Mallorca Sunrise

 I heard my husband sigh behind me, just a mild sort of prolonged exhale, and was instantly furious. Dude, the fuck? This whole thing wasn’t even my IDEA. 

“I mean, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have exactly what you want, it’s your kitchen, right? I’m just saying that…maybe I’m not totally understanding the vision, here.” She crossed her arms and leaned back against the vinyl countertop speculatively. 

“Like, what part, specifically?” If it had been up to me, we wouldn’t have even started this project. This whole thing would have been a DIY paint job and new appliances. And new flooring. And tile.

“Red, you’re saying red floor tiles? Pizza shop style?” 

I never thought a kitchen designer would be mean. “No, um…” I turned around and looked at my husband, whose former business partner this was mocking my color scheme, and he looked evenly back at me. “Um, like…terracotta.” 

“Which is pink, and” she cleared her throat pointedly “...and a bit out of budget. Which we’ve discussed?” 

“Yes, I know, I just think that I’ve definitely seen online these other tiles that are the same color basically, but that aren’t actual terracotta.”

She looked meaningfully over my shoulder at James, who was probably rolling his eyes behind my back, and then opened her phone to flash the reference picture that I’d sent her of, yes, red tiles. Reddish. “I think you two need to go look at some actual tile. I’ve got a connection at the bigger showroom downtown for Bedrosians, do you have time today? Because we really do need to get some materials picked out, here, since they’re going to be shipped. Probably a 12-week lead time.”

I did the math. “Oh man, that’s so long. So they wouldn’t even be able to start taking up the old floor before Thanksgiving?”

“Well, the guys are free to do the asbestos abatement now. I’ll tell you what. I’m going to send you–” she was typing on her phone, texting someone “...ok, perfect. So, there’s a tile warehouse, direct tile or something, and they have a bigger stock of available tile lots. I let them know that you’re coming, hopefully you can find what you want there and if they have enough of it in stock, I’ll get the guys started on the abatement and install next week. Sound good?”

“Yes!” I love tile showrooms. 

“I’ll warn you, though, it’s a real warehouse. There aren’t really displays for the wholesale lots, they just pull a tile out and tape it to the stack of boxes. You’ll need 30 square feet to account for overages.”

As we pulled into the parking lot of a very unglamorous warehouse, James took my hand and tried to soften the blow. “This is a really good option to find something reasonable, okay babe? And you know that the tiles won’t look like the do on the internet in the model kitchens, right, but we just want to match the paint samples. When it’s actually on the floor, you’ll be happy with it.”

I nodded.

Inside, it was huge, multiple football fields long with a very high ceiling, like an aircraft hangar, and weirdly dim. There were no employees that we could find, just rows and rows of giant metal racks covered with boxes of tile, stretching up to the ceiling and in all directions. 

James looked around appreciatively and handed me a fistfull of paint swatches. “This is pretty awesome. I know you think Madeline gives you a hard time about the colors but she definitely pulled some strings to get us in here. This isn’t for the general public.”

“Haven’t you been here before, when you guys worked together?” James’s previous life as a housing contractor was why I thought when I suggested a kitchen renovation, it would be a DIY. Apparently, being a general contractor on a large house design project didn’t actually mean that you liked to scrape up asbestos (or whatever, is that what you do with it?) and install tile on the weekends. 

“Nope, off limits unless you have a connection. You have to order off the website, and the wholesale lots aren’t even on there, mostly.” 

“Ooo. Secret tile.”

He smirked. “Yep. Now go look around.” 

“By myself?” 

“We can spread out, I think this place is laid out by material and then by color, you start over there–” he pointed vaguely into a distant row “--with the handpainted porcelain stuff, and I’ll go through the ceramic here.” 

James turned and walked off in the opposite direction. At first, as I walked down the rows and rows of stacked boxes, I could hear his footsteps and the occasional cough, but I stopped listening for him as I became more absorbed in peering at the tile samples taped to the boxes. Most of it was just garden-variety cream colored subway tile, but every couple of stacks I’d find something interesting that warranted a closer look. Lots of pretty jewel-toned tiles, but in narrow strips or other shapes. And, I reminded myself, emerald green hexagonal tiles were not what I was supposed to be hunting. The last thing I needed was to come back with something totally unlike terracotta and actually very close to the green and white color scheme Madeline had suggested in the first place. I finally reached the end of the first row and turned the corner, apprehensive about how many hundreds of hours I was going to have to spend in here to locate the pink terracotta-adjacent tiles of my dreams, and nearly tripped over a large box that had tipped off the very first rack in the row. One of the huge half-moon lights hanging from the ceiling, seemingly hundreds of feet in the air, was flickering over half the row, deepening the gloom, and at first all I could make out of the box was that the tiles visible inside through a torn corner were a warm color. 

I pulled at the lid of the offending box and brushed off a thick layer of dust, an almost archeological layer of dust. Pink! These tiles were a warm peachy pink with a soft matte finish, and the surface was flecked with tiny irregularities like the’d been handmade. They were large and square and if they weren’t real terracotta, they could certainly pass for it. The name of the color was “Mallorca Sunrise.” I held up my fistfull of color swatches, already convinced that these were the tiles. They complemented the swatches perfectly. Now all I needed to do was figure out how many boxes of tile we needed for…the number of square feet Madeline had mentioned. 30-something? 

Now this, I thought, is a housing contractor problem. I tried experimentally calling his name, but only my own voice echoed back to me. I snapped a picture of the tiles and the row and shelf numbers, then set off at a trot to find James. 

Jogging through the warehouse, I spotted him standing with his cell phone to his ear near where we’d first come in.

“Hey! Look what I found!”

His head whipped around he jumped backwards. “JESUS Katie! C’mon, man, I was calling everybody! Where the hell were you!?”

I stepped closer and looked around, confused. “What?”

He seemed genuinely freaked out, and angry. “You’ve been gone for 4 HOURS. Where?”

“What are you fucking talking about?! I found the tiles right away, I’ve only been gone for–” I pulled out my phone and stared. It was nearly 6pm. It didn’t make sense. 

“Are you seriously telling me that you were looking at tile boxes for 4 hours and didn’t notice?” 

I didn’t know what to say. I tend to get absorbed in tasks, but this…this had never happened to me before. 

“And I was calling you! I looked all over this place and yelled your name, I tried your cellphone over and over again.”

“Look! Ok, look at this.” I handed him my phone. “There are no missed calls! I must have been in like, a cell reception dead zone or something. I’m so sorry, James, I feel really badly. I had…I had NO idea that it had been that long.” I realized I was sweating. “I seriously thought I’d been really fast, I thought you were going to be impressed that I’d found the perfect tiles so quickly.”

“FUCK the tiles. I never want to see tiles again.” He nearly spat. We stood together silently, I was trying to puzzle out how 4 hours could have gone so quickly. I didn’t feel hungry or tired. I felt…fine. My feet didn’t hurt, and these were my least comfortable pair of sneakers, you’d think if I’d been walking for 4 hours I’d be able to feel it. It was just so strange.

James swallowed hard and handed me back my phone. “The perfect tiles, hunh?” 

“Um…yeah, honestly. They’re gorgeous. I don’t know if the stack is enough for the kitchen but it seems like a lot of them, so probably? I took a picture of the label and the location, so we can show it to the check out person.”

“I don’t know if there is a checkout person, the whole time I was looking for you I didn’t see anyone else. Let’s go home, just send your pictures to Madeline, she can put in the order for us. I think she’s got a wholesale discount here anyway.” 

I shook my head and took his hand. “C’mon, James, look. I’m so sorry! I don’t understand what happened. But don’t you at least want to see them, before we buy them? I’m worried you won’t like them or something and then you’ll hate the kitchen.”

He snorted and then smiled, visibly trying to shake off his frustration. “No! No, I am not going to get lost here again trying to see pink tiles. I believe you that they’re perfect. I’m sure I’ll love them.” He pulled me toward the door. We drove home in silence.

***

When the tile arrived, even Madeline had to admit that it was indeed perfect. The surfaces varied subtly in finish, and everyone marveled at how we’d somehow managed to score real, hand-painted porcelain tiles for practically nothing. The Install went off without a hitch and an entire unopened box of tiles was left over to use in case of someday floor damage. The floor glowed warmly. 

A few months later, when the two fancy ovens were finally installed and the project was officially complete, I settled in to cooking in my dream kitchen. Everything was ideally laid out and close to hand, and I felt so much more efficient (and so relieved to not be using a hot pan in the basement the way I had been during the year of renovations) that I started to take more risks. I organized themed dinner parties for our neighbors. I invited over James’ work friends and their wives for 1950s-era multi-course home-ec masterpieces (tiny frenched lamb chops, jellied olive salad, and fruit cocktail cake made up one memorable menu). It was incredibly gratifying to be able to walk people into the kitchen and point out all the clever details and bask in the universal praise for my initially-rejected color scheme. 

The only problem was that the ovens regularly malfunctioned. We’d spent a combined 10k on them, and I was outraged when they started performing strangely, almost from the moment of installation. At first this only seemed to happen when James wasn’t home, and the scenario was always the same: I’d carefully prepare something, set the timer, and start working on another dish. Then, a few minutes later, the timer would be going off insistently and the item inside would be burnt beyond all recognition. Burnt so badly that the pan was ruined, more often than not. This happened with both ovens, sometimes simultaneously. I couldn’t figure it out, and since James was often traveling for work and wasn’t entirely convinced that he could take my word for it that our brand new ovens were garbage, it took several months of these episodes (and my calling out a bewildered appliance technician to examine them, who also didn’t take my word for it that these expensive ovens were burning things for no reason) before I was finally able to get him to take the problem seriously. 

It happened for the first time when he was home with a batch of banana nut muffins. When the timer went off, I ran to get him out of the garage (he was fiddling with some engine component for the car) and rushed him in to show off the crusty wreckage of the muffin tin. 

“See! That’s what they do! BOTH ovens!”

He peered at me, then bent down and examined the ex-muffins. Finally he cleared his throat. “Well, I mean, are you sure that’s how long you’re supposed to cook them?”

“What? I set the timer for 20 minutes, 350 degrees. They should not be burnt! It must be getting way hotter in there than it’s supposed to…” I noticed he was looking at me closely. “Ok, what?”

“It’s just, I mean…didn’t you put them in when I started the carburetor?” 

“I don’t know, maybe?”

“No, you did…” He paused. 

“What does that have to do with the oven?”

“And I’ve finished it. Like, I’ve been done with it for a while, I was just sitting out there on my phone.”

Setting aside how annoying it was that he was hiding in the garage to apparently scrolling tiktok, this statement was still total nonsense. “Great?” I shrugged aggressively.

“I don’t know exactly what time I started, but that repair takes a long time, like hours at least. And I thought…I thought maybe I heard the timer going off for a while.” He finished, looking away. 

“Are you saying that I just left these muffins in for hours and that’s why they’re burnt?” 

He almost looked at me and then bent down and began examining the oven again. “I think it’s possible. It makes the most sense.”

“That I’m CRAZY?” I was shouting. 

“No, that you…lose track of time.

“What are you saying?!”

He stood up and put his arm around me. “Weren’t you going to get evaluated for ADHD? Couldn’t this be a symptom, or something?”

I just gaped at him.

“Listen, honey. I’m honestly kind of worried about this. You’ve always had trouble being on time–” I started to interrupt but he squeezed me tighter and continued. “--and keeping track of tasks and things. Don’t be mad, you know it’s true. But it really seems like you’ve been doing way worse over the past few months. First there was the thing in the tile warehouse. Then these issues with the ovens. And to be honest, even when you’re not cooking anything, it seems like you’ll spend hours and hours puttering around in here doing I don’t know what. You’ve been late to a lot of things. You completely forgot about picking my mom up at the airport–”

“--YOU should pick your own mom up at the airport! It’s not fair to blame me, my alarm didn’t go off. Or maybe I didn’t hear it because the stupid fucking broken oven burned the cookies I was planning to bring with me!”

“Honey, I want you to see somebody.” His voice was somber, it scared me. “I don’t know if it needs to be a psychologist or, like…a regular doctor? But you’ve got to check this thing out.” 

***

In the end, to appease him, I made an appointment with an online counselor for an ADHD evaluation while he was on another business trip, and wound up with a prescription for adderall. The ovens kept breaking, but I stopped telling him about it and started paying very close attention to being on time to things. 

It was bizarre. It seemed that I was genuinely getting so distracted that I’d lose track of whole afternoons, but only when I was at home. I started referring to them in my head as gaps, and tried to keep track of how often they happened–as the frequency increased, I began keeping an actual list in my journal, that I hid from James. The gaps didn’t happen every day, maybe a few times a week. They didn’t seem to be associated with my stress level, or how we’ll I’d slept. I’d be doing dishes at noon and suddenly notice that the sun was going down and it was past dinnertime. My work, as a receptionist at a medical clinic, wasn’t affected at all. And although I was terrified, I still felt very much like myself. I’d spent dozens of hours googling every possible permutation of “cancer that can cause you to lose time” and aside from the bizarre disappearing clock episodes in the kitchen, I didn’t have any other symptoms of brain cancer. 

One night while James was away, I poured myself a glass of water and sat down in the banquette to quickly finish it, planning to run back downstairs and catch the last half of a show I was watching. 

I happened to glance down and stared as the dial suddenly sped around my watch face once, twice, three times as I took one long, shuddering breath. Then it stopped. I ran out of the room and found the TV blank, the show long over. I’d been sitting in the kitchen for 3 hours. Crying, not knowing what else to do, I climbed into bed and lay awake in the dark, too panicked to sleep, as I wracked my brain for something that could explain what I’d seen. 

This had never happened to me in my childhood, nobody had accused me of being particularly well-organized but I wasn’t thought of as a total space cadet. In my 20s I made it to class on time. In fact, I still was never late for work, never had any issues getting from point A to point B out in the world. I couldn’t remember a single gap before the tile warehouse. 

I flicked on my bedside light and pulled out my tracking list with shaking hands, scanning down the rows of times, estimated hours lost, what I was doing when it happened. 

Dishes.

Baking.

Dinner planning.

Emptying dishwasher.

Putting away groceries.

Scrambled eggs.

The kitchen. The gaps only happened in the kitchen. And the very first one was when I found the tile.

***

Feeling like I’d finally crossed over some invisible boundary into full psychosis, the next day I tried an experiment. I pulled the box of tiles from their place in the basement storage closet and opened it, carefully sliding out a tile onto the floor. My heart was racing and I felt queasy. On the back of the tile were the same symbols that were on all the rest, small shapes like cruniform writing in one corner, painted in red. Madeline had shrugged when we noticed them, she told us she figured that they were some kind of logo for the manufacturing company. I carried the tile into the garage and tucked it under the tool box. James would be back home tomorrow, and then I would know for sure.