The Breakdown

by B. A. Paris

  Dr Deakin leaves, urging Matthew to make sure I rest and to call him if I deteriorate further. I spend the rest of the evening lying drowsily on the sofa while Matthew watches television next to me, my hand in his. When the programme comes to an end, he turns off the television and asks me if there’s anything else worrying me.

  ‘Just all the work I’m meant to do before school starts up again,’ I say, tears welling in my eyes despite the pills.

  ‘But you’ve already done quite a lot of it, haven’t you?’

  My lies have caught up with me. ‘Some, but there’s still a lot to do and I’m not sure I’m going to get it done in time.’

  ‘Well, maybe you could ask someone to help you.’

  ‘I can’t, they’ve got enough of their own work to do.’

  ‘Then can I help?’

  ‘No, not really.’ I look at him hopelessly. ‘What am I going to do, Matthew?’

  ‘If you can’t get anyone to help and you can’t do it on your own, I don’t really know.’

  ‘I just feel so tired all the time.’

  He smooths my hair off my face. ‘If you feel you can’t cope, why don’t you ask to work part-time?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’ll be too late for them to find someone to replace me.’

  ‘Nonsense! If something happened to you, they’d have to.’

  I stare at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that no one is indispensable.’

  ‘But why did you say something might happen to me?’

  He frowns. ‘I was making a point, that’s all – as in, if you broke a leg, or got run over by a bus, they’d have to replace you.’

  ‘But you said it as if you knew something was going to happen to me,’ I insist.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Cass!’ His voice is sharp with annoyance and I flinch, because he doesn’t often raise his voice. He catches the flinch and sighs. ‘It’s just a figure of speech, OK?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumble. The pills are chasing the panic away, bringing sleep in its place.

  He puts his arms around me and draws me to him but it feels awkward.

  ‘Just think about speaking to Mary about going back part-time,’ he says.

  ‘Or not going back at all,’ I hear myself say.

  ‘Is that what you want, to stop working altogether?’ He moves back and looks down at me in puzzlement. ‘On Thursday, you said you were looking forward to going back.’

  ‘It’s just that I don’t know if I’ll manage to do everything that’s expected of me, not when I’m feeling like this. Maybe I could ask for a couple more weeks off and go back in the middle of September, once I’m feeling better.’

  ‘I doubt whether they’d allow that, not unless Dr Deakin says you’re not fit to go back just yet.’

  ‘Do you think he would?’ I say, even though there’s a part of me telling me to stop, to remember the phone calls, to remember Jane, to remember that I’m not safe at home. But I can’t hold on to those thoughts long enough to focus on them.

  ‘He might. Let’s just see how you get on with the pills you’re taking. There’s two weeks until school starts. Once you’re taking them on a regular basis, you’ll probably feel a lot better.’

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 28TH

  The front door closes behind Matthew. From the bedroom, I listen as he starts the car, drives to the gate and disappears down the road. Silence settles on the house. Struggling into a sitting position, I reach for the two little peach-coloured pills lying on my breakfast tray and scoop them into my mouth, washing them down with orange juice. Ignoring the two slices of toasted brown bread, sliced down the middle and arranged artistically rather than just stacked, and the little bowl of Greek yogurt and granola, I lie back against the pillows and close my eyes.

  Matthew was right. Now that I’m taking the pills on a regular basis, I feel so much better. My life has improved dramatically in the last… week? Two weeks? I open my eyes and squint at the clock, looking for the date. Friday 28 August, so thirteen days. I might not remember very much but 15 August is ingrained in my brain as the date I had my breakdown. It was also Mum’s birthday. I only remembered once Dr Deakin had left that night and, when I realised I hadn’t gone to lay flowers on her grave, I became distraught all over again and blamed Matthew for not reminding me. Which was hardly fair, as I’d never told him her birth date, something he refrained from pointing out, telling me instead that I could go the next morning.

  I still haven’t been because, physically, I can’t. I take two pills before I go to bed so that I sleep all through the night and, each morning, before he goes to work, Matthew – taking to heart Dr Deakin’s admonishment that I should rest – brings me another two along with my breakfast tray. It means that the anxiety I always feel once he’s left for work has dulled by the time I’ve showered and dressed. The downside is that, by mid-morning, I feel so sluggish that it’s hard to put one foot in front of the other. I spend most of my days drifting between wake and sleep, sprawled on the sofa, the television switched to the shopping channel because I can’t summon the energy to change it. Sometimes, in the background, I’m vaguely aware of the telephone ringing but it barely pierces my consciousness and, because I never answer, the calls become less frequent. He still calls, just to let me know that he hasn’t forgotten me, but I enjoy imagining his frustration at not being able to get hold of me.

  Life is easy. The pills, powerful though they are, allow me to function on some sort of level because the washing gets done, the dishwasher gets loaded and the house gets tidied. I never really remember doing any of it, which should worry me more than it does because it means the pills are playing havoc with my already failing memory. If I were sensible, I would half the dose. But if I were sensible I wouldn’t have needed the pills in the first place. Maybe if I ate a little more the pills wouldn’t affect me as much but it seems that I’ve lost my appetite as well as my mind. The breakfast Matthew brings me goes into the bottom of the bin and I always skip lunch because I’m too drowsy to eat. So my only meal of the day is the one I make in the evening to have with Matthew.

  He has no idea how I spend my days. Because the pills wear off about an hour before he gets home, I have time to clear my head, run a brush through my hair, put on a bit of make-up and get something ready for dinner. And when he asks, I invent work that I’ve done and cupboards I’ve tidied out.

  I want to shut off the whole outside world. I’ve been getting so many texts – from Rachel, Mary and Hannah, inviting me for coffee, and John, wanting to chat about lesson plans. I haven’t answered any of them yet because I don’t feel up to seeing anyone, even less chatting about lesson plans. The pressure I’m already feeling increases and I suddenly decide that the best solution would be to misplace my phone. If I’ve lost it, I won’t have to get back to anyone. And as it barely works in the house, it’s not as if it’s much good to me anyway.

  I fetch my mobile. There are a couple of voicemails and another three text messages but I turn it off without opening any of them. I go down to the sitting room and look around for somewhere to hide it. I walk over to one of the orchids, lift it from its pot, place my mobile in the bottom and put the plant back on top.

  In case the pills should make me forget that I have dementia, there are always little reminders to tell me that my brain is slowly disintegrating. I can no longer remember how to work the microwave – I wanted to make myself a cup of hot chocolate the other day but had to resort to a saucepan as the various buttons no longer meant anything to me. And things I remember seeing on the shopping channel but have no memory of ordering keep arriving in the post.

  Yesterday, another parcel was delivered. Matthew found it on the doorstep when he arrived back from work.

  ‘This was on the doorstep,’ he said calmly, even though it was the second one in three days. ‘Have you ordered something else?’

  I turned away so that he couldn’t see the c
onfusion in my eyes, wishing I’d ordered something that would have fitted through the letter box so that I could have hidden it before he came home. Coming so close on the heels of the spiralizer that arrived on Tuesday was humiliating.

  ‘Open it and see,’ I said, playing for time.

  ‘Why, is it for me?’ He gave the box a shake. ‘It sounds like some kind of tool.’

  I watched while he took off the packaging, my brain trying to remember desperately what I had ordered.

  ‘A potato slicer.’ He looked at me questioningly.

  ‘I thought it looked fun.’ I shrugged, remembering how a potato had been turned into chips in seconds.

  ‘Don’t tell me, it’s to go with the vegetable-spiral thing that came on Monday. Where on earth are you getting these things from?’

  I told him that I saw them advertised in one of the magazines that come with the Sunday papers because it sounded better than admitting I got them from a shopping channel. In future, to avoid temptation, I’m going to have to leave my bag in the bedroom. I’ve got into the habit of taking it downstairs with me in the mornings in case I need to make a quick getaway, which means my credit card is easily accessible. But even if my silent caller did turn up, I’d be incapable of going very far. Because of the pills, driving is out of the question, so I’d only get as far as the garden, which wouldn’t be much help.

  Sometimes I think that he has turned up. I’ll start awake, my heart beating furiously, convinced that he’s been watching me through the window. Because my instinct is to flee, I half get up from the chair, then sink back down again, not really caring, telling myself that if he is there, well, at least it would be over. I’m lucid enough to know that as well as the pills being my lifeline, they’ll also be the death of me, one way or another. Or, at the very least, the death of my marriage, because how much longer can I expect Matthew to put up with my increasingly bizarre behaviour?

  Aware that the pills I took are already making my head a little woolly, I have a quick shower and put on what has become my uniform, loose jeans and a T-shirt, as I’ve worked out they still look presentable after a day on the sofa. One day, I wore a dress and it was so creased by the time I finished sleeping the day away, Matthew joked I must have spent it crawling through the bushes in the garden.

  Leaving my bag where it is, I carry the tray downstairs, tear the toast into tiny pieces and take it into the garden for the birds. I wish I could sit for a moment and enjoy the sun but I only feel safe in the house with the doors locked. I haven’t been out since I started taking the pills regularly. I’ve been relying on food from the freezer for our evening meals and I’ve resorted to using the cartons of long-life milk that we keep for emergencies. Matthew noticed last night that the fridge was almost empty, so I’m hoping he’ll suggest going shopping tomorrow.

  My limbs feel heavy as I go back into the house. I rummage in the freezer and find some sausages and then rummage in my brain, searching for something I can do with them to turn them into an evening meal. I know there are a couple of onions hanging around somewhere and there’s bound to be a jar of tomatoes in the cupboard. Dinner sorted, I go gratefully into the sitting room and sink onto the sofa.

  The presenters on the shopping channel have become like old friends. Today, the goods on offer are watches studded with little crystals, and I’m glad I’m too tired to go and fetch my bag from the bedroom. The house phone starts ringing; I close my eyes and let sleep take me. I love the feeling of being slowly lowered into oblivion and, when the pills begin to wear off some hours later, the gentle tugging back to reality. Today, as I drowse in the no-man’s-land between sleep and wake, I become aware of a presence, of someone nearby. It feels as if he’s in the room looking down at me, not on the other side of the window. I lie very still, my senses sharpening as the seconds tick by, my breathing becoming shallower, my body tensing. And when I can bear the waiting no longer, I snap my eyes open, expecting to see him looming over me with a knife in his hand, my heart beating so hard I can hear it thudding in my chest. But there is no one there and when I turn my head towards the window, there is no one there either.

  By the time Matthew comes home an hour later, the sausage casserole is in the oven, the table is set and to make up for the lack of any kind of second course, I’ve opened a bottle of wine.

  ‘That looks good,’ he says. ‘But, first, I need a beer. Can I get you something?’ He walks over to the fridge, opens the door. Even I flinch at the empty shelves. ‘Oh, didn’t you do any shopping today?’

  ‘I thought maybe we could go tomorrow.’

  ‘You said you’d go on your way back from your meeting,’ he says, taking out a beer and closing the fridge door. ‘How did it go, by the way?’

  I look surreptitiously at the calendar on the wall and see the words Inset Day under today’s date. My heart sinks.

  ‘I decided not to go,’ I tell him. ‘There didn’t seem much point when I’m not going back to work.’

  He looks at me in surprise. ‘When did you decide that?’

  ‘We talked about it, remember? I said I didn’t feel up to going back and you said we could talk to Dr Deakin about it.’

  ‘We also said we’d wait to see how you felt after a couple of weeks on the pills. But if that’s what you want…’ He takes a bottle opener from the drawer and takes the cap off his beer. ‘Does Mary think she’ll be able to find somebody to replace you at such short notice?’

  I turn away so that he can’t see my face. ‘I don’t know.’

  He takes a drink straight from the bottle. ‘Well, what did she say when you told her you weren’t going back?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I mumble.

  ‘She must have said something,’ he persists.

  ‘I haven’t told her yet. I only really decided today.’

  ‘But she must have wanted to know why you weren’t going to the meeting.’

  I’m saved from answering by a ring at the doorbell. Leaving him to go and answer it, I sit down at the table and put my head in my hands, wondering how I could have forgotten about the Inset day. It’s only when I hear Matthew apologising profusely to someone that I realise Mary is at the door and, horrified, I pray that he’s not going to invite her in.

  ‘That was Mary.’ I lift my head and see him standing in front of me. He waits for me to react, to say something, but I can’t, I don’t know how to any more. ‘She’s gone,’ he adds. For the first time in our marriage, he looks angry. ‘You haven’t told her a thing, have you? Why haven’t you answered any of her messages?’

  ‘I didn’t see them. I’ve lost my mobile,’ I tell him, sounding worried. ‘I can’t find it anywhere.’

  ‘When did you last have it?’

  ‘I think it might have been the night we went out for dinner. I haven’t really been using it as much lately, so I didn’t notice until now.’

  ‘It’s probably somewhere in the house.’

  I shake my head. ‘I’ve looked everywhere, and in the car too. I tried calling the restaurant but they haven’t got it either.’

  ‘Well, what about your computer, have you lost that, too? And why haven’t you been answering the house phone? Apparently, everyone from the school has been trying to get hold of you – Mary, Connie, John. At first they thought we must have gone away on a last-minute holiday but, when you didn’t turn up for the meeting today, Mary thought she’d better come round and check that everything was all right.’

  ‘It’s the pills,’ I mumble. ‘They knock me out.’

  ‘Then we’d better ask Dr Deakin to reduce the dose.’

  ‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘If you’re capable of ordering things from a magazine, you’re capable of getting back to your colleagues, especially your boss. Mary was very understanding but she must be angry.’

  ‘Stop going on at me!’

  ‘Going on at you? I’ve just saved your skin, Cass!’

  Knowing he’s right, I back off.
‘What did Mary say?’

  He retrieves his bottle of beer from where he left it on the counter when he went to answer the door. ‘There wasn’t much she could say. I told her that you’d had a few health problems over the summer and that you were taking medication and she wasn’t altogether surprised. Apparently, she was worried about you last term.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, deflated.

  ‘She didn’t say anything at the time because she thought it was just fatigue making you forgetful and that you’d be all right after the summer break.’

  I give a hollow laugh. ‘She’s probably relieved I’m not going back then,’ I say, mortified that Mary had noticed my memory lapses.

  ‘On the contrary – she said they would miss you and to let her know as soon as you feel up to going back.’

  ‘That was nice of her,’ I say, feeling guilty.

  ‘Everybody’s rooting for you, Cass. We all want you to get better.’

  Tears blur my eyes. ‘I know.’

  ‘You’ll have to get a medical certificate from Dr Deakin.’

  ‘Could you ask him?’

  I feel his eyes on me. ‘All right.’

  ‘And could you take me to the supermarket? I don’t want to drive while I’m on the pills and we need food.’

  ‘Do the pills really affect you that much?’

  I hesitate, because if I tell him that they do, he might ask Dr Deakin to reduce the dose.