Insomniac, Part 20

Harold sat in boxers and a T-shirt on the couch. No one was home. No one was going to be home for a few hours, well past a microwaved dinner. Victoria was 'out,' the mall and a movie, Harold remembered, and Hilly was with Hork, spending the night. Saturday afternoon TV was dismal, but he only had to endure 47 minutes until 'Return of the King' came on. Alex would have badgered him to put in his own disc. He didn't know why he didn't get up and look for it on the jumble of movies stacked on the bookshelf, but he didn't. He sat, instead, and waited and watched a rerun of SpongeBob learning to drive. He figured he got about four minutes of cartoon for every six minutes of commercials. It really was annoying, and a little depressing. Why the hell did they put commercials for the scooter store on a network intended for kids, Harold wondered. Then, he laughed out loud. He was watching the kids network. He was glad Alex hadn't heard him snort with laughter out of the blue. She used to hate when he did that. Harold was thinking of dozing off when he heard a click.

"Oh, that's disgusting," Victoria said as she breezed into the living room. Genna and Rachel stood behind her in the foyer. He wondered why they called it a foyer when it was only a five by four square of tile placed by the front door. The girls had turned to face the door and were trying not to giggle.

"Dad, can you just ..." Victoria hissed in a stage whisper as she waved at all of him.

"Disappear?" he suggested.

"No, Dad," she said with a stricken look in her eyes. Harold could see that tears had sprung to her eyes. Real tears. She sat suddenly on the couch next to him as if she'd lost her balance.

"No," she said again. There was a feeling of silence, despite the droning TV. He held his breath. "You know, like, if you could just have seen yourself..." She stared into his eyes but her words trailed off.

Harold sucked in his gut with his next breath and tried to pull the dog's blanket off the floor to cover the boxers. It was kind of an old farty guy thing to do - to sit in front of the TV in his underwear watching cartoons. He hadn't expected either of the kids, let alone company.

"Dad, I didn't mean that." She pulled the blanket away from him, got up, and got Hilly's blue and orange fleece from the quilt rack, and gently spread it over his lap. It made him feel old. This was the different Victoria that Harold had been watching, now and then, since he got home from the hospital. It confused him to feel her flip from one Victoria, the surly teenager, to the other.

"If you could have seen yourself, all pale, and quiet, and lying there on that white bed. You weren't even snoring, Dad."

"It's okay, Victoria. You don't have to ..."

"No, Dad. I do. Hilly, he did everything. I couldn't even drive. He did it all. Didn't you know? I was useless."

Harold looked at Victoria, not having a clear picture of what she meant. Then, he looked at the two girls standing awkwardly on the other side of the living room, halfway looking at them and at T-ball, dance, and karate trophies on a shelf by the door.

"Honey, weren't you going to the mall?" he said quietly.

Victoria stood up abruptly, scrubbed her face with the heels of her palms, and said, "Yeah, Dad, could I have some money? There was, uh, I saw a ... Like ... You know, it isn't really important. Not now." Harold grabbed her arm as she stood up to leave again.

"Give your old man a hug," he said and pulled her thin frame down onto his lap and hugged her in a way that, a month ago, would have infuriated her with its dorkiness. She buried her head into his shoulder for a minute, then pushed him away.

"Oh Dad, that's disgusting," she said as she got up too go.

Thank you for listening, jules

Insomniac, Part 19

Harold woke at 4:17 am and realized that he'd hoped a head injury would miraculously cure his insomnia. It hadn't. The only difference it made was that he had some holes in his memory and sometimes he missed stuff like turning off the burner after he made tea. After a couple of weeks, the memory part was getting to be less of a problem. Harold realized that within two weeks, the stuff he couldn't remember about his life from a month ago would be irrelevant anyway. It kind of sucked.

The trouble he had with his memory was coming along too. He'd learned not to try too hard to grab an idea before it slipped away. He learned never to put cutting boards on the stove if any of the burners were on, and he learned to double-check that the knobs were all upright before he left a room. He patted his pocket now to feel his keys, before he closed the car door. Two parking lot visits by locksmiths had taught him that. He checked and double-checked his writing at work. Roger had called him obsessive-compulsive. It wasn't obsessive-compulsive if you really were forgetting to turn off the burners, he thought. He could have told Roger that, but he forgot when he saw him and remembered when he walked into his door at home at night.

It was 4:43 am and Harold laid in his bed with the light off, wishing he could go back to sleep. He scratched his crotch. Why was it that something so mundane and socially intolerable was just so satisfying? No one was going to say anything about it now. Alex had nagged him about it back when they'd been married. It wasn't as if he farted around her. Even a year after the divorce, he reveled in this freedom, to be able to scratch his crotch and fart freely in his own bed.

The cat jumped up onto the bed, asking to be petted. At least someone was glad to see him at this hour. Harold had a problem remembering his name, but the cat didn't care. Harold pulled one of Alex's decorator pillows off the floor and gave the cat a throne. It seemed right that the pillow was so furry it looked like it was beginning to need a shave. Even the cat deserved to be himself in his own bed.

Harold tried to remember the days that he'd missed. It was like the time he chipped his tooth when he fell off his bike when he was twelve. His tongue had kept running over that nervy hole in his smile. He couldn't seem to control it then or now. When he woke in the middle of the night, there it was, that nervy hole in his memory to run over and over again.

He'd gone to bed one night but then he'd woken up on the floor, looking up at strangers in his bathroom. He'd been lying there in a puddle, stark naked. He'd woken up in the hospital in the night, after a breakfast had cooled off on his tray, and in dim light, after the old food had been removed and more food had been delivered and congealed on it's plastic tray. He'd been told to be careful, to have complete bed rest, and been sent home. He'd had to ignore the complete bed rest since the kids were gone at school all day. Somebody had to do the laundry. Somebody had to make food.

Hilly and Victoria had surprised him by cooking and cleaning for the first day. It was a Saturday, but by Sunday afternoon, Victoria had tired of the job and had taken the car and some cash and disappeared until after he'd gone to bed. Had she even asked for the keys? Harold couldn't remember.

Hilly seemed to be playing his usual role, going to school and coming home to play video games with Hork, but Harold noticed that something was different about him. Something had been different between Hilly and Victoria too. He just couldn't put a finger on what it was.

That was the thing about memory loss. Harold couldn't put a finger on it. He didn't mind, not too much anyway.

Thank you for listening, jules

Insomniac, Part 18

Harold was at home, but he couldn't remember much of what happened in the three days he was in the hospital. He remembered waking up, but he seemed to always be alone in the room, yet Hilly and Victoria kept talking to him as if they'd been there with him.

Now, he was home, not working yet, but at home, where life was familiar. He knew things still were not right. He had a good idea, but forgot it before he could put it on his list of things to do. He stood in his kitchen with the list in his hand, wondering what it was. People always said that they'd remember it eventually, but he wasn't sure he would.

He was making his usual omelet as though it was a Saturday breakfast, broccoli, cheese, and bacon, with a dollop of sour cream on top.  His doctor had told him to give up eggs because of his cholesterol, or at least the egg yolks, but he hadn't listened. He even used butter.

Things hadn't been going well. He had put in a load of laundry, but when he'd gone back to throw it in the dryer, the socks were still furry and only the towel was wet.  He had shut the washer door and pressed all the buttons again, making sure he had clicked the big one again at the end. He'd waited until the water began to run. The cat - what was his name? - had jumped up onto the washer and pawed at the lid where you were supposed to put in the soap. He had obediently opened the lid and the cat stuck his paw down into the running water and shook it.  It hurt to laugh still. After that, he'd wandered around the house until he'd found himself in the kitchen, looking into a half-empty refrigerator. That felt normal.

He nearly put a pat of butter in his tea, but stopped himself. Could he make these eggs for himself?

Hilly and Victoria were at school. Harold felt abandoned. He didn't feel old enough to be left at home alone.

Thank you for listening, jules


 

Insomniac, Part 17

Every time Harold woke up, a new plate of half-eaten food sat on the tray in front of him. His head still hurt the same way, that fluffy hangover kind of headache he always got on Sundays when he was in college. He looked at the table, still out of reach. It was unnerving that the tray changed from pale pink to pale blue to pale green and then back again as if there were some code he was missing. He thought there should be more to the code than three colors.

The TV was on still. Animal planet. Some cat was scratching an owner's boyfriend. He knew the answer to that problem - a squirt bottle. Why didn't this crazy cat guy ever use a squirt bottle to stop the nasty behavior of a jealous cat? It was the tattoos, he thought. Tattoos changed the way a guy's brain worked.

He thought about that for a while.

When Harold opened his eyes, the congealed food lay on a pink tray.

Thank you for listening, jules

Insomniac, Part 16

Harold woke up in a hospital room. He couldn't remember falling asleep again in his bathroom but he couldn't remember getting where he was either. His head hurt. He thought maybe it was the pale teal walls and the pink cabinets that hurt. It should hurt, that color, even if there was something else that was going on with his head. He closed his eyes.

Harold woke up in a different hospital room, more upright than he'd been before. This room was pale yellow and blue, nauseating, but at least it didn't make his head hurt. The television was on. SpongeBob. Even in the hospital, he couldn't escape SpongeBob.

His phone rang. It was lying on a little table holding a tray with turkey, congealed gravy, and little gray pieces of broccoli stems and carrots. Someone had eaten part of it. Harold looked at the ringing phone and thought, for about the hundredth time, how the ringtone ruined Stevie Ray Vaughn no matter how much he loved that song.

He couldn't reach the little table with the used food and the phone. Something held his neck straight so he had to move his eyes in exaggerated ways. It felt to him that he was in a silent film, trying to express some deep desire, yet no one watched. Charlie Chaplin, with his black eye-liner, was dead.

Harold lay still for a minute. The phone went silent. He couldn't hear anything from another room because of the commercial for the scooter.

"Are you having trouble getting to the bathroom by yourself?"

'Yes, I am,' he said and fell into a deep sleep, like drowning in cotton wool and warm water.

Thank you for listening, jules

Insomniac, Part 15

Harold looked around. There were suddenly faces hanging above him like big ornaments. He squeezed his eyes closed for a second, but when he opened them again, the faces were still there and looked just as strange, kind of blurred at the edges. He was suddenly cold, shivering in fact. Who were these people in his bathroom? Why were they yelling at him, calling him Mr. Westminster?

Hilly's face came into his vision, sideways instead of upright. Harold couldn't turn his head. The other faces receded for a moment but he felt someone's hands on his bare ankles.

"Dad, are you okay?" Hilly asked. Harold didn't point out that people had appeared in his bathroom, their heads looked like globes, and he couldn't move his own head. Was he still naked from when he got out of the shower? When was that? He didn't quite feel naked, but he couldn't move his head to see. None of it seemed okay.

"No," he said.

"Dad, you're going to be okay," Hilly said. That sounded as ridiculous as asking if he was okay. How was any of this okay? Just as Harold was about to say that, the boy was gone and people were rolling him onto his side. He didn't even try to stop any of it though and with the wash of cold air on his butt, he knew, without a doubt, that it was naked.

Just what he needed. The vision of his furry butt exposed to the six or eight people in his bathroom made him groan. How could so many people even fit into his bathroom?

"Sorry, Mr. Westminster. We'll get you all packed up here in a jiff. Just bear with us. Can you remember what happened to you, Mr. Westminster?"

Get him talking. Harold could tell by the too-cheerful tone of the man's voice that it was a ploy. Get him talking and maybe he won't notice his ass is hanging out of his wet towel. He could suddenly feel it, the wet towel grinding into his right hip and the cold air hitting his butt.

"Oh God!" It was Victoria's voice he heard, but he couldn't see her. He tried to see where she was so he could explain why he was lying here, half naked on the bathroom floor. He knew she would be disgusted.

"Stay still, Mr. Westminster. We're getting the board," someone said. He couldn't see the face who went with the voice. What the hell was 'the board' and why were they getting it?

It figured. It was already one of those days and it wasn't going to get any better than this, lying on the bathroom floor in front of six or eight strangers with his ass hanging out. Someone needed to call his boss. He was going to be late for work.

Thank you for listening, jules

Insomniac, Part 14

Harold decided that, being Saturday, it was a good day to use all of the hot water.  He took stock as the water washed over him. Yesterday, he'd bought the big box of chews for the dog but this morning, when he opened the box, it was already half empty. What the hell was up with that? It was the same thing with the containers for his rice protein. The containers were barely half full when he took off the multiple safety seals. Did they really think people were that stupid? Well, yeah, they did.

Harold picked up the soap.  It was a hockey puck. No lather whatsoever. They even did it with hotel soap. Whoever thought of these things must be rich by now. He wanted that job. He wanted to be the guy companies hired to dupe people into thinking they were buying more than they got, the one that thought to make packaging twice the size it needed to be, the one that put a waxy hockey puck inside every bar of soap so that it looked as if you were buying a bigger bar. There were gallons of milk now that weren't quite a gallon. Even lumber yards did it. A two-by-four wasn't really two inches by four inches. It was a conspiracy. Refrigerators were designed to crap out after ten years instead of forty. Dishwashers only made it seven. They were made of plastic parts, yet they cost more. Plus, even the deluxe models were made with the same crappy parts. Then you were supposed to spend another $1200 on a service plan. Then you'd lose the paperwork for it within the first two years of service. It sucked. It all basically sucked.

What the hell was he taking a long shower for anyhow? It didn't help. He turned off the water, reached behind the shelf for his towel and, as usual, knocked a couple packages of stuff nobody ever used into the farthest corner. He held his towel with one hand while trying to reach the fallen packages with the other. The corner of the towel dragged across spilled green conditioner and came up smeared with a flowery fresh scent. He used the long handle of a scrub brush to poke at a white box and three half-used blister packs slid out of it. He accidentally jostled the shelf with his shoulder and a spent tube of toothpaste also fell just out of reach. It left a blue smear of furry toothpaste on the vinyl. Saline from an open bottle dripped onto the floor as he tried to grab the bottle. It rolled away from him twice before he bounced it off the far cabinet and caught it on the rebound, sending a jet of spray across the wall. Eventually, as usual, he slid the whole shelf back from its recess so he could pick up the three half-used blister packs, the soggy white box they came in, and the empty toothpaste tube. Why did he do this every day? Why was it his towel that had to hang behind the shelf? Why couldn't anyone throw out their spent toothpaste tubes?

He managed to get everything off the floor, to wipe up the spills with his towel, and slide the shelf back into place without knocking anything else off. He knew, as he threw his damp towel into the laundry basket, that he'd be stuck without a towel in the morning and would resort to drying himself off with the damp hand towel. He stepped out of the tub, intent on getting a fresh towel for himself before that happened again.

And he slipped on the wet spot he'd created, looking for soap, and hit his head on the tiles. He was down and he was out.

Thank you for listening, jules