To all my legion of fans: we’re heading north to the big island for the 4th so there won’t be any new content on this site or those affiliated for about a week. Why not take that time to look back to some of your old favorites in the archives? I know it’s not the same but perhaps it will ease the pain somewhat (if in fact anyone notices that there’s nothing new). AT ANY RATE happy 4th — I leave you with the first part of my latest boffo story, a little number that I call

 

SWAY

She watched the shadows of the branches sway on the sidewalk outside, her forehead pressed against the cold window. There was nothing else moving on the empty street – all the husbands, like her husband, had gone to work, and all the children, like her children, had gone to school.

When had her life become becalmed like this, she wondered, submerged in the current of other people’s lives. When she was younger she’d wanted nothing more than to be free, independent, to not owe anyone anything. She’d been determined to leave home as soon as possible, realizing early on that she was the proverbial "accident," the reason her parents had to get married so early and then work so hard for so many years. Then later when they were in their thirties and really ready to have children her brothers had come, one after the other, and she’d found herself a babysitter and mother’s helper in her own house. She’d dreamt of getting as far as possible from that house, from her brothers’ banging and shouting, her father’s demands, and even her mother’s passivity, but yet here she was, less than fifteen miles from it, still picking up after a pack of wild young boys and humoring an irascible older man.

At first she’d convinced herself that her husband was one of a kind, unique, the only man in the world worth trading her single life for, but lately she’d had to admit to herself that he really wasn’t that different from all the rest, exactly the kind of guy she’d always been attracted to, big, from money, the kind who liked to acquire nice things and considered them his due. Almost despite herself she’d always been drawn to confident, even cocky guys, the ones who aggressively pursued what they wanted, and more times than she cared to remember, she’d found it only too easy to give in to them. She was the sort of woman, however, that men didn’t just want to sleep with but to own forever, and forever, was the one thing she couldn’t provide. She’d always been able to avoid complete capitulation, often extricating herself only at the last moment, the moment when it all changed, when the men who’d been so determined to possess her instead found themselves possessed by her, unable to let go, the moment when whatever affection she’d maintained for them quickly curdled to disgust.