Now I can say it was a little madness in the spring, what possessed me.
I ran straight into his life, his arms. Seduced by an accent with London Blue eyes.
We made love on the bloodstained sheets where his first child was born only weeks before.
Just a little spring madness…
My son awoke to find his mother gone, evicted from the family home by jealousy and passion and broken things. It had to have been madness. A decade, two spouses, two young children, two blocks between us. Between those two blocks we evicted a friend from part of her home and made love so noisily our friend had to tell her son, my son’s friend, that the neighbor’s cats were fighting.
Spring madness…
We moved into a camper. I worked as a chambermaid. At night we feasted on leftovers from the silver service French restaurant where he waited tables.
My friends were astonished. My parents, not so much. They always knew I was mad.
Around us the town grumbled and chose sides. I felt watched like Hester, and like her I refused to care. More and more the sidewalks seemed to pull away as I walked by the little walkways up to those homes where once I had coffee. Curtains moved. Conversations stopped.
I didn’t care. I couldn’t think.
Of all the days and nights I drank Kokinelli, Bacardi, J&B, Old Grandad, Old Overholt, cognac, chianti, Brandy Alexanders, Slippery Nipples, sniffed, smoked , injected, inhaled, pushed drugs under my skin and into crevices — nothing compared to this intoxication.
His wife and my husband began a campaign. Together they visited the places where we once worked, currently worked; visited old friends, told anyone who would listen about our madness. Our awfulness.
I had nightmares: running up and down the Greenport streets; up and down, back and forth in those tree-lined, church-lined, tavern-lined, judgment-lined streets. In the dreams I was always rising above the town. From above it was always beautiful, smelling of lilacs and seawater, looking softly golden in the setting sun. So easy, so sweet.
I always woke up sweating. He always said, “One day, we will look back on this and laugh.” Then near to tears we would laugh so hard.
It had to have been some kind of spring madness. Who in their right mind would do this willingly?
(inspired by the painting “Modern Art 4,” by Lynne Taetzsch and by Emily Dickinson's poem that begins “A little madness in the spring”)
