Julian or Migraine?

 

‘How’s the head?’

 

Linda flinched. His voice seemed so hollow, like the words were fashioned from bubbles and popped even before she had processed them. If only it was just ‘the head’ but it wasn’t, it was nausea and weakness, hypersensitivity to light, the frozen stomach, smells, sounds, worst of all the sound of her husband’s voice. There was no point in trying to explain it to a non-sufferer, she tried before and his response was never satisfying.

 

‘It’s as bad as it always is Julian. Why don’t you just go to the gym, don’t stay here for me, I’ll be fine.’

 

‘Mum’s coming over in a minute so I’m gonna go later.’

 

The corkscrew sensation in the side of Linda’s head tightened its grip. She lifted her hand and rubbed her temple in a circling movement with her palm. It seemed like such an effort to speak, so exhausting. His bloody mother, like a poisonous cloud, was floating steadily towards their house in her little blue car. It was no use arguing. She sighed and closed her eyes. ‘Why, why is she coming over?’

 

‘I said you were suffering and she insisted, you know how she likes helping.’

 

‘Oh God,’ Linda sighed and placed her head on the table.

 

‘She means well.’ He fashioned a concerned look from his smooth, featureless face and said,  ‘Perhaps it’s best if you go and lie down,’

 

‘No, I’d rather be up and about. The painkillers should kick in soon.’

 

Nurofen, Migraleve, Immagran, Panadol, she’d tried them all with mixed success and she took them on rotation which seemed to increase their effectiveness although they were rarely fully effective. The familiar sound of a vehicle slowly pulling up on the gravel driveway exacerbated her nausea, she took a couple of deep breaths to stifle an imminent gagging attack.

 

Julian clapped his hands together loudly. ‘Here’s Mum, ‘ he announced, rushing to the front door.

 

How annoying can a husband be. Linda’s eyes followed him across the kitchen, she studied the back of his balding head; the contours of it were so intolerable to her, the bones of his skull, the shell that held the entirety of his consciousness seemed to her, quite simply repellant. The migraine continued to ring like a savage alarm bell, filling her mind with a sort of black tarry pulp in which no positive thoughts could ever germinate and thrive. There’s no room for Julian, she thought, not with a migraine, I can’t take Julian with a migraine, there’s simply no room…

 

It was difficult to ascertain what came first, Julian or the migraines. Did he cause the migraines or had they already started around the time that they met, damaging her brain enough to make him seem more attractive than he was. One of the first memorable episodes had occurred during their honeymoon in Berlin. A sickly, turbulent affair which struck during a visit to the Neue Synagogue and later in the hotel room, the drilling pain down the left side of her head, harsh and unwavering. What was it, they wondered, a brain tumour, an allergy to European travel? As they accustomed themselves to married life the attacks grew regular and frequent, now they were every fortnight, sometimes more often.

 

‘Look, Mum’s bought you flowers Linda,’ Julian looked so happy when his mum was around, he beamed.

 

Linda nodded, ‘Thanks.’

 

Mrs Cherry, smiled and her eyes twinkled, she adored her only son. ‘They’re Hyacinths, your favourite.’

 

Linda inhaled and grimaced, the smell, the sickly toxic smell. She hated Hyacinths, so flamboyant, all those hard little blooms, brightly coloured with their powerful scent taking over the environment, audacious plants.

 

‘Yes your favourite Linda,’ Julian echoed with an inane grin on his face.

 

‘Actually it’s Hydrangeas that I like,’ she said. He should bloody well know that, she thought, I will be placing them straight outside as soon as that mother-in-law creature has left. ‘Thanks anyway.’

 

Mrs Cherry shrugged. ‘Try finding Hydrangeas in March! Ha ha ha. Now…...have you taken any painkillers for this head of yours Linda?’  

 

‘Yes, an hour ago,’ she nodded.

 

‘And have you drunk enough water, I know that’s when I get a headache, when I haven’t drunk enough.’

 

Linda was quiet for a moment, she frowned. ‘It’s not a headache,’ she said quietly. It seemed as if everything Mrs Cherry said carried a vapour trail of contempt which wasn’t always immediately palpable. Sometimes it lingered for days before she picked up on it, a double meaning, a back-handed compliment, something complicated and nasty.

 

She saw her husband glance at his mother, there was something knowing in the glance, something shared. It made her angry and she had to leave the room, she walked off towards the spare bedroom. I can’t stand this, she thought, I can’t go on. She lay down on the pristine guest bed, closed her eyes and half listened to the animated chat between mother and son. Something about pensions and the Sunday Times, something about Annabel, an old family friend and one-time girlfriend of Julian’s who moved to Dubai and became a dentist, something about staff in Tesco speaking to each other in Latvian. Everything felt like it was closing in on her; the pictures on the wall, the shrubs in the garden, the people she’d collected in her life, clutter everywhere, clutter and detritus. It all had to go.

 

She must have drifted off into a short sleep, the sound of the front door closing jolted her awake. Julian appeared in the doorway. ‘I’m off to the gym now. Are you feeling better?’

 

Am I feeling better, she thought and shook her head left and right. ‘The edge of pain has softened...maybe, but I still feel sick and dizzy.’

 

‘Oh...Mum’s been reading up, she said it could be chocolate, coffee or citrus...or dehydration.’

 

Linda sighed. ‘Yeah, the obvious culprits, she likes to state the bleeding obvious doesn’t she.’ It occurred to her that if she could make her head bleed then somehow some of the pain could maybe escape. If she could prick out a hole and tilt her head to drain it.

 

‘She means well, heart’s in the right place and all that.’

 

No, your mother’s heart is twisted and cold. ‘Should I make you a smoothie for when you get back?’

 

‘That would be lovely but only if you’re feeling up to it. I’m off dairy at the moment, mucus membranes going into overdrive, but you can add chia seeds for protein and maybe some cacao powder.’ Julian accompanied this statement with a thumbs up gesture.

 

Linda turned away. My husband is unbearable, I have wed an intolerable being, she thought. As his car pulled away she got up and was immediately assaulted by the sickly smell of Hyacinths which had been arranged in a tall glass on the kitchen table. She picked it up and rushed to the back door but migraine always made her clumsy, unco-ordinated and she dropped the flowers, smashing the glass all over the tiled floor. Steadying herself on the worktop she took a few deep breaths then collected the larger pieces of glass and placed them on a copy of the Sunday Times which Mrs Cherry had left on the table. The flowers she hurled out of the back door. ‘Disgusting things,’ she said.

 

A drop of blood formed on her fingers. She cursed and grabbed some kitchen roll. The glass had carved a fine, clean cut, the sort which doesn’t hurt but bleeds and bleeds. Little shards of glass scattered the floor so she put on slippers. The migraine pain was severe now, the painkillers were wearing off as they usually did, long before it was safe to dose up again. Even thinking was arduous. She closed her eyes for a few seconds but the smell of Hyacinths lingered in every molecule like a poison in the air, making her sick.

 

If only there was a cure for migraine. She had looked into this many times, scoured the internet, explored the possibilities; Botox injections, surgery to the arteries around the temples, all sorts of medication, all with side-effects. It felt hopeless...and Julian like another migraine, a permanent one, next to her in the bed, omnipresent with his well-meaning mother. I don’t have the space for this, Linda thought, one of them has to go and it will be a long time before doctors unlock the mystery of migraine, Julius Caesar had them, Napoleon had them, John F Kennedy, Freud, they all had migraine and no-one could cure it.

 

Linda plugged in the Nutribullet, she put a little water in the bottom, then a banana, a spoonful of chia seeds, cacao powder poured straight from the packet, a little too much perhaps, that stuff was expensive, two strawberries, three almonds and a handful of broken glass. Enduring further cuts, her hand ran with blood as she twisted the beaker to turn it on. Then she went into the living room while it whirred away for several minutes. She sat on the edge of the sofa, placed her hands over her ears and rocked back and forth, the sound was unbearable but it was important to make sure everything was finely milled. The beaker was placed ready for her husband on the kitchen table, she added a drinking straw. Wearily she cleared up the rest of the glass, took a dustpan and brush to the floor and put some plasters over the cuts on her fingers.

 

She ran a bath, as hot as she could stand, sometimes this provided relief from the head pain especially with the addition of lavender oil. Lying there she drifting into a fitful sleep. Her husband returned home and she remembered that there was something important in her mind but the migraine blurred it from view. Moments later he put his head around the bathroom door and grinned at her. ‘Feeling better?’ he said with a brown cacao moustache framing his lips.

 

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I will be.’