Stay Awake

by Dan Chaon

  “So have you talked to Robin recently?” she asked.

  “I talk to Robin every day at eleven o’clock,” he said. “She calls me on my cellphone before lunch.”

  “Oh,” January said. And—well, yes, it did bother her, a little. A small twinge of hurt, or jealousy, a momentary recurrence of she is the type of person who.

  As it happened, Robin hadn’t called her since being dropped off at the dorm room on the first day of New Student Week. Robin had declined January’s offer to help her unpack, and hadn’t wanted to be taken out to a bon-voyage dinner at a nice restaurant, either—instead, trotting off with her new roommate, leaving January to walk alone to her car and sit there for a moment in the parking lot (not crying) and drive silently through the rude Chicago traffic toward the miles of interstate that would take her back to her empty home.

  She gave Jeffrey a smile.

  “So,” January said. “How is Robin doing? She’s settled in all right, I presume? She’s meeting new people and enjoying her classes? Lots of excitement keeping her busy, I would imagine.”

  “Yes,” Jeffrey said. “She’s doing okay, I think.”

  “Well, good, then,” January said. “Good for Robin.” She put a French fry to her mouth, and the shape of it made her wish for a cigarette. She sighed, and Jeffrey raised an eyebrow, cocking his head with puzzlement.

  “Are you sad?” he asked at last, and he peered at her face as if it were one of the crosswords he used to do. Since his accident, he had some difficulty interpreting facial expressions and emotions. He had been working on this in his weekly rehabilitation therapy sessions. He had shown her the flash cards he was studying—close-up pictures of people miming various exaggerated feelings.

  “No, no, no,” she said reassuringly. “I’m not sad. It’s been a frustrating week, that’s all.”

  “Hmm,” Jeffrey said. “It’s hard to concentrate when you’re frustrated.”

  “It really is,” she said. Without thinking, she licked her napkin and leaned over to dab a spot of ketchup from the edge of Jeffrey’s mouth, and he didn’t appear to mind—though it was weird because she hadn’t done the napkin-licking thing since Robin was about three.

  “I’ll admit,” she said, “it hasn’t been an easy time. I’ve been in a mood. You know what my moods are like.”

  “Yes,” Jeffrey said.

  She shook her head. “There’s a lot of stuff to deal with, you know? I mean: the empty nest. And middle age, or whatever you want to call it. And coming to terms with your own mortality in general, you know. I’m kind of afraid of dying, Jeffrey. Does that seem childish to you?”

  “Why?”

  “Why what? Why am I afraid of dying? Aren’t you afraid?”

  Jeffrey shrugged. “It’s just like going to sleep.”

  “Yes, but you never wake up. That’s the problem.”

  “How do you know?”

  “How do I know what?”

  “You don’t know that you never wake up,” Jeffrey said. “Because you’re dead. You don’t know anything anymore.”

  “Good point,” she said. She looked at him thoughtfully. Though he was almost four years older, he looked younger than she did. Abruptly, he reached out and patted her hand.

  “Don’t be scared, Jan.” he said. “It’s okay.”

  And that was how it happened: He patted the back of her hand.

  He patted the back of her hand and she turned her hand over so their palms were touching and their fingers moved vaguely into one another in a melancholy, exploratory way, and then the fingers interlocked and she hadn’t seen the familiar lines of his palm in so long, the palm she had once tried to read using a chart, a silly game of fortune-telling, and there was something sad and naked about the creases that marked the segments between his finger joints—thumb, index, middle, ring, pinkie—and she bent down and kissed the fleshy pad where his fingerprints were whorled; it was completely impulsive, she’d had only a couple of glasses of wine, and then, well, shit, despite the brain damage, his instincts were still intact and they were kissing, he pressed her up against the stove and caught her wrists in a grip and his body was leaner and more solid than she remembered, and she could feel his erection through his jeans, and she was really, really lonely and sad, damn it, unzipping him and reaching beneath her skirt to push her panties down and etc., etc.

  Don’t judge me, you fuckers, she thought, as her eyes turned upward and squeezed shut.

  • • •

  For the next couple of months, things went like this. October, November. The leaves turned color and there were a few minor snowfalls, and she went to work at the library and when she came home Jeffrey was there waiting for her, sitting in the wicker chair on her porch with his hands folded in his lap.

  Usually, she made dinner for him, and she discovered that he would dutifully eat whatever she cooked for him, even the spicy curries that he used to hate, even the much-loathed chicken breast, though he widened his eyes sadly when she said, “You’re going to eat your chicken, aren’t you, Jeffrey?” Which was, she guessed, a little cruel. Sometimes, he would stand with her on the porch, shoulders bunched and hands thrust in his coat pockets, watching as she took her time and smoked her cigarette, shivering as his own breath fogged in the cold air. Then she would feel guilty and they would sit on the couch together and watch a movie—his preference now being lowbrow comedies or animated children’s films like Shrek, which they watched probably fifteen times, and which, after a couple of glasses of wine, she had come to enjoy even in its repetition, the charming indie-rock soundtrack and the way, at the end, the princess decides that she wants to be an ogre, too, just like her rescuer. She imagined that this must be significant to him.

  Usually, though, there was no prelude or small talk. They would move toward the bedroom almost as soon as they’d eaten their dinner, wordlessly undressing and falling onto the bed, grappling and kissing and moving against each other, not even making eye contact.

  He was a better lover, as a brain-damaged person, than he used to be—less self-conscious, less likely to come up with pronouncements like “I understand the importance of the clitoris,” which he said to her once when they first began to sleep together and then he went down on her politely for about eight minutes—whereas now, it was kind of like having sex with a monkey, and sometimes, okay, she found herself getting a little rough with him, digging her fingernails into his back or biting his nipple or gripping his etc. hard until he emitted a small yelp that, okay, really turned her on—and she thought, Oh my God I’m a monster—no one must ever know about this …

  And then afterward they stood outside her house and waited for the bus that would take him back to the group home, and he’d sigh, and shift his backpack from shoulder to shoulder: not much to say.

  When he was gone, she sometimes felt as if she’d landed back in the first years of their marriage. That late-night feeling, that insomnia, that floating sense of having lost herself. She would remember what it had been like after Robin was born and she realized how permanent a choice she had made.

  Back then, she found herself waking in the middle of the night. Even though the baby had been sleeping until morning for quite some time, she still found herself wide awake, listening for something she couldn’t identify. The baby was not crying, though for a minute she could almost hear it, vague, distant, melting away into other sounds—a plane’s metallic yawning overhead, the soft breath of her pulse in her ears, the assorted implacable clicks and hums of the house settling.

  Once she was up, she felt better. She turned on The Weather Channel soft and studied the temperatures of distant places; she looked through her old books from college, the earnest notes made in the margins by the teenage girl she had once been; she stood at the window in her nightgown and brushed her long hair.

  Always, always, a few minutes after she woke, a bus would stop in front of their house. Often, she’d be standing at the window looking out. Presently, the empty bus slid dow
n the street.

  Who rode it? she wondered. She imagined people on their way to factories or hospitals, or on their way home from bars. She saw, or imagined herself—just a solitary silhouette alongside the street sign: a woman working a double shift? Or on her way to a tryst? A drunk, the lit end of her cigarette the same size and color as taillights passing in the distance? Another life? Another life?

  After the bus passed, everything was still. She even walked down to the sidewalk sometimes, and there were only the shadows of trees and bushes crisscrossed on the asphalt, rows of streetlights stretching down to where the streetlight blinked yellow. There weren’t even any cars on the road.

  It had actually been her idea to have a baby. Some of her friends had them by that time, and she’d been stunned by a longing the moment she’d touched them, their soft skin and beautiful, half-blind gaze, downy hair along their ears and neck. One night after she and Jeffrey had talked about it, he went out to a movie—a Kurosawa double feature—and when he came back, he said he had come to a decision. “Yes. I’ve thought it through. I think we can manage it,” he said, and her heart quickened. They lay down together, no birth control, and he began his strategic kissing of her body, his hands fluid and considerate along the graph of her. She stared at the ceiling uncertainly as he passed a gentle tongue along her belly. Wait, she wanted to say. Do I really want to do this? she thought. Am I making a mistake? But it seemed like it was too late.

  This occurred to her often after the bus had passed. She could pinpoint the moment when she almost said, “No! Stop!” And her baby, and her life as it was, would have ceased to exist.

  And then, without warning, the baby, Robin, was all grown up, and the young woman who had stood at the window brushing her hair was like a ghost in an attic. January read an article in a newspaper about “bucket lists,” which was a list of things you wanted to do before you died, and she found herself looking at the various suggestions with growing dread. Skydiving? Absolutely not. Visiting Florence? Extremely doubtful, given her salary and fear of flying. Learning to play a musical instrument? Too complicated and boring. All the things that people longed for seemed a little stupid, she thought.

  Meanwhile, in the living room, Jeffrey had inserted Shrek into the DVD player, and there was that jolly music yet again, maybe I’m in love, maybe I’m in love, etc.

  And then Robin was coming home from college for the Christmas holidays, and January and Jeffrey stood in the baggage claim area of the airport, awaiting her.

  He had promised that he wouldn’t tell Robin. She had extracted this vow after that first night, and he had agreed, and she basically trusted him, although she worried a little.

  “So,” she said to him now, as they sat watching a cluster of people withdrawing luggage from a conveyor belt. “So, anyways … I think it’s really not a good idea for us to talk to Robin about what’s going on with us.”

  “About …?” said Jeffrey. He had been hypnotized by the slow trundling of baggage along the carousel, and now looked up at her, perplexed.

  “About us having sex,” January said. “Don’t tell Robin about that.”

  “Why would I tell Robin about that?”

  “I don’t know, Jeffrey,” she said. “You have brain damage. I have no idea what your thought processes are like. I’m just reminding you, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “I’m not trying to be mean,” she said. “Do you think I’m mean?”

  “No,” he said, and folded his hands in his lap. She looked at her cellphone to check the time.

  “She should be here by now,” January said.

  Outside, it was sleeting a bit. The news had spoken hysterically about a “monster storm” spreading across the Midwest, but she hadn’t paid much attention until now. She stood below the monitors and found Robin’s flight. DELAYED, it said.

  This was the kind of thing that used to make Jeffrey crazy. He hated disruptions to his schedule, he hated being made to wait, he would descend into tantrums of outrage when he encountered a long queue or was put on hold on the telephone or, God forbid, had to sit in an actual waiting room—she could remember how he had once behaved at the obstetrician, sitting there with his legs crossed and his foot jiggling, flipping irritably through the pages of Parents magazine and Good Housekeeping with wrist flicks that seemed almost like slaps, and she’d said, “Please, Jeffrey, will you just go for a walk or something,” which sent him spiraling into a decline, and he spent the entire rest of the afternoon radiating gloomy, silent resentment. (Note: He had not in fact been the one who was eight months pregnant at the time.)

  Now, on the other hand, as they lingered and lingered in the airport, Jeffrey seemed perfectly content. He was still as a potted plant, and had a little transcendent smile as they sat there in the uncomfortable plastic chairs. A few rows away, a young mother was struggling to keep her toddler from running amok; she had him strapped into his stroller and he was flailing and arching his back like a torture victim, letting out low, guttural, straining cries as the mother attempted to calm him with that gently therapeutic voice they all used these days.

  “She’s reasoning with him,” January remarked to Jeffrey as they observed the unfolding drama. “It’s so stupid. It’s like trying to explain something to a cat.”

  “Hmm,” Jeffrey said. “Cats don’t really understand human language.”

  “Do you remember that time when Robin was about four and she would have those terrible fits of rage? Pulling her own hair and throwing herself around like something out of The Exorcist? God, that was awful.”

  “I don’t remember that,” Jeffrey said.

  “You were very good with her, actually,” January said. “Very matter-of-fact. I thought you were a good father.”

  “I don’t really remember anything about what Robin was like as a little girl,” Jeffrey said. He was still observing the mother and toddler a few rows over, who were in the midst of a great contest of wills. “I remember when I look at pictures,” Jeffrey said. “I remember taking the pictures.”

  “Hm,” she said. The photographs had begun to taper off precipitously not long after Robin turned five. Whatever urge there had been in the beginning to document every “first” they experienced had faded, and soon the photo albums were only bare outlines of their years together: a few posed portraits on birthdays, or in front of some vacation landmark, or a Christmas tree. She wasn’t sure how much she herself could recall of those last years of their family life, so distracted had she been by unhappiness. It was kind of chilling, in a way.

  “Well,” she said at last. “Memory’s not all it’s cracked up to be, anyway.”

  “Probably not,” Jeffrey said, and after a moment he leaned into her, tilting his head so that it rested lightly on her shoulder. He was capable of such gestures every once in a while, and sometimes she thought that, even without his memories intact, some residue must still remain. It was weird to think that she had known him for longer than she had known anyone else in the world.

  Across the way, she saw that the toddler had calmed. Freed from his stroller, he now rested comfortably and quietly in his mother’s lap, his head leaned against her shoulder, his blanket clutched to his mouth.

  She looked back at Jeffrey.

  Oh, she thought, and absently reached up and put her fingers through Jeffrey’s thick, shaggy, beautiful hair, and he nuzzled a little, comfortably. Jeffrey had his fist pressed to his mouth, as if he were holding an imaginary blanket.

  Oh.

  But she tried not to think any further. She arranged a calm look on her face. She would not step even a tiny bit more into the future that seemed to be settling over her.

  The buzzer for another baggage conveyor began to bleat, and luggage began to emerge from another mysterious cave, but neither the toddler nor Jeffrey lifted his head. Above, on the screen that listed arrivals and departures, she saw that Robin’s flight had been changed from delayed to cancelled.

  She would j
ust sit there a while longer, she thought. He was resting so peacefully.

  Outside, the sleet had gotten thicker. You could hear it pebbling against the large glass windows, you could see it swirling wildly through the spotlights of street lamps. It was the kind of night when you might expect to see a skeleton flying through the air, its ragged black shroud flapping in the wind.

  I Wake Up

  Twenty years passed. Then one summer my sister Cassie began to call me on the phone. She’d call me up every week or so, just to chat, and it was a kind of weird situation. I hadn’t known anything about her whereabouts since I was very small, and at first I didn’t really know what to say to her.

  But Cassie acted as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “Hey, babe!” she said. “What’s up?” She had the kind of voice that made her sound as if she was smiling affectionately as she talked, and I found that I enjoyed hearing from her. “What’s been going on, sweetie?” she’d ask me, and we’d end up talking for hours, talking until her voice began to blank out and get static as her cellphone ran out of power. She would go on about some movie she’d seen, or tell a story about some eccentric person she used to know; she would ask me to describe my friends and my job and my daily life, and when I said something she thought was funny she would laugh in this great way that made me actually feel a kind of glow.

  Sometimes she would call very late or extremely early in the morning, and she would be in a strange mood. She would want to talk about our other brothers and sisters, who she was also in contact with; or she would go into very inappropriate subjects, like her sex life; or a few times she even wanted to talk about our mother, who she referred to as “Karen.”

  “What do you think Karen’s doing right now?” she asked me once, and for a minute I didn’t even know who she was talking about. It was about five in the morning, and I was in my apartment above Mrs. Dowty’s garage, sitting in my narrow twin bed with the covers wrapped around my middle.