Write Michigan Short Story Contest

Chaos Theory

It was always the windows that drew her attention. Nearly spanning the length of the wall, this one afforded an attractive view of the city with a church cathedral as its centerpiece. Tonight the lighted spire backlit by dense fog caused an eerie blade-like effect. It was the same fog that had hung overhead as they had driven methodically to the hospital. She was always surprised at how spacious the building felt, as if even the walls were backing away from containing her problems. Her son had an entire room to himself again and the staff had brought out a heated blanket when he’d hollered about the cold. Not that he was aware of any of it. He was so stoned that he’d mistaken the nurse for her and thrown up over both of them twice. Looking at his emaciated body, it was a wonder he had anything left to discharge.

The window provided a welcome relief.

“Laura, he can’t help it,” Her husband’s voice whispered into her ear as he stood beside her. “The drug has taken over him completely. It’s not our son that’s chasing the high any longer. You have to separate the addiction from our boy. You know he would never do these things to us if he had his own way.” Laura leaned in further toward her husband’s shoulder, the curve of his arm seeming to be formed just to contain her back. She couldn’t look into his eyes, knowing the pain she would see mirrored there would send her into another round of tears. Though she found herself nodding her head, it wasn’t out of agreement but habit. She wasn’t ready to release her hurt.

Back before any of this—before the toddler and the swollen belly and the twisted sheets and the handsome professor—she had been young, hungry for adventure. Graduating university had taken her by surprise. She had expected there would be more time to decide upon a future. It was midway through a restless summer when the colorful advertisement to teach abroad had caught her eye. She responded almost reflexively. A phone call, a reference and a quickly updated resume were exchanged. A month later she found herself in a new country, not fully understanding the language nor what she had gotten herself into. 

When she looked back, her first memory of Honduras was of landing on the stunted runway and how she had spontaneously grabbed the hefty floraled thigh of the missionary next to her. “It’s okay, dear,” the woman had said kindly. “It still gives me a little scare.” As the plane descended, it came so close to houses built into the side of a mountain that she could make out individual pockets of the laundry hanging to dry. Taxis and buses raced her heart even faster. She soon learned to close her eyes, as watching the chaos unfold gave her more anxiety than just letting things happen.

Laura had assumed that this release of life allowed one to enjoy it more fully. But as she studied her son lying in the hospital bed, she wasn’t so sure anymore. His gaunt legs poked through the sheets and Laura marveled again how easy it had been to lift him into the car. It was over eighteen years since she’d last been able to lift him up in her arms. What had she failed to provide that he had sought elsewhere?

“Laura… come back to me.”

Having been numbed by her reverie she was now able to look at her husband. Tim’s piercing eyes were lately accentuated by red veins and puffy eyelids.

“Where were you?”
“Honduras, mostly.”
The corner of his mouth turned upward and Laura swooped in to kiss it.

“You know we may not have been able to do anything differently. We lived simply. We loved him. We still do.”

“I know,” she said, not meeting his gaze.

In her drafty middle school library she had once read that the world was so sensitive to change that one beat of a butterfly wing could cause a hurricane weeks later. This had bothered her—could stepping on the wrong snow bank shift a tectonic plate? Or perhaps one jump too many on a trampoline might form an earthquake thousands of miles away. Her fantastical imagination was adept at creating hundreds of doomsday scenarios.

She had always been a quietly troubled child, her spacy air belying a frantic interior. This anxiety continued throughout high school and college; a perfectionism that drove Laura to the top of her class while remaining completely miserable and unsatisfied. So it was with great surprise that her family and friends witnessed the dramatic change that Honduras had produced in her. They never knew how hard-won it had been.

Things began easily enough. The students were initially curious and pleasant; the co-teachers helpful and everyone gave her grace for being new. Soon, however, demands began to increase. Her dissatisfaction with the school curriculum led her to spend hours recomposing it. The novelty of a new teacher soon wore off on the students, and little rebellions grew to mutiny.

She began to dread the routine and thus she was perpetually late in the morning. From her front door she would clatter down the twist of stairs, race across the gravel strip to the blackened front gate, frantically unlock the latch and clang the iron door shut behind her before sprinting to the grassy corner where she could spy the bus heaving around the sharp angle of a house.

One day as she packed her bag, she felt a familiar gurgling in her lower abdomen. Other teachers had jokingly referred to it as the “Honduran Welcome”, though it had been several months since her arrival. The unpleasant sensation morphed into a vice-like grip that had her clutching a chair for support. She eventually made her way over to the telephone and dialed the school secretary. Laura felt a wash of relief surpass the nausea. She was so glad to have an excuse to lie in bed. The next day she could no longer detect feeling ill, yet she remained home, staring at the blank cement wall. For the rest of the week she did nothing but lay in bed with no motivation to attempt any other activity. She stopped eating. She stopped caring. She didn’t want to die, exactly—she just couldn’t bring herself to face her students and the demands of the job. She was completely overwhelmed and her response was to withdraw from life.

When she finally returned to school after a lengthy absence, it was a different teacher that emerged. She switched into survival mode and her sole goal became to make it to the last bell at the end of the day. Letting go of her need for perfection helped her to get out of bed each morning. Laura began to accept the idea that her role was rather insignificant, and this was enough of a release to help her continue.

But as she stood next to her husband, she reflected that it hadn’t been so easy to wash her hands of everything. Traces of her withdrawal from difficulty had caught up with her, culminating with the young man in the hospital bed in front of them. She could no longer ignore the sinking possibility that she had been too quick to retreat from life. Perhaps in accepting things as they had come, she had relinquished the right to change course.

The doctor entered. Laura and Tim were made to understand that their son’s body was shutting down. Too many cycles of abuse on its system had taken a toll. The doctor expressed hope that if their son was able to stay sober, his body might be able to repair itself. What the doctor didn’t say, but what Laura already knew, was that the likelihood of her son staying clean was slim. He had done this to himself and he was going to keep getting high until it killed him. No amount of rehab or treatment or prayers was going to stop him from chasing escape.

Tim was the first to speak once they were left alone again. “Let’s go home,” he said simply. There was so much relief in the exhale of his sentence. Even the air around them felt liberated.

Laura had been so excited to leave for Christmas break. A colleague’s brother whom she had never met happened to be heading to the airport as well and it was arranged that Laura would travel with him. The two strangers set out before dawn since their destination was several hours away. She spoke little Spanish and he spoke even less English, but they were able to make small talk and filled in gaps with encouraging grins. He introduced himself as Jose and managed to tell her about his wife and two daughters. It was half an hour into the trip before Laura realized she had left behind her money and passport on the kitchen table. She felt terrible. Though her companion willingly turned around and assured her it was no problem, Laura remained upset with herself even after the items had been recovered. Jose paused before starting up the car again. “Shit… happens,” he declared seriously, before breaking into a grin. Their laughter ricocheted off the glass windows and pushed out all feelings of guilt.

This was the moment Laura loved to recall. It was no accident that one of her happiest memories was of leaving. Everything was raw in Honduras. Pinioned between breathtaking terrain and a vibrant culture was a coarseness that refused to be subdued. Plastic bags of trash filled the streets and spilled out into the gutters. Barefoot children with ragged clothing and large eyes sold mangoes to her uniform-clad students, a fence separating so much more than the physical space between them. Everyone knew someone whose life had ended violently. Even the dogs traveled in packs for protection. It was devastating to witness how many beings desperately needed help. The only way of coping was to withdraw, to turn away from the skeletal dogs, from the hungry eyes.

“Thinking about the mangoes again?” Tim teased.

“Mmhmm.”
“Why is Honduras on your mind so much tonight?”

She considered this for a long while.  
“I think it’s because it’s the last time I felt so helpless. I was stranded in a foreign territory. And now I don’t know how to handle our son. I don’t know what I did wrong and I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Honey, you know I’ve said this before. But you have to believe me. We worked to provide structure for him. We were home base. But ultimately, he’s his own creature.”

            There had been other happy memories. Once a few students had invited her to a birthday party at a resort. Mango trees enclosed a courtyard with a large wooden patio and a pool. Pleasant formalities were dropped as the evening wore on and everyone became comfortable with the teacher in their midst. It was impossible not to revel in the infectious joy of the gathering. After playing a barefoot basketball game and dancing under the twinkling lights of the patio, she gathered with some of her students and their parents to dip their toes in the cooling pool. Suddenly, Andrea, a straight-A student with a devilish grin, ran up from behind and tossed Laura’s startled body into the water. The guffawing continued as Andrea and several other students spontaneously jumped in together, splashing water at each other and the onlookers. Laura couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so uninhibited. As she watched her students’ faces under the glow of the moon, she realized that in spite of herself, she had somehow formed a connection with them.

It was late when they all piled into the back of a dusty pickup truck. Even in the darkness, the brightly colored houses stood in contrast to the dirt covering everything else. “Stop the car!” Andrea screamed suddenly. Everyone was thrust forward as her brother complied with a squeal of the brakes. “Here! Pull in here! I want to show Miss Laura el marañón.” No sooner had he pulled in the driveway indicated than Andrea hopped out of the truck and pulled a fruit from the branch of a tree in the middle of the yard. “Here Miss,” she said, handing the harvest to Laura. “Can you guess what it is?” Laura examined the object in her hand, holding it under the streetlight. Never had she seen anything like it before. She might have guessed it was a pepper had she not observed it pulled off of a tree.  From a distance it had looked something like one of the large Christmas lights her parents used to string in their pines, but up close she could see that it was rounder and had a strange object attached to its base. The bulb of the fruit was bright red and soft while the piece that was attached looked disturbingly like a small green fetus. It curled upward on both ends and smelled fragrant and vaguely familiar. “Give me a hint.”

“You can use both parts.”
“The fetus too?” Everyone had burst out laughing. “No Miss, it’s a cashew!”

Laura realized she had never known how cashews were grown. It was so strange. The bulb was tender and easily bruised but the nut itself was firm. She wondered what function such a fragile fruit could serve. As she held it carefully in her hands, she considered that perhaps providing support for the cashew was purpose enough. It added perspective, connecting the nut to the tree to the earth.