Surrender the Keys:
Scenes from a marriage, as directed by my ipod
(If this is too cryptic, skip down to the Author's Note. Otherwise, enjoy the ride!)
Track One
Storm Tossed Man/AM Project
He's empty. He doesn't know how he got this empty. He stands on the edge of the wide blue Pacific Ocean, and feels the wind push him back. He wonders if he let it, would the wind pick him up and lift him into an orb of blue lights?
The beach was never his place, not in either of his lifetimes. He has always gravitated toward this city, this coast, but not for the obvious reasons. He feels more at home on the bridge that crosses over the water than on the shores. Funny how that works.
He thought he'd feel something, something more than this. He was once married to her, her death should mean something to him. He lost her so long ago, though, it barely registers. But he is here, because it was Lillian's place.
Track Two
Lost and Found/Adrienne Pierce
She remembers believing that all the difficult decisions were in her past. Most of the time, she thinks she was an idiot for not foreseeing the problems ahead of them. And yet – every time some new challenge, some new tragedy arrives to rip them apart, they always say the same thing: We've survived worse.
Sometimes it's true, but usually it isn't. But she's still here, he's still here, and that's got to count for something.
Track Three
Do I Love You/Aztec Camera
"So is the car packed?" Piper asks for the thirty-seventh time.
"Yes. The car is packed."
"Have the boys used the bathroom? Did you put sunscreen on Melinda? Do you have that CD they like, not the one that drives us crazy, but the other one, with the funny voices?"
"Piper," Leo says, his voice stretched to the limits of his frustration, "you can keep asking me questions, from now until the sun goes down, and the answer is always going to be yes. Honey, just get in the car. Whatever we've forgotten, we'll survive without."
Track Four
Halfway Home/Billy Pilgrim
The sky is that beautiful color it gets in the half hour or so before the sun sets in the summer. The car is quiet; in the rear view mirror, he can see all three of his children have fallen asleep in the backseat. Beside him, his wife rests her head on his arm, her eyes drifting closed.
In ten years, Wyatt and Chris and Melinda will be teenagers, fighting over who gets to drive and stretching the rules, pushing his and Piper's patience. In fifteen years, they'll be in college, in the process of moving out of the house, half in, half out on their own. In twenty-five years, they'll have kids of their own.
Track Five
To Be Alone with You/Sufjan Stevens
If you remind me of this day, I will kill you, Piper says.
Track Six
Footsteps/Pearl Jam
Phoebe loved the beach, and Prue hated it. This was just one of the hundred thousand things her sisters disagreed upon, and, like with most of them, like with motorcycles and flan and wearing red with pink and boys, Piper developed her own neutral stance on the beach. She didn't have particularly strong feelings either way.
But her children? Adored it. From an early age, they fell in love with the ocean, would beg their parents to take them to the beach, even when it was cold or rainy or completely the wrong time, wrong place. She and Leo would try to bribe them with everything else: amusement parks, museums, the wharf to see the sea lions, and still, they insisted upon the beach.
Track Seven
Love and Memories/OAR
The bravest and most incredible and hardest thing he'd ever done, in either lifetime, broke every rule he'd ever lived by, completely annihilated his entire moral and ethical code, utterly destroyed every belief he'd ever held. In saving her life, he destroyed himself, and he was naïve enough to think it'd be enough.
But it wasn't. He gave up everything for her, absolutely everything, so she could live again, and she looked at him with those gorgeous brown eyes of hers and said, "I'm with Dan now."
Track Eight
Dave Matthews/Crash Into Me
They sit in the backyard, together in one of the Adirondack chairs Paige bought and then left behind, wrapped in blankets they were smart enough to take with them this time. It is winter, and it's cold for San Francisco, unseasonably so, even. Inside, their children sleep in the warmth of their bedrooms, unaware of their parents' ridiculous need to see the stars together.
"Look at that one," Piper says, pointing. "What's that one called?"
"I don't know," Leo says. "I can't really tell from here."
"Well, make something up."
"OK. It's the ninth moon of Caledonia. Is that good?"
"That's perfect."
Track Nine
If You Want Me/Marketa Irglova with Glen Hansard
His skin is warm beneath her hands. Which is good; she's developed this irrational fear that she's going to wake up one morning and find him dead beside her. Mortality, for all its benefits – the biggest one being that she and their children won't grow ancient while he remains perpetually in his twenties – has a few major downfalls.
Warm is good. Warm means alive. She's not used to this, not used to having to worry about him.
Track Ten
Something I Can Never Have/Nine Inch Nails
It gets colder. She takes four steps into the dark room, and wishes she had her sisters beside her. This whole idea – going for a vanquish, even a simple vanquish that needs neither a power of three spell or a potion, just a lower level demon who she can blow up in her sleep if she wanted – seemed like a good one at the time. Prue is in Portland on a photo shoot, and Phoebe is, well, Phoebe, still heartbroken but still not admitting it, so Piper decided to handle this one on her own.
She's already regretting her decision.
She sighs, looks around her, and then opens her mouth.
"Leo."
Her husband materializes before her almost instantly, as if he was lurking in the atmosphere above her, waiting for her call.
"Are you OK?" He says.
"Yeah," she answers. "But I want to make sure I stay that way."
* * *
A/N: This is based on an extremely fun exercise, a version of which was posted by the incomparable Ryeloza about a week ago, in which you set your ipod on random and write during the length of the first ten songs it lands on, with each drabble lasting only as long as the song. Hence, the disjointed nature of this -- threads that start and stop, and incomplete thoughts and scenes. Hey, just like real life. Anyway, read Ryeloza's "Hodegepodge" for the complete rules, and give it a spin: it's an extraordinarily fun writing exercise (if a tiny bit frustrating). And teaches you things, like, wow, I'm not really a very fast writer! Poor Sufjan deserved more than one sentence.
If you do try it, definitely let me know: I'd love to read more of these.