The Sunday List of Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

fine—determination, survival, the elegant grace of a woman who has come into her own and who is very nearly ready to push through the last barriers she has set in front of her own life.
    “Let’s run naked through the neighborhood,” Frannie says, charged from the conversation and moving her feet off the table so she can reach in and touch Connie’s hand. “Are you ready?”
    “Sure, but are the neighbors ready?”
    “Good point. We’d end up having to do CPR on all of them, and some of them would die, and then we’d have to write detailed reports, and there would be lawsuits. Oh, shit, just forget it, we’d better call Daniel before we blow ourselves to hell in this singing house.”
    “Can you just have him come over tomorrow?” Connie asks, squeezing her friend’s hand. “I want one more night of this ear candy. I love the house whispering to me like this, and it’s been good company, maybe even inspiration.”
    After O’Brien leaves, Connie sits in her kitchen for a long time, listening to the faint line of music and smoothing her fingers across the list, the first three numbers, that she has spread out on the table in front of her.
    1.
Stop being afraid.
    2.
Let go. Stop holding on to things so tightly. Loosen your grasp. Be honest.
    She gives herself a B-plus for numbers one and two, decides that #1 might be in her pocket for a very long time, and then turns her attention to #3.
    Get rid of SHIT. Start with the garage.
    Connie’s laugh overtakes her musical house, floats through her gray hair, wraps itself around her ankles and seems to fill up every inch of a home that she honestly—see #2—can admit has become a lonely haven for a single, middle-aged woman, who often acts like the shit—see #3—but is indeed scared shitless.
    “Cleaning out the garage,” she says, still laughing, “is going to be the easiest thing I have written on this whole damned list.”

2. Let go. Stop holding on to things so tightly. Loosen your grasp. Be honest.
    2 ½. Do not apologize for keeping this one on the list.
    T he orchestra in the walls turns out to be the upgraded cable service, installed by a man who should not be let out in public with a screwdriver. Somehow he has managed to cross wires and pipe a 24-hour international radio station into every speaker that has been hammered into place throughout Connie’s house by her daughters’ boyfriends during the past 20 years. Although the wiring is not dangerous, it has to go because Connie Nixon is beginning to answer the songs, which are often muted by the walls, plaster, and the boxes of junk stacked against them.
    The Irishman, Daniel, and his friend Al are so intrigued by the wiring, loops of cable wrapped up in string, tape, and in some places yarn, that they spend hours crawling around Connie’s house with pliers and drills in their hands as they unscrew vents and talk as if they have discovered buried treasure.
    “Al, get over here, this one is looped around a gas pipe,” Daniel shouts excitedly from the bathroom. “It’s sitting behind the plumbing and I can’t figure out how in the hell they got it back so far into the wall. It’s kinda cool.”
    The men laugh as they work and Connie watches them while she drinks coffee, works on her five-minute retirement speech, and shocks herself with an unexpected slice of pleasure.
    She likes seeing men crawl around her house with their butt cracks showing.
    Daniel hears her laughing in the kitchen and as he walks past he leans over, sets his hands on the table, and asks her what is so funny.
    Frannie O’Brien’s husband and their two boys have been Connie’s handymen for years. They have jump-started cars, installed gutters, helped her put up and take down her window screens, trapped mice and squirrels and one time a wild cat in the basement. They have pretty much been on call since Connie’s ex-husband got sidetracked with a new wife and more kids, and Connie made a conscious decision not to replace