as he unlocked my car door,
“like freshly baked cookies.
Or spumoni ice cream.
I want it to be special, Al.”
And when he said that,
for some reason,
I thought of Mom
and those cookies she’d made me
on that miserable day.
Suddenly,
no matter how much love
was in my heart
for Blaze,
I felt
empty.
As empty
as the ice cream dish
we had just
left
behind.
mixed-up
I should have felt
good.
Happy.
Excited.
I wanted to feel
good.
Happy.
Excited.
The look on Blaze’s face
told me he felt
good.
Happy.
Excited.
But when we walked into
the lobby of the hotel
and I saw a happy family—
a mom, a dad,
and two girls—
I felt scared.
Sad.
Confused.
I watched
as the girls each took
their father’s hands in theirs,
pulling on them,
as they begged him
to take them
to the Space Needle.
He laughed,
then gathered them
up and into his arms
and told them
he promised to take them
in the morning.
I thought of Blaze
holding me
and caressing me,
and told myself
it would make everything
better.
After all,
the world outside
the MarQueen Hotel
would surely
disappear
while we lost ourselves
in each other.
But as I looked around
the lovely lobby,
I knew we would end up
back there to check out
and head home.
And that’s when
it hit me.
No matter what changed
in a hotel room
between me and Blaze,
everything else
would stay
exactly
the
same.
I need to believe
When I told him I wasn’t ready,
and that I might have been doing it
for all the wrong reasons,
he told me he understood.
He told me I needed to be 100 percent sure.
He told me he would wait until I was 100 percent sure.
“You’re really okay with it?” I asked him
as we sat in the car before going home.
He shrugged.
“I love you.
So I’m okay with it.
As long as it’s you making the decision.
Not your dad.
Not your friends.
And most of all,
not the everyone’s-a-sinner preacher at your church.”
“Come on.
It’s not even like that at my church.
How can you talk like that when you don’t know?
You’ve never even been.”
“I know I don’t need God, Ali.
And I don’t need a bunch of people telling me I need
God.”
“You make it sound like God is a bad guy.
He’s not bad.”
Blaze sighed as he started the car. “Let’s get you home.”
As we drove in silence,
panic expanded
in my chest
until I almost
couldn’t breathe.
First Claire.
Then Dad.
Now Blaze.
I reached over,
took his hand,
and placed it on my
rapidly beating heart.
“Please tell me we’re okay,” I whispered.
He pulled the car over
to the side of the road,
reached over, and kissed me—
a long,
slow,
wet,
beautiful
kiss.
“We’re better than okay,” he told me.
“Believe me?”
And of course,
I did.
was pretty much
unthinkable.
trying to understand
Blaze’s dad
was a bad, bad
beast
of a man.
Blaze hasn’t told
me a lot.
But enough
for me to know
he was hurt
on a regular basis
and has
a few scars
to show for it,
though more inside
than out.
I think he
blames
God,
because it’s hard
to blame
the one
who really
deserves it.
What I believe
is that life
is music and fabulous fall foliage,
but it’s also cancer and wars.
That’s just how it is.
Maybe God could do better.
But shit, so could we.
doesn’t fit
The next morning
when I woke up,
I called Blaze
to tell him how much
I loved him
and appreciated him.
I told him
a lot of guys
wouldn’t have been
as understanding
as he was.
He said
that’s because
a lot of guys
are assholes
and he swore to himself
he’d never be
like that.
After we hung up,
I found Dad
on the couch,
holding Ivy.
Just him
and her.
I watched them
from around the corner.
He stroked her head.
He played with her feet.
He picked her up
and held her tightly
against him.
Part of me
wanted desperately
to join them,
while another part
wanted to turn and run
and never
come
back.
When I was little,
I loved doing puzzles.
There was this
ABC puzzle
I played with
all the time.
I always got the
M and the N mixed up.
I’d try
and try
and try
to get the
M to fit in the N spot.
I’d spin it
this way
and that way
until I finally
got up
and walked away.
Right then,
in that moment,
watching them together,
I felt like the M
trying to fit
in the N spot.
And once again,
I walked away.
broken
I was in the kitchen
getting cereal
when Victoria came in.
She held
a little frilly
yellow dress.
“Isn’t this the cutest, Ali?
We
’re going to dress her up and go to the store.”
I listened to them
giggle and squeal
as they got Ivy ready
for her first trip
to the grocery store.
You’d have thought
they were flying to
Ireland
to meet Bono.
After they left,
I felt so alone,
and all I wanted
was to talk
to my best friend
about everything
that had happened.
I got up the nerve to call,
but her cell phone
went right to voice mail.
When I called her house,
her mom said
she wasn’t there.
The way she said it,
I knew
it wasn’t
the truth.
The anger
and the sadness
and the hurt
came out
like a bullet
as I flung
my cell
across the room,
where it hit the wall
with a
loud
BANG.
Pieces
on
the
floor.
How
appropriate.
imagine
But what if her mom
wasn’t lying?
Maybe Claire was
coming to see me.
Maybe I would
skip outside
to greet her.
Maybe we’d
go out
for coffee and doughnuts.
Best friends,
like before,
making music,
not war.
And then I remembered,
she’d rather make
bowling shirts
than make music
with me.
desolate
The driveway
stayed as empty
as my heart
felt.
a tangled web indeed
I had a sudden urge
to see pictures
of my family
together.
The happy family
I knew we were
years ago.
I searched
everywhere
for the photo albums.
In closets,
in cupboards,
in drawers.
The longer I looked,
the more frantic I got.
When I didn’t think
there was anywhere else
to look,
I thought of
the attic.
I went up
and pulled on the string,
lighting up the rafters
and the cobwebs.
Way back in the corner,
partly covered with an old,
paint-spattered sheet,
was her stuff.
How sad that her
most-beloved possessions
were stuck in the corner
with the spiders,
like they were
creepy and unwanted.
Well, I love spiders,
thank you very much.
I threw the sheet back,
ran my hand across the desk,
and pulled on the top drawer handle.
Locked.
Drawer
after drawer
pulled open.
The photo albums
were in the bottom drawer.
After I took the albums out,
something shiny
caught my eye.
A tiny silver key for the top drawer,
carefully taped for safekeeping.
Carefully put there
for me.
ahoy, matey
I felt
like a pirate
discovering
secret
buried treasure.
Better than diamonds
or gold coins
or silver trinkets,
I found
sketches.
Mom’s sketches.
My sketches.
Mine.
motherly love
In my room
I carefully
unrolled them.
My hand
oh-so-gently
caressed
each one as I
imagined
her hand there,
creating the images
she held
in her head
and her heart.
And in fact,
the first sketch
was a huge heart,
with a woman
holding a baby
drawn inside
of the heart.
The second sketch
was of a young girl
sitting in a chair
reading a book.
The third sketch
was the one
that brought tears to my eyes.
A sketch
of my face
and her face
side by side.
Together.
I wasn’t sure
what they all meant
exactly,
but what I felt
and knew with my
whole being
was that she
loved being my mother.
And even if
she’s gone,
that knowledge
can stay with me
forever.
a lover of news, I am not
I didn’t notice
how quickly time
passed.
Suddenly
Victoria was there,
standing beside my bed,
looking at the sketches
I didn’t want anyone
to see.
“Don’t you knock?” I asked.
“Sorry.
Wow.
Are those—”
In one quick swoop,
I rolled them up
so they were
safe in my arms.
Safe from her.
“They’re nothing.
Just a project I’m working on.
For school.”
“Ah. Okay.”
Dad came in.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“I was just coming in to tell Ali the news.”
I don’t like
news.
I’m not a news
person.
News
is rarely good.
When do you
watch the news?
When something
horrible is happening,
like a tornado
or a blizzard
or a terrorist attack.
It’s usually something bad
that makes you turn on
the news.
She told me, “We’ve decided we’re going on a trip.
To visit my parents, in Chico.
Over Thanksgiving break.”
“‘We’ as in ‘you three,’ right?”
Dad said, “No, Ali. All of us.
We’re a family.”
Yep.
I knew it.
Something bad.
Very, very bad.
one strange plot twist
I started an e-mail to Claire
ten different ways
and nothing seemed
right.
If I said,
“I’m sorry,”
it felt like I was saying
I needed to change
who I am
as a person and
as a songwriter,
and I didn’t believe that.
If I said,
“Let’s go to the church
and tell them
we want
to keep playing,”
I was setting myself up
for a big fight
all over again.
It was like
I’d turned the page
in a book I’d loved
since the beginning,
and suddenly
it had turned into
a horror novel.
I wanted to slam the book closed
and run away.
Except
I’d grown to love
the main character’s
best friend
so much,
of course I couldn’t really
do that.
I had to keep reading
and find out what happened.
I just had to.
suffocating in silence
I skipped church
Sunday morning
because I didn’t want to see her there
without fixing things first.
I stayed home,
writing a song,
wishing her to appear
with every
other
note.
The happy family below
carried on like it was only them,
just as it
should
be.
I skipped meals,
and they didn’t
even