The Mismatch

Today, like most days, begins for her sometime after 10 a.m. because she can’t fall asleep until nearly 2 in the morning anymore. Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s just how she’s always been wired but didn’t realize it until after she retired and no longer had to go to bed early.

She rises from her bed and everything hurts. The dog watches her pull on a T-shirt and a pair of lounging pants. She shuffles toward the bathroom.

She runs a comb through her hair, notices the house is cool from the air conditioning but somehow stuffy. She sniffs, makes a mental note that the cats’ litter boxes need to be cleaned. She heads to the kitchen, turns on the hot water in the sink — it takes forever before it runs warm — and opens the refrigerator door.

“. . . the hell are you doing wasting water like that?”

She pulls out a bottle of cold water that she filled the night before, sets it on the counter, cleans the cats’ dishes and opens the can of food to share between them.

“Damn it, drink tap water! Bottled water isn’t free. Wake the hell up and think!”

The dog needs to go out. She clips on the leash and walks him to the mailbox to see what’s been delivered. Two notices from her health care provider, three ads, a magazine from AARP. A small package; she collects stamps, and her recent online purchases have arrived.

She looks at the return address and smiles briefly. Adding to her collection gives her some joy. It’s also the anticipation after she places the order. It’s like all the yarn she buys for knitting, or the miniatures she puts in the bookcase to look at.

“. . . buying more crap? You’ve got a million hobbies you waste money on and can’t stick with any one of them.”

The dog pulls on the leash, leads her back toward the house, out of the summer heat. She pauses to wave at a car driving by — a neighbor who sometimes chats with her when they run into each other. The dog next door comes over, wagging. She pets him, rubs his belly, pulls a Milk Bone from her pocket and offers it. Her own dog growls softly. The neighbor dog takes the treat and bounds off toward home.

Inside, she throws the mail on the table.

“Keep the goddamn door shut when you go out. Electricity isn’t free. What the hell is the matter with you?”

She sits in her recliner, pulls her laptop over. She checks her email, reads some cartoons, does the Times word puzzles. She has a talent for words and language; they’ve played a part in most of her various work positions. She’s always known that she wouldn’t have any important jobs, like being a scientist or medical doctor or engineer, but writing is something she’s been good at.

“. . . wasting so goddamn much time sitting on that computer. Get up and clean this filthy house.”

She stretches. Her eyelids are already heavy from her restless night. The sleep test she took didn’t offer any answers. Sometimes heartburn wakes her up from her sleep, but she can’t seem to get it under control. Almost as often, she has bad dreams and wakes up depressed and emotional. She can’t shake the feelings until late in the day, if at all.

Just today she had awakened from one of those dreams; she’s had this one many times before. In it she’s fighting — not just a word battle, but a physical one, deeply seated in a rage that came from being pushed too far for too long. She knows she thrashes in her sleep when she has this dream; someone she was seeing once had told her so. In the dream, she finally speaks her mind, and that makes her feel powerful. She always tries to strike her opponent, to cause pain, real pain, but her punches never connect. They grow weak and floppy just before they land, and then she wakes up, spent, frustrated, still angry.

Her eyes close now with her laptop still on her lap. She sleeps.

* * *

The dog’s sharp bark startles her awake, and she squints hard at the clock. It’s nearly 3:00. Again she’s done nothing all day but sit in her chair.

She rises and goes to the kitchen for something to eat. Nothing sounds good, and she hates to cook. She grabs a bag of chips and a sleeve of cookies. She knows it fuels the heartburn and adds pounds, but it’s all she can do right now.

“All you ever eat is junk. No wonder you’re as big as a damn house.”

A friend texts her. “Whattup?” the screen reads.

“Oh, you know,” she writes back. “I’m good. Just doing stuff. You?”

She checks her social media, plays a game online. At 4:00, the news radio show she likes begins streaming. She goes to that website, listens to what’s happening in the world, in the country, in politics. Her anger rises; so does her stomach. She reaches for a plastic bottle on the table next to her, shakes out some antacid tablets, caps it back up. She hates the flavor of the tablets, chews them quickly, washes it down with the water that’s gone lukewarm in its bottle.

She should do something, she thinks. Just one thing. The dishes have been sitting on the counter for a week; she could load those into the dishwasher. She leans forward in the chair to stand. One of the cats slinks over for attention, flops on its side. She rubs its chest.

“. . . goddamn place is covered in animal hair. You’re lazy. You live like a slob.”

She needs a shower. Maybe, she thinks, if she showered, brushed her teeth, put on some real clothes, she’d feel like running to the store. She needs a healthy meal for supper.

Her phone rings; a different friend. “Yeah, it sure is nice out,” she says. “I might go to the store in a bit . . . . Yeah, I’m doing great. Keeping out of trouble.” They hang up 20 minutes later. She wishes she hadn’t agreed to go out for dinner on Saturday.

The news hosts drone on. It’s nearly 5:00. She needs ice; the filter on the ice maker in her freezer keeps clogging up from the hard water. The dollar store up the street carries ice. Slowly, she rises, heads to the bedroom, pulls on jeans that already should have been in the dirty laundry. She grabs her wallet and keys and goes out to the garage.

“Now where the hell you going? You drive that car hard. Make a list and go once. The hell is the matter with you?”

She drives the few blocks to the yellow sign, pulls into the parking lot. Someone in a massive pickup truck is parked across the two spots closest to the door.

“Asshole,” she mutters, and kicks a piece of gravel at its back tire as she passes by.

“. . . she’ll go right to the candy and chips aisle, you just watch.”

She grabs a package of tortillas, a jar of salsa, a can of refried beans, and a box of treats for the dog. She waits in line, hiding under the bill of her ball cap. She pays, leaves, heads to the car.

She’s forgotten the ice. Going back in, she drops a five on the counter, gets her change and exits again.

She glances at the dent in the passenger side door panel. One night, six, maybe eight years ago, when she was still working, she came home late, exhausted. Backed the car into the garage and clipped the ladder leaning against the wall. She probably could pop the dent out if she tried.

She drops the bag of ice on the seat. In the heat, the car smells of mice.

“. . . goddamn careless with everything you own. You don’t deserve nice things. You don’t know how to take care of them.”

Her stomach tenses. Gastric reflux forces bitter acid up into her mouth. She spits it onto the ground, gets in the car, drives home.

It’s Tuesday. She remembers that she needs to be online at 7:00. Since the pandemic, she’s had a standing online appointment every Tuesday evening. Once everyone stopped wearing masks, there never seemed to be any need to go back to meeting face-to-face. She’s fine with it this way. Saves her the effort of having to dress and go out.

Once home, she throws the ice in the freezer. The dog needs his walk, but again today, it’s too hot outside; she’s worried he’ll burn his foot pads. The dog is disappointed. She takes him to the wooded lot out back, lets him do it there. She picks it up in a small bag and drops it in a bucket by the garage.

She realizes she forgot to water the irises again.

Each day, she notices, it seems harder to get back up the stairs into the house. Sandy soil; the house is shifting, the cement steps are sinking. She needs to get some estimates on a new driveway and walkway.

“. . . never take care of that goddamn house. You’re just going to leave it until it falls down around you. You don’t know the value of money. You’re so goddamn irresponsible. . . .”

She runs a brush through her hair, rubs a little makeup on her face, goes back to her chair in the living room. Soon after she opens the laptop, a screen pops up with the sound of a phone ringing. She answers it; a familiar face appears.

“Hey Callie,” she says. She can tell from her own reflection in the screen that her smile looks phony, and that makes her uncomfortable. She looks away, shifts in her seat.

“Well good evening,” the woman says brightly. “Right on time as usual!”

They chat about this and that for a few minutes.

“So,” Callie says finally. “Last time we were talking about the tapes that keep playing in your head — your father saying critical things to you, and you can’t seem to stop them, and they make you feel bad about yourself. Remind me: How long has he been gone now?”

“Ten years. . . . It was ten years last August, so almost eleven.”

“Uh-huh. It’s been a long time now and yet he’s still right there in your ear. Let’s talk about all that some more. How have you done this past week? Are you able to use that technique we talked about last time to push those critical thoughts away when you recognize that you’re having them?”

She pauses. “I’m trying,” she says finally.

It occurs to her to tell Callie that she had the dream again last night, but it probably happened just because she was so outraged over politics in the news the past week. Politicians make her crazy, the way they expect everyone to respect them, how their way is the only way and no one else’s opinion matters. Selfish. Dictatorial. Insensitive. They say such horrible things to each other across the aisle. That surely must have been what triggered the dream this time. Her father — the one she’s always trying to punch — must represent all of that.

She looks around her living room: a mostly finished knitted afghan spills out of a cloth bag; books holding her stamp collections sit piled on the desk, with small vellum envelopes peeking out between some of the pages. Her framed doctorate degree, earned late in life, sits over the fireplace, easily visible, so she can remind herself of something big she’s accomplished.

“Just because someone has a degree doesn’t mean they’re smart.”

From where she sits, she can see a thick layer of dust on the fireplace mantle. She turns back to the computer screen. Callie is looking at her expectantly, waiting for something more.

And it suddenly hits her . . . she doesn’t want this anymore. Any of it — the trying, the pushing, the reaching, the searching, the seemingly perpetual failures even in life’s most basic tasks. The exhaustion. The voice.

Especially that voice.

At that moment, something heavy in her chest breaks loose and sinks, falls so far down inside her she feels as if she’s been driven to her knees and will never be able to rise again. She has always thought that at some point, all her work, her awards and papers, degrees and accomplishments, would stop the criticism and let her finally feel some peace, but as it turned out, her hard work all amounted to . . . nothing. And now, well, now it’s too late in her life to bother even trying anymore. The truth is, the voice could never be beaten, no matter what she did to stop it, and it will never stop until she admits and accepts that it’s been right all along.

She feels very small in her defeat, and very broken.

“Listen,” she finally says, turning back to the computer screen. “I’m really not feeling well tonight. I need to go.”

“Oh,” Callie says. “I’m sorry. Well, shall we plan on the same time next week, as usual?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I’ll get back to you.”

They hang up, and she roughly tosses the laptop onto the table.

“Stop that, damn it! Are you trying to break it?”

“Shut up,” she snaps out loud. “You win, so just shut up and go to Hell!”

She curls into a ball on the chair and closes her eyes, begging her mind for sweet, dreamless sleep. Eventually she dozes off, wondering whether the voice ever had any satisfaction in its inevitable win.