*Here is a part of one of numerous longer novella/novel length pieces I have been working on – in fits and starts – for over a decade, if not longer. It’s messy and so, so, sooooo overwritten, and, this winter, I want to edit and complete it. I WILL complete it. Sigh. Hopefully, I will. I intend to. LOL. Thanks for reading.
People, a lot of people I’ve met in my life, say things they don’t really mean. They’re not bad people; they don’t intend to lie or mislead, they just want to please whoever they’re talking to, or not make anyone angry or whatever. I do this, everybody does this, but mostly I try to be honest all the time, occasionally to a fault. This is because, or mostly because, of the way I was raised: by upright, uptight Methodists whose primary maxim was that one must always, always tell the truth. It’s also, probably, because of who I am, which is, in essence, bluntly truthful, perhaps even tactless at times. Perhaps? Definitely, in a world where we say we want honestly in all things and at all times, but really, truly, we appreciate, promote, and value ellipsis and evasion, all forms of dishonesty masquerading as kindness, politeness, making nice. Passive aggression. I try not to speak, often, because of this tactless blunt tongue of mine, finding safety in silence. I know I am considered reserved, snobby as well, perhaps, because I don’t gab and jammer or engage successfully in small talk, which is one of the things I dislike most in the world.
Mostly, however, I think I speak the truth stumblingly and thoughtlessly, bluntly, because of my mother, and I’m not just blaming her because that’s what people do, blame the mom, as she really did mess with my head. There was a time, several years of time, when my mother thought I was a liar; we went through – I went through, I experienced, I endured, I guess – a few really challenging years as a teenager when nothing, not even, say, “it’s cold out”, got past her without an interrogation of all terms and conditions surrounding my statement. I think she caught me lying once or being evasive. I think she might’ve been going through menopause? I wouldn’t dare ask her, even all these years later, yet I have no specific memory or idea of what triggered this particular obsession of hers – and perhaps it was even my silence, my watchful and stubborn refusal to speak – but looking back I’m not sure she ever believed me, ever. And then another time I came home later than she thought was proper, Senior year – and I was not lying about it, the why I was late – but she was so sure I was, and that this was part of a bigger pattern of lies and lying, her cross-examination of me was relentless, so much so that even when one of my small circle of friends, a girl my mother liked a whole lot more than she ever liked me, supported my story, it was still all a lie.
You get the picture. It was a nightmare, like Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man, a film I still cannot bring myself to watch for the anxiety I feel while the web of misunderstanding and helplessness tightens around the protagonist, it tightens around me too, adding to the heaviness in my chest; it’s too much for me to bear, too familiar. Maybe she was going through ‘the change’ or something else was going on I have no clue about, and that’s what made her more suspicious than she’d ever been before, and paranoid, but as I won’t ask her, it doesn’t matter, I guess. It was. It happened. It’s over. Right?
Maybe not, actually, as, after a seeming lifetime of my mother’s suspicion, I still find myself trying to be completely honest all the time. Whenever I make a statement of any kind, I rehearse what I intend to say over and over, checking for the right word or words, trying to avoid misunderstanding, which series of compensatory actions get me into a whole other sort of trouble when it turned out that no one really wants the truth. And rehearsed words sound false, you know? To most people, in most situations. I settled, while I lived at home at least, on not saying much at all. It became too hard to try and explain myself, and there was never anyone to back me up. But the conversations in my head, which are never ending, became a habit I have yet to break as I begin and continue to have explanations, explications, extrications and excuses prepared for ready use, for every single eventually. Exhausting. It’s exhausting, and a hard habit to break, impossible, maybe.
I’m telling you this because I want you to know that what I write here, what I write about this family, the Carrolls, and myself, will be imperfect and incomplete but it’s the truth, my truth as I remember things. And this much I know to be absolutely, totally 100% true: having the Carrolls move in next door to me – to my family – changed my life. They changed me. They changed me and my life in ways good and bad and profound and silly but mostly, overwhelmingly, they changed me in ways profound and good. I fell in love with them all. I loved the Carrols, I loved them. I did then and I do now. I dream about them, not as often as I used to, and in these dreams I try, always, to get to them, to catch up to them – whether by foot, bike or by car – sometimes even on a sled, through winter snow drifts rising up to my shoulder on the street where we, both the Carrolls and my family, lived, although at other times I’m following on an unknown city street, or on a back road in my home town where they are forever ahead of me, striding or rolling away, laughing. Not unkindly, but because that’s how I remember them, always laughing in jest and in fun – yet wholly out of my reach, which makes sense as they were all good athletes and drivers, skiers and bike riders, moving confidently, quickly through space and time. I was and am a so-so athlete at best, and a much more cautious mover and driver, whatever the mode of transport. But I am getting ahead of myself now, and of my story, which is a love story like all the best tales, though I don’t aspire to write it as well as those who have captured love and its many and varied journeys successfully and beautifully. I simply hope to do this love justice. And them. I hope to do them justice, the Carrolls, to write them fairly and with all the love I feel and all the wonder and pain, because of course loss is a part of love, and I have lost them, they are lost to me, except what I keep inside. Maybe by writing I will recover them, in some essential, substantial way? Maybe. Perhaps.
And I want to, need to, write about them, the Carrolls, and by writing about them and that time in my life, I can maybe, perhaps, free myself of longing for their presence and for, for what – childhood? Yes, childhood, in a way – but also, and mostly, for remembered joy in the fall, in falling in love, discovering a family and culture so different from my own, one where passion was a constant – passion for life, for sports, for music, for books, dogs, frogs, kittens, barbequing – for anything and everything in which they were interested. A family where I was completely accepted and liked and even loved as I believe they loved me; I hope so. No, I know they did. As for me, I adored them all. How not to fall in love with all of that, and them?
I remember reading a book once where a woman went abroad and felt immediately at home – accepted and loved by the people of the country despite an initial language barrier. Even the fact that she spoke Spanish or French or whatever it was, at the high school level, didn’t matter; they laughed with and praised her attempts at fluency and welcomed her wherever she went, gifting her with oranges (naranjas?) and other treats of the area she was visiting.
It was a delicious fantasy but that was how the Carrolls were with me, or so it felt to me then. And so I begin. I wish I were a better remember-er and writer as failing to do them justice bothers me before I even start. Help me, oh you Gods and Goddesses of love and all that is good and great in the world!! Help me. Help me.