59
I’ve been in Long Island for a week, and I’ve started getting up to swim in the ocean first thing, even before my coffee. I’m trying to swim half a mile down the beach and back, and I’m getting close, depending on the tides. I remember the days of counting my laps in the YMCA pool, in a constant negotiation with God. Stripped down now, I’m just me in the water, swimming stroke after stroke because I want to, because it feels good. When it stops feeling good, I will stop.
That night under my blanket on the futon I text him: New best day today
He doesn’t text me back, and I lie there wondering what he could be doing and who he’s with. I have an idea of what his life in LA looks like, what his view is. I imagine him in dark-colored sheets, and I don’t know why. I fall asleep picturing Wyatt in dark-colored sheets.
Hours later a text wakes me: Tell me
I blink and stretch, then reply: It’s the middle of the night, you have no boundaries
Wyatt: I didn’t know we had any, I think I wrote a song about this
This makes me smile, and I pull the covers up over us.
Me: So it was pirate day and I had these swashbuckling costumes so that we could perform a ten-minute play. But they hated my play and wrote their own—in three acts—to perform for me.
Wyatt: How was it
Me: Nonsense and violent. Can’t wait till tomorrow, reading a book about soup. Who knows?
Wyatt: That’s the best thing ever. Go back to sleep
As expected, the whole soup thing doesn’t go as expected. I brought soup for tasting, and instead, the kids wanted to peel off the labels and make a collage. I ride my bike home with a basket full of unmarked cans that will get me through a dozen surprise dinners. This feels like my whole life right now, knowing generally where I’m going without a single specific spelled out for me. I honestly don’t care what kind of soup I eat.
I pull into my driveway and choose one can of soup to bring inside. It’s warm for mid-September, and the wisteria has lost its blooms but not its leaves. I run one between my fingers and feel that dark-green-turning-to-brown feel.
After dinner (chicken noodle!), I take a beer up to the treehouse to watch the sunset. It’s a great place to sketch, and I’ve finished three different takes on Gracie walking through the dunes with that Bryant kid. I’m trying to capture that in-between stage where she’s just figured out why she should be a little self-conscious. I wonder if I’m in an in-between stage where I’m figuring out why I shouldn’t.
I decide my drawing of Gracie is nearly finished. I turn to a new page and start to sketch Wyatt, sitting on a stool, singing at the Owl Barn. I am concentrating on the way the fabric of his shirt lies on his shoulders. I reach for my phone to text him but decide to wait. It’s only four thirty in Los Angeles, and I’d rather be talking to him when he’s lying down.