(Towanda!) Head Strong

She is going to a party later, and wakes up, really wakes up from sleep, invigorated.

The restorative, healing powers have begun their process, and what with Pennywise still at large in his cave somewhere, it being too early in the spring for him to pose an actual threat, Alexandra feels completely safe, and sleeps like a baby for many nights in a row. Somehow, she feels safer when she doesn’t see him, and less so, when he is back in the juniper.

It isn’t that kind of party. It is a children’s party, thrown for her godson on his second birthday, a son of her friend Helene’s, back from when they were kids themselves, the one friend from when she was little.

When Alexandra thinks of all the daily horrors she overcomes, every day, she feels like she should be given a medal. Pennywise. The man under the bed. The woman with hair just like hers, who lives on her shoulder, and sometimes in the mirror, with the empty eyes, and sometimes the eyes of a dragon. Lilith, she calls her, when she is alone.

But the dogs, her beloved dogs, they don’t fear her, so she knows she cannot be completely evil. On her walk, she stops the music in her headphones and asks if she can pet the chocolate lab, a grandpa with a grey beard and a happy face, and when she can, she loves the old dog with all her might, telling his owner it is quite alright, when he warns her that he is dirty and drooly. She has a magical connection to dogs, and this old boy, too, wags his tail and nudges his large head in her lap, when she strokes his ears and chin and belly and cheeks.

“You are at the end of your walk, here”, she says.

“Yes, he is already eleven years old”, the man responds. Alexandra looks at him, smiling. “No, I meant the end of your walk, today.”

“Oh, I know”, the man corrects. “No, I didn’t mean that he is about to – no, just, yes, we are heading home now.”

“Well, I’ll let you go. Let’s hug again the next time, yes?”

“Yes, he loves it.”

It is an inconsistency, that Alexandra is so natural and charming and straightforward with strangers, with her illness, and something her husband likes pointing out. Alexandra finds it equally interesting that her husband, a man with a high-stress, highly visible job, can be so awkward and painfully shy in his private life. He can’t even ask for help at a convenience store.

At the haunted house, at the pinnacle of her walk, there is a lot of commotion going on in the yard. A group of hired help, or volunteers, are raking the yard, taking out severed branches, making the giant field pretty again, for the summer. This time Alexandra misses the woman with the billowing dress and red hair in the attic window. Maybe she is scared, with all these people wreaking havoc all over her yard. The monster in the woods is sleeping, too, but then again he is always sleeping, it’s a deal they have struck, he lets Alexandra take her walks unobstructed, and she pretends not to notice the roaring, the dragging feet behind her, the sound of twigs breaking and the songbirds hushing, in the face of a predator. It is like with Pennywise, after the snowstorm. If she manages to pass off as indifferent, the creatures won’t touch her. It is when they catch her watching, or notice that she knows, that there is danger there. It’s why she always takes her walks with her headphones. Inside the music she is always safe.

She is terrible at getting gifts, so she asked for help, and Helene was so gracious with her idea, and it was so simple, that Alexandra did not buy one, but two, books for Bruno, both about Paris, her beloved Paris, because every present needs to have her own personal twist in them, and because she was afraid they wouldn’t make it into her hands in time for the birthday, she went ahead and got a backup present as well, and the backup is also something specifically from Alexandra, so now she has two presents.

It is nearing noon, and the man under the bed is gone for now. Alexandra eyes out of the window, through the gossamer curtain, looks at the two entwined birches right outside. The sun is out, but it is cold. Funny, how things that were enormous as a kid, are sort of small as an adult, she thinks. And things that were of no difference become major factors.

Like, when she was a girl, she used to sleep in a bed with a pullout guest bed underneath, so there was no way the man could have been hiding in there.

When they were little, they once made a snowman and a snowwoman, in Helene’s yard, and when Helene’s father saw them, instead of getting mad, he burst into delighted laughter, and went inside to get his camera, and they posed with their two snowpeople, with all the appropriate body parts graphically assembled from chunks of snow. They even made nipples out of small pebbles, for the lady. They had rosy cheeks, and had been at work for a long time, and in the picture, they looked the epitome of healthy and wholesome, smiling next to a job well done.

There is a dog at the party, too, and Alexandra makes time for him, throwing a partly chewed up ball for him for as long as he wants. Helene’s older kid is jumping on the trampoline (For the benefit of Mr. Kite/There will be a show tonight/On trampoline), telling her about when he ran into his little brother with his bike around where that rock is, see? and about when the dog accidentally ran into him on the flagstone path right there. “And did the dog say he was sorry?” Alexandra asks.

“No, silly, he can’t speak, but I know he didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Of course not.”

Alexandra stays for a long time, eats the incredibly crafty and delicious chocolate cake shaped like a car, helps Helene make hors d’oeuvres before the other guests arrive (“Yes, I made the cocktail sticks myself”, she jokes), and takes in the peace of mind that comes with spending time with people who don’t take her hysteria so seriously, because she knows how to make it entertaining. It is a solace, really, and she is lifted from her body almost, from the woes of her own particular life, into this lovely assembly of children’s high chairs and curly baby hair and the presence of a friend who has known her since before kindergarten, and will in all likelihood stay with her until the end.

Her headache doesn’t return until after she is back home. She wishes the magic will cure even those headaches, but like with all else, she fears it is something she has done to herself, and will need to pay the piper from now on. I swear I’ll be good, I swear I’ll be good, she thinks to herself, and while the man is not under the bed right now, she suddenly misses her husband, and looks at his picture in her smart phone a long time. The greying stubble, the dimple, the tuft of hair like Tintin’s.