Dialog: Raising Daughters

photo by ifdefelseif.

“When did you come home last night?” he asked.

“I don’t know exactly. Around midnight, maybe?” she replied.

“Who were you out with?”

“James. We went to the Orpheum and saw a show, and afterward drove down to Willow Grove and parked by the pond.”

“I didn’t want that much detail, but thanks for stopping there.”

“You asked.”

“I asked who you went out with, not where you went, or where you parked, or what you talked about, or anything else, for that matter.”

“We didn’t do much talking.”

“See, there. Don’t tell me that. I don’t want to know.”

“You intimated.”

“I did nothing more than provide an example of what I don’t want to hear.”

“Whatever.”

“Intimated. That’s a good word. When did you learn to use words like that?”

“From James.”

“He sounds like a pretty smart boy.”

“He’s thirty-seven.”

Narrative: Boys Will Be Boys

photo by Haeretik.

Stay here. Don’t move. I’ll be back in a few minutes. I just have to go find the deputy. He’s out back looking for bodies. See his flashlight bobbing on the grass? Why did you do it? You had so much going for you? Don’t answer that. I already know what drives a man to kill. But my own son? My own boy? Didn’t I raise you right? Didn’t I take you fishing? I paid for that pansy summer camp when you were twelve. Lots of good it did. I knew you were going to do something, one day. I knew you were going to go too far. Sit down. Didn’t I tell you to sit down? I’ll go out back. I’ll take care of the deputy. Tired of cleaning up your shit, I can tell you that. I’ve been cleaning up after you all your life and it’s why you continue to make such a mess of things. What are you going to do when I’m not around to clean up your mess? When I get back here I want to see you cleaned up. Get a duffle bag. Pack enough for a week on the road. No more. No less. Now you can get up. Go on. Didn’t I tell you to get up? Don’t start crying now. Did I teach you to cry? You made choices, and now you have to live with them. You’re one thing or another, but not both at once. You have to decide. Are you a man, or are you a baby? Are you my boy? Or are you a little girl? I didn’t raise you to be a girl, so go on now. Boys will be boys. We’ll get this cleaned up in a just a second. Stay in the house. I got to go find that deputy.

Chloe Jean: Siren of the Skies

His family lived on a farm briefly when he was a kid, back when his accountant father and architect mother decided to abandon the New York City bedrock for the more tender bed of soil abundant in the Midwest. It was there that he spotted his first love, Chloe Jean, cutting a swath across the sky over their crops. The young woman crop dusted all of the properties in Jefferson County since her father had developed glaucoma when she was sixteen. Chloe Jean. Her name was on the lips of every man watching her dip and weave over the fields, misting a cloud of insecticide over the waiting plants. She was pretty, that particular kind of wholesome, healthy, white teeth pretty that farm country tends to breed. The town believed the only reason she was still unmarried was that she spent more time in the sky than on the ground, and nobody could catch her.

Chloe Jean. Even years later, just saying her name conjured the image of the young beauty buzzing low overhead, summer dress and scarf trailing in the wind. When he was thirteen, how many nights did he fantasize about sneaking off with her, taking to the skies, a stowaway in the cockpit between her thighs? He rode his bike to the landing strip at her father’s farm and hid away at the side of the hangar to watch her climb in or out of the cockpit, just in hope of catching a glimpse of leg or swelling breast beneath her summer dress. She was always smiling when she climbed in or out of the plane, the same kind of smile when a woman gazed into the eyes of a man she loved, but for Chloe Jean, it was reserved only for her plane.

He was in chemistry class when everyone heard the fire trucks and crowded by the window. A thin trail of black smoke curled into the sky over Peterson’s farm. Chloe Jean, the first love of his life, crashed and burned in a bean field. Investigators later determined that a tree limb at the border of the field had clipped her wing. For years afterward, boys from town kept a shrine in her memory at the trunk of the massive oak. He considered, several times, hanging himself from one of its limbs. He still feels, unreasonably, somehow less a man for not having done it.

Beware the Fireflies

photo by louistib.

He didn’t know anything about writing anymore. He hardly even read. So why did he sit down every morning at the laptop and pretend like he was going to write? Foolishly optimistic. Maybe he could just stream-of-consciousness write:

No matter what, whoever you may be and wherever you go, you will find little monsters hidden in the brush. Green emerald glossy eyes with sparks shooting from them when they see you stumble into the grove. The smoking embers of last night’s bonfire still curl skyward, unstirred by wind or bird’s wing or buzz of insects. He falls to the weeds near the ashes, lies on his back, looks skyward and watches the slow stream of smoke dissipate into the dirty blue, and remembers.

We piled up pillows at the bottom of the staircase and jumped. That wondrous sensation of falling from the sky and landing gracefully in a mound of silk pillows imported from the Orient. The darkness that fell when you closed your eyes, and the warmth when you reached out blindly with your hand and took hold of your friend’s arm to pull you up, there in the pillows with you, her eyes also closed and the sound of her playful giggling in your years, and you fall back into greater darkness as the memory fades.

There. A pinprick of light in the black velvet curtain. Help him. Pull him out of it with a yank on the arm, maybe even something whispered in his ear. He won’t look, won’t open his eyes, won’t betray with blush in his cheeks, but you will feel it against his chest, the rapid drumming of his heart in its cage. Shit, cliché’s come out after dark like fireflies, so pretty, so tempting to chase out across the fields.

Seven Wives a' Calling

photo by Katrijn Michiels Photography.

Late one morning, a man in his mid-fifties sat down in his living room with his cup of coffee and a newspaper, and was about to take a sip when an odd noise caused him to pause. Was it coming from inside the house, he wondered. He lived alone. He had only just moved in a few weeks back. Through the windows, he saw crows crowding around outside, cawing like an angry mob and beating the air with their wings, but they were not making the noise that caused him concern. He rose from his chair and pressed his ear to the wall. Quite distinctly, he heard the sound of wood groaning and cracking. As he drew away from the wall, he heard the unmistakable sound of windows sliding open and banging shut, one after another, from somewhere inside the house, loud as gunshots.

He grabbed a butcher's knife from the kitchen and took a tour of the many empty rooms with their gleaming hardwood floors broken up only by stacks of boxes still waiting to be unpacked.

One room after another greeted him with nothing but the mundane. He was about to chalk it up to nerves from living in a new place, when he heard a faint rustling sound in the attic. He climbed to the second floor, pulled on a rope to a trap door in the ceiling, and ascended the steep ladder to the attic knowing that most likely he would find only pigeons or mice. He had never been up here before. Instead he found a dozen mourning doves sitting atop travel chests and perched on the shoulders of a headless seamstress’ dummy. He looked closer and saw that all of their eyes were merely black beads sewn into their sockets, stitches running up their breasts, mottled feathers, and sawdust spilling to the floorboards.

He chuckled, but he started to sweat. Just the heat caught under the roof, he told himself. The silence calmed his nerves, until he noticed that the noises had not died; they only migrated to the cellar, and the sound was less mistakable. A woman, perhaps? She was crying, and it was getting louder.

He plunged down the attic ladder, through the house toward a woman’s cries that steadily grew to the pitch of a wail. He came to a halt when he reached the stairs to the main level. Draped down the staircase, like the shedded skin of a snake, lay a wedding dress. Mildewed lace and torn veil flowed down several steps. The moment he saw the dress, the wailing stopped. He stepped closer, reaching down to touch the fabric, when the sound of shattering glass brought up upright.

He proceeded slowly but steadily now toward the cellar. He had only descended halfway down the crumbling concrete steps, just at the depth where the dank air circled round his ankles, when he saw her standing at the bottom. A gauzy mirage, with a face faintly recognizable, but he wasn’t sure. Was she the first, or the third? Red hair like a slow burning fire. Behind her, another woman in a shredded veil, standing barefoot atop a shattered jar and spilled white powder that left a caustic odor in the air. From behind him, at the top of the stairs, came another movement as another bride slowly descended towards him, this one with hair black as crows feathers, eyes hollowed out and spilling river pebbles from their sockets. He moved away, ever so slowly, but not in an attempt to flee. He had already moved enough times to realize he could never really get away. Instead he brushed past her on the stairs and went to the kitchen to put on the kettle.

He ignored the dozens of dishes shattered on the kitchen floor and routed round the cupboard for the large teapot. It was the favorite tea set of . . . which one was it now, the fifth wife? He gathered up the seven teacups on their chipped saucers, carried them to the sink to delicately clean them until the water boiled.

He had guests to entertain.

We are Little Worlds

photo by wili_hybrid.

I can’t decide if I want to be alone, or with somebody. I don’t even mean whether I want to be single or in a relationship; I mean do I want to isolate myself from other people, or do I want to engage myself in conversation at the tea shop, do I want to small talk with people at work. It is so strongly tempting to draw back, to still be among others but separate, quiet, observing. Why would I want to do that to myself? Why would I deny myself the enjoyment of friends, of getting to know what somebody did that weekend or what they thought of the movie “Dan in Real Life?” I could still listen in on their conversations with other people, but I wouldn’t have to share myself. I wouldn’t have to share myself. Interesting choice of words.

Becoming a solitarian carries with it a kind of romance, something that …this no longer interests me. Now I’m thinking about going for morning walks down Theodore Wirth Parkway, the crisp mornings, the stillness of the trees. I suppose there would be birds singing, and squirrels bouncing over the wet grass. Would it inspire me? Would it become one of my favorite moments of the day? Nothing is stopping me from getting up, putting on my shoes and my coat and heading out. Yeah, let’s do it!

I’m still sitting here, drinking tea and talking to myself. I keep wishing to discover something here, in the solitude of my living room with the sunrise cresting the rooflines and trees in my east-facing windows, and seeing the Others walking their dogs, jogging, pushing strollers. Watching the others. Another interesting choice of words. They are like me, but separate. Maybe that’s what I find so terrifying about other people. To know that they dreamt last night of being late for class or about the last argument they had at work, to know that they went shopping with a friend to buy that pink windbreaker and now they pull it on each morning as they go jogging to hopefully lose some of that weight that makes them loath themselves, or makes them realize their body is aging and they don’t want to succumb to the inevitability of growing old, that’s what frightens and thrills me. We are little worlds orbiting each other. We can’t all possibly carry these inner lives, fears, loves, can we? What if I had ended up being one of them? But I landed in this body, in this house, in front of this laptop and drinking a cup of Nilgiri Woodlands Estate and wearing the old flannel shirt of my dead dad and wondering, do I want to be among others, or do I just want to be by myself? Do I want to go for a walk, or do I want to stay in this chair, waiting for something to happen?

Tea for One

I sit in my favorite teashop but look around as though I don’t recognize it. Somebody came in and changed everything. The old orange walls that looked as though a drunk had experimented with sponge painting have been painted over in soothing green. Covering the dirty brown Berber carpet are oriental area rugs. The taupe chairs have been replaced with bright red ones hollowed out like cracked nutshells. I’m in one of these red chairs now, by the window, drinking smoky Russian Caravan tea. It’s my second steeping because I want to prolong my stay in the tea shop, so I make-do with this tepid second steeping and sip slowly.

I read a book on Midwest perennials in anticipation of spring. What should I plant? I picture an English garden alongside a path of paving stones winding its way to the front entrance, or maybe a secret garden at the side by the chimney, with figurines of sprites hidden among the flora. I just moved into this picturesque brick home in the Fall, on Manor Drive, in a town called Golden Valley; it even sounds like an imagined place. The prior owner covered the grounds in gardens, so maybe I won’t need to plant anything. It is now early Spring and the first few signs of growth have broken soil; all of these pockets of gardens are ready to wake up. I feel a bit like a parent with a dozen infants stirring in their cribs, about to wake up screaming and demanding attention. Maybe I should make a run for it.

I get distracted by the sounds of a mother and young daughter that take a table beside me. The little girl has a whispery voice, like the daughter Zuzu in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” who says to her father, “But I’m not sleepy.”

“Mommy, want me to do a magic trick?” Brilliant smile of baby teeth and dimpled cheeks, and she makes her hands disappear inside her mittens. The mother looks under the table, under the chair, inside her teacup while the little girl giggles like mad.

I take another sip of cold tea and think of gardens.

Grasping

photo by Vesuviano.

I should never have waited this long to write here. Yeah, I had a number of excuses, what with buying a new home and work getting crazy. But the longer I wait to post something, the more pressure builds up. On this long of a hiatus, he better come up with something good. But I haven’t. I’ve barely written a thing during these last six months. When I try to write, I stumble around, get all clammed up and frustrated and tight inside, and then I just go blow my time on the internet or channel surfing. But now I feel like I better throw something against this wall, or it could get archived, and I’m not ready to let the Life of Brettanicus slip into oblivion. So here you have it, the first post in six months, and it’s about nothing really. Which is probably for the best. I get blocked when I put high demands on myself. I’m not even sure I want to write still, but since the age of fifteen I have believed that writing is the only thing that gives me a sense of purpose, and that feeling—when inspiration gets into my bloodstream—it’s one of the best feelings in the world. It makes you want to experience it, again and again, and you chase it but never quite get there again. But the chase is the next best thing.