She looked out the side window as she placed her fingers against her temples and tried to press away the pain.
“I been thinking maybe I can get a start on it next spring. Once the crops are planted.”
He looked over at her, but her eyes were closed tight.
“Thought maybe once I get it done, I can get my mom moved back out here with us. Give you a little something to do. Looking after her a bit. Wouldn’t be by yourself so much anymore.”
He looked over at her again, sighed, then notched down a gear as they approached their driveway.
The truck swung onto the driveway and, as they crawled toward the trailer, she looked at it as if for the first time. Faded to the hazy blue of a cataracted eye and improved only by a crinkled glazing of tin foil across the living room window to counteract the summer heat, the trailer did not do a disservice to the other abominations that littered the yard. A smattering of old tires had been thrown on top of its tin roof in an effort to hold it down, and the wind, unable to unearth them, had blown them full of dirt instead, a motley array of thistles and grasses and stink weeds sprouting up from their centers. Victoria helped herself slowly from the truck and made her way up the stairs and into the trailer, a tattered throw rug tangling briefly around her feet like a mangy mongrel welcoming her home. She leaned against the porch wall to slide out of her shoes, looked around her and observed wryly, but without amusement that, like it or not, she was home.
Bobby attributed his wife’s insolent behavior to a belated teenage rebellion. He responded by clamping his fist down tighter, watching her warily for any seeds of resistance that would need to be crushed before they again found root. He need not have bothered. She felt deflated, no more able to envision flying free than a scrap of paper stepped firmly into the mud. She walked forward through the days, each one identical to the one past, the one future, save for the constantly changing date of the wall calendar. In the evenings she placed herself into the rocking chair and rocked herself into the night when at last sleep would claim her, and Bobby, finding her bent and broken as a discarded doll, would carry her off to bed.
Life had become a spectator sport, observed from a distance. From the outside looking in. She moved through it methodically. Ate. Drank. Sometimes even laughed. But her reactions were born of an almost involuntary response toward life rather than any real desire to participate within it.
Bobby had taken to rising before her in the morning, and she lay in bed waiting as he ran through his morning routine. Listened to his brushing and showering, peeing and farting before he moved on into the kitchen. Her mind was as sluggish and thick as the fog hanging outside the dark morning windows. She tried to convince herself out of bed, her body feeling as if it had magnetized toward the earth. Dragging herself into the abused bathroom, she brushed her teeth, washed her face, then gave a halfhearted struggle against tangled hair before giving up and stuffing it away in a bun.
The static of the TV crackled through the air as Bobby settled himself in front of the morning news with a cup of instant coffee, the instant intended to placate him only long enough for her to get up and brew him a real pot. Shrugging into yesterday’s clothes she wandered into the kitchen, reaching to turn on the light that was all ready on. She was greeted by a wall of unwashed dishes that somehow kept managing to elude her. Indeed, it seemed more and more that the mundane tasks of her life kept eluding her, stacking up against her, the simple requirement of folding a basket of laundry more than enough to drive her back to the comforts of bed at four in the afternoon. Slowly she made Bobby his breakfast and delivered it to the floor by his feet, receiving a guttural grunt in lieu of a thank-you. She watched as he gulped down the food like a half-starved husky, barely bothering to chew even the long, greasy strips of bacon, which he choked on in his haste to devour. The sight of it nauseated her, and she hurried back into the kitchen, her stomach making little leaps at her throat. Rummaging through the cupboard, she found a dry cracker to pick at as her mind slogged through the absolute redundancy of her life. Her life’s work: the work she’d sacrificed her strength and time and purpose to each day. A constant, revolving circle of futureless effort. Meals prepared, consumed and eliminated. Clothes washed only to be re-soiled. Dirt chased from the trailer only to creep in again at its leisure. And it struck clearly in her that life was no less than a farce. A pathetic, humorless farce, full of self-induced delusions of purpose and meaning and false attaining.
Bobby walked in from the living room, disrupting her thoughts. “What are you up to today?” he asked, a hopeful eye on the grungy mountain growing out of the sink.
She shrugged, walked into the living room to retrieve his dishes then, struggling to recall what day it was, added hesitatingly, “I think Rose might be coming out for coffee.”
“You think?”
“Well, I can’t remember for sure what day she said. Monday or Tuesday. What day is it today?”
“Friday.”
“Oh. Well, maybe it was Friday.”
Bobby raised his eyebrows and stared at her for a moment as if trying to understand, then, giving up, shook his head and scowled at the sink full of week-old dishes.
“Well, you better clean this mess up if you’re having company. Starting to stink in here.”
He turned away from her to reach for his jacket, but not before she glimmered the trace of embarrassment that ran across his face. The idea of his feeling embarrassment over her mortified her, and she struck back defensively.
“I know, Bobby. I haven’t been feeling well . . . in case you haven’t noticed.”
“In case I haven’t noticed,” he spat. “Got news for you, Vic. That’s all I have noticed lately. You moping around and complaining dawn to dusk ’bout how shitty you feel.”
“Bullshit, Bobby! You never hear me complain. You’re not around enough to even know what I do all day.”
“Pretty friggin’ obvious what you do all day, Vic. Bo-diddley-squat. That’s what you do. Sit around on your friggin’ ass all day and do piss-all. Look at these socks,” he hollered, stumbling against the wall as he tore a dirty sock from his foot and flung it at her face. “Been wearing the same friggin’ pair for the last bloody week. Last bloody two weeks, probably. I don’t even bother remembering anymore.”
If he had accused her of anything but the truth, she’d have easily found the fuel to fight him, but the accuracy of his accusation derailed her and, to her absolute horror, she began to cry. It was not something she did, cry in front of her husband, and the sight of her tears filled him with such an uncomfortable helplessness that he raged at her to get them to stop.
“What the hell you bawling about? Ain’t no use bawling,” he yelled desperately, as if she’d struck out at him with an unfair advantage.
Covering her face with her hands, she slid down the wall and sat crumpled on the floor, shoulders convulsed by silent sobs. She lifted her head slightly and pleaded up at him. “I’m sick, Bobby. Can’t you understand that?”
He fished his sock from under the table and struggled it back over his foot with exaggerated effort. “Ya, well maybe I’m getting sick of you being sick, huh? Ever think of that? Ever think maybe it’s time you snapped out of it and got with the program?”
“Can’t just snap out of it, Bobby. I’m sick. I don’t feel—”
“Well, what about that shit the doc gave ya? Ain’t that ‘sposed to fix ya up?”
Victoria picked at a noodle dried to the floor beside her.
“Hey? Ain’t that shit helping none?”
She shook her head.
“Not at all?”
She concentrated hard on the noodle.
“Well, why the hell not? You tell the doc?”
Sensing a collision course with a conversation she would rather avoid, she pulled herself back up and started past him into the hall.
“Hey! I asked you a question. Did you tell the doc they ain’t working or not?”
Looking at the floor she shook her head.
“Well, why the hell not?”
“I haven’t taken any.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“None? Ya ain’t taken none of ‘em?” he yelled, his face incredulous.
She silently looked out the porch window, wished he would follow her empty gaze down the driveway and leave her alone.
“Well, why not? Can ya just tell me that much, Vic? You like being sick? Ya like moping around here all the time having everyone feel sorry for you? Is that it, Vic? Huh? Ya like having an excuse for feeling sorry for yourself?”
“Bobby, don’t,” she rushed in trying to end his tirade before he blew himself into a storm. “I don’t know why I haven’t taken them. I guess I just don’t think they’ll help, that’s all.”
“Well, that’s pretty twisted bloody logic. Ya ain’t ever take ‘em, how the hell ya ever going to know?”
It was twisted logic, but her reality was twisted and unless the pills could untwist that she knew they offered her no hope. A dulling of the pain perhaps, but definitely not a cure for the hopeless mistake of her life.
Bobby jabbed his hands into his coat pocket irritably. “Now, where the frick did my bloody keys go? You put them somewhere again?”
“No. I didn’t touch—”
“Well, find the damn things then. ‘Sposed to be in town a half hour ago already.”
“What’re you doing in town?”
He stopped rummaging through the heap of miscellaneous junk covering the counter and stared at her hard.
“Like I told you yesterday. First I’m going by to help JJ. with his carport then I gotta stop by Rose’s an fix up her plumbing. Now, can ya remember all that or I gotta write it down for ya?”
She made no attempt at an answer, just watched silently as he unearthed his keys, snubbed his cap into place and exited goodbye-less out the door.
The pills he alluded to had been a small shopping list of tranquilizers and sleeping pills and antidepressants the doctor had prescribed when she had gotten her stitches removed and made the grave mistake of mentioning her mental distress. She hadn’t appreciated the doctor’s condescending chuckle as he wiped away her self-diagnosis of asthma to explain the crushing tightness in her chest and her sudden inability to draw a full breath of air. Anxiety. Not asthma, he’d proclaimed too carefully, as if she were a child. She’d listened to him politely, received his list of prescriptions with a trite thank you, but she didn’t believe it. Didn’t trust him or his casual diagnosis. She didn’t feel anxious. Quite to the contrary, she felt utterly desolate. And she hadn’t even bothered to tell him the rest of her symptoms, mainly because he hadn’t seemed bothered enough to want to hear them. And how could one describe them anyhow? Or when they had become a part of her, stealing inside and becoming one with her as seamlessly as senility and old age.
She’d noticed it first as a soft, pulsing flutter at the base of her throat. Like a small injured bird or a heartbeat, discordant and misplaced. At times, for reasons she could not distinguish, the gentle fluttering rose into a frenzied pounding as if there were a bird trapped within her, desperate to find its way free. The way she’d seen them do among the rafters in the barn, crashing aimlessly into the windows and battering themselves to exhaustion as the cats slunk below and licked their lips. Sometimes she’d opened the big doors wide and sat watching silently as she tried to coax them to their freedom. Every once in a while, although not often, one would find its way out, their sudden escape making her want to laugh and sing and shout. She wished she could do that now. Wished she could open her mouth and let the tiny creature rise up through her throat and find its way free.
She looked around her. Blinked. She turned to check the time on the clock. Two hours. Gone. Vaporized in thoughts. It happened so often now that it failed to raise her concern. Although it did raise a warning that Rose would be arriving soon, and the trailer was far from ready to receive her. It felt like ages since Rose had last been out to visit. Having finally broken down and bought a new television for the girls, she had abruptly ceased her weekly trips. Victoria turned to the disaster of the kitchen, but the complexity of the mess stymied her. She didn’t know where to start, or even how. She picked up a plate and a mug then set them back down. She gathered a pile of cutlery from one side of the sink and sat them down on the other side. Above her head the clock kept taunting her with its cheery ticking until finally she yanked it down, ripped out its batteries and fired it in a drawer.
Still, time would not come over to her side, and she wandered helpless and aimless through the trailer until the roar of Rose’s car coming down the road jolted her into action. Opening the cupboard doors, she crammed them full of dirty dishes, and what wouldn’t fit in there went into the oven. Victoria slammed the cupboard door just as Rose burst into the porch without the formality of a knock. She had emptied out the mailbox that stood at the end of Victoria’s driveway and was busy skimming through a handful of envelopes.
“Gross! What stinks in here?” she demanded, her nose instantly offended upon entering the trailer.
Victoria flung around and laughed, embarrassed. She hadn’t noticed any odor. “Oh, hi, Rose. I don’t—”
Rose’s corkscrewed face abruptly led her to the source of the problem. Mortified, Victoria scrambled uselessly for an explanation. The garbage can under the table had risen through the stages of full to over-full to spilling-over-onto-the-floor full without garnering itself the least bit of attention.