Going It Alone

For one week, Dusty didn’t leave her apartment. She lay on her folded-out sofa bed with the lights off and the TV on, occasionally getting up to eat. She paced the fourteen steps from one wall of her one-room apartment to the other, or sat staring out of her tiny window into the parking lot below. On Sunday she showered, put on clean clothes, and went to church. This was her vacation.

On Monday, Dusty went back to work. She walked there, like she walked everywhere. The ground was icy, but it was better than the forced proximity to strangers on the bus. At the factory, she avoided her coworkers’ eyes; it wasn’t hard to do. She had been working there for sixteen years. The boss who had hired her had long since moved on, and she wasn’t sure if anyone else there actually knew her name.

Over the course of the day, the other workers made plans to go out for drinks when they got off at six. They went out of their way to invite the new girl, a forty-something with bad skin and a horsey laugh; she talked with the other employees as if she had always been there. No one ever thought to invite Dusty to these get-togethers. Their eyes slid right past her. She told herself she didn’t care.

If her life was different, maybe her coworkers would be happy to see her. They might crowd around her, wanting to catch up on the last week, asking how her vacation had been. As it stood, she was glad they didn’t ask; the answer made her want to cry.

When Dusty went to finally leave, a group blocked her exit, chatting casually. “Excuse me,” Dusty said with some effort, sweat pooling under her arms. She thought she had spoken loudly enough, but it seemed that no one had heard her. Like a trapped animal she looked around, hoping that a way out would somehow appear. She considered going back to her workstation and acting as if she had forgotten something; that would buy her time until the group left. Finally, the chatting group moved forward of its own volition. Relieved, Dusty followed them outside. They went one way and she went the other.

When Dusty moved to the big city, she had been a wide-eyed brunette clutching two suitcases and a framed high school diploma. She’d tried to go to university but dropped out after two months, unable to handle the life of a student. Today, she was a nondescript woman in her mid-thirties with perpetually pinched lips. Her young, hopeful days felt like they had taken place during a different lifetime.

Slush soaked through Dusty’s worn-out boots as she walked home, but the chill wasn’t as bad as the pain in her temples. The cold, like many other things, gave her a headache. She was often tired, too, no matter how much she slept. She worried that these were symptoms of something, a brain tumour or some kind of cancer. Her greatest fear was ending up as one of those people whose deaths are discovered because of the smell of their bodies rotting in their lonely apartments.

The elevator in her building had an Out of Order sign again. Things in the building were always breaking down. As Dusty approached the stairwell, the girl who lived across the hall from her came out of it. She smiled at Dusty. Dusty tried to smile back, but looked away immediately.

It would be her who would find Dusty’s decomposing corpse.

Dusty folded up her sofa bed and set her laptop on her coffee table to watch downloaded episodes of TV dramas. The characters were her best friends; certainly she knew them better than anyone she knew in real life. She watched their interactions with some envy; they made it look so easy.

At ten-thirty she got ready for bed, then brought her laptop under the covers with her to watch one last video. As usual, she fell asleep bathed in the bluish glow of the computer screen. When she woke up, she was often curled around the laptop, one arm slung tenderly around the keyboard.

On Sunday, Dusty went to church. She didn’t go to confession, but she would pray for the forgiveness for her sins, the greatest one of them being envy. Even in church, she couldn’t escape her powerful jealousy. She couldn’t help but look at all the people with their husbands, boyfriends, children, friends. Only she was on her own. She watched dozing husbands prodded awake by irritated wives, watched two women in the choir sniping at each other between songs. Anyone at all was better off than her.

Dusty prayed for release from her torment. Some of the websites she had looked at called it anxiety a personality disorder, but she thought of it as a test imposed on her by the divine. It wasn’t clear what she would have to do in order to pass.

“The peace of the Lord be with you always,” the priest said, pulling her out of her thoughts.

“And also with you,” the congregation said in near-unison. Dusty mumbled along with them. This was her least favourite part of Mass.

“Now let us offer to one another a sign of peace.” She stood stiffly and looked down, unable to offer anyone her hand but hoping fervently that someone around her would extend theirs. Often this was the only physical contact she had with other people all week.

People around Dusty shook hands. She clutched the edge of the pew, thankful at least that no one was reaching across her. At last, a small hand came into her peripheral vision. She looked gratefully at the little boy who was offering her his hand.

The child’s mother pulled his hand back. “No, sweetie, the lady doesn’t want to shake your hand.” She looked at Dusty. “I’m sorry. He’s too little to know.”

Dusty stared at the woman. Her hands clutched the pew harder than ever. “That’s okay,” she mumbled. Mass resumed, but she had lost her interest in what the priest had to say.

Home again, Dusty picked up the phone. This time, she would do it; she wouldn’t lose her nerve again. Something had to change. She stared at the keypad, her heart pounding. Finally she dialled the numbers that she knew by heart, pausing for a long moment before the last one, but finally pressing it too.

“Dr. Reid’s office, how can I help you?” a chipper voice answered.

Dusty hung up.

Her situation came down on her like the bar of a mousetrap. Crushed by the weight, she lay on her bed and cried – alone, facing the wall, where no one could see or hear her; no one could know how much she despaired.

She wondered if there were other people like her all through the building. If you cut off the sides of the high-rise, would you see women and men just like her clutching their pillows, in the fetal position wailing, screaming into their pillows? In every apartment building in every city, a hundred thousand, a million Dustys, sick with the misery of being completely and utterly alone.