Sanibel Scribbles (7 page)

She bent down to pick up a stick. Before long, she tossed it down, then fell to her knees on the damp ground, praying for Rebecca. After her torrent of words was spent, she rested her head and stared at the stick.

Without thinking, she took it and began scribbling in the sand. She wrote what she could remember of Rebecca’s goals. She scribbled with so much intensity and enthusiasm that she was probably acting like the kid who built the castle she had just destroyed. The stick broke in two, but she continued, and now she no longer kneeled. Instead, her scribbles grew larger and larger along the shore, enough so that someone in a plane overhead might be able to read them. Suddenly, without warning, the water gently rolled further up the beach than before and made its way over the markings. As quickly as the water came, it also went, carrying Rebecca’s goals and dreams with it into the Gulf of Mexico.

She felt sorry that nothing survived forever. The island Indians were eventually wiped out, not by an incoming tide, but by invaders with firearms and foreign diseases, things they couldn’t compete with. She had stomped on the sand castle, and now her markings were washed away as well. Maybe it was a good thing. Something about the sacred goals being tossed in a trash can back at the café didn’t settle well with Vicki. Despite the fact that her scribbles in the sand would never be seen again, Vicki’s soul felt refreshed because now Rebecca’s dreams were blended into nature.

As she glanced down at the sand, she noticed piles of different types of
miniature shells, known to the islanders as “coffee grounds,” and decided she could use a good, strong coffee drink herself, so she left.

When she arrived back at the condo, she decided it was too early for coffee, so she settled down in the recliner chair in the living room, attempting to fall asleep for a few minutes at least, but the hyperventilating returned. Why couldn’t she breathe? Several times she dozed off, and it felt good and natural. Once there was a thud on her window, and she assumed it was a bird hitting the glass. She dozed again.

No! Wake up!
an inner voice cried out.
Do not fall asleep! You might die!
The inner voice, her mind, tortured her exhausted body. This attack of hair-pulling insomnia returned night after dragging night.

CHAPTER FOUR

VICKI WISHED GOD HAD
never created night. But nights of sitting up alone in the living room recliner attempting to catch her breath did pass, and day arrived to greet her rudely. Sure, day rescued her from night, but having had no sleep, day felt like unusual punishment.

During the days that followed, she took shelter under her dark sunglasses, which barely hid her red, bloodshot eyes and the bags that drooped as low as her cheekbones. No one fully understood the extent of her insomnia, or what to make of it, but she knew she needed one good night of sleep in order to survive—physically and mentally. She did her time and now wanted to declare this time of mourning over, complete. She wanted to enter a new time, perhaps a time for dancing, or one of the other joyful times that fall under the category of “everything.”

Naps on the raft in the sunlit pool hardly competed with a dream-spent night in bed. She wanted badly to become a member of the rapid-eye movement, but she couldn’t get in and didn’t know why. She granted herself permission to enter sleep, but it stood miles away, a fortress up on a mountain, hidden behind brick walls and moats filled with dark water and knights prancing around on horses. She wanted more than anything to enter the kingdom of sleep but didn’t have the strength to break down the walls, swim through the dark water and kill the men in armor guarding its doors. She could hardly catch her own breath and had no idea where it had gone. Despite her feelings of sleep deprivation, she rejoiced
with more gladness than ever when the days that the Lord hath made kept coming. But nights came too, part of the package. She couldn’t have day without night, she knew that, but still resented night — a punishment, solitary detention or abyss — that kept creeping up.

“When you have your shortness of breath tonight, just breathe into the bag.” Her mother placed a brown paper lunch bag next to the recliner, her newfound bed. “Try relaxing your thoughts when it happens.”

“But it’s not my thoughts. It’s kind of strange that my thoughts would do this to me. I know I’m not crazy!”

In truth, she knew her thoughts of death made their way through her mind like objects on a factory conveyor belt. She couldn’t bring herself to yank the bad thoughts off, and just let them go by.

“It has nothing to do with being crazy,” added her father as he turned the television off. “Have you been drinking caffeine past three o’clock?”

She pushed the lever on the chair and shot upward. She didn’t want to recline. “No. I’m down to half a cup in the morning. No more.” In truth, she knew that if anyone asked her blood type, she’d have to reply, “hazelnut coffee.”

“I was thinking that it’s asthma,” she said. “Or who knows, my scoliosis might be constricting my lung cavity. I haven’t had my scoliosis checked in years.”

“Are you worried about anything?” Her mother turned off the lights in the living room.

“Wait, keep that small light on, please. No, I’m not worried about a thing. Just falling asleep, that’s all.” She sat in the recliner, ready to confront another night as a coward, as if death might come like a thief in the night.

“Why don’t you have a gin and tonic with us?” asked her mother. “We can sit out on the porch and talk.”

“I’d love to, but I’m exhausted,” she said. Secretly, she believed her own hypochondriac thoughts.
It might be mitral valve prolapse, or some irregularity with my heart, or angina, or an undetected aneurysm ready to burst
.

“Try to get some sleep tonight. If it doesn’t go away, we’ll get you checked.”

As they left the room, her mind began to tick along with the clock. So did her fingers, tapping the arm of the cold vinyl recliner. An hour later she could hear the distant snoring of her father, like the growls of a dragon from within the fortress of the world of sleep. She tried focusing on the present moment and the remote control in her hand. She felt frustrated with the new digital manner in which she had to flip through over a hundred different stations. This must be why Grandma had never watched television. Perhaps she would specialize her future psychology practice on patients who couldn’t adapt to modern technology.

She clicked the remote, and then got stuck on a channel of static. The stubborn device wouldn’t work as she desperately pointed and clicked, over and over again. She tried to enjoy the flickering static show in the dark living room, like fireworks on a smaller scale. The
stststststtststststst
sound got to her, and she knew she’d have to quietly exit the vinyl, walk over to the television and turn it off.

Hours passed. She started to slip into sleep, the existence she longed for, but then someone kept tossing her out.
No, wake up, do not lose control or you might slip into the dungeon of death by mistake. Do not fall asleep!
She manned the graveyard shift, while the rest of the world slept. The living room in the condo looked ready for battle. A gaudy copper helmet posed on top of the TV, a medieval sword hung on the wall over it, and two black-and-gold shields were nailed next to it. Touched by sun, the decorations weren’t bad, but at night, in the dark living room, they were eerie. She watched the walls, decorated by her grandparents who had traveled the world after retirement collecting cheap souvenirs. Nothing moved but a spider on a cross-country journey from the corner above the television to the corner above her recliner.

Day arrived and night followed, over and over again. Who said it was all very good? She disagreed with the Creator on this one.

Sitting at the kitchen table in her pajamas, she stared at the cereal boxes erected like buildings that formed a city around her bowl of milk. She could feel her hair, tangled by her night of tossing and turning, and she traced the skin on her face for pillow crevices. They remained, along with the head rush that should have disappeared a minute after first standing.
She chose Life, Quaker Oats’ Life. She chose it because she liked its name. Perhaps eating it might make her live forever. She read the nutrition facts on the side panel and the ingredients below. She placed her health in the hands of whole oat flour (with oat bran), sugar, corn flour, whole-wheat flour, rice flour, high-starch oat flour, salt, calcium carbonate, sodium phosphate (a phosphorus source and dough conditioner), reduced iron, and many more ingredients. Yes, this combination created the cereal she now ate, the cereal called Life.

Her lazy adrenal glands screamed out to her, so she poured herself a cup of coffee, added milk, then squeezed in chocolate syrup and stirred it all together.

“You know, Dad, I’ve never had a summer unemployment problem before. I always worked for you in the shop or in my internships in Chicago.”

“I wish I had a job to offer you this summer, honey. I don’t anymore.”

“I know. I try not to look back, but this time last year, I’d be ringing the silver bell, alerting the town that the ice cream had arrived; that the season had started.”

Her father set his paper down and stared out the window at a palm tree. “I’d be outside in front, painting a fresh coat of pink on those wooden benches.”

“I’d be slicing strawberries for the guests’ breakfast,” added her mother, “and Ann would be sneaking testers here and there when I wasn’t looking.”

“And old Granny would be sitting in the window on the pink radiator,” added her father.

“I feel horrible. I planned on making enough money this summer to at least reimburse you for my own airline ticket to Spain.” Vicki sipped her chocolate coffee and burned the tip of her tongue, which ruined the experience of drinking the rest of her cup of coffee. “Is there a yellow highlighter anywhere? I’ve got to search the classifieds.”

“You might not need to,” her father said.

“What do you mean?”

“We got a phone call this morning. There are some legal matters Mom and I need to attend to concerning the sale of the businesses. We’re leaving
for Michigan in two days. We’d love for you to come with us; spend the summer there.” He took a sip of his black coffee. “You could at least live back in Holland near your friends, and wait tables with them. That way you’d have some spending money for Spain.”

“No, I can’t go back to Michigan. I can’t, not now.” She poured herself more coffee, this time without adding chocolate. She felt as if she had done nothing to pursue her goal of finding a summer job. She felt like a crab walking sideways.

“We had no idea this would come up. We don’t want to leave you here alone. You need to be around people, especially after the loss of Rebecca. It might be good for you to return.”

“I can’t return. I won’t. In fact, I vow right now to find a job within two days. Maybe I needed a deadline to work against, and now I’ve got one.
Two days
.”

She gulped the muddy drink as if injecting herself with some ancient formula. With each gulp she could feel her creativity awakening, her ambitions screaming out, and her confidence building. “Someone will hire me, I know it. Just put me in front of an interviewer, and I will get the job.”

“Whoa, Nellie. What kind of job do you think you will look for?” He often spoke as he would speak to his horses back in Michigan. His favorite horse was named Kid. He loved them all.

“When I drink coffee, I can do anything!” She laughed and poured herself the last inch from the pot. “This liquid bean stuff turns me into a wonder woman of some sort. Coffee inspires me. Don’t worry. I’ll go out and interview today, and I’ll come home with a job!”

“Hey, hold the reins! Before you go, good luck, and we know you’ll do great. Don’t you forget that, you hear? Mom and I say it all the time - anyone who hires you is going to be the luckiest employer alive.”

“Oh, Dad, I wish I could still work for you.”

“Get out of here. Hit the pasture!” he said.

“Okay, but I’ve been meaning to ask you both something. Just before she died, Grandma told me she had discovered a recipe for instant gratification. She was going to send it to me. Do you know what she might have
been talking about?”

“No. I have no idea.”

“I wish I knew.”

In one full day, she attended a brief seminar at Edison Mall on how to become a purified-water saleswoman, interviewed with Lee County to become a toll collector on the bridge linking Sanibel Island and the City of Palms, and phoned the Thomas A. Edison and Henry Ford Museums in Fort Myers, begging to get hired for anything. When the man there asked her why she wanted a job at the museums, she had desperately replied, “Because I’m sick of fearing death.” She knew it made no sense to a complete stranger, but the man, once his surprise had passed, told her that when Thomas Edison was in a coma and close to death he awoke for a moment, looked up, and said, “It is very beautiful over there.” The man didn’t offer her the job, but at least he gave her a glimpse of hope.