The Hidden Message

The moon cast shadows of the trees on the ground outside MaryAnn’s bedroom window, they looked like barcodes, if I scanned them, she wondered, what would they ring up as? Shit, I’ve been in retail too long, apparently tree shadows look like barcodes now, I have to get out of this fucking job!

The phone rang and she jumped. She’d been daydreaming again. “Thank you for calling Mervyn’s Department Store, this is MaryAnn, how can I help you?” The person on the other end started yelling something about shoes, the black ones this customer had purchased turned out to be blue when they got them home, somehow this was MaryAnn’s fault. She waited for them to finish, holding the phone away from her ear until the diatribe was done, then she apologized, offered to exchange them for the correct color, and of course a five dollar gift card for the inconvenience, that seemed to appease them, thank goodness. Sometimes the yelling can go on forever.

Break time. MaryAnn sat in the dingy little white florescent bulb lit box in the center of the store that served as the employee lunch room. Some daytime soap opera was playing on the ancient CRT TV in the corner of the room, but she wasn’t paying attention, she was idly flipping through the apps on her phone. She clicked open the map and zoomed out to view the entire United States, placed her thumb in a random spot, and zoomed in. Chadron, Nebraska. She looked up at the foam tiles on the ceiling of the little box. I could run away.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love her husband or her family. Of course she did, but they were part of the problem, contributing factors to her captivity, pieces of a puzzle that she no longer fit in, keeping her trapped in this life she hated. She felt she had no choice; she had to leave them or be stuck here forever.

Chadron, Nebraska, she had done some research. It was a town of 5,000 in the middle of nowhere, no bigger than her high school had been. They wouldn’t ever think to look for her there. She could disappear; she could have the life she wanted instead of the one everyone told her she was supposed to live. She imagined herself a waitress in a diner in this (hopefully) adorable little town with regular customers who loved her, and plenty of free time for her photography and writing and hiking and all those little things she loved to do but was always too busy or exhausted for.

She lay in bed listening to the raindrops as they whispered at her window, secret things only she could hear. She thought of her suitcase, already packed and sitting in the trunk of her car. Tomorrow. She looked at her sleeping husbands face, he seemed so peaceful, so content, would he ever be again? She rolled over, closed her eyes, and sobbed herself to sleep.