NONFICTION
A Day Like Any Other
by Amy Kudelka
As soon as I step into the garage, I realize the magnitude of my mistake. I had started the car to warm it up, but forgot to press the button of the automatic garage door opener before going back inside the house to finish making my lunch. Exhaust fumes hang in white clouds in the small space, poisoning the air I swallow. I freeze momentarily, thinking I should retreat back into the house, then realize it is locked and the keys are in the idling car. Although I can see the shape of the Jeep, I stumble through the lethal fog, feeling for the door handle like someone who has suddenly gone blind. Tears run from my burning eyes, which I cover with my mitten, only to realize I should have covered my mouth and nose instead.
Inside the Jeep, my hand finds its way to the automatic door opener clipped to my visor. As I wait an eternity for the door to clank upward along its metal tracks, I squeeze my eyelids closed and press my forehead against the steering wheel, trying to force back tears. My father is dying, alone in the hospital, and I cannot find my way out of my own garage. How frail he looked last night, swaddled in a thin white blanket, so still I wasn't sure he was actually breathing. His foot, mummy — wrapped in cotton and gauze to stave off infection at the site of an amputated toe. Sunken cheeks, without dentures to give his face structure, looking more like a death camp inmate than the strapping man who taught me to hit a baseball. Hollow eyes, already too distant to acknowledge my presence. Where had I seen those eyes before? Not my father's, but eyes possessed of the same vacantness.
* * *
I must have been fifteen or sixteen. My father was working nights and my mother had just placed a large bowl of spaghetti and meatballs on the table when our neighbor called, panicked because she couldn't find her husband. We drove up the street to the Spearmans' dilapidated ranch and the three of us fanned out, searching the yard and outbuildings. In the house, twenty Springer Spaniels lounged, sprawling on the floor and furniture, milling about, licking empty Schlitz cans and the previous day's unwashed dinner plates on the coffee table. We searched each room, careful not to step in the puddles and piles scattered around the floor like land mines.
I was the first one through the garage door and sensed immediately from the lingering smell that something was not right. My eyes followed the vacuum cleaner hose running from the exhaust pipe into the slightly open window. I only caught a brief glimpse of Mr. Spearman in the driver's seat, head tilted back, face bloated, staring blankly at his last earthly sight, before I had to run out into the fresh air, dazed and woozy. As I knelt in the damp grass, head pressed to the ground, I felt my mother's hand on my arm. "I'll stay with Mrs. Spearman," she said. "You go home and heat up some dinner for yourself."
I can't remember my thoughts during the five-minute walk back down the hill to our house, but I clearly remember taking a heaping portion of spaghetti and meatballs out of the white pottery bowl, painted with bright pink and yellow flowers, heating it in a sauce pan, and eating as if it were a day like any other. When my father got home from work just before midnight, I heard muffled voices in the kitchen. I didn't get out of bed and my parents never spoke of the incident after that night.
* * *
It would be easy to die here, like Mr. Spearman. I'm already light-headed. "I'll race you to heaven," I might call to my father as my astral body floats above the white Jeep, indistinguishable from the exhaust fog. I am not cut out for the dolor of this life. Burying one parent, then another. Soaking up the loss like a dutiful sponge, looking the same afterwards, but feeling much heavier. Dave, my partner of fifteen years, would find me like I did Mr. Spearman. Why did she do it? Why? We had no idea... But what would suicide accomplish — so inconsiderate, so self-absorbed?
Finally the door is open. I slam the gear shift lever into reverse and press the gas pedal to the floor. The Jeep shoots out of the garage backwards, barely missing the door jamb, and stalls inches from the giant pine that grows next to the driveway. I turn the motor off and absently grab my handbag from the passenger seat. In my haste to evacuate, the contents of my bag spill onto the driveway. As I bend down to pick up my credit cards, hair brush, lipstick, and a handful of coins, a small mirror falls onto the asphalt and shatters. I drop to a sitting position, sobbing.
The sound of a motor makes me suddenly self-conscious. I gather the contents of my handbag and jump to my feet just as the dry cleaner's van pulls into my neighbors' driveway. The driver glances in my direction as he carries an armful of suits covered in clear plastic toward my neighbors' front door. I look down to avoid eye contact and notice a gaping hole in my pantyhose and some small pieces of gravel stuck to my bloody knee. It is 8:45 and I am expected in a meeting at 9:00.
I go back inside the house, through the front door this time, and pick the gravel out of my knee, scrub it with soap and water and again with hydrogen peroxide, and cover the wound with a Band-Aid. Then I change into pants, wash off my makeup and re-apply it, using extra concealer around my eyes. In ten minutes, I will walk into my meeting as if nothing has happened — a day like any other.
Amy Kudelka teaches college composition at Rowan University, where she is completing an M.A. in Writing. She graduated magna cum laude from Smith College and has an M.S. in Technical Communication from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is currently working on a novel and a collection of personal essays. An excerpt of one of her essays, "Buying the Farm," appeared in the October 2005 issue of New Jersey Life. She and her partner Dave raise horses on their farm in southern New Jersey.