Chapter 69

69

She is sitting cross legged in a field somewhere, anywhere really, meditating upon some aspect of her blooming reality, while a small girl flies a bright red kite off in the distance. The wind pours down from the surrounding mountains, in short but powerful bursts, pulling the kite’s string tighter and tighter until a fray begins to develop halfway down the line. In a mere breath of a moment the string snaps and the kite is stolen by the mountain air. Jamie runs over to her mother and falls sobbingly into her lap. The meditator retains her focus, allowing the little girl to deal with this small tragedy in her own unique way. Once the sobbing resides, Jamie opens her eyes and begins to stroke her daughter’s rested head. Another gust blows down from the peaks, and I feel myself begin to levitate.

Without their knowledge, the wind begins to steal me away from the two women below. I feel myself trying to root into the earth, desperately forcing weight into my feet, hoping to deny this undeniable force from carrying me away. But my tether frayed and snapped long ago. I must succumb to the wind around me. I have no other choice.

I am carried up over the mountains and down into the valley, across open fields and into the city. I can smell the sulfur in the air, I can taste the grit of the city below as it fades into a grid of streets and sprawling urban development. The cacophony of air conditioners and automobiles creates its own brand of white noise, which fades into silence as I am whisked across the continent, over the Atlantic, all the while gaining altitude. Higher and higher, up above the clouds and through the Earth’s atmosphere, I am carried into orbit. I am but another piece of matter relegated to infinity. And it is that notion begins to stir a panic deep within me.

Forcefully, I snap awake, gather my breath and recalculate my surroundings. I am still here, in our newly built home, with Jamie sleeping peacefully beside me. Rolling over, I clasp her face in my hands, just to reassure myself that she is indeed a reality I can depend on. I let my lips graze her cheek, her ears, her neck. I kiss her firmly on the lips. I can taste their beauty, their soft pillowy perfection.

She stirs. She wakes. I encourage her. I kiss her again. With even more conviction. She lifts her lids. Her brown eyes finding recognition in mine.

“Hi baby,” she says in a half-awake whispery slip of breath. “I was having the strangest dream. You were flying away like a kite who’d broken his string.”

I remain silent as her lids grow heavy again, her breath becomes metered, and she drifts back into sleep. It’s five in the morning, and the sun is slowly beginning to poke it’s head up over the mountains. Patiently, I await the coming dawn.

Chapter 68

68

Inadequate.
Incompetent.
Impotent.
A calculated cut across my arm.
I can’t feel anything anymore.

I’ve locked the door for the final time, settled myself in front of my typewriter. The sound of the flames engulf the house around me. I’m a character in a burning book who has finally discovered that the end of his novel is just like the beginning. Cyclical, bound by a hardened outer shell, there is no need to escape the flames. Everything in between can be read out of order, a hodgepodge collection of memories that are creeping in under the door. They’re suffocating. But of course they are. You wouldn’t have it any other way.

A .44 across my lap.
A .44 complete with shells.
I am leaving it you.
I am leaving this.
Maybe you’ll miss me.

Coughing. Choking. Lungs breathing in the billowing smoke. I can see the kitchen from here, succumbing to the heat. The clock, remember the clock? I was fighting...with you...with myself...with the wind surrounding me. It matters not which. I took this same gun. The gun across my lap. And put a bullet into the midnight hour. The flames are tickling at it’s toes. Soon both hands will melt together. But I wasn’t there to see it.

It was quick.
A thought struck me.
Like an arctic breeze.
That 50 years was simply too long.
To be over in an instant.

And I laid there for days. My body waiting for your arrival. I thought you might come back, I thought you’d need to see if I was ok. Charred from the fire, they had a hard time recognizing me from the pieces of smoldering timber lying around me. The gunshot took off the back of my head. And the flames engulfed me. I wish you would have called.

But I wouldn’t have answered.
You could have called.
And I couldn’t have answered.
I died so very long ago.
When suddenly I stopped answering.

These words seem so hollow and meaningless now that everything lies in ruin around me. Hollow and meaningless as the surrounding air grows silent. Hollow and meaningless as I become smaller, and smaller, my memory fading, ashes of my former self being carried away by the wind. Hollow and meaningless because I am no longer here, or there, or anywhere for that matter. Hollow and meaningless until I am left with only one sentence...one sentence that summarizes my time here with you. One sentence that is neither hollow or meaningless:

Within you, I had found a home.

And those words will linger in the air long after the wind blows this all away.

Chapter 67

67

An open tract of land somewhere deep within the mountains. A foundation that has been re-laid in the middle of a clearing. The air feels familiar here. I’ve smelt these trees before. I’ve tasted their moisture. Jamie looks at me, beaming. Jamie closes the passenger side door and it echos against the rock walls surrounding us. Jamie grabs a hold of my right hand and squeezes. Jamie jumps up onto the hood of Jamie’s Subaru and lights a cigarette. Jamie brushes her hair from her face. Jamie’s squeeze gets tighter. Jesus Christ, I think to myself. I’ve been here before. Is this what I think it is?

I remember, jarringly, a moment twenty-two years ago. Piled collections, setting them afire, ridding myself of everything I’d ever wanted...never wanted. I left them burning in the living room while I retired to my office...to sleep...to dream...forever?

The smoke seeped in under the door, memories billowing in, enveloping me within. I felt, tasted, metallic. That was my unravelling. I wasn’t patient enough. She wasn’t patient enough. And that was our unravelling.

Twenty-two years ago she was nowhere near, but now she stands beside me, squeezing my hand tightly, firmly, lovingly. Twenty-two years ago I was ready to burn. And now...

“Look familiar?” Jamie asks me, softly, like a kiss.

“Are we really here...together?” The words sound distant. Not my own.

“I bought the land after the divorce. I leveled the remains of the house a couple of years ago. I just couldn’t let them sit here like...like...”

“Ruins?”

“Yeah. Like ruins.”

I let go of her hand and walk the foundation, entering through the door she first walked through on that chilly night in September . Into the hallway where she fell, sobbing, into my arms. Into the living room and on into the bedroom. Our bedroom. Our bed. Our chest of drawers. Pictures hung on the walls, pictures of her and I, pieces of our life together. You could connect them like stars, a constellation, a larger representation of a collective us.

She used to keep a bottle of pills on the night-stand, next to the bed, in-between the lamp and the alarm clock. They used to help her sleep on nights when the thunder would shake the house like a tree. She would curl up next to me, finding her way into every soft nook of my body, as if she were hiding from the storms themselves. And in a way she was. She was always hiding from the storm of life, the turmoils that shake us all like leaves on the proverbial tree.

I’m biting my finger nails, almost viciously, as I walk through the kitchen. We made dinners together, on the nights when I was in town. We drank wine and listened to the wind. Occasionally we’d put on a record and dance while cooking, singing into our spatulas and spoons. She’s wearing her favorite pair of jeans and wool socks, which float along the linoleum dance-floor, effortlessly. She’s smiling enough for the both of us, ear to ear, cheek to cheek. She grabs me by the waist and stares up into my eyes while mouthing the words to the new Talking Heads album:

Home is where I want to be, but I guess I’m already there.

“Jamie and I have been saving to rebuild your old house,” she says, startling me back into reality. She’s found her way onto the foundation, back into my home that she left so long ago.

“I know it’s sounds sentimental, and probably crazy, but I wanted to live here again. I loved being in these woods with you. We need to get out of that city, out of the suburbs and into something that feels a bit more like home.”

“That sounds like a good idea.” I reply, as she slides her arm around my waist.

“You could live here too, with us, if you wanted.”

“But I don’t know how long I’ll be staying.”

“Neither do I,” she says as the wind picks up around us. “But at least it’s something we can look forward too. At least it’s a tomorrow.”

Which is more than we had. Much more than we used to have.

Chapter 66

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Chapter 65

65

Staring out the back of Jamie’s Subaru hatchback, I watch the passed road twitch eastward behind us. Like a couple discovering love, it looks somewhat familiar...but feels so awkwardly unknown.

As we head into the mountains surrounding the city, the Jamies occupy their time in the front seat singing along to Janis Joplin’s Pearl. Their voices stimulate my mind, a lyrical ignition, uniting with the passing pavement and the whipping wind to conjure recollections of the past. Drifting into thoughts, memories rush at me, and I allow myself to wander into:

A classroom. My childhood. She sits across the room from me, as usual. Yet, today there is something different about her. Today she wears a different pair of glasses, her hair parted evenly down the middle. She sees my eyes and smiles just slightly. I attempt to, but cannot, smile back. Her attention returns to Mrs. Everett who is teaching the class how to diagram a sentence. My gaze stays fixed upon her. I’m too busy trying to remember how she looked in her other pair of glasses. I wonder, to myself, which pair she likes better.

The first poem I ever show my father. It’s the conclusion of a dinner together at his home outside of town. He reads it, twice I believe, and hands it back to me. His eyes squint, as if he is looking for something very small deep inside of me, and says, “You didn’t write this.” His voice sounds like loose gravel being pushed aside by four tires coming to a stop. “It’s too good.” Suddenly I decide that I will never show him my work again.

Myself laughing in the corner of John’s parents’ kitchen. John is in the living room rolling another joint. “We should refill my dad’s bottle of vodka with water,” he yells from the other room. “Do you think he’ll notice?” His words sound as if they are tightrope walking across the string connecting two aluminum cans. I continue my isolation in the corner, laughing.

The day I saw the family cocker-spaniel lying dead in the back yard.
The injections. Needle after needle being inserted into my veins by a black man wearing white. Every one causes some sort of pain.

The curly headed girl who took my virgin hand and placed it under her oversized sweatshirt.

My birthday party. Seven years old. It was snowing outside. No one attended. Even my mother felt sorry for me.

A photograph. You and I sitting at dinner together. I burnt it in a plastic trash-can one windy day in December. The trash-can tipped over, and the wind blew the fire and ashes all over the yard. I thought that I might burn the entire house down that day. I didn’t, but I finally began to forget about you.

A one night stand and my confused walk home. 

The moment I realized that I had to go.

The university library, and the stacks we always wanted to make love in.

Your living room couch.

An abandoned house and the rock salt shotgun.

Your disappearance.

My misunderstanding.

The glow of the flash.

The grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, you made, when I showed up on your doorstep, at two in the morning, my clothes ripped, my face covered in mud, high on acid, needing a warm place to stay, which you denied me, when you shut the door, and asked that I never return.


My life, as it comes rushing toward me, like this western road leading me to a home that I’ll barely even know.

“Richard,” she says to me. “Richard, wake up. We’re here.”

Chapter 64

64

I found the letter sitting on the

night-stand a few hours after she had left.

Two pieces of paper, standard, 8x11,

that she must have taken from my office.

They were folded into thirds and held

tightly together by three staples that she

must have slammed into the paper with

purposeful force. I had to rip them open to

get to the words within. She began:

I have and always will be a woman consumed by love.

I have spent my entire life searching for that Hollywood perfection, that Rosalind Russell /Cary Grant sort of love that’s playful and knowing, smart and confident, and most of all...unbreakable.

Not every little girl dreams of marriage.

Not every daughter dreams of their father walking them down the isle.

But every girl, every person rather, dreams of being in love. Richard, when I met you, believe me, that dream came true.

When I showed up on your doorstep, half drunk, rain-soaked and broken, I had no interest in staying for long. Simply a night, maybe two, and I would vanish. Perhaps I would have left a note, a simple thank you letter, but I wasn’t planning on loving you. I was planning on moving to Portland.

But one night became many and began to include days which strung together like a passing train. You swept me up in the whirlwind that is loving you and soon my thoughts of flight hovered much closer to the ground.

I’ve grown so accustomed to us that now, now that it’s time for me to say goodbye, I barely know which foot to begin with. I hate leaving you like this, Richard, but this is fucking killing me.

I could dam a creek with all the things that I just can’t do anymore. I can’t sleep one more night alone. I can’t make dinners for two and then eat them by myself. I can’t pretend that I’m o.k. Above all, I can’t sit here and watch this die. With a little time and support we could have survived the loss of our daughter and eventually, we could have tried again. I could of handled that and we would have been happy again. But I can’t lose the love you and I created together. I can’t watch from the other side of your office door while we fade like photographs. I just can’t do it anymore.

You’re in there now, locked away in your office, drinking, smoking, staring at your typewriter, desperately hoping that the keys will begin to clack by themselves, the words necessary to reason through our loss appearing on the blank page like the ghosts they’re meant to reveal. But they aren’t coming, are they? And yet, you’re still staring.

Don’t you know that I’m staring too?

Don’t you know that I lost everything too?

I can’t bear your burden any longer, Richard, my love. My everything will remain here long after I go, obediently sitting outside your office door. I hope, for our sake, that one day you’ll open that door and return to the life you’ve left behind. After everything we’ve been through together, we deserve that. I love you, but I can’t bear witness to this death.

Until we meet again -
Jamie

Chapter 63

63

She tells me she’s taking me somewhere special today, but is vague about the details.

“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
“Jamie, where are you taking me?”
“You’ll find out when we get there. Don’t ruin the surprise.”

Saturday morning. The three of us pile into Jamie’s Subaru. Jr. calls “Shotgun!” as soon as we step foot out of the door. “But I’m so much older than you,” I try and reason. Jr. just looks at me with those exceptional brown eyes that smile just like her mother’s and quips, “We’ll, you snooze you lose, old man.”

The two of us have grown quite fond of one another.

“It’s amazing how much she’s been around the house these two weeks,” her mother says to me last night as we’re preparing for bed. I nod, but cannot reply. My mouth is full of toothpaste.

She crawls into bed wearing a simple pair of turquoise panties and a white tank top that accentuates her breasts almost perfectly. At forty-two she still has an exceptional body and a flawless face that’s been freshly cleaned. The removal of make-up leaves God’s natural canvas completely unblemished. I can’t help but stare at her through the mirror as I absentmindedly brush my teeth. She catches my eye, and demurely smiles back.

“ I have a surprise for you tomorrow.” She says. “Hopefully Jamie will want to come along.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”

With the Jamie’s both in the front seats and me in the back we pull out of the driveway and into the street. From this vantage point it’s all but impossible to distinguish the two young ladies. The Jamie in the passenger seat opens a small carrying case and pulls out a compact disc. She slides it into the stereo and turns around to look at me. “This is one of my favorite albums,” she says just before she cranks up the volume.

And as we head away from the two Jamies' suburban neck of the world, the haunting guitar notes of “Gimmie Shelter” engulf us. Falling back into the car seat, Jamie, I’m not sure which Jamie, but Jamie rolls down all of the windows. With the breeze blowing in and out of the car Mick Jagger and his Stones musically take us back to 1969 while this road westward takes the three of us back to where we all began.

“You can’t always get what you want,” Mick celebrates at the end of Let it Bleed. “But if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need.”