Those Luckiest
by LC Neal
The curse of the writer, she thinks randomly, who has lived a remotely interesting life: it’s almost impossible to write about it without cutting yourself on its sharp edges.
Her own family, such a major source of both inspiration and caution. They are a living, breathing poem, long and epic; a tale in dire need of an operatic teller. Her youth, scented by magnolia and honeysuckle vine and piney woods, laced with the laughter and indulgent derision of her sisters and the music of many, stained by the terrible deeds of a few, a constant scream to be translated onto the printed page.
How many times had a cousin, an aunt, a nephew said it? Why don’t you write a book about THE FAMILY? She always hears it in capital letters, despite the speaker. They have no idea of the contents of the box they invite her to throw open. The one that would unleash all the emotional gore about which they know nothing and are therefore unafraid, those luckiest. The lid of that box would certainly not close in time to prevent anything as useful as hope from escaping.
Pandora was awfully fortunate, after all.
Her phone rings in her hand, bringing her attention from the window of the cab to the little screen lit with the house number. She closes her eyes and puts the phone to her ear. Where are you? she hears. Where are you now?
Another question she hears all too often, a question anyone determined to love her is forced to ask repeatedly, and sometimes the question and the answers are simple and sometimes not; I’m in Chicago, Ontario, New York, Denver, San Antonio, Dallas. I’m lost, I’m lonely, I’m leaving, I’m sick, I’m confused, I don’t know, I’m done, I’m tired, I’m gone.
She had a million of them, those answers, and she hauled them around with her wherever she went. No wonder she was so tired. What had she said last time? Something innocuous…I’ll be there. I’m on my way. Something like that. She knew she hadn’t said the appropriate thing, the accurate thing, which was I’ll be too late.
She wants to shed those stock answers she has used too often, shed them like old clothes. She wants to set her baggage down; those suitcases battered and worn, stuffed with every psychotherapeutic cliché ever mouthed by an overpriced babbler of such things. She wants to climb the oak-banistered staircase in her newly unburdened and naked state, to enter the familiar room with the big old familiar bed, covered in an embroidered quilt smelling of soap and sun and generations. She will open a big window and the curtains will billow like lace balloons in that magnolia breeze and she will lay down and watch motes dance in the light until she dies.
Because she can’t for the life of her, and wasn’t that totally appropriate, for the life of her, figure out how to not do that, just lay down forever. It’s ironic that, for once, she has a valid excuse to run from everything, and no strength to put one foot in front of the other to get away from the most dangerous of places.
She looks straight ahead, and realizes that the cabbie is watching her in the rearview mirror. His eyes are dark, tense and hesitant, torn between demanding his fare and wanting this vacant-faced woman out of his cab.
She pays the driver and stands at the wrought iron gate, that will open smoothly and clang shut noisily, which is surely significant. She sees many dressed in black, seated on the big veranda, leaning against the heavy porchrail, wandering around the shaded yard. She watches kids, in their Sunday best for a Thursday funeral, racing around within the confines of a game only children can know; laughter muted in deference to the dead who await their turn to haunt the living.
I’m home, she says to her phone.
