We spent the anniversary of our son’s suicide tending a fire deep in the wild of the North Cascades, the sound of the Skagit River rushing by a constant reminder of the persistent truth of impermanence.
My husband’s boy scout training emerged in the form of confidence and a methodical approach to fire-making. We stacked logs in formation, two at a time. Poked the burning cuts of wood with a charred stick. Taming the coals and teasing out their heat.
In the summer I started a compost. It stood at the back of the lot, out past the trees and the grass on the edge of the wood. It was a good spot because it was half sun, half shade, and the smell didn’t reach the house.
In the compost I put the dead grass that dried up in the sun. I put sticks and twigs and dried leaves. I put dandelions and logs and whole fallen branches, and soon I had a great heap of dead things.
Nick bought paint, white paint. Enough white paint, he thought. He also bought all of the brushes and rollers that the man suggested should go with it. The man knew plenty about painting houses. Done plenty of painting, myself. What you need is probably 5 gallons. Now, do you need brushes?…
Nick started with the back room…with the closet in the back room. It was a basement apartment. It was once part of the main house upstairs, but the kindly upstairs couple had turned it into a basement apartment for people who needed a place to get back on their feet. They had sealed off the upstairs at the top of the old stairs but kept the stairs themselves, in case they should ever want to open the place back up again. As it was, the stairs now just went up and ended against the wooden boards which sealed off the upstairs from the down. The stairs were there, but went nowhere.
The Leisure Plaza is full of cool shit. Fruit machines, American pool (hey guys, you’re welcome), tenpin bowling and interactive squash – but it’s all off-limits to lesser mortals like me. There’s a big red ‘X’ slashed through it on the map in the orientation room. I stared at that X so freakin’ hard, I’m surprised it didn’t burst into flames.
With a flourish, the waiter unleashed their steaks. Dan was hit by the smell first and his mouth watered accordingly. He braced himself for consumption, but rather than hand them their bounty, the waiter curiously knelt by the trolley and rummaged underneath, before popping back up again with something gripped firmly in his hand. Dan had no idea what was taking place and a peek at his wife, Susan, revealed that she was as bewildered by the whole process as he.
Today I walked six thousand and thirty-nine (6,039) steps which I appraised as ‘acceptable’.
I consumed five hundred and thirty-one (531) calories for breakfast in the eating of one bagel (254) with cream cheese (100) and smoked salmon (177).
I shed twelve (12) tears whilst crying on the phone to my dad about the fundamental question: “Am I willing to be hurt in the same way by this person again?”, which I resented but had to concede was #growth.
The backyard s’mores party for the neighborhood kids on the last day of school was the perfect time for Karl to show off his new fire pit. The pit was tubular, silver, and more than a little phallic. Smoke got sucked into the sides of the contraption and kept it from the women’s hair and clothes. (Which, Karl thought, they would appreciate and compliment him for.) Karl could see his convex reflection on its’ shiny, perfectly smooth surface. What a man he was.
It was one of those backyard parties where, in a movie, everyone would start sex-swinging or be secretly in a coven or perhaps be complex robots unaware of their own nature. It was the way of the suburbs to imagine that the exotic and chaotic lurked beneath the quotidian surface. The blandness was sinister. Like, clearly sinister, evil, horrible, a desecration of the earth itself to live like they did — destroying large swaths of prairie to install big box stores, extra wide parking spaces, and identikit houses that wanly gestured toward an imagined, vaguely feudal, European, past that was pure fantasy. Yet people fled here from the city because they felt it was safe for their children.
At first sight I thought it was some sort of exceptional moth. I had never seen anything like it. My husband’s best guess was an obscenely large bat. Neither had the ring of truth. I re-heated last night’s supper while we failed at calming each other down. It was all I could think to do. Perched on top of the microwave with its ovular, platinum eyes fixed open, the creature never once moved. I wanted to stop and inspect the down on its marbled wings. The texture of its skin reminded me of a mushroom’s gills. All we could do was chew and stare. Brian asked me sheepishly if we should keep it.
I suggested we call it Baby, short for Babylon. The weight of undying mystery seemed to suit it just fine. All day Baby sat perfectly motionless on our microwave. It became clear Baby needed to soak up a little radiation to survive.
Scars heal, but should they?
What if they lingered, a weeping sore, so that they were a constant reminder? When they faded, so does the memory. If they remained, visceral and seeping, would you neglect the reminder?