It takes a lot of experience for a girl to kiss like a beginner.

Drywall, colder weather, rain, calling old friends, google, frangipani tarts and procrastination filled this morning. Steven said he would be here to drywall at 9. so I was up and coffeed by 9 and he called at 9:30 to say he would be here in 45 minutes. And then in 30 minutes he called to tell me he had a flat tire and would be over when it was fixed. So around 11 he strolled in, it wasn’t irritating as much as amusing, and it gave me a chance to visit the bakery and stock  up on Friday treats. Okay he is tardy, big deal. He is a cheap worker and cleans up scrupulously each time he works so what’s my complaint?  Now the question is what color do I [paint the room and do I add  a door or keep it so neat that walking past the open doorway daily doesn’t make me crazy. I could add an armoire at an angle to the door. Or make the island a peninsula and make it higher to cover the mess. Lisa from Portland Closets will help me decide Tuesday. Jim arrives tomorrow and I am stocking up on ethnic food and his favorites. And wood is laid in and the self feeding (isn’t that a cute term?)  fireplace grate arrived so we can hunker down tonight and watch ralph fiennes torment himself and other in Onegin.   Love for Lydia is turning out to be the most exquisite of books and her simmering heat is more fully described. She has the sadistic romantic notions that only a young woman of such loveliness can have. I recall it acutely and while it isn’t at all admirable, to flex one’s sexual muscle and learn not to use it for hurt is part of becoming a woman. hell I was flexing it inappropriately in my 40’s. good thing jim is an angel.

 

I was wondering also who reads this blahg, I mean I know some of the people who I email take a look at it but I don’t imagine people look more than once. Although I am careful not to identify anyone. I hope. But some people may see themselves here an di hope I am kind or at least generously honest. If Abi could read it would bore her to death. It might bore me to read this claptrap too. So for the records:

 

 Reliquary

 

 

            The mass in Rachel's throat was growing.  It had started as a small jagged obstruction near her larynx. When first noticed she thought it was the sensation leftover from swallowing a pill without enough water. But it had not gone away for two weeks. She remembered clearly when she first felt the tiny stitch in her throat. She was holding the hotel receipt from Cleveland. 

            "Surely, he said he was going to Chicago," Rachel thought. It was not like her to get it wrong. But here was the evidence. Her husband had stayed at Gliddon House in Cleveland the first week of June. But he talked about the Seurat.  And that was at the Art Institute. Chicago. Not Cleveland. She was confused.  And then a week later she found the peach. It was pale pink crystal, transparent and luminous. It fit perfectly in her hands and had a ripeness to it that was disarming in an inanimate object. When

she asked her husband where the peach shaped container came from, he mumbled, "Cleveland. " "Ah yes. Cleveland. That's why I was confused. I thought you said you were going to Chicago, but it was Cleveland after all."

            George stopped writing in his day planner and looked at up at her . "Of course I went to Chicago. What are you talking about, Rachel?"    She was too tired to debate this with him. Too confused and too tired. She needed more time to gather the collection of lies before she confronted him. The archive was expanding at a ludicrous rate. Soon after she found the hotel receipt, she found a  book about Judaism. She and George were Anglican. Other objects had appeared. A tie. A teakwood fountain pen. Music by Stephen Sondheim. Each item innocuous enough but the collection was beginning to unnerve her.  And then she found the note Zachary had left for his father. She only found it because Zachary had used the back of the birthday card she was intending to send her mother in Cornwall.  There it was. Her son as an unwilling accomplice. The  eleven year old's handwriting scrawled across the card:

Dad. Call Dot.

 

 

Dot?  Damn. Her name is Dot. Dorothy? Dolores? Dot? Who names anyone Dot nowadays? The image of a blowsy red haired waitress came to mind. But that was wishful thinking. And then three days ago, Henry had asked her why his father was down at the end of the driveway talking on the phone. Rachel considered running down the pebbled drive, tearing the phone from his hand and screaming that she could not take it any longer. But she had to take it. She had to accept this and pretend and collect her thoughts until she knew what they were all going to do.

            So when the phone rang and a intelligent, soft, school teacher voice asked to speak with George, Rachel was too numb to object. She called her husband to the phone and told the boys to help her haul some wood. They left him alone. To talk. To Dot.

            When Rachel returned to the house, she knew George had been crying. The puffiness around his eyes testified to the tears.

            "Bad news?" she asked.

            "That was Dot. A friend of mine. She called to say she was ill," George said.

            "Why was she calling you? And on a Saturday?" Rachel said. She wanted to hear the truth and she dreaded hearing it.

            "We are friends. She needed someone to talk to. It seems she miscarried," George said.

            "And she has no one to turn to but you? Surely she has family." Rachel's punch was effective. She retreated to the corner to assess the damage and tighten the laces on her gloves. But the minor victory turned to defeat when she got the call from the florist the next morning. They wanted to clarify the note to be sent with the white roses.

            "Go ahead. Read it to me," Rachel said.

"It's sorta long," the woman at the flower shop said, "that's why we wanna make sure we got it right." 

"Please. Read it and I'll check it for you," Rachel said.

Rachel listened as the caller read verbatim from the Book of Ruth. "Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die and there I will be buried. Thus and more may the Lord do to me if anything but death parts me from you."

Rachel quietly placed the phone on its cradle. The mass that had been wedged in her throat wrenched free. She felt it moving. Its jagged edges tearing the inside of her throat. Stomach acid mixed with her saliva. The mass was free and on the move.  She could gulp and let it pass through her body along with everything she had been swallowing  for weeks. Or she could gag and let the lumpy vomit of  repressed anger splat against the pine floorboards.  She called to her husband to come inside. She was ready to listen.