Last Chance Idol #1, In The Garden
I didn't want to open the last drawer. Like the ones that had come before, it would contain memories from a happier time, a particleboard fortress reluctantly disgorging items that would have to be examined, remembered, and finally placed into one of two piles, keep or discard. I surveyed the two piles in question, patiently awaiting new additions, the left for the damned and the right for the saved, and inwardly cringed. The keep pile was noticeably larger, and I knew Jessie would not be amused. I never would've believed that this childhood room, abandoned for more than twenty years, could have held so many things I now found myself unwilling to part with. Nostalgia aside, I would be hard-pressed to convince anyone, let alone my wife, that any of it had value, but dammit, I had a right to remember my past, didn't I?
With a sigh, I gave the last drawer's handle a tug, resolving to sift through its contents as quickly as possible. The likelihood was, no matter how attached I thought I was to the detritus heaped to my right, if Jessie had her way, it would end up gracing the inside of a storage unit. Not that I could blame her really, if I faced facts, I had been procrastinating, unwilling to do the final cleanup the old house required before putting it on the market. Maybe if I ...
The evening light from the bedroom's window spread over the jumbled items in front of me, caught and twinkled on something metal. Instinctively, I reached towards the light, and uncovered a plastic bag holding a small collection of tools. There was a screw driver, what looked like a pair of tweezers, several rectangular pieces of plastic, and about a dozen tiny screws. I stared at the plastic wrapped mystery for a moment, and then grinning, began digging through the drawer's remaining contents. Would it be there?
It was 1986, and my sister Tina loved The Bangles with that type of overwhelming enthusiasm that can only be generated by teenage girls of a certain age. Her scout troop was departing for a week-long camping trip, and she desperately wanted mobile tunes. Unfortunately, I owned the only Walkman in the house, and obviously I would never agree to let her borrow it for an entire week. Desire and morality warred inside her for days, but eventually she gave in, and took the giver of tunes. Of course, I knew exactly what she was planning to do, and decided to have a little fun. I'd let her have the Walkman, but before she left, I took apart The Bangles cassette, and replaced its innards with the tape of my favorite artist, Bon Jovi.
The cassette was buried at the bottom of the drawer, pushed into the far right corner. I held it up, "The Bangles, Different Light." Tina hadn't quite dared to destroy my Walkman when she cued up The Bangles and Bon Jovi came out instead, but she had eviscerated the offending tape.
"Ah Tina," I chuckled.
"So, you're still hiding in here, wallowing in the past?"
Not Tina's voice, not even close.
I dropped the ruined cassette back into the drawer, a useless relic, and turned my head to face her. "No Jessie, if I were hiding, you wouldn't have found me."
"Hilarious." Her voice was filled with icy contempt. "You're not even done with the dresser yet? How long do you expect me to wait around here?"
"Here's a plan," I snapped back, "when both of your parents finally croak, I'll give you as long as you need to grieve for them and honor their memory." I made a throw away gesture with one hand, "For you that'd take what, five minutes?"
"Oh please," she scoffed, "you're honoring your mom and dad's memory by cleaning your dresser? This shit," prodding my discard pile with the toe of her right shoe, "is a remembrance?"
I wanted to bellow my rage and grief up into her smug face, to rip the drawer in front of me loose from the dresser, and hurl its contents at her feet. The animosity had been growing in-between us over the past few months, like some gnarled and twisted tree with roots that sapped both our energy and strength.
I braced my hands on the open drawer in front of me, and pushed to my feet. "Look Jess, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have dragged you and Michaela out here today." I stretched out a hand towards her, "Let me take you and the kiddo out to dinner, and I'll come back tomorrow by myself, and finish packing up the rest of this crap."
Ignoring my proffered hand, she took a distancing step backward, shaking her head. "You're too late," she said, the 'as usual' plain in her tone, "Stewart's asked me to come back into town and meet him for dinner."
"It's Sunday," I murmured, hand falling back to my side.
"Yes John," she agreed, already turning away, "it's Sunday, but one of us has to think of the future."
Her footsteps echoed through the house, reverberating off of floors and walls until, at long last, the front door slammed shut behind her. Perhaps it was that sound, the finality of it, which allowed me to move. I turned away from the empty bedroom doorway and walked to the window overlooking the back yard. Michaela had been playing outside for the last hour or so, but apart from a few scattered toys, there was no sign of her now. I briefly wondered if Jessie had taken her, and then shook my head. The only footsteps I had heard had been Jessie's, and besides, Stewart undoubtedly wouldn't have wanted our child at his and Jessie's business dinner. So, where was she?
Flipping the latches aside, I pushed the window open, and pressed my face against the outer screen. "Michaela!"
Living in a one story house, escaping for nighttime rendezvouses had never been the grand adventure for me that it was for some of my friends. I just pushed out the screen and went.
Tentatively, I gave the screen in front of me a light shove, and its bottom popped loose.
This was crazy, if Jessie came back now ...
I shoved again, and just as when I had been a teenager bent on escape, the screen sprang free from the window, and tumbled to the ground outside.
"Michaela!"
Not waiting for an answer, I clambered over the sill, and clumsily flailed around with my feet until I found a foothold. I got a steady grip on the ground outside, and then almost brained myself trying to wriggle out the same way I had when I was fourteen. Not a kid anymore.
If she was still in the back yard, and not visible from my bedroom window, there was only one place Michaela could be. I had known that even before I pushed out the screen.
As I walked, the light of the summer sunset faded around me, until I was moving through the evening glow that came right before total darkness. The grape arbor, a small latticed structure my father had built years ago, was at the back right-hand corner of our yard, no more than thirty feet from my bedroom window. It should have been just a few steps, ten or maybe fifteen seconds away at most, but walking through that evening glow, it felt like miles.
Thankfully, Michaela was right where I had thought she would be, curled up against the arbor's back wall.
"Sweetie," I said, bending down and scooping her into my arms, "didn't you hear me calling?"
"Daddy," she murmured against my shoulder as I straightened, "I think I was asleep."
"Yes, I think you ..."
The back wall of the grape arbor was gone. Our neighbor's back yard fence was gone. Staring straight ahead, I saw the house I had grown up in.
"I must've gotten turned around," I whispered into Michaela's hair, not really believing it.
Slowly, I swiveled, and saw the house I had just walked from, my bedroom's screen still lying on the ground. At least I had a landmark I could use to tell them apart.
"Was it a good dream or a bad dream?" I asked Michaela softly, turning again to see the duplicate house.
"Good, I guess," Michaela answered, although there was obvious doubt underlying her words. "Grandma and grandpa said you could come live with them again if you wanted, but I couldn't."
No, not an exact duplicate after all. Besides the fact that my bedroom screen was where it should be, the back yard was cluttered. Two bikes, a baseball bat and glove, various sizes of plant pots, both filled and empty, a wooden swing, and a huge metal barbecue pit I remember Dad getting rid of when I was ten.
"John!" It was my mother's voice, and I could just barely make out her outline standing in the house's back doorway. "It's time to come in now."
Could it truly be that simple? A new lifetime filled with opportunities to make different choices, hopefully better ones? If only ... Mom and Dad could raise a third kid, I would just have two younger sisters instead of one.
I stepped forward, and the rebuff was instantaneous, more felt than heard.
No! This is not the time of her choosing, that will come later. This is for you. Choose!
In front of me, the arbor's back wall was coalescing out of nothing, grape vines and lattices weaving themselves into a solid barrier once again. If I jumped? If I put her down and jumped?
Hot shame flooded over me, and I stumbled out of the arbor's entrance on to the grass of the back yard. Oddly there was more light now, as though a layer of clouds had temporarily dimmed the entire sky, and then, like a curtain, had been pulled back to welcome the warm light beyond.
"Daddy," Michaela said, her drowsy eyes turned up to meet mine, "your face is all red. Are you mad at me?"
I drew in a long breath, and then exhaled it on a laugh. "No, I was just running around trying to find you, and us old people get tired if we run too much." I lowered my voice into a pretend growl, "Sometimes we even fall down!" Wrapping her in my arms, and shielding her from the fall with my body, I tumbled groundward.
Author's Note: I try and do research every time I write something, and the geek in me loves the fact that you can, in fact, find pretty much anything online. So, for those of you wanting to repair old cassette tapes, or perhaps play a trick on a sib, I leave you with this:
How to fix a cassette tape.
Dan
Crossposted from Dreamwidth
With a sigh, I gave the last drawer's handle a tug, resolving to sift through its contents as quickly as possible. The likelihood was, no matter how attached I thought I was to the detritus heaped to my right, if Jessie had her way, it would end up gracing the inside of a storage unit. Not that I could blame her really, if I faced facts, I had been procrastinating, unwilling to do the final cleanup the old house required before putting it on the market. Maybe if I ...
The evening light from the bedroom's window spread over the jumbled items in front of me, caught and twinkled on something metal. Instinctively, I reached towards the light, and uncovered a plastic bag holding a small collection of tools. There was a screw driver, what looked like a pair of tweezers, several rectangular pieces of plastic, and about a dozen tiny screws. I stared at the plastic wrapped mystery for a moment, and then grinning, began digging through the drawer's remaining contents. Would it be there?
It was 1986, and my sister Tina loved The Bangles with that type of overwhelming enthusiasm that can only be generated by teenage girls of a certain age. Her scout troop was departing for a week-long camping trip, and she desperately wanted mobile tunes. Unfortunately, I owned the only Walkman in the house, and obviously I would never agree to let her borrow it for an entire week. Desire and morality warred inside her for days, but eventually she gave in, and took the giver of tunes. Of course, I knew exactly what she was planning to do, and decided to have a little fun. I'd let her have the Walkman, but before she left, I took apart The Bangles cassette, and replaced its innards with the tape of my favorite artist, Bon Jovi.
The cassette was buried at the bottom of the drawer, pushed into the far right corner. I held it up, "The Bangles, Different Light." Tina hadn't quite dared to destroy my Walkman when she cued up The Bangles and Bon Jovi came out instead, but she had eviscerated the offending tape.
"Ah Tina," I chuckled.
"So, you're still hiding in here, wallowing in the past?"
Not Tina's voice, not even close.
I dropped the ruined cassette back into the drawer, a useless relic, and turned my head to face her. "No Jessie, if I were hiding, you wouldn't have found me."
"Hilarious." Her voice was filled with icy contempt. "You're not even done with the dresser yet? How long do you expect me to wait around here?"
"Here's a plan," I snapped back, "when both of your parents finally croak, I'll give you as long as you need to grieve for them and honor their memory." I made a throw away gesture with one hand, "For you that'd take what, five minutes?"
"Oh please," she scoffed, "you're honoring your mom and dad's memory by cleaning your dresser? This shit," prodding my discard pile with the toe of her right shoe, "is a remembrance?"
I wanted to bellow my rage and grief up into her smug face, to rip the drawer in front of me loose from the dresser, and hurl its contents at her feet. The animosity had been growing in-between us over the past few months, like some gnarled and twisted tree with roots that sapped both our energy and strength.
I braced my hands on the open drawer in front of me, and pushed to my feet. "Look Jess, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have dragged you and Michaela out here today." I stretched out a hand towards her, "Let me take you and the kiddo out to dinner, and I'll come back tomorrow by myself, and finish packing up the rest of this crap."
Ignoring my proffered hand, she took a distancing step backward, shaking her head. "You're too late," she said, the 'as usual' plain in her tone, "Stewart's asked me to come back into town and meet him for dinner."
"It's Sunday," I murmured, hand falling back to my side.
"Yes John," she agreed, already turning away, "it's Sunday, but one of us has to think of the future."
Her footsteps echoed through the house, reverberating off of floors and walls until, at long last, the front door slammed shut behind her. Perhaps it was that sound, the finality of it, which allowed me to move. I turned away from the empty bedroom doorway and walked to the window overlooking the back yard. Michaela had been playing outside for the last hour or so, but apart from a few scattered toys, there was no sign of her now. I briefly wondered if Jessie had taken her, and then shook my head. The only footsteps I had heard had been Jessie's, and besides, Stewart undoubtedly wouldn't have wanted our child at his and Jessie's business dinner. So, where was she?
Flipping the latches aside, I pushed the window open, and pressed my face against the outer screen. "Michaela!"
Living in a one story house, escaping for nighttime rendezvouses had never been the grand adventure for me that it was for some of my friends. I just pushed out the screen and went.
Tentatively, I gave the screen in front of me a light shove, and its bottom popped loose.
This was crazy, if Jessie came back now ...
I shoved again, and just as when I had been a teenager bent on escape, the screen sprang free from the window, and tumbled to the ground outside.
"Michaela!"
Not waiting for an answer, I clambered over the sill, and clumsily flailed around with my feet until I found a foothold. I got a steady grip on the ground outside, and then almost brained myself trying to wriggle out the same way I had when I was fourteen. Not a kid anymore.
If she was still in the back yard, and not visible from my bedroom window, there was only one place Michaela could be. I had known that even before I pushed out the screen.
As I walked, the light of the summer sunset faded around me, until I was moving through the evening glow that came right before total darkness. The grape arbor, a small latticed structure my father had built years ago, was at the back right-hand corner of our yard, no more than thirty feet from my bedroom window. It should have been just a few steps, ten or maybe fifteen seconds away at most, but walking through that evening glow, it felt like miles.
Thankfully, Michaela was right where I had thought she would be, curled up against the arbor's back wall.
"Sweetie," I said, bending down and scooping her into my arms, "didn't you hear me calling?"
"Daddy," she murmured against my shoulder as I straightened, "I think I was asleep."
"Yes, I think you ..."
The back wall of the grape arbor was gone. Our neighbor's back yard fence was gone. Staring straight ahead, I saw the house I had grown up in.
"I must've gotten turned around," I whispered into Michaela's hair, not really believing it.
Slowly, I swiveled, and saw the house I had just walked from, my bedroom's screen still lying on the ground. At least I had a landmark I could use to tell them apart.
"Was it a good dream or a bad dream?" I asked Michaela softly, turning again to see the duplicate house.
"Good, I guess," Michaela answered, although there was obvious doubt underlying her words. "Grandma and grandpa said you could come live with them again if you wanted, but I couldn't."
No, not an exact duplicate after all. Besides the fact that my bedroom screen was where it should be, the back yard was cluttered. Two bikes, a baseball bat and glove, various sizes of plant pots, both filled and empty, a wooden swing, and a huge metal barbecue pit I remember Dad getting rid of when I was ten.
"John!" It was my mother's voice, and I could just barely make out her outline standing in the house's back doorway. "It's time to come in now."
Could it truly be that simple? A new lifetime filled with opportunities to make different choices, hopefully better ones? If only ... Mom and Dad could raise a third kid, I would just have two younger sisters instead of one.
I stepped forward, and the rebuff was instantaneous, more felt than heard.
No! This is not the time of her choosing, that will come later. This is for you. Choose!
In front of me, the arbor's back wall was coalescing out of nothing, grape vines and lattices weaving themselves into a solid barrier once again. If I jumped? If I put her down and jumped?
Hot shame flooded over me, and I stumbled out of the arbor's entrance on to the grass of the back yard. Oddly there was more light now, as though a layer of clouds had temporarily dimmed the entire sky, and then, like a curtain, had been pulled back to welcome the warm light beyond.
"Daddy," Michaela said, her drowsy eyes turned up to meet mine, "your face is all red. Are you mad at me?"
I drew in a long breath, and then exhaled it on a laugh. "No, I was just running around trying to find you, and us old people get tired if we run too much." I lowered my voice into a pretend growl, "Sometimes we even fall down!" Wrapping her in my arms, and shielding her from the fall with my body, I tumbled groundward.
Author's Note: I try and do research every time I write something, and the geek in me loves the fact that you can, in fact, find pretty much anything online. So, for those of you wanting to repair old cassette tapes, or perhaps play a trick on a sib, I leave you with this:
How to fix a cassette tape.
Dan
Crossposted from Dreamwidth