Trying for a New Start

Welcome to The Spot Writers.

Catherine A. MacKenzie’s novels, WOLVES DON’T KNOCK, a psychological drama, and MISTER WOLFE, the darkly dark sequel or stand-alone novel (18+), are available on Amazon.

This month’s prompt is “starting over.” Cathy continues with her Melvin saga. . .

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Trying for a New Start

by Cathy MacKenzie

I’m a few days late for resolutions this new year, but I’m determined to become a new man. Never too late to begin anew, right?  I’d shout, “Happy New Year, Marie,” but she wouldn’t hear me. She’s still in bed, asleep.

If at first you don’t succeed, try try try again. Clean slate and all that. “Don’t let the door kick your butt on the way out!”—that’s what I whispered on New Year’s Eve when I stood, freezing my buns off, at the front door from 11.58 p.m. to 12.02 a.m., waiting for the old year to escape outside and the new year to sneak in. Enough of Covid-19 and child loss. A clean slate, as I said.

I think Marie has wiped her slate clean, at least as it pertains to me. She started back to sleeping in our bedroom the night of January 1. Would’ve been nice had she joined me on the thirty-first instead of sleeping in the girls’ bedroom, where she’s been since they disappeared.

For far too long, she’s been harping about toilet paper in the downstairs bathroom. We passed on the stairs one day last week. “Look at this,” she said in her disgust tone, her arms full of half-used rolls. “Why can’t you finish one before you start another? I even found one in the tub. And why can’t you ever replace the empty on the toilet paper holder?”

I thought she was done, but nope!

“And look at this!”

“What?”

“On the stair here.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Peanuts. You cart them downstairs in your hand instead of in a bowl and toss them into your mouth like you’re in a circus. Drop them everywhere. Just like the toilet paper!”

Yeah, I do need to mend my ways. Make her prouder of me.

Back to the girls. . . I don’t believe my two girls will ever bolt out of the water, gasping for breath, and return to us as William did. Almost every night, I’ve wished upon every star I’ve seen since that fateful night in August. Marie, too. I’m sure she’s done her fair share of wishing. Upon the stars and any other mirage-y thing high or low that she’s seen, for she’s always possessed a wild imagination.

She and I don’t talk about the girls. Neither does William. It’s as if aliens landed and wiped our minds clean. I know I’ve grieved—gone through those five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. There’s actually a sixth stage: guilt. Not that I suffer guilt; well, I suppose I did, for a while. For the first couple of days. After all, the kids were in my care that day, but I do believe it was God’s will that they were taken. A test, if you will. To test our stamina.  See if we can survive every pitfall and pain the Good Lord Above tosses us.

And we can! We will!

I’m not sure if Marie and William have gone through those five stages of grief. I think not. I don’t think they suffer guilt: the sixth stage.

I need to have a heart-to-heart with William. I’m his father, after all, but I can’t. Not even sure I can give him the birds and bees chat when that time comes—which it will unless fate has a mishap for him, too, and then God takes him like He took his sweet sisters.

Everyone wants Covid over and done with. The populace hopes (those that “believe” pray to a god) this’ll be the year it’s gone, that we can all move on: onward ho! And once life’s deemed safe, that the pandemic is over, it’ll be like the entire world will be starting over. I envision people being nicer to each other. Everyone’s been holed up, imprisoned for far too long, and everyone’s afraid to socialize when we do venture out, so once we’re set free, I predict the world will have learned its lesson and it’ll be a calmer, quieter, more peaceful place of existence.

I, also, should start over. For me, for Marie. For William. I must forget the past. My indiscretions and guilt and sins. If I were Catholic, I’d race to a church. Seek out the priest. Sit behind that weird screen in that dark cubbyhole and confess confess confess until he lifts this mammoth boulder off my shoulders.

I may try to have those chats with William. Maybe the three of us can start talking about the girls as if they’re still alive and not dead. Maybe even pretend they’re in their beds at night and sleeping in every morning. Preteens need as much sleep as teenagers. I can bunch extra pillows, form little fake bodies in their beds. Call Marie into the room. Have her enjoy a few precious moments of happiness thinking they’re back. She lives in a dream world, anyhow, so what’s one more illusion, right?

Then, come April 1, I’ll shout: “Happy April Fool Day, Marie.”  I’ll grin. Bare my teeth—oh, I jest. Just my sarcastic humour! I’d never hurt her that way. Would I?

Yeah, the start of new beginnings. No more half-used or empty toilet paper rolls. No more peanuts on the stairs. I need to improve my ways.

It’s a new year—January 2022. Wish me luck. And good luck to you, too, in whatever fine resolutions you’re attempting!

I’ll start tomorrow. Tomorrow’s a new day.

 

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The Spot Writers—Our Members:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/