Dear Jen,
I haven’t a damned clue when you’re coming back, if ever, but I hope to see you soon. I miss being understood. Hell, it’s more than that. I miss everything, and feel incredibly alone right now.
I went to our beach the other night all by myself. Jen, I haven’t been that exhilarated in a long time; so alone, so beautiful, so inhibited, so turned on, so fucked up.
That half-hour was a little slice of how I used to feel, I guess, on our wild nights out where anything was possible. Maybe it’s because I’m not in college. I keep thinking about you all, your new lives, and here I sit in my naked apartment with bills and shifts to work and nothing else to sustain me. No one else. No food for the soul.
You know those rocks over by the sandbar? It was kind of hard to swim because there were these huge, wild waves. So I dug my legs into the stones as far as I could and laid up against the slab of stone and let the waves crash against me. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the pounding, pulling, even when the waves would knock me against the stone. The suction of the force was pulling my legs out of the sand and pebbles. I felt overcome.
Overcome. Jen, I guess there’s no point trying to describe the sensation. What are words? I felt like a virgin sacrifice. It was sensual, but a hundred other things too. I didn’t want to leave, wanted to write to you, but I was soaking wet and still too detached to pick up a pen. So I went to find some American cigarettes, then talked myself into going to the movies instead. But I wish I would have stayed at the beach. I need that place. I don’t know if I’ll feel the same when I’m with somebody. There’s something in me that’s too private. Something that may cost me happiness.
Sometimes I need to be alone, detached, and yes, fucked up so much I ache. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to hear. I just want to feel, absorb the carefully hidden perceptions of myself. What happens when you commit yourself for good? Do you lose this? It’s like a poem I wrote that didn’t come off right. I was waiting for the horizon to let me go, and Jen, I think that’s one of my greatest fears. I’ll never be satisfied. I’ll always be searching for something more. This recognition alone keeps me from committing. Keeps me from love. So where does that leave me? Some selfish bitch left alone to her pain and her incapabilities? Some life. So where do I get off fucking up your relationships with my distorted images, right? What do I know about love?
Maybe I got a little carried away but I can’t help but feel that part of you is exactly like this. Like I am. That you have the fear. Maybe it’s present in anyone free-thinking, abstract and intelligent. Or maybe it’s just my imagination again, coloring everyone’s world for them. There’s always that, isn’t there?
I’m sorry about Roly. Really, I am. I’m sorry I behaved badly: I know you’d say otherwise, but I know in my heart I did. I didn’t want to be the only one who felt this way, and I’d lost you to something I perceived to be a thinly veiled game. But I see you now, shelled up in Toronto, cutting everything and everyone off, and I have to wonder why. I mean, that’s not your thing, Jen. Solitude. Be careful. Men love a woman in trouble.
I’m tired. Write me soon, please.
- Anne.
Jen had never seen this letter before. Not once. She’s sure she’d remember. Positive. It was waiting for her with the bills when she came home. There’s no postmark on the letter. It has to be Gary who put it in the mailbox. She’d never, not now. But it was only yesterday Jen saw him. It seems like a year ago. It doesn’t sit right, but she’s been up all night and feels burnt out and in a glaze. She doesn’t have the energy to put it all together right now.
There’s an early summer morning feel about the house… the light from the river. Everything looks alien to Jen. The pine cottage couch with its marine tweed seat-covers, the little clay pots on the bare wooden shelves, the tile table she worked so hard on, glazing each block, so it’d look like a big happy sun in a bed of bronze and blue.
This does not look like a room built for comfort. Or children. Chris’s toys are hiding in a tall rattan basket, beside the peacock chair. The plants are wilting. Jen’s Turkish wall-hanging looks, well, it looks like it belongs in a single-woman’s eclectic flat. Not a family home.
Jen folds the letter and puts it in her purse. She hears footsteps upstairs, and cannot decide whether to go up and get Chris, or wait for Jace to come down. She decides she’ll make coffee first. She steals into the kitchen, another alien room. Colored tins and pans, a strange little bookcase, and hand-painted wood table with two press back chairs, a plastic highchair. The highchair is completely out of place. Its vinyl hearts clash with the feel of the room. What has she been doing here? Why doesn’t it all fit in?
She makes coffee in the old metal pot. It’s not that they can’t afford a modern one, she just likes the metal pots they used when they first invented automatic coffee. Garage sale treasures. She feels very nervous, her stomach is coiled tight. She’s not sure whether she’s dreading a fight or deadly silence, but she feels awful. She wants to hold Chris, to play with him. She missed him, and feels sad about walking out yesterday. But she doesn’t want to have to face Jace before she gets him. If Chris is with her, it won’t be so bad. So she decides to wait until Jace brings him down.
She goes to the porch to enjoy her coffee, to think about this letter, this new glimpse of Saint. There’s a light breeze on the water today. She opens one of the windows. It sticks, so she has to pull hard on the lever. Everything smells fresh. Maybe it will all be okay. She sits down at her desk and sees it’s only 7:00 a.m. It feels much later. She’s surprised that Jace is up this early if he was out so late. He doesn’t work ti1 9, and it only takes him a few minutes to get ready. She sees a tanker ship coming into view from the bay. She watches it growing larger, until it passes on the other side of the island and disappears from view.
She and Janet used to love going to the island when they were teenagers. A ferry goes over twice a day, and the ferry-driver used to get them high. Then they’d sit a1l day by the muddy channels and talk. It’s hard to put today’s Janet together with the scruffy, mischievous hippy of Jen’s childhood. It’s strange how they still find themselves on the same wavelength now. It’s not something she usually thinks about a lot. She just takes it for granted. Jen often wonders what Rosemary was like when she was younger. It’s strange, so hard to picture her less than fully-formed. Smart, shy, maybe a little bit awkward back then. Jen doesn’t know how she’ll manage all this now. The guilt. She’s going to be hard on herself, Jen suspects. Jen feels a little helpless, a little cut out. She realizes that Rosemary shares everything except her own pain. But maybe this is why they’ve been friends, so close, for so long now. Because Rosemary has that reserve, Jen doesn’t get sick of a steady barrage of emotions, like she does with Lou. She’s not sure how this works. Everything feels different today. Maybe it was what Rosemary said, even if she didn’t mean it. It hurts, but Jen has to ask herself if it’s true. Saint said it. Now Rosemary. Only those closest to Jen have to tools to hurt her. The map: strike here.
“Mrs. Jones?”
Jen turns and sees Sherry holding Chris in her arms. They startle her.
“Hey there. I almost forgot you were here. Was that you walking around upstairs?”
“Um, yeah.” Sherry looks a little sleepy, has that ‘vampire girl’ look about her with her dark hair and eyes and revived 60’s ornament. The friendship bracelets, silver rings, smudges of black eyeliner and straight, greasy bob.
“Come here sweetie,” Jen says to Chris, who’s reaching out for her. She kisses him and holds him tight for a minute, but he squirms. Now that he’s sure she’s really there, he wants down to play.
“Jace still sleeping?”
“I guess. I didn’t hear him come in,” Sherry says with a yawn.
“The car’s out front, so he must be home.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah. Anyway, sorry about last night. Let me make you some breakfast,” Jen offers.
“Naw, it’s okay. I think I’11 just go home and sleep some more. But thanks.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” Her arms are crossed against her chest. She’s not a morning person, Jen thinks.
“Okay. I’11 have to go upstairs to get your money, I don’t have any left on me.”
“Sure,” she says, and sits down on the wicker loveseat, where Chris is pulling himself up. She begins talking to him. This is why Jen likes her. As strange and hip as she looks, underneath she’s a good-hearted girl who loves kids. Jen goes upstairs quietly; she doesn’t want to wake Jace just yet. The door to their room creaks when she opens it. The bed is perfectly smooth. Stunned, Jen looks out the window. The car really is there. She feels a sense of panic.
She checks the bathroom, Chris’s room, the guest room, nothing. He’s not here. She tells herself maybe he went for a walk, maybe he’s in the garage. She runs downstairs and onto the back porch. Sherry gives her funny look, there must be something wild in her eyes. Fear.
“He’s not upstairs. He took the car last night, right?”
“Yeah, of course,” Sherry looks puzzled.
“Okay, maybe he just went for a walk. I’ll have to go look while you stay with Chris. I’m sorry…”
“No problem Mrs. Jones.”
Jen slips on her bike boots and goes out to the garage. Empty. So she walks down by the river, crossing the neighbor’s yard toward the small wooded lot on the other side. She can see everything inside their house, right through to the front window and down the lane. She feels a little guilty, but can’t help noticing. She can see the corner of the TV, two small blond bodies in pajamas sitting on the floor, a woman holding her head looking down at what Jen suspects is a magazine or a tablet. Jen prays she doesn’t notice her cutting through the yard.
Jen’s almost at the woodlot when she sees car keys. She picks them up. They’re his. She cannot begin to understand what has happened. She feels horror closing in her throat as she enters the cool shade of the trees. A little further, she finds a shirt. His. Three trees later, a belt and a faded pair of Levis. Then she sees a sock in a fern bush. Another. She comes out in a clearing by a sandy part of the river bank. Jace is lying curled up on his side with his face inches from the water. He’s white, cold. There’s a bottle of Jack Daniels upside-down in the sand. His legs are muddy. His underwear are in the river, caught on a branch, fighting the current.
Jen can’t seem to breathe as she rushes over and tilts his face up out of the muck. He opens his eyes slowly; they seem cloudy, veiled. He closes them again. She steps over him to the water’s edge and crouches down to face him.
“Jace, wake up! What are you doing here, God you…”
“Fuck off,” he slurs. He doesn’t bother opening his eyes again.
“I need money for the sitter.”
“Fuck you,” he says.
“Jace! What’s going on here…”
“You tell me, Jen.” He’s clearly awake now, just won’t open his eyes. His words are clearer though.
“Didn’t you get my message? About Rosemary?”
He smiles and laughs to himself.
“Come on, Jace, Sherry’s back at the house. I’ve got to pay her.”
“Then go to the bank.”
He still won’t move a muscle, it’s a point of honor, Jen thinks. She stands up to relieve the strain and crosses her arms.
“You have to go to work.”
“Nope.”
“What am I supposed to tell them, you’re lying naked by the riverside and don’t feel like going in? Come on!” She pokes him a little with her boot.
“Leave me alone, Jen.”
“No.”
“Go away. You’re good at that. Just take off.”
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you’d better get it together fast. I’m going into town to get money for Sherry, then I’m taking Chris to Mom’s. When I get back here, you’d better be cleaned up and ready to talk,” Jen says.
“Or else?”
“Just do it.”
“Or else what Jen, will you leave me?” He opens his eyes to show me his bitterness.
“Fuck off!”
“No, you fuck off, you whore.”
“Don’t do this, Jace…”
“Don’t Jace me, just go, get away.”
“You’ll be sorry if I do.”
“Good riddance to bad trash,” he spits.
He’s a child, curled up, closing his eyes again to make the world go away. But Jen doesn’t feel any pity, none at all. She wants to kick him and scream and tear his hair out to make him move, the bastard. She stands there for a minute, and realizes she could kill. She’s shaking with rage. There’s no justice.
“Go on, what’s the matter, you little cunt. Afraid no one would look after all the shit for you if you left. Pay the bills. Be a parent?”
She lands the boot hard into his stomach, making her toes numb. He grabs her ankle with his left hand and pulls her down. Jen topples sidelong into the shallow water and her wrist burns but she crawls forward and jams her left fist under his jaw. He leaps on top of her and clutches her throat with one hand. She thrusts her knee up and he goes limp, rolls off but doesn’t let go of her throat. She knows she has to reason to get him to stop but the rage keeps surging even as she chokes. She feels the cool water lapping against her hair.
She grabs his hair and tries to grind his face into the wet sand to get him to let go but his neck is too strong so she pulls back instead and this throws him off a little. She uses this chance to push forward again, and presses with all her might. Her veins are exploding. He’s sobbing, muffled in the sand, but neither of them lets go. He doesn’t squeeze any tighter, though; she can still gasp air. She keeps her pressure firm. It seems like an eternity passes, but finally his hand relaxes and slides off her neck. She struggles to sit up and lift his head up out of the sand. His eyes open to saucers, like a rabbit caught in a headlight. She pulls her right arm back, and slaps him across the face with every ounce of force she can muster. He just lies there, facing the bush now, and slowly draws his knees up to his chest, staring, tears swimming around the clumps of sand stuck to his face. Jen sits breathing hard, looking at him, hoping he’ll meet her gaze. But he can’t, so she rises, and tries to brush the sand off her wet clothes.
She walks away into the brush, enjoying the whipping branches that slap against her goosepimpled flesh. She’s not numb anymore, and at least the pain feels alive.
She comes out into the sun of her neighbor’s back yard. The woman is clutching the collar of her robe, looking out the window at Jen. Jen marches forward, lost, craving the comfort of a hot shower. She swings open the door to the back porch, and Sherry looks up at her.
“Jace was asleep by the water. I tried to wake him up, so he tripped me and I fell in the river,” she says. She smiles. Her face might crack, but Sherry understands how she’s supposed to respond.
“Oh my god!” she laughs.
“I’m going to go for a quick shower, and then we’ll have to go to an ATM before I take you home.”
“It’s okay, you can pay me later.”
“No, I’d rather do it now. Just let me shower first.”
“Sure thing, Mrs. Jones.”
In the shower the burning spray makes Jen’s flesh pink and overtakes the pain throbbing in her wrist. She wants the steam, the tears, to dissolve the last two days, the images flashing in her head. She wants to be an empty vessel, so she can begin again and collect joy, beauty, all the things hidden from her for so long.
She wants to be innocent, and know it is hopeless.