Once in the bedroom, I started searching through the bedside table for some clues about my life. I had always kept a diary, I even had one still, although it was pretty abbreviated, so there was every reason to expect that this Ramie had one too, but it wasn’t in the usual place.
I tried the closet, looking up at the top shelf, behind my folded jeans. Jeans I supposed I was probably looking forward to fitting in again. Everything was very neat and tidy, I kept meticulous order, just as I did today. But the diary, if it existed, simply wasn’t where I expected.
I even checked under the mattress. The most clichéd of diary hiding places. Honestly, I half expected to find it there, but there was nothing.
I sat down on the bed heavily and looked at the room around me, feeling hopeless. What if this was where I stuck? What if, now that I’d landed here in this apparently unlived life, I could never get out? Was this my new existence, like some experiment I had to make better?
I lay back against the pillows and cried again. I just didn’t know what to do with myself. I was lost, far more lost than I’d been a few days ago.
There had to be a clue somewhere.
I no sooner had the thought than something told me to open the bedside table drawer again and feel behind it. Sure enough, there it was. A small leather diary.
I opened it randomly and started to read:
… to his office Christmas party. It was the same as last year. And the year before. And the year before that. And everyone wanted my recipe for grape jelly and chili meatballs, which I took this year, and last year, and the year before, and all in all it felt as if I had been written by Charles Dickens, only instead of getting the ghosts at midnight, all I got was heartburn from Millie Krantz’s deviled eggs. Which she also brought last year and the year before, but which I’d remembered as much more delicious than they actually were.
My life is in a rut.
Not a great Christmas, I gathered. I flipped through the pages and read some more:
I was watching Oprah today and people were talking about how they “only” had sex once a week. Some were once a month. Not one of them said they literally couldn’t remember the last time, but if I’d been on I could have said it.
I’m tired of feeling like such an undesirable loser. What twenty-six-year-old man doesn’t want to have sex? We used to have the hottest sex life in the world and now I can’t even get him to kiss me. Even if I really throw myself at him, half the time he can’t even finish. He doesn’t even want to. He’s always polite. Brendan is always The Nice Guy. But I think he’s bored with me, and why wouldn’t he be? I’m bored out of my mind with myself.
I don’t know what to do.
My heart ached for this poor woman who was, apparently, me. This woman who must have thought she’d dodged the necessary heartbreak of growing up by defying the odds and marrying her high school sweetheart. Just like in a storybook.
But it didn’t turn out that way.
I wouldn’t have seen this coming and I’m sure the woman who married him didn’t anticipate it either. No one sets out to have an empty and unfulfilling life. Somehow I’d become empty.
All in an effort to stay fulfilled.
I wondered how this had happened. Had Brendan wanted the marriage, or was it just me? Or, for that matter, was it just Brendan? How had this happened and, more to the point, how had it gone downhill so quickly?
I was only twenty-six, but I was pregnant and writing in my diary about how uninterested my husband was in me. That was a pretty dismal state of affairs.
The reality of my twenties was that I’d gotten my own apartment in New York—well, apartment is generous, it was a room with a hot plate, but it was my own, and I had worked on Wall Street and built a name for myself, and a place in the world I wanted to practice business.
I’d had friends, and boyfriends, and parties and brunches and a lot of good memories. I’d not only completed several levels of education, but I’d built myself out of some great experiences. Not because of a man, but because of the whole of my life, all the elements put together to create one whole person.
I’d done it right. At least right for me. After all the dithering and wondering if I’d done the right thing or the wrong thing, based on other people’s lives and decisions, it was finally clear to me that I’d done what was best for me. I’d grown a life that was my own and that I was, usually, very happy with.
I lacked intimate love, that was pretty clear in all of my incarnations. That was something I really wanted—I wasn’t too cool to admit I wanted it still—but a bad relationship was so much worse than no relationship at all. How many times, and how many ways, did I need to learn that before I was finally able to move on to the next level of the game?
I leafed through the pages of the diary and the words it was positive caught my eye:
Took the leftover pregnancy test from last month’s two-pack today, thinking it was going to be the same old story as ever, but imagine my surprise when it was positive!
I haven’t told Brendan yet. I know he didn’t want to keep trying, because it was stressing us both out and, honestly, I don’t think he wants kids. At least not now. Maybe not with me. It’s so hard to tell with him because he’s always so nice about everything. He’d never want to hurt me, any more than I’d want to hurt him, but I feel like we ran out of gas a couple of years ago and now we’re just running on fumes.
Should it really feel like this when you’ve only been married for five years?
I hate to say it but I’m just so bored. I never wanted to be the housewife in a housecoat, waving good-bye at the front door with a cup of coffee in hand, then greeting him in the evening with a pot roast and a Saran Wrap dress, but maybe that is the life he wants and what I should be trying harder to do. After all, I’m obviously going to have to take maternity leave and take care of the baby at home for some time. I can’t imagine not working, but I guess that’s what I’ll have to do, at least for the first few months.
I know you’re not supposed to hope that a baby fixes everything but I can’t help it. I hope this baby brings us back together.
I just have a terrible feeling that it won’t.
Of course it wouldn’t. Everyone knew that. It was a futile hope. A mistake made by many, many women over the centuries.
No wonder I—now, sitting on this bed, heavy and pregnant and without any sense of the life inside of me—was so depressed. I knew the truth: that I was bringing a new person into an empty life. What would become of this family?
I couldn’t stand to read any more. It was just too depressing. Yet how does one look away when she is able to see right down the sights of her future? I turned to the last entry. It was dated March, so judging from the sweltering heat outside it must have been a couple of months ago:
All of my life, I have had a recurring dream of being in love with a man whose face I could not distinguish. They weren’t “sex dreams” really, though sometimes there was sex in them. Mostly kissing. Passionate kissing.
And in these dreams there was always a feeling of, “Where have you been? What took you so long to find me?” It’s hard to describe but there is always an intensity of feeling, like I love him so much, and have loved him for so many lifetimes, that I just cannot get close enough to him. I want to climb into his soul. I want to drink every bit of him in, and hold on for dear life, and never, ever let go. There can never be enough time for all of the catching up and connecting we need to do.
When I’d wake up from these dreams, I could never identify one thing about the man. Not his height, hair color, eye color, nothing. Only the way he made me feel. The way I felt in his presence.
Does he really exist?
And, worse, if he does, does it even matter? I could never do that to Brendan. I could never hurt him like that. So I must go the rest of my life knowing he’s there, whoever he is, but that I can’t be with him, ever.
Once upon a time, I thought I’d gotten to skip so much heartache by find
ing the love of my life—Brendan—so early.
Now I know that all I did was close my eyes tightly to the rest of the world and deprive myself of what might have been real happiness.
I’ve made a huge mistake.
The entry ended there. Nothing followed.
This me must really be depressed, because I couldn’t think of a time in my life when I’d gone more than a few days without some sort of entry in my diary, if only to check in and say what was keeping me away.
My heart felt heavy. My chest was tight.
I knew those dreams. Because of course I’d had them too. I knew the feeling of waking up in love with a phantom and wondering if I’d ever be able to find him. And now that I read the words of this still-romantic twenty-six-year-old me, they struck me as true; the thing I felt when I met Joe was that familiarity.
But not even thirty-eight-year-old me, in this pregnant body, knew what to do about it. Because I was stuck. We were all stuck now. At the moment, the baby felt like a medical condition, not a life inside of me, but soon enough that life would burst forth and become a person in his or her own right.
And I knew that Brendan and I would both doggedly do the right thing. Maybe forever.
What had I done?
How had my life become such a mess, when all I’d wanted was something as simple as love and security?
A wave of nausea came over me and I lay down. Sick, tired, depressed, hopeless.
I fell into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
That damn alarm again!
This was torture. Always beeping, but I could never stop it. I could never find it. It had to be part of the dream. A nightmarish element to keep things surreal.
I tried to open my eyes, but they felt like they were sewn shut. The effort of trying to open them was overwhelming. The vague thought that I might be in a morgue crossed my mind. I must have seen that on The Twilight Zone at some point. Like the guy who’s about to be autopsied but they notice a tear coming out of his eye.
Did they sew eyes shut anymore? Had they ever?
There were voices in the room.
“… it would be a miracle, that’s for sure. But I’ve seen a lot of miracles in my time, so I fully expect one.” I knew that voice. I had heard him say it a million times.
Sammy.
Who was Sammy?
Something inside assured me he was my friend. I knew him. I trusted him.
I could hear him whispering in my ear. “You can get through this and you will. You can and you will.”
What? What was I supposed to be doing?
I felt like I’d asked myself that question a million times lately. I was always supposed to be figuring something out, but I was just so damn tired. All I wanted was to sleep. And forget.
Then my mother’s voice cut through the darkness. There was no confusion there. “Jonathan is waiting downstairs. I’ll just pop down and check on him. He doesn’t like to be alone for long.” The big fat baby. Jonathan was always complaining that Mom wasn’t doing enough for him. I had the reaction before any clear thoughts could come to mind.
But, wait. Jonathan? Sammy? Those names felt so far away. Like another lifetime. Slowly their places in my life took form. But how long had it been since I’d seen, or even thought about, either one of them? They didn’t even seem real.
The thought was quickly obscured by my father’s voice.
“We’re all here to learn something. Sometimes we learn it in the worst possible way. Sometimes we have to face something we don’t think we can live through in order to show ourselves that we can live through hell and still come out on the other side.”
When had he said that to me? I felt like we were talking about his death, but how could I possibly have been talking about his death with him? The words had given me some comfort, I knew that. Meaning in a time when I had lost all sense of purpose. So he was right and he had helped, but how could he have known?
“Sleep is good for her.” I couldn’t say who that was, but the female voice wasn’t entirely unfamiliar.
The thoughts were too much. Too mixed up. It was like trying to untangle a bunch of thin necklaces with frozen fingers. Exhaustion took over me. I was too tired to think. Too tired to figure out puzzles that had no answers. My head hurt. The beeping sound was driving me nuts. Why wasn’t anyone stopping that?
Maybe a vodka would be good right now.
I was so tired.
Just so tired.
“I could have sworn I just saw her eyes flicker.” That was Sammy again. His voice was high, excited. “Maybe we should call someone. Quick.”
“It happens,” the other voice said. It was a woman. “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a thing.”
“Not necessarily, but what if…”
The rest was lost in a dense fog of sleep. I welcomed it. I was so tired I would have taken death.
And, truthfully, that was what this felt like, because I hadn’t dreamed normal dreams—the disjointed, fragmented ones filled with nonsense and resolution—in what seemed like forever. My brain was so cramped with confusion that even the mental recycling of sleep seemed like a blessed relief.
* * *
WHEN I ROUSED again, it was the same story. Beeping. Heavy lids. And, I was aware this time, the distinct smell of antiseptic.
“Turn off … the alarm…” I labored to say.
“Whoa! She’s moving her mouth!” It was Sammy again. “I don’t give a damn what that stupid nurse says; she’s coming back. I’ve gotta go. I’ll call you back.” I heard the beep of ending a phone call, then something clattered right by my head. It sounded like metal.
“Hello?” A clicking noise by my ear. “How does this fucking thing work?”
Where was I? I couldn’t move. Even with my worst hangover—and my head was telling me this was a whopper—I’d never had to work so hard to open my eyes.
Then a crack of light shone through. Misty. Blurry. Overhead lights blazed, but I couldn’t see what they looked like.
“Nurse! Nurse!” Sammy had moved; his voice was a few feet away now. “She’s waking up. Get the doctor!”
* * *
I COULD NOT begin to say how much longer it was, but after I’d finally gotten my eyes open and realized I was in a hospital room—Sammy’s frantic eyes looking at me from behind the doctor’s shoulder—things came into decent focus.
The beeping continued, but it wasn’t an alarm clock. It was the heart monitor that had been hooked up to me for what Sammy told me had been nearly three weeks. Good thing it hadn’t stopped when I’d kept wishing it would.
It was disconcerting how that had pierced through my sleep now and again, before I slipped back in.
Sleep, they called it.
But it was a coma. I’d been in a coma, suspended between life and death, and so my mind had taken me back to high school. Or, more specifically, to those precious moments before my father died.
And he’d given me the gift of understanding that, even if I’d never accept his death as “for the best,” I didn’t need to carry the memory of how I found him as this heavy warning that life can suck. Had it made me stronger? Unquestionably. I never would have dreamed I could have gone through that and survived.
But had I also taken his death as permission, or even an order, not to get too close to someone else? Maybe.
“Apparently people don’t usually come back when they’ve been out as long as you were,” Sammy was saying, continuing his list of things that had happened while I was sleeping. “There was talk of pulling the plug. Can you imagine?”
I drew in a breath, though it was still difficult. My mouth felt dry and tight. Cotton. “Who wanted to pull the plug?”
“No one wanted to,” he said, then corrected, “Well, I don’t know, maybe Jonathan wanted to. Apparently he’s sick of being in Florida. The bugs, you know. We heard all about the bugs.”
“Jonathan wanted to kill me so he didn’t have to stay in F
lorida?” Oddly, this seemed consistent with Jonathan.
“Sweetie, it wasn’t exactly like he wanted to kill you himself.” That was comforting. “Your mom never let him up here, not once. She said if you sensed him in the room, you’d never open your eyes.”
I had to laugh. “True.”
“And none of us trusted him with all these pillows around,” he added sagely.
“Thanks for that.”
“To be honest with you,” he began, which was how he always started juicy gossip, “I’m not sure your mom is really all that into him. Like, at all. She talked an awful lot about a guy named Robert. I gather that was your dad?”
A twinge of sadness pierced through my chest. “Yes.”
Sammy nodded. “She kept saying she felt like he was here. At one point she even swore she smelled Aqua Velva.”
“Seriously?”
He crossed his heart.
“Did you? Smell anything, I mean.”
He shook his head and looked disappointed “You know I’m into the woo-woo. But I couldn’t smell a thing except whatever it is they use to scrub down the floors with. Bleachy sort of Pine-Sol stuff.”
“I’ve been smelling that myself. In my dream or whatever it was. Now and then I’d smell this antiseptic scent that wasn’t consistent with where I was supposed to be.”
I had told him about my experience, my dream or whatever it was, and after a few Wizard of Oz jokes, he’d finally taken me seriously and grown interested in the meaning of it all.
“That’s kind of cool, actually. Your mind was in a completely different time and place, but your senses were still here.”
“But they were there too. I could smell, taste, feel—it was all so completely real.”
“The sex was satisfying?”
“Sammy!”
“Well?”
I gave a laugh. “You know there’s nothing like teenage sex. Nothing better.”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I never had that particular experience.” He shrugged. “Woe is me.”
If I Could Turn Back Time Page 23