Novel

CHAPTER ONE

"The greatest hazard of all, losing one's self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly..." ~The Sickness Unto Death

     She could not remember the last piece of herself she had given away. It was clear to her that she was incomplete, that she had drastically lost pieces of herself that could not be gotten back, but she could not remember when it had happened. Every morning as she sat in the bay window of her bedroom, looking out at the moon as her husband slept, she wondered when she had casually handed herself over, and to whom.
     Had it been like a sales transaction? Had the price of her identity been tallied up and subtotaled?
     The question was not even why, but how. It seemed to her that the means might make the end inconsequential...that the reasons didn't matter, that the process was what needed to be explored. She wondered how a human being could just one day wake up, look at herself in the mirror, and not recognize the reflection looking back?
     The apathy perplexed her. That first day, when she had realized that the shape of her face was no longer familiar, why had she not jumped back? Why had she not screamed? Why had there not been a moment of total disbelief, as one might feel if one's arm had been suddenly chopped off? Or if they had awoken to find that someone had replaced their own face with another?
     It had happened to her before, this disappearance. She had been about twelve years old, running out the front door to catch up with kids from the block to play a game of kickball in the street, when she had casually stopped to tie her shoe and realized within the span of one defining moment that she no longer liked kickball, that she had no desire to play with any other kids, and that she had to turn around and go home, to search herself for reasons she had just changed. Walking home, she could feel herself outside, looking in, watching herself walking and wondering. She could feel the presence of herself separated from her awareness, observing her own movements through the eyes of a foreigner--unaccustomed to the social clues of her world, unable to speak the language, feeling about in a blurred atmosphere for any object which might be hers.
     The experience had been hard, felt physically hard, as if she were battering herself against an object which wouldn't budge.
     She had told her father about the experience. "I didn't feel like myself, Daddy. I felt disconnected."
     "Don't be silly," he had said. "Who else could you be?"
     Her father was a logical man. Had his own parents not drank themselves to death and left him orphaned at nine, he might never have had to live with his aunt and uncle, who were logical people, and grown up to believe that life was punching in and out, putting food on the table, and going to church to ward off Satan's evil influences. He might've grown up to be an explorer, or a teacher, or anything other than a postman who drank too much on Saturday and atoned for his intake by giving a proportionate amount to the collection plate on Sunday.
     "I felt lost."
     "Don't talk crazy. You're you. You're nobody else."
     "I feel different now."
     "Go to bed. You'll feel better in the morning."
     He might've been able to see how much his daughter needed him.
     How had she disappeared without notice from anyone around her? How did it happen that she had changed into a person unrecognizable to herself when everyone acknowledged her as who she had always been? There had once been a smile. There had been that slight curve of the left side of her mouth. There had been an expression, perhaps one of mirth, that made other people smile. There was once a delivery of words, unfunny by themselves, but humorous by her tone, her inflection and delivery, her simple perception of gleeful undertones. That was all missing now.
     Her eyes were different. She was no longer seeing things the way she used to. Colors were faded, seemingly washed away by overexposure. On her way to work each morning, she seldom noticed anything. She assigned nouns to various shapes just to keep her mind from fully closing. "Stop sign, tree, dog, traffic, building, post-office..."
     Her father never knew how much she needed him.
     She could not believe that people around her did not see the change, that she was the same to them as she had always been. It had to be that they didn't care, that what had replaced her was good enough for them, and so, no one mentioned it.
     She didn't blame them. She never mentioned it either. She never once said to anyone, "Can't you see I'm missing? Can't you see that these aren't my hands? This isn't my smile? This isn't my life..."
     In the window her face was reflected off the glass by the moon's silvery light and made her think of a pixie, made her feel the presence of herself, represented by an illusion. I am an illusion, she thought and smiled. It was easier to live with than thinking of yourself as an empty life-form, merely housing internal organs and going about the motions of everyday life so your husband and child could have clean underwear.
     She looked hard into the darkness of her bedroom, squinting through the moon's shadows for her husband's shape under the Laura Ashley quilt. She tried hard to remember why buying that quilt had made her so happy. Finding the right color had given her such a thrill. There had been an importance about the dark, hunter green. There had been an acknowledgement that the creamy hues in the swirled pattern would bring out the subtle tans in the bedroom's new wallpaper. She had traced the lines with her fingertips and marveled at her luck. It was going to look so lovely in her bedroom. It was going to make her bedroom complete. It was going to fill up some emptiness inside her. The precise coloring and pattern was going to define some elusive piece of who she was so that when people came over and saw the comforter, they would say, "Ah yes, this is Laine. This is so Laine!"
     That was important at one time. She could not remember why.
     There were shoes in her closet that mattered. She had to buy them. They matched. They belonged. There were dresses she had to have. There was deodorant she bought for specific reasons; it was cheap, it was on sale, it was baby-powder fresh. She had carefully deliberated over specific furniture, colors and patterns mattered. There was the agony over the carpet, hours of turning the hard pages of home-improvement books filled with swatches of carpeting, textures, colors, patterns, hues, stain-resistant importance.
     She felt disenfranchised from her own heart. In the dark window seat of her room, listening to the familiar sounds of her husband's snores, she was seized by the knowledge that she was a stranger to herself, that it was her own fault, and that she may never find her way back.
     Back from where?
     "Where are you?" she whispered to her reflection. "I can't find you. I don't know you."
     She could not think of one thing that mattered.
     "Laine?"
     She startled at the sound of her name. Her husband was still calling her by her name. She had changed into someone else, and he didn't notice.
     "I'm right here, hon," she lied.
     "You're up again so early? It's five o'clock."
     She returned to bed and stiffened slightly when he wrapped his arms around her. His slightest touch was lately an assault, no matter how gentle, no matter how subtle...the contact so repelled her, it was as if his fingers burned off her skin and exposed her insides to toxic air.
     "You've been waking up early every day for a few weeks now."
     "I know. I'm tired, I just can't sleep."
     "Think it's because you just turned 40?" he laughed.
     The question made her angry, not because of the reference to her age, but because he could define her so easily with a number. "Yeah, that's why."
     He kissed her neck. "I'll give you an early present..." he said and lifted her nightgown.
     He did not notice her apathy. In the dark, her apathy got lost in the matching designer sheets. He could feel her body. He could feel her opening up for him. He did not know that her body responded without her permission. He felt her loving him. He did not know how much she hated him.
     She responded with an empty embrace, a holding on that was bereft of any feeling. She moved her body under his to find enough comfort to ride out the storm, wishing she could capsize the boat, wishing she could drown in the overwhelming stench of such acquiescence.
     "I love you, Laine..."
     She doesn't live here anymore.
     "Oh Laine..."
     You're fucking a corpse, she thought.
     He thought himself the best lover in the world. He told her how much their bodies fit, how well they meshed together...how perfect they were for each other.
     She could not remember the last time she had arched her back.
     She could not remember the last time she had broken a sweat during sex.
     She could not remember the last time that storm swept her over waves fifty-feet tall, waves that swelled and pitched, waves that engulfed her and held her, suffocating her and plummeting her towards the darkest edges of desire, where her voice caught in her throat and her muscles jumped and she held on for dear life because she might drown...she might drown in loving so deeply.
     Sex was now only a black waveless water where she floated indifferently until she washed ashore, unfettered and sound, scarcely able to recall that she had been wet at all.
     Sometimes her husband fucking her was the only clue she had that she was still alive. But it was far away and removed, like life being sustained with a machine, the bleeps and blips the only evidence that blood traversed veins well below a pale, lifeless surface.
     He collapsed on top of her, unaware that she had not moved.
     Sometimes she wanted to kill him.
     "That was so good," he said into her neck.
     This was one of those times.