| ENNUI
by Caitlyn Hallman
Life was going nowhere. Lainey had known this for some time, but
had refused to acknowledge it. She shifted in the sun-lounger trying
to find a more comfortable position. There was a dull ache in her
right butt check.
It had become increasingly apparent to Lainey she could no longer
extend her state of denial. This was her fifth weekend in a row
she had spent lounging by the pool. She wasn’t being lazy.
She was thirty-five. She had achieved everything she wanted from
life. There is nothing else to do.
Lainey opened her eyes and immediately squinted. Even through the
lenses of her sunglasses the sun’s rays were a penetrating
white. It was another endlessly hot day in a land that knew of nothing
else. It was another endlessly long day in a life that knew nothing
else.
She shut her eyes. The light burned through her lids creating a
red glow behind them. She opened her eyes again and looked at the
cloudless sky. Sunbathing was boring, but getting a tan was the
only advantage Lainey had found to living in this climate. She shut
her eyes again, and the world was once more plunged in red. She
opened them and everything was white. Lainey repeated this several
times with growing rapidity: red, white, red, white, red, white.
She became dizzy and stopped.
Lainey breathed in and took a sip of her ice tea. She nearly spat
it out. The drink had grown warm in the sun. She picked up the magazine
she had been reading. ‘Get perfect abs in just ten days!’
it proclaimed. She tossed it aside and gazed out into the distance.
Suburbia constructed out of a desert. The expanse of the wilderness
had been divided evenly into square plots of equal size and shape.
This section of the desert yielded 250 houses. They had sprung up
and multiplied stealthily covering their section of Nevada like
a particularly virulent strain of herpes.
The landscape had been tamed. The desert’s thrush was cut
down, burnt or otherwise moulded to make an environment resembling
a housewife’s dream. The barren land was forced to yield grassy
lawns and palm trees that stayed unnaturally green throughout the
year. As Lainey inspected her surroundings the pattern of houses,
pools and lawns spread out before her, repeating themselves continuously
to the horizon.
Lainey was unused to continuity in her environment. This land was
utterly removed from her hometown back East. It wasn’t just
the seasonal changes in weather and foliage that were missing; it
was the soft roll of the land and the weathered eccentricities of
the buildings. Distance and time could be marked and kept in the
East. You always had a sense of place or being. Out here, distance
and time were left to maintain themselves outside of human concern.
You were left to drift through life without any visible changes
to your surroundings.
There was a time, when she was young and newly married, that Lainey
longed for a place and a life like this. ‘Be careful what
you wish for…’ she muttered the opening of the old proverb
under her breath. At that moment she felt there was never a truer
sentiment expressed.
She sighed and leaned further into her deck chair. The strap of
her bikini pinched against her shoulder blade. It was beginning
to feel small. Had she put on weight? She adjusted the strap. Her
shoulder relaxed from the release of pressure. What would it matter
if she did grow fat? She might as well accept the start of middle
age.
Lainey picked up a bottle and sprayed herself with water. There
was momentary relief from the heat, but the drops seemed to evaporate
into steam as soon as they had landed on her skin. She tried this
experiment once more and watched two water droplets on her thigh
land, roll a few centimetres and then disappear.
This is what it was going to be like forever: heat, houses and a
sun that never goes away or disappears behind a cloud. This was
the rest of her life: an unbreakable stream of nothingness. Some
days she would sit by the pool. Other days she would go shopping
or go to the salon. Those were the only variations.
Lainey’s life used to be full. For so many years she felt
like she could never stop running. If she stopped and stood still
for one second, her whole existence would tumble down around her.
There were so many things that needed to get done. There was so
much pressure to succeed, to earn more money and to get ahead.
Then suddenly one day Lainey reached all her goals. If she was being
honest, they were more Bob’s goals than hers. They were going
to save a few million and then quit. They would take early retirement,
before the age of forty, and move out to Vegas. They adored Vegas
when they were on honeymoon.
Life would be easy. life was easy. Even the house didn’t need
Lainey. There was a housekeeper who slipped in and did everything
like a magical kitchen fairy. She left little trace of her existence,
but the house was always clean and the kitchen was always fully
stocked. Lainey felt buried alive in all the trappings of her hard
work. She was just another mummy drying in the desert.
The door to the deck slid open. Bob appeared covering his face with
his hands waiting for his eyes to adjust to the light. Lainey looked
over at him. The sunlight bounced off the top of his bare head.
‘Rick’s just called,’ he said. ‘Wanted to
see if I felt like joining in a poker game tonight.’ Here
Bob stopped speaking as if waiting for an acknowledgment from Lainey.
She didn’t offer one.
‘I said that I might,’ Bob continued. ‘It’s
alright if I go, isn’t it honey?’
Lainey turned away from Bob and stared out at the never-ending An
answer formed on her tongue. She withheld it. She knew what he expected
her to say. What if she didn’t say it?
What if she said ‘no’? What if she demanded that Bob
spent time with her? It wasn’t an unreasonable request. Lainey
was certain when they had moved out to Vegas part of the idea of
early retirement would mean that they got to see more of each other.
She never remembered Bob saying he wanted to spend all of his time
on the golf course or playing cards. Lainey’s mind generated
various snapshots of escapades they could have: Lainey and Bob together
at the bowling alley, the two of them drinking a bottle of Southern
Comfort and talking until three in the morning or getting in the
car and driving all through the night down to Mexico.
Her mind expanded their adventures further. They had jumped out
of the rat race. Why couldn’t they do something like that
again? They could give all their money away. They could sell their
house. Lainey could get another job. She was her company’s
top sales rep when she left. That was only two years ago. Plenty
of places would still want to hire her.
There was nothing to stop them from starting over. They had no children
and no responsibilities. All it would take would be a little commitment.
Maybe that was the answer: they could have children. Thirty-five
wasn’t considered to be too old for first time parenthood
any longer. The house had four bedrooms. It was an obscene amount
of space for only two people. They could get a dog as well and a
cat. It could be the family Lainey dreamed of having as a child.
They had to restart their lives. Lainey couldn’t stand another
day of living like this. She didn’t want another forty or
fifty years of its vast emptiness. Her life was a long, white stretch
of desert. She needed it filled.
Lainey willed herself to say it. She could hear ‘no’
echoing in her head. The single syllable would explode like a thunder
clap and usher in some much needed rainfall.
She looked over at Bob. He stood bouncing tentatively on the balls
of his feet. Her mouth puckered up into the shape of ‘no.’
It would be the start of things. It would be the moment that would
mark the change in her life.
‘Yes,’ Lainey said, the word sliding out of her mouth
unexpectedly.
Bob nodded. He was content with her answer. His bald head happily
bounced up and down. There was no room to make a retraction. ‘I’ll
just let Rick know,’ Bob said disappearing back into the house.
The moment was over; she had failed. Lainey adjusted her bikini
strap once more. It really was starting to dig into her shoulder.
She should get a new one. She’d go shopping tomorrow.
Lainey took a sip from her warm ice tea and closed her eyes. A new
shopping centre had just opened near their housing development.
It was meant to be beautiful. There was a Neiman Marcus and a Nordstrom
inside the mall and an Ikea and on the outskirts. Lainey would check
it out. It would make a nice change from her usual Sunday.
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