Dating : “Harboring Juno”

Chapter 14

“The best ideas always come while I’m driving,” she said.

“So now I’m one of your best ideas?” a man’s voice joked. A figure stepped into the room, his mouth seconds from a smile, and years from a frown. He rarely frowned. His eyes were always bright and dark at the same time.

If she was surprised to see him, she didn’t show it. “Oh, you’re my favorite idea,” she laughed and crossing the brilliant white space between them, “but only sometimes my best.” They now stood face to face. She knew every detail about his, and yet she could never explain any of it — not the shape of his eyes, the curve of his smile, or the way he smelled. Every time she came close to describing him, her voice would get caught. Every time she came close to writing about them, her fingers locked. For a moment or two, they simply looked at each other.

“Why do you do this to yourself?” he asked gently. Gently, but pointedly. He brushed a hair from her face, and that was all.

“Do what? Play with you?” She toyed with two fistfuls of his shirt in her hands, making her eyes big and looking up at him from under her eyelashes. “Don’t you want to hear my idea?”

He ignored her teasing. “Playing yourself. I’m asking why you’re putting yourself through this.”

She scoffed, pretended to be upset, turned and began to walk off.

He sighed, shook his head slightly, and called, “You’re wasting time our together, pretending to leave and all!” He watched her retreating figure. “Your body will arrive at Crystal’s house in 5 minutes.”

She stopped. In Real Life she would get upset that he was right, upset to have been pointed out. But here, in Her Head, she was safe. Here she could admit she was wrong. Here, she could be honest as soon as possible.

“I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with you.” Her eyes were filled with tears as she turns.

“You’re being dramatic. I’m always here with you.”

“Not always!” She bursts out at him, taking a step back toward his still stance. She cannot have a fit, however, not when she’s already expressed and understood; he always already understands. She looks up at him and takes a deep breath.

“Would you like to hear my idea?”

“Do I have to?”

“You’re being mean.”

“I’d be so unrealistic if I was perfect.”

“Now you’re wasting time.”

He moved his face so close to hers that she could feel his lips as he spoke, which then became her lips moving to say the same words with him, as they always did when they were losing time — “Winnie, pay attention to the road.”

She was beginning to see the world ahead of her again, now the car in front was visible, the radio a fuzzy noise. She was leaving Her Head and coming back into Real Life; she spoke almost frantically.

“Will you come back before I sleep tonight?”

“Only if you’re a good girl.”

“What if I’m not.” She was starting to feel her driver’s seat, losing sight of what was going on In Her Head.

“Then I’ll have to find you in your dreams, beautiful. I’ll find something for us to do.”

She was blushing, but in real life, with her real cheeks. They’d run out of Time, again.

The white room was nearly gone as she called out, shaking her head, “You’re impossible!” And then she was pulling into a driveway, with his last words echoing in her head.

“Yes, Win. Mostly.”

Jonah, the one she’d for years rise and set her smile to, because the real sun hurt her heart too much to look at anymore.

Jonah, her shortcut to feeling at home in this strange world.

Chapter 3

It is important to know that the Richardson family was inherently attached to the letter F. Susan Richardson (although it had been Susan Henry before she met and married Michael Richardson at 28) was determined to make sure all of her children would stand out — and yet stand together — in the rawest form of their identities (besides, of course, their blood). Her reasons where clear and simple:

Growing up in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, Susan wished her parents could have been just one letter more adventurous than S. She liked the name Farrah Fawcett most, and they even looked kind of similar: Susan grew up really goddamn beautiful (and coincidentally or not, with really good with hair). It is through this association, one could suppose, that Susan ended up putting F on the alphabetic pedestal for life.

Lifelong beliefs are often catalyzed by the smallest desires of childhood, have you ever noticed?

Susan bulldozed through her early life feeling that an ‘F’ added softness to a word. She had reason to believe the world was rather hard, so she thought adding more gentleness would be a greatest, subtle lifetime contribution (and also rather clever). She thought that the figure of an “F” was rather stubborn and strong despite how much it looked like it should topple over. It was more open than a P but less open then an E. An F seems goofy, but also rather classy and secular, like the world “Feather” and “Fjord.” We’ll put in here so you can properly appreciate it yourself:

F

She also quite liked how she could say “Oh, EFF IT!” And curse without cursing. A letter like that was powerful, had gumption.

Frankly, Susan thought that if she was ever to be described as a letter, she’d be an F. She vowed to make F’s out of all of her children.

Pretty much all of the town knew about Susan’s F Theory, so understandably the small community was just slightly confused when the young couple proudly announced the arrival of their first daughter Winifred Winter Richardson. But Susan would wave the comment aside, in her very Susan way, and strongly pronounce that the presence of the letter in the very middle satisfied the idea all the same. Michael agreed. Michael very often agreed with Susan. He thought his wife was the most artistic and beautiful person in the world, and trusted her very deeply. If Susan wanted Fs, then Fs were surely the best thing they could have, however they’d have them.

And so became Winifred. On the first day of kindergarten, Ms. Lewis read aloud “Richardson! Winifred!” to which the young blond girl raised her hand and responded politely, “Winnie, please,” The town quickly got the point. Winnie was very girly, and Michael used to count how many times Winnie changed her outfit in a day (once, when his eldest was six, he counted seven outfit changes before lunch). Her two sisters were the only ones who called her Freddie, and she liked it this way.

Most people liked Winnie.

It was nine months later, when Susan and Michael found out they were pregnant with another child, that they gave the F thing a real go. They decided to name their first son “Francisco” because it was in San Francisco, California that they first met. It was a superb idea until they found out that they were having a little girl instead of a boy.

Not to be dissuaded, Michael told his wife he had a brilliant idea. Susan wasn’t wild about it at first, but she liked the effort, so she embraced Michael’s sweet enthusiasm. When the doctor asked, on November 24th, what name they’d like on the birth certificate, both parents beamed and declared “Francis Summer!” Francis grew up to be very much like Winifred, except exactly the opposite. Francis acted an awful lot like a boy for a girl, but years revealed her childhood gender confusion was a result of artistic necessity: who else would play the Prince in Winnifred’s plays? Francis had an unshakable habit of stealing scissors and scraping hearts into carpets, couches, walls, sidewalks, chairs, banisters, moldings, bedframes, cutting boards, and cabinets.

Everyone liked Francis.

Susan and Michael had one more accident before deciding that it would be unreasonable (and frankly, rather obnoxious) to have four F children. So when their third child was born two years after Francis, Susan gave her youngest daughter her favorite name of all time.

And so the blond haired, blue eyed trio was completed with little Florence Spring.

Florence was the most balanced and wise person that Susan, Michael, Winnie, and Francis had ever met, and friends and strangers alike would confess to similar sentiments about the youngest Richardson for as long as she lived. As a baby she never cried, only gazed with her big grey-blue eyes at the world, as if amused by its unfolding. She had an absurd amount of freckles.

Absolutely everybody liked Florence.

It was, in fact, hard not to love the whole Richardson family. They liked puzzles, they played in the front yard often as a family. Susan made magnificent soup, was a wonderful hairdresser, and was an even better carpenter. Michael cleaned things by putting them in piles, ate McDonalds when Susan wasn’t looking, and was somehow still incredibly fit. He adored his daughters so much that he worked at the dam only four days a week, spent Fridays in their classrooms, and never missed a recess. The Richardsons were rather poor because of the way they sacrificed their time to each other, but didn’t look it because they were always making things. They bought food on sale, made coupons fun, and built furniture and painted paper and gardened and sewed and played in the yard every kind of sport Michael could show his girls. Susan sewed their clothes.

It hurt a lot of people when Michael died.

A piece of each Richardson died that April day, more or less. Michael was the only one to stop breathing, but Susan stopped moving.

Thirteen-year-old Winifred stopped feeling.

Twelve-year-old Francis stopped trusting.

And Florence — little ten-year-old Florence Spring — had her heart broken so early in life that she started life without realizing she’d stopped her childhood.

This Nothingness lasted for what felt like an eternity.

And then they started — ever so slowly — to wake up again.

Chapter 5

Sometimes, when Winnie was sitting somewhere, not doing much of anything —

Like sitting at a computer desk, or in an auditorium listening to a lecture —

She would slowly rub the tips of each one of her fingers onto her thumb, making small circles. She found if she moved them slowly enough, she could feel the ridges of her fingerprints, every little bit of them. It always calmed her down, this strange catching of her lines, miniature patterns that if, touched right, could maybe be secret doors. And she’d sit there, wondering if everyone’s fingers perhaps were congruent to the inner rings of a tree somewhere on the planet. If maybe that’s what trees are, the resting places for souls. Maybe that’s why we breathe easier, Winnie would think, maybe trees are like soul headstones. But better than headstones because they’re actually alive with what’s inside them. Maybe Earth is a cemetery for souls, from all over.

And Winnie would rub her fingerprints until this thought grew soft in her mind, and her hands itchy for something else to do, something to mold, something to make while she was alive and had hands.

Winnie had an incredible imagination, which would hurt her as much as it helped her. She imagined wonderful things, even things that were too wonderful, because it was far better to hurt from those things than real life.

Hurting from real life was something she did not want to do again.

Chapter 2

“Can you reach it?” He asked, knowing I couldn’t. He swiftly swept his two hands under my armpits, pressing my laughter, my wriggling, into the sky. We wiggle so much as children, have you noticed?

“Grab your heart!” he said. It was easy to find, racing and beating in it’s place, playing percussion to my chorus of giggles. A child’s laughter doesn’t boom, rather plays a piano on your ears, have you noticed?

“I got it!” I played, holding out an invisible heart in front of me.

“Now rip off a little corner!”

I continued acting, ripping off a corner of the invisible heart in front of me.

“Now put the rest back!”

With the other hand I mimed popping my heart back into place, making a resounding loud thud, the alarming kind that only kids seem to endure without shock. “That’s my girl, so strong! Ok, ok, now set what you got right on top of the sun, quick!”

His excitement could stir a stone; I became all panic, excitement, and precision. Squinting out of one eye, my elbows scraping air (children can scrape their elbows on anything, have you noticed?), my right hand ever so slowly lowering the invisible Important Thing onto the setting sun. My eyelids lowered; the whole world was now made of fuzz.
Then I let go.

“Is it there?” he asked.

“Uh-huh!” I wiggled.

“Can you see it?” he asked.

I couldn’t see it at all; in this whole charade about my heart, I hadn’t seen it to begin with. I had ripped out something invisible, torn something invisible, and set something invisible on top of the sun. I had done it only because he asked me; I thought this was a game.

He put me down, and I looked up, and the looking up took miles. My father was so tall. His face was so pretty. It was brighter than the sun. It always was when he was laughing.

“Winnie, do you trust me?”

“Yes!” I squatted (children often squat when you ask them exciting yes-or-no questions, have you ever noticed?)

He crouched down next to me. “Look.” His right hand moved to his chest, in the corner where I used to think hearts would sleep, dream, and wake up when our bodies did — for, back then I didn’t know that hearts where functioning organs in the body but rather thought them to be living pets of our minds, which they kept inside our bodies; different from us, separate from us, but always barking inside us.

He scratched around that corner of his chest, made a fist, and pretended to wade around. An actor who always took home the gold, but never made it to the screen.

“Daddy!”

“Aha! Here it is.” He pulled his invisible heart out, and ripped off an invisible piece.

“Can you see this?”

“No.”

“But do you trust it’s there?”

I did, with all of my own invisible heart. I believed everything my father told me. He stood up, squinted as I had, pinched it as I had, and let go as I had.

But he kept looking longer than I had. “Hearts are funny things, Fred. You often don’t see them until the very end.”

That’s what I loved, even back then, about my father. He was the only adult who would talk to me when he was looking at something very far away, but still be talking to me and not to himself. He always took me with him, even when his voice changed.

“Watch,” he said.

And the sun, falling as it was, stopped for a second. It bit the sky — once, and so quick you’d have missed it if you blinked — just before it went out.

I have since driven miles upon miles, ask anyone. I have crossed ocean after ocean, ask anyone. And I spent years of my life chasing sensation after sensation, death after death, life after life. And I have seen some things, said some things, hurt some people, saved some people. I have stories that have no business being strung up like lights — they lead down my Own Deep Well, my heart’s cavern, where my soul slumbers.

But if you choose to follow this string, you’d find that….

That I have driven miles upon miles, crossed ocean after ocean, but at the tip top of every sunset, no matter when or where I’d land, I could always spy that spot in the sky where we left our hearts that day.

Hearts are funny, invisible things… but I’ve never not seen it sitting there, in that second just before the sun leaves, showing me. Right when everything ends.

We always become the child we once were if we stare at the sky long enough, have you noticed?

To be with your innocent self, at the sight of it all ending, is a shortcut to feeling at home in this strange world.

Chapter 24

Winnie’s pen was lightning across the notebook, then dropped like it was struck. “DONE!” she boomed proudly, looking up at the young man who stood in the doorframe of her room. “Wanna hear it?”

He rolled his eyes. “Why do you always ask?”

She stood up from her seat in the corner of her bed, notebook in hand. “It’s my favorite sentence to say besides ‘All healed.’”

He raised an amused eyebrow, “And how often to you get to say that?”

“Next to never, so you gotta let me have my enthusiastic fanless-artist question.”

His eyebrows furrowed, “Fanless? What am I? Chopped ghost?”

“You will be after I read this to you, just absolutely in pieces. So anyway, may I?”

He gestured for her to go on, and she took a deep breath before reading out what she’d spent the last hour putting to the pages.

“Yuna and Juno are soulmates, and even they don’t use the term lightly. They grew up together, spending all their imagination together, reading books together, taking care of each other, taking care of others together. When Yuna’s father died, however, they had a major falling out — Yuna asked Juno to take care of her, and he helplessly said he couldn’t. Unconsciously abandoning Juno, she thrust herself into a relationship with Marcus, a boy at school, who promised he’d care for her forever, followed him through college, and spent over a decade hardly thinking of Juno. Yuna deals silently with the battering she receives from Marcus, feeling as though it’s a small sacrifice in exchange for his love and care, but when she finds out he’s been was caring for her and many women over their years, she up and leaves to traveled the world, and every now and then would meet people that reminded her of someone she used to know…

And then, she found Juno again, on a trail she finds in California. The reunion is a frenzy of excitement — they’re never apart, Yuna is telling Juno all her stories, Juno is listening as though she never left, he visits her at work, he falls asleep with her every night in her tiny twin bed, he encourages every one of her dreams, and Yuna has never felt so independent and supported. But there’s some side effects:

Yuna’s not quite seeing straight anymore — she’s only seeing poetry, and colors. She’s not treating time properly: she’s arriving when she feels like it, and can’t seem to force urgency. She feels increasingly disconnected from humanity despite never being more in compassion with it; it’s that she’d rather spend time with Juno, the person she loves, the person who listens, the person who knows her better than she knows herself. The only problem? Juno’s in her head.”

Winnie glances up, makes eye contact with the young man she’s reading to, and goes back to reading.

“Yuna is now a young woman whose in a committed relationship with the oddest person: her male energy, the man of her dreams, the voice inside her head.

When people accuse Yuna of not being fully there, they assume she’s off daydreaming, or being careless. But really she’s off in another world, discussing more important things — her favorite things — with her favorite non-person. Recently she’s been trying to earnestly find a compromise between the two, trying to find a way to keep her Other Half without missing her chance at Really Living — because her impatience is growing.

And now, through conversations with Juno, we see Yuna having to navigate her next move: does she spend the rest of her life with Juno, in her head? Or can they find a way for her to live in Reality without her losing him again? But They, as One, don’t have much time — the more energy Yuna gives to time with Juno, the less energy her body gets, and it’s beginning to get terribly sick….

A story about two halves trying to be whole, who are willing to explore the length of a human heart’s sacrifice in hopes to harvest one of the healthiest souls.”

She closes her eyes and without looking up speaks slowly, carefully.

“What do you think?”

There’s no response; Jonah is gone.