Most likely

After he left with the box of old records, she opened the photo book to the shot he'd admired, and laid it on the floor, in the halo of light from her dresser lamp. Can you make me a copy of that one, he'd asked...She angled her phone so its shadow didn't obscure the shot, and zoomed in to the center of her own face. There was a bit of reflection from the floor lamp, but that couldn't be helped, she thought, and snapped the photo. Hit send.

The townhouse was quiet, all the lights were out except the lamp. Mutt had fallen asleep on the crumple of sheets and bedcover. She'd have to wake him when she climbed in herself. The papers she'd decided to keep, to take with them to Colorado, and the artworks she'd just shown J were still spread on the floor and chair; J said he'd straighten it out for her, since she had to go in to work so early tomorrow. Sunday. Last minute full day of work. She like the bridal shop. So many happy brides to be, and now she was one. Had been for almost a year. Brides would email her boss and praise her for her help. It would be a great job, if only the pay were better. But so was the art supply shop. The schedules could be weird, trying to juggle that and school and J, but it was worth it. Except it was exhausting. She could nod off at either job, or in class-- but then she couldn't fall asleep at home. Too quiet since Dad moved out. Thank God for Mutt, that pain in the butt little monster.


The photo was still uploading? Then Message Delivery Failed. Damn. She'd been laughing to herself at her little joke photo, but now she was irked. A storm was kicking up outside, maybe if she went downstairs to the patio it would go through. It wasn't quite raining so she just stepped outside with the phone and hit send again, watched the screen as the photo slowly churned through space to reach his phone. Why did it take this long? She smiled involuntarily, thinking of his expression when he got it. He might not see it till tomorrow, but that would be fine.

Ghost

Today is warm (60F) and I go out for my daily walk from mom's place, picking a new route that avoids the main streets to her north and south. As I walk I realize I am very near the school I attended in second grade, then the street where our family's lawyer lives, which is also where I met my first real boyfriend. A little further on I pass the street with the name I can never get out of my head, but not sure why. Sometimes I forget who lived there. It's not till I see the dark clouds building on my left, the west, that I remember Michael Ruppert.
He was close friends with the lawyer's family, whose son had introduced me to that first boyfriend.
And what I remember is the two of us at a teen retreat my church gave, and we are sitting in front of a fire place in the main hall, everyone else is gone and we're just two lonely geeky kids happy to have someone to talk with. We really had so little in common, but we did, we were Catholic kids and it was the Midwest in the early 70s, after all. We talked for hours.

A few months later he's dead. Not just him, his whole family, shot on Easter day. We found out when we got home from a drive to my grandparents' farm in Indiana. My dad turned on the 11 oclock news, and there it was. I dont' think I quite believed it at first. But over the next months every newspaper had the Ruppert story on the front page, nearly every day. Go out to get the paper, see Mike's family sprawled dead on the floor of their grandmother's tiny house. Or the photos of his uncle, the killer.

But this is not what I was thinking as I got to Vinnedge. If I was thinking at all of anything except the weirdness of this Ohio town. I wasn't thinking about Michael at all at first. By the time I turned home I was talking to his ghost. He was surprised to see me. The rest is between me and Mike. But I was crying by the time I got to my mom's. The wind had kicked up. It was just about to rain.

And so this new age of reckoning begins

We're moving. Leaving New York. I don't want to go. When people hear that we are moving they ask my husband if he is insane. You know, they tell him, Iso belongs in New York. They ask me if I think I can stand it. I've lived here my entire adult life.  All my friends are here. Every job I've had since college, here. My only living son is here.

My family members take me aside one by one and solemnly grill me to make sure this is not some terrible mistake on my part. I'm not sure I can answer that. I tell myself, it's only a few years. It's only if I can stand it. It's only this or that.

I do my best, I know I agreed to let son have the loft and he's agreed to leave me a bedroom with many returns expected. He needs to be 22. He'll be ok. I look at the cupboard shelf full of teaboxes  and tears well up. I have been here this long. My children were born right there in that living room. My son was dying in that same living room. Their father too. On his way to death. So much love and pain has fit into these narrow walls and it's time to let go. It should be easier. It shouldn't be so far. I don't have much choice in this. No other solution would do for my husband. Believe me I offered many. Many.

Fact is: we couldn't move at all if it weren't for me. I have the job, I'm paying for it, I'm the engine of it. It's husband wants, it's what I'm giving him, but I can't tell you what the price will be or who will finally pay it. I don't really care at this point. Something needs to be done. Something needs to change. This is why I took him to Bali. This is why I've agreed to let him move us to Austin. Not because I want to be there. But because right now, my son doesn't need me and I don't know what else to do. Maybe by giving my husband these last years of his mother's life will change things.  Maybe by giving my son his freedom he will take charge of his life in ways I can't even anticipate.

It won't kill me to find out. And I can still cry.

I'm here.

I got to Mom's on Thanksgiving Day, and headed to the

I don't hate writing, or posting. I hate thinking. It's not helping me. The one place I get my dander up enough to post is full of kooks who hate me and my family and my family's family that I'm not even related to, and their friends, and their friends' friends. I mean, hate in real life, as much as that is possible with an intervening Facebook group. It'd be more terrifying of course if I lived in the same town with the rest of my family. A place I now refer to as Suckville, in honor of all the people who make it suck now more than it did when our family moved there in 1966. Back then my parents had to drag me there kicking and screaming from a suburb of DC. Now it's pretty much the same, except it's mom guilting me from NYC. And now I have to gird my loins and wade into the middle of what could be an episode of 48 Hours on ID, or just a very, very isolated and tense group of people in one or two places with the curtains drawn at all times so the stalkers can't tell which one of us drives a boxy car.

I suppose if you live in a boring little suburb with no cultural center and no intellectual life whatsoever, you will find that the local entertainment isn't tv, it's gossip. Even tv is gossip. They watch tv so they can gossip about what they saw there. And now we've been on tv, so we're fed into the grinder like Kardashians. I liked it better when we just moved there and no one knew us nor cared to.