Quieter than Sleep

by Joanne Dobson

  She paused again, staring down at the soggy cereal, stirring it a bit with the spoon. I waited. She looked up abruptly, and her voice was stronger. “I know you think I should hate him….” I shrugged, shook my head. No, not necessarily. “But I don’t—I can’t. Can you understand that? I can’t hate him.” I nodded. I can understand that. “You know, he’s just trying to make it. Ever since I can remember, he’s worked two jobs. Just so we could get by. You know? Can you imagine? Two jobs? He’s always so tired. Now he’s lost his job at the cement plant. It shut down, just like that, no notice. Twenty-five years and he’s got nothing to show for it. So now he’s working nights at the college, cleaning bathrooms and mopping floors. And weekends at the Seven Eleven. He hates it, the Seven Eleven. He’s so tired and people get so nasty to him. Can you understand that? He’s not a bad man. He’s just tired. All he wants is for his family to be together and to—to behave. That’s all. He just wants my mother and me to behave.”

  She picked up the cereal spoon, contemplated its dripping contents, then dropped it back in the bowl. She bit her lower lip, hard. When she began speaking again, I could see the impress of her teeth. “But I do hate him.” Her eyes were bleak, for once more gray than blue. “I’m such a bad daughter. All he wants is the best for us—and I hate him.” She whispered, “I think I’m crazy?” It was a question, not a statement. The gray eyes scanned mine, as if I had an answer.

  “You’re not crazy.” I judged it safe now to speak. “You’re not bad and you’re definitely not crazy. It’ the situation that’s bad—that’s crazy. Not you, sweetie.”

  I reached out to grasp her hand reassuringly but she pulled it away rather sharply.

  “And—he’s really mad at you.” Here her words dried up again, like a stream that’s run into an obstruction. She turned her head away from me and bit her upper lip. When she looked back at me, the dam broke and the words came rushing out. “He says you’re a meddling bitch, sticking your nose in where it’s none of your goddamned fucking business. He says you’re an evil influence on me. He says you’re a—a dyke, out to ruin me forever, to turn me into a pervert. He said you’d better watch your step because he’d see that you weren’t going to get away with it for long.”

  Tears began to pour from her eyes, not individual tears, but a whole wash of them, as if a river had crested and overflown its banks. She hadn’t cried like that before, at least not in front of me. I handed her the tissue box. She cried for a long time while I patted her on the arm. I wanted to hold her, but the word dyke hung in the air between us, preventing a natural act of compassion. That must be why she’d pulled her hand away. I sighed. They were better off in the nineteenth century, I thought, when love between women was just love, no matter what form it took.

  When she had recovered sufficiently to speak, Sophia murmured, “I didn’t tell Amanda, because I didn’t want to frighten her, but I think I should tell you because now I think I should leave, because I don’t want to be any trouble to you, only I don’t know where I could go.” All in one breath. Then, “He was drunk, of course.”

  “You’re no trouble to me, Sophia. Don’t worry about that. And don’t worry about your father. I can handle him.” I shrugged off the notion of any danger from Warzek. With what I seemed to be facing, an angry, drunken father was of little consequence. I had dealt with abusive fathers before. My own and Amanda’s.

  His call, however, provided a tailor-made opportunity to suggest that the girls leave Enfield. “Sophia, I’ve been thinking—Amanda was planning to spend a week in New York City with an old friend, and now might be a really good time for her to go, and take you. What do you say? I know you’d be welcome, and maybe by the time you get back your father will have cooled off.”

  “New York? Really?” It was wonderful to see how perfectly ordinary things, like a trip to a city she’d never seen, like a dozen roses, could bring the light back into those lusterless eyes. “But …” and she looked dubious, “do you really think it would be okay? If I went, I mean? I don’t want to intrude….”

  “I’ve just been talking to our friend and I know it’s fine. He’d love to have you.”

  “I’m going to tell Amanda.” She jumped up from the table as if she were much younger than twenty-one.

  “Eat your breakfast first,” I replied, also as if she were much younger. And she did, sitting down obediently, eating the soggy Müeslix and finishing the orange juice before she ran off to the bedroom.

  I washed out her bowl and glass and, as I dried them, wondered if it was possible to adopt someone who had already turned twenty-one.

  The college pool was closed for the semester break, so I drove over to the Y in Greenfield to swim my laps. It had been days since I’d been in the water. I desperately needed both the exercise and the tension release. Especially after talking to Tony. Indeed, I was so preoccupied with the echoes his voice had raised in my heart I lost awareness of everything else during the drive to town. When I hit the blinking red traffic light in the center of Greenfield’s business district, I came awake with a start. How had I gotten there? I didn’t remember anything about the trip after backing out of the driveway. I had totally blanked out fifteen minutes of my life.

  Then, to top it off, I didn’t notice, even when I had pulled into the empty parking lot, that the Y was closed. Of course it was closed. After all, it was New Year’s Day. But, distracted, I pulled my car up close to the building, exulting in the good parking spot, got my gym bag out of the backseat, and headed for the door, thinking all the while about seeing Tony again. It was only when the glass entrance door refused to yield to my push that I surfaced sufficiently to read the small print on the sign posted on it: Closed Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, & New Year’s Day.

  I stood there with my hand on the knob, trying to adjust to the fact that I wasn’t going to get to swim, when I saw someone walking down the empty sidewalk toward me. The figure also carried a gym bag. As she got closer I realized it was Margaret Smith. If it had been a stranger approaching and not a colleague, I would simply have turned away and walked back to my car. Now, however, I waited politely until she got within speaking range and smiled ruefully at her. “I’m afraid we’ve both been a little forgetful. The Y’s closed today.”

  “Why would it be closed?” Margaret glared at me accusingly, as if I were somehow responsible for this disruption to her plans. She wore a brown quilted jacket, baggy gray corduroy pants, and the duck boots I remembered from the college locker room. A navy-blue watch cap was pulled low over her forehead and ears, and her round face, chapped with cold, looked withered. She reminded me of a doll handcrafted from dried apples.

  “It’s New Year’s Day.”

  “Oh, it’s a holiday, is it?”

  “Yes….”

  She turned to leave, the functional part of our conversation completed.

  “Good-bye.” I don’t know why, but I was stubbornly determined to preserve the amenities. “Happy New Year.”

  At the sound of my voice, she turned around again. The look she gave me was fairly chilling—straight, sober, and unreadable. “So.” Her voice was oddly uninflected. “So. Karen Pelletier. The rising young star of the English Department. You’re one of the lucky ones, aren’t you?”

  I stared at her, for once flabbergasted into total silence. Her dark gaze was direct and opaque. “You’ve done a book on Dickinson, haven’t you?” Her eyes slipped past me to scan the wide street, bare now of its usual tumult of pedestrians and traffic. The gray sky was heavy above the low buildings. The traffic light blinked red at the intersection, but no cars appeared to obey its command.

  “Well, no. But I have a chapter on Dickinson in the book that’s about to come out.” As usual it was difficult for me to discuss my work with anyone I suspected wouldn’t have sympathy with it.

  “What’s it about?”

  “The book? It’s a study of the ways in which many nineteenth-century American writers were hampered by class privilege i
n their perceptions and expression of American experience. I look at Emerson, Melville, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Poe, as well as Dickinson. I call the book The Constraints of Class: Six Classic American Authors.”

  “Oh.” Margaret turned to walk away. She had received the information she wanted. She was not interested in continuing the conversation. Then, turning briefly back to me, she added impassively, “Very trendy.”

  I stood there, on the wide, empty sidewalk, with the cold wind whipping down the street. Then I shrugged. If I’d wanted to be trendy I would have called the book Class(ic) American Authors. As usual, it was too late for a cool rejoinder.

  Margaret plodded away down the sidewalk, pausing only to remove a sheet of newspaper that the sharp wind had blown against her leg. Although a large wire wastebasket was close at hand, she dropped the paper back on the sidewalk. I resisted an impulse to run after her and pick it up.

  At last night’s party someone had mentioned that Margaret had been working on a book about Dickinson for over twenty years. It was apparently the joke of the campus. Nobody believed she would ever finish it, but just this month she had told her chairman that she was about to send the manuscript off to a publisher. I wondered what anyone could possibly have to say about Emily Dickinson that would take two decades to write.

  My nose and ears were numb. I tugged my purple scarf up to cover my face. Walking back to the parking lot I checked out the money in my wallet. Four dollars and some change. It was midafternoon, and I hadn’t had any lunch. Four dollars should get me a Fishamajig at Friendly’s, and maybe a cup of coffee. If Friendly’s was open. Then I’d stop at the BayBank and use the cash machine. If the cash machine was working.

  Friendly’s was open. The Fishamajig was flavorful and juicy. The coffee was fresh and hot. And, even though it was a holiday, the ATM actually dispensed cash. And when I got home, my young housemates were just setting up a game of Trivial Pursuit. My mind is luxuriant with trivia. I absolutely love that game. Maybe Margaret was right: Maybe I was one of the lucky ones.

  Nineteen

  THERE WERE FLOWERS in my salad, blue flowers and orange ones. The orange ones looked like nasturtiums. I picked up my fork and regarded them warily. I had never eaten a flower before, at least not since I was two years old and would eat anything. Maybe they were garnish, not meant to be eaten. Out of the corners of my eyes I peeked around at the other diners. It had been six months since I’d been in a Manhattan restaurant, and I was obviously out of touch. Hearty homestyle American fare had been the last thing I knew, and I’d never been offered pansies with my pot roast. No one around me seemed to be at the salad course, however, and Tony had chosen to begin with split pea soup. Well, there were hospitals close by if I had a problem. I chomped down on a blue flower. It had no flavor. Paralysis did not set in. I ate an orange one.

  Seeing Tony had been more difficult even than I had anticipated. The sight of his square, somewhat battered, face across the table, the total familiarity of it, brought an intensified sense of just how alone I now was without this man with whom I had once shared everything. He was fresh-shaven, and his curly black hair looked moussed; he had obviously prepared carefully for this meeting. His soft off-white Irish fisherman’s sweater looked new. I wondered if what’s-her-name—I never could remember her name—Jennifer or something—had given it to him for Christmas. Maybe even knitted it.

  I glanced around the room. It was intriguing to be back in New York again. Enfield tried hard, but it offered nothing that could begin to approximate a Columbus Avenue restaurant. This one featured functionalist decor, its brick walls sandblasted bare, its utility pipes bared and painted a shiny black against a high white ceiling. Sections of the former pressed-tin ceiling, alternating white and black, were framed in shiny chrome plumber’s pipe, elbow joints and all, and hung by steel chains from the overhead pipes. The pure white damask tablecloths and crystal bud vases on the jammed-together tables provided an incongruous elegance.

  The lunchtime crowd seemed well-dressed and harried. At nearby tables at least five people were conducting business conversations on cellular phones while they wolfed down exquisitely prepared thirty-five-dollar lunches, seemingly without tasting the food. While they wheeled and dealed on the phones, their lunch companions carried on conversations around them. I had never seen a cell phone in a restaurant in Enfield, I realized. It would have seemed the height of rudeness. And I’d never been offered blossoms in my salad. Six months away, and I was already becoming a hick.

  I tore my bemused gaze away from my surroundings and turned my attention back to Tony. From his close concentration on the wine list and his finicking with the water glass, I could tell he was nervous. His left hand played up and down the stem of the glass as if it were the neck of a stringed instrument. With his right forefinger he was tracing a pattern around its base. To tell the truth, I was surprised he wanted to see me at all after the pain I had caused him.

  By most people’s standards I had been the guilty party, walking out on a six-year relationship with a stable, loving man who was devoted to home and family. We could work it out, I had argued when the job offer had come from Enfield College. We could commute the hundred and seventy-five miles between Enfield and Manhattan on alternate weekends. I knew lots of academic couples who lived that way. It would be fun, I said. It would give us two homes, his upper West Side apartment and a small place in the country. It would give us two very different lifestyles—the vitality of the world’s most exciting city and the peace of the New England countryside. It would be an enviable life, I proffered.

  What about his unpredictable schedule? he countered. Given the realities of narcotics investigation he never knew in advance if he would be able to take the weekend off. And he couldn’t be so far away on a regular basis, because he never knew when something unexpected would break. And what about marriage? And what about children? Amanda was great, but hadn’t we planned on having at least one child together? And, anyhow, didn’t I have a perfectly acceptable job right here in the city?

  With the current budget cutbacks, my job was uncertain, I replied. And it was oppressive. I was overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated. Enfield was a prestige job, a dream come true.

  Was I going to let ambition rule my life? he asked.

  Wasn’t it ruling his life? I asked. Why didn’t he take early retirement now that he was eligible for it? He could go back to school, get another degree, change his life.

  He loved his work, he said.

  I love mine, I said.

  But what about me? he said.

  I love you, I said. But I’m going to Enfield.

  “Listen, I talked to Piotrowski.” Tony had torn his roll into crumbly fragments on his bread plate and arranged those pieces with his soup spoon into a neat concentric pattern. We had been talking about the weather.

  “You what?”

  “I called Piotrowski. I figured if he wants you to send Amanda and that girl away from home, some fairly sinister possibilities must be playing around in his mind, so I called him. He said he’s had protection on you for the last few nights.”

  “He’s what? Last few nights? I knew about New Year’s Eve, but not about any others. Why didn’t he tell me?”

  “Hey, don’t snap at me. I wasn’t there. I’m just telling you what he told me.” He stopped fidgeting with his water glass, and leaned toward me, into the argument now, comfortable again, bickering with me just like the old days.

  “I’m not snapping,” I snapped. “And why did you call him? I didn’t ask you to get involved. Amanda was coming to visit anyhow.” If that wasn’t just like men. One minor request for help from a woman and they circle the wagons.

  Tony’s beeper went off. He reached down and pressed a button, and then seemed to forget about it. This was new. He used to head for the nearest phone at the first beep. “I called him”—he pursed his lips in a manner I had always found particularly self-righteous and annoying—”because …” And then he was off
on some long, jargon-ridden, technical explication of crime analysis, methodologies of investigation, psychological profiles…. My temper flared.

  “Face it, Tony, you didn’t call him for any of those reasons. You called him because you didn’t think I could handle myself. You called him because you were worried about me.”

  Interrupted in midsentence, he shut his mouth, reached across the table and took both of my hands in his. His blue Irish gaze was so full of our life together I could have walked into it as into an old familiar room. I could have walked into it and mislaid my life forever. “I called him,” Tony told me, “because I am worried sick about you.” I pulled my hands back a little, but he didn’t let them go.

  “Piotrowski says you’re living way out in the woods, and you’re too damn stubborn to even talk about going somewhere safer for a few days.”

  Stubborn? Piotrowski had said I was stubborn?

  “Now listen to me, Karen. I want you to stay here, in the city, until this is cleared up. You can stay with me. You know how much room there is. Karen, stay here with Amanda and Sophia. It’s for the best. You know I’m right.”

  If he had said please, instead of issuing commands, I might have stayed. But I never could stand anyone telling me what to do. He should have known that by now.

  I finished about half of my angel-hair pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and porcini mushrooms, had the rest doggie-bagged, and, on an impulse, gave the bag to a homeless man on the corner of Columbus and Seventy-seventh. Tony and I argued all the way up Broadway to his apartment house. By the time we got there and he opened the massive front door with his key, we had stopped speaking, and we rode the elevator to the eighth floor in silence. The girls weren’t home. The note Amanda left us said she had taken Sophia window-shopping and to see the tree at Rockefeller Center.

  The apartment made me nostalgic. It was great in a particularly New York City way—a little shabby but spacious, with ten-foot ceilings, high, wide doorways, and tall rectangular windows looking out toward the river. I wandered around for a few minutes, just looking at things: the torchère floor lamp we had bought at the Bombay Company; the Indian rug from Ikea; the huge, extravagant arrangement of dried roses and eucalyptus leaves from a place on Madison Avenue. I wondered if Tony could ever forget me with all these things around. We had planned a life together, and I had put my mark on this place. The apartment made my little country house seem cramped and styleless. It was cramped and styleless, but until Amanda finished college and I paid off my own education loans, it was all I could manage. But this place—this place looked like home.