Early Friday Morning

by Lloyd B. Abrams

Chilled and shivering, huddled into a fetal position, the old woman awakened with a shudder as her eyes blinked open. The clock radio, placed within reach on the empty side of the double bed, stared back at her, its red numbers changing from 3:51 to 3:52. She slowly unclenched her left hand and reached over to tap the sleep button that would turn the radio on for another 60 minutes. The soothing voice of the psychologist on the call-in show, she knew, would let her, help her, allow her, to slide back into sleep, or so she hoped. She was feeling so exhausted these days.

Such problems, she thought to herself. Everyone with problems. She pulled the thin blankets over her shoulders and closed her eyes to listen for a while. This time, sleep did not come easy. She felt her heart beating. Her hands ached and she rubbed them together. She was filled with worry, though she couldn’t put her finger on any one thing. Nor could she think clearly enough so early in the morning so that things would be, as her younger son had put it, “in the proper perspective.” My sons, my sons. She peeked at the red numerals, 4:18. She tried to calm herself. Finally she dozed off.

She slowly opened her eyes. Through the sliding glass doors, the first dim light of dawn was fighting off the darkness. She noticed the outlines of the tree outside her condo apartment, and the four-story building, a mirror of her own, across the man-made pond. 5:37. She knew that sleep would not come easy, so she decided to get up and go about her business.

She carefully shifted her weight and pivoted her body into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. She heard a muted siren off in the distance and sadly shook her head the meat wagon was coming for yet another one. Why couldn’t they at least turn the sirens off? What were they hurrying for? Now, the hardest part. She touched her feet down on the floor and pushed her gnarled toes into the threadbare slippers. Holding firmly on to the bed, she stood up, and waited for the dizzy feeling to abate. She was so frightened after that first time when she lost her balance and almost crumpled to the floor. The anti-vertigo medicine was helping, but it was doing only so much. Goddam doctors. Goddam old body.

She put on the tattered robe and shuffled into the smaller bathroom. She flipped the wall switch, and waited the few seconds as the humming flourescent flickered on. Just like me…slowly dying. But why bother changing it?

She turned on the tiny black and white television as she walked into the kitchen. She liked the early morning show on the NBC channel, the view through the studio windows of Rockefeller Center, so close to where the boys live. She ran some cold tap water into a small tea kettle, placed it on the electric element, and propped up the kettle handle with a lid of another pot so she wouldn’t burn herself when the water boiled. She picked up the chipped Century Federal Savings Bank mug which she got as a premium when she turned over one of her many CD’s—from a bank long since merged with some other S&L—rinsed it out, and then dropped in the used tea bag from last night.

She sat in the chair at the table, watching the TV set as she waited for the water to boil. When she saw the steam rising from the spout, she got up and poured the hot water into the mug, then grasped the mug to warm her hands. She carried the mug over to the table. She walked back to the refrigerator and pulled out a plastic bag, took out a small piece of bread and placed it in the warmer. She carefully placed the bag back into the fridge and then took out a small tub of cottage cheese. She opened the tub, and reached into it with a spoon to scrape off the green mold on top. The rest is still good, she thought…why waste it? She then spooned a bit of the cottage cheese into a small bowl, sprinkled on some bran and cereal, and carried it back over to the table.

She sat down and once again checked her list of daily things to do, which she had written on the blank side of a small scrap of old bank slip. She opened up several small vials of pills—and took out one for her vertigo, another for her depression, and a third for the thyroid. She pushed aside the tube of ointment that had been prescribed for her rosiola; now she would have to pay for it because the HMO decided they wouldn’t cover anymore since it wasn’t in their formulary any longer. After all, the redness on her nose wasn’t so bad anyway. She swallowed down each of the pills with a sip of the hot tea. It was time to start another day.

Thirteen hundred miles away, her son lay on his side of the large bed with his eyes closed, knowing that a return to sleep would not come easy. He tentatively opened his eyes the to check the time on the clock radio. The red numerals, 5:57, stared back at him without the feelings of angst, without the self-accusation and self-doubt, and without the constant vague ominousness that woke him in the first place. Groggily, he searched for the tiny earphone attached to the transistor radio that always somehow got stuck under his body, or under the pillow, and placed it into his right ear while burying the left side of his face into the pillow.

He listened to the news radio station for a while, interspersed by the occasional muffled sound of his wife’s snores. Several times, he reached over to nudge her, to alter her breathing pattern, to stop her loud snoring, for he was a light sleeper and feared that he would never fall back to sleep. Several times, he just wanted to hold her, to be comforted by her, to have someone or something else magically fight off the demons that plagued him and laughed at him and tortured him in the night. Finally, with a sigh, he turned over on his right side, changed earphone ears, reached under the blankets, and gently placed his left hand on his wife’s shoulder. He lay awake, and felt his heart beating in his chest.

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February 11, 1998…Copyright © 1998, Lloyd B. Abrams