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Authors: Sharon Shinn
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step away, backing up toward the house and waving good-bye. “Drive carefully!” I want to add
Talk to you later!
but it just sounds
too
friendly and I can’t have him thinking he’s completely won me over. But I stand on the low slab of concrete that functions as my front porch, and I wave and watch until he’s back on the road and out of sight.
Then I sigh and unlock the door and step inside. And Ann uncurls from the couch and throws herself at me across the room, and the dreary menacing everyday world, without any warning at all, spins into a glittering brightness that hurts my eyes so much I start to cry.
CHAPTER FOUR
JANET
I
have decided I need to write it all down. In part, to make sense of everything for myself, as if chronicling the events of the last twenty years could ever do that. In part, to explain those events to anyone else who might be surprised or bewildered or horrified by what I have done. I do not plan to disguise my identity, but I will omit some details about times and places. I don’t want anyone to be able to trace my footsteps and discover where I have gone.
Once I have gotten it all on paper, the trick will be figuring out who to send the story to. There are so few people who love me enough to worry about what I might have done. And yet I cannot stand to take these actions without leaving behind some kind of powerful record. Though the story itself is so powerful, so primal, I almost feel as if it would write itself in the soil and stones—speak itself aloud in the winter air. I almost feel that if another woman stood where I am standing right now, she would only have to grow still and look around, and she would know without being told exactly what had happened. If I gave away details, if I drew her a map to this spot, would she understand then? Would she nod, and put her hand against her heart, and say with conviction, “I would have done exactly the same”?
* * *
A t times it seems to me that I didn’t start to live until I met him. If I try, I can remember the earliest days, the trailer in Arizona, the apartment in Michigan, the farmhouse in Iowa where the straight rows of corn stretched out so far in one direction that you literally could not see the end of them. I can remember the fights, the screaming, the sound of my mother playing the piano, the smell of my father’s cigar smoke, but only when I exert great effort. Most of my childhood is packed away in boxes that I have stored in the cellar of my mind, and that I never take out, and that I never want to sort through again.
But I remember every minute of my new life. My true life.
It was night the first time I saw him—past midnight, I’m sure. A half-moon was just rising to remind me that, dismal though the world was, it could still produce wondrous illuminations. I was sitting on the back deck, cross-legged on the wood itself, careful to avoid the three rotted planks and wearing jeans and socks against the possibility of chiggers. It was a warm Midwestern June, and the air-conditioning had broken the week before. The inside of the house was unbearable for so many reasons, only one of them being the heat. In another few moments, I planned to stand up and make my way to the sagging chaise-style lawn chair unfolded on the edge of the deck, where I hoped to fall asleep.
When I saw movement deep in the shadows of the yard, at first I thought a possum or a raccoon might be trotting across the lawn, headed toward the garbage cans snugged up against the house. But it was too big, and it moved too slowly, to be one of those common nighttime creatures. A dog, then, maybe. The neighbors’ collie from up the street was always getting loose. She was a pretty dog, but old and untended. It was clear her owners didn’t care if she died of heartworm or if she got hit by a car. More than once I had kept her in our own yard for a day or two, combing out her matted fur and making sure she got a few decent meals.
My father
Talk to you later!
but it just sounds
too
friendly and I can’t have him thinking he’s completely won me over. But I stand on the low slab of concrete that functions as my front porch, and I wave and watch until he’s back on the road and out of sight.
Then I sigh and unlock the door and step inside. And Ann uncurls from the couch and throws herself at me across the room, and the dreary menacing everyday world, without any warning at all, spins into a glittering brightness that hurts my eyes so much I start to cry.
CHAPTER FOUR
JANET
I
have decided I need to write it all down. In part, to make sense of everything for myself, as if chronicling the events of the last twenty years could ever do that. In part, to explain those events to anyone else who might be surprised or bewildered or horrified by what I have done. I do not plan to disguise my identity, but I will omit some details about times and places. I don’t want anyone to be able to trace my footsteps and discover where I have gone.
Once I have gotten it all on paper, the trick will be figuring out who to send the story to. There are so few people who love me enough to worry about what I might have done. And yet I cannot stand to take these actions without leaving behind some kind of powerful record. Though the story itself is so powerful, so primal, I almost feel as if it would write itself in the soil and stones—speak itself aloud in the winter air. I almost feel that if another woman stood where I am standing right now, she would only have to grow still and look around, and she would know without being told exactly what had happened. If I gave away details, if I drew her a map to this spot, would she understand then? Would she nod, and put her hand against her heart, and say with conviction, “I would have done exactly the same”?
* * *
A t times it seems to me that I didn’t start to live until I met him. If I try, I can remember the earliest days, the trailer in Arizona, the apartment in Michigan, the farmhouse in Iowa where the straight rows of corn stretched out so far in one direction that you literally could not see the end of them. I can remember the fights, the screaming, the sound of my mother playing the piano, the smell of my father’s cigar smoke, but only when I exert great effort. Most of my childhood is packed away in boxes that I have stored in the cellar of my mind, and that I never take out, and that I never want to sort through again.
But I remember every minute of my new life. My true life.
It was night the first time I saw him—past midnight, I’m sure. A half-moon was just rising to remind me that, dismal though the world was, it could still produce wondrous illuminations. I was sitting on the back deck, cross-legged on the wood itself, careful to avoid the three rotted planks and wearing jeans and socks against the possibility of chiggers. It was a warm Midwestern June, and the air-conditioning had broken the week before. The inside of the house was unbearable for so many reasons, only one of them being the heat. In another few moments, I planned to stand up and make my way to the sagging chaise-style lawn chair unfolded on the edge of the deck, where I hoped to fall asleep.
When I saw movement deep in the shadows of the yard, at first I thought a possum or a raccoon might be trotting across the lawn, headed toward the garbage cans snugged up against the house. But it was too big, and it moved too slowly, to be one of those common nighttime creatures. A dog, then, maybe. The neighbors’ collie from up the street was always getting loose. She was a pretty dog, but old and untended. It was clear her owners didn’t care if she died of heartworm or if she got hit by a car. More than once I had kept her in our own yard for a day or two, combing out her matted fur and making sure she got a few decent meals.
My father
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