Before I Wake
Sara bowed her head and looked away, as she always did when Herb started his nightly tirade. This time, though, she blinked with shock. An old woman stood just outside the sliding glass door.
Entrenched in his lounger, a sheen of belligerence settling over his eyes, Herb picked up his third 7&7 for the evening and turned his attentions from complaining about his work to the main event, verbally abusing her. "I don't know why you can't just help me out here. God knows I work long and hard and need a vacation."
Her feet holding her within range, Sara paid just enough attention to her husband, while she studied the old woman outside.
A thin woman, clad in a simple housedress. Her head and shoulders drooped under an invisible burden. Her hands clutched each other as though bracing against a fear that must be borne rather than fought. She averted her face, avoiding scrutiny, pretending that looking away stopped ... something, that it blunted the violence being done to her.
"How much work is it to pick up a phone and talk to a travel agent?"
It must be terrible, Sara thought, to be so stranded, exposed to the incessant bite of the wind, the hollow ache of loneliness, the creeping assault of the cold, the sharp pangs of hunger, the earth relentlessly tugging at her, trying to drag her down into it, sadness weighing on every thought unrelieved by any buoy of hope. Sara pitied the old woman.
"I'm exhausted when I get home after one of the roughest commutes in the city; just look at Sunday's paper if you don't believe me. That clerking job of yours can't be that demanding. I know you've got both time and energy to make these plans."
Why didn't she just stop this nonsense? Shuffling through her day, shuttling from place to place, suffering the pricks, cuts, and slashes laid upon her. Why didn't she — no strength to break free. Couldn't she — no energy to forge a route to freedom. Surely there was — no words or wisdom to show her real salvation. Trapped like the proverbial mouse without even the proverbial cheese as reward.
"Just because you'd rather stay home with your garden, instead of coming fishing with me in the Yukon, doesn't mean you can't do this job right. Then again, what have you ever done right? Besides marry me?"
I could step over to the glass door, slide it open, and invite the poor thing inside, offering her shelter from the incessant elements. But would taking her away from all that really help? A pause in the assault, but then — soon enough — she'd be back out there, shivering, anxious, with nowhere to go. No, rescue wouldn't help, not really.
The old woman is trapped in her life, nowhere to go, no way to get there.
"But no, you had to saddle me with middle-class obligations, with yourself ... and this house, out here in the suburbs, so far from my job at corporate headquarters.
"Get me another one of these!
"Where was I? Oh, yeah, I don't get any exercise, you know that, between driving to and from work, meeting after meeting after meeting, and doing lunch. By the time I get here and eat your miserable excuse for a dinner and relax over drinks, there's no time to go to the Club."
When Sara got back from the kitchen with Herb's drink, then stood there as he tasted it, then dropped back a step and looked away again, the woman outside the door was gone. No, Sara corrected herself, I'm in the wrong place. She eased over a few steps, and the old woman came back.
Old? Why am I always calling her "old?" That label arose every time, arose from ... from? From the pale skin, the hint of palsy in the jaw and hands, the stooped body, the lack of care ... from many other small impressions. The woman in the glass had to be old ... much older than Sara's 34 ... had to be!
Yet, tucked away from her stream of thoughts, like a slender remnant of reason, shimmered the knowledge that the glass only reflected her. She'd known that all along. No one really stood outside. She was the old woman.
Old? I look that old? Sara stared, for once losing track of Herb's incessant scorn.
Age was the worse penalty that life inflicted. With age came frailty. With age came loss of opportunity, more and more chances gone by without action, with fewer and fewer lying ahead, to make up for the past failures, to make this one-is-all-you-get life worth something.
"I bet you set it up that way on purpose. You just had to have this house. You just had to have all those flowers. Now, all you have to do is wait for me to drop dead and collect my insurance and my pension. Yeah, I bet you're just waiting for that. In the meantime, you've got a cushy life."
Life? Life is over for me. Just look at me — her — out there. If she was ever anything, she is nothing now. If she ever had potential, it's smothered now, with no hope of fulfilling itself, not before death steps in to end her suffering.
Sara examined the turned-away face more closely ... and realized something she hadn't seen before. Death had already arrived in this woman: it skinned the eye sockets till they hinted at the skull behind them; it sapped the body and spirit till they made no difference to anything; it spread through the woman's mind, covering it with hoarfrost of shame and cobwebs of apathy.
Reaching out in protest, Sara found herself looking into the woman's eyes for the first time. Eyes that were surrounded by death, haunted by its first cousins. Eyes that were scared, truly scared for the very first time.
Herb paused in his verbal assault. Sara heard him rustle in his pack of cigarettes, then strike a match. "Cushy?" he went on with pursed lips.
As sulfur smoke bit at her nostrils, Sara stared at the glass door, at its reflection of the match's fire, at the way its small flame flickered in the apparent middle of the old woman's chest, like a soul.
"Did I say 'cushy?' It would be for me. If all I had to do—"
A flame that small, a flame that tenuous, can be snuffed so easily. Blasted by wind, pitched into lonely dark, shrouded by cold, wanting for fuel, smothered by filth, exhausted by its own tiny fury.
"If I die before I wake" resounded through Sara's mind. At this rate, I will die before I wake. And I will have lived for nothing. Earned nothing. Knew nothing. Created nothing.
"— was schlep around a store all day, gabbing with customers, ringing up sales right and left. If all I had to do—"
A fire is a font of physical energy. Cupped in a hand, stoked with shreds, it could burn on.
"— was do some housework and some cooking. But you're too stupid to make it work for you. Stupid, stupid, stupid."
"Might as well try to stop the wind," said the old woman, somehow, through the glass door. Dispiritedly, she raised a hand and swiped at the breezes around her.
"What the hell is the matter with you?" Herb bellowed. "Stop that twitching and get me another drink!"
A soul is an eternal font of spiritual energy. It, too, can be sheltered, can be fed.
"You stop the wind," Sara said aloud, lifting her head, turning to face Herb, "by giving yourself permission to try, then by putting a door between you and it, a solid, closed door."
"What are you talking about?" Herb shuffled himself in his lounger, trying to generate some menace.
Sara glanced toward the glass door. The old woman had vanished, had come in out of the cold. Sara was glad to have her company, to fight another wind.
"Herb," she said, "get your wallet, your car keys, and your coat. You're leaving."
"What? Where will I go? Where will I stay?"
"Right now, I don't care as long as you're somewhere out there, on the other side of my front door. Come home tomorrow after work and we'll talk about changing the way we live."
Herb climbed out of the lounger, but didn't leave its side. "I won't stand for this!"
Sara wanted to retreat, wanted to crawl over and hug his knees. "Herb, I ..." She saw the phone. She picked it up. "Herb, either take yourself out of here — and come back on my terms — or I'll have the cops do it for you. Your choice." She grinned, as much to keep her own head focused on this minor victory as to keep Herb moving out. "You've got two minutes."
The front door slammed. Sara's knees buckled. She felt old again as she caught onto the breakfast bar. But the wind that had buffeted her was gone — for now. In its absence, she found within her a glimmer of energy, growing in a calm, warm, and soft place, a place to build the strength she would need for tomorrow ... and the day after that, one day at a time.
THE END
