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    Wolf World - A Novel - Book 2: Secrets, #2
    Wolf World - A Novel - Book 2: Secrets, #2
    Wolf World - A Novel - Book 2: Secrets, #2
    Ebook233 pages3 hours

    Wolf World - A Novel - Book 2: Secrets, #2

    By Jo Ann Lordahl

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    About this ebook

    In "Wolf World" by Jo Ann Lordahl, the prologue and chapters one and three depict a complex emotional journey experienced by the protagonist, Christine Forrester, as she grapples with the death of her father. The prologue sets the stage for Christine's introspective exploration, expressing her struggle with the past and her determination to understand and reconcile her experiences. Chapter one delves into Christine's emotional turmoil as she prepares for her father's burial, portraying her inner conflict, vulnerability, and the surreal nature of her experiences. Chapter three further delves into Christine's contemplations, revealing her introspective musings on her relationship with her father, her struggle with control and vulnerability, and her realization about the importance of acknowledging her inner child's needs.

     

    The narrative captures the protagonist's emotional complexity, vulnerability, and internal struggle as she confronts her father's death and grapples with unresolved emotions and past experiences. Christine's introspective journey and her attempts to come to terms with her father's passing are central to the narrative, portraying a deeply personal and emotional exploration of grief, self-discovery, and the complexities of human emotions. The text captures the protagonist's inner turmoil and her process of introspection, providing insight into her emotional landscape and the challenges she faces in navigating her relationship with her father.

     

    Overall, "Wolf World" offers a poignant portrayal of grief, introspection, and the complexities of human emotions, providing a deeply personal and emotional exploration of the protagonist's journey towards understanding and reconciling her past experiences and emotions in the wake of her father's death.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJo Ann Lordahl
    Release dateFeb 1, 2024
    ISBN9798224758678
    Wolf World - A Novel - Book 2: Secrets, #2

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      Book preview

      Wolf World - A Novel - Book 2 - Jo Ann Lordahl

      DEDICATION

      Dedicated to my paternal great-grandmother from Brooklyn, to my father, and to the paternal side of my family.

      The lamb, whose time has come, goes off in the cab of the dump truck, tied to the seat with baling twine, durable enough to bear her to the knife and rafter.

      O lambs! The whole wolf-world sits down to eat and cleans its muzzle after.

      From How It Goes On

      Maxine Kumin

      Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

      Matthew 7:15

      Nothing in this life or the next will bring you more pain than love. If anyone tells you otherwise, they are liars.

      Or they are still inexperienced in such matters. Or they have been exquisitely fortunate in their choice of lovers. So far.

      AKI-NO-HASHI (1311) Quoted from Takashi Matsuoka, Autumn Bridge

      PROLOGUE

      Looking at the past is irksome. There's always the problem of where to start. Who was I then? What was I doing? And of course, why am I returning to what's over and done instead of declaring good riddance to wretched rubbish, and getting on?

      My old selves roll like amber beads. I yearn for order and understanding. The necklace of today depends on the past, depends on how the beads are strung, depends on interpretation.

      Traits of never letting anything go and stubbornness wink from my core. I didn't get where I am today by giving up. Or by throwing anything away. I use it all. I want to go back and claim the child, girl, woman I was. Change knowledge into wisdom, sketches into finished paintings. I won't abandon my shifting past simply because three or four fractional selves strike out on their own. No, they're all me. All necessary. I'm the past-tamer, liontamer, or actually lioness-tamer, as the case is.

      My journals are the string that can let me whip that past into order. Thank all the saints, I wrote most things down. Now, as they say, what are the particulars?

      Fact One: The Artists Gallery, doing a twenty-year retrospective of my paintings, thinks it would be nice (nice, of all things) if I'd write a brief history of each painting. If I'd let the largely woman's audience into my mind at the time of creation.

      Writing a little innocuous history for each painting is no problem. But parading my private history, forget it. I'm not going to do it. That’s why I’m writing for myself alone.

      Fact Two: Jogging down memory lane could be exciting. Revealing. I’ll wipe it out as I return. Take a large brush and annihilate the old. Turn those ancient paintings into ghosts, into air so thin nothing remains.

      Fact Three: I don't know how to do this. But I could grab one of those old amber-bead selves, put a needle in her middle and start stringing.

      Chapter One

      The drive to the cemetery was thirteen miles and, of course, Christine Forrester had planned to arrive long before darkness came.

      She would dig the hole, or Michael would, for the square, brown box of her father and leave. The evening was planned. Dinner at Michael's and a party later. Why not go to a party? How could she properly grieve for a father who'd been dead for longer than she could remember?

      Except the time chasing shovels wasn't planned. She knew all the while she was being ridiculous. Part of her, like a floating prisoner in a bubble, observed and was helpless while she collected shovels, calling friends. The world was full of shovels and she never knew. One friend told of a broken handle. Another, who wouldn't be home, would leave the shovel standing by the back door. A third told of a small green shovel that folded. Shovels multiplied, took on a surrealistic Dali look, floated grotesquely, bent like watches and clocks on a clear blue background. One shovel came from her daughter and one from her new young lover.

      Christine hadn't planned on rain. The rain was slow, steady, there forever as she dashed to pick up the first shovel, a folding green garden tool, a small shovel for a small box. No one, not even Michael, had asked why she wanted shovels. Asking friends for shovels was an unnoteworthy event, ordinary and done all the time. She was the only one who found this business of shovels so odd.

      The rain was coming down hard when she picked up Michael, the darkness nearly complete. Michael's shovel was huge and soon thrown in the back seat beside the small green one, ruthless. An inside part of her quailed. And knew, as she did it anyway, refusing utterly the tiny voice of her demon, that she was being a fool as she drove out of town in the drumming rain. This journey was farcical. This was what teenagers did on Halloween-travel in the rain to cemeteries to dig holes.

      A giggle was close to the surface, a wild shriek below it, and she wondered how she'd ever come to be here.

      Christine was out of town driving fast. The pitted highway collected the rain. Her wheels smacked into the water. The light vehicle planing on the water, darted uncontrollably to the edges. She had to keep wrestling the car, fighting to avoid the water filled, deep-grooved lanes in the concrete from too much traffic. Lights from approaching cars on the narrow roadway became brilliant Van Gogh suns blinding her. She put down her foot hard and accelerated to sixty, never letting up no matter how the car buckled. Or Michael squirmed beside her in the darkness.

      This road is horrible, Christine said dodging a grooved lane to the center. The approaching car was a beacon, an obstacle. Yet weirdly, this was fun, like driving a race car. She moved her vehicle to smack the grooved lanes exactly in the center. She could feel the resistance of the water and wanted to hit harder.

      Is there any rush to where we're going? Michael's voice was quiet and calm as he always was. But she heard the concern. She had it herself. Nothing in her wanted to crash the car, or them. She just wanted to drive fast.

      There was an odor in the car, damp and horrible, unclean. She opened the window and let the rain come in, and the squishing outside sounds of the night. Was the brown paper box in the back getting wet, she wondered? Were drops of rain hitting it from the open window? Then she thought of the box in the ground, disintegrating.

      My father would laugh like anything if he could see this, she said suddenly.

      I wondered about that, and you, if you'd get maudlin, and what kind of person he was?

      I planned for us to get to the cemetery before dark, she said thinking that it was only Michael, uninvolved, unemotional, detached Michael she could ask to accompany her tonight, digging a hole before the memorial service tomorrow. Beautiful, comforting, young Michael who didn't give a damn. She knew Michael would see it as an adventure. She needed to see it as an adventure. A reincarnated father, was she always seeking a father in these men who didn't care about her?

      Did you ever think that some Saturday night you'd be driving in the rain in a warm winter in Florida to dig a hole in a cemetery? she asked.

      No, Michael said. Your father would have liked this?

      He'd have found it a colossal joke and laughed in great roars. Called it ridiculous and stupid and loved the whole thing.

      The wildness of her father gave strength to her and permission. She could be unconventional. He was. She could drive wildly fast, drink too much, be charming, unpredictable, and arrogant. He was. And she could be unsuccessful all over the place, fail, live in chaos and never, no never, look at the gnat bites of the minutes of every day click, click, clicking away, tolling the time, devouring a life. Yes, here was a difference, a major hard and horrid gap. He never saw the bead like days dissolve in futility, end in fog. Her father walked an eternal yellow brick road. Was this where it came from, her clutch of time so obsessive, her feeling that the present was never to be spent, or enjoyed, or lived, but only mined for the future and controlled for tomorrow? Was this possibly, in fact, why she turned off part of her mind for pleasure?

      Your father was not religious or properly conventional? Michael’s quiet tones blended with her against religion and drowning the rain. father's voice ranting She remembered the peculiar, half proud, half ashamed cast of his face as he had said at various times, always with the same look, I was a choir boy in the Catholic Church. On Sundays before the priest celebrated Mass, I used to swing the incense. I wore a long white robe, and the priest followed me to the altar. They were probably going to make me one, he snorted, a priest. They like to take the brightest and bend them to their will.

      So clear she could remember, how next he would begin raving against the greedy Catholic Church, the nuns especially, for two aunts who'd taken orders—who were rich and then died—and her grandfather wasn't told. The greedy bastards never told us a thing, her father had cried. They buried my aunts and the church took the money. But my father found out. When he did he told the Catholic Church to go to hell and in revenge made the family into instant Episcopalians.

      Now Christine realized she'd always felt sorrow for the small boy who was her father, torn from his moments of dignity, of pomp, of ceremony. Somehow she must have always known how he'd needed stability. And how he'd missed it for the rest of his life. Had he found security now? she wanted to ask.

      Both hands gripped the steering wheel as the car lurched in deep water skidding to the edge of the road. No, my father wasn't religious, she said at last, not panicked by the blinding lights of the approaching car. My father agreed with Marx that religion was the opium of the masses. He didn't care what we did, but I simply do not remember him going to church with us. He faded from the home picture—became, was, the remote and wronged hero. At least he was to me. I used to dream of making everything all right for him, making him happy.

      Christine’s foot stabbed the gas pedal again. She knew she couldn't see properly but she increased the speed. She longed to fling herself into the rainy night, be more reckless and wild. Cool air from the window and some drops of water stung against her face. The car was a safe space hurling forward and this journey had no end. She'd been traveling this road all her life, and she'd never get out alive. The grooves in the highway deepened, her foot pressed harder, and the yellow suns burst faster and faster. This road for sure had no end, this evermore dark rainy night had no day.

      Christine's right foot lifted. I'm going too fast. The weather is too bad to drive this fast and I should slow down. Panic waited quietly within her. She spoke to herself as to one who newly emerges from a nightmare.

      She drove competently down the road to Kris Kristofferson's tune of slapping windshield wipers and turned off the highway onto a gravel road, twisting a back way through small frame houses close to the road in the black section of town. At each of the two red stop signs, unseen dogs came to bark, the last one following and barking frantically next to her open window until she speeded away.

      She came again to asphalt, following it slowly, searching for the sandy road to the cemetery. Out from town the night was pitch-black and the rain came steady and hard. She picked her way along the road, avoided the worst holes and pulled into the cemetery. Her lights reflected on the one lane white gravel trail somberly brooded over by gigantic arm-dangling oak trees. In the sunlight this spot was serene. Now it was an entrapping place where spiders and vampires came at night. She tried to remember where she was going, orient herself. Everything was foreign in the darkness.

      The rain came quietly as she slowed the car to a crawl. Crowds of dark green bushes lined the trail that took sharp and unexpected turns. I'll never be able to find the plot, she said. Then remembering an open space beside a huge live oak tree, she aimed for the far side of the cemetery. She'd chosen a plot far behind the oak tree, way off the tiny road, the most peaceful area she could find. And had thought how her father would love that its plot number was one hundred.

      The rain slowed, almost stopping. Dry wipers scratched as she drove on searching for a tree, or a look of the road, or a clump of bushes, anything in this changed, surreal place that was confusingly both familiar and unfamiliar.

      I think that's it. Christine pulled the car awkwardly, half off the road, couldn't go further, backed and pulled off again, arriving a foot or two deeper in the bushes than on her first attempt. She considered backing again. I think it's over there, she said lifting a heavy arm and pointing straight into the darkness off to the right. There's the big tree I think the plot is under.

      Why don't you point the car lights that way so you can see?

      Yes, I could do that. Christine backed again, then pulled forward at a sharp angle, set the brake, but left the motor running. She sat waiting, both hands on the steering wheel, eyes following the car lights picking out trees covered with swaying grey white moss. Millions of shiny fallen brown leaves glittered with reflected light as it touched them.

      You go see if you can find the place. I'll wait in the car, Michael said

      Here was something to do. She received the suggestion gratefully. From considering the brown leaves, she stared at her high heeled brown shoes straining for a connection, for any avenue to join disparate objects. She was brain damaged and couldn't make her mind function. Then with scarcely a pause she took off her shoes, short stockings and gave the legs of her jeans two swift turns. I'll ruin my shoes if I wear them on that soft ground, she said. Matter of factly, Christine opened the car door, moving quickly. I'll be back in a minute. You wait here, she told him.

      The cool satiny rain felt good on the soles of her feet. Her toes spread and dug into the ground as she walked. This was old times. Loathing shoes, hating to be confined, this was how she liked to walk as a child, going barefoot all summer and even now whenever she could.

      She moved briskly from the yellow spotlight that the car lights made, wanting the darkness. Or what passed for darkness, for as her eyes adapted to the dark, there was plenty of light from her car, from the glistening drops of rain everywhere, now lightly falling again, and from nearby house lights just over the open cemetery fence.

      Traces of fear touched her, not real, as her heels sank in the ground, then her toes. In between these familiar heel and toe touches, as her feet rotated and sank, the tender inside of her arches was stroked by strange objects. Wet leaves brushed her, grass, small stones, and sticks. Childhood admonitions against walking barefoot came back, and a fleeting memory of a painful tetanus shot after she had stepped on a nail in the horse barn. She remembered the sight of the nail sticking thorough her foot, rusty brown and alien and how she'd felt as she pulled it out.

      Christine thought of these things so she wouldn't think about what was under the present ground she stepped on. Any implications of squishiness were kept far away. Her steps remained firm as she kept a sharp eye out for gravestones so she could walk around them.

      Her zigzag path led to the tall oak tree of her memory, and she walked the boundaries of the plot she was sure was hers. The tree was in the right place and three small white stones were in two corners, as she remembered. She walked the outline twice, doublechecked the marking stones and the tree's shape. She knew this was the place, but her mind wouldn't believe it, not one hundred percent. Off on the right were square shapes and then the gleam of polished grey granite.

      A sharp stone underfoot made her jump. Under the tree the ground was less soft, and more rocks and fallen small twigs and branches covered her path. The rain, matching the faster rhythm of her heart, came harder now, not making much sound, just falling.

      She stood listening, waiting, having a sense she should do something, feel something, say something, but not knowing what to do, feel, or say. There were no known rules to cover her plight, digging a serene grave for her father in a rainy night in a strange southern cemetery. What was she doing here anyway?

      Unrealness crashed in on her. She listened. Nothing came but the rain, the slow, sad plop of water on the trees, leaves and on her black vinyl rain-hat. Life would go on, but it shouldn't. She wanted to think profound thoughts but nothing came except an intimation of silliness. However it had happened, her fault or not, she had gotten herself into an awkward position.

      She thought of Michael waiting in the car. His unavoidable thoughts of her, which she had caused, were a mild irritation. She resented him—someone to watch her when she was vulnerable—yet was grateful for his company. With a sudden resolution she moved straight for the car, her feet hitting the ground in long strides. Whatever the cost, she deserved it. She would pay without complaint.

      I can't be sure, she said to Michael as she busied herself with the car, not one hundred percent sure that this is the right plot. I'm ninety five percent convinced, yet this is a time when the wrong five would cost too much. I can't take a chance. She was firm and businesslike. I'll come down alone early in the morning and take care of the digging.

      Chapter Two

      On the drive to the party Christine heard herself chattering, holding inside her brittle fragility. She was a glass object, the tiniest jar could shatter her. And yet she moved, she talked at the party; she was charming and smiling to the host. Her facade was firmly in place. Moved by obscure impulses, or perhaps only the desire not to be alone or dependent on Michael, she closed with glad, not quite fake cries, to flirt provocatively with a male acquaintance.

      Tell me what you've been doing, she demanded, and how you are really. Alert to every nuance in the bearded gentle man she fed back flattering attentiveness, drew him to her in every way she could, looking into his eyes with long stares and kittenish smiles meant only for him.

      When he told how it felt to run a marathon, and she magnified her interest, she had a garish vision, almost a waking dream, of a

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