Curtain of the Owl's Call

March 14, 2012

Interesting that it’s you, dear wife…

But I think somewhere in me I always knew it’d be you.

You—that subtly, inadvertently albeit, held my hand and guided me, like a child to the edge of this lake, behind the leather wheel of this swanky convertible. You—whose smile could level buildings and make one rethink their choices in a mere instance. And you—who didn’t bat an eye at my choices, inconvenient as they may have been to you, yours, and us.

Almost thirteen years of you and I. I should know, I’m the romantic between us. I’d been counting seconds spent with you since we first met by that sheer, cosmic chance of rom-com proportions. To be perfectly frank, I’ve done such things with every girl I saw so seriously and tenderly, but knew you were different.

I can’t even remember the name of the girl who’d dragged me to that play but your performance was—needless to say—the stunner of the evening. But your performance was no surprise. When that near-anonymous date of mine and I bumped into you outside that West End theater less than an hour after the show, I got a good look at you and understood you’d had to act most of your life, maybe your whole childhood. And the ironic part is that these days, well into your womanhood, others will accuse your day-to-day of being a performative charade, one that those ignorants will claim fools noone.

But this is not about who you are, it’s about who I am and what I’ve endured not because of you, but—so I believed to be—for us; but these days I realize it was mostly just for me, and I can feel that shame opening my car-door and pulling at my shoulder.

I can recall when we first started dating up in New York; I’d chosen to not call the plain girl I’d seen you with and started hanging around the theater you performed at. Many would deem that horrifying but you thought it endearing. You told me how much you enjoyed Genesis about two dates in and I teased you for it, all the while conceding that I liked their frontman’s solo work.

The soft touch of Peter Gabriel’s voice tapping my eardrums since that date, even in our worst and our falling outs and even our brief break-up always brought a certain warmth because it conjured thoughts of you, even when apart.

Did I tell you that he made an album just a couple years back. Maybe I did, it doesn’t matter now… Nonetheless it’s called “Scratch My Back.” It’s entirely covers of songs I’d never heard before, but I thought I’d loop the track that reminds me of you when I proceed, as I know this day will hurt you.

One of the things that harkens back most in my remembrance of us was shielding your eyes from the horrors of that fateful day in 2001. We were just over a dozen miles from the rubble and collapse but we knew not just its death toll but its weight on the country I’d tried so hard to serve…

You never did quite understand that, did you? My impassioned patriotism, desire to serve, first in blue and taking to the streets then in an office, calling shots to the ones in blue?

To be perfectly frank, I hardly understood it either. I’d grown up in a decade where those without the crisp and parched-dry skin of Caucasians were often ridiculed and outcasted, even in the progressive forefront of New York. To make matters worse for me my complexion was not in complete contrast, but somewhere in the middle; and Lord knows the kids would mock those slits I call eyes, call me a squinter and words much harsher.

But after serious thinking in my 20s and later adolescence, I concluded that it was not out of a faux humbleness nor arrogant self-righteousness that I wanted to serve the country. It was not due to the ever-pending pride of my immigrant father, who shoved me on a bus to the inner-city of Buffalo first thing each morning to tend the farm. It was a drive to extend a hand of uplifting to those knocked down, particularly those who’d done no provoking to cause their downfall.

It was a drive that came second only to romance, and later second only to you.

But alas when the planes slammed into the sides of those buildings, it was not the explosion nor the sheer terror of it all that instigated my decision to move us down South, but the fear it caused you, not just in that expression or the hours of crying, but the way it would ever-so-slightly shrill your voice and rattle your fingertips in the forthcoming years.

Maybe that shrill and that rattle are still there. Eleven years can make you adjust to anything; but so can the weight of my indiscretions?

I’ve already decided to not play Gabriel’s take of “The Book of Love.” All too easy, too cliche to cover the way one feels for another. Probably been done by several teenagers this year already…

And thus, we migrated South further and further until we’d found that little town outside Charleston, the town whose name I cannot even think of right now due to the sheer nausea it causes me.

An obscure notion to be thought of by the town’s police chief, isn’t it? But we always were an obscure couple, wouldn’t you agree?

A decade has passed since that night.

Moving down here we had many talks—in our preceding apartment, in the car down here, in the house we bought without consulting a single realtor (thank the Lord for the dawn of the Internet). We’d discussed the risks of the South and suburbia for a couple like us. And honestly? I think we (or at least, you) should be proud of how far we made it along here.

Calling their police force “quaint” is an understatement, this much you know. It’s going down from MLB to little-league, a handful of cops in a precinct that resembles a mom-and-pop type store.

It’s hard to pin down exactly where things went wrong, but I know it wasn’t when I strolled through downtown that one time…

It was January in ‘02, and in the two-or-three traffic-light district, arrogantly called “downtown” I had waved to the new police chief; and I could not help but notice his sheer evasion. How could I not? His eyes rolled around and he lightly tapped the back of the young woman he was with and urged them to cross the street away from me.

It would only be until about three weeks thereafter, come Valentine’s Day, that I realized that it wasn’t the chief’s wife that he was with, for his actual wife would come in and surprise him with lunch and whole-hearted embarrassment in front of his staff of cops. Most of them snickered and gave him shit but I just stood there, knowing more in that moment than in any since we’d arrived… He exchanged a quick, but still evading, glance with me as she hugged him.

That only made it all-the-more awkward when the chief invited himself over to ours for dinner, an apparent tradition for his new hires…

You were very excited to play the role of the house-wife; you may have even charmed me into thinking his arrival was a good idea. I had never once been embarrassed by you, but concerned by us in our facing a world that was not moving fast enough for us.

Hell, I told myself, we have it all—the picket fence, the dog who floated around the living room, I even had a study complete with cigars, books and brandy. Why shouldn’t we do the “boss comes to dinner” cliche in our home? It’d made perfect sense.

But when he came in and saw you, I knew you were too enthusiastic and pleased to see it, but when he peered at me after the pleasantries, the look of pure disgust sent me into a spiral that I can’t say now I’ve truly recovered from…

“My Body is a Cage…” Peter Gabriel really nailed this one. But for a woman like you, it’s still painfully trite… Onto the next one.

The dinner went okay, all things considered, but it was then that my at-the-time boss chose to invite himself somewhere where we could, in his words “chat about work things.” I remember my affirmative mutters, wishing I could decline or say literally anything else.

We went to the study, and he shut the door behind us. I turned up the fire as if everything was alright, and pulled cigars from one of the boxes, opening the window as well. We lit up and sat down across one another, the fire the main source of light. That conversation, particularly the man’s voice, still rings in my ear:

“You know that’s not okay, right?”

“What’s not okay?” I played dumb.

“Your ‘wife.’”

“How’s that?”

“Son, he’s—”

“She.”

“That’s the point. She ain’t nobody’s wife, she ain’t a fucking woman at all, son. That’s a man you have downstairs.”

I snorted, contemptuously. “You know there are certain groups, flying planes into our buildings and you’re worried about—”

“I’m worried about having hired some homo, officer.”

“No, no…” I said after a beat, peering around the room, “She had the surgery before we’d met, I assure you she–”

He grimaced. “Spare me the fucking details, son. You know that shit isn’t going to fly down at the station.”

I looked over at him, eyelids down a bit, bored demeanor, and, feeling as though it was time for Sisyphus to push the rock over a cliff, I asked him, politely as I could: “But does it ‘fly,’ sir, to cheat on your wife with college girls?”

I could hear the owl’s call at that moment. I’d sleep in the barn as a kid. And when Dad had his women over when Mom was away, I’d try to just focus my hearing on the ambiguity of the barn owls that scoured the structure for mice. My only friends at the time, they did not construct false narratives, and they just did what they did for survival. As did I, from this point onward.

I remember the rapid decline of the chief’s expression, and the unspoken uproar of his standing up and saying “Excuse me,” as he walked sternly from the parlor.

I just sat there. I heard him descend the stairs, and slam the door on the way out. You dropped what you were doing immediately, and came upstairs, on the mere chance I’d need consoling.

“Is everything okay? He seemed mad? Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes upward to the comfort of yours, “He just remembered he had to get back to the sitter, is all.”

Thus began my career not just in police work but in extortion. And this in turn would chip away at my psyche, my compass, and fully into my actions (or simply misdeeds) over the past decade.

Which now, dearest wife, has brought me to this lake.

“I Think It’s Going To Rain Today.” Melancholic, but uplifting. Ideal for the occasion, and all that follows.

And so, dear wife, now that the track is on loop in this damned vehicle, I feel I haven’t any real choice other than to descend the grass to the gravel and sand and into the water to baptize myself, not to wash away sins, but to truly purify my spirit; permanently.

And I’m afraid my mind is made up, darling. The pills have been swallowed, 911 ambulances alerted, my will signed, to be executed by our lawyer… May the death of Kahn Nguyen be the rebirth of Margaret Nguyen. Farewell.

“Bright before me the signs implore me

To help the needy and show them the way

Human kindness is overflowing

And I think it's going to rain today…”