14. Spelling Lessons

 

There was a pattern in the carpet, wheat sheaves embroidered in golden thread, that I followed, foot over foot, arms extended like a high-wire artist, all the way to the front desk. The sound of a vacuum cleaner came from the mezzanine. The operator remained out of sight. The slender ivy-leaf hands of the large, elegant clock in the middle of the lobby said it was 2:17. I put my hands on the white marble counter, which was cold. There was nobody behind it. A sequence of nature photographs saved the computer’s screen. Sesame seeds rested inside the yellow paper that a fast-food bagel had come wrapped in. White stringy headphones lay beside the computer like something aquatic found on a beach, stranded and dead.

There was no bell to ring. Six minutes passed—a figure I know to be exact because I repeatedly, compulsively, checked the time on the large clock behind me, and then a young woman returned to her post. Her name tag said Brenda. Her pupils were gigantic. She smelled like skunk. Jiggling the mouse, Brenda brought the computer back to life. She checked for email, her phone for texts, and after confirming she’d received no new messages, Brenda turned her attention to me.

“How can we help you?”

I contemplated the many ways I could answer this question. The first that came to mind was tossing my hastily packed suitcase into the air, jabbing my index finger toward the elegant clock, and asking her what she thought I wanted. Another option was to let this be the moment I broke down, the moment I let all of the sadness and fear pour out of me, to cease resisting my ever-increasing sense of feeling unsafe and finally collapse into a weepy puddle of middle-age failure on the embroidered carpet beneath my scuffed leather dress shoes. It occurred to me that the opposite approach was available, too, that I could repeatedly raise and lower my eyebrows, slap my credit card on the marble countertop, and make innuendo-soaked comments that strongly imply a passionate devotion to decadence and vice, behaviour that would culminate in whichever king-sized bed she assigned me. What I actually said surprised us both.

“Forgive my eccentricities as I forgive the eccentricities of others.”

“Excuse me?”

The vacuum from the mezzanine stopped running. The sound of traffic leaked through the rotating doors. I closed my eyes to enjoy the stillness. When I opened them, Brenda was checking her phone.

“A room. I just need a room.”

“For one night?”

“Yes. Possibly more.”

Inside the elevator, the button for the twelfth floor lit up as I pressed it. The doors closed, making a mechanical clatter rarely heard in the digital world. I found it soothing. The elevator began to rise, and something about this motion, so slow and smooth with a clear end in sight, triggered the understanding that I was in the middle of a mid-life crisis. I was doing my best to pretend that I wasn’t having one, but clearly that’s what’s happening to me. And there, in between the third and four floor, it became clear that my mid-life crisis is not the result of dwindling power and limited opportunities, but of sincerely questioning whether I want to keep fighting. Whether the consequences of continuing to strive, both mentally and physically, are sustainable or desirable. A mid-life crisis isn’t provoked by an inability to move upward, or the realization that long-held goals are no longer attainable, but from questioning whether fighting to achieve them is worth it. That the destination I’ve spent my whole life travelling toward may not actually be a city I want to visit, let alone a place where I want to hold the mortgage on a five-bedroom, three-bathroom detached with a nice backyard. And standing behind this difficult realization, eager to gain my attention, was an even bigger one: that my goals were never worth it in the first place.

The elevator continued upward. I remained the only one in it. It was somewhere between the seventh and eighth floor that I lost all hope. I’m not saying that right then and there, as the overhead indicator lights flashed their predicable sequence, I made the decision to type “tie a noose with curtains” or “ways of breaking unbreakable glass” into Google. But for the first time in my life, suicide seemed pragmatic. As the elevator rose, I felt an extraordinary pressure, self-produced and even more insistent for it, to make a decision how I was going to react to this urge before I arrived at my floor.

When the doors opened on the twelfth floor, I knew that the only course of action available to me was my old friend procrastination. So I continued down the hallway and slid the plastic card into the door marked 1207. The lock clicked open. The small room was filled with furniture that had been mass-produced to give the feel of hand-crafted antiques: a writing desk, a wardrobe, a king-sized bed. I stood in the hallway, looking in. When the door grew too heavy to keep holding open, I took my suitcase with me into the bathroom, and from it I retrieved the translucent yellow pill bottle.

The lighting in the bathroom made me squint. I avoided eye contact with the mirror. My intentions were to take a single pill, but it did not take long to realize that this was a metaphoric task, which, if achieved, would have mythic ramifications provoking ironic punishment. It was a dilemma: one pill would eliminate my anxiety, but once the bottle was open, there would be no taking just one pill. So I didn’t open the bottle. I had a long bath. I tried to get myself off but I couldn’t conjure a fantasy, and the overpriced high-production-value pornography available through the in-room entertainment system was so choreographed that actual penetration seemed stagy and fake. The room felt very small. I had to leave it. I rode the elevator up and down for half an hour, until the motion made me seasick. Wobbly, trying to regain my balance, I walked through the silent, Brenda-less lobby. Outside it was cold and I could see my breath. I widened my stance, tipped my head backward, and breathed in and out, watching thin white clouds leak out of my body. I closed my eyes. I listened to the city until I wasn’t dizzy anymore. It was too quiet. The abandoned streets felt unsafe, and I twirled through the circular door, back inside.

Returning to my room, I inspected the emptiness inside every drawer, then had a second bath. I dried myself off. I tossed the towel onto the floor. It fell into the shape of a P. Crouching down, I took the towel and shaped it into an L. With the addition of a washcloth, I made an E. I continued to do this, making letters, using the same towel and washcloth to shape an A, an S, another E. I made an L, an E, a T in sequence. I continued until I’d formed the phrase “please let me sleep,” a silent plea to an absent god, heliographs carved not in of rock but from linens scented with lemon.

Whether superstition or answered prayer, it was in this moment that I finally began to feel sleepy. I closed the curtains, pulled the comforter off the bed, and collapsed face down on the mattress. I was exhausted but still awake minutes later when the sun started to rise. I turned my head and stared at the white wall to the right of the curtains, watching the colours shift and change as more and more light crept around the heavy fabric. When the room was filled with that optimistic yellow light only sunrises provide, I managed to fall asleep.