#ALSO HARRIET LOL hey girl šŸ’…šŸ’…
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coffeeandcalligraphy Ā· 1 year ago
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I havenā€™t read this section of Feeding Habits in probably 3 years & tell me how I wrote ALLLL of this before I watched Hannibal
The confessional smells rank, like rotting paper and expired cologne, its corners seedy with overuse. Scratches mar the fabric he rests his elbows on, like someone clawed into it while reliving their sins, track marks on the floor from a rainy day. He canā€™t imagine anyone else but him in this small box, caged in by the lattice, mumbling incoherent sins to the priest he hasnā€™t even committed. Stealing a set of glass eyeballs from a garage sale. Forgetting his wedding anniversary. Missing Easter Sunday mass to go whale watching. He doesnā€™t sign himself at the right times or speak at the right times or thank the priest at the right times. He lies when heā€™s asked if heā€™s lied since his last confession. He mentions nothing of drinking with Anya, of not saving the sheep or the bunnies even though he knew the outcome of their lives without finishing the program. Of being a wicked child, of knowing wicked children, of not knowing the difference between wickedness and innocence, and which one he learned first. He says his name is Luka. He works at a law firm. Heā€™s married to a Harriet, a seamstress or a stock broker or an antiques traderā€”he doesnā€™t know. He likes golfing, parcheesi, drinking martinis on yachts. Heā€™s never overindulged, heā€™s loyal to his woman, he wants three kids and a house with finished floors and no neighbours. Heā€™s a good father, a gentle father, a careful father, no wickedness, just an empty shell of goodness, like a father should be. His father is retired, and visits him on weekendsā€”they play checkers, paint birdhouses, keep a distance but toast with spirits he canā€™t pronounce. Everything is goodā€”itā€™s all good, all good. Thatā€™s not a sin, the priest should say but they laughā€”itā€™s good to be good. Children are good, marriage is good, fathers are good, everything an iteration of good. By the time his confession is over and heā€™s well on his way out of the church mumbling I am heartily sorry, he believes his lies are trueā€”heā€™s absolved into someone new, Luka married to Harriet, three kids, an empty shell, dreamily stumbling through a house with finished floors thatā€™s actually just the sidewalk until a woman passing by with two small children has to help him sit on the curb.
She asks if he needs something to drink, if he needs someone to call, and emerges with a half-empty bottle of sparkling water and a cell phone. She asks whatā€™s wrong with his eye, and he doesnā€™t know whatā€™s wrong with anythingā€”with eyes, with children, with sins, with confessions, with baptisms, with orange juice, with madeleines, with wickedness, with practicing how long he can breathe underwater because he knows itā€™s possible just like walking on it.
One of the children, hair pulled into two plaits secured with pearlescent butterflies, pokes at her mother and asks if heā€™s crazy. Her mother shushes her at the same time her older sister shows him a cool trick she learned with a toy convertible. Its wheels whir. Lonan gasps. The girl says, ā€œEven crazy people think Iā€™m gifted,ā€ and wheels the car again. People stop to watch. Church bells gong an elegy heā€™s sure heā€™s heard before. The womanā€™s sparkling water dribbles from his mouth and dampens his dress shirt. Sun eclipses his face and eats at his throat like a parasite, like it knows all the unclean things about him, a watcher, an eyeball, a scorching little thing that bullets through his neck like the tooth of a wolf. The woman shushes her children and asks if heā€™s got a health problem, a drug problem, any problem, and he could say yes to all three but instead keeps repeating I am heartily sorry, I am heartily sorry. And when she does call someone, no one he knows, he leans against the cool pavement, cranes his neck to the sky, and parts his lips so the sunlight fills his mouth.
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