Cracked

The morning light shined through the old single-pane window of my apartment onto the bare wall opposite my bed. It wasn’t always bare. There had been a picture of my family hanging smack in the middle of it until yesterday. I knocked it off the wall moving some shelves into the living room. A clean white rectangle was all that remained. I was about to ignore it and make my way to the kitchen for some coffee when something caught my eye.

It was a small crack in the wall. Maybe a quarter inch long, about the width of a match, directly in the center of where the painting had been. “Hmm”, I thought. I know walls crack, especially in these pre-war buildings. But such a peculiar place. Not on a seam or in a corner, but the dead-center of a non-load bearing wall. My thoughts about it stopped there as I carried out my daily routine.

That night, I entered my room, spent from the day. As I flicked the light switch on my attention was drawn directly to the small crack. “Oh… right, I’ll have to get some spackle for that, and re-hang the picture”, I thought. It’s a lovely picture; my parents and my brother and sister. All of us young and healthy and happy. My brow furled as I looked back up to the crack. Upon closer inspection I noticed it had grown noticeably in size. It had more than doubled since this morning. I figured my tired eyes were getting the best of me, so I turned off the light and went to bed.

The next day, I ignored the crack. I went to work, inputted data into a computer for eight hours, and returned home. But the whole time away, I couldn’t stop thinking about the crack in the wall. I kept telling myself I should have checked it in the morning. I was in a rush though, and it had slipped my mind. On the stair climb to my apartment, my heart beat was a little faster than usual, hoping the crack hadn’t grown to an unmanageable size. I fumbled with my keys, made my way into the apartment and before removing my jacket or shoes, and swung the door to my room open to great relief. The crack had grown only slightly since I saw it last. This time, I decided to measure it. I didn’t have a ruler so I grabbed a piece of loose-leaf and measured by the lines on the page. Two lines and a bit. I wrote the measurement neatly on the wall next to the crack along with the date: 09/07/1998.

The next day I went to the hardware store on 84th street. When I asked the man what I should buy to fix it, he recommended that I just leave it alone.

“Those pre-war buildings, it’s like putting lipstick on a pig. Once they start, you can’t stop it, and it’ll just make it look worse.” He assured me.

“I have to try something”, I told him.

When I got home that evening, I discovered the crack had again doubled in size. Four lines exactly. I wrote down the measurement and applied a few thin coats of drywall compound as I had been instructed by the hardware guy. The next morning I awoke to a smooth finish of dried mud.

That day was the best I had had in a while. I felt alert and happy. I was charming, funny and people at work mentioned they noticed a change in my demeanor, for the better. I arrived at home, excited to check on my beautiful wall, when, to my absolute shock, I was greeted with a fissure in the wall much bigger than it had ever been. Eight lines. September 8th I jotted beside it. The compound I had spread, now dried, was completely cracked, the edges resembling a broken pie crust.

I sat on the edge of the bed, starring, confused, upset. The picture sat at the bottom of the wall, resting on the floor. Me, my parents, my sister and another boy. Her boyfriend? Maybe.

Morning approached without warning. I didn’t believe my alarm clock when it told me I had to get ready for work, until I noticed the light cracking through my home. The crack in the wall remained, unchanged. “Maybe it’s not that bad”, I thought, knowing I was in denial about the whole thing.

That day was tough. People noticed. I hadn’t slept at all and there wasn’t enough coffee in Manhattan to wake me enough to mask it. Whatever thought processing I had kept drifting my mind to the wall.

“You’re not lookin’ good, dude”, Raymond said to me, leaning over into my cubicle from his.

“I just got some stuff going on at home”, I told him, too embarrassed to tell him the truth. What am I going to say? I can’t sleep because my house is caving in on me?

When I returned home, I was devastated to find that the crack had grown yet again. In the ten or so hours I was gone, it had managed to increase exponentially in size. Not just in length and width, but it had branched off to the left into a new, sub-crack. I was baffled. I had watched it all night long, barely taking my eyes off of it for hours. Yet, in my absence, it grew by six lines in the same amount of time. I watched it again, confused, all night. Stopping only to briefly eat and use the bathroom. A week went by with the same routine.

Eventually, I was called into the small office at the back of the the grid of cubicles that housed Human Resources. I knew my work had been suffering, at best, since this whole ordeal started, so I figured I knew why they were summoning me. Although, I had hoped it was something more menial, like a pay related issue. But my intuition proved correct.

Ruth, the overly empathetic and cheerful woman across the desk claimed to be ‘concerned’ for my ‘well-being’ and ‘overall moral of the workspace’. Her words didn’t match her tone. She then recommended I take some time off. Unpaid, of course. I assured her it was a one-off and I just had some personal issues to deal with, and my work would improve without the need for a leave of absence. She agreed, hesitantly, on the condition that I would be monitored closely for signs of regression. I accepted the terms, unsure if I would be able to meet them. Raymond asked if I wanted to join him and a friend for some drinks after work. I declined.

I was weary, but anxious to open my bedroom door when I returned. I crept in slowly. As my eyes panned across the opening door, a large series of cracks resembling the Mississippi Delta were revealed from left to right. They were still centered on the wall, reaching in all directions from the original crack. So, I measured them in forks. I scribbled beside them, 6 forx X 6 forx S. 17. There is a picture on the floor of my parents. Three kids are with them. It must have fell.

Again, the night into the morning brought no change in the state of the wall. The cracks running through the plaster like veins on the back of some old man’s hand. I couldn’t bring myself to leave, so I phoned Ruth and told her I would take her up on the offer, making up some BS about my mental health. I figured I had enough savings to get by. I could eat pretty cheap on ramen noodles and Kraft mac and cheese. I did it in college.

Day after day, I watched the wall. I wondered what I would use to measure it once forks were to small. By now it had grown to larger than ten forks squared, as indicated on the wall: 10f2. I feel the date is irrelevant a this point. I’ve resorted to writing my measurements with the fork itself, scratching the wall to record, as I broke my pencil some time ago.

I never see the crack grow, but every time I measure it, it’s bigger. So I need to watch it constantly. Measure constantly. Phone keeps ringing. Maybe it’s work. I told them two weeks. Has it been two weeks? This picture on the floor has been here forever. I think the previous tenants left it.

The cracks are now on all walls. I try to watch but I think I fall asleep sometimes. I have a bucket. It’s for the bathroom. So I don’t have to leave. Haven’t used it in a while. No food.