Linda

I.
The first time Linda noticed she had lost her mind was when she walked into Target, pushing a bright red cart, headed into the beauty aisle, and totally forgot why she was there. Not in the beauty aisle, but in Target.

She wracked her brain for a good five minutes before angrily huffing and puffing back to her car without making a purchase. On the way home, idling at a red light, Linda remembered why she went to Target in the first place. Soap, the store had a sale on soap and she was clean out of it at home. She made the next U-Turn and headed back to Target.

When she got home and put the soap away, she went into the living room to find someone to talk to about what had happened to her. Her daughter Merilee was lounging on the couch with a bowl of buttery popcorn, flipping through the channels.

“Merilee, I have to tell you what happened to me at Target,” she said, taking the remote and shutting of the TV.

“What are you doing?! I was watching that,” Merilee’s green eyes flashed with infantile anger.

“Oh please, you weren’t watching anything important, like the news.” Linda loved her daughter’s sweet childishness but sometimes she wanted Merilee to act like the sixteen year old she was. “I wanted to tell you what happened to me at Target.”

Merilee put on her detached stare and stiff set lips, preparing for an epic story about a clothing sale. It usually ended with Linda exhibiting matching tops for her and Merilee to wear out somewhere; which wouldn’t have been so bad if Linda’s style wasn’t so conservative.

“I drove all the way to Target and then completely forgot why I was there,” Linda said, as if revealing some profound secret.

“So? I do stuff like that all the time, it doesn’t mean anything,” Merilee grumbled.

“Yes it does. It means I’m getting old!” Tears formed in Linda’s eyes. She didn’t want to get old! She wanted to travel with her family, take up tennis, learn to drive a boat, not sit on the recliner all day watching talk shows.

Merilee rolled her eyes. “I have the youngest mom out of all my friends. You’re just so busy with stuff it must have slipped your mind, that’s all.”

Linda shook her head but she wasn’t entirely listening. “Yesterday I set the stove on pre-heat for no reason,” she said, mostly to herself. “And then I rewashed a clean load of laundry in the laundry room.” Her eyes glazed over and she became silent in thought.

“Hello? Hello!” Merilee grabbed Linda’s shoulders and shook her. “Are you ok? Maybe you should lie down and watch TV, Maury’s on.”

Linda’s eyes widened in fear, “Maury? No, no, I can’t watch that.” She stood up and slowly backed out of the room. “I’ll just go lie in bed.”

“Ok,” Merilee said, arching her eyebrows.

Linda backed into the hallway and then took off for the attic. She pried the stairs down from the string swinging freely at the end of the hallway. She was careful not to let the stairs hit the hardwoods in case Merilee would come investigating. The wooden stairs slid down at her like a ladder and she silently climbed to the top, using her arms to pull herself into the room.

Linda looked around. The attic was so plain and drafty without a floor, just wooden planks separated an inch apart, and the insulation exposed high above her head. But, it was tall enough to stand in so it was good enough to act as her escape nook.

She walked over to the rusted, gold-painted dressing table across the room and looked at herself in the spotted mirror. Her strawberry blonde hair hung in her face. It was straight and thin just like Merilee’s but Linda didn’t have Merilee’s captivating green eyes, hers were blue. And not a very powerful blue at that. The color appeared washed out, as if they were once a fierce navy but have been fading over time to match the whites of her eyes. Her ex-husband thought her eyes were exotic, until Alexia came along. Alexia was the most exotic woman Linda had ever seen. She was a Brazilian beauty with tan skin and thick thighs without an ounce of wrinkles or cellulite. No wonder he had run away with her, Linda would have to, if she went that way.

She sighed and sat back in the racer-back chair, staring up at the insulation and going over all of the mistakes she’d been making lately. What was happening to her mind? Was it dwindling out like her blue eyes? The deterioration was happening so quickly, what would she be left with by the end of next week?

Dementia ran in her family, her mother was only seventy and she was already lost to the disease. She had to be put into a home under surveillance. Otherwise she would wind up behind the wheel of a car on the freeway heading in no particular direction for any particular reason. Then Linda would get a call from a police station in some obscure town requesting she come pick up her mother, who had crashed into a store front and couldn’t recall a single detail about herself except that her single daughter lived in Matawan with her pretty but immature granddaughter.

Linda stood from the chair and paced the room for several minutes until she got tired of thinking of these things and laid on the spare bed in the corner and fell asleep.

II.
Linda awoke to a light shining in her eyes. “Mom, are you awake?” She thought she heard Merilee ask, and then an unfamiliar voice added, “Can you sit up?” Maybe it was her ex-husband’s weekend with Merilee and they came to say goodbye.

She squinted and pulled herself into an upright position. Her body felt like lead, which made her wonder how long she had been asleep for. When her eyes were fully adjusted she could see Merilee and a police officer with a flashlight standing before her. “Can I help you officer,” she asked.

“Ma’am, I got a call from this frightened young woman, she wanted to know what you’re doing up here.” The officer looked concerned, but not violent or angry.

“I must have just dozed off. Really, I’m ok Merilee you didn’t have to call the cops.”

“Please stop calling me Merilee, ok?” Merilee’s eyes flashed back and fourth between Linda and the cop.

“What do you mean stop calling you Merilee? Why would I do that?” Linda was a little confused, but Merilee always played these games with her, changing her name, her hair color, her taste in clothes.

“Ok,” the officer interrupted. “Ma’am do you have any sort of identification on you, so I can find out where you live.”

Linda grew even more confused. “This is where I live,” she demanded. “And stop calling me ma’am, my name is Linda.”

Merilee looked worried. She handed the police officer a wallet she picked up off of the dressing table. The police officer looked down at the driver’s license in the wallet. “Actually, your name is Rose,” the police officer said.

Linda’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about? What kind of joke is this Merilee?”

Merilee’s face contorted into annoyance, Linda thought another childish temper-tantrum was about to explode, but instead Merilee remained calm, she looked sad even. “Miss, my name is not Merilee its Erin and you’re in my attic.”

“You see…Rose, I got a call from Erin here and she told me you came into her home through the kitchen door and walked into the living room where she was watching TV. You started talking about Target and an oven…” The officer trailed off like he expected something to dawn on Linda. For her to confess something. But she just sat there looking incredulously at Erin and the cop.

“This is a terrible joke to play on me after the day I’ve had!” Linda shouted and stood up. Erin cautiously backed away and the officer took Linda by the shoulders, she shook him off. “I’m not some old woman. Don’t hold onto me like that. I don’t know what’s going on here but I will be calling city hall tomorrow to report you for barging in on me when I was napping because my daughter made a prank call!”

Linda snatched the wallet out of the officer’s hands and approached the dressing table to place it back in her purse. She caught a glimpse of her reflection and gasped. The officer and Erin, who had been standing a little away talking, turned to look at her.

Linda sat with her nose to the mirror, running her chapped, wrinkled hands over her face. “What happened to my face,” she repeated over and over again until hot tears ran down her cheeks. “I’m so old.”

Erin came to her and placed a youthful, warm hand on her shoulder. “Rose, I know you’re scared and upset but you have to tell me who I can call to help you. Do you have family in the area?”

She thought a moment and then it hit her, finally a true moment of clarity revealed itself to her admist all the scattered memories and logic. She looked up at Erin’s glorious, emerald eyes. “Yes, there is family in the area! I have a single daughter that lives in Matawan with my pretty but immature granddaughter,” she said.