-C
A
Curious Position
Time is a hell of a
thing to mourn, so I don't bother. It's not solid like a person; it
never dies like a loved one leaving you with your dignity and a
justified weeping finale. Instead, it keeps dying, every day, every
time you open your eyes.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
There's three more
funerals you'll never find the time to attend.
You can sit at its
bedside while it wastes away.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Wring your hands and
click your tongue, but nothing will stop the procession; it marches
along whether you sit on the grassy hill and sun yourself ignorant to
its passing, or balance the coffin on a padded mourning suit
shoulder; the sad, sweet serenade of fabric and wood in measured
tone.
Shush.
Shuffle.
Shush.
*******
Most nights, I sleep
on the couch. Why bother moving to the bed when the couch is more
than adequate? Its big enough, my feet barely make it past the second
cushion even with my legs stretched all the way out. One of the first
quilts I ever made, a child's blanket with a patchwork kitten batting
a real piece of yarn, hangs over the back during the day and is the
perfect throw to cover my toes at night. Besides, if I mess up the
bed it means I have to make it, and I hate making beds.
I still have that
quilt, the one with the creepy kitten (never really thought about the
Frankensteinesque effect of stitches across its face while I was
making it) because I had no children to give it to. I got married at
twenty-three but we wanted to make sure we had enough room, a real
house and a backyard, before the children came. Back then the only
method of birth control for a respectable married couple like us was
the withdrawal method. A little risky, but somehow we beat the
numbers game; not even a scare.
By the time I turned
thirty I was an orphan. We had the house by then, one with a large,
manicured lawn that sloped down to a shallow forest. On the afternoon
of my mother's wake, I caught my husband and my sister making love up
against a birch tree in that forest. I tiptoed back to the wake,
hoping they didn't see me, forcing a confrontation, a slipped moment
to become a permanent truth. I remember the square heels of my
Sears-Roebuck pumps sinking into the Spring-softened lawn, leaving
marks like a path of a pirate's map, leading to the giant X. I recall
the way their sounds became the song of an injured bird. I remember
telling myself “Grief does funny things to people.”
In an effort to heal
my broken heart, my husband decided we could end our habitual
precautions, that a baby was just the thing for his quiet, sullen,
chain-smoking wife. But it was too late. Maybe out of
self-preservation clicked on by the betrayal I couldn't allow to be
real, I began the first stages of early-onset menopause. It turns out
one of the symptoms was blindness where the increased frequency of my
little sister's visits was concerned. There were a lot of birds
nesting in the back woods in those days.
One night in
mid-February, I awoke to a moan that echoed up the frost-covered lawn
like a rolling marble, tapping against my bedroom window. I'm not
sure what made that particular night different, but I threw off the
covers and slid into my slippers.
The axe was where it
always was, leaning up against the woodpile on the outer garage wall.
It was heavier than I imagined it would be; heavy as intent could be,
and instead of throwing it over my shoulder like a warrior, I dragged
it behind me like a biddy with a grocery cart. It left a trail across
the grass from the house to my husband. And my sister.
I paused for a
moment when I found them, and the adrenaline flashed through my guts
like lightening, then rumbled deeper into the muscle tissue like
low-lying thunder.
She started
screaming, pushing him out of her, holding her hands out in front of
her face. I smelled the hot urine that leaked down her bare legs at
the sight of her scorned sister in a long white nightgown, hefting an
axe; it soaked the panties hooked on her left foot.
“Rose...”
Donavon stumbled over each letter, trying to pull his tweed trousers
up over his pale ass. “Rose, wait.”
He moved away from
Lilly, the coward, and she fell to the ground, screams muffled by
moss and snow.
Thats when I swung.
The blade was sharp
and it bit through the yielding flesh, wedging itself deep in the
denser core so that the metal squeaked as I wiggled it back out. The
second swing was easier because by then I'd balanced my legs and
positioned my torso just so. She must have stopped screaming at some
point, but the absence didn't register; I was consumed by the task.
I didn't know why
they always came to this tree, maybe it tilted at the perfect angle
for their bodies, maybe they were sentimental, bu when it fell under
my axe I had the odd sensation that it was over, that I had managed
to end it once and for all. And I was right.
They scrambled up
the slippery slope to the house while I finished chopping down their
birch. Donavon took the lock-box with our savings and his old pistol
from the closet and loaded it into the backseat of the Chevy, along
with his good shoes, some winter coats and my sister. I heard they're
together still in a retirement villa on the west coast, their doting
children making regular visits to bring the rosy-cheeked
grandchildren for well-mannered visits. Of course, at sixty-six,
Lilly is the youngest there, a bit of a Bingo bombshell. Well, good
for them, I suppose.
After Donavon left I
took in a few boarders, mainly students from the university. I tried
to limit the intake to females, but by the third year I took in a
boy. He was a thin specimen, smelling of caramel and mothballs like
an old woman. Maybe that’s why I took him in when he showed up on
the doorstep clutching the ad for renters in one finely-boned hand, a
duffel bag of pilly wool sweaters in the other.
“I know it says
female boarders only, but its the only room in my price range and its
close to the library. You won't even know I'm here.”
And for the first
month he was in the back bedroom the only evidence of Brian Childs'
existence was the loaf of cracked wheat bread on top of the fridge, a
set of galoshes in the mud room and the grey cloud of chickadees on
the front lawn each morning, fighting over the ring of crust thrown
from his breakfast as he left for class. The smells in the house
stayed the same, his own scent covered by bleach and Chantilly like a
woollen sock. The dynamic didn't change either. Besides Childs, there
were three women in the house: myself; Ming, an international student
out of Taiwan studying pharmacology; and Diane, an obese nursing
co-op placement. At first, we were ruffled and moved more cautiously
about the common areas. After that first week, we settled back down
over the nest, and by winter break we'd gelled as a 4 person unit. We
weren't really friends or family; no one was a replacement for an
absentee parent or a missed sibling, but it worked. We'd even started
a household lending library in the front room. Our taste in
literature was almost contrary with one another. Ming sprinkled my
Reader's Digest hardcover collection with Russian names and Diane
added two or three new paperback romances a week, while Brian
contributed slim volumes of carefully curated poetry. I read each
cover, every jacket summary and memorized each author. I'd take them
down off the three shelves they occupied during the day when the rest
of the house was in class or on shift. I was old then- thirty-five
and practically a widow. And as an old woman I'd put aside desires
and passion, and focused my efforts on the running of the household.
As such, though I handled the books twice weekly and ran my fingers
over the embossed letters of their spines often, I never once read
them. It was too dangerous. Literature, after all, can be a crowbar
for a closed heart.
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