never said. And still I find those touches most enduring. You will return to Ireland and I will miss you. And all is as it should be.
********
My boss called me the perfect All-American girl this morning. I laughed and asked her why. She said it was because I was eating a brownie with a glass of milk. It seemed at the time such a trivial reason to be called all-American. Much later I realized, then again, eating a fudge brownie with a glass of milk might be the only thing that most Americans do enjoy. I saw myself in pigtails and a red gingham dress. I tossed the image aside. Anyway, this could very well be a hash brownie.
**********
She was standing on the couch, leaning on the back and looking out the window. The living room in that house faced the road. She was wearing a new dress. What it looked like entirely escapes her now. She only remember feeling very pretty and grown up. She had a black patent leather purse and shoes to match. After awhile she sat down, her legs crossed at the ankles. Trying to be very patient. Patience was something grown-ups had. She looked into her purse. A tube of lipstick, a pencil and a note pad (on which, even then, she pretended to know how to write). There was also a smaller coin purse inside. Red satin with a zipper across the front. Inside was a thin slip of folded paper carrying her address and the address and phone number of their closest family friends, there was also a dime. She knew how to dial that number even at five. Her mother had practiced with her over and over again. She folded the paper and put it back with the dime. She put my lipstick back in and closed her pocketbook. She sat back to wait some more. Her father never got there. He didn’t call. He just didn’t come. She hung the dress back up in the closet. It was never worn.
Somewhere, She still has that red silk change purse. The phone numbers, the dime, everything. She still know the number. It’s the one that comes out of my fingers most naturally when I pick up the phone. Fortunately, it’s a different area code since she’s moved, or she’d be calling some stranger quite often.
**********
I remember once when I was eight or so. We were outside playing hide and go seek in the dark. I had been dscovered and was being chased to home base. The air was slightly warm, surrounding me. I can feel my limbs move about in it, as if they were moving through cooking oil. I was laughing and screaming. Wayne was chasing me, so in part I am running in terror. Two nights before I had woken up to find Wayne sitting at the end of my bed, looking at me. I don’t remember knowing the word sexual back then. I don’t remember exactly when it was I grew into my awareness of sex and sexuality. But I knew what he was thinking then, looking at me. Touching my legs and waiting for me to wake up. I recall the look on his face as my eyes opened to his. he didn’t know what to do, he had forgotten to plan that far ahead. He stood up and turned to look at me a little longer. Then he left. No words were ever exchanged of that moment. Between the two of us or anyone else. But I remember him chasing me, and my mouth open in half-laugh, half-scream. I was running down the little hill in their back yard. There was Russ, Wayne’s brother, who already made it to base. “C’mon Caitlin, C’mon.” Even then he seemed my hero, calling for me, pushing me on. I flew down the hill toward the house, and suddenly I landed on my back staring up at what was left of the sky behind a large fir tree. A wire clothesline had caught me right in my open mouth. It took out half of my first molar on the right hand side. Years later, at eighteen, a dentist told me to fill the chip. He said I had to do it right away, because it would rot. I told him he was a liar. He wanted the money. That was all.
********
I’ve had that dream before, too. It is the only nightmare I’ve had consistently. There is nothing I can see or touch. Just darkness. It’s a dream of pure emotion. And it is over whelming. Emotions come over me so fast, so hard that I wake up smothered to see a man standing there. He was wearing a long overcoat and a wool hat with a brim. The first time I had it, I thought it was my father, and I was so scared I threw myself back away from him. I slammed my head on the wall accidentally. Mama ran in because I was screaming so loud. I didn’t know I was screaming.
********
Regarding Men; Regarding Andy Scene I
I wonder when it is they understand what is at stake is love. Can it be they never will? I can’t live with that. He comes to me, he calls me, he holds me, then he avoids me, hides from me in town. Funny though, he only came down here for coffee, so why did he get coffee in my town, 50 miles out of his way? Did he truly expect no one else would see him? No, he tells me now, he was just freaking out. Fine. I can handle freaking out, but over what? Over me liking him? He doesn’t want me to like him? No, he says, he likes me too much and he can’t sort through it. What is there to sort through? We both know the circumstances are bad, they can’t be changed, and the possible damage done has already been done.
If and when (more like when) Pele finds out we, her ex and my current crush, have spent this kind of time together, she will be furious and hurt. That damage has already been done. We decided once, he and I, that it was worth the battle. And came to that decision again the following weekends. Obviously there is already something going on. The question remains what is that thing? Which is what left me in turmoil when he stood me up, although I did know it was his feelings, not mine, which he held in conflict.
So look, I want to ask him, if these circumstances are so bad, so terrible that the world will come crashing down around us and our friendship, then why on earth are we still struggling with the whole issue? There is always that phrase… turn around and walk away slowly… why are neither of us doing that at all? Why are we both torturing ourselves with images of each other which sneak up on us at random and inopportune moments? Why am I writing so much? The only answer that I can come up with is that THERE IS ALREADY SOMETHING THERE. ok, that said, can we get over it now?
Get over yourself, sister. The man does not love you. You’re a fuck, not a destiny for him. And how is anyone going to live up to your alleged destiny. Christ. Stop thinking.
**********
I see you more directly now.
There are candles lit in my dark room
and I have smoked enough to fall into reminiscing.
Your face still falls in shadows
contrast candle light with flames of silent gray.
A touch that has not happened
yet, meant to happen soon.
My memory carries you to me within it.
I have touched you many times in this dark space.
And when I touch you then
as I touch your face before me now
do not be scared when I come to you like this.
********
Death valley. Mid-March 1995. Not unbearably hot. My sister was driving this stretch of the road. I had rolled some cigarettes and packed a bowl. Country music was playing. it was something we had to listen to in the desert. I was enjoying the ambiance. I sat lost in the mountains around me. Lost in the constantly changing landscape. i had thought the desert would be boring. A monotony of unbroken sand. Every so often I would realize the view had completely changed.
I used to adore her, my sister. When I met her seven years ago (I was fifteen), I thought she was so cool. I wanted to. I thought my family could finally come back together. At least a little. But we drove mostly in silence. I excused myself by falling in love with the desert. Really I think I was taking my sister apart in my head. There was so much we couldn’t talk about. She couldn’t talk about Dad. I couldn’t talk about Mom. And between us that’s all there was.
Our campfire got going right away. We took out the stir fry: chopped veggies and beef in garlic sauce, wrapped in tin foil. We threw the whole package on the coals. It grew dark and the stars grew open. There in the desert I realized I had never seen a night sky.
And there you were again. You came to me as I sat beside the fire, staring up into the sky. We said nothing this time. No confessions, no dramatics. We just sat and stared up. Waiting for shooting stars and making wishes. It hurt to know if I turned my head to face you, you wouldn’t be there. As much as I wanted someone to put their arms around me, I knew if I reached out for you my fantasy would no longer be deceived and you would vanish altogether. But I wrote it down, that night sky, to the best of my ability. So that someday when we finally meet each other, I can bring it to your memory.
I got up. It was time for coffee. My sister and I lay side by side in the back of our van where we slept. Our heads were at the tailgate; it was open. “The stars are incredible,” she said.
********
I tried to run away. I don’t remember what Mama and I were fighting about. Something very silly I imagine. I packed up a bag. I made a big fuss of it. Stomping about the shack grumbling out loud so she could hear. Even then, I had some inkling I shouldn’t be pretending to run away, no matter how angry I was. I said finally, “Mama, I’m leaving. I’m going.” She didn’t ask me where or how. She just offered to make me peanut butter and jellies for the road. Of course this made me more angry, so I ran to our bedroom and cried on my bed. I’m sorry Mama, if you are reading this that I ever said that to you. I’m sorry. It’s taken me twenty years to understand you lost a child.
********
Jan. 15, 1995 I suppose here is as good a place as any to start this. Although what this is exactly, I don’t know. A life with men? Or a story about such a topic is all that seems to come out of me. I am pacing the kitchen in my old apartment. Jackie is not here and Tamala, her new house mate, is at work I think. It has been a long quiet time, which is why I pace the floor, and every few minutes leave blank messages on Andy’s answering machine. He’ll probably know it’s me anyway.
Rahja is on my lap biting my pen, his whiskers brushing my hand. What I must do now is resign myself to the fact that ultimately I am to be alone. Pessimistic? Maybe. But possibly, isn’t it truthful? I am to be the only one who knows myself, for no one can climb inside my head the way I want them to. No one lives and breathes in me except me. All my dreaming and seeing into relationships more than is really there cannot change that. And no matter how hard I wish my fantasies into reality, they are to remain fantasy. Because I make them impossible.
I looked into him, into his eyes. It is a moment I will never forget. One moment reaching and excited and turned on. On a bed clothes already gone, feeling the warmth of arms, moving to get more and more comfortable. Moving to feel good. Then stop. Pause deeply. Eyes. I am scared and exhausted and tears come to my throat. I can no longer move. To breath I would give something away.
Like a deer in headlights, I freeze in fear of my life; my safety. He has already taken that from me. I am no longer safe and I cannot regain the peaceful solitude which I built for myself. In that moment, questions were brought up and solved. The kind of person I wanted to be with, the safety I needed, the dreams I wanted to live and the way in which I wanted and wished to be overwhelmed. This reality can exist. It was held out in front of me in that moment. Now it teases my memory. Leaving me dreaming alone, where I started. I cannot settle for less than that one moment. And I have lost it. Out of nothing I did or said. Or didn’t do or didn’t say. It is gone because he had to go; he had his own life to live.
**********
So much happens in the car. At least between two perceptive people. I was going grocery shopping with my boss from the community. She asked me about my camping trip with my sister. I told her the desert was beautiful and quiet. She asked me if I didn’t talk much there either. No, there wasn’t much that could be said. I tried very hard to like my sister. To find a friend in her, since finding a sister seemed ten years too late. I didn’t even remember her from before. I was only five when she left. My boss asked me if I’d forgive a friend of anything. I told her no, not anything. “What about your mother?” I answered that my mother is different. I may not forgive her, but there would be ways to move on, it’s isn’t as if you can just get rid of your mom. “You don’t have to like your sister. She isn’t your friend. It seems to me friendship isn’t what you need to work on.” It hadn’t occurred to me before.
**********
I see you more directly now. There are candles lit in my dark room and I have smoked enough to fall into reminiscing. Your face still falls in shadows; contrast candle light with flames of silent gray. A touch that has not happened yet, meant to happen soon. My memory carries you to me within it. I have touched you many times in this dark space. And when I touch you then as I touch your face before me now do not be scared when I come to you like this.
*******
The first to come in were Jerry and his brother. “Where’s my Sunshine?” He caught my eye and winked. I asked if he wanted his usual. He did. I was half way through the meatball grinder, and the store was filling up pretty quickly. Some drops of water hit me on the back of the neck. I turned to see Jerry’s grin. I threw a few slices of lettuce at him, and finished his grinder, adding fresh hot peppers. I brought it to the counter and rang it in. The drops came again. I grabbed a wet dishcloth and stepped from behind the counter, excusing myself through the customers in the way. I whacked him a few times until I saw he held the mop I had forgotten to put away. Finally, we both got back to our appropriate sides of the register. He looked at me when he got to the door, “wouldn’t be a day without you Sunshine.”
********
Windows I told my director. All I see are the windows. I don’t know if I’m seeing the right things. “It’s not a right and wrong. It’s a replacement. So when you get on stage as the daughter, you can think of windows instead of Dad. Your actions will be the same, but your emotions will have something else to focus on. Something slightly less personal.” She asked what my reaction had been when I came upon the image of a window. I told her about the mother and child. I hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry, so I laughed. “Laughing and crying are the same body motion. they fill the same need.” I tried to envision myself laughing at my father. I couldn’t.
********
Alone. The word of this century rings out in my ears. I am surprised no one else can hear what goes on in there. What is distance? It is the bond between two people which makes it impossible to maintain contact over a space and time. I want to smoke myself into oblivion and forget you even exist. I want to be able to close my eyes and feel, and open them sitting next to you. You are reading this and know I am writing it to you. Wherever you are now. Some bed or some couch, possibly one you don’t even know. Hopefully, I am familiar. i am sitting in someone else’s room. The memories in mine, the dreams placed there gone unfulfilled, make it impossible for me to occupy my own. Funny that someone else’s room should be more familiar than my own? I have dreams of you walking through the door. A day early because you needed me. Needed to talk to me. And you and I would walk away, leaving the others to do what they will, and you and I would finally see each other. I want to feel you behind me as I write. I want you to open the door and catch me in this fantasy.
I feel the fringe of your jacket and know that you are gone.
********
I don’t know when it happened, but suddenly I found I had a brother. It began, I suppose, a long time ago. When I met Cheyenne we were in high school together. he was two years behind me. I worked for his father in the general store. Seven years later the only way to explain us is as siblings. People have told me this is silly. Good friends are just good friends. We did all the things good friends do. We drove each other home from parties, tucked each other in if one of us was in bad shape. We shared stories and acquaintances. We spent nights in the same bed plutonically, we went to the second Woodstock together. (Random aside: for all you who thought it was capitalist bullshit and a re-creation of something not meant to be recreated. You obviously aren’t capable of making an incredible experience for yourselves out of great music and mud between the toes.) I would say that Cheyenne and I can read each other’s minds, but there is a different knowing from what can be read. That is what we share. A sixth sense, an intuition and a perceptiveness. I guess he could still be just a best friend. After all this I still believe that family is what is permanent. If he’s my brother, I’m guaranteed to have him in my life. After all, I can forgive almost anything of my family. And he’s not the murdering type.
********
Cheyenne is sitting across from me. My friend from Portland is in my ear, running up more bills. We’re having a long distance party. I am alone, the community is away, i am with their children. Thankfully, they are in bed now. I am trying to realize that this is my life. It’s been so long that I’ve felt lost. After I got my diploma, I thought life was supposed to be handed to me. But I do not want to be a nanny forever. It’s not bad really. I have benefits, a roof and great food, and I get paid to play all day. With Cheyenne here, it makes me feel again that my life hasn’t completely stopped. I don’t have to build an entire new life for myself. The important people are still here. Thank god.
********
I wonder, as I sit imagining you, if other people do this too. I envision myself in a bar, playing pool. Hopefully well. You come back from Ireland. You stand at the other end of the pool table and wait for me to notice you. I do. You tell me to wait, not to speak. You have something to say first. You ask me whether I would marry you if you moved to the states. I shake my head and say I can’t. You ask me to marry you and move to Ireland. I say I can’t. You ask me if you can take me out for dinner and coffee and maybe a good night kiss. I tell you coffee is an acceptable alternative to marriage. God, no wonder no one ever lives up to my reality. I also wonder whether I create all this to make sure no one does. If no one is near me, no one can leave.
********
Parties, flowers drifting through time warped by sensuality, touch generosity. An arm a feeling slipping lightly around my waist. inside me somewhere i feel someone close to me in utter blackness. I cannot see what is consuming me.
I wake up to the darkness of my room and someone is there with me, so tangible I swear I can see him. Wakeness sets in and he is gone, if I had only a few more seconds to look. He was right there. I could have grabbed him and held tight. Really trying.
I cannot shake this feeling of destiny no matter how hard I try. Since the time I was born I’ve known I was different. An outsider in this life. But I’ve always known I would emerge o.k. I’m tired of gray, of obstacles that dare me to overcome them. But there is something I must do, must find. It is a desperate feeling because I do not know yet what that thing is or what to do to get there except dream. So I dream, emphatically, happily, but I am always on edge, knowing that at every dream I must make the right choices. I must get where i am going. It is somewhere between fate and destiny, and somewhere I will find my answer.
********
I didn’t want anything from you. I didn’t expect or demand anything. I expected you’d have the courtesy of a phone call when you’re trying to tell me something is wrong. I’ll apologize for the circumstances. I’ll apologize for flirting, for encouraging, for letting one touch get to me, I am sorry. i will not apologize for having had fun, for having been honest with you. I haven’t been honest in a long time. This never happened, and I understand that now. That’s not what I want, it’s what I’m sorry for.
Don’t hide in a town which is more yours than mine. You no longer have anything to hide from. Actions speak louder than your phone call ever could. I understand what you are saying. For sharing, for being honest, I thank you. But I know now, it never happened.
********
“1900”. It’s just a film really. Bertolucci directed it. But it affected me more strongly than any film ever had. Turn of the century Italy. The differences between the lives of the peasants and those of the landowners, as demonstrated by the lives of two boys. Over the five and a half hours it takes this film to complete itself, the “prince and the pauper” grow up and realize they’ve ended up fighting eachother. I sat with my class mates through this film. We shared a course entitled “Class and Society”.
My college was wealthy, a school which was founded to provide Ivy League men with educated and cultured wives. In my classes were the remnants of that legacy; women who were educated, cultured and mostly from well-to-do families. in the middle of the film is a scene in which the peasant boy asks his father if he can go away to school, the landowner has offered to pay. The father says no, his son will stay with his people, and will become a great leader in his own way. He cannot go away to a rich man’s school and forget his people, forget where he came from. I cried because I understood. And realized at the same time, no one was crying with me.
********
We were in line at the bank. I had my arms wrapped around Mama’s leg. She was wearing jeans. Her horse jeans. They smelled like the barn. I let go and walked over to the table where extra deposit slips and pens were kept. I “wrote out” my deposit and went back to my mother. I wrapped my arms around her leg again. Suddenly she was wearing corduroy. I looked up into the face of a strange man. Everyone laughed. It must’ve struck them as cute. But it wasn’t cute and it wasn’t funny. I couldn’t find my Mama.
********
My dorm room was more than adequate. I couldn’t complain. My roommate and I had a bar set up. We were known as the partiers, though in self defense I must say both of us graduated with honors. We had a microwave and shelves full of stoner study food. i was working on an anthropology paper. Drinking coffee and eating oatmeal cookies hoarded from the dining room. Mama called me, just to chat really. She was down and needed to hear my voice. It was odd to be reminded of our home. She was still out of work, after a year of applying. Her teaching ability was often overlooked for that of the younger and recently graduated. She hadn’t eaten that day, she was making pasta, the only thing she had in the house. When I hung up the phone I was surrounded by images I thought I had escaped. Images of where I came from and how I grew up. Tomorrow, I knew, she would eat at our friend’s house for dinner. There was no planning further than that. Just to keep trying, filling out applications and turning in resumes. She might clean a house now and then, or train someone’s horse to pay the bills. It hadn’t changed in so long. The only way I could excuse myself was to believe that with this education, I would someday be able to return home. To give back to all those who had supported me. The thought didn’t help much. I brought my cookies out into the common room where my dorm mates could eat them.
********
Why are you here again? Can’t you leave me alone? Just when I think I am happy, that I’ve found Him, the man of my dreams, you have to come to me. Are you just here to make me restless? Or have I invented you so that I won’t stay with anyone, won’t let anyone too close? I’m tiring of this search you know. I try to find you, to figure out who you are. I’d ask you to reveal yourself, but as certain as I am of your existence, I know you don’t exist. I wonder if I will ever meet you.
********
I left the classroom after the movie and threw up in the bushes. I don’t remember doing it. Someone told me about it later. I don’t remember getting to my room, or writing the twenty pages I wrote in reaction to the movie. But they are there, I read them. They are not well written, but they are felt. I woke up from my movie daze in my roommate’s lap. She was holding me on the floor, rocking me. To say that now sounds silly. It goes to show what a friend she was though. I read my journal entry to her. Thank God she understood. I was supposed to go to work. I didn’t. I sat on my bed and stared out my window. I was looking for my father.
********
Jumbled and fragmenting. Random voids floating in and out. Storming, more or less. I can’t hang onto them, they’ll pass. All those people from my past life, still living, stuck in time, in me. Although they’ve changed and grown, through me these shapes still pass. The ridges and ragged edges, like running your finger around the rim around the edge of an opened tuna can. I can’t take my finger away. Petty, I should let go, let them go. Shapeless, but they shape me. I often wonder if everyone has them too. Does everyone hold on like this? No, I’ll bet they don’t. They don’t care because they don’t know and don’t want to.
I hate the word healing. It’s too vague. Heal what? How can anyone heal themselves? I try but it doesn’t work. I need someone to pull out all this shit. To watch me while I do it. What am I supposed to do, volunteer it? Like any stranger really wants to hear me throwing up tuna cans and listen as they clatter on the floor. It’s an irritating sound. Tin on the floor. I need a home, a heart to live in. I need shelter while I pull these edges out. Remember the game “Operation”? You had to use those metal tweezers to pull the bones out of this flat , little man., and you couldn’t hit the sides or this buzz would sound and his nose would light up. one slip and you’d have ripped skin. I need help pulling them out. So I can hang them together like chimes on my porch.
********
It isn’t fair that I ask all this of you. I ask you to have all the answers. To be able to see me, all of me, at first glance, and understand what it is I need. I know it is wrong. Yet still I wait for the person with the answers. I could find them myself. Some of them I have, but then, your answers will need to match mine. As if we were on that game show, newlyweds testing there knowledge of each other. I’m sorry I am demanding all this of you. But I cannot stop.
********
Regarding Men: Regarding Andy Scene II
and so it goes and so it goes. Am I the only one who knows? As I signed off last night, he called. I laughed from embarrassment. I did not expect to hear from him. But he was considering a drink of red wine, alone. And that does not do, although it probably should have. He brought the red wine. We split the bottle. I did not touch or encourage him in any way. Just to rub the shaved spot on the back of his head. Well, he asked me if I’d buzz his head. I consider that legal play. He simply reached over and kissed me. That’s all. That much took me the rest of the night.
entry III
I don’t know if I’ve ever really written about any of this . I wonder now if I should make some coffee. It is late. I would almost prefer to go to bed. My life, when I stop to think about it, often brings me sadness. The boy parts are a distraction. The dad parts, the poor parts, the friend parts, and the fuck parts are a distraction.
Is it true that women can heal themselves by accepting their mothers? I often wonder. There are times when my mother disgusts me, in an intimate way only I would know. But there are times, like tonight, when I realize how much she gave up for me. How much it took for her to raise me in this way I am so proud of.
Everything i want for myself is a part of what Mama taught me. And everything I wanted that night walking down the road with Andy. It was dark and there were trees and woodsmoke, and New England was all I wanted or needed. To realize that at least I was already in the place where I wanted the rest of my life to happen, was overwhelming. To want that with someone else is truly extraordinary. He did not call, at least he did not leave a message. But I walked home in the cold air tonight, watching my breath float away. I swear he was there.
I was at becca’s talking about my family… “family”. Why is it that getting close to someone so suddenly always brings up images of my fucking family? The biological part, not the people I grew up with. My Dad, my sister, but mostly my Dad. Why is it that my life is not moving away from him? Why is it I remember it always? It’s not even tangible. It’s like walking around with a serpent on my neck.
Yet walking home tonight, I felt him by my breath. I must stop. I cannot go any further tonight. The problem is, every time I try to write about it, I distract myself with a good introduction. And now as I reach the point of continuing, I am too scared.
********
With all the strength inside used to believe, to have faith, living for the hope of fantasies fulfilled, dreaming of days lived for another, dreaming for another. If the devil is to choose a punishment in death, one has been chosen in life by the very humanity that denies redemption. The strength it takes to hope and live will not be sacrificed to another, nor can the boundaries of flesh and blood be broken to accept another in communion. It cannot happen in this physical life.
********
She woke up to hear him whispering. It had been a long night. They had made love for the first time, and it had been everything she hoped it would be. They had talked and kissed, and she read his writing. he was not hiding. She heard him whisper “I love You.” She got out of bed, dressed and went outside. Now that the words had been said, she knew one day they would be taken back. She wished now he had remained silent. She didn’t want to live in tomorrow’s reality.
*********
She sat, curled up in her chair. Reading. She wore a baseball cap and sunglasses. Kaylee sat down next to her. She reached in front of the book and took the bowl from her lap. “Have some.” She said, without having looked up. Kaylee took it and paused, looked out into the hills.
************************
Our first Christmas with Robin back in our lives. Mama was nervous. She couldn’t think of what to get her. She kept asking me what I thought she’d like. As if I actually knew my sister. The bottom drawer was opened. The gift ended up being a photo album. I watched picture after picture go into that book. Photos we had dug around in garbage to find. That I had poured over while Mama was away at work. Imagining who this stranger was. This young girl who I’d never seen before. We had so many pictures of her.
**********
Jan. 16, 1992
I forgot to write something of incredible relevance. My father wrote to me. And I called him. Since then I’ve called him once and he called me twice. We talked for a long time. I keep forgetting he’s a part of my life. I’ve never had to remember to write to him before. Now I feel badly for forgetting.
I’m sorry for not telling you. I haven’t asked any real questions, I don’t want any real answers. Nothing is going to change the way I’ve lived all my life, or the way I’m living now. All I want right now is to know him as a person. Not as a father, but as a person.
Anne, wendy , Gret and i went to see Kuffs. I laughed so hard I peed my pants.
**********
After they lost the house, she and Mama camped out on their friend’s pull-out couch. The friend had two sons, the youngest was two years older than Dale. Once she broke the model airplane he had built himself. She must’ve gotten into a lot of their things, not really meaning to. She was six. She remembers playing tag in the backyard. She was laughing and running down a hill. Her mouth was open and she ran straight into the wire clothesline. One of her back teeth chipped in half. She went to see a dentist once and he told her it needed to be filled. She answered that it had been there 11 years, and the tooth wasn’t going to start rotting if it hadn’t already.
They spent much of their time, she and Mama, with the family who lived next door to their old house. They ate with them, and used their phone. Their daughter was Dale’s age. Michaela and she are still in touch. She’s having a baby next month. She’ll name it after Dale. It was odd, seeing the old house everyday. The new people who lived there even took in Nubbins, their cat. The path from the house to the stable grew over, eventually the barn was torn down altogether. Michaela’s family was the first to call her Sunshine.
Christmas came again. This time it was different. Mama usually made a big deal of the holidays. She still does, with their own set of traditions and family. A tree covered in straw ornaments, with a few glass ones which are always saved for Dale to hang. Dale’s stocking is this long sock with five toes in it. Sometimes it’s still bigger than she can lift. That Christmas one new tradition started. Mama made her a doll house. She stayed up all night sometimes. Dale could hear her working on it. Much of it she made herself. It was elaborate and beautiful, made of treasures she hunted for and found in her out of the way places. Braided rugs, potted flowers. It was smaller than a normal toy dollhouse, but everything was there in detail. She said she gave it to her because she wanted Dale to have my own house. When we moved to Connecticut, she had a neighbor put it into the wall next to my bedroom door. She had a glass cover made. I would take it off now and again to rearrange or redecorate. Mostly I would look in through the glass and wonder what their life would be like if they were real.
*******
Her bedroom was her haven then. There was no better place in her house. It was there that she played. There that she learned to pretend. That day she was a star. Humbly come back to give a show in her hometown. It was after school and the lights were off and she sang to her wallpaper audience. Her voice was strong and clear, and someday it would allow her to really be someone. She would come back and say “See? I told you. I was better than you thought. Aren’t you sorry you hurt me?” That was the day Joel broke her flute. The flute that had been given to her by a professional, a gift because she could not afford her own. She opened the case and found it in parts. The main body had been dented, the reeds and pads were pulled off. She closed the case knowing exactly who had done it, knowing that it did not matter, no one would believe her. She would never say anything. She borrowed her teacher’s flute instead.
She told no one and said nothing. She took her seat in the front, the sax section behind her and played. It was hard to hold her breath steady. It was hard to keep her face impassable. Joel had a study hall in the auditorium where they played. He was watching her, she knew, though she couldn’t see him. The lights were on the stage.
There was no light now in her room. The sun had gone down. But the trumpet player who sat behind her that day was not there either. He had made jokes. The one who had never spoken, and never directly to her, he had made her laugh. He had made her laugh hard, she and everyone else, even the teacher. They had tears in their eyes. Only he was not behind her there in the bedroom. She was sitting, rocking gently, on the floor of her room. The music still played. She was not singing.
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Dreaming again. Only this dream has happened over and over. It’s silly really. It started as a nightmare. I had it so many times it grew boring. I was six when I first had it. I was dreaming of a boat. Floating down the river that runs behind my friends house, and down the street to my mother’s shop. I came upon a house where my friends were having a birthday party. [As I got older, so did the party.] I tied the boat and joined them. Suddenly I realized that something was going to happen. Something terrible I couldn’t put my finger on. I looked out the window and saw a storm, a tornado blowing up the street. I tried to warn my friends, running to each of them and helping them find places to hide; places to be safe in the storm. Just as I was crawling under a table, the door was ripped open. The Tasmanian Devil [Yes, from Loony Toons] was standing above me. And I would wake up.
As I got older, The Taz was replaced by a dark figure, a man, tall, and someone I definitely did not recognize. I also remember distinctly, the third or fourth time I had the dream, I yawned as I got under the table. The last time I had the dream, I refused to get under the table. I was standing in this dream room, the character of me, completely irritated I was not having a restful sleep. I remember thinking “Damn it, this is my dream, and it’ll go the way I want it to.” I walked to the door casually, every one else still in hiding. I met the figure at the door, opened it, acknowledged him, and slammed the door in his face. I never had the dream again.
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It was Christmas 1976. My Mama and I drove home to New Jersey from my grandmother’s. Daddy wasn’t with us. He had called to say his flight was snowed in, he wouldn’t make it. When we pulled up to the house it was completely dark. Not even a porch light. My mother’s keys didn’t work in the locks. They had been changed. Mama put me back in the car. She looked in the windows and found the house empty. All our furniture, our paintings, my toys, everything had been moved.
Mama found some of the furniture. We still have it. Some of it has been in her family for generations. She found it in the dump. Along with the family pictures. She salvaged what she could. We stored the furniture in people’s attics and barns. I guess we went to a friend’s house that night. I don’t know if our pictures were ever in an album. Now they live in a bottom bureau drawer. We keep it closed.
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She was four. Mama wanted to go out. She had her overalls on, she had to put on her sneakers. They were living in what they lovingly referred to as “their shack”. They always tried to make a joke of it. Mama brought her her shoes and sat down in front of her to put them on. She picked them up saying no, She’d do it herself. She walked over to the corner of the couch. She couldn’t tie laces yet. It was something baffling to her, all the looping and knotting. She tried with her right foot, then her left, then her right again. The laces kept falling limply to the sides, still dragging. She could see Mama getting her jacket and the car keys. Mama sat down to read at the kitchen table. She kept glancing over. “Do you want help?” “No!!” the little girl shouted. Mama looked back into her book. After an hour the blonde little girl walked over to the table. She sat in the chair next to Mama. She put the shoes in her lap and folded her arms across her chest. She glowered at Mama from under her eyebrows. Mama always gave her that extra hour to put on her shoes. It took her that long to give up.
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She had it as a child. She must have been about five years old. She knows where the dream came from. She had been playing with her sister’s make-up. She’s sure she did a wonderful job ruining the lipstick, as any decent five year old would. Anyway, in her dream she was holding onto this case, full of eye shadows and liners and lipsticks, all the brilliant colors of the rainbow which could be used to adorn a five year old face. She realized part way into the dream that she would be waking soon. So she took the make-up case and laid down with it, holding it tightly to her, and waited to wake up. She figured on holding it so tightly she’d bring it back with her into the waking world. She tried really hard. She really did.
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He’s so goddamned normal.
I don’t know why this bothers me, and sometimes it’s hard to tell whether it really bothers me or whether i’m just jealous of something i’ve heard of, but never seen before.
My best friend’s boyfriend. Soon-to-be-fiance.
I actually had to apologize to him once. She told me to, as if I were a child. As if I were hers to instruct. And of course I did it anyway. I wonder now whether or not I had actually done anything wrong.
I hope she realizes what that means. I wouldn’t normally give someone that privilege. I wouldn’t normally apologize to an acquainance for something i wasn’t sure i’d done wrong to begin with. That’s something I reserve for those people who’ve proven some kind of long term interest in me. Not for the sake of their relationship with someone else. I mean there’s no inherent reason that one must like their best friend’s boyfriends, fiances or husbands, is there? All of a sudden it seems there is. And I cannot let people go the way she can.
We were all so indepedent then. Maybe that’s why i chose a women’s college, whether or not i knew it then. It was so startling for me to listen to her while we were moving in together.
“Jaaaaakey!!! Jaaaaaaaakey!! Come here! Can you move this couch for us?” My god, I’ve never asked a man to move heavy shit for me. Help yes. Move it for me? The thought is appalling. Constantly, all day long she whined his name from one end of the house to the other. And it was so clear to me what she expected of her future life partner. To be the provider, to make the financial decisions, to be the one who knows the directions while driving, to be the man. I never thought any of us needed a man to be truthful.
I can’t see why i didn’t identify it. Even in myself i couldn’t see that the whole time i was looking for that other. my therapist says i’m desperate to be known. so desperate, i think to myself, that i ask myself i’m straight. hey don’t want to limit my options. especially since neither option seems to be presenting itself in any large way anyway. my cell phone rings. it’s a wrong number. and i remind myself why i didn’t want one. same reason i wish i didn’t have to have a phone.
he’s so godammed normal. do i find that threatening? unsettling? what is it that pisses me off? just because she wants someone nice and normal doesn’t mean i have to. so that’s not the problem. she’s a graduate of the jane austen school of romance. choose the practical, be provided for, not necessarily mind fed. not necessarily fascinated. as long as the sex is good and he’ll be able to keep food on the table and roof over the head. as long as he’s interested in raising children properly.
maybe it pisses me off because she’s so exceptional.intellectually superior and opionionated. and all of a sudden, around him, she’s girl. great. normal, yuppie, girl. nothing exceptional. and she calls me changeable.
“i like it there. it’s not art, but i like it there.” we’d just hung the horse painting. a minister painted the snowy field years ago, and no, it wasn’t art. to me it was history. and the horses a part of my own history. but it doesn’t make her father’s painting’s art either. still lifes of their back yard, of the sun setting behind a mountain overlooking a lake. booooring. and not art either. for some reason i’m kind enough not to say anything.
ah well. and life goes on. only now i’m realizing it’s me that has to want me. there may be no perfect other for me. there may be no One waiting sometime in my life. and so i begin a new quest. to be independent, and fun, and moody and emotional, and musical and artistic, for me. not for anyone else.