Divorce

This is a one hundred word challenge for grown ups. This week’s prompt is the sun shone but. You can find other entries at:

http://www.theheadsoffice.co.uk/

Can I stop the clock?

I see them breathing, but there is no air. Through the open windows the sun shone but they were still sleeping. It is time to go now but my feet won’t move. I’ll count to ten; kiss them on the forehead and go. That’s it. I will pretend that I am just going to work and at the end of the day I will be home.

One kiss for Katherine and one kiss for Taylor. But my heart knows better. It beats but there is no blood. The sun shone but there was no light.

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A penny for your thoughts

Neat rows of corn and tobacco plants flicker by the car window like the spokes of a wheel. Hours go by without a word spoken between us. Then my father’s voice breaks the silence as he pats my leg.

“A penny for your thoughts?”

There are complete conversations in my head, but I offer up “Nothing.”

“Must be awfully lonely in that head.”

He reaches out to pat my leg again, but misses as he looks at the road straight ahead. He smiles, lights another cigarette and exhales a curling snake of smoke.

“Yep, awfully lonely.”

I turn my head to look at the green fields of North Carolina stretching into a forest of trees on the horizon and wonder where they end.

Floating on my back in the frigid Maine Ocean water I find memories of my father caught in the hollow of the waves tumbling over and over again. I point my feet towards the shore and let the sun warm my face, wondering for a moment if I am still thirteen and have just dreamt the last thirty five years.

I stand up, turn around and see a single white sail leaning into the wind brilliant against the blue sky where it meets the water. Turning back toward shore I see Paul on the beach and breathe a sigh of relief.

I join him on the beach. We lie on our backs and let the sun dry us. An hour goes by before he turns toward me, opens one eye, squinting from the sun and points a finger at me. “What are you thinking about? Right now!” He says this in a quick way to signify that I cannot change my mind or interpret my thoughts.

 

“I was just thinking I wish I was a professional writer”

“But you are a professional writer.” He says

“Technically, I would have to be paid.”

“Well, I could pay you.” He says

“You wouldn’t be paying me for my writing. That might make me a prostitute, but not a professional writer.”

“We have college bills to pay; maybe prostitution is the way to go.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a man approaching four hundred pounds in a thong swimsuit walk towards the ocean.

“I’ll keep on writing.” I say.

The day stretches into evening as we join our friends on the front porch of the Inn while a full moon floats over the pine trees. Paul is recounting a story from his trip to Wells to buy cheese.

“It’s a good day to be Irish. Do you know what we’re talking about?” Paul is quoting the shop owner.

“No”

“We’re talking about the English; they all want to be Irish.” There is disdain in the shopkeeper’s voice.

“Well, I must be conflicted, because my mother is Irish Catholic and my father is English Protestant.” Paul says

“Well at least you’re not one of those queers!” The shopkeeper says.

“Actually, I am.” Paul says as he grabs the cheese and walks out.

We are dumbfounded as we look at the wedge of brie sitting on the table. I grab the knife slice the cheese, take a bite and say. “Homophobic brie is actually pretty good!”

I am thinking about Paul’s story while we sit in traffic on the trip back to Boston; the sunny days of the weekend already fading into memories under a cloudy sky. Paul looks out of the corner of his eye at me and says:

“What are you thinking about? Right now!”

I consider saying nothing, but then “I was thinking even though strangers may hate me, I’m glad that I don’t hate myself anymore.” Paul pats my leg and smiles. I look through the window of the car, past the traffic and close my eyes.  There is a single white sail leaning into the wind, brilliant against the blue sky where it meets the water.

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Comfortable in my own skin

This is a one hundred word challenge for grown ups. This week’s prompt is the picture listed below. You can find other entries at:

http://www.theheadsoffice.co.uk/

Browsing through the online profiles, I begin to notice a formula. Amazingly, they are all well-adjusted, travelled, “comfortable in my own skin” men. They all seem so complete that I begin to wonder why they would possibly want to screw it up by including someone else in their lives.


But then I begin to meet them and it becomes clear that aside from being pathological liars their profile pictures were merely an approximation. Let’s just say that the right lighting and certain angles can make even Quasimodo look like George Clooney. But nothing could prepare me for this profile picture.

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Shut up and drive!

I rarely drive. But I am awesome at giving advice to Paul while he drives.

Unencumbered by all of those driving gadgets like gas pedals, steering wheels and odometer thingies I can really concentrate on the important aspects that make car travel pleasant such as the selection of music and temperature control. I find that being separated from the mechanics of driving makes me a superior and impartial back seat driver.

Paul does not agree.

This morning I offered a bit of obvious advice that I thought he might find helpful. You should not read e-mail while driving on the streets of Boston. Because 1) It is illegal and 2) you will miss your turn. To which Paul countered, 1) did we get the fuck where we were going? Because 2) there is a bus that can take me there.

Paul seems to think that an elephant could fit in the space between our car and the next while I believe only a mouse would fit. Several times I reached for the imaginary brake pedal on the passenger side with both of my feet.

“This brake pedal doesn’t work!” I say with mock alarm.

“Thank God. We’d be stopping every five seconds if it did.” Paul says wearily.

A few months ago, Paul had an asthma attack in the middle of the night. He dressed; tip toed out of the bedroom and checked into the Emergency room. After his treatment, he came back home and slipped back into bed. I was completely oblivious to all of the above, which makes me a rotten husband.

The next morning I woke up, got dressed and went to the gym. I sensed that Paul had a restless night. So I did not wake him, which makes me a loving husband. I returned from the gym and noticed a bracelet on Paul’s arm, which upon closer inspection I identified as a hospital ID bracelet.

Shaking him awake I say “Did you go to the hospital last night?”

“I had a tough time breathing”

“And you didn’t wake me?”

“What could you have done?”

“Well, for starters I could have driven you!”

“Sweetie, your driving would have made it harder for me to breathe.”

Apparently, not only am I a horrid back seat driver, but an equally horrid front seat driver. I’ll admit I suck at parallel parking. Paul constantly says “It’s all about the angles.” Like this should mean something to me. But with ten cars behind me honking their horns the only angle I can think of is how I can slant this to appear as if I really wanted to switch between drive and reverse fifteen times while trying to park.

And OK, I’ll admit that I can be a bit cautious while driving. But driving is a risky business and you can never be too careful when trying to turn at a busy intersection. I check left, then right, then left again and right and then left once more just for good measure.

“Does Polly want a cracker?” Paul says.

“What?”

“You look like a parrot, bobbing your head up and down and back and forth.”

This is the kind of negative feedback that can damage a marriage. But if I’m going to be completely honest, I don’t look that good driving. Not compared to Paul. He has an easy grace sitting in the driver seat with his long legs and sexy confidence. While I look like an eighty year old man hunched over the steering wheel, nervous and fidgety.

So I will be Miss Daisy to his Hoke and let him drive and not say one word. Because those negative comments really serve no good purpose. But, I will still control the selection of music. Oh, the stories I could tell about his taste in music.

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Baa-Baa Billy

“Nick, I am giving you an A plus for this project, but please don’t ever, ever write children’s books.” This was the alarmed warning from my step-son’s high school teacher after he turned in his children’s book project titled “Baa-Baa Billy”. Of course I was intrigued. I am the title character. I felt a swelling of pride and asked Nick to tell me the story:

Baa-Baa Billy wandered a lonely road far from the tiny farming village that was his lambhood home. But his heart was full of wonder and his fluffy tail twitched with glee as the rocky road before him stretched into the distant hills.

His tiny hooves had carried him through the village gates with a soft click-click in the dark deep black of night while all the other farm animals slept and dreamt of buckets of oats and grain. But Baa-Baa Billy had bigger dreams. Dreams that were bigger than his simple little sheep’s brain: A pasture of his own.

“Why hello!” a deep voice called. The click-click of Billy’s hooves stopped and his little pouf of hair stood on end.

“Who’s there?” Baa-Baa Billy bleated.

“Lucifer’s my name, but you can call me Luke.”

Now because Baa-Baa Billy was so simple and could not concentrate hard enough to keep his eyes from crossing. He failed to see that his life had suddenly taken a terrible and horrifying turn.

“I’m Baa-Baa Billy!” he bleated with glee.

“Well of course you are and you are seeking a pasture of your own! I happen to own a pasture that is of no use to me.”

Baa-Baa Billy began to dance and kick up his mud covered hooves as he baa-baa’ed with abandon and joy. It was such a horrible happy sound that Lucifer covered his leathery ears and shouted:

“Quiet you stupid little piece of mutton!”

Baa-Baa Billy had no idea what mutton was but there was something in the way that Lucifer licked his pointed teeth that even poor little simple Billy could understand.

“The pasture can be all yours for such a small price.” Lucifer said this slowly so that Billy could understand.

“Baa, baa-but I have nothing to give you” Billy said as huge tear drops gathered in his wide eyes.

“The price is your soul: A pittance.”

Poor Billy had no idea what a soul was, but in a moment of confidence strange for such as small lamb he said:

“My soul is quite lovely, certainly worth more than your pasture.”

Lucifer scratched his scaly head and in a moment of pure inspiration said:

“Take this Hannah Montana CD as a down payment and give me your soul”

Poor little Billy was such a big fan that he snatched the CD in his mouth as Lucifer’s terrible smile stretched from ear to ear. Just then the village farmer spotted Billy and came running down the road.

The earth began to tremble and shake and just below Billy’s hooves the road split in two.

“Please Luke, give me my pasture before the farmer catches me!” Billy bleated.

“Your pasture? Why of course it’s your pasture, but your soul is mine and must be stored in hell. I will let you leave if you give me 99 human souls. A sheep’s soul is so tiny that it is only worth that Hannah Montana CD.”

Billy’s eyes grew wide as the farmer reached for his neck. Billy spit out the CD and clamped down hard on the farmer’s leg with his crooked buck teeth, soul number one. The earth swallowed them both whole. The stretch of country road stood empty, save for a Hannah Montana CD. Billy’s soul was devoured and the world never noticed the difference.

I am silent for a moment. I get up from the table and then hug Nick. This is pure genius! My husband Paul gives me a bewildered look and says “OK, now I know you two are related.”

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It's just me (100 word challenge)

This is a one hundred word challenge for grown ups. This week’s prompt, 5 words: ripple,brood, evocative, lilt and untoward (which can be used in any order). You can find other entries at:

http://www.theheadsoffice.co.uk/

“Hello sweetie, it’s just me.” This is the beginning of his every voice mail; always in that sing-song lilt. The first part is good enough; it’s the second part that seems so untoward.


“It’s just a million dollars.”

“It’s just a Renoir”

But that is Paul; never recognizing that his existence has sent a ripple through my life. We sit silently on the T as it carries us through the warm summer night.

“You are not ‘just me’” I don't mean to brood.

“But that is who I am.”

“You are everything”  is my evocative reply.

But that’s just me.

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Too shy, shy

“There’s nothing to see in here folks, nothing to see.” Sam is holding up my jacket stretched wide between his arms as if it were a curtain. I am on one side and every other man who walks through the bathroom door is on the other. His statement produces the opposite effect of its intention. Everyone who enters the restroom is acutely interested in what, exactly, is on the other side of that jacket. At one point I overhear a curious onlooker peeking over the jacket say “What, does he have a vagina?”


“Dammit, Sam” I whisper to myself. He told me this bathroom was private and refurbished. But it is an open bank of urinals with no partitions and immediately within full view to the entire bar when the door swings open.

“William, I’m serious, take a look at the bathroom. You’re not going to believe how beautiful it is.” That is what Sam said when we first entered the bar. If Sam knows anything about me, it is that I am as gullible as my bladder is shy. I walked into the restroom expecting the best but seeing the worst. The look of disgust on my face as I turn back around and walk out of the bathroom has Sam laughing so hard that he has to catch his breath.

Still laughing Sam says, “Ok, come on you pussy, let’s go in and I’ll cover for ya’.” Surprisingly, this statement makes sense to me. Surprising because I am again believing the friend that told me the “Eagle Bar” bathroom is the Taj Mahal of bathrooms. Not surprising because two gin and tonics ago my bladder reached capacity.

So I find myself standing in the spotlight like an actor trying to remember his lines backstage before the curtains are lifted. The urinal is my audience. Relieved, I remember my line.

I have always hated public restrooms. Why do women get complete privacy while men have to stand side by side while they expose themselves? This is why women go in groups. I think they sometimes go to the restroom and never do anything in their three foot by four foot room of privacy but chat and paint their nails, because they can. They are gloating.

I love it when bars or restaurants have single occupancy restrooms. The only time that a single occupancy bathroom does not work is on airplanes. Airlines are under the impression that paper is a suitable substance for bathroom walls and two feet by two feet is ample space to pull your pants down. If that were not intimidating enough the flight attendant is always sitting on the other side of the folding cardboard door listening intently for any embarrassing sounds. Would it kill her to tell the eighty year old man jiggling the damn bathroom handle that the red light above his withered grey head means that someone is in the bathroom closet concentrating?

On a recent flight home from San Francisco to Boston, my husband Paul was in the restroom before the plane took off. A woman in her fifties prepared to sit in the middle seat between me and Paul. “Oh, I am travelling with my husband, would you like my window seat?” I say. “I’d prefer the aisle seat.” She says and immediately plops her presumptive ass down in the aisle seat. I hate her. But then I exact my revenge. I will drink more water and soda than my bladder can handle and then trouble her each time I need to get up. I am writing this as she sits next to me. She is probably nosy too. Oh well, one more bottle of water down and now one more trip to the bathroom closet.

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