Stories

Emily Johnson couldn’t sleep at night, so she bought a sound machine for her bedroom. It didn’t really help. Right away, three of the sounds were no good. The chirping crickets were annoying, the heartbeat was just freaky and then there was white noise. It was sort of like listening to the radio not turned to a station, or TV after sign-off. She kept waking up feeling like she’d just missed the national anthem.

When Emily tried to sleep with the ocean sound playing, she awoke repeatedly to seagulls’ cries. She sat up in the middle of the night and switched to the mountain stream. She was awakened a short while later by the sound of rocks tumbling downstream. Finally, she tried the spring rain, but within minutes she heard a squeaky gate, blowing open and closed in the storm.

Emily decided that a sound machine and an over-active imagination were not a good combination.

So, the next morning Emily awoke feeling even more tired and exhausted than before she bought the sound machine. She stumbled out of bed and caught sight of her face in the mirror while brushing her teeth. Oh God, Emily thought. Do I really look that old? She smiled at the mirror and saw fine lines appear around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Her eyes were puffy and dark from her lack of sleep. While showering, Emily decided to forgo ironing her pants in favor of lying on her couch for 10 minutes with tea bags or cucumber slices or ice cubes on her eyes. In the decision between wrinkly pants and wrinkly eyes, Emily decided she’d rather have wrinkly pants any day.

On her lunch break, Emily went to the store to return her sound machine. She mumbled at the clerk when he demanded a reason for return. How could she explain creaky gates and seagulls to this man?

Emily decided to visit the shoe store so long as the clerk miraculously returned her money. Maybe the anticipation of wearing new shoes the next day would help her sleep that night.

There was a mother with her young daughter in the shoe store. They were buying new shoes for school. Emily stood with her back to them, deciding which pairs to try on. Suddenly Emily heard the little girl’s squeaky voice say, “Mommy, look at that lady. She’s so big.”

The mother’s voice responded, “Yes, she’s very tall, isn’t she?” The mother put a hopeful emphasis on the word “tall.”

“No, Mommy,” responded the squeaky voice. “She’s fat.”

Emily squeezed her eyes closed and swallowed back tears as she waited for the mother’s reprimand that didn’t come.

“There! I think that’s the perfect pair of going-back-to-school shoes, don’t you?” asked the mother’s voice, bright and strained.

Emily fled the store before she sobbed out loud. Outside, she fantasized turning around to the little girl and giving her a lecture about true beauty being on the inside. But even Emily didn’t believe that, so she switched to a fantasy where the mother soundly spanked her precious little girl for being so uncouth.

Now, it’s not that Emily wished harm would come to the people who’ve hurt her. No, she decided as she walked along. It would be nice if they felt bad, though. Not terrible. Not locked up in their rooms, gnashing their teeth and refusing to eat for weeks at a time. Just bad enough to say, “Oh, I feel so bad. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” Oh, hell, thought Emily, I don’t even care if they feel bad, just so long as they can deliver a sincere apology.

On the bus on the way home, Emily sat next to an elderly gentleman. He smiled at her and asked her name. Emily lied and said “Grace.”

“Oh, Grace. What a beautiful name. Reminds me of the Grace of God. My name’s Adam,” he added.

“Nice to meet you, Adam,” she replied and looked away, hoping this would be the end of their chat.

“Well, Grace, I have to tell you why my name is Adam. See, God has appointed me to start a new Garden of Eden. I’m supposed to get as many young Eves as I can and take them to a beautiful tropical island and, well, spread my seed, so to speak,” he announced.

Grace rolled her eyes and looked to the other passengers for help. The only one who would meet her eyes was a middle-aged woman who was openly snickering.

“Yes, m’am,” Adam continued. “I can invite some other Adams too, if I like. We’re all going to start a new Paradise. God will provide me with an island just as soon as I have 70 people to go with me.”

“That’s nice,” Emily said politely as she pulled the cord to get off the bus. She was only halfway home, but she had decided she’d rather walk.

As Emily walked home, she thought about Adam and she thought about how easy it would be to just relax and let her crazy thoughts take over. What would they do with her? Emily thought it would be really nice to spend the rest of her life in her pajamas, watching TV and building jewelry boxes out of Popsicle sticks. How relaxing, how calm, how free. There were days when Emily’s grasp on reality was anything but firm. The only thing that kept people from knowing anything about it was that she kept it to herself. Emily thought about how it would feel to just let go, to laugh at the moon, scream at the sun, dance under the stars. No inhibitions. Just freedom of expression.

Emily let herself into her sad little apartment. She decided to treat herself to a bubble bath and a glass of wine. It had been a difficult day. She ran the water steaming hot and felt her skin glowing red when she emerged. She wrapped her robe loosely around her and began to wander from room to room. Listlessly, she opened closets and drawers, and cupboards, not really sure what she was looking for. Finally, her eye fell on the old shoebox filled with photographs, half-hidden on her closet shelf. She pulled it down and sat on the floor. She began to flip through the pictures. She hadn’t looked at them in a very long time. Many she had forgotten she even had.

She stopped and pulled a picture from the box, held it up to examine it more closely. It was a picture of herself, nude and in bed, that one of her lovers had taken. She was partially covered with a sheet and they had just finished making love. She remembered him taking that picture, how she didn’t even care that there was a camera in her face. She was 19 and in love and her smile was smugly satisfied. Her face was bright and flushed, her hair, luscious and long and thick was fanned on the pillow beside her head.

Emily had almost forgotten this girl. She took another sip of wine and did a quick internal inventory. Yes, she was still there, her eyes blazed blue from the depths of Emily’s memory.

Emily put the pictures away and returned the picture box to its place on the shelf. She carried her nude picture to the bathroom and clipped her to the bathroom mirror. That way she would remember to look for that girl every morning.