black
"I know someday you'll have a beautiful life. I know you'll be a star," I sing through clenched teeth, angry and bitterly alone again in the front seat of my car. Eddie Vetter screams along: "in somebody else's sky, but why? Why? WHY? can't it be... can't it be mine?"
At times like these-- occasions that seem to get less and less occasional, times that seem to get more and more frequent-- at times like these I tend to drive a little crazy, glaring and shifting like some mad machine, accelerating down 62nd as though to make the vehicle into a physical expression of all the angry frustration for which I had no outlet.
An explicit demonstration of why not to let Christopher Hahn drive a fast car.
The song ends too soon. The drive, too.
The car is off, and I'm still in it. Staring at the garage door in front of me, sitting with the driver's side door open, the neighbour's red Wrangler way too close at my left, I can hear a kid screaming with laughter inside the house.
I'm going to get out of my car now. Going to grab my laptop bag from the passenger seat, hoist myself up and out of the car, close the door, tuck my car keys into my right pocket, check the mailbox. I'll unbuckle my housekeys from the beltloop and unlock the door. When I step inside, Caitlin will be at the computer, playing one of her grandmother's myriad games. Nathaniel will be running around playing, having fun, and they'll both say "Hi Dad".
Joann will be in the kitchen, cooking, or in the Florida room, smoking. The kitchen will be a disaster. The living and dining rooms will be littered with toys.
Caitlin will be too close to the computer screen again, and I'll have to stop Nathaniel's fun to tell him to clean up the toys he's not playing with. I should put him in timeout for that, but I don't want that to be the second thing I do upon getting home, so I won't.
I'll go unlock my bedroom door, set the laptop on the bed, and go back to put the keys in the tray on the entry table. If Joann isn't cooking I'll go into the kitchen and have about two minutes to try to mitigate the disaster before she comes in to start.
Caitlin and I will get started on her homework, and I'll have to tell her all the same things I tell her every single time, ten or twenty times over: be careful; don't try to jam the pencil through the paper; we don't need little baby t's and l's; hold the pencil higher up so you can see what you're writing. Et cetera.
When she's done with the writing she'll still have to draw, so Nathaniel will too. Then I'm going to try to find something to do, some way to be off the computer, and finding nothing I'll take the laptop out to the Florida room, and I'll sink into the armchair with the computer and a pack of cigarettes. I'll relish the moment of quiet, the sinking relaxation.
I'll push the newspapers out of the way so I can put my feet up where I always put them, and where Joann invariably leaves the papers.
Before two minutes are past, one of the kids will be pushing out into the room to tell me something they've told me a hundred times before, to which my response will be no different from any other time they've told me. When they go back, they'll close the door very, very slowly, because they know they're not supposed to leave it open.
By then I'll be online and staring at her name in my instant messenger's contact list. She'll be online, but labelled 'away', and I'll wonder if she's really there. I'll message her, or she'll message me, and I'll not say how much I wished she'd been here when I got home. She'll complain about the schoolwork she has to do, and at split-second intervals I'll accidentally fantasise about being there, studying with her.
Every thirty seconds to two minutes, one of the kids will open that sliding glass door again, the one they're supposed to keep closed, to say something that could wait or to give me something that could wait.
Joann will take a break to smoke a cigarette, see that I'm involved in something, pick up a newspaper, and say something that starts with "yeah, unfortunately", although it has nothing to do with fortune. If I reply, her response will start with "no", as though I'd disagreed or misunderstood, although I hadn't.
At dinner, which will be late, the same questions and comments will be tossed back and forth as are made every other night, with the same responses. Someone will call or send a text message to my phone in the middle of it, interrupting the dinner that I have made plain to all of my friends is not to be interrupted. When I've done eating, knowing that she's online, I'll not even try to do anything else: I'm going to get the laptop and go back to the Florida room to chat with her.
After Joann is done eating, the same performance will recur, in which she comes to the Florida room to smoke, and intrudes with meaningless words and phrases. Shortly, one child will leave the table to come ask if they may 'quit' their dinner, as we'll have the same conversation about the usage of 'quit' as we do every night, and the answer will, as with every other time, be a negative. Within seconds, the other child will come and ask the very same question, and the very same conversation will ensue, with the very same answer.
Then they'll play at the table, so I'll take the laptop inside, so that they will know that they are being watched.
Caitlin will finish next, and we will chat with each other while she draws and I talk to my friend on the computer.
Nathaniel will take another hour to eat his portion, though it will have been smaller than anyone else's, because most of his time at the table is spent in some occupation other than eating, and then, after having told him ten times to eat his food, I'll have to threaten to spank him if he does not eat his food. He won't.
When he's finally done, clean-up time will be right around the corner. He will not clean up.
When it's finally done, I will fight them to get them to take their baths, to do as their grandmother says, and while they bathe I will be back out in the Florida room, chatting with her again if she is nearby or, if she is not, just waiting.
Just waiting for forty more years to pass.
"What happens in forty years?" she asks sometimes.
"Nothing much," I lie.
I'm going to be up until one in the morning, just to talk to her for an hour or two in the peace and the quiet. I'll be sitting there chatting and smoking, pretending to not be bothered by any of it, ignoring or suppressing all the urges to say all the things that, in storybooks, people like Edward Cullen can say, and it all works out in the end, and love triumphs over all.
It's too bad, perhaps, but true that in real life, inconvenience conquers love.
This is a day like any other, that started like any other, proceeded identically, and will end no different.
So now I'm going to reach for that laptop bag, and I'm going to hoist myself from this car, and I'm going to close that door and tuck the car keys into my pocket, and I'm going to go inside to go through all these motions, and I'm going to try my hardest to pretend that it doesn't bother me.
And I will not say any of the things that need to be said. I will not do any of the things that ought to be done.
Because it is inconvenient.
I will not.
Although I know that, eventually, I will.
Why does this sound so much like one of my stories?