Nina lay in bed watching the stucco ceiling slowly emerge from darkness; a hieroglyphic of veined cracks and blots of water that had taken months to master and finally read:
“Crazy,” Nina whispered to the half-light in the shuttered bedroom.
Just a word, two syllables, two sounds. That is, until it finally wears you down like a sweaty high school boyfriend who just won’t stop insisting: “If you really love me, you’ll…”
At some point you give in.
She had not made love to her husband in over a year. Crazy was the Thing that shared her bed, and now she knew it more intimately than Broker’s body. Its smell, its familiar stir, the urgent touch of the incessant demands it made in the night.
The last word she said at night. The first word she said every morning.
But this morning something was different, as, beyond the ajar bedroom door, the sounds and smells of morning filled the house and meandered up the stairs. She heard Broker enter Kit’s room, pull the window blinds. Heard him say in an upbeat voice, “Not a cloud in the sky. It’s gonna be sunny today.” Then to Kit, “C’mon, get up. Feet on the deck.”
Less distinct was Kit’s grumbling as she stirred in the warm covers. Nina pictured her rotating her hips, planting her feet on the floor, rubbing her eyes, and staring at her father as he left the room and went down the stairs.
Kit dressed, made her bed, descended the stairs. Breakfast; a muted clatter, far away. Nina continued to lie on her back, arms across her chest, motionless as a medieval statue on top of a tomb.
Then she moved her arms, stretched, and enjoyed the movement. The inertia trembled around her, crumbling. She dry-washed her arms, her chest, ran her fingers over her face, touched her hair. Pushed off the invisible detritus. In the faint light creeping at the edges of the drawn window shades, she saw the first glow of a Monarch dawn.
Broker entered the room wearing his busted-out work clothes. He cocked his head, seeing her sitting up in bed. He’d always been a man who approached you slow and quiet, reserved. Today he was too upbeat. A little jagged.
“Sun’s out. You got the house to yourself. I’m going to hang with Griffin today, do a little work,” he said.
Then Kit vaulted up on the bed and kissed her on the cheek.
“Bye, Mom.”
She waved vaguely, thoroughly enjoying the tactile glide of her skin through the musty air. Then she flopped back in the covers as Broker and Kit left the room. Again she studied the ceiling stains and cracks. Now they hovered; Delphic, potent.
What had changed?
The answer came as she heard them leave the house. She remembered…all of yesterday. Normally, in real-time sequence; not sliced in random wedges. The ceiling had not changed. It was the way she looked at it.
For the first time in months her first thoughts were not of herself, but of Broker. Depression seemed to turn on a simple inside/outside trick. The more you climbed out of your own head, the more you broke its hold. So Broker. After he dropped Kit off at school, he’d go help Griffin at Glacier Lodge. Which was good. He’d been cooped up in the house all winter, and now he was starting to screw up, like leaving the garage open. Losing the cat. His explosion of nerves yesterday morning-raging at the towels in the washer…Then Griffin dropping in after supper. What was that about? She heard the door shut. The truck start up. She was alone.
As she swung her feet off the bed, she felt the sheets and covers; they were dry. Cool to the touch. No longer sweat-fouled. She pulled on her robe, put on her slippers, and walked down the stairs and into the kitchen.
Coming into the room, she paused, eyes downcast out of habit, and braced for her first look at the sky out the windows at the far end of the kitchen.
Fear of clouds that would steal the light.
Nina Pryce-B.A. in liberal arts, master’s in business administration, University of Michigan; Phi Beta Kappa; eligible for Mensa, too cool to accept-had come to exist on the superstitious level of an Egyptian peasant from the Middle Kingdom; paying homage to the sun.
This morning she felt a blush of warmth eke in from the east and caress her face. Galvanized by the sunrise, she continued into the room. Broker had cleared away the debris of the previous night, loaded the dishwasher, straightened up the clutter, and wiped all the surfaces clean. A fresh carafe of coffee sat on the counter. She poured a cup, sheltering it close to her chest, and stood huddled in her robe. She faced east, staring out through the patio door, over the deck, the shoreline, and the broad gray expanse of Glacier Lake.
The platinum flare of late-winter sun burned through the mist, revealing a layered dawn of burnished seashell pink and purple. She smiled, sipped the coffee, and watched the eastern tree line ignite into a happy morning sunrise that hurled bright skipping stones across the lake. Then long shadows jumped out from the cluster of paper birches in the yard. There were mornings she’d recoiled from the birches, seeing skeletal fingers in the crooked white trunks with their black markings. The shadows reaching for the house…
Today they were just trees, and she was able to remember an afternoon when Griffin had stopped over with Teedo, the Indian guy who worked with him. Teedo had explained to Kit how the birches got their markings. Nanboujou, the Ojibwa trickster, had angered the thunderbirds who were pursuing him through the forest. He’d ducked into a hollow birch trunk. The thunderbirds, unable to stop, had smacked into the trunk, leaving for all time their skid marks…
A normal thought.
Just trees. The shadows they cast stopped midway up the yard.
Nina set down her coffee cup and walked through the entire first level of the house, opening the shades and drapes, drenching the rooms with light. Stronger now, she refilled her cup and threw open the patio door, stepped onto the deck, and felt the pale sunlight on her face. The nip of the cold air.
She went back in hungry. A bowl of Total, a banana. Toast and peanut butter. Fuel. For the weights in the living room.
After breakfast, a tremble of doubt as the force of habit set in. A lingering whisper of the Crazy. A time of pacing on the deck, opening a fresh pack of cigarettes, brewing a second pot of coffee, waiting for the sunlight to slowly exorcize the darkness from the house. As the sun arced overhead, the shadows fleeing to the west would stall, retract, and began to shrink down and finally disappear. When the house was cleansed of darkness, she could finally begin her day.
Not today.
She poured the coffee into the sink, extinquished the cigarette, and went into the living room to confront the second challenge of the day.
The weights.
The dumbbells lined up on the broad seat of the bay window in the living room; nine pairs of them-five pounds to fifty.
The numbing two-pound repetitions of the physical therapy had been completed. She raised her right arm, no longer anticipating the tug as it approached shoulder level. Rotated her elbow left and right. No tug. No pain. Okay. The soft tissue had healed. To a point. She drew her shoulder blades together, aligning the bones in her shoulder and her back like the tumblers on a combination. Almost audible clicks as she slowly elevated the arm over her shoulder. She paused there, evaluating the slight hitch. Lowered her arm. Encouraged, she picked up the ten-pound weight. Lifted it smoothly.
She put down the ten and grasped the fifteen. Brought it up in a biceps curl. Then she raised her elbow and lifted her whole arm and felt the warning catch in the complicated architecture of her right shoulder. Just like yesterday. The impinged shoulder accepted ten, but protested and quit at fifteen.
She inhaled and started up again. Sweat popped on her forehead. A strand of hair fell across her eyes. She huffed a breath, blew the hair away, and lifted the weight, got to shoulder level, and hit the solid lock of the blown-out bursa.
Trembling, she lowered the weight. For a month she’d been telling herself: tomorrow, just keep gobbling down the Tylenol. Placate the inflamed bursitis. It’ll start mending tomorrow. Knit back together, then the strength would come…
She let the weights fall to the carpet, turned, walked into the kitchen, out the door, and sat on the deck.
Stop kidding yourself. It was time to face the truth.