A Bright House

“The lake you saw is where my husband vanished during an ice fishing weekend” Jenny spoke as Ray attempted to follow the movement of the large dark mass into the upper reaches of the tree canopy above them. He stood up, placed his index finger to indicate “shhhh”, then stepped away from the tree trunk by ten paces, turning with eyes to the highest branches and their black outlined leaves. Jenny wordlessly stepped back from the trunk, toward the lake so that moonlight could assist with whatever it was they were looking for. Ray whispered “do you see anything sitting up there?” She shook her head, unable to differentiate between leaf or limb, still unsettled by the emotions of only moments before. “As you and I spoke, I saw a very large bird or something fly up from behind you... it completely blocked out the moon and then swooped almost straight up into those upper branches” Ray dispensed with the whisper, not seeing anything unusual, not sure... he often required several minutes to regain the foothold of this reality after a trance experience. “We have herons here” Jenny was barely audible, “falcons, hawks, turkey vultures...”

“it was bigger than that” Ray stated flatly, suddenly feeling a new escalating unease that surpassed the disturbing visuals of minutes prior. “We should think about heading back to the ferry. I have an early alarm and a less than easy day ahead of me tomorrow.” Jenny angled her wrist to see the time on her watch, felt a sinking sensation, a body wrapping fatigue all at once. Cynicism, too. Townes had been remarkably compassionate, accurate with what he had perceived, but had given no answer as to the fate of her Scott. She knew it was too much to expect. She admonished herself for dropping her barriers so completely in the hopes of an impossible solution, yet within the emotional dip that felt like a boulder falling through hundreds of feet of water, an incredible warmth... it had felt so indescribably wonderful to just give in, submit to fragility, and to trust someone.

Standing there with Ray, Jenny lived within the imbroglio of emotions at odds. How much of what he had articulated did she listen to? Her skin had been tingling, her heart hammering at the feel of his body when she leaned back into him. Would she remember his words of guidance for as long as she would the memory of what it meant to be touched that way? With caring hands. What was this insane question? This wanting to ask him to please, just please once, return to her house and lay with her on the bed, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, holding hands. Even for an hour. Did she think that and feel like a simpering, damaged person? Was she kicking aside most of her personality in order to attain a few precious hours of inner peace? It didn’t matter, those annoying queries for an ego in fog, because he would be gone on Monday and Jenny’s cocoon would remain as before.

“Jenny” his sudden voice a little jolt. “We should go. I’ll see you home.” She could hear the change in his tone; a weariness and resolve. It would be eye opening to wear his shoes, she thought, and knew that she would not mention her dream on this night. Would there be another night, be another chance to tell him? To get to know him better? As they moved to cut across the width of Ward’s Island, following low sodium street lamps that offered bare minimum illumination through the residential lanes, Jenny vowed almost vehemently not to allow herself to become pathetic.

He is a thoughtful young man. Outwardly shy, this thoughtfulness would be readily assumed given his demeanor. His reticence to make eye contact doesn’t accurately portray him as someone with something to hide, for it is his general mistrust of humanity at large that keeps him from fully inviting the majority of people he encounters to share intimate thought-space. His name is Kevin May, and his next door neighbor owns a dog named Whisky. Kevin has a sister who is two years older than his seventeen; he despises her. Susie gets everything that she wants. She lies to her parents constantly, about where she is going, who she is with, and mostly she lies about her younger brother.

That Susie is as thick as a brick doesn’t sit well in the mind of her keenly inquisitive, very bright sibling. Her giggle annoys him beyond all logic, as does the long string of loser boyfriends with their muscled up Camaros and GTOs; guys who enjoy teasing Kevin for his bookish rake thin exterior. Muscle cars for muscle heads. One of the reasons for Susie’s endless fabrication about her brother is that he has something on her, something blackmail worthy and of a potentially scandalous nature. Intensely uncomfortable with what he knows, she is laying the groundwork for a black day when he discloses it. This preparation involves the ongoing assertion to anyone who will listen, in particular her parents, that Kevin is a pathological liar. It doesn’t help Kevin’s case that for years he has been deeply immersed in esoteric topics.

In a town as small as theirs, teenagers who don’t toe the status quo, who don’t listen to the music making the rounds or enjoy the same dimwitted television fare, are viewed with hefty doses of suspicion. Labels such as “geek”, “homo”, “weirdo”, “freak” are automatically and freely applied. In Kevin’s example, he taught himself to wear the labels as a badge of honor; being a part of the local fabric held a particularly sharp revulsion for him. He was a young man in waiting, excelling in secondary school and poised for escape to the dreamland of London, Ontario... Fanshawe College, like-minded individuals who could think both collectively and in their own subjectivity. A mid-sized city with a thriving music scene, bookstores, art supply shops, beautiful young ladies who didn’t live and die by the Grease soundtrack.

He has been to London twice, stayed with a favorite older cousin, fell in love with the Kevin potential of the place. It is highly possible that his daydreamed plans are laden with delusion, hyperbole, even the risk of crushing disappointment, but Kevin is bright enough to know that any fate is better than a fate of growing old in a town that values cow manure more than the cultivation of its young minds. At seventeen and deeply restless, Kevin can’t know that he is a mirror. He doesn’t know who Melinda Emma Townes is. Alignment of mirrors happens constantly, but the timing of mirror cognizance is anything but frequent as a part of the resultant resonant eternity revealed. A mirror mirroring a mirror; this is seen blithely by most who behold it, as two reflective inanimate surfaces creating an illusion.

Kevin May, however, is among the viewers who become mirror-lost, intoxicated by allusions of ever more depth in the reflected realities. At seventeen and in the mysterious phase that announced a quantum shift in his young life, Kevin began to have ultra vivid dreams about a place at once entirely unknown and terribly familiar. The first episode coincided with his new fascination for the concept of twinning; human, object, thematic... all of it kickstarted by a lone late night viewing of a deeply unsettling David Cronenberg film entitled “Dead Ringers”. The twin brother protagonists, brilliantly portrayed by Jeremy Irons, are tragic controversial gynecologists who unravel when their lives intertwine with an attractive patient.

Already drawn to and resonant with the darker truths of his fellow beings, Kevin found within this movie and its impeccably timed devastating impact upon his viewpoint, a crystalline fundamentality far out beyond language. It spoke to him. He immediately viewed his willfully stupid sister with a fresh loathing. Hints of just how alien to his family he truly was, became inner screams. Where in this confusing morass, was Kevin’s twin? Two twos, he would think gleefully, liking the doubling back of it, the implication of applying the idea of “two” to itself, creating a true One? He would unspool the wild strands of that peripheral possibility, postulating that to be a true One, one must be a two. Be a mirror mirroring a mirror.

Ray and Jenny found themselves emotionally and therefore physically drained as they stood at the Ward’s Island ferry terminal in silence. The quiet between them was not one of shared unease, but rather existed in a mutual unspoken understanding. Ray, who had grown accustomed to the unusual, dwelled in a thoughtful place that didn’t feel very pleasant; the impressions from his tuning into Jenny had bore little positive fruit. For the first time in many years, he perceived a vastness in the unknowable portion of his receiving, though in time he suspected his reflections back to this few hours with Jenny would carry a more hopeful warmth to contrast the evening’s creeping chill.

The silent Jenny, standing close but no longer experiencing the need for his touch, had already begun to rebuild her walls, perhaps with less formidable mortar and not quite as high as they had been only two days before, but as necessary to her emotional well being as she had come to believe. The ferry arrived as scheduled. A handful of people boarded. Ray and Jenny this time chose to sit below deck on a well worn bench. “I can’t thank you enough for trying to help me” she spoke in hushed tones over the rumble of the motor below them. Ray’s eyes did their crinkle at the corners, less so than earlier but still very appealing to her. “It helps me, too” was all he said, looking fixedly away at the then twinkling skyline.

When they walked the short distance from the mainland terminal to busy Queens Quay, Ray found himself yawning continually. Deep yawns that forced him to turn away and cover his mouth, which Jenny noted in silent approval. He was a good man, a very attractive unique and gifted man, and he lived halfway across the country. She couldn’t help but inwardly laugh at the universe’s perverse sense of play. To be shown, so wonderfully and suddenly, a way out of self incarceration, only to have it revealed as still coming down to her own responsibility, without the dreamed of companionship, the romantic beauty of a love as strong as Scott’s devotion. Instead of giving her the key, the universe had shown her where to find it. Ray stepped into the street and hailed a taxi. Jenny snapped a mental picture of his lanky form, the long braid, his strong energy, benevolent air, and knew that it was best that he be leaving town on Monday morning. She could feel the slippery slope of falling for him, right there under her aching feet.

A taxi operated under the company name, Diamond, pulls up in front of a sloping bay windowed house on Bright Street. Two passengers in the back seat exchange words, one writing down a home phone number on the back of her companion’s business card. Before she exits, they briefly and impulsively join fingers, he feeling compassion and intense fatigue, she lost in something far more complex and evasive. After the cab pulls away, she lingers to watch its tail lights and the silhouette of a man in the back seat who has arrived from nowhere to become everywhere.

The woman feels slammed, inside and out, thinks of the long work week ahead, then turns toward the front door of her dwelling. She will not see the broken glass until twenty four hours have elapsed. It is there as she inserts her key, hangs up her oversized straw hat, kicks off her footwear. It is there as she climbs the staircase to the bathroom, where another shower beckons before readying to read herself to sleep, if reading can take place without constant mental wandering. The woman in the shower with her mind replaying a variable loop of all that had transpired during the last Saturday of her previous incarnation’s routine, does not see the glittering shards of window glass that catch moonlight through the tree boughs above it. Scattered in the grass beneath the old shed’s yard facing window. Broken outward from within.