The Night Louisa Almost Drowned
Louisa realized she might never get to eat the boxes of chocolate she had swiped. Her second realization was that the puddle she drove through was not a puddle at all, but a part of the lake that had overflowed onto the road. She had driven on that road at night before and usually when the lake overflowed, the Department of Public Work employees set up cones, and sometimes even detour signs to alert drivers to the flooding ahead. This time, no one had, which is why Louisa not only didn’t see the puddle, but found herself driving in water that very quickly reached the handle on the car door.
When she tried to hit the brakes, the engine stalled, and she knew she was in trouble and needed to get out of the car quickly. Louisa, however, wasn’t a good swimmer. She had watched a video once on how to try and escape from a submerged vehicle, but she found herself so uneasy about what was quickly unfolding around her (water pooling around her ankles and her car floating towards the edge of the lake) that instead of thinking clearly, she felt incapable of doing anything.
Louisa was a home health aide for an elderly woman named Marjorie who lived up on the part of the lake that apparently hadn’t flooded. She worked a 12 hour shift every other day and liked this type of arrangement because it gave her time to do the things she liked to do when her daughter was at school – namely hike around the lake or bake some cookies. Sometimes she liked to do nothing at all and would often find herself just watching the chickadees nibble at the food she had placed in the bird feeder. In hindsight, perhaps she should have taken swimming lessons in her downtime.
Louisa was first hired to care for Marjorie seven months prior. She had signed up for the job with a nursing service, even though she had to explain she wasn’t a nurse and only had an associate’s degree in sociology. But the head recruiter for the firm said her lack of experience was irrelevant. This was a position that required preparing simple meals, some housework, and above all, just showing up.
Marjorie had one child, a son named Thomas, who not only lived too far away to care for her but was often too busy to even visit. After Louisa spoke to Thomas on the phone, she was hired by him sight unseen. She was immediately thanked profusely for taking the job before she had even started. She was also given access to a credit card in order to buy anything Marjorie needed – food in particular. She was encouraged to shop online and even have food delivered.
“That way you don’t have to leave the house, so Mom isn’t alone,” the son had told her.
When he added “ever,” after saying that to her, Louisa began to wonder if Marjorie even knew she was basically being held hostage in her own home. Louisa agreed to shop online, but still she thought that maybe Marjorie would have liked to get out of the house. Even if it was only a trip to the grocery store, or to have her hair or nails done.
Louisa remembered the first week she was there and found a closet she didn’t know existed in a spare bedroom. When she opened the door, expecting perhaps to see some old clothes or simply hangers, she was astonished to find it was stocked with cans of soup and sardines, and bags of rice and elbow macaroni.
Then she saw the chocolate. There were at least 12 different boxes of what looked like old Valentine’s Day candy, most of them in heart-shaped boxes as well. They were all still cellophane-wrapped and a few even had a 50% off sticker on them. She couldn’t imagine how the boxes of chocolate got there or why they were never eaten. When she asked Marjorie about the boxes later, she just looked at her and insisted that not only did she know nothing about the chocolate, but that there was no closet in her house containing those items.
Although Louisa did have a sweet tooth, she still didn’t know why she ended up taking some of those boxes of chocolate with her that day. She also didn’t feel guilty about stealing from her employer; the rationale being that if Marjorie didn’t even know they were there, why couldn’t she just have them? Louisa also thought it was a bit unusual that Marjorie never asked her for a cookie or even a piece of candy on the days she was with her. Louisa thought that most older folks loved their sweets, but apparently Marjorie did not.
Louisa always made Marjorie breakfast – usually a single scrambled egg with wheat toast and a cup of black coffee. Sometimes lunch would be more eggs, too. Marjorie loved egg salad, but if she wanted something salty, she’d have a cup of chicken soup or sardines - again on a slice of wheat toast. Louisa wanted to be more creative when it came to dinner since they ate that meal together, but Marjorie wasn’t an adventurous eater. So, Louisa was usually stuck making baked chicken with some rice and green beans, over and over again.
After four months of eating the same food with her charge, Louisa decided to order food she’d like to eat. She wasn’t worried about Thomas questioning her purchases because she had a feeling he never looked at any of the credit card statements at all. He probably just paid whatever the amount was each month. Therefore, she started ordering freshly squeezed juices (blood orange and carrot were her favorite), organic salad kits, and even imported cheese. Occasionally, she’d feel ashamed when she ordered an expensive piece of meat, like steak or even a veal chop, since she knew Marjorie would only take a bite. But that feeling quickly vanished when Louisa would take the rest of it home.
“I don’t want to eat that.” Followed by, “It’s too much for me,” Marjorie would always say to her.
That night, besides panicking about possibly drowning in a car that was rapidly filling up with cold water, Louisa realized that she had dropped her purse on the floor by the passenger seat. She fished around in the cold water and tried not to think what else might be floating around in it as she fumbled to pick up her purse. Miraculously, she found it and reached inside for her phone. The phone was dripping wet, but somehow, she still had one bar. She quickly tried to push the numbers 9-1-1 before she knew the phone would stop working.
Louisa yelled, “I’m stuck in my car near Oneida Lake and the water is almost up to my stomach,” she said. “The road flooded and there was no warning!” she continued.
She didn’t wait for the operator to respond, but quickly gave her full name, date of birth and social security number.
When the operator asked her if there was a relative she could call to inform them of her seemingly imminent demise, Louisa looked into the darkness and saw what looked like a couple of metallic-colored beer cans bobbing up and down on the lake. Louisa wasn’t sure how Sapporo, a Japanese brand of beer got to be there, and just as she was about to give the operator her husband’s phone number, her phone died.
Louisa tried to roll down the window and open the car door but realized this would be an impossible task to do since she had no power to operate either. Louisa remembered watching an ad on TV a few weeks prior about a tool that could cut your seatbelts off in a hurry and be used to break the window, too. She remembers the cartoon-like bubble that appeared above the device that insisted it was “guaranteed” to work underwater. Louisa realized that if she, by some chance, had purchased that tool, she would have probably thrown it in the trunk of her car and wouldn’t have been able to reach it anyway.
Louisa suddenly felt very cold. She also saw a light in the distance and hoped it wasn’t “the” light that everyone always talked about when facing death, but the light of a rescue vehicle, or at least a good Samaritan. Louisa began to wonder what Marjorie would do if Louisa wasn’t able to take care of her anymore. But then she realized she could easily be replaced. And knowing how quick Thomas was in handling his mother’s affairs, even from a distance, he’d probably have a different caretaker already lined up before someone had even claimed Louisa’s body.
Louisa closed her eyes and felt the water creeping up her neck, almost near her mouth. She tried to keep her lips closed, too, since the thought of the lake water seeping into her body made her ill. Wouldn’t it be awful, she thought if she suddenly threw up? Even with her eyes closed and the water about to submerge her, Louisa suddenly felt bad she had taken the boxes of Valentine’s Day candy. But also sad that she wouldn’t have the chance to taste a single one.
“Mommy, Mommy!” Louisa suddenly heard a voice.
She opened her eyes and realized she was lying in bed. Her bed. In her house. She must have been rescued, but why didn’t she remember how?
She looked at her daughter who had climbed into the bed with her. She was holding a small heart-shaped box that she now thrust in her face.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Mommy. Daddy said we have to have breakfast first.”
Louisa took the box from her daughter and ripped off the plastic wrapper. She opened the box and took the first chocolate-covered truffle that she saw and stuffed it in her mouth.
Her daughter started to giggle. “Daddy says he’s going to get you sushi for dinner.”
And then she whispered, “But I’m not supposed to tell you.”
Louisa started to laugh.
“When will you be home tonight?” her daughter asked.
“Before you’re asleep,” Louisa said. “You can eat the candy if I’m not back in time though, okay?”
When Louisa left for work that morning, she decided to be extra careful when she drove by the lake. That’s when she started to remember the very intense dream she had about drowning last night. She wondered if she told Marjorie about it, would the old woman be able to interpret the dream for her? She had never asked Marjorie what kind of dreams she had, or if they were as real as the one she had last night.
Louisa looked down at the floor mat on the passenger side of the car and gave a deep sigh. She was glad everything was dry, and suddenly, she thought she should stop and get Marjorie a little something for Valentine’s Day, too. But what?
Her phone suddenly pinged. It was Thomas texting her that he had ordered his mother a heart-shaped cake from a local bakery, and he hoped they could enjoy it together.
“Hope you like strawberries,” he texted.
“I do, that’s sweet,” Louisa voice-texted back.
“Hope you have a nice Valentine’s Day,” he texted again. “Thanks again for taking care of Mom.”
“Yes, my daughter got me a box of chocolates and my husband is getting us sushi tonight.”
After she said that, Louisa looked at her phone and got a thumbs up from him.
By the time she got to Marjorie’s house, the cake was already there. Marjorie had put it on the kitchen table and was staring at it.
“Strawberry,” she said.
Louisa nodded.
“Did you know about this?” Marjorie asked.
Louisa nodded again. “He texted me this morning.”
Marjorie looked at her. “Was the lake flooding over on the road?”
Louisa looked at her. “No why?”
“Just curious, I had a strange dream last night about the lake flooding,” Marjorie said.
“You did?”
Marjorie nodded. “Someone drowned.”
Louisa felt a bit uneasy. “I had a dream, too,” she said. But then she decided she wasn’t going to tell Marjorie that she dreamt she was trapped in a car that was surrounded by water.
“What was your dream about?” Marjorie asked her.
Louisa looked at her and said, “Chocolate, boxes and boxes of chocolate.”
Marjorie seemed okay with that answer because she nodded and was already getting a knife out of a kitchen drawer to cut the cake.
“I thought you don’t like sweets that much,” Louisa said.
“I don’t, but I love strawberries. So, I’m going to eat all the strawberries off of it, and you can eat the cake.”
Louisa started to laugh when Marjorie said, “Thomas sent you something, too. It’s in the fridge.”
But before Louisa could go over and see what was in the fridge, Marjorie was standing in front of her holding a very large heart-shaped box.
“Take this home to your daughter,” she said. “You know Thomas always sends me boxes of Valentine’s Day candy every year. And I don’t eat them, I just put them in a closet. But this year, I told him, please don’t send anything.”
Louisa’s eyes must have gotten very big because Marjorie suddenly asked her if she was okay.
“Yes,” Louisa said, wondering why Marjorie had originally told her that there was no closet in the house. Or boxes of chocolate. Or did she dream that, too?
And then Marjorie started laughing, “So he got me a cake, instead!”
When Louisa finally opened the fridge, right in front of her was a six-pack of Japanese beer. The exact same brand in a shiny metallic color that she had dreamt about. And that Louisa thought was just very strange.