Watercolors

by Krista Lester

© 2009

 

 

She’s still half-asleep.  Still waiting for the coffee to kick in, but the coffee isn’t made yet.  She sits on the edge of her bed and stares at a bottle and thinks.  She’s in that moment, the moment after sleeping and before waking.  The moment that for most people is a moment, for her is a way of life.

The edges of the room are hazy, the outlines not quite filled in as well as a precocious child fills in the lines of a coloring book.  No, everything is blurred like the watercolors painted by a different child, a child who plays with the colors, disregards the lines, sloshes half-developed colors in inseparable slashes across paper that melts with the color and dissolves into a misshapen mess.

The bottle stands before her.  She wants to pick it up and do something with it, but it’s too early.  She’s not sure if she really wants to do anything with it.  And if she does, what is it?  She stares at the bottle, and the goldfish-orange blends with the Easter-egg blue of the painted wall behind the bottle, and she sees a mismatched array of pale meets vibrant in the tragic awakening into her new day.

She hasn’t turned off the alarm clock.  She knows the alarm woke her up, and she knows it’s time to wake up, so she sits and thinks.  But for what?  Where does she go now?  To the bottle?

She picks up the bottle and holds it in her hand.  It feels small and inconsequential, not heavy like the handle of a .38 Special, not satisfying like the handle of a serrated blade.  No.  It’s too small.  Too useless.

Does she have somewhere to go?  Does she know?  Who is she?  Does she know anyone?

She looks around the room to see if she can find evidence of another person.  Is there a man she knows?  Is it truly morning?  Is that Beethoven playing from the clock radio?  Ah, it is.  Beethoven’s Ninth.  The most monumental work of symphonic form, pushed to its limits and forced beyond, but beautifully, magnificently, so that the forcing beyond sounds as effortless as if the notes had been picked out of the air in their natural form, in their natural sequence -- effortless and powerful.

What would happen if she pushed herself to her own limits?

The sun has risen to a point where she knows it is morning.  She knows she is awake.  She knows the bottle is before her and she should empty some of its contents into the palm of her hand.  She should take the contents into her mouth and swallow, but then. . . .  What then?  Everything the same.  Everything clear.  The watercolors shaded into real pictures with stained-glass colors and sharp edges again.

She’s not sure she likes those sharp edges.  They seem too clear, too hazardous.

She knows she goes to the office everyday.  Some office.  An office.  She’s not sure what she does there, but she knows it doesn’t matter.  In fact, it might not be everyday, or even most days, it might just be the exact same day in endless repetition.  Again, and again, and again.  Because she always reaches for the bottle.  Always empties the contents into her hand.  Always swallows the tiny portions of sanity.

She notices his side of the bed.  There are crumples that aren’t hers.  So, she’s not alone after all.  She has him.  She stares at the bottle, the wall, the space in front of her eyes.  She tries to remember what he looks like.  But all she can remember are pointy edges that hurt her eyes.  Bright colors too sharp, too loud, too spontaneous and stark.  She might be able to handle one at a time, or even two, but all the colors in the world are just too much to bear.  She can’t handle it.  She never could.

He’s always helped her.  She remembers now.  He’s always been the one to say, “You’ll be fine.  You’re going to be okay.  You’ll be able to go to the office for one more day if you just take the little pills from the little orange bottle and deal with the bright colors and the sharp edges for just one more day.”

But when does it end?

She sets the bottle back on the bureau.  She stands up.  She feels the weight of her own body pressing against the limits of gravity and resistance.  Somehow she continues to stand despite the desperate longing to fall headfirst into a pool of water, through a glass window and off a balcony, into a pool where the shards of glass would cut into her skin and bleed her so the chlorine could clean her out, make her able to feel, able to be.  But she just stands there in the bedroom, hating that she is just a woman, just human, just another person in a bedroom in the morning, awakened by the alarm clock and waiting for the coffee to kick in.

Maybe he made the coffee.

Maybe he is helpful and generous.  Why else would he stick around?  What’s his name again?  Why would he think to make her coffee?  He doesn’t even drink coffee.  He’s just a man.  She’s just a woman.  Together, they’re just another couple in a world where individuals and couples stand side-by-side, ready or not to brave the world.

She is not.

She slips into her slippers as she leaves the bedroom and heads down the stairs to the kitchen.  He is there, and she smells coffee.

“Morning, honey,” he says. “Have you taken your pills?”

She looks at him and waits for his figure to blend into a whole figure, not the wavy, hazy lines and undulations of watercolors that spill in front of her eyes and obstruct her vision of him.  She tries to answer, but she remains silent.  She cannot speak.  She is not part of his world.

“Honey,” he says, “are you okay?”

She is not okay.  She is unwell.  She is ill and horrified at the thought of another day at the office.  And she’s not horrified the way most people are horrified to go to the office.  She’s horrified because life is offensive to her like the stench of formaldehyde in a laboratory where incisions and lacerations are part of the daily routine.  Sometimes, she wishes she were the cadaver, and the smell of formaldehyde could no longer reach through her nostrils to her brain to make her recognize the repulsiveness of another day awake, conscious, and pouring her soul out for another day doing God knows what in that God forsaken office where nothing ever happens and no one ever cares and nothing ever means anything to anyone because life is not about going to the office.  Life is not about taking the little pills to make her fit within the confines of a cube.  It can’t be.

“Honey?”

The voice echoes in her mind.  She hears, but she cannot react.

“You need to take your pills.”

She hears, and she reacts.  But he can’t see the way her insides twist around themselves in excruciating recoil.  She remains still in her anguish, her torment, her futility.

“Coffee,” she says.  “I want coffee.”

He seems shocked that she has spoken, shocked that she can think or understand without the proper chemicals in her bloodstream.

“Coffee,” he repeats.  “You’re sure you want coffee?”

“Coffee,” she says.

The smell makes her feel something.  The promising aroma of delicious security races through her bloodstream in place of the pills.  Caffeine may not be good for her, but it damn well feels good.  And what is life for, if not to feel good?

He hands her a cup of coffee.

She thanks him in her head, in a resounding voice that sounds unlike her own.  She sees the steam rising from the mug as she holds it in front of her face.  She takes hold of the mug with her second hand and raises both hands and the mug closer to her nose.  She inhales the fragrance and notices her lungs at work.  She remembers now that she’s not dead.  Just partly.  Or mostly.

He crosses to the kitchen table and shoves the newspaper away from one corner.  He pulls out a chair for her.  She doesn’t know that she should sit down.  She is mesmerized by her coffee.  She thinks that the steam rising from her mug looks like angels rising from the depths of hell.  They swim through her sinus cavities and bring the heavenly relief of coffee to her brain before she even takes a sip.  She wonders briefly if she should bother drinking it at all.  She wonders if it will cause a meltdown in her brain with the absence of the pills.

“Why don’t you sit down?” he says.  Then he pauses.  “Honey?”

He looks at her, watches her sniffing her coffee for a moment, then turns and heads upstairs.  A few seconds later, he returns with the bottle.  She is still standing, smelling her coffee.

He walks past her.  He faces the counter, pushes down on the lid, twists the bottle open.  He pours two pills into his hand.  He looks at them.  He places the lid back on the bottle and puts the bottle down on the counter.

“Here,” he says.  “Take these.”  He holds his hand out to her.

She hears, knows, understands what he says.  But the voice doesn’t reach her.  She’s elsewhere.  She’s not really in her mind, not in the kitchen, not in today.  She’s not herself.  Or is she?

Is this herself?  Are the pills herself?  Is she going to be popping pills for the rest of her life?  Are they to keep her alive?  Is that it?  Is that really worth her time and trouble?  What would happen if she didn’t take them?  She doesn’t want to.  What is he doing?  Doesn’t he know?  Can’t he see?

She stands, smelling her coffee.

He heads to the sink, reaches into the cupboard above, pulls down a glass, and fills it with cold water from the tap.

She hears water and is reminded that she is one with the things in the universe beyond cubes and newspapers.  She knows the lessons learned where the lines are unclean.  She watches him come to her, holding out his hand, offering pills and water like bread and blood, and she is supposed to take them, not caring what they do to her, not caring what they make of her.  Not caring who she becomes when she is not herself but can manage to fit herself into a cube.

She stands still.  She refuses.  She wants a gun or a knife instead.

He approaches.  He pulls down her bottom lip, squeezes in her cheeks, pops the pills through her lips and pushes them to the back of her tongue, then lifts the glass to her mouth.  She doesn’t want to drink, but the pills are about to choke her.  She doesn’t want the pills, but the water is about to drown her.  She drinks the water and swallows the pills.

He looks satisfied.

She looks at him for a long while.  The blurry, hazy, wavy lines begin to take shape, begin to form into the shape of a human, a man, the man who loves her more than anything.  She feels the first trace of recognition.  He smiles.

She hates him.

The undulations of watercolors flatten before her eyes.  The colors brighten, the lines trip around her, wrap themselves tighter until she feels them choking her, the colors blinding her, the black lines dividing truths and untruths into the differentiations created for her by men and things and natures she doesn’t know.  All she knows are the undulations.  The watercolors.  The haze.

“You’d better hurry,” he says.  “You’ll be late.”