Chapter Twelve

There had been a period of time that Flora waded through wherein she felt unlike herself in ways she still could not articulate. If pressed to describe it, she would say there was an amorphous, tar-covered beast hovering just behind her. The visual idea was certainly conjured from some horror movie she had seen at some point, one that likely featured a glutinous, hideous, murderous monster. This creature would lurk nearby, looking at her—though it had no eyes, per se, since it didn’t inhabit any kind of recognizable being—in a threatening manner as if to say, “If you don’t pay attention, I will engulf you.” Though it was not as gruesome and dramatic as all that in its fruition, it was a way for her to assign something solid to the unnamable feeling.

This happened for about two months, shortly after President Kennedy was shot. She remembers it being in juxtaposition to that tragedy because she first explained for herself the appearance of the beast on that terrible event, and then, when the general public seemed to be going back to business as usual, she capitalized on it if anyone asked her why she looked glum or extraordinarily weary, and she would tell them, “Oh I think I’m just having a hard time bouncing back after the whole ordeal.” And they would seem to understand and nod solemnly. She felt some self-denigration in using this as an excuse, because she hated to think that people would see her as weak and sensitive or that she was somehow indicting them for being so insensitive as to be feeling back to normal. And poor Jackie. She truly was still reeling from it, no doubt, and it wasn’t fair of Flora to pretend to be. Flora wondered if Jackie had the beast threatening her, or possibly in the throes of engulfing her.

The beast began showing up often enough during this period that Flora would wake up in the morning and look for it first thing to assess whether or not it was going to be one of those days. For days on end it was, so anticipated and dependable, in fact, that it became a ritual. She had to check herself sometimes, to make sure it wasn’t just habit, that she wasn’t just used to seeing it—feeling it—and therefore going along on assumption. But even if she tried to ignore it or pretend it wasn’t present and accounted for, within the span of time it took her to reach the bathroom, she would have confirmation that it was not an illusion. The confirmation came in the form of a feeling that she was dragging a weight, as if the beast had one of its gooey tentacles around her ankle and was forcing her to drag it along. The realization that it was real, that it was in fact still around, made her feel even heavier so that she was sure she was walking bent over like an ancient person. But when she would get to the mirror in the bathroom, which reflected her from the waist up, she looked her usual self, albeit with puffy morning eyes.

She would pull herself through these days. She didn’t feel especially tired or even sad, but just—the only word that she could summon was “gray.” It seemed like an insufficient and lazy adjective, but it was as close as she could get to its character. Not only did she feel, and sometimes almost actually see, the dark blob loitering only a few maddening feet away, but the air seemed to hold a gray tincture. Even on a sunny day there was a scrim between her and everything else, like looking at a museum diorama through an aged, scuffed acrylic shield. She was numb and slow and it was the only time she recalled that her inner smoldering anger was nowhere to be found. The few moments that she could rise above herself and see that that regular part of her was missing in action, she felt a spark of relief and wondered if this was the better way to be. But when she imagined someone turning up the dimmer switch so that she could get a glimpse of the way life was before, tense and angry but with sharp contrast and bright colors, she had no doubt that that was the better way. Even though she could see it by imagining the light and colors, she couldn’t get fully back to it.

She went through motions and did what was necessary during her days, but without feeling anything—no annoyance or worry or impatience or overpopulation of thoughts. But still it was clear that the laundry list of things she was used to carrying around was still lighter than whatever this was. Those things—the dread of so-and-so’s imminent wedding; the dripping powder room faucet; owing a phone call to Grace; an overdue physical exam—could be ticked off and managed or at least acknowledged and assigned recognizable words. Not so with this. Some days during this period, she would sit on the edge of the bed in the evening and deliberately concentrate on things that seemed to be knocking from the inside of her skull, small things, things that would appear on the regular-life laundry list, and she would restack them in neat piles, as neat and manageable as actual laundry. She got to unintentionally calling this practice “making up her mind” as in the way one makes up a room. She would convince herself that it was just a matter of decluttering her head and realizing that the only thing troubling her was that she had a lot of things to attend to, and by looking at them and giving them a moment in the light, she would see they didn’t amount to much and that it was pointless to give them more than their due. It made her feel a little calmer, as she knew if she didn’t undertake that mundane sort of housecleaning, there was posilutely, absotively—as Will would say—no chance of her sleeping. Because in the dark and deep night, she knew that the list of stupid things would swirl around in her mind, latching themselves onto the bigger, darker thoughts—guilt about her relationship with Abby; remorse about her job which attached itself to resentment that her friends never seemed to feel guilty for not working, maybe because they never had held a job, which fueled more resentment at them and at her uncritical fidelity to the ethics of her family of origin; meaningless life; death—and get swallowed up by them, giving the larger thoughts fuel to grow so large that there was no room for anything else.

After several months of living with the beast, long enough so that Flora was growing accustomed and resigned to its inscrutable presence, she found one morning that it was gone. She poked and tested it, sitting on the edge of the bed, overemphasizing the burden of the task, and she couldn’t activate it. She felt light and impatient to get on with the day. The world did, indeed, look brighter. The problem, however, from that day nearly ten years ago until the present, was that she worried about its reappearance. And a few times since, not attached to any triggering events that she was aware of, she sensed its nearness. She sometimes thought the dread of its return might be worse than she remembered its presence actually being.

One of these times, she was in the car with Will driving to visit friends at the lake, an occasion for which she would be expected to be cheerful and chatty. It was a late sunny afternoon, and she was in the passenger’s seat holding a glass bowl of potato salad covered in tin foil. She had been quiet while Will prattled on about a new patient, a man who had intrusive thoughts about murdering his family while they slept, when she thought she noticed a cloud pass by the sun. But there were no clouds. She was instantly anxious, recalling the old feeling in a flash. She felt a flutter of panic in her throat. She told herself it was the cold glass bowl in her lap that was making her feel nauseous. But she was not convincing herself. She was mute. No, it can’t be. And not now, especially. Esther and Lou. She had to socialize and they were far from home. She felt like she had just been donned with a lead blanket. And that she might even want to cry. She told herself she was making something out of nothing, that it was just a tree or a sign that blocked the sun for a moment and the cold bowl pressing on her abdomen. She was making it worse with her fear.

They arrived at Esther and Lou’s and she steeled herself. She had faked cheer all those months back then, and she could eke it out today, too. They greeted their friends, went to sit on the deck overlooking the lake, and thanks to the exuberance of this particular couple, she was deprived of private thought for the next four hours. By the time she and Will were driving home in the dark, their friends’ talkativeness and good natures had left a pleasant glow on them so that they chattered amiably themselves for the entire hour ride back. Flora had forgotten the threat from earlier in the day.

She could not rest on her laurels, though, and go believing that the beast was slain, like it had just been gasping a few dying breaths. And in fact Flora did feel a sense of it, not when Will was in Vietnam, which would have been logical and a proper story to use to explain herself to others if her behavior and demeanor was affected, but just after he returned. It was the morning after his late homecoming in the taxicab. They’d had a lovely reunion and she was so relieved to have him home safe, having genuinely missed him. She had been fully awake and fidgeting for hours waiting for his arrival and as soon as she got into bed with Will already snoring beside her, she fell asleep instantly, for the first time in years. She felt as if she had completed a great mounting accomplishment and her entire body was weary and relaxed and the sleep felt deserved beyond compare.

Will was not in the bed when she woke up, as it was already 8:00, an astonishing time for her to wake up, a full two hours later than her usual. Though she had gotten a considerable dose of rest, she could feel something, not the usual gray film or the proximity of the beast, but a heaviness that was all too familiar. “Dammit,” she said aloud. “Fuck off, you rat fink.” Then she laughed aloud. She remembered the first time she heard “fuck” in juxtaposition with “off,” and she had been delighted. It was out of the mouth of Alan Levy’s son, Steve, and he had used it to curse at a bee that was terrorizing him on the patio, where he and Abby sat. They didn’t know Flora was at the kitchen sink whose window was just half a story above them.

“Fuck off!” he shouted at the bee. Abby laughed. Flora laughed, but they couldn’t hear her. From that point on, whenever Flora had occasion to think, “fuck you,” the usual pairing, she now thought, “fuck off.” It might be that this was the first time she said it aloud. It felt like a talisman. The beast, if he was approaching, retreated.

She could draw no parallels between the first incident and the two almost-incidents. If she took the initiative to share it with Will, he would most certainly have offered a theory to explain it. His theory would somehow, she was sure, indicate something she was or wasn’t doing, instead of something that was happening to her.

After the post-assassination bout, while she may not have thought of the beast on a daily basis, she did move about the world cautiously, as though walking on a balance beam. If she wasn’t careful, she thought, she could fall. But what she was being careful of, she was not sure. It was related to reining in her thoughts and feelings, even more than she already did, to not let them take control. She honestly believed that if she let herself think what she really believed, that nearly everything in life was pointless, that the beam itself would fall away, and she would be in freefall to an uncertain demise. She knew exactly that feeling, because she had recurring dreams of being in her car, unable to reach the brake pedal and flying off a bridge or an abruptly ending highway, and she would wake with a pounding heart. So she buoyed herself not with cheerful thoughts, since that was not in her repertoire, but optimistic thoughts and a good deal of bootstrap denial. She would be fine and could walk tall and straight and most of the time make believe that everything was fine, or good enough. But she thought that perhaps her constant low-level fatigue was due to the relentless resistance against her true feelings—or, as she frequently maintained, the knowledge—and fear of losing the ability to stay on the beam.

As ritually as Will did his deep knee bends every night before retiring, his joints cracking with each dip, so Flora maintained the ritual of making up her mind when she got into bed, to seal off the gaps where the beast might slip in.