Novel

CHAPTER TWO

     Laine Sanders was an invisible woman. Over the years she had gained enough weight that clothes, no matter the cut or style, seemed to effectively camouflage her into whatever background she stood before. She meshed into the scenery at work, being passed over for promotions and bonuses. She had become a prototype of every woman who had ever picked up a child from an after-school event, every woman who shopped for groceries with a fistful of coupons, blending into the American ideal of suburban, middle-classed economy-car driving sensibilities.
     There was nothing about Laine that stood out. She went unnoticed in stores, sometimes being passed over for service for women who were dressed more nicely, or who were taller...younger women who were still visible to the world at large. Laine suspected that people looked through her not because she was older or overweight or washed-out, but because she no longer existed.
     She no longer tried to be noticed. She walked with her head down, her eyes on the ground, moving step after step into the mundane, every-day predictability of home, work, errands, motherhood and slow domestic suicide.
     Every function she performed was like writing a suicide note. Picking out melons at the grocery store was a sign. Pumping her own gas was a call for help. Chewing food without tasting, drinking wine without pleasure, answering the phone calls each evening from the telemarketers was nothing if not a hotline.
     "We are pleased to offer you great savings on homeowner's insurance!"
     "I can't breathe."
     "We have a special offer for you regarding your long-distance phone service..."
     "I'm dying."
     She had always done what was right. She did what she was told to do. She did what her husband wanted her to do. She believed gender equality went as far as the paycheck and stopped, and never bartered for privacy or independence.
     She graduated from high school and married young. She had a baby boy, a mortgage, and a 401k. She drove a sensible car and wore sensible clothes. She made friends in the PTA and made herself available for volunteering at her son's school. She had a loving husband and belonged to a good, conservative Baptist church. She had everything everyone had always told her she had wanted.
     And it was slowly choking her to death.
     For seven years she sat at her brown desk in a brown cubicle, processed payments and updated amortization schedules for a small mortgage company. She did it without thinking. She wrote the numbers and made the phone calls and entered information into the computer without using her brain at all. She had once found comfort in that common routine. She could disappear into the nether reaches of a mundane office pace, block out the machinery of the banking world, and not think about how purposeless her job really was.
     As far away as her mind traveled sometimes, she was always surprised to come back and find herself working along in the every day world, smiling at people she didn't like, following orders from a boss she didn't respect, and performing a function in the business of barely existing. She could run on automatic pilot while flying under the radar, while not feeling anything regarding her employment and not caring one way or the other about home loans, interest rates or the latest coffee-break romance.
     Her boss had once introduced her to a new associate as "Lisa."
     "Hi Lisa," the woman had said.
     "No, it's Laine."
     "Oh, I'm sorry. Laine. So you're new here as well?"
     "I've worked here for seven years."
     And what could anyone say? There had been an uncomfortable silence, a snickering from a younger associate and Laine's realization that her boss felt her so inconsequential he hadn't even had the decency to feel embarrassed for the blunder.
     He had recently poked his head into her cubicle and said, "Listen Lois, can you give a shout to First Federal for the 4-1-1 on that overnight?"
     "I could combust, right here, and no one would notice but for the pile of ashes on my chair."
     "These chairs hurt my ass too," said a voice.
     She looked up to find herself once again, at work, feeling nothing but a sense of robotic obligation, shocked she had spoken words out loud. "What?"
     "You said the chair was hurting your ass, I think," said Joie, her coworker. "And I said, 'These chairs hurt my ass too.'"
     She and Joie were separated by a thin partition and talked to each other frequently without seeing the other's face, as if on the phone. Sometimes it was easier to talk that way, but she had been trying hard not to make friends with this new woman, Joie, who was so vibrant and colorful and scary.
     "We need new chairs," Laine said quickly.
     "We need new jobs," Joie said.
     For what? Laine wondered. What was the difference if you were miserable in one job or the other? What was the difference if you were miserable with one man or another? What was the point if you were miserable no matter where you went?
     What was the point at all?
     "How was your birthday?" Joie asked.
     "My birthday?" Laine asked and shuffled papers. "It was the same as it always is. I made myself a cake, bought myself a gift and signed my own card."
     "I thought Michael was taking you out?"
     "I told him not to bother. I didn't care. It doesn't matter."
     Joie got up and walked around the partition, sat down on the chair next to Laine's desk and said, "It matters that you don't care, Laine."
     "What?"
     Joie was so pretty. She was dark and Italian and passionate. She was picky about food and wine but not about people. She loved people, loved to talk. She wore expensive jewelry and fashionable clothes. Her features were dark and exciting and she walked proudly, demanding notice, her bracelets twinkling and her high heels clicking on the pavement. She was thin, but shapely. And she smelled so nice all the time, Laine inhaled the scent as if it were the only thing keeping her alive.
     "It matters that you don't care, Laine."
     Laine looked away. She did not want it to matter. And she wanted Joie to stop trying to make it matter. Her indifference was the very thing protecting her from having to take action.
     She celebrated her fortieth birthday without fanfare. She had taken her son Aaron to the movies and they had gone to lunch afterwards. They had eaten at a favorite cafe where books lined wall-to-wall shelves and were free for the taking, so long as you read while you ate. She and Aaron had been patronizing the establishment for years. That day at lunch, Laine had stared deep into her son over lunch and realized that he was the only thing keeping her alive. "Are you looking forward to your first year as a camp counselor?" she had asked, her voice cracking slightly.
     "Are you kidding? Of course! I get to be in charge," he said and winked.
     It was the wink that made her eyes water. Her son was the most incredible human being she had ever known...warm and personable, intelligent and funny. He had a way of making her relax by anchoring her to the possibility that she had created something astounding for the world. His very existence made her realize that her life had had some purpose, a meaning beyond any she could ever comprehend. She found she breathed better around him. When he went to camp, would she cease breathing?
     He was so smart. He was the only one who knew she wasn't there anymore. She knew he had grown more and more watchful as she had become more and more depressed. What had escaped her husband's attention had not gone unnoticed by her son. He was there when she lingered at the table after dinner every night, long after everyone else had gotten up. He stayed with her as she sat there, doing nothing, seeing nothing, making no move to clear the table. He watched her as she folded laundry, each item taking longer than the last, each item having to be folded and re-folded as if by someone just learning how. He noted her indecision, her hesitation. More than once he guided her through the most rote tasks, like answering a phone or heating a dish in the microwave, after she stood unmoving for far too long. She could sense his wonderment. "Are you okay?" he asked, seemingly everyday now.
     It was a question she always answered in the affirmative. It was always good enough for everyone else, but it had never fooled a 15-year-old camp counselor.
     "I'll miss you," she had said over lunch. "I've never gotten used to you being gone every Summer, ya know."
     "I think you will this Summer."
     "I'll be fine for a few days but by the fifth day I'll be climbing the walls..."
     "Will you do me a favor, Mom?"
     She had nodded immediately, knowing that whatever thing he asked for, he could have. He seldom asked for favors, perhaps never knowing that she would have granted each one, without question or hesitation.
     He had put his fork down and looked around. She took a sip of wine and listened carefully.
     "While I'm gone this summer, I want you to jump out of an airplane."
     She had not moved. At first, she wasn't sure she understood him. "You want me to..."
     "...jump out of an airplane."
     She had never considered it before. She had never had a desire for skydiving. Even when she had imagined herself doing something dangerous or thrilling, skydiving was just not something that appealed to her. "But why?"
     "I think it's something you need to do," he said casually. "I think it's something you'd enjoy. You need some fun in your life."
     "I need fun in my life, yes, but I don't really have any special urge to jump out of an airplane. I'm not much of a thrill seeker, sweetie."
     "You've always told me to do things, even things that were uncomfortable, if they challenged me. I want you to challenge yourself."
     "Yeah, but why this?"
     "Because it's something unusual? Because you've never done it before."
     "Why not something like ball-room dancing or buying a red convertible or..."
     "Because if you do something that might actually kill you, you might want to start living again."
     The restaurant had suddenly disappeared. The customers, gone. There was no sound or movement. There was no discernable object in sight except the face of her 15-year-old son, who had always seen beneath the surface of things and who had always known his mother on a level deeper than most people. For one moment, in a small diner filled with ordinary people on the corner of an ordinary intersection of an ordinary town, an ordinary boy and his mother made a spiritual connection to each other that happens seldom in the lives of ordinary people.
     She did not lie. She did not tell him she'd be fine. She knew how close she was to pulling the trigger, and now that she knew her son was aware of it as well, it became even more possible. Was it something she could discuss with him? Could it be like the instructions she gave him each summer before he went away? "You can always call. If you want to come home early, that's fine too. You've got my cell phone number..."
     I'll be dead before you get back. Remember that it wasn't your fault. Remember how much I loved you. Don't forget to brush your teeth every night. Take out the garbage before you leave for school...
     He fished a newspaper clipping out of his pocket and slid it across the table. He spoke quickly while she looked at the article. The picture showed several people plummeting through the atmosphere, wearing brightly colored parachutes, smiling into the camera. "Tandem jumping is nothing," he said. "It's like a short training and then you get strapped up to a pro. All you have to do is fall..."
     He had always been so perceptive. Even as a little boy, he had always known when she was in pain, when she was lost. The adults in her life seemed to notice nothing. But to be fair, what had she noticed about any of them lately? What had she noticed at all? "Aaron, I would never leave you..."
     "Well, just sticking around because you don't want to leave someone isn't really living, is it?"
     She was already gone. They both knew it.
     She folded the clipping carefully and put it in her purse. He watched her for a few minutes and then smiled. "Camp is gonna rock this year!"
     "I love you, Aaron," she said.
     "Mom," he said and looked around.
     It was the Sunday before Aaron flew to New Hampshire for camp that Laine found herself sitting in the same pew at the same Baptist church where she had been christened, baptized and married, where her son had been christened and baptized, where her father's funeral had been held, that she realized there was no God.
     It was a subtle, unmoving awareness. Her faith had simply gone away from her, evaporating into a pestilent stench and blowing away casually like smoke from a cancerous lung.
     She had never felt more empty.
     Her mother would tell her she was being dramatic. Her mother, a staunchly logical and religious woman, would tell her to banish those hedonistic thoughts immediately and repent her wicked nature. But her mother was crazy, locked up in the state hospital, court-ordered to receive treatment against her will. And that was God's fault.
     "I have been touched by the hand of God!" her mother had screamed as they came for her a few weeks after Laine's tenth birthday. "I have listened to the voice of the Almighty! I have heard the gospel truth from the angels themselves!"
     A police officer had handcuffed her mother as Laine sat quietly on the front porch stairs, too battle-scarred from the previous skirmishes to offer much in the way of tearful goodbyes. She had seen them take her mother away so many times before, had fought them and carried on and begged for their leniency. She couldn't fight anymore. She had lost the ability to feel what was happening. It was like traipsing about in a field of land-mines; only the first one was really going to hurt. "C'mon, Mrs. Wilson. We don't want that crazy talk."
     "Crazy talk?" she had screamed. "You think you can talk to God and stay sane?"
     The last time she had visited her mother the nurses had told her that her mother had become catatonic and might not respond. She remembered seeing her mother standing stiffly in a corner, not moving, not really a part of the world anymore. She remembered looking into her mother's desperate eyes and wondering if she was trapped in there. She remembered praying that God would be merciful. "Take her," she begged, "or give her back."
     She missed her mother. It was a familiar feeling. She waited for the emptiness in her arms to become hard knots of pain. She waited for the tears to fill her eyes and race down her face. She waited for the bittersweet smell of her mother to fill her senses.
     None of it happened. I'm too tired to miss my mother, she thought. It required too much energy.
     She slumped into the space next to her husband and waited to die. Her legs became heavy, her back frozen into a pathetic slouch. Her face felt plastic, waxed over an unmoving expression and empty eyes. There was no life in her. There was nothing she could feel. She wondered if she'd even be able to walk out to the car after the service. She wondered if Michael would even notice.
     She could picture herself sloughing away in pieces, as if parts of her were drifting away into the ether. She imagined the whole genetic base of herself disintegrating and floating out into black, meaningless space. She saw herself as ash or tiny molecules, too small to form any recognizable shape, landing here and there in the world, too far apart to ever reform, too small and insignificant to ever be anything of importance to anyone or anything. She could picture herself imploding into a nothingness so overwhelming that even her name was meaningless. It was a proper noun indicating a woman's name, but it did not belong to her. It did not define her. She had been scalloped out and hollowed before the watchful eyes of a God that tortured her mother into the most senseless existence of all--a woman of faith without integrity, a body without a soul, a mind without reason, and possibly, the consciousness of it all.
     She could feel the movements of the church as they readied to pass the collection. She suddenly felt something...
     ...a feeling. It was as palpable as if someone had just punched her in the stomach. Her breath became quick and shallow.
     Five wicker baskets made their way down her aisle.
     Michael whispered, "Can you get this? I didn't bring my wallet."
     How could he not see? She could feel her face whiten, felt the moist beads of sweat on her forehead. "I'm dying," she thought. "I'm going to die right here and my husband isn't even going to notice!"
     Suddenly she felt a beat, a pounding of sorts. Her face began to vibrate and felt as if it were changing shape, morphing into a hot mask. She placed her fingers on her face. Her hands were tingling as she reached out for the collection basket. In what felt like one fluid motion, she placed the basket on the floor, reached into her purse for her wallet, removed a five, dropped it into the basket and palmed a handful of bills from the collection plate before passing it down the aisle as if nothing had happened.
     For a few moments, she couldn't breathe. There was incredible effort in keeping her head upright. What had she done? What motivated such a felonious indiscretion? She didn't need the money. She didn't need anything. She was about to die just seconds ago and without one solid pause of premeditation, she had just stolen money from her church.
     Her husband put his arm around her, squeezed her shoulder and smiled. She thought she might like to ram her metal cross bookmarker through his left temple.
     She could feel the adrenaline coursing madly through her veins, could feel the hair on her neck stand up.
     The congregation rose for the last hymn as she felt a transfusion of her own blood fill parts of her that had dried out years ago. She could feel the rush of a life-sustaining force travel through her arteries, splash through and saturate the crusty parts of her mind, and feed every gaping crevice of her that had been begging for sustenance. Her mouth watered. Tears spilled out of her eyes.
     She felt the beat again. A low, steady drum pounding out a consistent anthem. She strained to hear it more clearly. It was like a proclamation, like a whispered vow during a sacred ceremony.
     Experiencing a revelation that bordered on divine manifestation, she realized it was the sound of her own heartbeat. It filled the space of her head and chest. She felt it beat in her arms and legs, felt the essence of it escaping the confinement of her own body and filling the church, the symphony of her cardiac rhythm conducting the voices of the choir.
     She let it gush over her. She wanted to drown in it.
     She wanted to drink it. She wanted to be quenched. She wanted to feed off it.
     The day Laine Sanders realized she had no soul was the same day she realized that she was going to live. The day Laine Sanders realized she had no identity was the same day she figured out how she was going to get herself back.
     She was going to stop being afraid and start being angry. She was going to stop worrying and jump blindly into her own life. And she was not going timidly. She was going to make noise.
     She felt her face change shape again, but this time, it was not a waxy frozen expression of emptiness. This time it was a familiar shape. This time it was a smile. And this time it wasn't a victim's smile or the smile of a fat, ugly woman trying to blend into the background. This time the smile felt real. It felt hopeful. She could not remember the last time her face had entertained such contours.
     She looked at the statue of Jesus on the alter...the same statue she had gazed upon all these years while feeling a mixture of fear and adoration. She slid the fistful of bills into her pocket and said plainly beneath the music, "That's for killing my parents, mother fucker."