Slumberland

by Bradley Carter

  It’s not a magazine I’m actually reading but flipping through its pages is a way of keeping to myself. Soft music plays with a tempo to bounce my foot to. This song from 1958 sounds familiar. Music my parents used to listen to when they were younger. My lips move to the words but the singing comes from the women on the radio.

  Mister Sandman…bum bum bum bum…

  Nothing in this magazine peaks my interest. Articles with advice on men, love, and sex. The latest trends in fashion and makeup. Celebrity rumors. Pop culture. These women in the photos, I wonder how they look without the airbrushing. These days, anyone can achieve a perfect appearance if they hire the right graphic designer.

  An old woman a few chairs to my right, watches me. From the corner of my eye, I can tell she’s staring.

  Turning my head, I smile and say hello.

  She smiles but says nothing and still, she won’t look away. Her front teeth are darkened from decades of drinking coffee. Thin white hair curls on top of her head. Next to her seat is an aluminum framed walker with tennis balls attached to the feet. But only three of them. One is missing from the front right leg.

  The next page of the magazine is nothing but advertisements. Makeup. Skin care products. The A.G. Loan Company. There’s even a strong scented strip of men’s cologne, a free sample. None of these things interest me but the magazine makes for a good surface to write on. The copy from the receptionist is blank on the back. Call it a habit but drawing circles is soothing. It keeps my mind focused, flawlessly bringing each curve around to meet itself at the beginning. Two perfect loops and then a third. But it’s the third circle I don’t finish.

  This elderly lady still watches me. I don’t want to be rude by ignoring her but she didn’t say anything before and she doesn’t say anything now. She keeps grinning and staring, nodding her head. It’s like she’s agreeing with whatever thoughts are in her head.

  Trying my best, I pretend it doesn’t bother me. A nurse watches from behind the glass window and senses my feeling uncomfortable. She grabs a folder and comes through the door.

  The rest of us waiting, they look to her, waiting to see whose name is called.

  Behind her, I see the hallway leading to exam rooms.

  “Sierra Preston,” she says.

  I’m quick to get up, leaving behind the magazine with my paper stuck to the back.

  As I step through the doorway, the nurse greets me with smile.

  “I love your hair,” she says. “How do you keep it so smooth and shiny?”

  “Thank you,” I reply. “It’s natural.”

  Twisting my head over my shoulder, I see the grinning old woman leaning forward to watch me disappear behind the closing door.

  The nurse has me step to a scale.

  She asks if I’m eating okay.

  She asks if I’m getting enough sleep, enough exercise.

  She asks how old I’ll be tomorrow—March 14th

  “Twenty-nine."

  The average weight for a woman my height and age is exactly the weight displayed on the scale.

  From there to the exam room, the nurse brings up a common topic of small talk.

  Sometimes, it’s hard to engage in chitchat without sounding like I’m on television.

  The nurse knows what I do for a living but can’t help mention the potential for rain.

  “It was only a small cloud that flew across the sun. The drizzle of rain was just a cloudburst."

  “I sure hope so,” she replies.

  Both earpieces of her blue stethoscope plug her ears and she wraps a Velcro cuff around my arm. Squeezing the bulb over and over, the cuff gets tight.

  “A little hug on your arm,” she says.

  The needle of the gauge bounces at each number. It’s the same rhythm of the pulsing sensation in my veins. Her thumb flicks a knob, and she knits her eyebrows, and the air hisses from the cuff.

  She’s focused on inflating it again.

  While she listens, the room falls silent.

  After a moment, the tight squeeze subsides and blood pulses again. Alas, she’s done and tells me the doctor will be in shortly.

  On my cellphone’s black screen is a wry reflection of my face. My eyebrows appear drawn together and seem to bend downward. My reflection looks worried.

  Why the need to take my blood pressure twice?

  Why the need for the nurse to hurry from the room?

  What is so top secret?

  The screen lights up the number of notifications from my social media app.

  It’s best to keep my mind occupied to keep from worrying. Don’t assume the worst. Don’t worry about things until things happen. Reading through comments and posts from my viewers will bide the time.

  B.L. Farmer says: “Seeing your face is all the sunshine I need.”

  That’s pretty smooth. I’m impressed. I’ll give him a like for that one.

  L. Sommer asks: “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven…?”

  That’s so sweet. I’ll give that one a heart.

  Anonymous, but with zero replacing each letter O, says: “Keep your head out of the clouds!”

  My thumbs tap away at a response: “What does that mean?”

  I press the reply button but it won’t go through.

  Again and again but still nothing happens.

  Error?

  The phone won’t send my reply.

  A double knock at the door and Doctor Lane waits for me to say come in, before he does.

  It’s only been three months since the last time I saw him. When you make a memory, over time it transforms into something different. A person with slightly different features. Each time you remember, your brain has to redesign the image of who you thought you once saw, as they were when you saw them. This happens over time and is why Doctor Lane looks slightly different. He looks sharper than the last time. Maybe from a new hair cut or maybe because that’s how short his hair was before and I’m used to envisioning him from memory. He keeps his black hair slicked back and its color matches his mustache.

  “There’s the weather girl,” he says, closing the door behind him.

  Doctor Lane only wears his white coat when he makes hospital calls. Checking up on patients he’s admitted. At his office, his private practice, he wears gray dress pants and a pastel blue buttoned shirt. Off-brand white tennis shoes. His eyes scan my chart through his thick glasses. His shirt pocket holds a handful of ink pens.

  “The good news is,” he says, “there are no changes from your last visit. You’re healthier than most of my other patients.”

  “What about my blood pressure?”

  “It’s perfect,” he says. “Too perfect. I wish mine was this good. One twenty over eighty is the standard they put in medical books. A reference point for ‘normal.’ If my nurses tell me a patient has that reading, they had better check it twice because it’s almost unheard of.”

  He says both times, my numbers matched.

  He tells me the top number, the systolic, is the pressure measured when my heart makes a beat. He tells me the diastolic, the bottom number, is the pressure measured between each beat. Speaking of which, he says my heart rate is steady at seventy beats per minute and also textbook perfect. Taking a seat on his stool, Dr. Lane sets his clipboard on top of the counter. He listens to both sides of my chest with his blue stethoscope.

  Inhale and be aware of that breath.

  Focus on how it feels.

  Exhale and be aware of it.

  Focus on how that feels.

  “Sierra,” he says, “Do you remember the last time you were sick?”

  Thinking back, I can’t recall.

  “A cold?” he asks. “A sniffle? Anything?”

  Hanging the stethoscope from his neck, he watches me shake my head.

  He clicks a pen and scribbles my chart.

  “Are you getting enough sleep?”

  “My schedule is different from most people but I still get the recommended eight hours.”

&n
bsp; His wrist flings his pen, checking off boxes.

  “As long as you’re sleeping at night, you shouldn’t feel any fatigue throughout your day. Your body has a natural sleep cycle—the Circadian Rhythm. It’s controlled by your brain’s response to light.”

  “I haven’t been dreaming lately. Does that mean I’m not getting enough sleep?”

  “Everyone dreams,” he says. “Whether or not your dreams are vivid enough to remember has nothing to do with your quality of sleep.”

  Doctor Lane clips the pen in his shirt pocket. Folded behind the other pens is a small sheet of paper with a set of bold print numbers— lottery numbers:

  01, 12, 01, 14, 14, 01.

  “Is that the winning ticket?”

  Doctor Lane chuckles.

  He tells me it’s not often he plays. Once in a blue moon. But with a winning jackpot of one hundred forty-three million, he’d be a fool not to take a chance.

  Even after taxes, it’s still a lot of money. Multiply the total by whatever percentage the government takes in taxes and divide the answer by one hundred. The answer doesn’t come to me.

  Doctor Lane is a human calculator, like my friend Annie. Math was something I always struggled with, even through college. Annie would be there to simplify things, to explain them to me, to make them easier to understand. Any time I try to solve a problem in my head, my mind goes blank. But there’s one thing that does come to mind:

  “They say, statistically, you have a better chance of being struck by lightning than winning the lottery.”

  Doctor Lane tells me the chances of winning the lottery are one in three hundred million; the odds of being struck by lightning are one in one hundred million.

  “But you have a zero percent chance of winning if you never play,” he says.

  As I exit to the waiting room, a nurse escorts the little old lady through the hallway. The lady shuffles with her walker, the three tennis balls rubbing the carpet. Her walker makes steps for her feet to follow.

  “Excuse me, dear,” she says. “Are you the weather girl from channel six news?”

  Politely, I nod and ask her name but she doesn’t say.

  “I was once like you,” she says. “Young and beautiful.”

  For a second, I feel guilty for thinking how strange she was before. My hand rests on her shoulder and I smile. Maybe she didn’t have the nerve to speak to me earlier. Maybe she didn’t want to draw attention from everyone else, the people planted in the waiting room garden. Whatever the case, I don’t think she means any harm.

  SUNFLOWER

  5

  My parents live twenty minutes from downtown in a suburb of two story homes. After moving away for college, Annie and I lived together as roommates until graduation. Ever since then, I’ve been on my own. My parents still insist I visit once a week for a home cooked meal.

  In this neighborhood, after Memorial Day, the swimming pools open and the grills get hot. The summer days are when I come around more often. Those days in the heat to relax with a good book on the deck.

  All of houses look similar. They all have two car garages the owners claim are full of lawn equipment, but growing up here, I’ve learned they keep their shiny vehicles in the driveway to show off.

  Mom stands in the door waiting for me to pull up. She steps out on the porch before I’m able to get out of the car. Like most mothers, mine never stops fearing the worst when it comes to their children. The results of my quarterly checkup never change, and she knows this, but still she insists to know everything the doctor says about my health. Dad says to let me in the house before she interrogates me. Once I’ve had a chance to hang my jacket and kick off my shoes, then I tell her.

  “Doctor Lane says everything is perfect."

  Mom sighs and hugs me. Her breath smells of red wine. She’s the same weight and height she was at my age. The same long dark hair. Her skin is scented with anti-wrinkle cream. A few crow’s feet around her eyes and thin skin; she almost looks like me, but older.

  “There’s the weather girl,” says Dad.

  He’s just as fit as he was in his day, only he carries a slight beer gut. His dark hair is parted and combed to the side. The same style he’s always worn, only now with a bit of gray. Both are young for their ages. Both young at heart as well.

  The meal Mom sets at the dining room table looks healthier than the usual carb-packed lasagna or pasta.

  “Greek Chicken Souvlaki,” she says.

  Dad has been having a lot of indigestion lately. Mom suggested they give healthier foods a try. Not a lot of greasy foods. No fats. Nothing to upset Dad’s digestive system. It’s not something difficult because they’ve always been open to try new things.

  A half bottle of antacids sits next to Dad’s recliner on the end table. The lamp shines on a photograph of me from several year ago when I was a young girl in junior high school. My long dark hair, tight blue tank top, a bright smile, hugging my pug, kneeling to pose with a sunflower. That was from our summer trip to Minnesota. Growing up, Mom and Dad always said I was their little sunflower.

  The veterinarian said Bart’s death was inevitable. Had it not been for the lightning strike, it still would have been a short matter of time before he passed on. Pug dog heart disease.

  That must have been the deciding factor in the choice I made to become a meteorologist. That’s what I wanted to do with my life. That’s how my life changed.

  Had we known ahead of time, Bart and I wouldn’t have been caught in the rain. He may have been in poor health but that day, it was a sequence of events that could have prevented his death.

  The power lines that fell. The tree that blocked the stop sign. The teenagers riding their bikes. The utility truck spinning into the woman’s yard. Bart’s excitement that rushed him into the open.

  It was all unexpected and spiraling out of control from a storm.

  A storm no one knew was coming.

  Since then, I couldn’t bear living with that kind of loss. The empty space in my heart. From that day, everything had to be perfect.

  Dad sips his iced tea, half-sweet, half-unsweet, then clears his throat. He should make an appointment to see Doctor Lane but my father, as most of them are, is a hardhead. No hospitals unless a limb falls off. No emergency rooms unless blood is gushing. No rides in the big white box unless he’s unconscious or can’t speak for himself. The bills from an emergency alone would be enough to give him a heart attack.

  “You know that too well, CC,” he says. “You know how I feel about those things.”

  Since I was a little girl, Dad has always called me CC; it’s short for Sierra.

  No one else. Not mom. Not grandma or grandpa. Not my friends or ex-boyfriends. Only Dad has CC and only CC has him.

  At dinner, as always, they ask about my job, about my life. How the world is treating me. As always, I answer the same. This time, I say Doug might be putting in a word for me to get the primetime spot. What a relief that would be to have a normal work schedule. To sleep in past sunrise. To go out with friends. To meet somebody and fall in love. I figured, as of tomorrow I’m officially pushing thirty. It’s time to get my life the way it was meant to be. But for now, I’m still waiting to hear anything from the producers.

  As always, Dad asks if I need money. He and Mom worry that I live alone, not having anyone to split the cost of living. Financially, I’m doing well.

  Dad says he’s sure the primetime spot is mine. Back in his day, you knew exactly what was expected of you. Back in his day, you earned things like promotions by going above and beyond. That’s how he has raised his CC, to be tough and push through the setbacks and never complain. To be patient.

  I just want my parents to be happy. Turning twenty-nine tomorrow, I thought my life would have come together by now. At twenty-nine, I’m already older than a lot of people I know who have children and are raising a family. I thought by now, things would be perfect. It would be a shame to disappoint them, my parents who have so much confiden
ce in me.

  Dad says I’m being ridiculous. Patience is a virtue. There’s no way to predict the future. No one ever said I would be a burden to them. No one ever said their expectations of me were set high. Remember to be patient.

  Mom wonders if the decision at work already been made, if they are simply waiting for the right time. There has to be a reason the producers are waiting and I shouldn’t worry so much because good things will happen. Good things, they seem to fall into your lap sometimes.

  “That’s right,” Dad says. “Good things come to those who wait.”

  My parents, I think they worry about this primetime spot more than I do. They keep convincing themselves, they try to justify why I don’t have it yet. If I let them, they could go on all night. But that’s why they’re so great; Always looking at the positive side of things. Always hopeful.

  “This Souvlaki is delicious.”

  Dad must think so because he takes another bite before he’s finished swallowing the one before. Joking with mom, I ask when was the last time she fed him. He has to breathe through his nose. Maybe this is why he has indigestion.

  “Don’t get choked,” I say.

  “It’s so good though,” he replies.

  His comment pleases mom but she warns him to listen to his daughter, to listen to his CC.

  Mom thinks he’s only pushing through the setbacks, not complaining, and saying he loves the healthy food so he can get to desert. The smell of fresh apple pie has been taunting him all afternoon. Mom wants to make sure I get plenty to eat. With my odd schedule, she wants to know if I’m getting plenty of rest, plenty of exercise. She claims my appetite isn’t what it was before. She thinks my stomach has shrunk from eating so little. This is what she says every week.

  Dad says his CC looks fit as a fiddle. He says his CC couldn’t be any healthier.

  Mom asks if dad and I are saving room for desert.

  “I’ll have some but only a small slice.”

  She takes my empty plate to the kitchen, looking me up and down.

  “That’s what I thought,” she says.

  “This isn’t anything out of the ordinary,” says Dad. “CC’s a busy girl, but she knows how to take care of herself. ”