Novel Treatments / gods of rockwell ch.1 revised

Recorded and stored in the metal file cabinet she obsessively maintained was; all she had, all that she would ever have to show for her self, the tiny bit of the universe that she comprehended, found coherent, formulated theories with, could interpret real meaning from, managed to grasp some sort of control over, the miniscule bit that was not fleeting. The ends of Susanna’s index and middle fingers wafted outlines of the manila folders’ edges, as she mentally audited the information typed and written on the pages that each contained.

Memorization of her extensive lists and descriptions happened naturally after numerous reassessments of the already meticulously organized, two-drawer metal file cabinet. In the midst of her second once-over of the “Music” section that morning, she whispered random artists and songs to herself, with the same continuous slow pace she had while alphabetically naming the contents of the “Artists,” “Books,” “Heroes,”  “Philosophy,” “Places,” and “Religion” sections. Her eyes closed at moments, making it seem as if she was getting some kind of premonition from the files. Throughout the entire three-hour process, Susanna did not need to remove one piece of paper from the drawer.

She was kneeling on the thin mulberry oval rug, beside the cabinet in her office like it was an altar. Every so often, she glanced up to the window above her desk to briefly assess the day’s arrival by the increases of sunlight that filtered in through the pale yellow curtains. Every idea, concept, and reason was accounted for in time for her to follow the morning’s schedule as planned. Her cell phone suddenly began to rattle on her foldable sewing table, and alerted her to prepare the bedroom. Her hands nervously bounced back and forth to the front of the drawer, back to the top of the music folder a few times, before firmly pushing it closed. She held her hands flexed above the cabinet for a moment, and closed her eyes.

When she opened them up again, she noticed her hands were red and raw with chipped, frayed nails, from their constant contact with water and cleaning chemicals. She walked down the hall, scanning the wood for anything besides cleanliness, in between darting disgusted glances at the backs of her still flexed hands. The bathroom had three large mirrors, two on one wall, one above the sink, and the other above the toilet. She hadn’t put them there, but assumed her landlady had some sort of superstitious reason for having so many mirrors hung throughout the whole building. They hung mostly in vain, without any of the building’s three inhabitants taking notice of their reflection in them for more than a few seconds a day. The medicine cabinet had three hinged doors, which when closed made up one uninterrupted mirror. Susanna opened one, and took down the hand cream that waited for her faced front, resting in perfect alignment with its assigned shelf’s edge in the same way that everything else stored in her apartment did.

The bottle made spitting sounds as she squeezed a glob into her right hand. She clicked the container’s lid closed, wiped the tip on a hanging hand towel with her left hand, and then returned it to its rightful place. With the mirror still opened she rubbed the cream into her hands while observing her profile in her adjoining reflection. Her face moved closer toward the hinge in between the opened and closed mirrors, shifting her eyes back and forth until they were centimeters away from their own reflections.

She did this from time to time, not only in Rockwell, but also when she lived with Thomas in N.Y. She remembered doing it in N.Y. every single time she did it in Rockwell. It was one of those random, lucid memories she had of him that was easily reenacted in her mind. She allowed the moment from the past to wash over her once more. She wiped the steam from their mirror, as he stepped out of the shower in a towel. She stretched her face in different directions with her fingertips and tiptoed closer to the mirror. The mirror was designed, and opened in the same way as the one in front of her in Rockwell, and in addition to observing herself in the same way, she also explained to him why she does this. She said, “Its like seeing how everybody else sees me, well as close to seeing myself the way everyone else does. Kind of like an outer body experience,” she chuckled a little at her own absurdity and continued, “ but seriously, that is something everyone really desires, think of how there are certain windows around the city that are tinted enough to be like mirrors. If you counted how many people checked them selves out all day, it would probably be like ninety-seven percent, and the other three percent that don’t are probably just really depressed and disenchanted.”

Susanna waited for Thomas to laugh before she showed her own amusement at what she had said. Instead, Thomas moved her aside with both hands grabbing the sides of her hips and said, “What are you going on about crazy?”

His hands on her, was the most vivid part of this memory, the part that forced her to miss him. “You know, “ Susanna waved her arms and hands, looking up to Thomas, and exclaimed, “ how everyone wants to know how the world views them, and we can never have that? So,” gesturing to the mirror reflecting the image of Thomas brushing his hair next to her, “ instead, I do this, with the mirror.”

Thomas closed the mirror’s opened side, rinsed off his toothbrush and asked, “ Now if you were to put down money for a bet, at what point would you say that I completely blacked out what you were just saying?”

Her mouth unhinged, and her animated arms ceased their gesturing to drop heavily at her sides. She then began to slightly pout before calling him a jerk while walking out of the bathroom.

With this, Susanna swiftly closed her mirror in the same way Thomas had years ago, stomped hurriedly into her bedroom, and shut the door behind her.  Crouched down on her hands and knees, she pulled out a folded plastic sheet from beneath her bed. She flapped it out over the bed like a duvet cover, and the plastic overlapped the floor by a few feet. She took a roll of electric tape out from her dresser and secured the plastic over the dark, worn, but polished wooden floor surrounding the full size bed. Then, standing on the bed in front of the headboard, she taped the plastic to the wall so that it was covered all the way up to the ceiling. She then tore off some smaller pieces of tape, and sealed off the loose edges she had missed.

Susanna then hopped off the bed, slipped her feet into a pair of plain black mary-jane flats, opened the door, and surveyed the room quickly. The sun was strong now, beaming in both her windows, glistening off the plastic, as well as reflecting off of the long mirror that hung above her dresser. The room was brighter than she had ever seen it.

With a wrinkled brow and slightly squinting eyes she closed the door, and walked down the comparably dark hallway to Jacob’s bedroom door. Her eyes adjusted as she rested a hand gently on the doorknob. With the other, she traced the seams of the skull and bones pirate flag that hung with a red tack on the dark wooden door. She remembered holding Jacob with one arm resting against her hip, guiding his hand to tap the tack with a small hammer, the both of them exclaiming enthusiastically, “ARRRRR!”

Her mind took her back further to the moments of him sitting on her lap rambling his own version of Peter Pan, as she sewed the flag holding his hands. His arms moved so obediently with hers, she moved as quickly as if she sewed by herself. Even though he insisted on helping make his flag, his eyes only observed the finished pieces. When Minerva came up to ask Susanna if she should throw out a painting she had just finished, Jacob quickly interrupted with, “Ask later! We are very busy!”

She didn’t experience vivid memories of Jacob in the same way she did with Thomas because they were still making new ones. She feared all of the reminiscing the day ahead held for her, and began to choke on a hard lump that rapidly formed in her throat. Jacob didn’t have a downside like Thomas had, which always helped her shake off the feeling of lose that she felt when going into the past to those great moments that captured their essence. Her face scrunched up in the same way a child does right before a terrific tantrum, and physically shook these thoughts out of her head, like a schizophrenic haunted by cruel voices. With her flexed fingers tensely pressed into each other, she tapped her forehead in rhythm with each heavy distinct inhale and exhale. Speechless for anything encouraging that she could tell herself, she pressed her now fisted hands into her closed eyes until spots of light appeared, and let out an unintended moan of agony.

When she caught her self does this, the thought of Jacob over hearing her snapped her out of it, and she slowly opened his door. She bit down hard on her lip entering the room with watering eyes, and went to the window to open the blinds as she did every morning. She turned around slowly, and puffed out her cheeks with a slow and silent exhale that was suppose to calm her frantic nerves. Her thoughts chanted, ‘Moment by moment, moment to moment….”

She quieted the inner voice that jumped to scold the ridiculousness of her reasoning, knowing it didn’t have a better idea to offer. Then she noticed Jacob squirm further beneath his rumpled up camouflage blankets and sheets. She leaned down on the bed on her hands with her thin long arms straight, and said, “ Where is that little boy I tucked in last night? Did he get up early and runaway to join the circus?”

A quiet chuckle emerged from beneath the mess of bedding. She began to pinch up random small bits of blanket continuing with a silly voice, “ Is he one of these lumps? Well, I can tickle the lumps, and then if any of them giggle back, then I will know that one is my Jacob.”

She pinched the sheets surrounding what was obviously Jacob for a moment before grabbing his ankle and exclaiming, “AHA! I Got You!”

She pulled the cover up to expose his feet, which she proceeded to tickle as Jacob yelped, giggled, squealed, wiggled and squirmed like a fish stranded on land, flopping about on his stomach with no way to escape. Then Susanna began to tickle his torso, and under arms, turning Jacob onto his back with his mouth open wide crying out for mercy. Susanna continued relentlessly, asking, “What in the world are you laughing about? What has gotten into you? My goodness!”

Then Jacob began to cry out, “OWWW! OW! OW!”

This ceased Susanna’s ambush immediately to apologized asked him what hurt, until he put on a grin from ear to ear and created two guns out of his hands.
He shot her with each gun for every word as he said, “ I got you! I tricked you! Ha Ha!”

Susanna threw her head back and let out a roar of laughter. She then hugged Jacob tightly, kissed his cheek, saying, “Oh man, you totally got me. Ok now go get ready for school, Mr. Smarty-pants.”

Jacob hopped off her lap and began to tear his outfit out of his dresser, slamming the drawers open and closed. As Susanna walked out of the room down the hall, she heard him call out, “French toast please!”

She took out the eggs and milk with the background noise of Jacob clomping down the hall, and into the bathroom, slamming the toilet seat up and down, and banging the cabinet door. It occurred to her then, that she was lucky he rushed to get ready in the morning, that they could spend more time together during breakfast. Jacob carried his sneakers into the kitchen and tossed them by the door as she sprayed the pan with Pam.
He stood on a stepstool searching the shelf holding CDs with his stubby pointer finger for the music he chose to start his day with while he went to the bathroom and brushed his hair. He carefully removed a CD case, and delicately placed the CD into the stereo. He looked at the list of songs on the back of the case, and skipped to the track he wanted before pressing play. Susanna smiled widely at his choice, and glanced at him taking the orange juice out of the refrigerator.

She transferred the French toast to Jacob’s Sponge Bob Square Pant’s plate, and placed it on the table in front of the seat Jacob was standing on. Jacob always pretended to be a conductor for classical music mornings, and usually chose Mozart ever since he learned about how he began composing pieces at the age of five. He thought conductors had such power, and liked the idea of a child being in charge of an entire orchestra. His facial expression was very stern, and during the slower parts of the piece, he’d comedically sweeps the air with relaxed hands, his eyes closed, and head directed upward. When the piece was over, he made dramatic bows to his imaginary standing ovation, and held his hand up humbly asking for the applause to cease. Susanna sat on the other side of their two-person table leaning against the wall next to her clapping her hands in an exaggeratedly proper fashion until Jacob was firmly seated and finished repeating, “Thank you, Thank you very much,” a la Elvis.

Jacob almost always had on the large grin on him then, which suggested self-awareness of being highly charismatic and unusually clever for an eight year old. He was also always very excited when Susanna would mention how he was just like his father in this way.
        (Quirky kid)
        Jacob took a sip of his juice and asked Susanna, “What are you doing today?”

Susanna became unsettled by the question and said, “The usual boring routine, why do you all of a sudden care what your boring mom does while you are at school?”

Jacob finished chewing, stabbed his fork into another piece and said, “ Cause you’re kind of dressed up, like you’re going on a date or something.”

Susanna choked a little on her coffee, and laughed. She said, “Yeah, no date for me. You’re the only guy in my life I have to look good for.”

Jacob said, “Yeah, and I do not care what you look like, so I don’t know why you are kind of dressed up.”

Susanna got up taking Jacob’s empty plate to the sink and said, “You know what, I honestly don’t even know why I ‘kind of got dressed up’ today.”

Jacob shook his head on his way to the bathroom, still grinning, and said, “You are so weird.”
(susanna crying by sink)
Susanna swallowed hard watching Jacob put on his sneakers. She bit her lip, and as soon as Jacob looked up after he finished tying his sneakers, susanna was wrapping her arms around him, saying, “ I’m going to miss my boy too much,” kissing his cheek a few times.

She grabbed his face, squishing his cheeks together slightly, and positioned it directly in front of hers and said, “ I love you so much. You are the best thing this world has going for it. I really do believe that.”

Jacob crinkled his brow, and through fish-shaped lips muffled, “ Three minutes mom,” and pointed up to the clock on the oven.

Susanna let out a whiney groan, squeezed Jacob again, and said, “ I mean it Jacob, it sometimes feel like you are the only person that can be of any use, that can actually help this silly world. I love you so much”

Jacob’s loosely stewn arms tighted around Susanna, whose frame was hardly larger than his, as she pressed her head down on his shoulder and his on hers, and said, “I love you too mom. But I have to go.”

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