[note: this trilogy, first posted in 2008, remained unfinished until now. This is 300 pages, 100k+ words, unedited. Story elements from Passegiatta interwoven. AL]
THE STARLIGHT SONATA
Part I: Woman in Chains
Tracy Tomlinson walked down the stairs as quietly as she could. She slipped into the kitchen like a shadow and put on coffee, then walked outside and down the driveway; she groped around in the dark for the newspaper, nearly tripped over a football when she bent over to pick it. It was still too dark out to see the headlines, but she hardly cared about them anymore. Mark kept up with all that stuff. The world would get along just fine without her knowing who had been fighting in what war over this or that reason last night, and she knew she'd greet tomorrow's wars with about as much interest.
Yet she could remember a time when she'd cared about the world -- and she knew she had. Like she had once cared about how she looked, about what she ate, or even what Mark thought of the way she looked. There'd been times when she worried what her friends thought of her, even what her children thought of her -- but not any more. She had grown tired -- tired of life, tired of living, tired of eating and tired of even breathing. Fucking Mark, she remembered bitterly, had been the last to go. She'd always loved a good rough fuck, but Mark had lost interest after she put on a hundred pounds, so now not even that simple pleasure remained. She was numb now, and it was like all those things resided somewhere in the back stacks, lost somewhere on a forgotten list with all her other useless memories.
She climbed the steps back into the kitchen and pulled down two little packets of flavored oatmeal and put water in the microwave to boil, then walked upstairs to her boy's room. Brian was on his back, his morgen-bone rising under the sheet from the center of his bed; the first time she'd seen that she had almost laughed -- because the spectacle looked like the troops were raising the flag on Iwo Jima once again. She shook her head at the memory and turned on his light, called out his name, then walked down to Stacy's room -- but heard the shower going in the hall bathroom and knew her daughter was already up. When she poked her head in their bedroom she heard Mark in their bathroom, his electric razor grinding away through day old stubble. Already the room smelled like his Old Spice deodorant and the scent brought back another bundle of useless, if unwelcome, memories -- like the last time she'd touched herself down there and everything had felt cold and dead -- or was lifeless the correct word, she wondered.
'Like this waste of time I call my life,' she told herself as she returned to the kitchen.
Once there she pulled out the big skillet and put it on the range, took eggs from the refrigerator and sausage patties from the freezer and set out everything she needed to cook her family's breakfast, and then she poured coffee for Mark and Stacy. Brian was still, she thought with the last vestiges of a smile, a little too young for caffeine. Too young to do much this early in the morning besides hump his pillow or brag about how well he was doing at football practice.
She scrambled two eggs for Stacy and three over-medium for Mark, poured water over Brian's instant oatmeal, then set out a platter of sausage patties on the table and poured orange juice for the three of them. As they flooded into the kitchen she walked by them silently and walked back up the stairs to her bedroom. She locked the door and sat down on the edge of her bed; she felt like crying for a few minutes, then walked into the bathroom. She looked at the bottles of Prozac and Xanax in the medicine cabinet and wondered if these were all she had to look forward to now, like would there ever be anything more than chemically induced oblivion to look forward to? Pills and a nap, again and again, then wake up and start it all over again, wearing a beaten path in the house's old brown carpet on her way to an early grave.
She took her prescribed dose and lay down on the bed, listened as the kids got into the car with Mark and headed off to school. She hoped sleep would come soon for her, and take her far, far away.
+++++
She knew she was far, far away because the ringing in her ears was so out of place.
Nothing here seemed right.
She was on a beach, she was sitting on a sandy beach; she knew she was sitting because she could feel wet sand under her legs and feet. The sun was hot; a soft breeze was blowing, lifting her hair and filling the air with smells of a salt-laden sea. Mark was standing beside her, his back turned toward her, and he was holding a huge mass of heavy chain. She looked down and saw twisted and rusted links wrapped tightly around her thighs, forcing them tightly together.
Why... Mark, why? Why have you done this to me?
The ringing was insistent now and she turned, looked over her shoulder at rows of palm trees swaying in the wind. She wanted to walk into the trees, look for the ringing lost in the darkness because the sound seemed to be coming from inside the forest. Suddenly she turned back to the sea, remembered something. A sailboat sat offshore a few hundred yards away. A man was on deck, looking at her from time to time, and she saw a gray dorsal fin circling the boat. She could see the man quite clearly, yet his face was invisible, like he was not quite a part of this dream. The man was playing a grand piano on the boat's foredeck, and she looked harder at him now -- because something was wrong with the dream today. She could just see strings attached to his arms and hands; some strings were stretched tautly, others dangled loosely, and all vanished in low, gray clouds that had just swept just overhead. She could see that the man's movements were being controlled by these strings, and she gasped when she saw the man's helplessness.
The ringing grew louder still. Then she heard someone knocking at the door.
The door? On a beach?
She opened her eyes; she saw her bathroom door was open and felt herself adrift in the hazy, shaded ambivalence of her meds. She looked at the old clock on the table by her side just as the knocking started again. It was nine thirty. Daylight, she saw. She swung her feet to the brown carpet and stood uncertainly, fell back to the bed with practiced ease and let her head spin slowly, let the pressure in her chest subside, then she stood once again and walked down the stairs.
She could see two police officers on the front porch; one was looking in the window by the door and he saw her, stood back and waited. She reached for the door, still not sure if she was awake yet, or if this was a new, very different part of her dream.
She opened the door, then squinted into the harsh light of day.
"Mrs Tomlinson?" One of the officers said.
"Yes. Is something wrong?"
"Ma'am, could we come inside," the other officer said.
She was waking up now; she could feel something dark circling overhead. Something wrong. She could feel it all around her now. Something was terribly wrong with this place.
She opened the door and let the men in and closed it behind them. She had the impression neighbors were standing across the street looking at her, and for some reason this scared her. She led the officers into the living room, asked if they wanted coffee and what this was all about.
"Ma'am, there's been an accident. Is there someone we could call to be here with you?"
"An accident?" Tracy Tomlinson said, her eyes going wide as the pressure in her chest returned, and she was now fully awake. "What? Who?"
"Perhaps you'd like to sit down, Ma'am..."
"No, I want to know what's wrong," Her voice bit into the rising tide of fear welling up deep inside, while hysteria rippled through the air around the empty house. "Why are you here?" she asked the closest officer. "Why? Tell me why?"
"Ma'am, does your husband drive a white 2023 Volvo SUV?"
"Yes! What? What...are you saying?"
