Dear MollyMol, I am so fucking sorry.
Molly
I’m so sorry I left the studio like I did. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. You probably know by now, but I moved out of my apartment, so if you’ve been calling I’m sorry for that too. I’m out at my grandpa’s cabin in Possession Sound. I don’t have a phone number yet, but hopefully will soon. I’m fine. I know that sounds like bullshit but it’s true. I’ve been better, but I’m fine. I’ll tell you all about it when we talk. I’ll call you from the payphone in town probably before you get this letter. I’m not dead. I’m not going to be dead. I don’t know what you heard or if you’ve heard anything. I’m sorry if any of it scared you. I’m sorry in general. I’m sorry for apologizing so much. I’m sorry. I love you.
The creak is so loud that it fills the room before Joni really understands what it is. She sits, pen in hand, bent over the dining room table. It settles on her slowly, but its implications rush up all at once and before she even really has time to think about it, she is standing, facing the door, searching for the source of the sound. Another creak, this one louder and closer to the door. And then the unmistakable sound of footsteps across the porch and into the tall grass beside the cabin. Audacious, Joni thinks, and she wonders why she isn’t more afraid. Maybe it’ll come all at once. Maybe it’ll come at the worst time. At the time that matters most. She doesn’t even know what she’s talking about, why she’s thinking this way. Robin left one of those big, crank flashlights when she came to fix the power the day before and Joni walks slowly to the kitchen to get it. She steps quietly, like the lights in the cabin haven’t already given her away.
The night air has a fullness she doesn’t expect. Devoid of all the city sounds and the chatter of people, the darkness swells with crickets and stars, an almost suffocating bloom.
Joni sweeps the flashlight back and forth across the narrow strip of meadow in front of the cabin. The crickets sound like a wave, falling silent at the light, crying out in the darkness. The darkness recedes reluctantly from the flashlight’s beam. A cool breeze drifts through the tall grass and, even though the cabin is far inland, carries with it the sharp, salt scent of the Sound. Branches tap their leaves softly against the heavy logs of the cabin and Joni is just about to chalk the noise up to her tired, worries mind when someone comes crashing through the thorny bushes.
Joni turns and the flashlight frizzles over tall grass and gnarled wood and lands on a woman half in, half out of a tall bramble bush. She holds her hands up in surrender, but her face is mellow, unperturbed. “What the fuck?” Joni says, holding the flashlight steady with both hands. She wonders vaguely if coming out here, alone and in the dark, is what the hospital pamphlets called an expression of suicidality. “Hello?”
The girl steps out of the bush, hands falling to her sides. She’s about Joni’s height, looks to be about Joni’s age, but there’s a malnourished concave quality to her body that makes Joni think, disturbingly, of roadkill. She’s dressed in a flowing, smocking dress that dips down between her heavy, braless breasts. Her hair is long and blonde but with a chlorinated look to it, the ends a blueish green. She has a big nose ring and a metal stud just above her cupid’s bow and even though she is standing there trespassing, dazed in the dark, there is something so wild and charismatic about her that Joni feels a strange guilt for disturbing her. And then she feels fear, bright and sharp fear. Because this woman has that look about her, the one Joni doesn’t have a name for, but recognizes immediately. The kind of look she would cross the street away from back in the city. “Hi,” the woman says with a drowsy smile.
“Joni feels rigid, a little brittle, standing out here wielding the big flashlight like a weapon. “What the fuck are you doing wandering around outside my house.”
“Oh whoa.” She has the cotton mouth of a junkie, but the soft, simple eyes of a worn-out stoner, the eyes of someone much older. “Someone lives here now?” Joni doesn’t like that answer, doesn’t like how familiar this woman is sounding. Doesn’t like that the cabin is a here. Joni says nothing, just keeps shining the flashlight at her. The woman has dark, colorful makeup, a little smudged. She’s drawn a star next to her left eye, a moon next to her right. The moon is much clumsier than the star but they both look somehow dirty. “I was out foraging,” she says finally.
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“Some flowers only come out at night.” She smiles that drowsy smile again, then extends her hand. The gesture is so formal, so normal, that she looks out of place doing it. “I’m Ellen.”
Ellen sits on the kitchen table, not in the chairs. She smells of patchouli and cut grass and something vaguely metallic. Joni doesn’t really know why she asked her to come inside and wonders again if this is an expression of suicidality. She doesn’t want to die, but then again, she didn’t really want to die before she tried to. “It’s just instant.” Joni measures the granules out between the mugs. “I hope that’s okay. She got it at the gas station. A nice enough brand, a good price. Ellen doesn’t say anything, just swings her legs as she looks around the room. Joni wonders if she’s about to be robbed and tries to imagine what she would do if Ellen pulled a knife on her. Nothing. Probably nothing. What does that say about her?
When Joni hands her a mug, Ellen smiles broadly and looks Joni right in the eyes. “What are you doing here?”
Joni blinks at her. “What?” Ellen repeats herself. Same tone, same cadence. Joni takes a sip of coffee and clears her throat. “I just moved here.” Outside, an owl hoots. Joni’s not sure if she’s ever heard a sound both so warm and so lonely. “What about you?”
“I’m here to find God.” She says, matter-of-factly. “Creativity. A path.”
All the small hairs on the back of Joni’s neck stand on end. That dread again. The one that feels hollow and homesick. The darkness outside the windows is so much more real now. Not just something outside a window, but a place Joni can go. A place things can come from. She feels suddenly like she shouldn’t have opened the door. “And how’s that going for you?”
Ellen smiles a weird, dreamy smile. “So far, so good.”
Ellen leaves behind the faint scent of patchouli and an invitation to a potluck at the artist’s colony the following weekend. Joni doesn’t watch her go. She closes the door and leans against it and when enough time has passed, she turns to lock it. She drags a chair out of the kitchen and pushes it up against the door.