Regeneration X (3 page)

Many of her
ways
were because she secretly longed for the slower-paced days. Days when people took time to appreciate their
actual
surroundings, other people and life, for example going for strolls or sipping a port or sherry over a philosophical conversation, instead of the occasional wine with dinner or a binge night out chatting about mundane tidbits. She fancied the idea of a habitual thing, not something you just did on occasion between scheduled happy hours and video conferences, or amidst the chaos of group chats, social media, and messaging, virtual or otherwise.
 

All of the boxes, which were part of today’s norm, were tedious and as Becks called it, “soul sucking.” Charley agreed wholeheartedly and felt, sometimes, she didn’t quite fit into the modern world even though she could navigate through it well enough. She even had a HaloYou profile. She
tuned-in
to her connections’ lives, but rarely posted virtual moment videos or
virtyous
, of her own self and life. This way she stayed informed; held fast to her privacy and managed some semblance of unspoken social responsibility. Privately, she also attempted to appease her quirks in a modern way, even though she was old-fashioned at heart. For example, since the beyond-repair fireplace was long gone (demolished during their remodeling) and she’d have to join some Meetup group just to play board games (she played Solitaire or Chess on her tablet), and around Christmas, she launched a hologram of a roaring fire as part of their decorations.

On a cold night Michael would ask, “Should I light a fire?”

Charley took her cue to turn up the smart thermostat (which wasn’t intelligent enough to detect the need for heat to accompany the vision). They’d sit and enjoy a chilled Moscato d’Asti or a hot toddy, enveloped by the virtual ambience.

・ ・ ・

Finally, she disengaged her limbs from the mangled comforter and wrinkled pile of sheets shoved halfway off the foot of the bed. Just now, she pondered the reasons why she had apparently slept so restlessly, especially when she had felt so comfortable.
Falling asleep is a challenge. Waking up I’m disoriented and now it seemed the in-between is in question, as well
.

Michael had already left for work and, judging by the state of the bedding, asking if he had bruised shins or lost any covers throughout the night might have revealed more. But those clues would have to remain uncovered, unless she remembered to ask.

All these waking meditations were helpful in the self-therapeutic steps she took to clear her mind, but they sure did muddle her subconscious. It was in this instant it came upon her; she had dreamt. She sat up at the edge of the bed and forced herself to concentrate. Closing her eyes, she pulled at a fragment and slowly an image appeared in her mind, but no story emerged. There was only a vague memory of herself long ago and an elusive idea behind this memory, which lingered. Getting nowhere, she gave up.

The bed had been toasty warm, but once out from under the covers her toes began to tingle with cold. Even in winter, or near winter, she hated sleeping in socks. Absentmindedly she curled her piggies around the wooly shag of the rug on the floor.

With the curtains pulled back, the sun shined in brightly through the panes of the balcony doors and cast a yellowish glow over the otherwise pale-bleached wood floors and white walls. Getting up she stood in front of those doors, stretched widely, and took in the view of Lake Washington not too far away.

“Eck, I pulled something,” she pronounced aloud, cupping the base of her neck and kneading it to work out the beginnings of a kink.

The house wasn’t situated on the lake, but set on a hillside of picturesque Montlake, a neighborhood of northeast Seattle holding all the charms of a town on its own. This particular view was beautiful and, rain or shine, it reminded her daily of the main reason they’d left Chicago. It was this combination of the less visible urban architecture amidst the sheer profusion of nature. For the city as a whole, they especially enjoyed the non-formulaic landscape, the grand variety of foliage, the long growing seasons, as well as the green vistas of spruce, pines and other evergreens, lasting through the winter. She could even faintly make out Mount Rainier—its almost symmetrical shape appeared flattened from this distance and its snow-white peak was obscured by a hazy, sunlit glow.
No one mentions the weather in Chicago sucks
, she thought feeling defensive on Seattle’s behalf.
Summers there are too hot; winters too cold; there is so little in between; and it’s getting worse every year. Soon it will snow; the city will look pristine for roughly a week before it’s covered in an ugly, black, greasy layer of ice and slush until April
.

Turning away from the view, a line from
An Affair to Remember
popped into her mind. “
It is a good place to remember, but you have still to create your memories.
” This was what Nicolo Ferrante’s grandmother, Janou, ensconced in her retirement, said to Terry McKay. Charley knew why the line applied to her and Michael; they acted old even though they weren’t as elderly as Janou yet. They were already sitting back in life and enjoying the view. This, too, had been a frequent thought of late.
 

People in the Pacific Northwest were generally outdoorsy sorts, biking, hiking, skiing, and so on. Except for the random bike trip down a trail, or a ferry ride to Bainbridge Island, Charley and Michael were not. She had hoped moving here they would become more so. Instead, they worked and followed the same routines, in a different house, in a different part of the country. And weekends were filled with chores and maintenance.
I don’t even know how we would go about making memories anymore
. She’d been dwelling on those words, the ones she didn’t think made sense before: solitude, lost love, and longing. She realized she
had
been feeling them, way down deep and they’d risen from their depths.

As she brushed her teeth, she went over the reflection in the mirror. Working from home had its many advantages: not having to deal with rush hour traffic, listen to and participate in office politics, or get sick via workplace quarantine, to name a big few. When she was going into an office she had taken particular care of her appearance, and relatively speaking, her morning primping routine was a minor sacrifice, but she missed it nonetheless. Now it was a waste of time. Instead, her routine was easy and rush-free. She liked this, but it seemed more and more as if the hopes she’d woken up with were fleeting and the days passing were nearly identical to the ones before.
 

Methodically, she gently scrubbed her face, patted it dry, and then tidied her hair, pulling it up and away from her face in a casual ponytail. Without makeup, she was plain looking, but her complexion was fair and clear, and possibly on the pale side. Her eyes were an uninteresting brown, but they were also large and evenly spaced with a nice shape, slanting slightly upward at the corners. Fringed with full, long lashes and framed by nicely arched brows, her eyes were actually the most striking, if any, of the features of her face. She thought her small nose and marginally wide lips were rather ordinary. She puckered her lips and appraised her mouth once more.

Her thick hair was nearly straight, dark auburn (mostly) and relatively long, so it rested on her back just barely between her shoulders blades, where the ends curled in locks of varying direction. She’d also considered growing it out really long, but decided the beach-tousled mane nearly to the waist were best conceded to the under 30-somethings. Although old hippies still wore their hair righteously unkempt and long, she didn’t personally identify as a trendsetter or a flower child. She’d tried a chin-length wedge cut, similar to Inez’s, but it didn’t suit her face and not being able to put it up and away was bothersome. As someone once said, “we are our own worst critic,” but, nonetheless, she fiddled, self-assessed, and found herself lacking.
 

Do I look as old as I act?
As she continued to scrutinize herself, gently pulling the skin around her eyes and mouth, and squinching and contorting her face for signs of new lines, the dream started to reveal itself. Wistfully, it soon became fully formed in her mind. It was dangerously close to a memory. … And there was no chance of forgetting it. Later she would try to transfer the image to canvas and interpret the message imprinted there.

Inez had repeatedly mentioned how much writing helped her gain perspective in much the same way. Her pitch was journaling didn’t require as much preparation nor was it as messy—unless things got messy in the emotional sense. But, while like Inez, many people used writing as a form of expression and sometimes therapy Charley found it difficult to get away from her analytical style and write freely without getting side-tracked in self-criticisms of word usage and mechanics. So she stuck with what worked. She knew her limitations with painting and didn’t need to strive for artistic perfection. More to the point, the last thing she felt motivated to do after work was write. One would think living with an art history professor, she would have felt the same self-consciousness about her painting, but Michael remained uncritical of her creations. In fact, he had never actually been very deprecating in his opinions. From the beginning, he had somehow known she wasn’t
trying
to create art for anyone’s appreciation.

・ ・ ・

Now, almost an hour after waking up, she was done with her ministrations for the time being. Gliding her hand along the smooth, warm wood of the handrail, she padded down the stairs to the kitchen. Fergus shifted his head toward her in acknowledgement as she entered the room. He was lounging under the kitchen table and had probably been there since Michael left. He was an unusual beastie. To look passingly at him you’d think he was a lazy mass of fur ever plastered to the floor, but there was a method to his madness. He was actually always alert and even slept with one eye open. As Charley dished out his kibble, his eyebrows peaked left to right. Quick as a giant squirrel, he was at his bowl chomping away, crushing the hard, dehydrated morsels as easily as a person crunches potato chips. Within minutes, he was guzzling water from a large bowl (trough). She absentmindedly watched his face emerge from behind the bowl rim—his austere beard was now tapered and dripping wet, like a slowly dribbling faucet. Subconsciously, she mopped up the puddle by shoving a small rug toward him with her foot.

Preparing her own meal and before sitting down to eat, she pulled out a thin, colorful, advert from the drawer. She didn’t need to read it, instead she traced the flat, white, lettering with her fingertip, “Renovate and Reinvent Yourself.” The idea was intriguing. She’s been toying with ideas of how she could do just this, except by ways of introspection and motivation rather than cosmetic surgery, (which is what Renovation amounted to).

After one or two more steps in her morning program were done, she shoved the pamphlet back in the drawer. Pausing at the base of stairs, she turned and glanced at Fergus, silently inviting him to follow, but knew he wouldn’t. He had resumed his prone position under the table with his now damp muzzle splayed out around his face. He turned and looked at her morosely.

“I know how you feel Shaggy.” He raised his head. “Sometimes I wish we’d chosen the ranch-style house, too.” He tilted his head to the side. “Be good and watch out for hooligans, K?”

Upstairs she finished her waking-up steps with a quick shower. Getting dressed, she pulled on a pair of comfortable jeans and a button-down dress shirt and sweater, and walked across the hall, subconsciously dragging her feet in her slippers.

・ ・ ・

She felt exhausted, more so than usual. Either she hadn’t slept well or she was emotionally drained. Her thoughts were all over the place, both about work and not. She needed to start on that painting and see if she could organize some of the chaos.

That evening as Charley and Michael watched old episodes of
Doctor Who
, she wondered why the Doctor couldn’t help people lead a better life instead of merely rescuing their existence. It was always about saving the world and, specifically, Earth and its human population. It didn’t appear as if anyone, except the Doctor’s current companion, was having any fun actually being human. Only when disaster struck was there the fear and panic, “We’re all gonna die!” stuff, but before the episode was even over, the outrageous end-of-the-world occurrence was forgotten until the next catastrophe. There was no,
how can I turn my life around?
epiphany by the people; they just resumed their humdrum lives.

She thought this was more telling than
Doctor Who
just being a show for entertainment. Granted, there’s only so much a program can show in 50-minute intervals, minus all the commercials (even though the show had been running for 60 plus years on the same premise).
Why are we all so complacent, walking around with blinders on like Cybermen, assimilating to a robotic way of life?

“Do you ever feel you’re just walking in place?” she asked Michael.

“Yes. I get the feeling a lot, repeating lectures, getting nowhere with most students who take art history as an elective course to fill a humanities requirement.”

“So with work?”

“Well, it’s mainly what I do, so yes, work. Everything else is par for the course. I didn’t used to feel this way. Now I sometimes think,
thank God
, only nine years to go.”

“You’ve never mentioned it before.” She leaned against his shoulder; almost feeling safer knowing that even being content was tiring. “Nine years is still a long time.”

“I think it’s kind of normal when you’ve been doing the same thing your whole adult life. Everything gets repetitive. I just try to focus on the subject since I find it interesting, and hope what I have to say inspires even one student and my grad students make it worthwhile.

“Time flies,” he added and snapped his fingers softly.

“Is there something else you would rather be doing?”

“No it’s not that, I still enjoy it; I just get frustrated sometimes. It feels like déjà vu. But, I have no idea what I would rather be doing or what I will do.”