Sliding (eBook)

Jeffrey Birch (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
179 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-0679-0 (ISBN)

Infos

Siobhan O'Malley searches in life for a lasting love, friends, and experiencing the loss of both. A somewhat stoic young woman she is undaunted. Her four close friends move on leaving her alone in search of her Mexican mother's family in the Texas border town of Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso. Her search for family takes her to her father's brothers in North Dakota. In Part Two we meet Dennis Flaherty, a police detective, whose friends, love, and loss mirror that of Siobhan. At the end of the novel Dennis and Siobhan find one another by accident on the park bench, a metaphor symbolic of their lives of searching and that plays a pivotal role in their lives.

Textauszug

Devoid of spouse and children, adult friends can be elevated to status otherwise unafforded to nonfamily relationships, but husbands and wives can come and go, children more permanent. Friends can also come and go, removed from position for many reasons including abandonment. A lonely heart seeks solace in new relationships or descends to unremitting sorrow.

 

SIOBHAN

___1___

 

WINDS OF CHANGE BLOW INCONSTANT, strong, and soft in turns. Inconstancy is confusing but I can’t live like this any longer: the off and on, the in and out, the up and down. I’ve reached the breaking point that’s been coming for months. Breakups are hard, made worse by the length of the relationship, the wished-for security of permanence that evaporates with the three words (the opposite three words): We are finished. Yet however long the pain and disappointment last, the end is the denouement. So, in the end, the length of the relationship is irrelevant. I’m rationalizing but firm in my need to sever it, THE RELATIONSHIP permanently. Will I feel better after? I hope so. Will I fail in my resolve face to face? I hope not.

I’m driving on the Crosstown just before I35 splits off south. The Crosstown runs east and west south of, or below on a map by convention, the metro area of Minneapolis. I wonder if some cultures place north at the bottom or the side of a map instead of the top. In my car I can switch the navigation protocol to move the tracking arrow pointing to the bottom of the screen but that seems weird. I always have it pointing up. Anyway, the remodel to the highway took years but it’s still stop and go because the Crosstown is always stop and go and new snow drops speeds to a crawl. Early this year, the snow, right before Thanksgiving. I’m crawling along, mind on what’s to come but keeping a safe distance from the huge pickup with oversized tires in front of me throwing off snow onto my windshield from its ¾” deep treads. The trailer hitch would punch right through my car’s front end, destroying the engine and probably me. I don’t trust pickup drivers. They shoot people in road rage incidents. Not all of them I suppose but it happens, has happened. I’m dreading what’s to come. It’s of my own doing, traveling to him but feeling the petulant child he makes me feel. It’s what I want, what I need but getting through it with Dave will be torture. He’ll make it that way, part of his perversity I abhor. I’m shouldering too much blame. He’s also responsible. Fifty-fifty blame wise. He wouldn’t come to me, not for this. He doesn’t want it, the breakup, he said unconvincingly on the phone. He should. It’s been a year of torment. I could have sent him an email or a cryptic message but that seems the height of cruelty and cowardice. I could write a letter long hand, but nobody does that anymore not since computers and the internet anyway. Besides my left-handed penmanship is like a personal notation system understood only by me. No letter. Thinking more about a dear Dave letter, maybe that would have excused me from doing it in person. Afterall, I’m a professional journalist and chiseled prose is my forte in twelve-point Times Roman each page proofed to perfection with exemplary word choices that evoke precise meaning. It’s a cowardly way out, the letter, and I couldn’t do it, so I’m stuck in traffic on the way to Dave’s big house in Wayzata on one of the countless bays of Lake Minnetonka. I forget the name. He’s home, expecting my visit. I couldn’t tell from his voice on the phone, but he must suspect the purpose of my visit since it’s been a running battle of our differences for twelve grim and painful months. He works from home as do I. His house is north of two mil with on-the-lake property taxes higher than my rent for a year for my efficiency apartment in Bloomington not far from the airport. I could have taken I94 around to County 12 that heads west past the Wayzata exit on fifteen, but the Crosstown is the shorter route and I truly hate driving on I94, too distracting with all the retail strip malls all the way to highway 169 where it swings north to County 12. Stop and go is mindless on the Crosstown. Watching out for lane changers and those exiting and entering is genuinely dangerous on I94. The only good thing about I94 is that it leads to the Mall of America at Cedar avenue, Co. Rd. 77 that runs north and south. The famous mall is a shopper’s paradise and I love shopping. Dave hated it so I always went alone. Two and a half years ago, when we were newish in our relationship, I pleaded with him to come promising sex after in my new nightie and the prospect of lunch at one of the Mall’s numerous nice restaurants, not the food court. At least I thought it sounded alluring, especially the sex part. He caved once and I quickly decided shopping was awful with him. Dave is not patient. He let me know with rolled eyes how bored he was. Never again.

The holidays are just around the corner. Thanksgiving is next week. I always spend that holiday with my dad in St. Paul in the house where I grew up in the Midway District south of the State Fairgrounds, one of the largest state fairs in the nation. I cook. I’m not a great cook but the menu is the same one my mother cooked before she died so I have her recipes, and anybody can follow a recipe. The trick with recipes is to not leave anything out or misinterpret a measurement reading too quickly or thinking you remember every ingredient when you don’t. Dad is kind about it saying, “Just like your mother made it.” For the past two plus years, the duration of my relationship with Dave, we spent Christmas Eve together at his mansion on the lake. We’d stop at dad’s house on Christmas Day. Dave and my dad never hit it off. Still, those were nice times although last year didn’t go so well. We were on the downside of the relationship. I knew then today was coming. I guess we both put it off. Dave’s parents live in Hawaii. They don’t come and Dave doesn’t like to fly. Facetime is enough apparently. Personally, having grown up in Minnesota, I can’t imagine Christmas in Hawaii.

Dave knows. He’s the coward about it. So, I claim the higher moral ground for the courage to say it: “We’re finished, Dave. You know it. I know it. I’m ending the torment.” He’ll feign complete ignorance. Cowards do that. It’s not about winning and losing. I figure we both win and lose. It’s about ending the misery. Dave is rich and good looking. If he’s not already cheating on me, he’ll be free to find someone else. I’ve been faithful and I know I’m attractive. I get ogled constantly. So, either of us could have cheated. I know I didn’t. Did he? Truthfully, at this point, I don’t need the ammunition of infidelity or the outrage. We’re finished for other reasons. Too many to list. Maybe I’ll make the list at some point but haven’t yet. Almost one hour later I pull up to Dave’s big house worn out from driving in snow. Salt on the roads makes pavement greasy and even more slippery apart from devouring sheet metal. Cars should be made from something else. It’s planned obsolescence, I suppose. Sucking in a big breath and letting it out slowly, I climb out of my white Beetle. Bad color choice for winter. It blends with snow. Becomes invisible to dreaded pickup trucks.

I also work from home as I mentioned, didn’t I? I’m a science writer with regular features in several science magazines for the science-literate, not professional journals. I have an undergraduate degree in journalism and a master’s degree in molecular biology, but I write on many topics as my editors require. I like research and especially like interviews with scientists about their work. Being a committed environmentalist, I seek to write on that broad subject from different angles. I write about climate change and privately I think meaningful change is hopeless in time. Short term economic stability trumps necessary changes. Food and energy must be affordable. No politician can sell and be elected on seven-dollar gas and milk and beef at greatly higher cost. I’m a vegan, but most people aren’t, and children need nutrition that meat and dairy provide. Or so say the meat and dairy lobbies. The truth is, I’ve researched it, children don’t need cow’s milk past nursing by mothers. So, I’m a pessimist about climate change action in time as I said. Meal preparation for vegans is challenging. A cheeseburger is easy. Fresh veggies get old quickly. McDonalds doesn’t cater to us. Challenging like I said.

I’ve been playing over the coming dialogue in my head, getting my points organized to a hopefully coherent sequence. Sequence, I think. Ending a relationship without histrionics might seem a matter of making points to support an argument. At the end of all the mental wordsmithing it comes down to: “We’re finished, Dave. Finished. I want to tell you in person. I feel I owe you that. Goodbye.”

He’ll bob his head like he does that drives me crazy. It’s the feigned sincerity that is off putting. Dave is not good at expressing emotions, but I have to say he was a learner when it came to orgasms, mine. He finally figured out what I needed and after that his physical attractiveness became secondary to technique. I mean lying in bed naked under the covers it’s about touch and sensations. I wear glasses so I can’t focus too close without them and who kisses with their eyes open anyway. Nobody. Most couples in my experience don’t prance around naked before getting to it. Maybe they, we should. Anyway, after he realized what pleased me, sex was above average. However, for a big handsome guy into fitness he wasn’t endowed with much in the cock department. Can’t have it all, I guess. To...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.5.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-0679-0 / 9798350906790