Horror Vacui
Morgan watched the cold rain fall onto the deck from the overhanging trees forming puddles that reflected the dark gray sky. The month of May was predictable only in its unpredictability. One day cold and gloomy, more like November, the next, brilliant and hot with mosquitoes, like July. This particular month in the pivot of spring seemed torn between two identities; depressed and indolent on the one hand, and optimistic and motivated on the other. Morgan had hoped to go outside for a walk. It was her usual morning routine to hike for about a mile or so down to the pond where she would stop to observe the turtles basking on the mud banks, and listen to the twang of the green frogs, like banjos out of tune, waiting in ambush in the swamp reeds and lily pads for their breakfast of insects. But this particular morning did not inspire a walk, and Morgan took up her newspaper instead, scanned the headlines, sipped her coffee, and wondered what she would do with the anxiety of time and how she would spend the rest of her day.
She had lost her job. Laid off. With no real prospects of finding a new job anytime soon, for the first time in her life she was faced with the real vacuum of time, the emptiness of the hours. When she had been working, she had always struggled against time, wrestled with it on a daily basis. There had never been enough of it. She had wished the days could have been longer so she could get more work done, and finish her assignments when they were due. Morgan had also realized, however, that the more work she did, the more would be piled on her desk; and that was the nature of work, that work begat work. And there was the maelstrom and vortex of her profession, the 24/7 never-ending always connected, e-mail, Blackberry, you-name-it umbilical cord to the corporation. And now that had been cut. The artery severed. What nourishment employment, aside from the obvious paycheck. She had been delivered of the company, born into her new world of unemployment, stark naked, alone, abandoned. People whom she had called colleagues rarely called, or checked in. They were too busy, too busy hanging on to their own jobs. Afraid, she thought, of associating with her, in a way, as though she might be contagious, with some illness. It might infect them too if they came too close. She was now quarantined. Isolated from the healthy workers.
Both of her children were in high school, employed in the business of learning. They left before seven o’clock every morning, and returned after team practice in the evening. Her husband still had a job, and frequently traveled. The dog had recently died. Three cats were left in the household; two of which were independent and self-sufficient and rarely seen, and the other one, Crackles, an old shameless beggar, would sit in the kitchen waiting for treats, between naps on the deceased dog’s bed. The pet fish had also died, and was in the freezer, in a plastic bag, awaiting his funeral.
There was central heat in the family’s home that kept the house comfortably warm in the winter, along with a wood stove in the living room, as well as central air conditioning that was rarely used. Morgan felt chilled most of the time due to her advancing age and slight build, and preferred the heat. She listened to the furnace kick on and off during the day and night all winter long, cycling to maintain the temperature she had set. It was as though the house were actually breathing, with the warm air puffing from the vents, and this was some comfort to her as if she unconsciously felt the presence of a companion. And this rainy morning in May, Morgan once again felt a desire for the rumbling furnace to resuscitate the house, yet she plugged in the space heater instead, and returned to her newspaper and coffee. No need to heat the whole empty house, she thought, when I’m the only person here.
Morgan turned the pages of the newspaper to the crossword puzzle. She had never done them before in her life. She had no experience, no practice in this exercise. She took up a pencil and began. “1. (across): use the maxilla and mandible.” Four letters. “chew,” she wrote, and then felt hungry. She found her stash of chocolate in the cupboard and nibbled at it while she continued with the puzzle, struggling with the clues. Yet underneath this temporary distraction was the looming anxiety of what she was going to do when the puzzle was finished, when all the squares were filled in, when she laid her pencil down on the kitchen table. What then? What was time going to do with her, with her horror vacui? Would she find something else to do to pass the time, to fill these unstructured hours as the rain fell? Would she open the freezer, bury the fish, and have a funeral in the rain? Or would she give in and wake up the furnace?
