Silence

"You have to find a balance between the music and me," I tell my husband. "I won't be lonely. I won't go to that place again. You have no idea what it is like sitting at home every weekend with the children while you are out playing music."

He tries to mask the smirk that bares his teeth but the black night hanging over the country road isn't dark enough to hide what I've become accustomed to seeing.

"Every time we have this conversation it comes back around to the same question. Do you want me to quit?"

His grip tightens on the steering wheel. My oldest son's sleeping head falls softly against the door in the backseat.

"I don't want you to quit. I know you need to play. The only reason it comes to that question is because you make it. You make it black or white. Not me," I say.

"Okay, babe." He shuts down, maybe because he knows I'm right, or because he isn't ready to go there, or maybe because he doesn't believe it isn't me doing this.

I know loneliness doesn't ride on the back of silence. With the children asleep in the backseat, and the gentle jostling of the truck rocking my body like a Bill Withers vocal, words that will be written, never spoken, form in my mind.

You're away even when you're at home. You want to hit the snooze button again and again so your mind can chase a dream shared between old friends. I've never had dreams, only memories of a time when I could hold the pit of another in the palm of my hand and be loved for it.

I think you believe I'm asking too much when I'm only asking for just enough.

You don't like to read about intimate moments I shared with others because you know that you aren't creating them with me. You need a dream. I need a memory.

White Wicker and Wrought Iron

He stood on the front porch and professed his love in a long winded curse. The words, ready to be spat, sat on my tongue. I took it in; the white wicker, the wrought-iron railings, the gardenias, and shook my addiction.

The wind burrowed under the hairs on my arms, created a cold the shivers couldn’t disperse. Had it been that long ago that I left myself to the elements, walking into the hot damp of a New Orleans’ summer night? Yet again, I found myself exposed, my life lugged around in a green backpack, orbiting to the only place I knew to go when the moon hung low in the sky.

"You shaved your head." I hung my bag on the hook above the arranged row of sneakers.

"What do you think?" Van rubbed a hand down his smooth head to his sleepy eye.

"Makes you look too tough," I said. He looked splintered. The untreated curls had always masked the self-inflicted pain behind his eyes.

He arched his back, stretched his lean belly muscles. "You’re a softy under all that garb," he chuckled. "I’m going back to bed. There’s towels in the bathroom if you want to shower." Van followed me to the back of the house and swatted me on the rear before dodging into his room.

I stripped my clothes and dropped them to the floor. I stared at the long skirt, the tights, the torn Sonic Youth tee; studied them, then scooped them up and sat behind the door. I mixed them into the pile of jerseys and ribbed white tanks, tucked the tights under a pair of Girbaud’s.

Van cracked open the door. I shrunk against the wall in embarrassment.

"Crys?"

"Yeah?"

"I’m glad you’re home." The door shut.

In the shower, scrubbing the numbness from my skin, wincing with soap in my eyes, I whispered, "Me, too."

I rolled Rico to the cold side of the bed before getting in.

"Did you dry your hair?"

"Sort of," I lied.

"Get the towel." he pushed himself up and leaned against the headboard.

I sat between his legs, covers wrapped around our waists, while he rubbed the length of my hair between the towel.

"Will I see you in the morning?"

I picked at a loose thread on the quilt I made for him two birthdays ago. "I need to be here a while."

He wrung my hair out in the towel one last time before dropping it over the side of the bed. Under the covers, my nose pressed into the pillow, a soft kiss lingering on the nape of my neck, I thought about the white wicker, the wrought-iron railings, the gardenias, and saw them for what they were; chipped, rusted, and wilted.

Theme

"I read your latest journal while you were gone." He leans back in the computer chair, brings up his legs, and rests his head on his knees. "I don’t know whether to puke or take your face in my hands and kiss you."

Immediately my mind scans the pages of that journal grasping for the pictures that go with the words.

"I don’t know what to tell you, Cory. I wrote it like it was. That is all I can do."

"I feel dirty, Crys. I feel like I stepped into a very scary place that I don’t want to leave. I’m so sorry I invaded your privacy but I had to let you know that I did it."

"I’m not upset that you read it. It’s that reaction I feared the most, the reaction from you." I curl up in his lap knowing the only way to remedy this is to let him hold me.

"It’s hard for me because I know them, even with the changed names. The chipped blue escort, the shelter house….I know your life because I was there. But I was left with this feeling that I’ve been sleeping next to you all these years and I never knew. I never asked. I couldn’t know."

I run my finger down the inside of his palm, willing myself to let him purge instead of making excuses for what I feel.

"Our lives are so interwoven. Not too many people have what we have because the background isn’t there. But that is also what makes it so difficult for me to read. I can picture Denny’s and the yellow Triumph and…..why did you make him out to be so caring? I know what you felt when you wrote ‘Road Trip’. You were shamed. You had taken yourself from Chicago and you were getting out. Then you walked back to him. I know this. I think I would have sensed it even if I didn’t know the background but I know this."

I slide my bare feet under his leg and twist my hair up into a knot. "You don’t get it. We all did what we had to do back then to feel special. You did it too with the guitars and the bare chest and the singing. You needed attention from girls and praise from the boys. You wanted to be known. You did what you had to do. I wanted to be loved."

"It’s my pride, Crys," he sighs. "It is difficult to read about you sharing an intimate moment with someone else. It repulses me, not you, the thought of it happening. How would you feel if I wrote about a passionate moment from my past?"

A smile breaks on my face dimming the blue light on the monitor. "I think you’ve forgotten your past," I smile down at him. "You slept with half my friends."

"Fair enough," he laughs. "Our lives can’t be separated. The history is too deep. I realize this."

I take the baby out for a walk and think about how I was sucked into that life, how at thirteen I ended up dancing in the middle of a house in Howell while two twenty year old men sat on a mattress playing ‘Simple Man’ on acoustic guitars.
_____________
Before bed, Cory wrapped his arms around my waist and told me not to hold back because of his pride or mine. It was a time, a life that many kids shared but no one understands. Maybe that’s part of the story I need to tell.

Perfect Timing

The singer's boot heel pounds the stage. My hip rocks, skirt swirling around my knees like smoke rising from a cigarette left in an ashtray.

Bottle to my lips, I watch the people at the table next to me instead of the empty dance floor. The girl with the shell necklace slides her feet out of her sandals and wraps them around the boy's leg. His eyes follow the curve of her neck while he talks to the man who grimaces with each sip of imported beer.

Tell me, Baby. The singer backs off the microphone. You got to tell me what's going through your head. The melody lures me onto the dirty white tiles.

He thumbs his bass, eyeing the crowd, watching their reaction as I ride the voice I've heard so many times at home.

I need you to tell me.

Barefoot on the front porch. He coaxes the swing back and forth, a silent bass accompanying his guitar.

What's it gonna be?

Lights of the highway hidden behind the cornfield. I catch the screendoor with my foot, two glasses of iced tea in hand.

You gonna come back home

Stop in front of the swing. Wait for the rock forward.

and stay with me?

Ten years. Perfect timing.