Laura stepped off the bus and headed towards home. If you could call it that. An illegally converted garage wasn’t much of a home. She shared the single bathroom with three others and had to keep her food in a cooler so it wouldn’t be stolen from the community kitchen. It was all she could afford but was far better than the house she used to live in with her alcoholic husband.
“The life in front of you is greater than the life behind you.”
Amy saw the poster tacked to the phone pole at the bus stop.
LOST: Female Dog.
Beloved Family Pet.
Sat., Oct. 6
near Grand and Otis.
Answers to Cookie.
The picture below the text showed two adorable little boys with their arms around an even more adorable little brown dog. Her heart sank. It looked exactly like the dog she had found just after midnight two days ago.
Every weekday morning Mama would walk us to school and chat on the schoolyard with the other mothers, discussing their supper menus and any juicy news they had heard since the day before. We lived in a small town where walls were thin and lips were loose. Today’s hot topic was the recent sale of the old Dorst home to a couple from out of town.
Martha, who lived across the street from the house, couldn’t wait to share her latest insight, “This morning the wife drug the trash bin to the curb and then drove off in the convertible. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the husband yet.”
Her head hit the shower door hard and she slumped onto the cold tile floor. He slammed the door behind him with a bang without looking at her or saying a word. Enough had already been said. Blood dripped down her cheek and she licked the droplet as it reached the corner of her lips. Warm and metallic tasting.
She heard the crackling noise and looked up. A dozen cracks crept from the spot of impact, creating a spider web across the glass. Fascinating. She shifted into a more comfortable position and waited patiently. Even the slightest sound would bring him back in a renewed rage.
Lisa was a bartender at a local club and always terrified that she’d be hit by a drunk driver on her way home after closing up at 2 am. What she didn’t account for was nodding off at the wheel, blowing through a red light and being broadsided by a produce truck on its way to market.
She opened her eyes to a shattered windshield and blood everywhere. It seemed hours before the fire department arrived and pulled her out with the jaws of life. She felt herself slipping into unconsciousness in the ambulance as the paramedic jabbed a needle into her arm. Then the world went black.
It’s been a month now. I haven’t done much writing other than my morning pages. My practice of handwriting three pages as soon as I get out of bed and have my first cup of tea brewed is more therapy than creativity; a brain flow without any deep thinking, editing or re-reading with a critical eye. I let my thoughts and feelings fly directly from mind to pen onto paper. This daily ritual was my saving grace as I grieved for my Nana … pages of tear-stained anguish that eventually became sweet memories.
“Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit,” she said upon waking, a childhood ritual taught to her by her English grandmother. Folklore stated that saying rabbit thrice on the morning of the first day of the month would bring good luck. She was no longer a child but figured it couldn’t hurt and she could use some good juju on the long drive ahead.
She was playing her harp at a wedding gig in Napa and decided to drive up the night before so she’d be rested before the mid-morning ceremony. The highway was clogged with weekend travelers and she was barely moving. The mechanical voice on her navigation app notified her of another route and she took the next exit to follow it.
It was a difficult pregnancy with morning sickness well into the third trimester, swollen ankles and constant back pain. The labor was hard and lasted almost 24 hours before the baby girl came screaming into the world. She didn’t take to the breast easily and fussed the entire stay in hospital.
“Don’t worry, it will change once you’re home and she settles in,” the nurses told Beth.
But that didn’t happen and Joy didn’t live up to her name. She refused to sleep longer than two hours straight and cried during most of her waking time. There were no sweet coos of contentedness, no smiles and no joy. As she approached her first month, Beth and her husband, Michael, were at wit’s end.
I stood mid-span of the Golden Gate Bridge, gazing down at the waves far below. The site was infamous for suicide jumpers who kept the Coast Guard small boat station busy year-round. The majority achieved their goal of death when they hit the water at a force similar to running into a cement wall, or drowned from the severe plunge into the frigid, rough waves sweeping out to sea. Less than two percent survived the fall since the bridge opening in 1938.
A sailboat bucked against the current on it’s way out of the safety of the Bay into the ocean, the bow dipping into the waves and then rising back up and throwing great sprays of water towards the couple in the cockpit. It was just one single boat and not a fleet. It wasn’t a race and the wind was relatively light. Still, it brought back memories of exactly 20 years ago that day.
Another day with not even a whisper of wind. Mariah gazed at the mirror-like surface of the expanse of clear, blue water all around her, shielding her eyes from the glare of the unrelenting sun. It was the hottest time of the day, between high noon and sunset. She sighed and picked up her journal.
“Day 14, 1600 hours: Fourth day in the doldrums. No measurable wind and none in the immediate forecast. Again. I should be in sight of land by now but without wind I’ll continue to drift aimlessly. Seriously considering starting the engine but afraid that I’ll run out of fuel and won’t have it when I really need it. And I’ll be disqualified from the race. No distress. All systems working well. Solar panels and water maker are doing their jobs and I have provisions for at least another month, albeit I am getting tired of canned food.”
