Undoing

It was one of those mornings. The heavy kind that strong coffee couldn’t help. Cup after cup and nothing could penetrate the fog of her brain. The only thing it seemed to do was make her hands and head shake from too much caffeine. The kind of morning that all her mornings had been lately. It was also the kind of morning where she couldn’t tell what time it was; the sky outside a roiling dark cloud. Lights turned on in every room. It was hurricane season in the south: a dread feeling you can’t shake for months. Every grocery store in the city sold out of water bottles and granola bars and cans of soggy vegetables with the weather reports of an incoming storm. She missed the free-fall feeling of the beginning of the summer. All that excitement in the air as the kids got out of school and summer vacation started, the tangible feeling of all that possibility.

Then, they had hit the inevitable slog of summer. The slow way the days poured over them. The sticky and unbearable heat. The sun never retiring from its punishing position in the sky. She should be grateful for this weather. At least it was a change. At least it wasn’t Sun. Instead, it was humidity that crept under the cracks of their doors and their windows and made her skin feel wet even as she sat on the living room couch. The air around her so saturated with moisture that the A/C was useless. She’d wake up with beads of sweat running down the sides of her face. When they had first moved here, the clouds had held the promise of cold weather. Now, after eight years, she knew better. Summers in Texas lasted through November. They had spent a few Christmases in shorts.

Now though, the weather represented the state of her thoughts – gummy, immutable, impenetrable. Somehow, she made it through each day only remembering half of what had happened. She found herself saying things to her kids that she couldn’t remember minutes later. She’d put something down in one spot and immediately lose it, no matter how many times she repeated to herself where it was. That morning she had had one of her cups of coffee in her hand as she walked into her bedroom, and minutes later she found herself in her oldest son’s room, cup gone. She had searched the entire house and had been unable to find it. The clouds were seeping into her brain. And getting worse every day. She’d walk around the house like she was walking through fog, her kids staring at her out of the corners of their eyes like a wild animal they were afraid to try and pin down.

She thought about telling her husband about it, but she knew he would insist on more appointments, more tests, more opinions. And she was so tired of doctors’ offices. Tired of the chlorine bleach smell that stayed on her skin after she left. Tired of the cold waiting rooms with the Food Network playing on the TV. She found herself talking to Bobby Flay in her head. As if, somehow, he was the one who would understand and sympathize with her, or at least sit her down on a barstool and serve her a plate of huevos rancheros with homemade chips and salsa. For some reason talking to Bobby Flay was not something that made her feel crazier. She believed that her ability to recognize that the man was only a TV personality and not a friend of hers almost lent her more credibility. She knew this was not an argument she should make with her husband though. She could already see his squinting eyes, the worried downturn of his lips.

It was just that every day she felt like more and more of her brain was slowly being taken over by something that she was couldn’t stop. That feeling of powerlessness upset her the most. That, and the way whatever it was sucked all the energy from her body and left her wanting to crawl back into her bed by ten in the morning. She was a woman used to getting things done, used to being effective and efficient. Now, her kids would ask her for things, and she couldn’t figure out how to get them. They would ask for apples or milk and she would find herself standing in the kitchen ten minutes later, unsure of how she had gotten there and what she was supposed to be doing.

Before the hurricane warnings had hit, they had asked to bake cookies. They were out of flour and chocolate chips, so she had piled them into the car to run to the grocery store. Thirty minutes later she had found herself pulling into the driveway, no groceries at all. From the backseat, her oldest had reminded her they wanted cookies, that she was supposed to be taking them to get the ingredients. She had laughed and acted like it was some kind of weird joke. Then, she had plugged a store into her GPS and repeated “grocery store” over and over again under her breath until they finally made it. She had let them pick out a package of Oreos that she let them eat in the car while she silently pleaded with them not to tell their father. Luckily for her, the sugar high helped them forget, and she spent the rest of the day on their playroom floor, trying to be present. Neither of them had mentioned the cookies when he had gotten home that night and she had given her husband what Oreos were left.

The wind outside picks up, tree limbs lashing and leaves snapping off and flying through the air. Her sons sit on the couch, watching a movie. The rain beats against their windows in sheets and their already saturated backyard begins to look like a swamp. She makes herself another cup of coffee, knowing that if the power goes out, there’s no way she will be able to remember where the flashlights are.