Trail of Broken Wine Glasses

She left a trail of broken wineglasses through the house.  I followed them to the attic, up to the children’s playroom and chest full of costumes that hadn’t been worn in years.  She left me a trail of her own blood to follow, all the way across the floor to the dumbwaiter.  Did she go up or down?  Was she hiding in the low hanging clouds or was she crumpled up in a heap in the cellar.  She always liked her wine, Ms Millie, ever since her first beau succumbed to the allure of the pond’s murky depths while the two of them skinny dipped with a bottle of Jack.  She remembered the stillness of the water, the quiet of the trees crowded around the shore to gawk.  

She learned she was pregnant shortly after that, carrying her brood even before she climbed out of the water.  The boy’s last plunge.   After that she was secluded away in a cabin on the Gunflint Trail with an aunt for nine months, and after they were out, perhaps even before, she drank and partied like a girl ready to throw it all away, and she did.  The Gateway District offered her unsafe haven, where I rescued her, if that is how you look at it.  She wasn’t looking for kindness or saving though, and maybe that’s where I failed her.  I hid the bottles, schooled her children, paid for home visits by the doctor because they wouldn’t let her back into town.  

Wine glasses crushed to diamonds beneath my pacing steps.  Where does a lost woman go when she doesn’t want to be found.  I see her in the moon, I see her in the water, I see her swaying in slow dance with the limbs of trees.

The Winding Woods

photo by ayacata7.

It isn’t always straight forward, the way we find our way through the woods. It isn’t always by light of morning but sometimes by light of moon, when the owl’s hoot and silent wingspan fills dark spaces between the trees, and when eyes aglow follow our trail, quiet, waiting.

It isn’t always plain to see, the town that comes beyond the hill. The ramshackle huts with smoke drifting skyward, or the laundry drying on the dead brambles, or the twisted sheen of the madmen gathered near the well.

It isn’t always what we thought it would be, this love of the girl we travel to see, this milkmaid or seamstress or nursemaid’s scullion. At times she hides a blush behind her hand, while others she screams with pretty little fists that beat your chest, hollowed and tight like a drum. Then the stolen moments, fleeting for the memory to cup, and ugly moments that will never end and neither drink nor sleep will see it fade, and once she is gone there are all the moments that never were, but that we play upon and mould with hands now empty. Linger upon days that could have been, if we had found our way by different paths, for the woods know best, in their weathered bark and aged span of limbs, which is the path for me that day, and the next, and the next.

Flavors of Crazy

photo by Midnight-digital.

She was crazy. Utterly nuts. I knew even before I had officially met her. I could tell when I first saw her behind a booth at a software conference in Las Vegas. She was one of those six foot tall, leggy women in a tight tee-shirt of a software vendor, as though she was one of the programmers, peddling a handful of flyers to the throngs of computer geeks. Black hair all tangled up in a bird’s nest, and these little black eyes like pebbles in her face. I sensed it right away; she was a bipolar carnival perched atop her high heels. For some reason I had always been drawn to the crazy ones. Later that night at the conference party I saw her again, only this time the roles were reversed and she was the target audience, with the computer geeks marketing their come-on lines and clumsy attempts at flirtation. After a few gin and tonics, I felt a need to assert myself as the alpha male of this inferior gene pool and took my shot. She ended up bar hopping with me and one of my coworkers, even though she didn’t drink. Mixed poorly with her meds, I figured, but she had no problem watching me drink for eight hours, and then followed me back to my hotel room.

Only flashes of memory, like some “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” montage, the silhouette of beauty that turned monstrous in too direct of lighting, the fuzziness of alcohol giving way to flashes of lucidity, disorientation, regret. Were those wrinkles and scars in the dark, or did the alcohol send me off into some kind of delirium? Who was this wrapped in the bed sheets the next morning? She quickly got ready in the bathroom and left, leaving a lipstick message on my mirror “Bye Sweetheart” with a heart drawn underneath. That was my first clue that she had a flair for the dramatic.

I was too hung over to attend that day’s conference sessions, but she had the vendor floor to work. She called me later that afternoon and came by the hotel lobby to talk, saying she didn’t want me to think this was a regular occurrence for her, that she was recently divorced and going through some stuff, and that there were no expectations, but she thought I was somebody special and sweet. Some shit like that. We hugged when she left and exchanged business cards.

The next week at work, I got a package mailed to me. It was a vintage Batman lunchbox (must have been something I said during my drunken binge), filled with Halloween themed decorations: orange and black tissue paper, confetti in the shape of pumpkins and black cats, a CD of Halloween songs like “Monster Mash” and “Werewolves of London.” There were homemade cookies, and stickers of ghouls and goblins on the inside of the lunchbox. I got razzed by the guys in the office, but it made me smile. I thanked her in an email, and she responded that she just happened to be in town for a vendor exhibit next week, so we could go on a real date if I was interested. I thought “Sure. Why not?” I resisted offering her to stay at my place, and found out which hotel she would be staying at.

I should have suspected something was not right when her hotel was nowhere near the convention center. She said she needed to find one with an oven. I found out why when I picked her up. She had baked me three dozen cookies. She apologized for how many there were, but she wasn’t sure if I’d prefer the chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips, or the traditional chocolate chip cookies with walnuts. I usually don’t go for nuts, but it looked like tonight I would be stuck with one that night.

I’ll skip describing for you the obligatory dinner, or how despite all of the warning signs I was still attracted to her, and that if she lived halfway across the country, I couldn’t really be in that much danger, could I? Instead, let’s jump ahead to the post-sex pillow talk at my place.

She had been bulimic at one point in her teenage years, then an obese binge eater, and now she had some sort of band wrapped around her stomach that had turned her skinny. The skin hung off her bones like an old blanket, in places. There were scars on the insides of her thighs where excess skin had been removed. Jesus Christ, what was I thinking? Why didn’t I go after a nice normal girl, like Christine’s friend, the geeky one with horn rimmed 60’s glasses, but kind of cute and funny? But in a moment, even this unhinged woman would be rejecting me.

After she told me about her bulimia, did I offer her a hug? I thought; okay, this just happens to be her flavor of crazy, compared to all of the other flavors out there, including my own. I clinically listened, nodded my head much like I imagined a therapist would do, and stayed at a safe distance. But she needed more. A sad sympathetic face and a tilt of the head. A hug. An “awww, come here you,” with arms held out.

When I missed my cue, she turned on me. Accusations flew. Why did I seem so stand-offish, now? Why didn’t I show more emotion? I tried to cover with stories of my own scarred childhood, an emotionally distant father, and how maybe I was unconsciously trying to become like him; a rock, an island. Why did I always conjure up Simon and Garfunkel lyrics when a woman put me on the defensive? It didn’t have much effect on her though, and she went on bitterly about the flat-lined men in her life, making me feel increasingly guilty until I felt like I was in some long term relationship when this was ONLY DAY THREE with this person.

Then I found my honesty and spoke up, “No I am not comfortable with you spending the night, and yes I think you’re a little bit crazy for baking me a batch of three-dozen cookies and sending a Halloween box to my work, and yes I think it would be a good idea if I drove you back to your hotel room right now!”

During the tense car ride to her hotel, she informed me that she would be flying out immediately, that there was no conference and that she had spent all of this money just to come see me, but good riddance to me. When I got back home, I sighed a breath of relief. Okay, brush my teeth: two times. Shower: two times. Wash the bed sheets: three times. She was almost erased, except the cookies hung around for another week. She made damn good cookies.

Postscript: She mailed two CD’s shortly afterwards. One was a forty-five minute burned monolog of how angry and hurt she was. Odd that she felt the need to capture this in a recording rather than an email or letter. Also odd how she somehow looped around from a tirade about that night and how cruel I was, to an introspection of her self-worth, to how I was so wonderful and caring on that first night when I was drunk at the convention, to eventually how I showed characteristics of an innocent, sensitive side that she would miss. I thought about posting it on YouTube. The other CD contained every possible cover of the song, “I am a Rock.” She was clever; I had to give her that.

Dear Mignon

Dear Mignon,

How could you grant a mere boy of fifteen a fantasy for two weeks at the end of summer, and then leave him for school in California? You were eighteen and had all of the big men on campus after you; the jock down the street, the man with a handlebar mustache at the club, and even my twenty-two year old brother who asked you to go away to a cabin with him for a weekend. But you picked me. I was so naïve I didn’t even consider that you were coming on to me; I thought you were just being nice. When did we first kiss? I remember it took a long time to get to that point, and you must have been wondering what I was waiting for, how I could be so dumb to miss all of the signals. You were house sitting for your uncle across the street from me, and invited me in when he was away on a trip. We sat on the large puffy sofa in the dark cool of his basement. You offered me a beer. I said yes. I had never drunk a beer before that, only sips of my Dad’s when I would get him another can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Then you gave me a massage. I laugh now, thinking about that. How did you maneuver us from sitting on the sofa to a massage? I wonder what you thought when I didn’t kiss you, or offer to return the massage, or anything beyond my thanking you for the beer, and the massage, and crossing back over the street to my house.

We played tennis. Some boys from a baseball tournament sat along the fence to watch you running for the ball and the way your breasts bounced when you ran. They asked if you were my girlfriend, and I said no. They started catcalling, but I didn’t know what to do about it. You glowered and turned red. They eventually went away.

I remember now the first time you finally broke through to me and left no doubt as to whether you were interested in me as more than a friend. We were at the movie “Fright Night”, and you leaned your leg against mine. You held my hand for a while, and pulled my hand closer to you so the back of my hand rested against your bare thigh. I wasn’t watching the movie at all anymore, only your thigh and my hand. Then there in the dark you let go of my hand and slid your palm across my leg, and felt me getting hard. I remember walking out of the movie theater with a raging erection and thinking everybody could see it, but I couldn’t stop smiling.

You taught me to always open a door for a girl, and to always be gentle. You used to press your nose against mine and look right into my eyes; you were just a blur except for your eyes and smile, and you would flutter your eyelids like butterflies. Your uncle’s red Camero and a church parking lot. I didn’t have a clue where kids went to park and that seemed as good a place as any.

That last night we were to spend together before you moved out to LA to chase your dreams of becoming an actress, you told me that a person never forgets their first. As you drove me home the radio was playing Phil Collins “Against All Odds,” a very fitting soundtrack to my night. I remember thinking how every time I would hear that song, I’d think of this night. Phil Collins. Jesus.

Then you were gone. I remember feeling how lucky I was to have spent those last two weeks of summer with you, and that’s what made me angriest later, after it hurt to read your letters about your part-time job in a shoe store while you waited for callbacks from your latest auditions, and then letters asking why I wasn’t writing you back. I had to convince myself that I didn’t feel anything at all. Another lesson you taught me.

Solace of a Bad Man

They drove up the North shore for a weekend away at a small cabin. Back in the Twin Cities, her new boyfriend was the perfect gentleman she new him to be, but with each passing mile his civility towards her gradually peeled away, like the trappings of the city slipping away as they drove further north. The trees grew taller, the woods deeper as his temper flared over petty things, like where they would go for Thanksgiving, and who would pay for the gas, and how fast he was driving.

On they drove, up past Duluth, the roads growing narrower as they passed hulking ships rusting in dry dock. The winds picked up near Two Harbors, fueled by drought, gusts coming from every which direction, and he struggled to keep the car on the road.

Civilization dropped away by the time they reached Grand Marais. The interstate trickled down to a county road, then to a gravel road, then to a dirt path with weeds growing down the center, winding among the birch trees, until they finally coasted to a stop in the deep woods of the Gunflint Trail and their cabin for the weekend.

It took them much of the day to get there. The sun was already setting. Inside the cabin, his gentler side came out again; he prepared a quick spaghetti dinner, and they talked about friends and family. She couldn’t explain, even to herself, what made her shut down his advances that night. She felt that things were not as they appeared.

Her nightmares didn’t help matters: she dreamed of wolves circling the cabin, staying just out of sight behind the trees. The next day it was her turn to become unhinged, picking fights over whatever was convenient. She got into an argument with him about hunting: he was for it, she against. He claimed it was natural and necessary for thinning out the herd, but she said only Native Americans should have the right to hunt. He claimed Native American’s weren’t good sportsmen when it came to hunting, using lights for spear fishing to attract the fish, or setting fires in the woods to scare wild game toward their hunters waiting in ambush.

She started to hate him. Maybe hate is too strong of a word: he dropped in her esteem. She lost respect for his ideas. He must have picked up on her change of heart, because he looked like a trapped animal, eyes darting around the room, mouth tense like a snarl.

She wanted to get out of there. She grabbed her things and marched out to the car, waiting for him to come drive her home. He didn’t. She crossed over to the driver’s seat. No keys. Stupid idea anyway, she couldn’t just abandon him out here. She decided that a walk through the woods might help cool her off. She happened upon a deer trail and followed it around the pond, down a ravine and beyond the surrounding poplars and birch into the deep woods of evergreens.

Windfalls crossed the trail, forcing her off the path. She lost her way among dead trees felled during the severe storms of last summer. She lost all sense of direction and began to panic. She smelled something in the air; soot, cinders, smoke?

The tree canopy rose too high to get a good view of the sky, but among the undergrowth and the tree trunks drifted a haze, like morning mist, only dirtier. The heat sucked all moisture out of the air. Within seconds the wind came rushing in with a smell that burned in her lungs. Fire.

Fir trees on fire. Great plume of sparks. In the strong winds, flames leapt from tree to tree. She ran beneath the arches of burning limbs, bolting through the woods alongside panicked deer and rabbits. Birds dropped from the sky like meteors. She fell out of the burning bramble to an open clearing where, beside the pond, sat the cabin: the one thing not burning in this world on fire. Inside, standing at the window, she saw him. Waiting for her. She stumbled inside, into his arms, and smelled the gasoline, the sulfur, the stench of a bad man who just got what he wanted.

One Less

“Hi Missy.”

“Don’t call me Missy.”

“Okay, Melissa. How’ve you been? Have you missed me?”

She looks at me, sideways, like she doesn’t quite trust me, but then she ventures her answer.

“A little.”

“A little? Like you miss my sense of humor? You miss my Yankee charm?”

“I miss kissing you.”

That caught me off guard. “I miss that too,” and I walked over to the kitchen and poured us each a glass of water. I wished it was wine, something to calm my nerves, but she didn’t drink wine. Only water.

“So how’s it going with that ex boyfriend of yours? I can’t remember his name.”

“It’s Tom, and he’s not an ex anymore.”

“I don’t want to know his name. I’ll just forget it again. Do you have sex? Don’t answer that. I suppose you do. You both got HPV. He’s the fucker who gave it to you, so no risk, eh? Not anymore.”

She looked hurt now. “We fuck, yes. Is that what you wanted to hear me say? We fuck, and I’m happy.”

“You could die, you know. I read something about it turning into cervical cancer.”

“That’s the other kind of HPV. I won’t get cancer.”

So you think, I wanted to say, but I knew she was probably right. She was the doctor, and I was just a sales guy. Not a very good one at the moment. “So you want to kiss me again?” I asked.

“No. Not right now, anyway.”

I must have pissed her off more than I intended. I wanted to kiss her again, but then what good was it? What could it lead to? Instead I played her some new music I had found on the internet, talked about her family, about the books she was reading, and it took a good twenty minutes before I could look at her apologetically, and then we kissed awkwardly like kids on the playground.

“I can’t kiss you any more,” she said.

“Any more tonight, or any more ever?”

“Any more ever. We’ll start messing around and then what? You know we can’t ever sleep together.”

“So that’s it? It comes down to sex?”

“It comes down to that fact that Tom is nicer to me.”

“Tom who?”

“I’m leaving.”