it wasn't something she thought of every day, but it did weigh on her. This morning it was easier to shake off, walking in the crisp dawn, down the little one-lane asphalt she lived on the dead-end of. Walking, listening, snapping photographs of milkweed exploding in the first rays of sun, the silvery foxtails leaning like drunken legions of the queens guard under the weight of the dew. The dogs bobbed in and out of the ditch, casting eager looks back at their human, who distractedly fiddles and squints at the little point-n-shoot in her hand.

like these were going anywhere, she scoffed at herself. Like i have any time to do more than get them on the hard drive!

it's amazing how many pockets we can stuff things into, she thought. So many things we think, OH THAT, well we'll figure that out later, then plop! down in a side pocket quickly buttoned, zippered, velcroed and chain-sewn shut clackety clackety clang!.... to somewhat balefully emerge at some later date when you are scratching your head to explain something you are in the middle of that you had plenty of time to plan for... at least that's what all the voices say, and maybe your boss, too. Stupid stupid STUPID!

well, of all the messes she'd ever found herself in, this one stacked up pretty good. It occupied about three tiers of plates constantly spinning on poles in the green room, waiting for the velvet curtains to swing wide and her predicament exposed for all to see. And man what a mess that will be! she smiled ruefully.

but for now it is walking and breakfast and ready the raft for another shot at the rapids. There is always forty minutes of road between her and anything needing attending to, so time for planning gets squeezed between the bursting into waking and the gulps of coffee between the emails and bills and where is that other sock? How can i have twenty unmatched socks? then finally the open road to stretch into a long moment edgewise to the world, unreachable, untouchable, pristine. Audiobooks at the ready, she is earnestly pursuing a self-decreed degree in enlightenment. To ready herself for the storm she knows is circling like sharks, still lazy from their last meal, just beyond the breakers.

So tucking her stray thoughts into burgeoning side pockets, and steadying the 93 plates spinning on their slender poles, she collected herself and focused on staying in one pile until she was safely belted into her little Festiva, some 238,000 miles and still chugging, just like her mind on so many secrets. And it seems she couldn't stuff her head full enough to hold them at bay, to keep them from leaking out her mouth like a toxic spill, quickly igniting into a wildfire and blighting her entire landscape for years to come. How could she have been so stupid!

If it weren't for this, she thought, careening through her day, my life would be sooo boring! Sameness every day, same kinds of rocks, same kinds of rapids, same scheduling snafus. But every once in a while, life throws these zingers! Or not life maybe, but her mother's favorite villain: a poltergeist, or the ubiquitous Murphy, whose law seemed to run amok in Mother's life, explaining the $600 light pole she had to buy from the city after she creamed it with her mustang, spinning out after another drunken charade with her boyfriend. And we kids, scraping the bottom of the spam-can! That protein-delicacy provided in the box of commodities that arrived like Christmas every month, us all gathering round to grab a chunk of velveeta and a saltine cracker or two. And the best-laid plans for going to the zoo and museums or out to the park to play routinely fell to Murphy's mighty hammer, as if that could excuse the thickening patina of broken promises and broken hearts settling like dust over her meager dreams.

Well, that was long ago. Thank god.

Marissa Jean, she thought to herself, when will you grow up!

A rhetorical question, she mused.

Driving now, the thrum of the road through the tires and the wires of fingers and toes and skin on gravity with springs and cantilevers all balancing and distributing shock so fluidly. Her appreciation of the elegance of design swelled in amazement, as her mind populated with exploded diagrams spinning slowly to reveal inner workings she could never quite make out. Like the time she studied gyroscopes and drove her instructor crazy with her obsession to understand it all the way down. He thought that was a bit overkill for the purpose at hand and told her so. But she persisted, in the end to understand that complete understanding is a slippery enterprise, a more a tantalizing and a teasing of the pleasure of satiating curiosity, which she found to be an unusually strong and pesky desire in her, the little trickster at the bottom of lots of monkey-barrels and capable of no end of mischief and tomfoolery.

her mind wandered to the comparison of the shock-absorbing dynamics of the machine to the shock-displacement mechanisms of the human mind, the sideways-sliding compensations, each a layer of counterbalance correcting for a weakness in the previous layer, each layer expressed itself in increasingly complex ideology and behavior.

shaking herself, she had to grin, wondering how she managed to drive from stop to stop without actually driving herself. And remembering to thank the part of her who was such an excellent driver, always knowing exactly when to ring her bell. Well, almost always, recalling several lengthy jaunts toward unknown destinations, unknowing that the interstate had somehow morphed and got out from under her. But thankfully, she was fairly light on her feet, taking joy in cutting back cross-country, snapping shots of everything new she will never see again. Except maybe as they flutter by to join the thousands upon thousands of pictures crowding her 80 gig hard-drive back home.

what a boring story i am, she thought: blind woman bumping along walls, exploring every permutation of the same old thing, leaving a trail of unsorted clutter like breadcrumbs for someone to maybe stumble across and follow to rescue her from this damn mess someday!

right!

damn fine mess! she should say. And so many for comparison! Sometimes she wondered if we didn't squirt into life just to see what creative manner of tangles we could twist ourselves into, each predicament somehow morphing into the next, and the next. This world seems the perfect place for tangles: nothing ever staying where you put it, mostly people thinking they are communicating when it was usually the opposite she noticed, people maybe thinking they might be more comfortable with their foot on somebody's back or other. She remembered the first time she realized nobody noticed or seemed to care about how people feel, the smack! hard right on her chest, the punch in her gut, the instant tears. How old was that? she noodled -- eight, maybe? And suddenly she saw the world in terms of mattering, and mostly how much people mostly mattered only to themselves.

eyes opened then, she began noticing too that there were people who were also amazing in their generosity, that some people really did care, really looked you in the eye and talked to you, not all koochy-koo how cute are you! But these, the gentle hands, the laughing eyes, always seemed carried away on a flick of the wind, smiling to the last like to shine hope back to her outstretched hand, as fate tugged their skirts and the tsunami of time whirled them away. The first saint she remembered was old-lady Agnes, about half-a-mile down from grandma and grandpa's farm. She was tall and gray, like velvet steel, always smiling, always pleasant, always moving silently through her kitchen, through her garden, through laundry, upstairs, downstairs, on the porch. But always with an eye and an ear on us kids, with us so busy with the cornucopia of comics and puzzles and play-pretend, and her beautiful home, full of sunshine and surprises, like laundry chutes and root cellars and a spooky set of ancient parents that lived at the end of a crooked little lane, in a three story house all forgotten from the second floor up, feeling like a seance in a Nancy Drew book as she crept through heart-thump and shhh! to the cousins trailing wide-eyed behind her.

Little scamp! Always sneaking away from the grown-ups to explore and spy and bloom her imagination. How could anything be better than that! She couldn't understand the nicey-nice and suzy-q's always sucking up for favor, when the mysterious Beyond scintillated just outside the window, coiling through her imagination and hooking her like a great big fish, tugging her in... And off she'd go, falling into a dream-sized pocket full of ruffians and forts and sneak attacks on the unseen, if that was all who presented themselves for an adversary. She was Mighty, on her black stallion, like the one from the Walter Farley's series, but her very own black stallion, who in some weird way actually was her, as she could feel her muscle rippling and sliding 'neath her supple skin, and a snort and a whicker would escape her own lips, and she would paw her foot and stomp and kick and run run run! like the wind, around what corners, through what canyons, who could care?

Which of course, looking back, may have been exasperating for the particular grownups involved in the oversight of her slippery little self. But to tell the truth, they hardly ever really tried, except when it came to punishment or chores. Then they were deadly! She still remembered the shrill marisSAAAA!!! as she huddled invisible in some handy nook or cranny, stifling giggles, or sometimes tears Because being a kid isn't all fun and games, is it? She would wait as the danger gradually receded, like a thunderstorm, affording a sneaky retreat to the barn or the top of the corn bin, or maybe grab her pony and run through the cornfields, maybe down to the pumphouse, where the water slammed through a concrete channel so hard it could bruise your hand, and so cold and so pure, drinking from the little metal cup hanging on a nail. She remembered grandpa, on a hot day, stomping the dust off him, the tractor putt-putting outside in the 105 degree Nebraska sun, filling the whole doorway as he took off his pith-helmet and wiped the sweat off his neck and forehead with the huge hanky he always carried in his stripey-bibs. Clean every day and ironed too, cause Grandma made her. And he would drink so deep and go ahhh! and make sure she got some too, and the little cocker-mix Lady who always scouted around the tractor as they chug-chugged down the endless upon endless rows, sweating and bouncing and cursing the rocks, breaking only for noon, iced tea and sundown, kids dangling from the fenders or running along behind, chucking clods.

A pair of red-tails in a tree drew her attention, and she quick-checked the time as she pulled onto the shoulder, tires attempting more purchase than able as she skidded slightly to a stop. Off with the motor as she adjusted the camera, leaned over to roll down the window and ran a quick series, adjusting up and down for exposure, camera secured against the window frame. Oh the beauty! she chortled as she luxuriated in their impressive presence, huge and hooded, their breast feathers tweaking in the breeze, heads tucked and hunched yet from still needing the heat of their feather-blankets, swaying in the improbable twiggy-tops of a towering elm.

Man, I need a better camera! She thought as she hit yet another limit of her cheap little friend, immediately feeling a wash of fondness for this little low-end digital, her very first, who had persevered through a battering first year while teaching her everything it possibly could about photography, even pushing her through its own limitations to stretch her ingenuity and keep her on an eternal hunt for a better way.

only two minutes late, good! Sliding back behind the wheel she revved up and checked over her shoulder pulling out, snapped a parting shot of the red tails through her rear-view mirror, for her "enroute" series. She laughed to herself. The enroute series! Like every other series collecting dust on her hard drive. Well, if not exactly dust, then what? Death through attrition? What happens to synapses that never synapse? Are they at some point reabsorbed by the silicone brain-wires and redistributed for file space needed someplace elsewhere?

She fell wandering then for a moment down the bowels of computer-turned-Brain with its big eye casting for some way of seeing itself, it's own translucent sheathings of mind within mind within mind, the glass onion, discernable only in reflection and with no trusting the funhouse mirrors, all the while slithering along a mossy dread of the unknown deeps, where surely slumbering and stirring serpents and gollums and weasels of clawing need and lies, lies, lies.... down to the pool of oblivion yawning and hungry-beaked and calling you home...

Well, that's quite enough of that! She clambered out of that dream-pocket back into the cockpit, readying for a crash-landing into another crazy day as she pulled around back near the end, for needed space to take a big breath or two before the plunge through another headlong day.

***

Sometime in the night, she awakened. Moonlight filtered through the branches and danced on the walls. The wind was a low moan between sudden bumps on the clapboard, like testing the ancient moorings and sagging foundation, pushing for any advantage time had not already pried loose with bony fingers. Was her man lying next to her? Eyes closed, seeking heat, scenting, listening, stretching taut for clues. He was not. Reaching over, the sheets were cold, and she could see a flicker of blue light from downstairs. He was sleeping in the recliner, no doubt, plagued by sinus and back pain that kept him restless and tired. Sigh.

Lying there, wandering through the drifty lowlands in her mind, sifting fractals of memories and disjointed judgments prodding her with guilts and thumping her heart, jabbing this way and that, now that she was half-asleep and defenseless. How many chances does a person need to turn on the light? she wondered. Youthful arrogance! to think one can pridefully march out to conquer life, because the grown-ups you've met haven't a clue and obviously can't be trusted to run your world. She could see that it would have been a little easier if each disappointment did not spin her so through idiocies more entertaining than any fiction-book she curled around and savored to the very last drop, reading in unwinding slow-motion to stretch the last page for that small eternity before plop! and sigh, it's over. Only she wasn't quite so entertained by her own plot-lines, which seemed more predictable and pathetic than the souped-up lives other people led.

For that matter, how many layers of dead skin are there needing to be peeled back? How many layers of compensating lies need revealing and resolving? Does it never end? Is it possible to get down to the bedrock? down to something true, that can't be carved into yet another false idol, another deadly sin? Listening to the clamor of competing voices in her head, she thought maybe not, if all must come into some kind of agreement in these unruly ranks, and then needing the floor mopped after the food-fight...

brushing thoughts like stray hairs from her forehead, she leaped onto the back of her big black stallion and shot sweaty-bareback across the plains, pounding hard into the wind toward ice-blue mountains, which she could never quite reach before being yanked back to sleep like a roped calf.

***

Stirring, she heard the screen-door slam, then the truck door and the rumbling pop! as the engine fired. The screen door slammed again and she swung her feet to the floor and into her slippers, pulling on her sweats and shuffling to the bathroom. By the time she got downstairs, Bill was gone and the truck was disappearing through the trees. Damn, i wish i knew when he was leaving early! I could've stood some conversation this morning... then noting the niggle of worry about his health, and the instant shame that her next thought was one about the oh-so important security of a not-real-likely-looking retirement and the needing somebody who knows how to fix things. Cars and lawnmowers especially, but Bill was an expert at anything building or fixing or destructing and hauling. He reminded her of the menfolk on Grandpa's old farm, so long ago, all smelling like oil and machines and black creases in the lines of shiny-calloused palms. Bill pushed too hard, too, like they did, pushed his body beyond endurance sometimes, and each time waking up something less than before, one shade less dense, like something was left behind of himself in that last herculean effort. And his muscles thinned and his hair grayed and still he pushed and grunted and strained against a load she had trouble seeing the urgency of, always brushing aside help or friendly encouragements to drink tea in the shade, impatient with the sun even, moving too slow or too fast for his tastes.

Sometimes she wondered if all men were like that, then reminded herself that that is another impossible question, that all men are just different in every which way, just like women. And giving each other an equally hard way to go for it! Not knowing what is, just what isn't, and blind-groping for solid ground between us, where we are supposed to be safe with one another, you know, like real social security, instead of the kind you take to the bank.

Thankfully he made oatmeal and saved some for her. He was so good like that. Even making her coffee every morning, fresh-grinding the beans and everything, even though he didn't even drink it. Laid off it years ago. Sprinkling in some chunky walnuts and cayenne and assorted nutriments, she settled at the laptop and began hacking through her emails. Julie has a hair appointment and would i mind picking her up afterward? Never mind that it's downtown, she'll treat to supper. Right! That's what she said last time, but at the last minute it's Burger King because she's got a date and broke the heel off her fuck-me shoes... snort!

Well, she was a little shallow but had a great heart when she could slow down enough to remember to wind it once and awhile! Lets see -- Capital One wants a payment and wants to lend me more money. I wish they'd make up their mind(s)! And there is a seminar in Boulder on Compassion in Everyday Life, by someone she thought she should recognize but couldn't quite. A click or two jogged her memory and she hit delete with a bit more relish than called for. They are just wanting you to grow up, she reminded herself. They just don't know how irritating that is! Like the man said, she chided herself, they just want me to be happy so I can stop mucking things up for everybody. And they want to help me to keep from mucking things up for themselves, thinking if you are busy wishing happiness you can't be busy thrashing about and hurting folks.

The sound of tires and the dog kicking up brought her out of her chair and peeking through the heavy drapes in the study, where she had a clear view of the front and a quick route to that nasty old root cellar, tunneled under the house and doubling as a storm shelter, with slanted doors opening to the yard. They rarely got company outside a stray Jehovah's Witness glory-bound and hoping to round up strays, but sometimes people got lost and needed directions or a turnaround. She watched a buick sputter up and die just short of the sidewalk, blocking the drive. Damn, don't even have my hair brushed! She grabbed a hair tie and bundled the mess into a wad in the back. Hunching her shoulders and crossing her arms to prevent notice she wasn't wearing her bra, she stood half through the open screen door and waited for movement from the car. The driver's window was obscured by glare, and she didn't want to approach without some sense of who was inside. Her mind tried to conjure where Bill kept the gun. Was it the cupboard over the oven or the one by the dryer on the utility porch? When was the last time she even had seen it? Being so far out in the country, it was just better to stay safe, but it seemed she had slipped some from a healthy alert into a complacency born of a long stretch of boredom.

The car itself was a study, some god knows what year when the fashion was bigger-is-better and comfort-is-king, but now fallen on hard times, plastic duct-taped over a broken rear window, some body-canker and paint flaking off as liberally as her roof shingles disintegrating in the wake of every storm. She waited impatiently, thinking of what she was going to say to not quite express her irritation, to offload a little of the umph from the sheer consternation and the probably going to make her late for work - and what if her husband came home and couldn't get in the drive? Bill was hell on tourists. He didn't like people down this way at all, some years back even resorting to a permanent get the F off my property sign down by the mailbox. Not in those words of course, but the intent was clear and that was certainly what he called it as he was pounding the fence-post in the ground!

But no, they kept on drifting in, and Bill puffing bigger every time, till she wondered if on some fluke drinking some night he might actually do something stupid, like throw something or brandish a gun or a chainsaw or a shovel. Barrel-chested and liquored up, she could all too easily see it happening, him spitting mad and fuming, head full of all the times these idiots! crossed his lines when they should'a known better and have to learn the hard way, now. He was a man tired of a growing culture of disrespect, as his own bullishness begins to wane and the young bucks are driving bigger and better and shinier trucks than any boy his generation ever dreamt of - hands down!

a door creaked open and suddenly the light seemed a shade brighter like sun reflecting off tin, just before the door opening flashed a shard of sunlight like a searchbeam through her brain. Stunned in the afterglow, she could barely make out the largish female figure pulling herself up and propping herself against the beeping door.

young lady! she cawed, unkempt wig slightly askance as she emerged from the car, waving a gloved hand and holding a hat of mainly protruberances, possibly explaining the hair. Her glinty eyes were shielded for shade as she emphasized each word like a bullet "Young lady, I am in need of a map. Or an idea. I could use an idea though a map would be more portable, ideas going up in smoke and all. Ah! and me being allergic to smoke! wouldn't you know!"

Her eyes never left Marissa's, though everything else seemed to be talking at once, hands gesticulating, eyebrows lifting - dramatically threatening the perch of the precarious hairpiece, even giving her thigh a good punctuation-slap at one point. "Do you have a map I could see? May I use your toilet? Never saw so many miles between stops! Where in the world did this place plunk itself down?"

She squinted and peered at Marissa, as if to weigh her words. "And right on top of you, if you ask me! Not that you need to ask me! Just look in a mirror your own self!" Laughing she heaved herself up the steps, leaning heavily on a twisted cane and dragging a misshapen trunk of a leg, knotted vericose veins visible even through the opaque support-hose old ladies wear.

"I thank you for your hospitality, dear. Yes, you are a dear! Where did you say we are? In relation to the restroom, I mean! Ha! Don't worry deary, I'm just teasing! I'm always like that, you don't worry a bit!"

She waddle-thumped down the hall in the direction that stunned Marissa half-pointed to as she barely got out of the doorway before the woman squeezed through, tapping firmly with her cane. "And you can go get into something decent if you want, deary! But no use fretting over little me - I'll be out of your hair in a heartbeat! Oh! You can call me Willa, yes you can! I'll be but a minute!" the frumpy old woman called laughing down the hall, without a glance behind her.

Gathering her wits as the dust settled, Marissa raced upstairs to slip into her bra and a decent tee, stopping by the mirror to check her teeth, and dashed back downstairs as she heard the toilet flush. She stood in the foyer a little awkwardly, wondering what to do with herself waiting for a stranger to get done with her business in her bathroom. Kind of like not knowing what to do with your hands as you give your little impromptu speech to the yawns and sneers of your peers, who were surely going to recite every stutter and mispronunciation they could gleefully catalog, having nothing much better to do with their time. Never mind it wasn't high school. Everything was like high school, as far as she could see! Not that she had gone to much school, herself. But from what she'd heard, she was glad!

Although it may have stunted her socialization, she thought, thinking back on what her therapist said, and wondering how you could tell, since here you are and that's hard enough to pin down, much less trying to factor in where you are not. How was she supposed to know how she would be different if things had gone better? Who's to say she wouldn't be a bigger wreck! That maybe the Universe was being kind and saving her lots of hardship by diverting her from "honest work," as her Grandpa would say, if he weren't ten years in the grave. Too bad he never saw her get back to school, cocooning himself in Alzheimer's for many years before he died, nothing but a shriveled skeleton clutching his own knees with hollowed out eyes stuck on terror by the time he was released. A very stubborn man! She mused, seeing still in her mind's eye her image of him in a dream, some time after he died. Accompanied by an angel with a worried face, supporting him as he croaked out, eyes a floodgate of terror, to please let him go, please let him go. And i did, at last, even though she could see it was still all about him. The angel looked grateful as they plummeted backward into the cupola behind a statue of naked babies.

When the toilet flushed again, she wondered if maybe the chain fell off the handle or the ancient porcelin stool maybe talked to Murphy about speed limits while she was sleeping last night. Too much crap might choke the poor dear, a rather routine problem that usually picked the worst possible times!

Chuckling at how she could personify a toilet: poor dear! Well but, really, the poor thing was ancient and had its better day before there even were any! It was an endless source of contention in a whole heaping houseful of contention between them. Always something, like everyone says. And Bill so obstreperous, nobody would help anymore. Mr. In Charge, No Regard. She found herself apologizing for him, and that was when things started to sour. Not a lot, at first, but real gradual down the wrong road, just under the 3-degree per second limit to perception, so you can't tell you're turning... a little dip on the aileron, a tiny nose-down and you've got big trouble just beyond the horizon.

Remembering those flying days, she was reminded again of the rummaging her deeper mind for those lost logbooks, having moved in such a hurry, so long ago. She would probably never need them again, had no intentions of flying again. But it would jerk a tear or two! Maybe. It has been a long time, at least a couple of selves ago, she mused.

Snapped from her reverie by a third flush of the toilet, she thought, this has to stop! Knocking as she asked "Is everything okay?" "Oooh just fine Deary, just fine! I'll be right there! Could I trouble you for a glass of water? Her voice sounded a little breathy through the door. Marissa, concerned "Of course! Are you sure you're o-"

"Of course I'm sure! I am thirsty enough to suck a toad!"

Startled, Marissa backed away and hurried to the kitchen, rummaging for something nicer than the faded brittle tupperware she couldn't even remember buying, thinking maybe it came with the house. Finding something more fit for company, she broke ice and poured water in two glasses, and met Willa as she emerged from the hall, wig straightened and hat firmly on her head. Or at least she hoped it was, as it looked a little dangerous, a briar nest with maybe little arrows? What were they?

You look like you've seen a ghost girl! Sorry to bust in on you like that. Got a little far off the beaten path, took the path less traveled, I took the high road, they took the low road -- she waved a hanky and laughed like she would fall off the chair, her water forgotten on the dainty little end table. Marissa giggled, sipping on hers then gasped Oh my God, I'm late for work! Her mind crunched the numbers and realized she couldn't possibly make it on time. Damn!

You ever thought of fixing that toilet Dearie?

"Are you kidding?" Marissa snorted. "If it weren't for that toilet, there'd be no conversation at all around here!" Marissa smiled and excused herself to call work to beg off, explaining her situation, and throwing in a flat tire for good measure, thinking the old lady story probably wouldn't cut it. She was bemused by her lack of remorse for lying. Here she thought of herself as an honest person! Were there no end to lies? It was starting to sound like a song!

Willa was looking at her family pictures and looked up as she returned. "Pioneer stock, eh?" Willa remarked. Marissa laughed, "Mom called us "peasant stock." Told stories of her great-Grandma Sadie Smith, who hauled her scrawny husband and her rough-patch kids across the Nebraska plains in a covered wagon. They claimed a section somewhere just north of the Republican River valley and set up shop. He died soon after but she kept going, wrangling those kids into landholders themselves. I guess they became wealthy, though where the money went I don't know. Lots of tributaries I guess. My grandpa lost almost all his back in the 70's - he borrowed too much back when the banks were too friendly. Then the bottom fell out - I guess he thought land would never go down, and his banker-friends would keep their promises! He was wrong about some other stuff too.

"Your grandpa was a strong man," Willa gazed at her intently as Marissa's head started to buzz.

"Do I know you?"

Can't say as you do! But I knew your Grandpa. Can't believe i got lost down this dead end, and me with a digestive, um, disturbance. She fluttered her hankie. This universe! In all my days! Sure has a way of whipping things around on you!

But who are you? Marissa had this sudden urge to run, squeezed down on it, head buzzing. No panic attack now! She ordered her insides back in place as blood pounded in her ears. Steady!

Willa sat down heavily and sipped on her water, studying her response.

What do you know about my grandpa?

Marissa could only guess, as Willa continued to stretch the moment, eyes suddenly far away. The room darkened as clouds moved across the sun, and a small gust made the house shiver. Crows, gathering for winter, clattered through the tree-tops on their regular rounds, calling between themselves whatever crows saw fit to talk about. They receded vocally beyond the edge-row, where all the abandoned equipment planned their returns to the soil, relics from the turn of last century even, covered with vines whose tendrils had yanked them apart over time, creating a bizarre sculpture as pieces were carried hither and yon. Marissa wanted to do a study, standing in the same spot every day, taking a slice of time for a flip-book movie of this strange dismembering. Thought it might be an interesting calendar or something, micro-perfed with assembly instructions...

"I knew your grandpa many years ago, child. We shared lots of good times, before he met your grandma. He was 17 when we met, running with some local boys, street toughs, thinking they had the world licked. His daddy died young, and his mom, well he visited her every Thursday at the state hospital. I visited once, but couldn't bring myself to go back. She was miserable and demented and drooled from the stuff they shot her up with. She had a breakdown after losing a baby, from what I understand, tried to drown herself. They did that electric shock on her and she never came out the same. Kept wandering the streets barefoot, once naked, couldn't find her own nose. Finally I guess, they just kept her. It was awful. I never seen anything so awful before or since - How your grandpa suffered!

So I was 18 and working at the library. Believe or not, he ducked in running from the cops one day! Ran in and gave me this big grin, signing shhh! and running into the stacks. The cops never even looked at the door, just ran by, and there he was, saying thanks, asking my name. I was so flustered - My, he was a good-looking boy!

Of course I was a proper girl, i did work in a library after all. So I turned down his advances. But he kept coming back. So sometimes after hours I would sit with him and share my favorite books. He took them one at a time and brought it back the next day, already read. And he wasn't faking it either: we'd sit and talk about it for hours!

Well, of course the talk turned later and the lights went dimmer and we took to taking walks in the public garden across the street, winding walks and roses and sculptures and fountains that sometimes really worked. We would make wishes but not throw pennies, as neither of us every had any to spare.

One day there was a thunderstorm, wind whipping everywhere, and we found ourselves crouched into a narrow stairway between two buildings, him standing over me sheltering me with his coat. It wasn't much but we didn't get killed and we did steal a kiss before the storm broke and people started gathering their wits.

Have you ever been in a storm in the city? It's something, deary, I tell you! Never seen so many drowned rats, coming out from the stairwells wringing out their coats and hats, checking with their neighbors and feeling lucky to be alive.

Marissa sat bolt upright and forgot to breathe, riveted by her story. Grandpa, before Grandma? Her mind recoiled. Impossible -- right? Grandpa was never seventeen! And how could he even look at another woman? Some part of her felt angry with him, how dare he! before reminding herself of the facts, feeling silly then.

Willa continued, still gazing through the walls, beyond the hills, beyond notice. She pulled a handkerchief from someplace and dabbed her eyes. "May I have more water, Deary?

Marissa felt as if she were already under water.

"If it's not too much trouble?"

"Oh, gosh! Sure..." She jerked upright and forgetting to smile took the glass into the kitchen. As the water ran, she leaned over the sink, quelling nausea and tears. How dare she! Why didn't she call? Inside, she wondered at her upset. What is up with that? Why the tears? Grandpa is dead and gone, Grandma now too - so many tears already cried, sifting the heirlooms from the junk, teething on the pain, the shock of reading Grandpa's notes in the bible beside his easy chair, where he would sit of an evening reading everything, Everything! that came in the door. She remembered running golden-haired out to the barn-sized mailbox and bringing in huge bundles of mail with catalogs to cut-out and hand-written letters for grandma and National Geographic nature series, her particular favorite. Grandpa knew everything in the whole world. He would throw the kids in the car and tour them around three counties, stopping the car to walk a ways and explain about the sediments and the aquifer and dig fossils out of the sandstone bluffs rising over the river valley. The kids'd scamper up and around scaring up trouble and sometimes a rattler, up on those tall cliffs. That's when Grandpa really shined. He would chortle and tickle and throw us in the air and call "Kaloo Kalay o Frabjous Day!" which was a real good indicator of mood, kind of a rubber-band snap that told them all he was okay to make lots of noise and bounce, even if Grandma grumped.

straightening, she steeled herself, even surprising herself with a little irritation. How dare she come in here under false pretenses and floor me like this? What does she think she's doing? And now I am late for work and probably late getting home! She had to laugh at that, as in the back of her mind she already planned to call in today, and it was funny to see herself fuss and fume, like a little cartoon-self in a fighting stance sputtering "bring 'em on!" A tendency that overtly manifest had brought some hard knocks her way. But that was when she still believed there was no tomorrow, nobody on her side...

Aggravation quickly yielded to curiosity, as it struck her what a curiosity it all was, this woman from nowhere, she could be making it all up, seeing the pictures, maybe she's casing the joint! After all, wouldn't she have heard something of this story, in all those years? How can something so momentous have escaped all the gossips hanging on their party lines in our family tree! Not likely she decided.

"Here you go," handing Willa the clinking glass, her composure regained: she was on a mission!

So what did Grandpa look like so young!" Marissa feigned. "Did he ever tell you about his dad? He never would tell Mom anything when she did a geneology. For a class. She went back to school. Bugged everybody for weeks!" Marissa always surprised herself at how easy it is to lie. And she ought to be ashamed! But it struck her that deception is the most natural thing in the world, biological in the camoflaging of butterfly wings and tiger stripes and little bambi's spots. And maybe it was deception that caused the body hair to thin, skin so sensitive, exposed, no nails, no teeth outside fruit-piercing and grinders, no poison. Only the ability to reflect its mirrors around corners, to sense the contours of another's perception. And wasn't deception the highest paying franchise in the world? Movies, novels, WWF, not to mention lipo and botox, high-heels and liptstick and the rest of the whole nine yards! she thought. Or maybe rationalized. She was never quite sure: Too many times the fool!

But it did seem to take the rough edges off the guilt, as she tabled further review for later.

Willa smiled gratefully. Her eyes seemed softer and a little red, hanky clutched in her lap.

"Why are you here today, Willa?" Marissa measured her words, feeling a sudden stab of guilt, wanting more to be kind than to win any particular point. She remembered to not kick herself too bad, a trick she was working on, having discovered herself being her biggest tripper-upper and tired of cleaning up messes. She was still trying to find a broom big enough! And she had hope, but so far no clues where to look. She remembered Grandpa's big broom in the shop, how sometimes he would put rambunctious kids to work with it. Marissa loved the smell of grease and the way the dirt was weighed down with it, heavy, loved pushing it around, the patterns on the floor, straining against the accruing pile as she struggled to maneuver it where Grandpa wanted.

Which looking back was more busywork for kids to learn and grow on, like Grandma having them iron hankies and pillowcases on the little ironing board, while she tackled the basket of clothes fresh off the line. She remembered hating that, always with an eye toward the door, watching Grandma to gauge her mood and attentiveness before risking a getaway. Cause lordy if she caught you! Endless fuss and bother! And sometimes long stretches motionless in a cubby, listening to her calling, spitting mad and saying all kinds of mean things about lazy little girls. These sorties into freedom never ended so good, sometimes with a tongue-lashing and twice the chores and the cousins laughing, pointing fingers from the yard. Sometimes with just a sore rump from a good lickin'. And sometimes Grandpa would rescue her, whisk her onto the tractor or into a big corn-hauling truck and go bouncing off to town with a dog using her lap to lean out the window. My hero! she thought, then felt the familiar boil of hurts from all that came later.

I honestly didn't come to find you, if that's what you're asking. I got down the wrong road and needed accommodations. But when I saw his picture! - she gestured vaguely toward her family wall.

So, let me - you didn't know it was me? So you don't know who I am? Just saw the picture?

Marissa leaned back. Willa said "My yes! I am just as surprised as you!" and fell to laughing. Marissa couldn't help but chuckle, which turned into a snort and Willa hee-hawed like a donkey and it was all over, and they laughed till they could finally get the giggles down and Willa's wig was sideways again and Marissa couldn't look at her without busting out again, draining to chuckles and subsiding finally as Willa blew her nose.

So, she said, straightening her hat and trying not to smile. Who are you then? You know all about me!

Marissa's feelers woke up any time there was a request for personal information. Hard to know what was just habit and what was real. Harmless looking old lady, but so odd! But her story checked and she sure didn't waste any time to the restroom! And three flushes! Wow. So. well...

Where are you trying to get to? She asked Willa, who was draining her second glass of water. Willa looked at her shrewdly for a moment before smiling,

I'm off to bury my brother. My niece is waiting in Carlsburgh, and then we'll pick up her sister in Weaverly, then on to Navarro for the services. She waved her hand at Marissa's attempt at condolences, "Oh it's okay, dearie, he was a perfectly horrible man. Never did a lick of work his whole life, always riding around in his limousines like he lorded the world, gyping the help and indulging every whim. Like he couldn't understand a world that did not serve him, so impatient!

Well he finally crossed the finish line, that's all I can say!" Willa winked, "And now we'll pay what respects we can salvage, and help him on his way."

Silence dragged while Marissa searched for what to say.

Your grandpa couldn't stand Richard. We were poor back then, when we were kids. He got rich later on Wall Street, lived in New York and never saw him for years. Too busy. And he always was a bully, dad made sure of that. Can't have his boy seen for weak!

But your grandpa, he had stars in his eyes - he was going somewhere! Richard couldn't' stand that. Made him even madder when your grandpa didn't notice, just always talking about the west and how he was going to join a survey team and light out to Oregon, mapping the way. Oh he was a dreamer! Talked of mountains and rivers and gorges and eagles like he could count their feathers! I don't think there was any pie that boy didn't have fingers in!"

Willa honked her nose again and risked another laugh-attack, but Marissa held it back. Willa reached in her purse for a bundle of yellowed envelopes, brittle and torn, bent corners and stamps from the turn of the last century. She held them gingerly.

"Funny," she said, "I just found these last week, digging through the closet for my husband's death certificate. My sister's doing a geneology. What a pest! Just like your mom. Anyway, I found these," fingering them softly. "I was going to read them when i was ready to go through them again. Some hard memories in here, but I want to just the same. I need to. But it seems that the universe is bundling things up for me somehow, here finding these, my brother dying, and now you."

"I tell you what, deary," she looked at Marissa carefully, then thrust the bundle to her. "Why don't you just take these, read them - please be careful, though! And I'll come back by to get them after the funeral. I won't have time before then anyway, and I really do have to go. I've dawdled long enough, and to be truthful, I am exhausted! Too much surprise for this old woman!" she joked, feigning a shocked expression.

"So how do I get where I'm going?" Willa heaved herself up out of the overstuffed chair. Marissa had forgotten to warn her of the missing springs in the middle, and instinctively grabbed her hand to help pull. "Oh my!" she grabbed her hat as she teetered upright and steadied with her cane. "Thank you! So, which way do I go?"

Marissa Googled a map for her entire route and printed for her. Willa was overcome with amazement, oohing about how all these young folks just perform magic like it's ordinary, and what a wonderful time to be alive, with the GPS and the internet - and oh my! what will they think of next!

She was gone in a blink, and Marissa was left on the porch holding the faded letters and shading her eyes from the sun, squinting through Willa's dust and feeling faded herself, a little worse for wear.

Returning to the couch, she sat heavily, looking at the yellowed bundle in her lap. Even the rubber bands were old, stretched thin and brittle. Real rubber bands! She mused, back to the days of real erasers and tubs of paste and finger-painting and running to show off her latest tour de force...

Tears squeezed out as the refrigerator kicked on in the kitchen, filling her head with it's steady thrum. Somewhere in her mind a screen-door slammed, the wind gusted, a voice called her name, again, insistent. She closed her eyes, and the bats flew from their cave, clamoring along her cavern walls toward open sky, feeling like an exhale as they burst from a cleavage in her milky cliffs, loosing a chatter of secrets like locusts in a dry wind, receding like echoes across a vast plain. The well of dreams yawned wide-open as Marissa's chin sagged to her chest and she began to snore, vibrating to the drumming thrum, thrum, thrum - sifting, drifting, drifting down, settling like Willa's dust, yet shimmering like a curtain where the road disappeared - beyond the trees, beyond time, in this unsettled land.

*****

The rattle-thump! skid of the truck rumbling to a stop snapped her awake. Clearing the shreds of dreams still pulling, the vague uneases and murmurings receding as she fumbled upright and shuffled to the door. Bill. What was he doing home so early? Her car was in the garage, or the shed that passed for a garage, so he didn't know she was here.

For some reason she scootched herself back up the stairs and into the bedroom, where she tucked Willa's letters under her underwear in her top drawer, closing it slow so it wouldn't squeak. Why was she so scared, she wondered, heart thumping. Something in her dreams niggled, like a lure in the early spring, teasing cold trout from torpor, deep-sleeping on the bottom, sunlight dancing green-yellow, so faint, so far away.

She and Bill hadn't been talking so much lately. Kind of like teflon, just easing past each other with as bare a bone as would suffice, verbal memos about picking up milk or stopping by the bank. Ever since she put him on notice, a year ago now. They were decent to each other, and even laughed sometimes. But they never talked, and each seemed comfortable going their own way, and not minding to much the other's way, not needing it particularly different. But each wary nonetheless, neither wanting to plant a white flag, neither ready to negotiate a hard truth, instead hunkering down in their bunkers and arranging them as comfortably as allowed.

But still it was lonely sometimes, way out here. She worked with a bunch of guys, and none of them lived nearby anyway. They never asked her to their parties, though they were full of the stories on Monday, all the in-jokes and back-slapping with nothing but a shadow where she was. So maybe she wasn't so popular.

And her very last girlfriend ran away last year because she called her on her venting, not liking the feel of being expected to hold her head while she vomited again and again, rather preferring to reach in and exorcise the demon on the spot.

Hard to keep friends like that!

But she hadn't meant to hurt her feelings. Like most things, it just came out her mouth, and she gentled it on the way out the chute as best she could, but she didn't pull any punches. And really had no regrets. You can feel bad for the suffering, and turn your heart inside out with compassion for that, but that doesn't mean clean up their garbage, which would be a disservice, disrespectfully denying the feedback of perfect consequences.

Sandy! She did miss her though. So many wild times! Claimed she was hermaphrodite, but that aroused no curiosity in Marissa, who adroitly sidestepped the topic on numerous occasions, preferring to keep her sexuality private. But Sandy still pressed, flexing her biceps, cocky as all hell. Especially when she got drunk. Then she really did turn into a rooster! Though to be sure, Marissa had seen more testosterone-based life-forms thinly clad in female skin. Sandy still had some estrogen going on, though she never thought to point this out. Being a bit like commenting on hair-color, something she wasn't likely to even notice. Why would she do that? Everybody's living their own colloquialisms, so who's keeping track? Whose track needed keeping?

Well, hers was sure growing weeds! She went downstairs to put on a pot of coffee, thinking she'd sit down with Bill. But where was he now? She leaned to peer out the window, seeing no one. She walked to the utility porch off the kitchen to look out the storm-door. Nothing. Where is he!

Returning to the kitchen, the coffee maker gurgling, she grabbed a mug and sat at the dinette to wait. The sun slicing through the blind striped the tawny hair on her arm full of tiny rainbows she studied as the gurgling got louder. The slam of the truck door and the revving of the engine outside surprised her, and she jumped up just in time to catch his gravel spray as she barreled outside to flag him down, peppering her bare feet and raising a plume of dust.

What the hell? she thought, watching him speed away, pushing that old farm truck pretty hard, she thought.

Oh shit! I've got to call in! She scrambled back inside for her cell, sifting for just the right excuse to deliver to boss-man all breathless about something mechanical thingymabopper she just can't get loose, and her man so far away! patting his male ego a little... Sad thing was, if they bothered to know her at all, she would never get away with it!

Sigh.

She might be a girl, but she could turn a pretty good wrench for the more basic stuff, growing up summers on the farm. But she didn't mind so much people disregarded her anymore. Bigger fish to fry these days, it seemed. Remembering when relationships were the most important thing in the world, she sent silent thanks to Bill that her life was no longer a soap-opera teetering on the edge of the prevailing opinions.

Paying her homage, she returned to the bedroom and opened the drawer, stood a few moments undecided, then sat down with the letters on the bed. She carefully eased the first rubber-band off, and then the second, holding her breath. Setting them aside she picked up the first envelop, turning it over a couple times, noting the date, the flowing hand addressed to Miss Wilhelmina Caruthers, of 916 North Barrington Street, Omaha, Nebraska. No zip code, she mused. The stamp was ornate, a street in Venice with those bridges and a gondola in foreground.

She gently lifted the flap and extracted the contents. Opening it, she felt a sudden guilt, qualms that she was prying like a voyeur, that it was none of her business and should avert her eyes. Now! But she persisted, doggedly now that the genii was out of the bottle.

It must have been their last correspondence, still on top.

Her eyes traced the faded lines: "Dear Willa..." Such a capable hand, she thought, but graceful. How old was he --- she did the math. Wait! This was way after grandpa married! Her heart froze as the implications cascaded like ice-crystals, obliterating hallowed ground as far as she could see. Oh my! Now what?

tears welled as her mind reeled back, caught and spun by a shard whistling by, wheeling her into Grandpa's living room after his funeral, sitting with her mother, thumbing through his heavily thumbed and referenced bible. How shocked they were to notice he had underlined double and triple the passages pertaining to the evil and wanton nature of woman, the serious threat they pose to godliness in their witchery, their ability to move certain fleshy members at a distance, even in dreams, loosing the legions of incubus to spread plague and pestilance like a malignant scourge, or even worse, tempt a man into beastly behavior, and ruining him beyond redemption for the Lord.

or something like that

She had tried hard to understand it. Her grandpa was a rigid, opinionated man, but when it came to anything pertaining to female bodies or functions, he was a madman, flying into rages with any suspicion of sluttiness. Too clearly she remembered when at 16 she went on a date with Blair Tillerman. He was a soft-curled Cat Stevens of a boy, so gentle and soft-spoken, who loved his guitar as tenderly as he kissed her scared lips, quieting her until she wished he wasn't such the gentleman! But sigh, he was a proper country boy, please, sir and thank you! Holding doors and other small courtesies, drip-dripping like warm wax on skin more used to sandpaper, and the tinge of adventure in whisking her out to the shelter house out on his family's land, western sky on fire, descending purple and magenta and finally shadow and then a cloak of inky black nonetheless radiant with stars, while he, oh Blair! would strum his guitar so sweetly, searching her doe-eyes, singing her sorrows, kissing her tears.

Now grandpa held her to be the apple of his eye until about thirteen. Then a sudden turn, scudding silences and sidelong scowls should she transgress some invisible line, as if he knew all her secrets, could see her tarnished halo and flirty moves and hated her for it, tossed her down the slut-chute. Of course she wasn't really a slut, not in her estimation. though she was nowhere near a virgin. But she felt his acid-eyes on her nonetheless, shriveling her flesh to bone.

By the time she was 15, the relationship had unraveled to the point of scornful avoidance on his part, wounded pride and confusion on hers. Her grandpa was the most important person in her world, the patriarch who as a child had always elevated her, showed her off to smiling buddies, bouncing her and tossing her and riding her on his shoulders. Now it was disdain and mockery and a face of stone.

It wasn't even her fault she wasn't a virgin, but she never even considered that at the time, not for many years after considerable therapy. But that was before her fall, when she understood sexuality to be a grand adventure, an attempt to explore connection by any means necessary, learning quick like a monkey what buttons and levers worked to get the high-beams and smiles from the boy-species. They said later it was because she didn't have a dad, but she did have a dad! Two of them, or maybe three -- Sperm donor, birth-dad, adopted dad. So how was she to know? Sperm dad never called to her, birth dad was her huggy-bear lap that dropped through a black hole when she was four, and adopted dad who tried to fondle her budding breasts at twelve, the first positive regard she experienced from a man, besides Grandpa.

She was actually mad on some level for being so inhibited she wouldn't let him, instead clammed up stiff like a little two-by-four carving of a scared kid, earning his haughty scolding about how she was going to have to get over it sooner or later. For once she had an opportunity to please this man, just by letting him do what everybody else did - this popular about-town kind of guy who seemed so funny and easy with everyone else, but never looked at her or her sister, took their young brother, his son, everywhere but left them behind without even an excuse or apology. Why did he ever adopt them? Marissa wondered, feeling a small upswell of bitterness, a leftover wish her Daddy had never left, had at least come back to rescue her, charging in on his white horse as soon as he heard how forgotten she was.

Well! She remembered that old pity-pot and had no desire to waste another moment there.

When Blair brought her back to the farm, the windows were dark. They sat in the car discussing whether he should just drop her off, which he said would be disrespectful, or whether they should wait together in his car or in the living-room. He felt uncomfortable entering the home without an adult present, so as soon as they decided to sit in the car, Grandpa and Grandma pulled up.

She remembered the night was stormy, the wind whipping the trees, slamming them against the house and outbuildings, heralding a storm-front to the southwest. They hadn't sat but for a moment, and with some relief disembarked as her grandparent's old Ford Falcon pulled past them into the garage, thinking all the concern was for naught. Well, she could see something was wrong in Grandpa's bulging neck veins and the ice-pick voice clipped real polite as he shook Blair's hand and thanked him. But as soon as Marissa was in the house, he had her up against the wall with his massive forearm pinning her neck, crushing her windpipe, squeezing the life from her. All she could see was his engorged eyes and red face and popping veins and his white-knuckled fist grinding at her cheek as he sputtered and fumed and accused her of things she had never even heard of, much less done! as she slid into darkness...

Well, Blair said later he had sensed something wrong, was worried about her, and was so upset by what she told him that he never asked her out again. Which pretty much was the one-two punch for that summer! Her beautiful boy! Threw her back in like a scrawny crappie, leaving a permanent niggle of doubt coiled like a baited hook in her fallow dreams of rescue and redemption.

There were other indignities, but that was the one that seemed to spill out first and push the most tears when she thought back. But it all finally made some sense, in a sick way, when she and Mom saw his bible, and feeling gut-punched wondered about mental illness or some sort of sexual trauma in his boyhood, which they thought was unheard-of back then, in some whitewashed plain of ignorance occupied by the hypnotized masses of the day. Unheard of? Right! How convenient!

Marissa fingered the sheaf of envelopes gently, careful of the brittle edges. Maybe those answers were in here, in these letters somewhere, which to her was looking more and more like a can of worms than the deep-family expedition she expected. Can't anything ever stay where it's put? In this life of broken promises and missing links and unmatched socks overflowing the drawer, escaping to the floor, under the bed, behind the door - seeking lost mates, avoiding fate!

Oh well. She wondered where she ever got the idea anything was supposed to! There was no evidence to that effect, and plenty to the contrary. She wondered a lot about things like that, trying to puzzle together the pieces of her, how they got so mixed up to begin with, when as far as she could remember, she started out straight enough. Is it possible the loss of a dad and a ride on the rapids could mess a kid up so much? She still slogged through the muck of so much head-up-her-assery, which she could see on her kinder days was just the crazy spin-out of lost innocence with way too little foreplay and way too much afterburn! Thinking the white knight was supposed to call back the next day, like they always said they would. Like they never did.

Then there were the decades lost to "Where was my mother!" Like her mother was in any position to save her, being too busily throwing her to the wolves. Well, that was overstated. Maybe not throwing her to them, just bringing them home to party, bringing the forest home to her little red riding hoods, offering up their picnic goodies - never mind going to stodgy old grandma's - she doesn't need to know, and besides, aren't we having fun?

Sure, if fun came wrapped in boys with knives and guns on motorcycles - riding hard, flying colors and punctuating their sentences with fists through the walls.

Which at the time seemed quite the adventure for little Marissa, taken on as a little sexual plaything, a mascot who endeared herself to anyone who wanted to partake of her grade-A tender. She thought they meant I love you when they said I love you. Still made her snort. How naive can a little girl be? Sure she was only 12, but sheeez! Sometimes a little common sense goes a long way, as Grandpa used to say.

Grandpa. How she missed him! Not the him he became but the him he was starting out, the one that lit up like the sun when he saw her, who fussed at Grandma when she was harsh, who taught her to shoot and ride and drive a tractor and start siphons for the water to get from the ditch down the long straight rows through the thirsty corn. He taught her to teach the dog to catch popcorn, and soon she had all her cousins catching popcorn too! He bought her a pony, though he got too mad to be much help teaching when the pony wouldn't mind. Once he even lost control, beating the wild-eyed thing for some willful indiscretion, furiously whacking him with the reins and jerking hard on his foam-flecked mouth, scaring poor Marissa, who was a ragdoll hanging onto the saddle screaming Grandpa stop! Grandpa STOP! to no avail as the pony twisted and bucked beneath her in its desperation to escape. She was only eight, but could never see Grandpa quite the same again, always overlaid with this thin patina of violence, a hint of a sudden brutishness just beneath his normal face, coiled in the darkness, full of venom, watching, waiting, ready. But soon enough forgotten in the everyday stream, diving instead to merge with the roiling undercurrents eating away at her pilings.

She wouldn't know he could turn it on her, though, for a little while yet, as she approached puberty, and he began roughly pushing her away from him, not asking her to ride into town with him anymore, dumping her off his lap real gruff, in front of company, and worst of all, leaving her crying, running behind his truck in the dust, not understanding why he hated her so. He spoke to her only through her grandma, a wealth of curt suggestions about ladylike behavior. He was especially enamored with the concept of "poise," and painted a picture of alabaster women who never spoke, gliding gracefully serving tea with a sweet smile and a steady hand. Marissa toyed with the idea, for a while wanting poise more than anything: balancing a book on her head, dressing up in lace and gloves on Sunday mornings, minding her manners. But she seemed to have trouble keeping her feet on the ground and her words tucked somewhere safe behind her mouth. A definite weakness in her family, which more resembled circling barracuda than a circle unbroken.

Marissa stood, and leaving the letters on the bed went back downstairs, poured a cup of coffee and took it to her rocker on the porch. She rolled a cigarette, having graduated to the cheapest generic tobacco after they lost the appeal to the IRS, who figured her dead husband's pre-marital lapses could somehow be extracted from her hide. Well, evidently they were right, though she thought it a bit odd, those foxes ruffling through her chicken-coop, fussing over which ones they wanted to take home. Seemed kind of backwards to her, impossible in a world where justice is given more than lip-service.

She rocked quietly in the sunny breeze, leaves skittering across the drive, piling up against the stoop and the chicken-wire fence around the garden. The empty corn bins looked rakish sillhouetted against the southern sky, rusted out and leaning. Beside them, an old auger stuck nose-down seemed awkward, embarrassed even, it's long snout providing good purchase for the triumphant vines, vigorously scaling the once proud heights, bursting over the top in over-exuberance, long tendrils spraying down like a crooked maypole, laced with hardy orange and purple blooms.

Interesting effect. Marissa imagined twittering fairy-children swirling wraithlike under and over, under and over, round and round - proud fairy-parents oohing and oh! look!-ing and gushing praises for their own little darlings, while being polite in agreement with the next obviously prideful and biased fairy-parent, smarming all over their little darling! In the next year or two, she mused, it'll be a perfect fort, remembering the honeysuckle jungles providing magical hideouts out in the woods, smelling like the nectar they sucked from slender blossoms on a hot day, cool in the deep shade beneath the fairy-mounds, she and her cousins, maybe her sister when they were younger, telling tall-tales and plotting their next adventures, and waiting for the long evening shadows to bring some mercy.

Mercy! Ha! Was that the only mercy she'd ever known? Sometimes she thought so, when she was a particular kind of sour. She smiled at herself. Not today, though. Maybe she was growing up? Oh no! she chuckled. It was way too late for that anyway, and why spoil a good run? Not everbody gets to stay a kid forever, not without lots of advance planning anyway. Hours beneath the checkered tables, spying on groan-ups, vowing to never fall down that rat-hole! Which kind of negates the purpose, come to think of it: planning and kids being vaguely oxymoronic. She laughed at herself, glad she was able to lift her own spirits, to laugh at her human foibles. Finally! Seeing's how she never could rectify them much anyway. Being human, it seems, necessarily comes outfitted with foibles, big ones, little ones, crammed in every which-way, real cozy, like students in a VW bug.

Well, Grandpa, you couldn't have picked a worse time! She thought about that child, so cocky on the inside, so foot-stompy proud and prickly, so wild, so unable to confess her massive sins to the only semi-stable male in her life, who could have maybe heard her behind that wall of defensiveness and storm. Could maybe have jerked her mother up by the back of her neck, taming her back to the little mewling kitten she really was, taught her how to use a litter box.

Well, that was a little harsh. But if she held herself, at 12, responsible for her behavior, then surely a grown woman can take some. Where was that woman's head? How could she have brought home a slew of bikers? Turned their home into party central for a bunch of under-age boys, riding their choppers like the bigger boys, giving her their allowance for whiskey and beer. She even got busted once! Spent the night in jail, freaking, while she and her siblings were whisked out before the cops came with Children's Services to place them.

But they were old enough to be bad. And they were pretty bad. In some ways, she was sure, even more so even then the big boys, who they emulated, walking the walk, talking the talk, chugging, slugging, dealing Black Widows and Ludes, always a pissing contest or a fuck-fest. She being the only house on the block that always had a driveway full of Harleys and triumphs with 27" extensions, flame decals and chrome everything. That and grimey-blue-jeaned grease-monkeys in various stages of drinking and cursing and throwing wrenches, hanging all over the hoods of whatever cars, out of the trees or on their scanty so-Cal girlfriends, or passed out in their own puke under the rose-bushes, where their buddies always rolled them for a hoot and let them lay.

Everybody else pretty much had a basketball hoop and a Ford.

So they weren't particularly popular in the neighborhood, with regular patrols to hold the noise down and put out fights. Even so, she was able to wrangle a couple babysitting jobs, and her first boyfriend Dirk lived down on the corner, so it wasn't a complete wasteland. His big brother was her sister's first love, so they double-dated some. But then they started hanging with the bikers, sucking fumes from a gas tank and losing interest in girls. But even 12 year old Dirk, a polite, clean-cut, good-looking boy when they met, got her drunk and let his brother rape her, hell, helped him! though she was beyond fighting at the time, remembering only swirls and spinsies and groping and vaguely kicking at someone, a silhouette against a dirty window, and clipping him pretty good - but who? twisting away, grabbing for something and missing, scrambling, only to be brought down by four hands, she was sure of it. Later, she remembered weaving and stumbling up the street back home, making it to bed, waking with dried blood on the sheets from broken glass ground in on her backside.

But that was easy to forget, compared to what came later. But some things don't deserve to be spoken.

Well, that incident took care of her reputation at school, where word got around she was willing. And her racy skin-tights probably didn't help her. But she didn't know. She wore what boys liked. And she didn't know why she couldn't make any girlfriends, finally settling on priding herself as a loner to numb it down a little, a little pride feeling so much better than the deep, cloying need beginning to gnaw her middle, crush her sternum, opening into a vast emptiness inside that terrified her, pulled her in, sucked her dry if she didn't fight, didn't grab somebody to hold her, if only for a night, to keep her from falling into whatever toxic pit lay at her core.

It wouldn't be long before she was a runaway anyway, and discovered alcohol to numb things. By fourteen she always had a pint of Cuervo in a pocket of her thrift-store army coat. Army coat and no shoes -- in November! She laughed. Man, somebody must've been watching over her! But it was California. Didn't really need shoes, if you weren't going to church or school, or shopping. But she didn't do any of that. She never could remember what happened to her shoes! Probably left them in the van she rode in with people who were letting her stay with them, when they all went to a free concert. They picked up a hitchiker and his Australian shepherd named Nikki, and took him to the concert too.

Walking around, they decided it would be cool to hitchike together and off they went, two ragamuffin kids and a dog, into the sunset, well, no, that would be west. Into the sunrise, then?

Goodness, how I roam! Sitting a moment she noticed the unlit cigarette still in her fingers, the lighter in her other hand. She put the cigarette back in the pouch, tucking it under the cushion so Bill wouldn't find it. She had about three hiding places, sometimes losing it, her "rig," for days. Which was okay, she was losing interest anyway. Such a hassle, having to roll it, keep track of it, hide the smell. She just loved the sense of adventure, the almost getting caught, needing lightning-ingenuity and instant subterfuges. Like shoplifting when she was a kid, or in happier times, playing Robin Hood or Peter Pan, sneaky-petes or pirates.

Though she did get caught! a couple of times. Shoplifting, that is. But she got away with more than she got caught. Hustled back to the little room where the big men blustered and threatened and finally succumbed to tears and promises of this little doe-eyed innocent, looking so much younger than her years, and playing it for all she was worth! Marissa frowned, and wondered that she never felt remorse for that. Antisocial kid! Figured the rich guys could take care of themselves. Well they could! They weren't eating commodities...

Feeling a slip-slide toward that sense of herself, Marissa stood up and took a deep breathe, stood feeling the sunshine, smelling smoke from down the way, tipped her coffee cup and went to put it in the sink. Upstairs, she bundled the letters and put them back in her underwear drawer. Bill's not the least interested in those, she snorted. God, how long has it been?

She knew exactly how long it had been! And Bill did too. She resolutely turned from these thoughts, still angry. After all this time.

Why can't he just be unfaithful and be done with it? Make it easier on the both of them. Way easier!

Damn.

She remembered his brief appearance suddenly. What was he up to, anyway? She didn't always trust him. Not since she caught him lying about his drinking, even after she repeatedly told him not to promise anymore. Still he promised, and still he lied. And that was scarier than a plain lie. Like he was really trying and fighting so hard, not understanding that alcohol is bigger badder meaner than any man alive, can take anybody down, hard, now! No second chances, all seductive and lubricated, she kindles fires in a man, and uses his own bones for fuel.

after she sucks the marrow.

damn! He lied to her! Again.

and now, he's up to something.

But she didn't want to be hasty. It was getting toward Christmas, and with him still trying for her better graces, when he wasn't pouting. She remembered the easel he had to drive into the city to get a few years ago, and she all suspicious when his alibi flopped.

Well he had to know she could read Jimmy better than that!

more proof she was invisible to men, at least as a person, rather than a rack of goods. How long does it take for a man to really see a woman?

grrrr!

on a whim, she grabbed her camera, her audio-player and her jacket, backed out of the garage and spun a little around the circle-drive, heading for the backwoods to do a fall shoot, to capture what glory showered everywhere she looked through a lens, somehow caught in all its suchness, a banquet of beauty shimmering like a mirage only she could see. How many times she would take pictures while sitting with someone in conversation, who would exclaim at their beauty, and with surprise that it was something right in front of them, invisible!

She loved that! Without taking credit, as she studied to see what she was seeing that was different, but could only come up with some flimsy theories, like if you walk in beauty, your brain fills all the blanks with beauty, and you can see it, so it materializes through the camera, but others can't, because they don't walk in beauty, and their brain fills in their blanks with something else. Maybe.

Or the spirit of the camera synapses with your own reflexes, quite leaving you out of the equation! That made her laugh.

So much to ponder!

One of her favorite subjects, which set her apart some in this backward place, but seemed the obvious question of what is really going on? That was what drove her most. Once she tumbled onto the great big game of opinionating, the world-wide circus of lawrence-welk bubble machines all spewing out these opinion-pinatas, and running around with all their big sticks whacking at everybody else's opinion-piňata, trying to pop theirs first.

It seemed obvious, for instance, that all creatures possessed awareness and emotion and sensitivity. But the prevailing local opinion was that animals have no feelings and were put here to do service for mankind. Man "kind" - right! ManUnkind, more like! Marissa recalled so many actions ranging from thoughtlessness to depravity at the hands of humUnkind. All so self-righteously justified, and justifying, by virtue of their own self-defined virtues.

And forgetting to look! Because that's all it really takes to see things. Empathy takes care of the rest. Just that little thing between us, that lets us feel our ways inside each other, even though it may be just in our imaginations. Somehow it feels real enough to depend on, at least to give it a name. It's not nothing, how so many view it, such a girly-thing, psychiatrist-talk, empathy.

because how can you not see the suffering of the kicked dog, the branded calf, the broken horse, the headless chicken? How can you not see your kids crying for the puppies you drown, the way you treat their mother, the curse you bring to life?

Marissa had known this was wrong since she was a kid, and how do you square with a world that doesn't seem to care? Filled with people who already knew everything, but never seemed to wonder about anything at all?

////

Marissa noodled, tires humming, shutter clicking almost of it's own accord, having a direct connection from retina to lens. She had always loved doing that, imposing her will like a trellis for her body to form itself on, learning how to stop sneezes (though why would you?), head off headaches, kill hiccups dead. Probably spent too much time in waiting rooms as a child, with her brother born so sick. Her sister too, but hers were birth-defects needing correction. Little Timmy was born so sick and small he didn't come home for a long time, and her mother took even longer, never quite getting her head out of the cloud of her only son, her precious angle-prince whose least internal rumbling pulled the switch on a clatter and a-clanging like an avalanche in her head, whooshing her away and filling her eyes with stars when she looked at him.

and the rest of her was taken by the adopted dad. Dad number two, or three, depending if her mother was telling the truth, which was always a crap-shoot, having seen her tongue twist events a bit too smoothly too often, even having been sucked into her little charades more than once, covering for her or even doing her handiwork, but never to good end.

But even that, the loss of a mother, replaced by a doll-eyed, high-heeled mannequin, couldn't compare to after the divorce. With the help of her psychiatrist turned man-friend, lovers for years. Despite the fact he had a wife and four kids about four blocks away, which Marissa suspected is why she bought the little house they couldn't afford and moved them to suburbia from the beach-front cliffs of her early years.

That's when the witch showed up. She and her best friend, Tanqueray, which she and her sister learned to have on ice with club-soda and an olive to hand her as she walked in the door, just so, and music "to soothe the savage beast," as she used to croon, once in the envelope of warm and numb. That wasn't so bad. It was later, turning to tears and wailing and clutching at her daughters and oh how sorry she was and oh what a cruel world.

Marissa learned to be a greased pig, but felt guilty when her sister got snagged, was made to tend and soothe and sing-song stroke her hair back as she howled. Marissa never would "kiss her ass," as her sister would implore her to, thinking her strategy more effective, frantic to stop the screaming and slapping and shoving between them. Marissa disagreed, feeling a chill death-wind down that rabbit-hole.

Which turned out to be true in a way, as she watched her sister succumb to the wasting of heroin addiction, just a few short years later. They never even had a chance to be friends. And where was their mother? Chasing tail, looking for that sugar-daddy she was sure was on her ship leaving without her, because who would want a woman with three kids?

How could she not know how that felt? So what conclusion could be drawn but that she did it on purpose because she didn't care. So many things she did bolstered that view, all the helter-skelter she created in her dervish-wake, strewing her broken children and broken furniture and broken promises like a hurricane buzz-saw, magnificent even from outer space!

Already she sensed a backwash of weariness that this part of her held on so, as if the mother she had now could ever reverse events, as if the river of time could flow backwards and she could somehow make it all not happen, to go back to that last place everything was right, before that naked fight in the morning, when little Marissa was surely out of diapers, remembering her mother, naked, begging her father not to leave, and he pushed her down on the bed, and all Marissa could think to do is cry because nobody would help her tie her shoes.

And then the door slammed and his truck was backing down the drive and up the street. And her sister said shush it's okay and helped tie her shoes, while their mother wept convulsing on the bed. The sun poured through the wall of windows. And Marissa just cried.

Sure she saw him now and again, for a little while. But then he inexplicably gave up parental rights and dropped fairly precipitously from their lives, his little daughters, one crippled, one just mewing and opening her eyes. And it took almost thirty years to open them far enough to really see he was gone, a lightning strike and bedlam during that first grueling round of therapy. Took lots of therapy, but mostly because interns just pinning on their solo-wings seemed to flap in their own breezes, licking their lips and asking her what she was afraid of, with their little hungry pencils waiting, then getting peevish when she wouldn't trust them. Usually ended up making it her fault and referring her for medication. Which was the exit sign for Marissa, who never did legal drugs if she could help it.

But now her dad was dead and here it was 18 months later and she still refused to think about it. But she could see how the not thinking had terraformed her life as surely as the reality of his absence ever had. A vast floodplain of reckoning ensued from all the deceptions that began calcifying around her Daddy-port, where he would surely return someday to re-fuel her in mid-flight with whatever it was that made the whole idea of daddies and no-daddies so damned important to little girls.

The sun dappled across her eyes as she turned south over the bridge. Once she had stopped, in the early evening, and hung over the ancient concrete arch to do a shoot down the gash of a deep, rocky gorge, with the tallest trees just breaking the surface, and a sturdy little creek smoothing gray-satin rocks, pooling into reeds and tickling the roots of willows along the banks, sun barely slanting through the treetops, deep shade mottling the bottom. She was startled to see, so far down, what appeared to be a juvenile raccoon, honing his skills and satisfying his appetite by searching the shallow rocks for delectables, pulling itself along the bottom with its little finger-feets, its sly and deadly crevice-pickers.

It was low light and the demands exceeded the capacity of her little low-end digital. But she persisted, trying this and that, propping and stutter-shooting and time-delaying in hopes of getting one good shot. Which it ended up she didn't, but that was okay. Sometimes you've just got to let it go.

She pulled over and walked out on the bridge. The sun was more directly overhead, and the stream was dry. Marissa's brow crinkled as she remembered the drought. Bad as anyone had seen in these parts since the thirties. And that was a sobering thought. Made the talk a little tense down at Mabell's, with some quickness toward laying blames for convenience of an easy target for jumpy trigger fingers.

It could get a little scary when the guys got liquored up.

Men! Don't they ever stop to think?

Well, come to think of it, where did she have any evidence women were any better! Not having time enough to show their true colors, to fall off their own pedestal of virtues, constructed from history's ribbon-road of salty tears and broken bones, knowing they would never raise that hand against another, would never stoop so low.

But they did raise that hand against themselves, carving their bodies like wax into acceptable parameters using starvation and lipo and botox and tucks and death-defying creams and masks and high-heels and make-up and nails and silkies and satins and ribbons and bows, while carving their souls with their catty competitions and gossip-circles designed to crush the aspirants who did not suitably match the template.

What next? She wondered. Maybe women will be off the hook for a little while, given that men seem to be doing a fine job stepping up to the fashion plate, preening in the mirrors and popping down some pretty good coin for vanity trade. We are becoming so alike! Men becoming more effete, women more muscular, so that we in the end will resemble the petty gods who languidly diddle their eternity in paradise admiring their respective elevations, so to speak.

Until of course that moment right before they tip into the grave when they go oops, all sags and bags even more grotesque and difficult a task for the mortician, who has to work overtime and charge extra to whisk it all away. Hazardous duty pay for Harvey down at Mortmiller's Funeral Home, forcing his cheezy acquaintance on anyone unlucky enough to be invited to a party he was at. Harvey, unfortunately, was the only end-game in town, but he did his best to not let on, to make a good show of boot-licking and bobbing for your apples.

Funny his name being Harvey, seeing how he did look like a big overstuffed bunny, long pale fingers a little too bony, a little too cold, but the rest padded and top-heavy and poochy-cheeked when he smiled, which he did like a fish gulping, lips a loose-fluttering steam-valve to keep his head from popping from his eternal effusing. Marissa was always half-expecting an explosive whistle to erupt, and considering what strains of what dirge he may emit always gave her a chuckle.

Well, no raccoon today, though sunbeams teased off the smooth, cobbled stone, far below, contrasting the rich shade, inviting her to frame some shots of light to shadow, voluptuous and suggestive in the sensuous curves, now dusty and visibly scarred by the perennial rush of waters, now an eery silence. Fallen autumn leaves piled where last year was a foot under fast water, which plunged even deeper into clear blue pockets between boulders where large, sleepy catfish used to dream, like shadows all wavery on the bottom, splotched with sun.

Man! Another bad year, and with the farmers the backbone of their rural economy - everyone has the jitters! She sent a few prayers for the farmers, to relieve their worries, to ride the motherfucker out and keep claim to their holdings, keep their puny acres from falling to the corporates, who ran through rural sections not caring about conservation much, decimating the soil and moving on, leaving localized, chemically saturated dustbowls in their wakes, dilapidated homesteads a century once standing now crumbling back to sod, once-loved family plots gone to weed and seed, the long-gone families she imagined hanging clothes to dry across filthy alleys from rickety tops of iron-skirted tenements, like the pictures in her junior-high history book in the women's suffrage chapter. She had looked at that etching for a long time, hearing strains of a white spiritual echoing the sorrow in her bones like a hollow wind. Took it for growing pains, back then, the subtleties of articulating emotion yet beyond her by a couple of decades.

So how do men leave their children? She wondered, walking back to her car, stopping to shoot the light through the glowing treetops, quivering aspen leaves so close she could touch them as she neared the shoulder where she was parked. How does that go? Is there no bond? Impossible! She remembered her father's face, his deep joy in seeing her lighting his whole face. So it couldn't be that. Always a little too tempting to throw men away as unfeeling, she mused. Women do love a good food fight! I feel more than you do! Nanny, nanny nanny!

Or was it that they simply lack the ability to manage the intimacies and dependencies too much surging for their circuits? Crippled as they are by a society who disapproves of tenderness, and leave men without tools to carve even the most meager channels in the rock, to let their deep, deep waters flow.

And whose fault is that?

Well, she wrinkled her nose. That question always devolved into everybody's and nobody's fault. Dead ends.

Sigh. Where were those really irritating philosopher-guys when you need them? The ones with all the holes in their premises... Not too bad at reduction ad absurduim, though! Or whatever you call it. She smiled.

Her mind wandered to that interesting six-weeks as a runaway neatly tucked into her savior John's back-pack, figuratively speaking of course, and trucked around to classes with him. She learned lots of things, not all of them in the classrooms. But some pretty interesting discussions on ethics that got some wheels turning, forced her onto the edge of the razor-question: who do you want to be when you grow up? And she learned about values and did a lot of thinking about that, noodling through those long hours of not much happening as she waited for the next curveball, and the next and next. Learning to read the pitcher.

John. Well. What can you say about a 26 year-old aspiring sci-fi writer who adopts a 14 year-old runaway stray? Holing up with her in a one-car garage refurbished with a mattress on the floor and aquarium crackle-paint like stained glass on the dirty, dirty window panes. He even hounded her after she was taken home by John's roommates over his objections after her mother's Hells Angel friends tracked her down and left a note on their door. She never knew what the note said, but she noticed they went a little pale and wouldn't take no for an answer as she was bundled into the back seat of a car and deposited forthwith and unceremoniously in her driveway, peeling away rather quickly.

She was gone again in a week or two, so no matter. But hard lessons learned. Geez! Never mind the long arm of the law! She never could figure out how her mother et. al. found her. She thought she had covered her bases, living in an unfamiliar part of the city with people she had never met, selling underground papers on campus and wandering through classrooms in a world so far from home she had never imagined. Nobody seemed to notice her at all, in the height of the cultural meltdown, the free-love revolution of the late sixties in southern California. But somehow they had tracked her down.

Well. Hadn't she been the slippery one, even back then! She grinned, thinking that Bill never had a chance. She was only recently coming to understand the depths of her own self-deception, self-hardening skin wrapped layer by layer, year by year, now calcified into a full-body cast, feeling like bone on bone every time she wiggled. So much effort, so much pain, so many years spent flailing against a prison door of her own making, only to look down and find the key in her own palm, like it was there all along.

But it is good to be clear on that anyway, to know that perception is so warped that self-deception is really the norm, rather than the deviation. Because really, how often do you meet someone who is really real all the way down no matter what? Marissa considered that for awhile. What would that look like? No apologies, no shame, no divided loyalties. Hmmm. No secrets, no lies. No gossip. No judge or jury or hangman's noose. Somebody who just says No. Sorry. I am not interested in your wily-wares today. I am only interested in one thing, the answer to just one question before i die.

Funny how youthful dreams of understanding everything had dwindled! Only one question! She couldn't see the trend reversing in the near future, either, wondering if it continued at this rate, whether by the time she died she would know anything at all. it was looking a bit doubtful.

Marissa pulled her headphones and crappy mp3 player out of her purse, untangled the wires and plugged in, not watching the road signs, listening to a dharma talk she downloaded off Audible, on rain, how it splits your mind right open, like a walnut-half, or a perfect diamond.

Balancing on the head of her awareness, she spread her wings over her little car, lifted just a little, and nosed toward the billowing thunderheads towering to the west. Thoughts tinkled like cracked crystal as she broke the sound barrier...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Late that night she awoke, startled again. Shreds of dream still lapped her shore, receding quickly to mist as she groped for them, and forgot, and groped again, riding wispy tendrils of thinking about yesterday, Willa, like a dream herself, and tomorrow, damn! she looked at the clock, today then, and going back to work. Ugh. And this was the best job she ever had!

Drifting, she thought she heard someone calling, but so faintly she chalked it up to tinitis, or receiving radio signals through her fillings. Which really happens! Yes it does! Though nobody ever believed her, saying she's nuts, like those split-personality people who murder their parents and eat their children. ooh ooh! they joked, always: hey! ain't they got meds for that?

Assholes. Well, what could she expect, working around a bunch of guys. At least they didn't duct tape her to the chair for a lark anymore. That wasn't so fun. Interesting though, as mortified as she had been, unable to stop them no matter how hard she fought, she caught their scared looks as soon as they realized what they had done, and covered it up with har-harring while they ripped the tape off her skin. But they never joked about it later. That's how she knew she really saw it. Raw terror at the question arising of Who am I? What does it take, wiseguys?

Seems like the universe likes a good face-slap to wake itself up sometimes, like a good aftershave, a little aftershock. A little cosmic peek-a-boo anyone? Preview of cosmic release? Supernova alarm clock? What did it take for them to feel her terror? Theirs being so loud and clear to her, even as they strong-armed her, kneed her chest, turned her face-down to tape her arms behind her and lugged her up to the chair, all jeers and laughter.

Not so amused, she called the state office for Employment Security, hoping to file suit against her employer, she was so mad! But no, you have to have at least 50 zillion employees before you can file for sexual harassment. It never crossed her mind to file assault charges! That was back in the day she couldn't see the law as her friend. Hey, she thought, that would be one way to reduce the incidence of crime: to make everybody afraid to report anything! Why haven't they thought of that? she wondered. Just go to school scaring all the kids, and voila! No crime, lots of donuts. Well, no reported crime, but still lots of donuts

She had to laugh about the donuts, after Roy and Gene Smart-ass Goodins, twin brothers who partnered patrols in Gravely, a two-horse town in the next county, just landing themselves in a heap of publicity for taking advantage of their donut-stop, helping themselves to whatever they wanted without even asking, and the owner, indignant, caught them on tape red-handed. like any fool meth-heads knocking off a mini-mart. Only this footage got fed to the national wire, and it broke on the network news. Slow news day, maybe. And that's always a good thing. But what a hoot!

Now, that really was someone calling her! Faint -- wasn't it, she just couldn't be sure with the wind bumping the timbers. Nothing now.

Awake anyway, and careful not to disturb the heavy mass beside her, she slipped into her sweats and socks, moving carefully on the hardwood floors. She stopped at her dresser as she thought of the letters, then thought against it, too squeaky, and continued downstairs.

She liked the tension, the not knowing which way to turn, a delicious interplay of impulses to walk through her fear and read the darn things or to break and run for the hills, scattering them like snow behind her. Feeling herself bucking the check-rein, calming herself - hey, settle, hold, hold, not yet -- building herself a big head of steam and straight-arming completion, like the long, drawn out foreplay of long-distance lovers.

mmmmm, careful there! she thought. Too easy to get in trouble out there on the net. Lots of horny boys oh so sweet dangling their little wares like chumming for catfish.... And she, teetering precariously on the edge of a marriage that could fall either way, any day. So she wanted to be careful of the forces she introduced, knowing from hard knocks how easy things can slip out from under. And not being quite consolidated in her knowing how to sort it out or what to do. Always thinking it was best not to think, just set it aside to steep awhile, it'll come when it's ready... But then letting it get too cool, and the everyday to-do list that never got done gaining such prominence that it may as well have been glued inside her eyeballs. Then one day, she'd remember to think again, and start catching herself sidling toward freedom sure as a wolf-dog eying the gate.

so she learned it was never a good time to think.

Listening outside, careful not to bang the screen, Marissa heard nothing to alarm her. Chilly, the wind still choppy, fickle. The stars a deep radiant velvet with the slip of a moon already set, and the dark silhouettes of tall maples across the road whistling thin and impotent, with once-plump leaves chattering their bones like dry rain, pushed into leeward piles by the fitful gusts. Doing half Marissa's work for her raking, she thought, but easy to trip on the rocks. No need to sprain her ankle again!

She ducked back inside to decide on hot tea, hot chocolate or coffee, depending on time. Standing there, on the black checkered floor, she had the strangest feeling, as she was trying to decide, of being suspended in this odd juncture of time and space, which seemed to curve strangely toward her periphery, tightening her field of perception. She usually freaked a little, got her heart thumping, but this time she just breathed, like she had practiced, staying present, able to listen, her blood not thumping in her ears. What was it, she wondered, an allergy? A stroke? One of those little ones maybe?

But no, no one-sided anything, no neurological stuff, just perceptual. But odd in its distance effects, as if she were somehow detached and observing while somebody else worked the levers. Like being a character in her own story, feeling a stranger to her own thoughts, her own body seeming to have a mind of its own. Thoughts popped up like bubbles, each their own invitation to story, all jostling for the lead. But she unable to reach beyond the glass she found herself pressed against, or trapped inside.

She settled on her ginseng combo with lemon echinacea, ginger root and cayenne. Felt good to slip into winter, routines emerging like old friends, comfortable slippers. Mixing the ingredients while the kettle heated, like so many other nights, thin pages of an insomniac laying down like parchment, bound in cracked leather, encyclopedic. She imagined a thousand nights just like this, standing here, her reflection in the window, the wind rushing outside, so alone, on this dead-end road. Not always lonely, but so alone.

Where to go from here? She wondered if the way forward was always the way back, picking up pieces, examining the flaws, the stupid little left turns when right was what was needed, all accruing into this encasement of a life set in concrete, set in stone. How is it that the trail just ends up in cul de sacs that trap you and keep you spinning, sideways to your path. And why did her little cul de sacs come each with the name of a man, like each street sign could state it: man, no-man, you choose. And she invariably chose the man, thinking each choice would necessarily correct for previous errors. But that seemed to be turning out to be not so much the case. Just another cul de sac, sapping decades from her life, color from her life.

So oh well, girl, she thought. Lessons don't come overnight. Sometimes you got to slug it out to the next level to make any sense of things. Never knowing if the slugging is up or down. Nice set up! For a comedian...

that was her favorite god, the trickster, the yellow-eyed grin, charming attention while the blanket is pulled from underneath the unwary, the unaware, the sleepwalkers, sleep-dreamers.

Well it seemed to be working! Her greatest desire in life was to dream awake, to know what the mystics spoke of, the great One thing. This mystery called so deep it practically sucked the marrow from her bones.

Puzzling over this problem of how to wake yourself when you are dreaming, the possibility of cosmic alarm-clocks or coded re-entries, like the crucifiction, enfolded instructions keyed to configure like a mandala teaching, knocking at the under-doors, making certain kinds of sense on the topland, but turning in the belly like a rubik's cube, magically solving its own problem.

She chuckled, settling down with the hot mug, breathing steam while it steeped. Ahhh. It's not so bad, not all bad, is it? She ruffled through her list of gratefuls: grateful for her ramshackle home that felt more like home than anywhere she had lived since a child on the ocean-cliffs of California. This place was isolated, wild all around the edges where Bill mowed up against the brambles of honeysuckle and blackberry, wild rose and poison ivy. It was beautiful and free, almost unfettered, just a thin road, a thin wire and a satellite disk in the yard connecting them to civilization. And she loved that. Loved the wind in her hair, the savege sunsets, the birds telling her everything she needed to know, about what was up, who was about. Crows especially flew their lookout routes, broadcasting all news to anyone interested.

She had learned to shed the city-buzz, to move slowly, to not talk. That had been hard, mistaking Bill for someone who actually thought about things he was not getting ready to do. She had to laugh at herself, and all women really, who love the testosterone-form, but want the mentality to work like theirs, which is estrogen-based. Where the favorite activity is talking, spinning oceans of feeling into reams of ideas. Not doing, which is what makes sense to men. If you think it, do it. No talking about doing it. If forced, pretend to listen, agree, and do what you intended to do to begin with.

She loved this old rocker, and all the memories buried in time, inside and out these old walls. She loved her car and her camera and her computer. And her job wasn't so bad. And Bill didn't beat her. That was good. His stone-face could get a little unnerving though. But she preferred that to the drinking.

So what else, let's see -- she had her Bugger and JJ to curl in her lap and sleep on her at night. She had a heart that was healing and getting strong, even as another battlefield emerges from the ether, thundering beyond the horizon, filling her mind's eye.

Which makes it really hard to sleep! She rinsed her cup and set her mind toward walking into dreaming, getting on that wild horse and chasing rainbows...

~~~~~~~~~~

Awaking again, startled, she found herself up on a stucco wall in the corner of a room, surveying several people, a little rough-looking, like gypsies, seated around the table. One of them looked straight at her and said, she's back. They all looked at her thoughtfully, but her consciousness reeled backwards terrified and tumbled into darkness again.

Then she is walking in conversation with a voice inside of her, the sun filtering through tall branches, dappling the winding path. So are there any thoughts that are my own? she was asking. A chuckle in reply. She considered, turning the gears of reason with her curiosity, but curious enough to not know, and having faith in the process. It was really just an interior extension of the trails she rain as a child, on the cliffs over the Pacific. Just the sheer love of running, the hunt for the unknown, which lay around every bend with its own suchness, so rich with beauty and mystery calling, calling. She could see her brown feet running, arms pumping, white-gold pigtails bouncing.

not much for conversation! she thought. Dream-people could be frustrating.

but he wasn't exactly there, though, even in her dreams. Just a voice, a wing and a grin, gentle proddings, probings. She wondered sometimes waking, if there was a connection to the little man she saw as a child, the little gnome who caught her horsing around after lights-out, little marissa barely five, accidentally bounced so high she landed on the floor in a heap. Looking up, the door opened, and this little man, his hand on the doorknob at eye's level, looking at her, kind but a little stern and scary, and he warned her back to bed, nodding as she complied, and shut the door. Her mother never shut the door. But in the morning she looked, and it was still shut. So she knew. What she knew she didn't know. But she knew she knew something. And she knew she could never forget it, whatever it was, that it was hers to hang onto and nobody could tell her it didn't happened. It was her secret knowing place, so bright she could barely see inside. Just flickers like flame-figures slicing through a diamond like the sun.

She wondered if this was the seed of faith in her, that she tried to prune and nip and constrain into some semblance of normalcy. She wasn't even religious, not at all a christian, though not to say she didn't love his teachings, and suspect he could perhaps enlighten her about that golden voice inside her dreams. It was all connected somehow, but how? That is what drove her, this insatiable curiosity about how is this all working REALLY?

And what is that beyond the bend?

Nothing else seemed half as material, though she made inroads as deep into the everyday as anyone else. Deep, long furrowing grooves of Ordinary Everyday, time carving her face along its banks. Once, when she had been so dry and dessicated in spirit, she saw her face in that mirror and like to died. Had no idea she had so many lines to turn downward into jowls and scowls and frowns.

Well that scared her straight! She thought Wait! I'm way too young to die! And she was dying, sure as a one-way train into the desert for twenty years, even the mirage fading, and the dry desert wind whistling hollow through her bones. Oh such a plaintive flute, moaning through her wires, carrying the scent of pollen to her ears, a pied piper back to the hinterland, and she could pretty well find her own way back from there. Having spent so much time in the hinterlands. Her favorite stomping grounds, so to speak.

But that desert, oh! that was a different order of beastie entirely! Not for ordinary boy scouts.

~~~

Funny how you go along feeling real light on your feet and invincible, then you lose a little helium, hit a few potholes, bury a kid or two, a man. And you can get up a few times, taking your knocks and bouncing off the ropes, but someday it catches up and clobbers you from behind. Then try to get up and get some laundry done! Yeah. Punch into work Monday morning. Go ahead. Just check transportation to the state hospital first.

It's not easy losing a baby, and she and Bill had lost two: one at six-months gestation, one a year later at birth. That was a long time ago, but what remained did not leave much for a marriage to grow on, like a vine without a trellis, kind of lackluster and aimless. And no room for talking. Hell there never had been any talking! That was one of the original terms of their endearments, that they would let bygones be bygones. No questions. And that was fine with her. Finally, a man who didn't want to pretend she was a virgin!

She always thought this might be about Viet Nam. Her first husband was all about Viet Nam. He wasn't too crazy, but still had some interesting kinks. And taught her a lot. Like what it feels like to think you're about to die. Of course, she didn't speak to him for two weeks after that fiasco, so she thought he kind've got a two-fer, the grand fun of stalking her in a parking lot with his har-har buddies, painted all in cammo, scaring the piss out of her. And then the added pleasure of not having to listen to her.

She guessed she just didn't get his sense of humor.

Well, eventually, push came to shove, and that marriage ended fairly spectacularly. She could write a manual how to blow yourself up over three counties! But if you have to trash your life, you might as well get a lot of bang for your buck, if you think of it as tuition.

So what did she learn? She learned she could color outside the lines, and she learned that can have unexpected catalyzing effects. She learned that she wasn't too keen on someone gluing her to his hip, if he didn't have her frying his grits in the kitchen. She learned that he would rather masturbate than make love to her. Man, that was a first! As far as she knew.

She had started looking real hard at questions of possessiveness, though progress would be slow-going for some years, mostly because it took that long to recognize her own clutchy-clinging, thinking herself all miss Unconditional Love. To be fair she had been young, moving way too fast, with no directional control and some claptrap map of the world, bequeathed to her largely by her "at-least-i-never-get-lost-in-the-same-place- twice" slolam-racing mother, no doubt. A woman of many faces, her fingers in many pies, but no manual or compass or headlights or brakes. Not nearly as dignified or practical as she wanted to see herself. And not knowing why not to push your nose into everybody's business. Wasn't she ever a kid? The woman was everywhere! Privacy was a foreign land where other kids lived.

Now that she thought of it, that may be something underlying her secretiveness. She was always hiding in plain sight. It was kind of a game when she was a kid, so she probably got better at it than was good for her. And having a crazed witch for a mother could hone some skills! Not that she was all bad, or always bad. Marissa felt guilty, black-washing her mother in memory, when they had such a strong relationship now, albeit across a great distance, across several seas.

Oh my, Marissa turning the rough-cut jewel to a shinier side of her mother. She really had her strong points. Beautiful, flashy, smart, so smart! When her mood was up she was the sun, all golden honey laughter so noteworthy splashing all the walls with tickles and smiles and glad to know ya's. Those days could wash away a lot of grime! And Marissa hoped her mother knew how much all those bygones were gone. Some last reckoning now, cleaning out the bilge. That's all, and man that felt good, to see the moon through the fog, to know at is only half a lifetime down to the learning the count, and now, almost, she could see her way free. Just this something still niggling, still incubating just beyond her reach.

so it is still this steady-as-she-goes, nose to the ground, one step at a time, and stay focused.

right!

god would this insomnia never let up? and those weird dreams, always creeping into her waking, making her feel stepped aside herself, edges all warped in. And those awakenings inside awakenings, like those nested russian dolls, thinking you are up and showered and brushing your teeth when, whoops! you're waking up again, then again. So desperate feeling, like how do i get out of here?

That's one of the reasons she loved her privacy out there. Trying to feel your way around with snoopers about could land you in the psychiatrist's office, and she didn't want to be going back there! No thanks! And Bill, he really lived on his side of the glass, not showing much interest in her doings, except to worry that she might be dead on the road somewhere if she lit out and forgot to check in. Thank god for cell-phones, making it easier for him to let her ponies run. Running to, running from, she never knew. But she didn't really need to explain or defend, just needed to chuck this ballast and run! She didn't mean to be bad, only to find some accommodation with her story somehow, just to lay it down to where it would stay put, inking out the true contours of her, something she could stand on without falling through the center of the earth. Again.

That's what she thought Bill would be. He was the rock of gibralter, the shh, shh it's okay soothing the wild-eyed mare back into the barn, back between the sheets, his big hairy arms, all tattooed from other battles, other wars, so strong and seasoned and well-meaning. And she thought I can fall in love with him, and we will grow together like old trees forever and ever and ever.

well that was the hope, the plan. Filed behind "you can't save anybody" and right in front of "nobody can save you." Now she was organizing the one right behind that, called "and that's okay: nobody needs saving, here, you can save your own damn selves!"

that's better!

and worse.

Sigh.

Nothing comes easy it seems. And boy isn't that like blood pooling between the lines of the wedding vow!

for better and worse
till death do us part

is that a metaphorical death? She had worked that every which way, chewing it like jerky.

she turned over again, facing the alarm: four a.m. Five whole minutes since the last eternity.

well, she could lay a little longer, drifting. not so bad, as long as Bill kindly moderated the beans: Mixing bean-gas with beer-fumes can be deadly, no lie!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

thrum, thrum, hooves on the prairie, black sky parting for the moon, just a sliver, a tiny piece of the pie, sliding like a tongue between the roiling clouds as they beat on the shores of infinity. To her right wolves sounded, and she could see the flicker of their supple hides as they flowed through shadow, over rock and and bluff and rise, through drop-dead, dead-end gully-washes laced with cattle trails, single filing the rough rims, threading the crumbling cliffs to the sandy bottoms, where the highlands disgorged their waters so precipitously into the valley to seep and filter through limestone into the cavernous aquifer below. The aquifer, Grandpa always said, thumbing his bib-straps, could never be drained or polluted by puny little man, who fancies himself much too big for his little britches.

And now, they couldn't pull up enough to irrigate, and what tested out of the wells was toxic for drinking with too much uric acid from nitrogen fertilizers and miles of feedlots right along the river. Water. They were pretty lucky to find a place on the water-line, tapped into the water-district way out like they were. Pipes were run by the county commissioner, back before he retired or was voted out for skulduggery, before selling them the place right before he died. She swore the man haunted them still! And she remembered Grandpa's pontification was a response to her getting the be-jesus scared out of her by an informational video at the airport, lots of doom and gloom about becoming a desert planet. And that a scant 40 years ago, remembering her feet swinging, not reaching the ground.

How she loved those airplane flights catapulting her between ordinary ho-hum and those magical summers on the farm. Going, she found, was more fun usually then the return, as the school year was the 40-year desert, as far as she could see. She didn't feel sorry for Moses at all, what little she knew of him from her big bible picture book her grandma gave her one Christmas, then made her mother allow to keep over angry objections. Grandma always won, once she got to fussing.

But either direction, the flight through cloud tops and cities and towns and countrysides all full of ant-cars and ant-houses and ant-farms and fields, quilting the countryside in those long stretches between mountain peaks, which were a glory unto themselves. She remembered becoming a pegasus, winging through the cloud canyons as free and sure as her little goat-feet on the cliffs back home. And the layovers in Phoenix and unexpected stand-by's and the nice stewardess's, always so crisp with their wings on their jacket-lapels and lipsticked smiles, always friendly and efficient, with goodies for cute little girls who didn't cause trouble. And Marissa was cuter than cute, and oh was she a good girl for an almond joy, even if it was just a little one, like they put in trick-or-treat bags. She was a sucker for a soda, too, and had a pretty good track record with the really old men, popping a nickel in if she smiled just right.

And old men really had been her stock in trade, later, after the forsaking. She always shined in their eyes, even if they were a little mischievous when they would touch her, offer her trinkets for some time alone. She began to detest old men early on, but she ran from the young ones, so much scarier, their heat-seeking frenzied gropings and sulky demanding. Old men were at least a little calm, and better liars. And how else was a girl to get clothes in the world of runaway? They were always so apologetic, shy-peeking, rubbing, then they would take her out to dinner or buy her a new pair of shoes. Nothing fancy, but just not wanting to let her off on the corner barefoot maybe, or without a jacket, whatever. Some sort of vestigial chivalry, she mused. Knowing she had nowhere to go.

Was there no mercy for a child in this world?

Of course, she never thought about that back then, down in the trenches. Those parts of her brain weren't online yet. She learned that later, after some therapy and education about these things, much much later, after the fall. The Fall! That's what she called it. She still had dreams of babies moving inside of her, babies shriveling black like watermelons rotting on the vine, babies opening their hollow eyes, clutching with tiny fingers, howling like a whirlpool sucking her out to the stars. She always woke sweating, feeling punched in the gut and sick, even dizzy sometimes, spinning left into the door-jam if she got up too quick. Sometimes she would lay there and sob, big dry sobs to not alert Bill, who always felt awkward and clumsy around her tears. Sometimes she would cry hard but quiet right in front of him and he would never notice, or if he did, he never asked.

She still couldn't shake this idea that she was nearing the end of the line for her line, for her mother's line. Her brother never had kids, her sister spun out through addiction and into her grave so long ago. She felt sometimes like a useless, barren hulk of a shipwreck on these obsidian shores. And railed at her body, her karma, the gods. Well really, anyone who would sit still for it. Because mostly people were three days of casseroles and get over it. And she didn't even get that from the third-trimester miscarriage, which was as unbearable as the next. Even more so, really. And her grown daughter hadn't looked around for years, no way she was going to slow down enough to drop a kid!

She never came around much, not caring for Bill. Said the place spooked her too, too many noises in the night, strange feelings in the hallways and the closets. But they were on good terms, and Marissa was grateful for that. Celeste, a tall blonde filly full of fire and snort, way too much a handful for Bill's stubborn huffiness and soft-candy centers, was her dead husband's child, already pretty independent and sure her mommy didn't need a man around when she started dating Bill. And she never really did change her mind! Always filling the house with storm, never backing down from an argument, even if Bill was staggering drunk she had no mercy, could pretty much clobber him with her lawyer-mind by the time she was twelve.

Glad though, for the opportunity to spill forth from her loins this magical bundle of agonizing ecstasy, this tiny reactivity forcing her through her paces in all those places she didn't get her own workable mothering stamped deep enough, that she had been too busy slip-sliding to masicate before they hardened into little pus-pockets left behind in the river of time, easy enough to ignore. But this child had saved her life, ripped her out of her own self-pity to make hard, dirty, woman choices between abject, beggarly love and the care and keeping of a precious gift whose whole being depended on her utterly with wide-eyed trust and all the fine-print from the mother-daughter contract somehow etched in her dna, holding her, no skewering her with her accounting and slamming her with her ledger lines, crammed full of her profits and losses and limited liabilities. And the kicker was she was usually right, and knew it. Sassy little thing!

But Marissa knew that the years of depression fueled deep angers inside her daughter, who couldn't pummel her off the couch no matter how hard she tried, how mad she got, glowering evil-eye, fisting back her tears. They were just now beginning to address this chasm between them now, her beginning to slow and turn around, seeing Marissa not as Mother but as complex human being with many branches, not just the mommy ones. But visits were rare, and deep talks took time, but they dove in deep when they could grab a day together somehow, maybe once or twice a year since she moved to L.A.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She awoke so suddenly she was disoriented. The bed was cold beside her, and she could hear the compressor kick on in the shed. Bill is up 'n at 'em already, she mused. Thank goodness he never got hung over. How could he not? she wondered. How can anybody drink that much and be fine in the morning? She couldn't understand it, having more memories of the porcelain throne than she cared for. Glad those days were gone, brief and fruitful with lessons as they were, thank god!

loving her saturday mornings with the lazy walks down the road then on a path cutting back along a creek. The crows would clatter along among the treetops, decimating any surprise factor far in advance of her lens. Rarely would she get a shot of a squirrel, though several nested nearby. Deer burrowed in the honeysuckle brambles by the back woods, across the creek.

The mud was churned by cloven hooves for a good stretch along there. It was a good place for them to lay out hunting season, well away from guns. One thing Bill wouldn't abide was hunting on his property, feeling himself a steward of the land and a protector of all wounded warriors and orphans. Not a deer had been shot on his small acres for over twenty years. And deer aren't stupid -- not the ones still alive!

Sometimes she would catch them early, as they eased out into the meadow, drifting with the fog. She was able to get ethereal shots by stretching her cameras capabilities, but it wasn't really able to produce better than a blur in low light, without a tripod. Which seemed a bit cumbersome to carry.

But she loved to watch the seasons roll, and somehow the slow turning of the earth, the rhythms of passing, allowed something in her to settle and flow. So many years of feeling like sport, so many years of feeling the victim, then the realization of the pain at her own hand, and then the regrets, and the cleaving, and the slow emerging from scalded skin into quivering vulnerability she could only hope would harden just a little, for a bit, to giver her a chance to catch her breath.

And meanwhile she walked, and worked, and deepened her understandings, and her ability to stay present to keep working, keep pressing forward, unlayering, excavating, irrigating. Work in progress, work in progress she kept telling herself. And most days feeling pretty good.

Today she felt restless, unrested. She sat in the sun on her flat rock, overlooking a small meadow opposite a stand of tall pine, waiting, her breath pluming in the rising light. The chill burnt her fingertips through the holes in her gloves, so she could work the camera. The rustle of leaves unnerved her, her neck hairs tightening as she couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. She slowed her breathing and relaxed her eyes to sharpen her peripheral vision, another dreary waiting-room discovery waiting for her mother and precious baby brother who never really needed being born, as far as she could see, for what good he ever did, hoggin her mother the way he did.

There wasn't much she couldn't blame on the little boy-king, back in those days, before he grew to be a tree-trunk man-mountain with serious leverage. She backed off smart and early, so he still in some quirky recess still believed she could beat him to a pulp. Memory like an elephant! She chuckled, wondering when that game would be up!

Willa crowded into her thoughts, and bumped up an image of that yellowed bundle, and her improbable purple hair. Marissa crinkled inside. Life is such a puzzle! Why this? Why now? Why why at all? It seemed her mind was an endless fractalizing kaleidoscope, calling up new configurations of her pick-up sticks ceaselessly becoming jerky marionettes, all jumping up and down yelling look ma! look at me! no hands! no strings!

so distracting!

and it would be different if she could trust them to make sense, but no, on closer review it didn't seem that her brain was in the least interested in what was really going on, except when it's a life or death thing. Otherwise, truth is a crapshoot and brain a lazy dog giving you the easy answers just because they worked once, like back when you were THREE for christ's sake!

look ma no hands indeed.

And she was feeling pretty jerked around on velvet strings all unaware of the gentle crazy puppeteer but trying so hard to catch a glimpse, beyond the murmuring flashes of sunlight on water in her peripheral vision. She wanted to see the workings of this machine, and had as long as she could remember, all the way back to that different kind of kid minister she was -marrying the spoons and knives in the dishwater to make sure they didn't feel lonely. What is this love thing anyway? And why are we told it is god and is so everywhere but people are dying for it everywhere just the same, humping their way to the ultimate orgasm through penis or mainline or the alimentary canal, humping into walls and off cliffs and over the center-lines: we are all humpers for love, blind baby cupids so missing the mark!

now that should be a bumper sticker!

.2
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


back home, she eyed her emails, thankfully few, no bills but her regular online chatters. Sylvia is excited her kid got a football scholarship to pay her back for all those hours warming the bench for him, and chauffeuring those miles and miles and buying pizza's for the team. Even after losses. She really put in her time! Marissa felt a little churlish at this, having watched her beautiful brilliant but late-bloomingly awkward Celeste get passed over for scholarships, with all her state championships in mathematics and mentoring and challenge-academics and tutoring so she never had a chance to breathe, to get to know her own kin, so pressured was she to win the high school race and get the hell out of dodge! And who could blame her?

But there were three full-ride scholarships for athletics. No child left behind, right!

Let's see: Mother wants her husband to change, hmmm, nothing new there. And Bonnie, what was up with her? Drunk maybe, sat on the send button again.

Her heart always thumped hard, anticipating, but she tried fiendishly not to notice. It invariably hit rock-bottom again, which was equally ignored, when she didn't see his name, though on the surface she prayed to never see again. He who tried forcing her hand so firmly to cut cakes she was not done baking. And she striving so mightily to lift that sword, almost, almost seeing her way clear, before the curtain dropped.

And now, checking email, hoping dreading he would be there, stabbing pain when he wasn't. And still grieving like somebody died.

Isn't that the silliest thing! Some stranger shows up through the ether who knows your song so well he whistles it blind, like that mockingbird in the midnight, joyfully recombining every zipped up chromosome of her melody and inviting her to sing! Oh and her little filly-prancing wanting to throw her life down that wishing well, in a heartbeat! Free all her ponies from her already burning barn -- which she constructed initially in good faith as a testament to lost love.

When will she ever learn? She sighed. And how far do you have to run before Love gives up the chase and goes home for supper? Sneaking through nook and cranny, through every chink in the dream, shooting through wires and webs and doors triple-chained and dead-bolted with a beware of Pit Bull sign and heat-zapping floodlights for good measure. Just like those relentless zombie monsters in horror movies she never watched as a child, peeing in her pants as she did with just the Wizard of Oz on their little black 'n white screen, sky-hopping child-stealing monkeys and stripey-socked witches killed dead under houses and in glass balls with toothy smiles and evil eyes, scary even as they melted, melted, melted!

And she felt melty too, for a moment, before remembering to be angry, which felt a lot better than the hole left by that masked man, riding in like that and stealing all her thunder! Just as she was getting off the mat from the last brain-jarring take-down. So it took twenty years! so she was a slow learner. But she had been sure she was over it, beyond needing anyone for anything.

Then Daniel. Sleek, intelligent, aggressively curious, oh! he could run alongside her night and day like no one she had ever known, and just when she thought she was gaining on him, he would sprint out ahead again and tease her to catch him. Damn him! How could anyone be so good?

She never set out to be unfaithful, working her marriage vow into a sort of chastity belt, no fine print, a solid bottom line, and a permanence clause written in blood drip drip drip on granite, etching into the marble on her tombstone of broken promises. But she forgot the happiness part, when safe felt so good. And the cherishing part is hard when all there are between are mutually maintained secrets. What is left to cherish? And honor is inherent in respect. That implies being able to Spect, to See someone -- and while she could see into Bill's aching heart, she could not minister him there without his permission. And as far as she could tell, he had no awareness of his depth-charge pus-pocket festery oozy-nasty boil, how could he not? she wondered, preferring anesthesia a little quicker than she could manage, especially given the fear he had of intimacy. Who was she to storm his gates, even if she wanted? But how could she bolster her respect for him when he fumed so unreasonably, slobbering over his beer? And avoiding her. And lying to her about his drinking. And never meeting her eyes, never flirty or suggestive, except when he turned his music on, as a hopeful siren call she may deign to hear, or not. If not, he got pouty and avoidant again.

But that was better than the lead-rope, brood-mare approach of their early years. No foreplay, no afterplay. No play. Though he was gentle and thoughtful enough, and well built and good with his tools. Safe for her to recondition herself into a functional sexuality, instead of the quivering roadkill he met and bundled into his arms and tended back to health and eventually married. It struck her that he was her wildlife refuge, providing for her as naturally as to the deer, during this seasonal slaughter. And with healing, her sexual urges roared to life, orange flames shooting out of the furnace, white hot bursting her insides, rushing the headwaters toward some felt completion, some mythical chariot driving, dissolving, disseminating to shooting stars and supernovas, depositing her mangled essence on the fiery rim of creation.

And that was a good thing! Of course she never considered she might want to take it out for a test drive...

But it gave her a chance to reorganize. Daniel was the coyote grinning, the joker spinning, the raven with his sharp eye for shiny things thought lost and forgotten on the dusty trail. He shook her up one side and down the other. But never crossed a line.

she squeezed a tear for that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So unfair, this life of seeking-crashing-burning cycles, steady as cylinders firing, frustrated little monkey-driver too short to reach the pedals, sitting on the afterburner button and painting her map on the windshield, guaranteeing she would never get where she thinks she is going, or anywhere, really, in one piece! She was actually beginning to appreciate the humor. Daniel had helped so much with that! So loving in how he turned her, like a jewel in his diamond eyes, coolly extracting every impurity with so much compassion, holding it up like a newborn babe and asking, now that wasn't so bad, was it? While he packed her gouged heart and staunched her metaphorical blood with instructions to drink lots of water, take aspirin and go to bed.

Hurt so good! Oh yes it did. Better than the very best therapy she'd ever had. Which, tallied up, wasn't a very big percentage.

But inevitably it turned to heat, and her thruster rockets started keeping her up nights, sweating, burning, slamming her into walls, pulverized by the relentless heave of his mighty waters on her honeycombed shores. And she felt helpless, skewered by this onslaught of desire, his, hers, who could split those hairs, though she wanted to try. Oh how she did!

And Bill, walking a tightrope, doing dumb stuff. He had no idea how close she had been to bolting. And he was not interested in the computer, had already written it off as a new-fangled idiot box for stupid people. He eyed her suspiciously sometimes, but only out of concern for the dastardy stalkers and identity thieves he heard about on the evening news and fueled his imagination with dramatic certainties, about which he loved to rail, when he was in the envelope somewhere between six and ten beers

Interesting way to calibrate a marriage, she thought.

So she never hid her correspondence, except in plain sight, knowing he wouldn't look because he didn't know how, understanding his cockamamie reasoning to be a not-so-well articulated argument for time standing still for a change. But she didn't think about Celeste, who visiting, got up early one morning and sneaked behind her, intending to surprise her, but instead found herself on the receiving end of a rather steamy correspondence and her mother with silent tears on her face for wanting so bad to be in another man's arms.

Hard to explain that.

Well, Celeste freaked and Bill woke up and heard enough, though not everything, and there was some hell to pay and this long silence stretching out to the end of her days, this emptiness squared. And her wrestling shame and rage and guilt, all thrashing about in her dreams, all forcing her through this little tiny pinhole to her interior, into somewhere nobody could ever reach her, a familiar dungeon padded with books and music and pencil-sketches and a herd of horses thundering to the mountains. But now the sleek black stallion at the fore was looking back and flashing his hooves at her.

But only in her dreams, now.

wild dreams!

She and Celeste had talked it out, her feeling so bad to blow her cover, although she had grown fond of Bill over the years, in his not-drinking places. They really had a pretty chummy relationship now, with her not coming home but for holidays. So Marissa was really sorry to have mucked all that up, caused this new rift that was more like a glacial drift in a dying ocean, and Celeste choosing to spend Thanksgiving elsewhere this year. New boyfriend. Not enough time off to drive, not enough money to fly. Marissa told her she didn't need an excuse, but they kept coming, all a-tumble, pressured by the awkwardness of needing permission to be a grown-up.

But Bill had been convinced she had been suckered by some slack-jawed predator, beating her bush and playing her for the fool, probably going to kill them all in their beds. She protested that, spilled the whole can of jelly-beans right in front of him and sorted them all into color-coded piles, but still he refused to give her the credit of complicity. She was just an idiot, plain to see.

Oh! that made her soooo mad.

But after that he learned how to monitor her email and Daniel bowed out, not being one for drama, she guessed. Cut the cord. Gone. Never even said goodbye.

Well, what did she expect? He was married too. And standing awfully close to the fire...

And after her many chapters and books of lessons learned of the wily charms of wolfish men, she still couldn't believe she had been that easy to dump. Again.

So the door clanged shut and the cavern sealed and the bats that weren't able to get out first, well, they were shit out of luck, she guessed. Doomed to her hellfire for eternity. Because she'd be damned before she would ever fall in love again! Not even a first date. Hell, she wanted to poke a man's eyes out for just looking at her, anymore! Extreme, she knew. Hoping they didn't take it too personal.

But she didn't feel too married anymore. Like a marriage puppet, peering from behind her painted eyeballs, somewhere between shell-shocked and calculating her advantage. Back to the old Marissa, gearing up for survival, holding her cards close, not that anyone was looking. Hell, nobody else even at the table. They were all drinking and shooting the shit out in the shed, thumping their hairy chests about all their clueless wives.

You go right ahead boys! Another case or two and i'll give you the keys to the motorcycle, put you right out of my misery.... Marissa was never quite sure how she felt about her assassin-side. Black turtlenecked cat-burglar self, deadly silent, keeping to the shadows, sharpening her blades. Not part of her she was ashamed of, but still was careful to give her lots of privacy, a wide berth and little opportunity to play her hand.

She remembered the first time she emerged, leaped up with a knife someone had to take from her when she mistook a man steadying her as she stumbled for a threat as she carried groceries to her car. She didn't really remember anything, but the police told her what the witnesses had reported, later as they had her drinking coffee from a soda cup down at the station, waiting for Bill, still before they married, to rescue her. She had lost time before, but nothing like that. That poor man! Just trying to help.

And of course Bill's buddies laughed at him for his schizo-fucking-phrenic girlfriend. Made him so mad he proposed! Silly man, what could he know, when he wasn't even curious?

And the bozos, like they even knew what schizophrenia was! Grrr. Marissa didn't appreciate disparagement of the mentally ill, or any other disadvantaged underdog person. like children, elderly, homeless, disabled. Anyone who couldn't fend for themselves. A fury would swell up in her and slam down like thunder on that sort of ignorance, and she never cared much how unpopular it made her in the break room, where people generally gathered for agreement, not justice. She never planned it, really, and it used to mortify her, back when she thought she needed to belong somewhere. Imagining for days the conniving plotting planning to show her what for!

But how can people so freely speak of things about which they knew nothing? Worse than addicts, craving that little puff of superiority just to get through the day. Metered doses or mainlining, that was the only difference she could see. Everybody bellied up to that bar, in some guise, and sometimes it came with fake angel wings instead of hooded white sheets. But it all broke her heart. She reeled from the carnage in their centers, where even the fake angels were hurting, twisting in all the unknowns, driving toward certainty like salmon to source, not understanding that certainty was not so solid and its siren-call but a fancy engraved invitation to the rocks at the base of the cliff. She knew, and for a long time launched a frontal assault on ignorance, but found it was like fighting a war on the other side of the glass, no matter how hard she tried, they didn't see or hear her. Once in a while maybe, someone would stop and listen, and she would be hopeful. Mostly this was when she volunteered at the crisis line, another aborted endeavor, after someone she was working with suicided. Not a caller, the girl that worked the next phone. She left crying one night and wouldn't talk about it. Her body was found in her car at the end of a small air-strip, bloated after three-days in the hot sun. Pretty sight for her parents, who flew into the little strip from Milwaukee on their charter plane, and recognized her car on final approach. Mystery solved.

Cara was pretty smart, that way. Not wanting her parents to have to search, knowing they would fly in.

No matter how she tried, though, Marissa couldn't stop the stampede. Lemmings everywhere! But she got pretty good at accepting it, and staunching what blood she could when someone splatted right in front of her. And politely avert her gaze if it happened across the street, or down on the next block. She refused to join the lookie-loos twittering on their cell phones, calling it sooo like they saw it, opinionating at the speed of light. Via cell towers, these days. No more tin-can party-lines.

Well, I guess that's progress! she thought.

But real progress would be when people actually felt what they did to others without the slightest twinge of guilt, like it was some kind of pissing contest. Who ever won one of those? Seems like everyone ends up stinking. And the last 'o mighty one standing there, holding their dripping faucet. So dignified. So something to write home about.

She figured if anyone saw it like she did, they probably would choose different. And she understood, since that one epiphany when the world rolled out so perfectly its red-carpet for her to see how this whole damn shebang is only exactly perfect just the way it is, and nothing can possible be any different than what it is right now. And so clearly how nothing can stay the same if even one tiny input changes. So the game became to identify the smallest input for maximum change. Fun for her, but frustrating as she listened to the helpless whine of too much horsepower stuck in neutral as lives careened around her.

As she careened on her own trajectory, on her own thin ice. Not much good to anyone right now, needing to get some purchase on something solid before throwing out life-savers. Else you could spend your days drowning as they clamber over you with amazing alacrity, no please or thank you or may i hold the door? Only to topple over their heads again from too much momentum, crashing into their next chapter with renewed enthusiasm, leaving any surviving rescuers gasping for air.

How many ways does that have to happen before you begin assessing situations before diving in, all little miss helpful? And forcing herself to witness rather than joining in the joyful noise, allowed her to see for real that there was very little actual drowning going on, mostly thrashing about in six-inches of water making lots of drama and howling with pain and blame and shame, little dervishes spun from tops by their own hand, all perfectly suited up for swimming, but all their eyes turned inside-out and backwards. To make things interesting she supposed. Freakish, when she saw it the first time. Like they were deep in the Holodeck on Starship, Next Generation.

She watched a lot of re-runs in her years on the couch. Rockford Files was her favorite, something about wanting James Garner for a dad, though any memory through that fog stayed pretty mercurial, hard to trust. No continuity, big blurbs that oozed up like lava bubbles through the murk, containing shards of events and random settings getting all confused with each other. She gave up trying even for a consistent time-line of those years. She had neglected journaling and reading newspapers and attending social functions. She even found ways of avoiding Celeste's school activities and parent conferences. Poor thing.

Marissa still worked to make those amends, carefully showing her daughter how this neglect affected her and produced so much disarray in her ideas of herself in the world. Listening and nudging and reflecting back across to her what clues she had found across that great divide. Something, anything that helped it make sense. And other things, she liked to think of as "depth charges," stories folded like origami cranes, keyed to unfurl inside her by future events, to help her sail to more peaceful waters without the detours that she, Marissa had sampled. Like the devil's own buffet, she had tagged it. And thinking how that cut both ways, her eating of the devil's delicacies, simultaneously feeding him chunks of flesh and bone from her own body. And she knew she had only glimpsed the portals of hell. She couldn't imagine what would happen should you truly fall. How deeply the dream-shackles would insinuate their bony fingers into your living tissues, and pull you down like metal vines through the shredder, where you are left to pick up your own pieces, or not. Period. End of sentence. Do not pass Go. Go directly to the end of time. Unless you are really lucky, and you run across some real opportunities to climb that ladder, that jacobs ladder back to the spiral stairway to the clouds.

Ooops.

That would be bad. But "shredder" might be a misnomer for atomizer, or annihilator, the like grand-slam rolls royce of shredders. Making all those subtle distinctions you overlooked when you were raping and pillaging on earth, like it was your own playpen. Fuckin'-a guys, are you going to get it, when you get there! Marissa would think, then immediately feel her heart leap for them and want to help them re-evaluate their long-term objectives. And if she could, she would. She'd sit night and day to help someone change their mind, if they truly wanted to. Because she had came close enough, maybe, or something in her viscerally, intuitively knew the climb, and the map of that territory was stamped in hi-res graphics on her dna.

Sometimes she could see herself as that fallen angel, only this time trying to make amends.

And dragging her sorry ass back home, twenty-thousand lifetimes later, beginning to recognize landmarks and road signs, in this fog of sleep, this fog of dread and clammy cold and putrid wrenching need maybe, finally, oh so slowly lifting, and now, briefer forays into delusion, into believing all the lies falling like ash across the face of god, all those common ordinary lies lies lies that everyone believes, and they spout as their dogmas every day. But when it drives you crazy is when you see that and nobody else does, and you don't believe what you see, because you are not strong enough, and you begin agreeing on subtle levels that you have to believe in yourself, perhaps even replacing experience of being entirely, with this false self generated by agreeing with your own reflection.

when all that is required is to simply fall into your own becoming. Let go of it, have faith that becoming is a natural process that unfolds itself through you with ease when facilitated and horribly when resisted. Like dancing on whirling blades for a lifetime or three. Chop chop chop. Doesn't everyone hear them? Everybody hiphopping everywhere, all lines and squares, lines and squares... She could hear that as a song maybe.

Where does this stuff come from? She mused, having found herself seated at her piano, her grandma's piano really. Her grandma's Perfunctory Piano, as she never actually played it herself. But seemed to satisfy herself making sure all the grandkids had little tonettes and music books. But never provided encouragement or instruction, a curious vacuum, Marissa later thought, as she began tracing all the missing pieces in her puzzle.

It felt so good to finally have more pieces found than missing! As she were dragging her stump of self out of the swamp and was finally beginning to get real, finally feeling her way into living human skin, quivery-new facing a torture of freedom under this white-hot, life-bearing sun. She was a leaf settling, or a feather, a magical feather drifting, drifting, like the one in that movie Tom Hanks starred in - oh, Gump something.

But life rumbling, there, on the horizon.

Her fingers drifted across the keys as she teased a song from its old ivory-toothed throat, not even minding where the tuning strayed or a hammer plunked, hearing in her mind the heart of the piano beating so sure and strong, so many years ago, so many lifetimes ago. Not many relics remaining, so much lost in the war! She laughed, laying into her c-chord from Am to add a little bittersweet froth with chocolate slivers for garnish.

Bill laughed when she talked like that.

Then he'd turn and walk away laughing, scratching his head under his hat the way her grandpa used to. And she would maybe cry and subconsciously add it to her list of insults, until she figured out he really didn't mean it that way. Really thought it was cute, because mr. farm extension expert Roy Parmer had said so down at the feed store, else he might not have. But even so, it was hard to erase, like the one time Bill got pissed of at her in a dream and woke up furious with her, having to lay there for a minute to walk out of the dream. So every time he laughed at her, she had to slide it back over to the non-insult side on her screwy little abacus score-keeper. Another thing everybody has but they don't see, she noted. Only some people have these big beefy scales.

that's a list i could be keeping, she thought. Bright idea! a list.

Who said she wasn't recovering? Order persisting in ordering, against all odds, worming through the deadwood like dandelions in March. Now that is life! The cutting edge...

No pun intended, she thought. Remembering that night, the night after Celeste left, and Bill dragged out the whole kitchen sink and called her a crazy whore and why hadn't he ever listened to his buddies when they warned him.

Some things can't be unsaid. She hated that, thinking back to times when both parties would do anything to pretend it away. But it's like one of those boingy-headed jack-in-the box clowns that are hard to stuff back in and get the lid down. Or getting un-pregnant. No easy way out, there, either.

But something had thunked in her chest that day, and she fell off her horse, and landed on a knife. She didn't really remember it but she was in the ICU for three-days, socked out with valium so she wouldn't shred the tubing. They told her she was frantic to leave. Then mental health came. Not again! How does anyone live a whole life without talking to these people? Sheez. Anyway they didn't believe the lost time excuse. That's what they said. They never even asked what was the last she remembered. Got all their information from Bill, no doubt. He would put his special spin on it, sure enough. How she was exposing herself to freakish men on the internet. Thanks, my love, she thought, not feeling so ugly in a long time.

So a day of observation at the state-op and she was home with these disgusting bandages on her wrist. Not even smart enough to go the long way, they told her. Why would they tell her that? Odd. The whole thing was surreal. She honestly had no memory beyond going to bed after a really hot bath, feeling so body-slammed, and hoping she never heard Bill's truck pull up ever again. Then some dim thrashing, and she was waking up in the ICU.

What was that? She jerked alert, freezing at the piano, listening. Not a sound. This was getting disturbing! She looked outside to see Bill down at the dumpster, throwing in a bunch of boxes. Okay. That was it. She didn't know he was back from town. Her heart settled and she thought about how much she just wanted to pop some popcorn and watch Casablanca. Clouds were beginning to scud in from the northwest, dragging a deep indigo across the horizon. Nowhere to go. Hopefully Bill was still in the friendly portion of his envelope, and they could have a pleasant day of it. He popped it the old fashioned way, in that big aluminum dutch oven, another relic from another time, a different marriage, a different insanity.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

she did a lot of thinking after that little side-trip. She had skirted breakdowns before, or like a cow in a pasture, had silent breakdowns dropped scentless in the tall grass, able to maneuver the flesh into some semblance of function, close enough nobody noticed, or at least nobody commented. She began searching the internet for audiobooks, to see if she could lasso some of this dark matter boiling up in side of her, get those ponies back in the barn for a minute, do a roll-call, consolidate her gains. But the pain, oh! How is a body supposed to deal with this pain?

Remembering her lost Daniel came slower, her feeler-tendrils all a-quiver, fearing the shock of dismemberment akin to newly minted amputees, fearing the first meeting with the empty space where nerves still extend full-feeling. And how are you to wrangle love, separate her out from the stampeding graspings and urgings that felt like so much dirty laundry, unsorted and smelly and weighing a greasy ton? She imagined a long line of skeletons bound by ankle-chains, clinking along behind her, conversing and taunting her mercilessly, poking her with their bony fingers, their dry chatter sounding like the death-rattle of dying leaves in the windy turn of seasons.

and then, a glimmer of dawn. A slow turning in the crucible, the valley of tears leading slowly upland the swamps, the quicksand, the brambles and thorns, the dead beneath the waters and gollums sneaking, prying slobber-toothed for their precious, and the night turning to steel to gauze, and now some color creeps back in with the spring, and the vigorous jostling of buds and butterflies and saw-toothed vines, all clamoring for sky, for the grand unsheathing of organ to organ pulsating transmission through time, the grand-master orchestration of symphonic movements and orgiastic crescendos, big and small, humping and bumping in the dark.