Eleanor Rigby

Eleanor Rigby, picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,
Lives in a dream.
Waits at the window, wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door,
Who is it for?
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?
Father McKenzie, writing the words of a sermon that no-one will hear,
No-one comes near.
Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there,
What does he care?
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?
Ah, look at all the lonely people.
Ah, look at all the lonely people.
Eleanor Rigby, died in the church and was buried along with her name.
Nobody came.
Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave.
No-one was saved.
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

-The Beatles


It has been near six decades since Nora-lee Coello, an only child, was born, one year since my parents' divorce, five months since reverend John Drummond departed upon his self titled odyssey, and a few weeks since last I vented my emotions upon a keyboard and, essentially, you.
At this point you may destroy any mental image you have of me pounding away with my fingers on the keys in a manic sort of frustration. You see, I need only tap the space bar 'too loudly' and I summon a pitiful barefooted stomp from the floor above followed by the patter of a ghostly nightgowned woman descending the staircase across the cluttered basement to knock viciously on my bedroom door, her various golden rings and bangles making more noise themselves than the knuckles on wood. Even so, she's asleep now and I might even sneak to the power button of my T.V. without retribution.

Indeed it has been one year since my parents' divorce, since we abandoned our home of eighteen years (a certain one of us clinging desperately to the exquisite granite countertops spouting threats about sending the place up in flames), and since my father, brother and I migrated to Port Moody in search of solace. Needless to say, a diet of porkchops, eggs, and red wine did not grant my stomach any such thing. Among my passtimes, which included watching black and white Much Music and wrapping myself in the heavy green blanket of my twin bed, listening to the rats quarrel in the cieling above, was the success I found in forgetting all obligation to the woman who had spent my entire life with me. I say my entire life because much as I tried to get away with anything, breaking a vase, whispering a curse word, or eating without a plate, there was, quite literally, a wailing voice carrying itself out windows and up staircases with supernatural ease to reprimand me for my actions. Even when this voice wasn't there I often imagined it, but it was different in Port Moody. Partly because of John Drummond.

If ever one could imagine the incarnation of the term "nice guys finish last", it would have been very close to the twice-divorced, daughter-less (by association) Santa Clause look-alike that arrived on our porch one April afternoon with a goofy smile on his face. John had spent years as a priest, dabbled in photography, and had mastered being taken advantage of. He was perfect prey for my mother, even the online dating website was in agreeance of this as it ultimately brought the two forlorn baby-boomers into one room. At this point my dad, who had been wandering in a sleepless daze around the kitchen, pulled his bath robe about him, grunted, and returned through the antique glass-paned door into the make-shift prison my mother had created for him in the basement. My dad who had paid the bills. My dad who had and still did work graveyards in 12 hour shifts to support us.
With a twinkle-fingered wave out the window of his Volkswagen, John would rescue my mom from her misery, taking her far and away to his house in Washington for days - sometimes weeks - at a time. She'd return with a smile on her face and something akin to a useless wicker birdcage in her quaking arms. Happy. Useless because the exotic bird we had ordered for my dad's fiftieth birthday had died months earlier of depression and string consumption, another victim of divorce.

You can't tell someone to love, I've learned, yet I haven't put my conclusions into practice just yet. Heartless and afraid of contentment, Eleanor banished the reverend from her bed and her life, letting him drive away in his little volkswagen to Minnesota with one final goodbye. No, you can't tell someone to love, much less to be happy. A bull will wander from his cow if you lead him and a spinster will stare ever out her windows as if life has denied her levity.