Quieter than Sleep

by Joanne Dobson

  I reached up, unlatched the window, and pushed it open. “Samoorian!” I yelled. Greg looked up, waved half-heartedly, and veered toward me.

  “Hey, how ya doin’?”

  “Okay. And you?”

  He shrugged.

  “Can you come in for a minute?”

  “What for?” he replied, after an uncharacteristic hesitation.

  Whoa, I thought, something wrong here. This from a man who was willing to drop everything, even at semester peak, for a cozy little gab.

  “Just a chat. I’ve been wondering how you’re doing. With Irena. And all that.”

  He shrugged again, dislodging flakes of light snow dandrufflike from his shoulders, turned from the window, and headed down the path that led to the front door of Dickinson Hall. As I closed the window a miniature whirlwind of snowflakes whipped through the opening onto the green plush of the seat cushions. For one ephemeral moment each flake stood out on its verdant ground, individual and exquisite. Then—specks of damp on the upholstery.

  The weather did not look promising for my drive back home from the hospital. Snow was, of course, preferable to an ice storm, but then neither was much to be desired by anyone on wheels.

  “Irena,” Greg said, standing in my doorway, “isn’t coming home for Christmas.”

  Ouch, I thought. Greg is a big Christmas freak. He’d been planning the holiday for weeks. The day after Thanksgiving he’d plunked down an outrageous sum at a tree farm near Greenfield. This reserved him a huge blue spruce, to be cut on demand. The tree had now been sitting in his garage for a week, awaiting its transformation into the tree of light and life. He’d had his homemade fruitcake wrapped in a rum-soaked tea towel since October, replenishing the rum twice a week, and had ordered his fresh, free-range turkey at least ten days ago.

  “Oh.” I didn’t really know what to say. “Where will she be?”

  “She’s going to her parents in Connecticut. And I’m not invited.” Greg plopped himself down in the green armchair. “I’ve never been particularly welcome in Greenwich, anyhow, and now even less than ever. Now that it is obvious that I am overbearing and restrictive, that is. Treating her like a child. Her mother always said I was wrong for her—too old, too overdetermined.”

  “Overdetermined?”

  “Too Armenian, I think. You know. Loud. Unrestrained. Emotional.”

  “Jeez.” Now I was really at a loss for words. “Jeez.”

  He crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair. Evidently he had overcome his reluctance to talk. “Yeah, jeez is right. They haven’t liked me from the start. We got married on the spur of the moment after living together for a few months. Cheated them out of their elaborate formal wedding. We had a big bash in the house we were sharing out on Saddleback Road. My family all came. Lots of friends from Enfield and elsewhere. Everyone brought food and wine. We had a student rock band and danced like maniacs on the grass. It was great.

  “But Irena’s folks didn’t come; two weeks, it seems, wasn’t sufficient notice for them to plan and prepare for a trip of one hundred and fifty miles. Since then they’ve turned down every invitation to visit us, on one pretense or another. When we go there I am clearly persona non grata. I make a joke and her mother looks politely puzzled. I talk about sports and her father discreetly changes the subject. I end up mute in the corner feeling big-nosed and sweaty and crass, smiling like an idiot whenever anyone looks my way. Which isn’t often.”

  We sat in silence. I didn’t want to ask the obvious question: Did this mean a formal separation? And what else was there to say?

  “So, what are you doing for Christmas, then?” I had the glimmerings of an idea. “Are you going to your folks’?”

  “You kidding? They’d kill me if I came without Irena. They’re crazy about her, Karen. It’s possible they like her better than they like me. My mother calls her a sunbeam. Me: I’m a big moody klutz who thinks too much. If they thought I’d done anything to screw up this marriage they’d … they’d …” He paused, open-mouthed, incapable of articulating his dire imaginings. “Well, let’s just say I can’t go home without Irena.”

  “Do you still have that tree?”

  “Tree?”

  “Yeah, tree. It’s Christmas, isn’t it?”

  “Oh. Yeah. It’s in the garage. Why? You think if I put the tree up Irena will come home?” He looked hopeful. This brilliant scholar, this nationally renowned cultural analyst, this modern skeptic: grasping at straws like any superstitious pagan.

  “Well—that’s not quite what I was thinking.”

  “Yeah. Right.” He blinked his eyes: rational again. “What were you thinking?”

  “Why don’t you spend Christmas at my house? Sophia will be there, and she seems really comfortable with you. It would be a good thing for her, and for Amanda and me, too. Kind of take the edge off a crisis situation.” He started to object. Something about imposing on me. I held up my hand to silence him.

  “Listen, I’ve just had a rather nasty encounter with Sophia’s father, and it’s made me nervous. So I could use some muscle.” Greg grinned; the image of himself as a hired goon seemed to cheer him up. “Besides, I don’t have a tree yet—and couldn’t afford a gorgeous one like you got, anyhow, Samoorian. So you’d be doing me a favor.”

  After a few token protests, he agreed to come to dinner that night and bring the spruce. We’d have potato-and-leek soup, trim the tree, and—if the anguish level seemed muted enough, what with Amanda’s pique, Sophia’s slashed wrists, and Greg’s broken heart—maybe we’d even sing a carol or two. God rest you merry, gentlemen,/Let nothing you dismay.

  What was I getting myself into here? This was not a promising situation, a Yuletide gathering of the hurt, the lost, and the unwanted: a real festival of waifs.

  Twelve

  SOPHIA AND I had a fairly mute trek from the hospital back through Enfield and Greenfield in the deepening snow. Never a confident driver in bad weather, I concentrated intently on steering my way through the late December afternoon gloom as the snow fell heavy and wet on the unplowed country roads. Emily Dickinson’s words came to my mind talismanically, as they often do in times of stress—and bad driving. It sifts from Leaden Sieves—, I chanted to myself, staring into the onslaught of snow. It powders all the Wood. Bowed down by the dense whiteness, the trees bent together, forming a chill tunnel through which we were the sole travelers. Once, when I touched the brake quickly to avoid a bewildered deer, the car skidded sideways but straightened out as I held my breath and, going against all my instincts, steered into the skid. It fills with Alabaster Wool/The Wrinkles of the Road—Through it all, Sophia sat silent, white-lipped, staring straight ahead. She was desperate already. What terrors could a mere automobile accident in vicious weather in a desolate and remote area hold for her?

  I knocked—kicked, really—on the front door of the house, my arms loaded down with groceries and a plastic bag with Sophia’s pathetic few possessions. My stomach was knotted with anxiety—from the trip, yes, but more in anticipation of Amanda’s reception. From her room I could hear, through a loud grid of percussion and guitar, a melancholy male voice bemoaning the isolation of human consciousness. “I fear nothing besides myself. Please don’t touch me.” Sophia stood right behind me, a little closer than was absolutely necessary, like a frightened, big-eyed colt sidling up to the mare.

  Amanda opened the door and the music blared out, annoying me with its inappropriate racket. “I feel nothing besides this pain. Please don’t watch me.” I frowned at Amanda and stood back to let Sophia enter ahead of me. As she did, she smiled faintly at my daughter and said something incomprehensible, something that made me fear momentarily for her psychological stability. She said, “Toad the Wet Sprocket.”

  To my astonishment Amanda flashed her a thousand-watt grin. “You like them?”

  “The best,” replied Sophia. “The absolute best.”

  “Aren’t they hot?” Amanda reached out her hand. “Let me take y
our bag. I’ll show you where you’re gonna sleep. Back here, with me. Did you ever hear anything sadder than…?” They trekked off, Amanda chattering away. The bedroom door shut and the decibel level diminished.

  I relaxed. I guess I’ve done something right in my life; Amanda’s one okay kid.

  • • •

  Christmas Eve, the following day, continued snowy and cold, with the thick hush that envelops country houses when the flakes fall fat and fast, obscuring sound and vision. The world was all interior, ending at the windows. In the swirling storm, even the woodsmoke from the chimney vanished. With the lights from the tree, the fire in the wood stove, the spicy smell of the tourtière baking in the oven and the steam from the pierogi Sophia was boiling in a pot on the stove, we three seemed cut off from the cosmos in a warm, fragrant, cozy isolation.

  The plow had gone by in midmorning, but as the snow continued to accumulate, traffic diminished, until by midafternoon the road was completely deserted, enhancing our seclusion.

  Afraid that Greg wouldn’t be able to make his way through the storm for Christmas morning, I called and suggested he come for supper that evening and spend the night. A slight hesitation greeted my invitation—in his present unsettled state “spend the night” must have sounded ambiguous—followed by a half-joking: “So, what exactly are you suggesting, Pelletier?”

  Being friends with a man is not always easy. And with Greg the relationship, on both sides, has never been totally free of a certain—shall we say—wistfulness. Immediately I pictured him in my bed, conjured up his embrace, imagined the warmth and the weight of his body. For one brief second I didn’t quite have control of my breathing.

  “I’m suggesting you sleep on the couch, Samoorian.”

  “Oh, tooooo bad.” He sounded disappointed as convention required, but also, slightly to my pique, he sounded relieved. I could just hear him thinking: That’s all I need in my life right now—another woman.

  Greg arrived around five, just after dark, with his turkey, his fruitcake, and a shopping bag full of packages wrapped in white tissue paper with green and red curlicue ribbons. In one arm he held a long florist’s box. This he presented with a flourish to Sophia and Amanda. “Beauty to the beautiful,” he said with comic fatuousness. A dozen long-stemmed red roses, so fresh you could almost see them quiver, met their delighted eyes.

  “Flowers!” Sophia seemed somewhat stunned. I could swear there were tears in her eyes, but she immediately occupied herself with finding a vase and arranging and rearranging the flowers in their thicket of ferns.

  “Well, girlie, it won’t be the last time some guy buys you roses; I can guarantee you that.” Greg was still playing his role of comic uncle.

  “So, what about me?” I feigned petulance; I’ve never been quite comfortable with sentiment.

  “You have not been forgotten.” Greg returned to his car and came back with an oddly shaped, bulky pasteboard florist’s box, which he handed to me with a bow. It contained an orchid plant with two lush blooms in a purple so deep it was almost black. Exquisite.

  “That’s the second time today you’ve taken my breath away, Samoorian,” I said after a moment, and reached up, half unwittingly, to pat his cheek. “Thanks.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Greg responded, and gave me a funny twisted smile. “You’re very welcome.” He intercepted my hand, squeezing it gently and kissing the palm before releasing it.

  Definitely a complicated relationship.

  Our idyllic mood was shattered a couple of hours later by a completely unexpected knock on the door. The storm hadn’t let up, and the road looked all but impassable. The girls were in Amanda’s room listening to something called Smashing Pumpkins, and Greg and I were finishing up the supper dishes.

  “Who’s that?” Greg asked.

  “Who knows?” I wiped steam off the kitchen window, trying to get a glance at the vehicle in the driveway, thinking immediately that it was probably Piotrowski come to harass me with more questions. Outside the snow was so thick in the air I couldn’t see a thing.

  Drying my hands on a dish towel, I opened the door as far as its chain would allow, a reproach ready on my lips: Damn cops, couldn’t let good Christian people alone even on Christmas Eve. However, it was not the familiar figure of the lieutenant standing there. It was Sophia’s father.

  “Yes?” My voice must have sounded strained because Greg came from the kitchen to stand behind me. Snow swirled through the partially open door, scattering across the mat and the hardwood floor.

  “I’ff come to see my daughter.” Warzek’s accent was intensified by the alcohol I could smell on his breath.

  I hesitated, then opened the door. Leaving him out in the storm wasn’t going to help Sophia any.

  As Warzek stepped inside he noticed Greg for the first time. An expression of befuddlement crossed his stolid face. He clearly hadn’t expected to find a man at my place. After all, I was a dyke, wasn’t I? He paused for a moment, then seemed to gather resolve.

  I noted for the first time that his left eyebrow was bisected by old scar tissue on which no hair grew. It looked almost as if he had three eyebrows, one long, two short. In the ludicrous way odd details have of eliciting an emotional response, this feature seemed to me to be imbued with menace.

  I immediately regretted letting him in, and Greg seemed to empathize because he moved closer. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his hands. They were clenched into fists, beginning to strain white across the knuckles.

  This time I didn’t invite Warzek to sit down. Instead, I left him standing by the door as I turned toward the bedroom where Sophia, as if she were any carefree young person, was grooving to the latest in contemporary music

  “I’ll ask her if she wants to see you.”

  “It don’t matter if she wants to see me or not. I want her out here now.” He took a step as if to follow me. As cold as the weather was, his heavy gray jacket was unzipped. I wondered wildly if he were carrying some kind of weapon. Greg smoothly placed himself in Warzek’s way, impeding him from moving. I’d have to ask Greg some close questions about his past. He certainly had all the defensive moves down pat.

  Sophia did not want to see her father. Pale already, she turned ghost white, the blood draining visibly from her lips when I told her he was in the living room.

  “Get me the car keys, Mom.” Amanda grabbed her jacket off the upholstered slipper chair. “I’ll take her out the back door.”

  I gave my daughter a startled look. Where had she been hanging out? “I don’t think that will be necessary, do you, Sophia?”

  “Is he drunk?” Sophia was clearly ashamed to have to ask.

  “I think he probably is. He’s been drinking, anyhow.”

  “Is Professor Samoorian still here?” Another question embarrassing in its implications, implying as it did cowardice on her father’s part.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I don’t think you’ll have much trouble with him.” Her face and body were stone still, but her hands moved, unconsciously it seemed, the right hand winding a thin blue satin ribbon tightly around the fingers of the left. In and out it wound, around and around until her fingertips assumed the color of the snow on the windowpane behind her. I motioned to Amanda with my eyes, and she nodded. As I turned to leave the room, she took Sophia’s hands in hers, reclaiming the ribbon she had been about to tie on the braid in Sophia’s pale hair.

  Warzek and Greg were in the same positions when I reentered the living room as they had been when I left. I imagined them standing there, practically eye to eye, not speaking a word the entire time I was in with Sophia. I was reminded of something extremely primitive, like stags in a standoff. Since, of course, I’d never actually seen stags in a standoff, I guess it would be more precise to say I was reminded of a picture of stags in a standoff—for some reason done in needlepoint, in somber tones of brown and gold, framed, rustic style, in intertwined varnished branches. Somewhat of a cultural icon, I thought. The elemental male
aroused.

  For once I was glad I had one around.

  “Sophia does not wish to see you.” I sounded like a prissy headmistress.

  “What?” Warzek moved toward me, attempting to sidestep Greg, who blocked him again with his body.

  “Perhaps if you were to call in a few days and make arrangements, she would change her mind. Right now she isn’t feeling well enough.”

  He stared at me for a prolonged moment, the blue rage of his eyes not unlike that of his daughter’s at the one moment of anger to which I had been privy. I was reminded of encounters with Fred, my ex-husband, whose eyes could transform themselves from sultry blue seduction to murderous rage within seconds. My left wrist throbbed where Fred had once broken it, close to twenty years earlier.

  “I think it would be a good idea if you left now.” The boldness I’d felt dealing with this man yesterday was gone. I was trying hard not to look terrified. He already knew where my office was, and now he somehow knew where I lived.

  He glared wordlessly, and then took another step toward me. “It’s Christmas Eve, goddammit. I’m taking my daughter home.” His hands moved, almost involuntarily it seemed, up from his sides. Then he looked over at Greg, who stepped toward him, fists clenched. Warzek hesitated, then dropped his hands. When he turned back to me, his eyes were blue slits in a face contorted by hatred.

  “Fuck you.”

  Each word was an act of violence, a savage explosion of frustrated rage. He threw open the door with a fierce gesture and went out, leaving the door wide open behind him. If his presence had been menacing, the manner of his departure was an implied threat. A whirlwind of flakes blustered across the room before I managed to get the door closed and bolt it shut.

  Greg’s eyes met mine. What would have happened if I hadn’t been here? I chose not to respond to the unspoken question.

  Together we watched Warzek’s headlights recede, miniature cones of swirling snow in the darkness.

  With cookies and hot rum toddy we coaxed Sophia back from the psychic fortress to which she retreated after her father’s visit. She even joined us, in a sweet high soprano, in the last chorus of “Silent Night,” Amanda banging away lustily on the old piano and Greg singing in Motown falsetto. Slee—eep in heavenly pee—eace. Slee—eep in heavenly peace.