Merging Realities

Avery stirred in his sleep when Jasper, his charcoal grey Persian cat, jumped onto the bed.  Jasper surveyed Avery’s body which looked like a broken swastika strewn across the queen size bed.  Jasper walked to the left knee and sat down.  He then got up and pawed the calf of the leg a bit; Avery moved the leg causing it to straighten out.  Jasper then moved to the arm which was flexed up towards Avery’s head.  Beneath the arm and head were two down pillows.  Jasper pawed the pillows then sat down curling his body into the crux of Avery’s elbow, his head closest to Avery’s ear and began to purr himself to sleep.

Avery was dreaming.   He was leading a band of people out of a burning building by using the fire escape ladders.  He enjoyed dreams where he was the hero.  The sound of sirens growing closer were heard beyond the panic of the people.  He was not sure how the building had caught fire or even why he was there.   But there he was climbing on the fire escape ladders that were precariously supported by rusted out bolts against the brick building. 

There were about fifteen people following Avery’s lead on these ladders.  And the ladders were not in the best of shape so they were beginning to give under the weight of the people.  Avery told everyone to remain perfectly still while he thought out how to get the final ladder rung lowered to the ground where unknown to Avery was waiting a hungry lion which escaped from the zoo.   Avery was first alerted to the lion’s presence by an ear shattering roar.  The lion roared again and looked up at Avery and the people behind him.  

Avery looked at the bolts of the ladder which were beginning to come out of the building.  He looked at the lion waiting down below.  He looked at the people behind him who were depending on him to do the right thing to save them.  No matter what Avery did, people were going to die. The lion began jumping up towards the ladder and continued to roar.  The roaring got louder with each successive jump.  Avery felt the ladder give way to fear as much as to the weight of the people behind him.  Avery began to fall headlong into the lion’s roaring mouth. 

Avery jumped awake.  The bed shook and Jasper cried out an angry meow and leapt off the bed.  Avery looked around him hearing the heavy landing of Jasper to the floor and the running into the living room.  Avery stared at the ceiling fan which churned the glowing red hot night air of flashing designs of warning on the ceiling.  He looked out the window and saw the red lights of the fire trucks at the building across the street.  Avery sighed, rolled over and closed his eyes again to sleep.  

The Hindenburg zeppelin was crashing.  Avery was down below watching as people jumped to safety.  He ran closer and positioned himself to catch them as they fell. He reached out his arms and as he braced to catch the falling lady in a charcoal grey suit there is a thump and the swish of a tail under his nose.  Jasper had landed squarely on Avery’s shoulder.  Avery’s eyes shot open.

28 September 2009

Today I rewrote the journal entries of Edison Woodrow so that they could be posted all in one post here on the blog.  In some ways I am hoping this will give the story “Behind  Prison Walls” some fuller context.  Edison Woodrow is already dead of lymphoma when the journal is found.  In reworking these entries, I am realizing that there is much to the story of his life that remains unsaid and these tales need to be uncovered.   As I did with Vivian’s Story, I intend to write the other people’s point of view in their own telling of the story.

Flash!

“You did what?” Sarah, my wife, exclaims.

“I know, it sounds incredible but I discovered a way to photograph time.  And to be able to see not only the outcomes that led a person to this point in time but also the alternative outcomes that could have been taken.”  I was speaking fast, I was so excited that I was about to hyperventilate.

“This is going to revolutionize everything.  No more just imagining other threads of linear time, we can actually see them.  It is more than just threads, it is like, it is like a tree branch that continues to break off into new branches.  Imagine being able to see what events led a person to end up on skid row instead of Madison Avenue.  Why it is just going to change everything.”  I was seeing Nobel peace prizes in front of my eyes. 

“Well why in tarnation would you do a thing like that?  Do you know what could happen?  What doors of trouble you are opening here?  In the hands of the wrong people what could happen?  O sure, you discover how to photograph time.  It is only a matter of time before someone learns how to manipulate it was well.”

“I already have. Only one time line can have dominance at any given moment.  These break off alternatives can’t survive very long unless they are fed with more events like them.  So, if the dominant thread line is somehow disrupted then an entirely new thread begins to have dominance.    I simply dissolve one of the images that led to a certain outcome and everything changes.   Remember the movie Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow.  In a split second an entire different set of events take place because she fails to reach the doors of the metro before they closed?”

Sarah nods her head still completely convinced that her husband of fifteen years has become the mad scientist. 

“Well, all that is needed is to discover what was the pivotal moment that altered the time line and then change it.  In the movie, it was the little girl in the stair well with the stuffed toy that Gwyneth’s character had to dodge in order to reach the train.” 

 “Show me.”

 “Okay, if that is how it must be.” I raise the time camera up onto its tripod.  I set the aperture and focus the lens.  I set the timer.  “Now all we have to do is have our picture taken just like any other camera but the photo will be different.”  

Sarah looks at me and says, “Well put your arms around me. This is a momentous occasion.”  Then Flash.   A brilliant light fills the room and suspended around the room are these moments of Sarah’s life.  She is in awe of all the different paths that she could have taken that have now faded away.  She looks at all of them.  And she sees one particular event and reaches out to it and it simply dissolves.  It all dissolves.

I arrive home from work. Sarah is in the kitchen cooking creamed spinach fettuccini.   “The house smells wonderful, honey.” I shout out.  I enter the kitchen and take another deep whiff of the aromas. There is home made bread on the counter. A cherry cobbler is next to it.  “This is what you did on your day off from work?  You baked? You are always surprising me. Say, how about after dinner we go out to see that new Paltrow movie, Sliding Doors, I hear she is excellent in it.” 

“No, I am too tired from playing domestic housewife.  I just want to curl up on the sofa with a glass of Shiraz and a fire roaring in the fireplace.” 

“Well, it is a good night for a fire.  Whatever you want.  You know that. I’ll always do what ever you want.”  I pulled Sarah into a hug and gave her a passionate kiss. 

 

End.

Jasper and Mrs. Dalrymple

Jasper, Avery Van Dien’s Persian cat, had taken to sitting out on the second floor porch balcony. For a while he would watch the sparrows fly in and out of the dryer vent where they had built their nest. His head would subtly turn as one flew in.  Then a few moments later,  he would again turn his head ever so slightly to follow the bird back out to the trees. But this did not hold his attention for long.

He developed a fascination with the downstairs neighbors;  who would walk underneath the porch balcony to their apartments or to their cars. He would stare wide eyed at them as they approach. Then,  if they noticed him he would scurry away under a chair or back inside to the safety of the apartment. But there was one neighbor he was most curious about.

Mrs. Dalrymple was a most peculiar creature in her own right. She was over six feet in height and heavier than most. When she walked her immense weight forced her to walk as much side to side as she did forward. So there was this rocking action in her gait that piqued Jasper’s curiosity.

She insisted on being fashionable even when fashion demanded; shall we say a thinner style? On this day she wore a  halter top and capri pants. Which on someone more than half her age might have appeared stylish but on Mrs. Dalrymple, well, perhaps it is best left unsaid. And she always wore a sun hat with flowers dancing off the rim. She didn’t want her face or shoulders to burn.

Jasper would leer at her as she lumbered underneath. In his mind this was something to behold. So he would perch on the table and watch the people walk by waiting for Mrs. Darymple to come through. When she appeared his head would turn quickly from side to side.  On this particular day, his curiosity got him and he leaped forward landing on her hat.

Mrs. Dalrymple screams and runs… body swaying side to side, Jasper hanging onto the hat for dear life. All the more scaring her as sharp talons broke through the sun hat into her scalp. She screams again. Mrs. Dalrymple, exhausted from running collapses on the ground.

Jasper scurries off the hat and back towards the apartment, scampers up the railing to the balcony. Jasper returns to his perch and nonchalantly licks his paw. He looks around, yawns, “What? Was there some fuss going on?”

There are heavy knocks on the door. Avery answers and sees a very much disheveled, extremely winded and disturbed Mrs. Dalrymple.

“Mr. Van Dien, we have got to do something about that cat of yours. He just jumped me.”

“Mrs. Dalrymple, Jasper? Why he is right where he always is on the porch balcony. See?” Avery points to the balcony where Jasper is stretching and yawning. “See, he is just now waking up from a nap.”

“I have witnesses, Mr. Van Dien. He jumped me. I nearly had a heart attack. If you do not keep your cat on your property, so help me god… I am reporting your cat to the condominium board and then we will see what’s what about your cat.”

She walks back down the stairs one step at a time leaning on the railing for support and is again winded by the time she gets down to ground level. She pauses to catch her breath and looks up and sees Jasper peering through the balcony railings. He hisses at her. She points her finger at him as if it were a pistol and shoots silently at him. Jasper throws his head and tail up in the air and walks away from the edge.

Avery walks to the balcony. Jasper rubs his body against Avery’s legs and purrs. “What am I going to do with you Jasper? Terrorizing the neighborhood and Mrs. Dalrymple to boot. She doesn’t need any more adrenalin rushes given her physical condition.”

Avery picks Jasper up who warmly accepts a rub beneath his chin and ears. He looks out beyond the balcony and sees Mrs. Dalrymple talking frantically to a neighbor.  Her arms are waving so furiously she would make Richard Simmons proud.  In her frenzy she points to Jasper.  Avery waves back and then walks into the apartment, dropping Jasper who resumes his position on the porch as look out.

Vivian’s Story

 There was a time when Edison would revel in my being on stage.   The very thought of him being in the audience would make me want to soar all the more in my performance. There was a time when he was an inspiration for me to fulfill my utmost potential as an actress. Singer. Dancer.  These were the roaring twenties and I roared with the rest of them.

 I remember the day he proposed his hand in marriage to me.  We went to the peacock exhibit in the park where we first met.  He pretended to be a peacock, expanding his feathers for me and crackling like a peacock.  We laughed and laughed.  He was an awful peacock.  He scared them away with his aping.  But then in a very tender moment he said, “Vivian, I would be the proudest peacock of them all if you would marry me.” 

 They say that marriage changes a man.  I know it has changed me.   Edison suddenly became jealous of the theater.   He didn’t want me rehearsing for shows.  He didn’t want me on stage with Jimmy Durante.  He was insanely jealous.  The things he would say to me.  The things he would do. 

He met up with Jimmy after a performance one night.  He and Jimmy had words.  I don’t know who threw the first punch but he landed one right on Jimmy’s nose and broke it.  Jimmy laughed saying his nose would one day be his trademark in the business.  I was so ashamed of Edison that day.  What was he thinking?  I married him not Jimmy.  

 Shortly there after I became pregnant with Rose.  The theatre company wouldn’t allow me to perform.  So I planned on returning after Rose was born.  But we were not able to afford help and Edison was now the breadwinner so I stayed home and cared for Rose.  Two years later I became pregnant with Michael. Again, I could not return to the stage I loved.  And less than two years later I had Karl.   I swore this would be the last child. 

I got a neighbor to watch the kids one day and met Fanny Bryce for lunch.   She looked at me in my house dress and just shook her head.   “Where is your style, Vivian?  Edison take that from you too?”   We talked for a long while.  I so missed Fanny and Jimmy and the rest of them.  We talked about the days when we were just starting out in Vaudeville.  She told me all about the up and coming people in the business.  Josephine Baker, this colored girl seemed to have real potential but we doubted anything would come of her with the attitudes towards race being what they were.    Then Fanny said, “ Viv, why don’t you just leave him and come back.  He’ll figure it out.  We are dyin’ here without you, Viv. We need you!”   It sounded cruel to me to leave the kids but I thought once the kids were in school I could do it.  I really could. 

And then, I became pregnant for the fourth time.  I had told Edison no more children.  I told him I wanted to return to the stage.

When Edison came home from the office the day I found out I was pregnant with a fourth child, I confronted him.  “I don’t want this child, Ed.  I have three already. Why can’t I resume my career now?”  You got mad.  I got madder.  I heard the kids crying in their rooms.  I felt as if each child was a bar on my prison cell determined to keep me from the love I knew.  Edison stormed out of the flat.  That was when I knew what I needed to do.  It was my only chance of being able to return to the theater. 

Fanny had given me a name of a woman on the East side who handled unwanted pregnancies in complete confidence.  No one needed to know.   She claimed to be safe;  having done many of these procedures. 

It was a cloudy day threatening to ice or snow.  I climbed the five stories to the apartment.  She opened the door quietly to let me in.   The apartment was dimly lit.  There were papers strewn everywhere in the main room.   The kitchen had dark grease on the walls above the stove.  Maybe it was just my pregnancy that made me more sensitive but the putrid stench of fried fish, bacon, and chicken all rolled into one made me gag.   

There was a back room with a cot that she asked me to lie down on.  She gave me some ether to knock me out. She asked me to count backwards and then I was out. 

When I came to, I felt a pain in my gut like something had been ripped out of me.  She looked at me and said, “You will feel some discomfort for the next few days.  And there will be some minor bleeding, no worries.  Your body will take some time to adjust back into its monthly rhythm. You understand?”  I nodded my head.  

“Well, then very good.  You may leave now.”   And with those words I got up and left the apartment with its putrid rotting smells.  I walked slowly down the stairs. The pain was more intense than I had thought it would be.  My thoughts were all over the place. 

I felt guilt. I felt relief. I felt fear.  I felt pain, severe pain.   I walked as carefully as I could to avoid the pain in my groin that I was feeling.  I just wanted a place to sit down and rest. I looked around but did not know where I was.  So I just kept moving as best as I could.  I thought maybe if I turn here down this alley it would be a short cut home. 

The alley was dingy.  There was trash thrown every where.  The sky was bleaker than it was earlier.   I collapse as the first snow flakes hit my face with spots of coolness.  I look down and notice a pool of blood is forming around me.  I look up again at the snow falling.  It is so peaceful, so very peaceful.

8 June 2009

Jasper, my persian cat, sits on the side table looking over his domain, including my work station.  He watches everything.  Motionless.  His golden orange eyes are fixated on my typing and frankly it is a bit unnerving. 

Does Jasper approve my attempts to write?  He just sits there.  Slowly he turns his head to look out the window.  Ennui.  His disinterest is his judgment.  He yawns and returns to his stare. 

Meanwhile I am at the computer and writing about Jasper instead of the next entry about Ed to further his story along.   I am wondering how Ed reveals himself to the world.  His diary entries are filled with secret thoughts that he does not share.  What does he share?  Why did Vivian marry him in the first place?   Who is reading this diary? 

I recently read a quote of Erich Fromm:   “The awareness of human separation, without reunion by love–is the soure of love.  It is at the same time the source of guilt and anxiety.  The deepest need of man, then , is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness.” 

This quote is my inspiration for this story. Jasper jumps off the side table and struts over to me and begins to rub his back on my legs.  Is this his way of saying, I am on the right track?  He purrs.  I reach down and pet him. He lifts his head up and closes his eyes, purring.   Then just as suddenly, he leaves the room.   I lift my hand to begin typing again and it is filled with cat hairs.   In the kitchen, I hear him on the counter knocking a glass onto the floor.   So much for writing…

The Journal of Edison Woodrow

4 March 1928

Vivian, I gave you children when you didn’t want children.  I thought not wanting children was unnatural. You wanted to pursue your acting career and I forced you home with children.  I told you, “A woman doesn’t have a career.”  You said something like if a woman can vote she can have a career.

You always wanted to prove me wrong.  Okay, I was wrong but did you have to prove me wrong this way?  Damn it, Vivian–why this way?  Why? 

When the doctor told me you weren’t strong enough to survive this bleeding, I didn’t want to believe him.  You were in a coma.  I went in to see you.  Your hair that showed under the cap was all matted with sweat.  Your face sallow.  Your belly flat. The baby dead.

“I don’t want this child, Ed.  I have three already.  Why can’t I resume my career now?”  I remember those words as the life drained from your body this morning.

You came into the bedroom after finding out that a new life was forming inside your soft body.  You were furious.  You said that I had placed you in a prison and each new child was another bar.

Your brown hair hung straight and your nightgown cast disturbing shadows on the walls.  I could only tell you: as soon as your mothering instincts started operating again you would love the idea.  That was when you said, “I don’t want this child, Ed…” 

I looked down at your comatose face; you didn’t tell me you were going to attempt this.  If the man who had found you wasn’t a Samaritan you would have died in that garbage strewn alley.  Vivian, weren’t there other solutions?  Weren’t there?

 

September 12, 1930 

Harriet, you looked so beautiful tonight by Grant’s lake. The moon in your eyes shone mysteries I will never begin to solve, but that enhanced your beauty.

I have been unfair to you even as I asked you to marry me.  I brought you here to City Park because this is where Vivian and I courted. I wanted so desperately to replace her with you and now I know that will never be. Yes. Harriet I love you but my love for you is second to my lover for Vivian.  And I shall never have that love again.  Are you going to be able to compete with a ghost?  I fear not. 

I will make it easier for you by not insisting that you be called mother by the children.  In that way you will not have to feel that you are replacing Vivian with them.  I hope in time you will see the wisdom in this decision. 

If this marriage lasts it will be by your determination and love not to allow my past to overshadow the present.  It will be the strength of your love that will keep us moving forward.  I know this is unfair to you but I don’t know how it can be otherwise.  Your love for me will be my salvation. 

17 June 1931

Well, I told myself when Vivian died I would never have children again. And now Harriet wants children.  I know she didn’t realize it but to ask this day of all days.  My anniversary with Vivian, eleven years to the day to tell me she wants children.

No.  I will not give Harriet children.  I can’t.  I won’t.  We have children already.  Why is it so hard for her to accept them as her own?  I’m sure Vivian would have wanted her to accept them in that way. 

Vivian, you were a god-send to me.  Remember, I met you in City Park back in 1918?  I took long walks those days after my mother died.

The day I met you, you were at the peacock cage. Your parasol was twirling to coax one of the peacocks to spread his tail of blue, yellow, and green.  And when he finally did after what seemed like hours you laughed with delight, throwing your head back, the sun catching your face and your rich coppery hair.   That was when you caught me looking at you.

First you giggled, then you blushed, then you were indignant.  You walked over to me to give me a piece of your mind, but before you could; I asked if you wanted to get something to eat.  It was noon.  You were so shocked, you said yes.

In the years that followed you always talked about Fanny Bryce and Jimmy Durante.  How you could’ve been up there in the stars with them.  You felt you still could.  You and Fanny wrote each other often about the good ol’ days of Vaudeville.  But you fell in love with a Bedford Hills man while on tour. 

You regretted it, didn’t you?  I became the reason for your not reaching stardom.  Fanny and Jimmy came to your funeral.  They didn’t forget you.  I didn’t tell them the facts of your death.  I didn’t tell anyone what you had done.  It will be our secret. 

I wanted you to have my children, Vivian.  And now Harriet wants children and I can’t give them to her.  She can have your children.  Harriet can continue baking angel food cakes for the restaurant. I will not interrupt her career for want of child.  Besides, I need her income to help support the mouths we now feed.  Blasted Depression.  Loosing one wife is payment enough in on lifetime.  I don’t want to pay twice. 

June 18, 1931 

Harriet didn’t speak to me today.  I have given her freedom that Vivian didn’t have and she won’t speak to me. How can I tell her what I have done for her? 

I feel like a dog being punished for some unmentionable that wasn’t the dog’s fault but the owner’s for not being sensitive enough to the dog’s behavior.

Mother was like that.  She acted like Harriet did today.  She’d walk around the kitchen, cooking, going from stove to sink to stove to table mixing various ingredients and not saying a word.  I wasn’t even in Mother’s line of sight.  I would just sit there, watching, wondering if I had done something wrong to receive such oblivious treatment. 

I would go over the list of possible wrongs done that might have offended Mother’s good nature.  And then I would worry after the list was exhausted fro fear that there could be something new that I didn’t know was wrong.  I would start fidgeting, and my palms would sweat so I would wipe them on my knickers.  I would fidget some more.  Then all my fears were realized, Mother would yell, “Stop your fidgeting!  Go do something will you!” At least Mother finally told me what I was doing wrong.  Harriet didn’t say a word to me at all. 

July 10, 1931 

Harriet looked so natural playing with Rose today.  No-one would’ve known that they were a step-mother and step-daughter on her fifth birthday.  For a minute, I thought that they were my mother and my sister Abigail incarnate.  Mother and Abigail played on the same hill behind the house where they played today. 

Abigail.  I’ve never mentioned her to anyone.  How can I talk of someone no-one ever knew; how would anyone understand her?  She is my jewel, my memory.  As I was remembering, Harriet asked about children again, shattering the moment.  Blasted memories they’re as elusive as running water.  Once they are secure they become stagnant with bitterness. Do I have to tell her everything?  I will not let my jewel be tarnished by soiled hands.  I will cherish Abigail’s memory like an heirloom.  

Abigail lived to be five years old and she was a happy child.  She was always smiling and singing songs to her china dolls dressed in petticoats.  When she was five she came down with Scarlet Fever. There wasn’t much we could do.  Mother hung sheets petitioning the room from the house.  I couldn’t see Abigail.  But I remember standing outside the room listening to my mother singing as she wiped my sister’s brow.  Softly my mother sang, I’ll walk through the garden alone…” I remember listening to those words she sang and wondering if God was there with you, Abigail, calling you his own.  Was that why she left us?  Abigail was too beautiful to be ours so God called her home.  

When she died all of her clothes were burned and everything had to be cleaned with the most god-awful stuff. The silver utensils she used suffered the most. The stuff turned them black.  

Today, I suppose it was the Harriet put daisies in Rose’s hair that reminded me of Abigail.  She wore daises all the time. Mother would braid them two abreast and crown Abigail, Princess of the spring.  Her golden hair would glimmer in the sun. 

Abigail would dance on that hill.  And as she danced she would throw up shinleaf and clover into the air.  You don’t see shinleaf anymore. There was more shinleaf then than there dandelions.  They were all over the place with their white flowers in the summer and red berries in the fall.  I guess Abigail picked them all. 

May 4, 1933 

Seeing my oldest plant those spruces with such determination reminded me of your determined Vivian.  I thought it was bull-headedness.  

You would be proud of him.  He’s planting these trees in your honor.  He remembers you and places you on some elusive pedestal to admire and worship.  Isn’t that what you wanted from your fans?  To be worshipped?  Idolized? 

Harriet is moved y Robert’s love for you. I am also but I won’t admit to her or to Robert.  The pain you afflicted is too great to allow others to tamper it with their mallet. 

I know the kind of woman you were and Robert is too young to hear it.  Harriet need not know because the past is with the dead and the dying.  Since you died, I have been afflicted with the slowest of deaths.  And no Balm in Gilead can avert it.  Lord knows I tried to find with Harriet what I had with you. 

Your death has placed me in a prison. You claim I placed you in one.  Only my prison doesn’t have children as bars. My prison has memories that hang like mosquito netting, keeping me from others.  I can’t escape them. Now on the side hill is a living tribute to your memory.  Although I admire my son’s determination I abhor the symbolism. My prison walls thicken with each tree planted. 

August 20, 1939 

I went down to the barn to tend to the chickens.  I heard some noise so I went to investigate.  The hobos often used the barn as a shelter from the damp night.  I didn’t care too much as long as they weren’t causing trouble.  I turned the corner to the hay stacks and there is the Harrison boy on top of Karl.  They’re laughing and giggling like some teenage girls.  But they aren’t clothed Vivian.  They are rubbing each other down.  They were using their tongues on each other’s balls like a dog in heat.  

I didn’t know what to do.  I was furious.  No son of mine was going to be a queer.  I had my twenty-two with me in case of vermin after the chickens.   I raised my gun and yelled, “You get off my son or I’ll blast you to kingdom come!” Karl and that Harrison boy jumped up.  

Karl was all a stammerin’.  He looked at me with eyes of fear.  I was loosin’ but I had to make my point that this was never going to happen again.  I pointed the gun at Harrison and told Karl to get out.  

“Karl, they kill queers around here. If you ever decide to screw anything again without two breasts I’ll so much as kill you than look at you, you understand?” Karl ran out of the barn.  The Harrison boy just continued to stare at me with that deer in the headlight stare.  

The white heat of rage consumed me. I don’t remember what happened next.  I found myself in the kitchen washing my hands over and over again.  My body was shaking. 

The next day, I went down to the barn. There was the Harrison boy swinging in the breeze.  I yelled for help.  His father came down and claimed the boy’s body.  He apologized to me for this happening in our barn.  The boy had attempted suicide a few years back.  They had thought he had gotten the help he needed because he seemed to be so much better. The doctors weren’t as optimistic. 

Karl just stared at me.  He stared at me with all the hatred a fifteen year old can have for his father.  But Karl is going to be a man because of this Vivian, I just know it. 

August 20 1940 

Vivian, the barn was torched today.  It was falling apart anyway. My father and his father before him farmed this land using that barn.  I didn’t use it much, though.  We had chickens so Harriet could bake her Angel food cake.  The chickens we sold a few months back.   That was about it though with the exception of some hay stacks stored there for the Harrison’s’ horse farm up the road. 

The blaze was bright. All the people up and down the road came to see what was happening.  I told them let it burn, let it burn. It wasn’t going to hurt anybody. I was glad to be rid of it.  It was hard to look at anymore.   No sense in having a barn if it was just going to rot on its foundation. 

People told me they used that barn as a landmark.  I guess they’ll just have to find another landmark; this one has used its usefulness.    

 January 3, 1983

 I am leaving this for my children and my children’s children. There are certain events in my life that I have never told anyone.   I told myself it was better to forget the old dust bunnies in the closet.  I am writing this to clear myself and in regret for any tainted or un-enriched experiences you have had because of me.

My wife Harriet has endured my nonsense without so much of a bat of the eye.  I hope that she too can find it in her heart to forgive me.  I abused her terribly over these long decades.  I wanted to replace the pain in my heart with her presence after Vivian died.  Alas Harriet was no Vivian nor should she have been.  But it was I who lost out.  It has only been recently that I discovered what a gift she truly is.  My children have known this gift.  I have always been grateful for the love she has shown them as if they were her own, and they have responded in kind.  

I did as I wished over these many years. I was king over all I surveyed or so I thought.  I didn’t care who I trampled on just so long as I got my way when I wanted it.  How foolish I have been.  

Harriet, if you should read this journal you will know the man you married was not as I portrayed.  I am just a loner with my memories that I could not overcome.  I was protective of those memories just like a three year old is protective of his toy and will not share, foolishly thinking that in sharing the memory it somehow becomes not mine any longer, that somehow the memory is tainted by others interpretations and distortions that cannot possibly be valid or real.  All along the opposite was true.  Withholding memories allows them to embitter the heart, while sharing them no matter how painful frees the heart to step beyond the prison to others. 

I have had a lot of time to think about all of this in the recent months since being diagnosed with Lymphoma.  How much longer I have is not up to me.  I believe my time is coming soon.  I have sometimes seen in the morning light Abigail dancing.  

Harriet has proven once again her love to me.  She stays up with me making sure I am comfortable. She is the saint in this family.  She quietly suffered marriage with me with no complaints.  I hope Harriet will have it in her heart to forgive me. 

Love, Edison.