I roll down the windows of the Montero and crank Boston up. They understand about indecision. They don’t care if they get behind. Something something about competition. Yeah. All we want is to have our peace of mind. Peace of mind. Yeah.
And maybe the head to quit hurting.
I go to the grocery store. Buy a roast, some red potatoes, canned green beans, and Unisom. It was almost as strong as Sominex but cheaper perhaps because of a more subtle, nondescript box. Some moron designed the other packaging with hard-to-read cartoons in color schemes of screaming reds and blues. They’re sleeping pills, for God’s sake. Everything about them ought to induce calm and quiet.
A Unisom box is mostly white, the directions on the back not all that taxing. I decide it must be a sign. Big Mama believed signs from God were everywhere. Why not pharmaceutical packaging? She also believed in the Trinity.
I take three boxes.
After cooking the food in my new home, I take it to my ex-home, where my ex-husband and our kids will find it when they get in from the lake. They love a roast beef dinner, even if it’s covered with my lumpy gravy. Out of reflex I look for my dog, Jenks. He’s not around to answer when I yell, “Hi Jenks!” anymore. After fifteen years of hanging about, he up and wandered off.
I drive the mile back to my new house. It is spring and sunny, a nice May day. I open the first box of Unisom. To sleep will be divine. I reach on top of the fridge and locate the tequila miniature. It’s a souvenir from my 30th birthday. My husband had surprised me with a Caribbean cruise. I don’t know how much to drink in order to double the pills’ potency. I wedge my tongue down into the small opening and get a little on my tongue. It tastes god-awful. Maybe normal strength will have to do.
The liquor doesn’t just burn, it tastes like rotten wood. Not that I’ve tasted rotten wood. But if I had, the wood might actually taste better than this. I might as well sip a little rubbing alcohol. Yum.
The pills are gelcaps; they dissolve faster.
I don’t know how many to take. So I take two boxes, managing to sip some tequila in between. I decide against downing rubbing alcohol because it sounds too crazy. I may be high-strung but I’m not that crazy. I’m not even suicidal. What I want is to close my eyes and finally rest. The good sleep.
Fatigue, I’ve learned, can sabotage any coping mechanism. Sleep deprivation is the leading cause of disease in the country. It’s sure made my head hurt. Given enough time, it can strip a body to the quick.
After the Unisom and tequila, something occurs to me. I won’t wake up tired—I won’t wake up at all. Unbelievable. I’m about to be dead. It’s so unbelievable I want to call someone. You’re not gonna believe this. . . . On second thought, better not. They may think I’m nuts.
Dead. Dead. Dead. What a word. It rhymes with everything: Bed. Fed. Head. Jed. Keds. Led. Med. Ned. Ped. Red. Said. Ted. Ved. Wed. Zed. Dead.
And if I’m dead, my body will be dead. Spread out on the tile-stamped linoleum like a bad throw rug. One that doesn’t even match. Well, this is unexpected. It won’t do at all to be findable so I’ve got to destroy the evidence.
A bit tricky to do before there is any.
Glad there’s no CSI Alabama.
I thought this was going to fix things not cause more problems. God knows I can’t have the kids hearing that their mother OD’d. So I decide that it needs to look like an accident. The deck’s not high enough. I don’t have a gas oven. Maybe the washing machine agitator and my hair could fight it out and I’d be spun into oblivion. Or I could fall into the dryer and wind up like the missing socks—just gone. Or I could be vacuuming my car inside the garage and trip over the vacuum hose, fall on the concrete and crack my skull. That could happen and then Mother could finally quit worrying that it would. And if I’m in the garage with the overhead door down and the car was running when I tripped, then that’d add carbon monoxide poisoning. That’s it. That’ll work. Not bad for spur of the moment.
I go into the garage, crank up the car, get the wet/dry vac and try to trip myself on its long rubber hose. I’m good at falling. I do it all the time, even when I’m not trying. Much harder when trying. I step back over the hose and give it another go. Okay. Back again. Once more. Twice more. What’s the deal! I manage to trip a dozen times a day. I make it look easy. Just one little trip is all I need. Just one. How hard can this be? I couldn’t even jump rope as a kid like I’m jumping back and forth across the gray hose now. I could probably jump HOTS without tripping. I try for the better part of what feels like a year. But I cannot for the life of me trip myself on purpose. I simply will not go down.
The car’s probably about out of gas by now. And the engine has turned the garage into a sauna. I’m sweating. Probably starting to smell. Not acceptable, either. Under no circumstances do I want to smell bad when I’m found. Plus my head’s starting to pound. Maybe I’ll just lie down by the hose and sorta bash my head on the concrete. Who’ll know I didn’t fall?
I pull the hem of my bright turquoise linen dress down so I’m not showing too much thigh and lie down. The concrete is cool, hard. My face is sweaty. Wouldn’t do to crack the cheek side. That’d leave an unsightly bruise. Sightly, not unsightly is my style, not because I’m vain—well, I might be a little—but at this point a girl’s gotta think about such things. If not now, oh Lord, then when?
This leaves the back of the head, where the headache is. If I ram it back onto the concrete floor it’s only going to exacerbate the pain. Hard to drum up enthusiasm to crack my already throbbing head. This whole process is not nearly as restful as I’d imagined. All I want is to go to sleep, to get some rest. Not a whole lot to ask for. I mean real rest. The good sleep.
Which, after exceeding the recommended dosage, I should feel at least somewhat sleepy by now. I don’t. Not at all. Probably I got the box of blanks. That’s what I get for cutting corners. Should’ve splurged and bought the more expensive kind. I turn the car off, put up the vacuum and smell myself. I’m borderline for needing a shower. Probably, though, I can get by with another layer of Secret and a sprinkle of talcum powder.
I apply the toiletries and decide to find somewhere out of the way to lie down. At least where no one will trip over me. The closet. My walk-in closet. If I can get in it. I’m not what’s called neat. I’m sure not cleaning it out now, though, just to find some corner to crawl in.
On second thought, maybe just a little straightening wouldn’t hurt. I start at the bottom. After rearranging my shoes, I separate the pants and shirts from the dresses and skirts. I’ve always wanted to be wire hanger-free. If not now, then when? I switch the wire hangers out with plastic ones. I untwist a wire hanger and thread the rest of them on it, and fasten it, a giant clothespin. I put a note to take them back to the cleaners because they’ve finally started recycling wire hangers. Then I arrange the rehung clothes by color. I never knew I had so much black. And hot pink.
I’m still not sleepy. Patience. Be patient. At this rate, I’ll have time to develop some. But no time to use it. Ha. I lie down in the corner to wait. I hate waiting. I’m waiting-challenged.
I remember my husband’s aunt, who overdosed but didn’t die because she vomited. After this much work on my closet, I don’t want to get puke in it. So I wrap myself in drycleaner bags and start counting sheep.
It’s hot, very plastic-y, inside them. Harder to breathe than it was in the garage. Mind you, I’ve got nothing against breathing. I’m actually rather fond of it. It’s the fatigue I don’t like. And sheep are so cliché. I don’t want to go out counting clichés.
I’m on 25-Mississippi when I remember that my daughter’s elementary school graduation is next week. She’s playing the piano as the accompanist when they march in and out.
“But you don’t play piano,” I’d said when she came in from school and announced she was trying out for the honor.
“It’s only one song. Surely I can learn a single song by then.”
She won, beating out real pianists.
I can’t miss that. Unacceptable, altogether, unspeakably so. Must cheer for my counterfeit musician.
I unwrap myself and kick myself all the way to the hospital emergency room. By the time I park, I’m yawning. The revolving doors are a little tricky. Yes. Not yes. Yes. Not yes. I close my eyes and just go for it. I’m in. Now I have to get out. Now. Not now. Now. Not now. I’m out. And a little dizzy. I finally get the ER registrar’s attention. She looks nice enough, a little blurry around the edges, maybe, but nice. Perhaps she’s melting.
“Can I help you?” she barks. Her voice hasn’t melted, that’s for sure.
On second thought, maybe I’ll just go back home and lie down. If I could’ve, I probably would’ve. But my balance was getting a little suspect. I cleared my throat and leaned in.
“This is rather embarrassing,” I start, only to have her interrupt me.
“No, this is an Emergency room in a Hospital,” she says, like I can’t read all the signs. “We take care of Emergencies here. Is this an Emergency?”
I didn’t know someone could speak in capital letters.
No, ma’am, not an Emergency anymore, I think, determining to go outside and throw up rather than listen to her bark at me some more. But the legs don’t move.
“I’ve done something stupid,” I whisper. Perhaps this admission would win me something, anything, close to compassion.
It didn’t.
“Here.” She shoves some papers through the window opening and topped them with a pen, the click kind. “Fill them out. Back and front. Then bring them back.”
I was staring at the stack but it was the pen that was giving me trouble. I couldn’t get the clicker to go down. And she was watching me which wasn’t helping. My thumb was aiming at the clicker but it was missing the whole pen.
“Stupid?” she asked.
I nodded.
“How stupid?” she asked.
“Two boxes.”
“With water?”
“Tequila.”
“Wheelchair at window three!”
That’s how you get out of triplicate hell. But it doesn’t get you out of hospital gown purgatory.
“Here,” the orderly said, handing me the gown. I’d gotten into my room and up onto the examining table. He closed the door and left.
Even less-than-coherent, I knew my dress—a short, tight, one-zipper deal that made my ass look good—was supposed to come off first before the gown went on. But apparently my dress had developed boa constrictor tendencies and the sweat wasn’t helping. Nor could I just beam myself out of it. I would have to get down off the table in order to get it unzipped. Apparently having lost all trust in my brain to get timely messages delivered to my extremities, I whispered this to my legs: Need a little help here. Gotta get down. Nothing major. No decathalon or anything. Not even walking. And in this room. Standing only.
The legs are amused; they like a good pun. They’re even more amused at the thought of standing. I think of an alternative. Maybe I can slide right off. Piece of cake. Sliding is easy. My sisters and I line up and do the electric slide every chance we get. We subject bystanders to our version, not because it’s so much fun for us, but because we’re so good at it that we’re sure everyone will be enthralled. Even an hour and fourteen hundred front-back-together-front-back-side-side-slide-turn-turn-slides later we’re sure the enthrallment has only increased. And what I need to do isn’t remotely as complicated. It’s music-less. Sliding unplugged. All I have to do is slide off the table. It can’t be that hard. And it wasn’t. But the floor was.
When I finally manage to get myself into an upright position, I make a note to myself. Unfortunately I can’t remember it; I’m sure it was very profound.
I was now sore and no closer to getting the gown on.
I know there was some wrestling. I remember throwing my arm over my shoulder once because it scared me so bad I thought I’d die. There it was coming at me fast, out of nowhere, a flailing arm. I couldn’t help but scream.
Luckily no one heard me. Talk about embarrassing. Try explaining that.
Then I garment-wrestled some more. And after quite a long time, I changed my mind. I wished like hell someone had heard me scream. If they had, I could have hijacked them and made them unzip my damn dress. By now I was sweating three times as much as I did in the garage and my turquoise linen sleeveless is still snugly on and zipped while the hospital gown has begun to slightly resemble macramé.
So I decided to layer; after all it’s considered prudent, a sign of being prepared for changing elements these day, Plus it would simplify things. Thoreau would like that. Put the gown over the dress. Probably no one will notice anyway. And it’ll take care of the hospital gown mooning epidemic.
At some point I know I was in the corner with my arms in the air. Then I’m on my arms and I think the corner’s in the air. Then I’m sure I’m in the air and the corner has left altogether. I hate when things disappear. I miss easy.
Having gotten the gown caught around my head, I’m muttering shitdamnhellpissfuck when the orderly walks back in.
“Excuse me,” he says.
I try to smile through my macramé burka. I consider explaining that this is the swearer’s version of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
I say instead, “I’m experiencing a wardrobe malfunction.”
“I’d say you are,” he says.
I can’t tell if he’s smiling at me and thinking I’m cuter than Janet Jackson or not because all I can see is his shape through the thin cotton.
“Would you like some help?” Oh God no. Not the pity. Anything but the pity. Always with the help comes the pity.
What I’d like is a do-over. To not be here, tangled in this hospital gown straitjacket being pitied.
I’m smelling something strong, but not ammonia. Then I realize I’m not smelling anything at all. I am feeling something in my nose. And fuck is it ever strong. I open my eyes. A doctor’s clicking her tongue at me. She’s asking me questions. Ouch. Whoashit. Whoaaaaaa!
“This will be uncomfortable,” the doctor says, as if the PVC pipe she’s ramming up my nose might be something other than. Now I really can’t breathe and it hurts much worse than the headache. I came here for help and get this instead. I cannot fucking believe this. My face is never going to be the same. Now my nose is going to be the size of Texas. Maybe as screwed up, too.
“Are you trying to kill me?” I ask, struggling to rescue my nose from what, by the sound of things, must be a helium pump.
And the doctor laughs. She, swear to God, starts laughing.
But not hard enough to quit ruining my nose.
I want to ask when she’s going to pump my stomach, tell me I was stupid, and send me on my way.
But it’s hard to sound serious when you sound like Alvin the chipmunk.
So this is my life. I’m lying flat on my back in an emergency room with a doctor standing over me threading my nose with tubing that is filling me up like the Hindenburg.
And then, in my peripheral vision I see my dress on the white counter. The gown’s there, too.
Yeah. This is my life. And I’m naked.