Headache

HEADACHE

ANGELA SAXON WOKE UP without a headache. This was not the first time that this had happened. The truth was, Angela had never in her entire life ever waken up with a headache. Or even gotten one midway through the afternoon. But just because she had never suffered through that kind of an ordeal did not diminish her relief each morning as she greeted what she knew would be another pain-free day. At least in the sense of a hurt in the head.
She had observed countless others in their experience, had listened to their descriptions, seen their agony, watched their slippage into dysfunction. And she knew from the evidence that she never wanted that to be a part of her life.
Lying there in bed, reflecting on her own good fortune and still not yet ready to rise, she felt her body for broken bones, lesions, ulcers on the skin, swellings, boils. Once more, she found none. Angela had never broken a bone in her life; her complexion was flawless. Still, she checked herself each morning, just in case. Her health was perfect.
Later, in the shower, after shampooing and cream-rinsing, and with the water still on, she inspected herself for rashes and bruises: her arms, legs, chest, and stomach. She even kept a small hand-mirror in the shower so that she could check her back and her backside. Done, she turned off the water. Another morning had come, and she was still rash-free. Not a bruise or a blemish in sight. Not on her entire body. This too was not especially surprising since she had also, in all of her twenty-three years, never had any type of skin disorder. Not so much as an itch. Not even acne. But she breathed a sigh of collective relief anyway as she stepped out of the stall. Once more, she felt that things would be good. Once more, it would be another fine day.
After the shower, and after toweling herself dry, she bent down and looked closely between her toes and under the toenails, to make sure that no strange creatures were growing--or hiding--or dying–-there in the secret place.
Then she got dressed.
At the breakfast counter, eating and thinking and, of course, shaping the myth of herself, she read the eye chart on the opposite wall: 20/20 vision, she was. As usual. As always. No break in the pattern. No calls to the optometrist today. (She had never seen an optometrist. No need to.) Her eyes were good; her eyes were perfect: hazel. (Angela loved the fact that there was a z in the color of her eyes.)
After breakfast, she brushed her teeth. After brushing her teeth, she looked at her teeth. Looking at her teeth, she noted that they too were perfect, clean and white and straight and bright; no chips or pitting. No cavities. No fillings. (Not a one.) No braces either. (Are you kidding?!) Her gums were pink.
Time to get to work. But before she did, she made a quick sweep of each room of the house: her routine check for earthquake damage: the walls, the windows, ceiling, and floor. Outside, she walked around the yard–-the front and the back--looking for evidence of any recent meteorite impacts. Or comets. Debris from above. Again there was nothing. Nothing that she could see. Nothing out of the ordinary. No craters. No injuries to the flower garden. No foreign visitors. Indeed, no unwanted visitations at all.
Then, just before getting into her car, she looked up to the sky, cloudless and blue, scanning that same sky for any potential threats to her safety. Again nothing. Satisfied, she slipped inside her car and started the engine and pulled out of the driveway.
* * * * * * *
Angela’s day moved along: the commute, work, lunch.
* * * * * * *
During lunch, on her walk (to keep the muscle tone in her legs accurate and aesthetically pure), she again looked up into the sky. And this time she saw it: the crack. It was not the first time that she had seen a crack. But this was the first time she had been able to spot one so easily, so quickly. Without any doubts as to what it was. At the bottom of the fissure, there was a little opening--larger than any she had ever seen before--that let the outside in, ever so slightly. Would it be too much? she wondered. She couldn’t tell. She’d never seen or heard of any serious problems from weaknesses in the sky before. But she had read enough to know that, in theory, it could present problems; it could be serious: It could be disastrous. In theory. Maybe even in Life.
The flaw was in the west, low on the horizon, and as Angela continued to stare, she set to memorize its place in the sky. Where it was exactly. She noted where she was standing, where a certain building was, and then approximately how high above that landmark her spot was. She marked it with her thumb. She’d check on it later.
* * * * * * *
(There is a photograph sitting on an end table in Angela’s living room, right there bedside the fireplace. The photo is of vicious, wild beasts: rattlesnakes, javelinas, dingoes, a black widow spider, a mosquito, the AIDS virus, a cancer cell, pride. They all look like family. They are a family. They are Angela’s family: her mother and her father, and her two brothers and one sister, and her own former husband (who had taken his life the previous year), and, of course, herself. When she looks at the photograph, she does not see the terrible beasts in the picture; instead, she sees Love. Angela dusts the photograph every day, and when anyone comes to visit, she shows them the picture and points out each member of her family, and tells them a little story about each one of them. Sometimes the stories change, but most of the time she keeps to the script.)
* * * * * * *
Angela knocked off work earlier than usual: 4:30. She was curious. She simply could not get her mind off the sudden fracture in the sky. And as the afternoon had advanced, she’d had a bad feeling about it. A premonition, you might say. She walked outside her office and her building. She looked up into the sky: Off to the west, to the spot she had marked with her thumb--with her mind--she saw the fissure. Immediately. And what she saw alarmed her: it was bigger than it had been at noon; much bigger. It now stretched out all the way from the western horizon to almost the sky’s zenith, with secondary cracks branching outward at intervals. The opening too had widened. Angela looked around. It seemed that no one else on the street was concerned; no one else even seemed aware.
The sun, though not yet setting, was nevertheless descending, approaching, seeming to be aiming directly for the weakness in the sky.
Angela jumped into her car and headed for high ground, away from the ocean and the lowlands. She made it just in time.
On a little hill perhaps 500 feet above the town and the shoreline, she parked her car. She got out of her car and stood beside her car to watch. And as she watched, she saw the sun make its first contact with the crack. Immediately, pieces of the sky, small at first, began to break apart and fall away. She could not believe how fragile the sky was. Pieces fell off into the ocean. She saw the enormous splash in the water and the subsequent wave spread out and begin its approach toward the land. But the real sight, for now, was still up above: the first pieces to break away were only the beginning. Almost like a chain reaction, larger chunks began to split and fall, each one higher than the one before. All was silent, no noise at all. (Or at least Angela could detect no sound.) She wondered if the people in the city had begun to notice yet. She heard no sirens, no loud speakers, no cries for help; she saw no panic. Traffic-–automobile and bicycle and pedestrian--continued to move in its orderly, leisurely--yet conjested--fashion. She looked back to the sky and now saw whole pieces, jagged and sharp, collapsing. They looked like they could slice the ocean to shreds. The sun caught these scraps, twisting and spiraling and turning and curling as they fell, so that the reflected light of the huge, falling shards created, arguably, one of the most stunning displays of a sunset Angela had ever witnessed.