by Mary McNear
“I look different?” she repeated and then she seemed, suddenly, to remember herself. “Oh,” she said, letting go of his shoulders and folding her arms, self-consciously, across her chest. “You mean because I’m wearing a nightgown? I’m sorry, I would have gotten dressed, but I . . . I wanted to try something else tonight. With your dream, I mean.”
“What was that?” he asked, wishing she would put her hands back on his shoulders.
“Well, I had this idea that if I woke you up as soon as you started dreaming, or at least as soon as I knew you’d started dreaming, I could kind of, you know, head it off at the pass. Stop it before it got too bad. Did it . . . did it work?” she asked. She’d uncrossed her arms and she was using her hands now to try to bring some order to her disheveled hair.
“Did what work?” he said distractedly. He was having trouble paying attention to what she was saying. Her thin white nightgown seemed to be almost glowing in the lamplight, and she was standing close enough to his bed for him to smell a faint but delicious scent emanating from her. Coconut, he decided. Some kind of body lotion, probably. Funny, he’d never liked the smell of coconut before, but on her, it smelled delicious.
“Was your dream better tonight, or, if not better, then less intense maybe? Or shorter?” she pressed.
“Um, I don’t know about better,” he said, remembering the dream. But then again, he thought, looking around, he wasn’t covered with sweat, and his sheets weren’t all tangled up, so maybe his dream had at least been shorter.
“Reid,” she said, fidgeting nervously with her nightgown, “I’ve been doing some research on posttraumatic stress disorder, and I don’t know if you know this but—”
“I don’t have posttraumatic stress disorder,” he said, interrupting her. He reached for the glass of water on his bedside table. “I’m not a soldier, and I didn’t fight in a war.”
“Reid, you don’t have to have been a soldier to have PTSD,” she said quickly, as if she thought he might interrupt her again. “People get it for all different reasons. I read one study that said that people who survive a heart attack are at risk for developing it, and I read another one that said that the wives of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are also at risk for developing it, even though they’ve never been anywhere near—”
“I don’t have PTSD,” Reid said, again, and then, because his voice had sounded harsher than he’d intended it to, he added, in a milder tone, “Thank you, though, for your concern. But this is something I’m going to have to figure out for myself, all right?”
She hesitated, and he knew she wanted to say more on the subject, but he saw her decide against it. For now anyway. “All right,” she said, with a little sigh. And then, “Before I go back to bed, is there anything I can do for you?”
You can stay here, he almost said. Because he was suddenly dreading the prospect of being alone again. But he didn’t know how to say this to her. Truth be told, he barely knew how to say it to himself. He thought about asking her to get him another glass of water. Or a couple of Advil, maybe, or a magazine . . . or something, anything, really, to make her stay a little longer, but already her hand was hovering over the switch on the bedside table lamp. “Try to get some sleep, Reid,” she said quietly. “Some real sleep.” And then she turned off the light and started to close the door.
“Don’t go,” Reid said, almost under his breath, and he thought for a moment that she hadn’t heard him. But she stopped closing the door and came back into the room. She turned on the bedside table lamp and looked at him, her expression gentle, but questioning.
“I don’t want to be alone,” he mumbled, embarrassed, and he looked away from her again. “I don’t want to have that dream again.”
“Is it always the same dream?” she asked.
“Most of the time,” he said, looking not at her but at the wall beside his bed.
“What happens in it?”
He studied the wall carefully. He’d never told anyone about the dream before. “I’m in the car. I’m trapped, and I’m . . . I’m shouting, I’m trying to get help. I know if it doesn’t come soon . . . I . . . I won’t make it.”
“Does help ever come?”
He shook his head, and then he looked back at her warily. But she didn’t ask him any more questions. Instead, she said, “I’ll stay here.” Indicating the armchair in the corner of his room, she added, “I’ll sit over there.”
“Will you be able to sleep there?”
She raised her slender shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. I can always take a nap tomorrow.”
“No, really, go back to bed,” he said. “I probably won’t be able to go back to sleep tonight anyway.”
“Because of the dream?”
He nodded.
She looked thoughtful. “Look, why don’t I stay for tonight,” she said, after a moment. “I don’t mind. And you try to sleep, Reid. If you have the dream again, I’ll wake you up again, right away, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, his relief palpable. “There’s an extra pillow and blanket in the closet.”
He watched while she helped herself to these and settled into the chair. He turned off the bedside table lamp, but when his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he could see her outline, curled up in the chair.
She couldn’t be comfortable there, he thought. But he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want her to stay. He blinked sleepily, surprised at how tired he felt. He almost never went back to sleep after he’d had the dream. But tonight, with Mila there, he felt himself begin to relax, a little, and, eventually, he felt himself start the long, slow slide toward sleep. He tried, once, to stop it, but then it was too late, so he gave up and let go.
When Reid woke up the next morning, the room was flooded with sunlight, and the armchair was empty. He could hear Lonnie in the kitchen, making familiar sounds with pots and pans. And what about Mila? he wondered guiltily. Had she slept at all last night? He certainly had. He’d slept better, in fact, than he had in weeks. And if he’d had the dream again, it had left no impression on his consciousness.
You look like you could use a little more coffee,” Lonnie said, refilling Mila’s cup at the breakfast table that morning.
“Do I?” Mila said, barely suppressing a yawn. But it wasn’t her tiredness that was worrying her. It was her neck. She rubbed the crick in it now, making a mental note to sleep in a different position if she ever slept in that armchair again. Still, it had been worth it. As far as she knew, Reid hadn’t had the dream again, and when she’d left his room, in the gray light of dawn, he’d been sleeping peacefully, one arm thrown over his head.
“Do you think Reid liked his oatmeal?” Lonnie asked now, a little worriedly. She was standing at the kitchen sink, elbows deep in soapy water and that morning’s breakfast dishes.
“I can’t imagine he didn’t,” Mila said. “It was delicious.”
“I don’t know,” Lonnie fretted. “I think I may have put too much brown sugar in it. You know me, I have a hopeless sweet tooth.” But before she could reassure her again that the oatmeal had been fine, Mila heard the familiar rumble of the UPS truck coming up the driveway.
Lonnie heard it, too. “Oh, that’ll be Hank,” she said, reaching for a dish towel to wipe her hands on. Hank, Mila now knew, was the name of the driver who delivered Lonnie’s packages to the cabin.
“I’ll be right back,” Lonnie said, using her fingers to fluff her blond hair a little before she rushed out the door. And Mila, going back to her coffee, smiled to herself. Lonnie got a lot of packages. Enough packages for Mila to wonder if her home shopping habit had more to do with her feeling lonely at night, as she’d told Mila, or with the idea of Hank delivering packages in the morning. Probably a little bit of both, Mila decided, as Hank handed Lonnie a cardboard box. Like Lonnie, Hank was in his late fifties or early sixties. But whereas Lonnie was soft and round all over, his long, lanky body appeared to be all angles and edges in his brown uniform. They looked nice toge
ther, though, Mila thought, a little wistfully.
After a quick conversation, Hank got back into his truck and Lonnie came back inside. “Something else I don’t need,” she said to Mila, a little shyly, indicating the package.
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll find some use for it,” Mila said, putting her coffee cup down, and it was at that exact moment that Reid wheeled himself into the kitchen, his breakfast tray balanced in his lap.
“Reid!” Lonnie said, so surprised that she almost dropped her package. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said.
But Lonnie, unused to his presence in the kitchen, didn’t believe him. “It’s the oatmeal, isn’t it?” she asked, putting down her package on the counter and wringing her hands. “It had too much brown sugar in it, didn’t it?”
“What? No,” Reid said, looking a little mystified. “The oatmeal was fine. I’m done with it so I just thought I’d bring my tray in and, um, get another cup of coffee.”
“Oh, of course,” Lonnie said, hurrying over to collect the tray from him. “I’m sorry I didn’t check back with you sooner about the coffee. But you usually have just the one cup, and sometimes not even that.” As she busied herself at the counter, refilling the empty cup, Reid looked at Mila and said quietly, “I hope you’re not too tired today.”
“I’m fine,” Mila said, noticing how blue his eyes looked in the kitchen’s morning sunlight. She felt strangely warm then, though the day hadn’t heated up yet and there was a nice breeze coming in through the open kitchen windows.
“You don’t need to wait for this, Reid,” Lonnie said, nervously sloshing cream into his coffee and stirring it in so vigorously that some of it splashed onto the counter. “I can bring it to your room for you.”
“No, that’s okay,” he said, wheeling himself closer to the table. “If you don’t mind, Lonnie, I’ll have it out here in the kitchen.”
“If I don’t mind?” Lonnie repeated, turning around. “Why would I mind? It’s your place, isn’t it? Or you brother’s, anyway. Which is the same thing, really.” She carried his coffee cup over to the table, set it down, and then started to rearrange the chairs. And Mila, feeling suddenly self-conscious about Reid’s being there, too, stood up and tried to help her.
“Now, where would you like to sit?” Lonnie asked.
“Anywhere is fine.” Reid shrugged. But Lonnie kept moving chairs around, and Mila kept standing there, not quite sure what to do with herself, either.
Reid sighed finally, and Mila waited for him to make a sarcastic remark. Or to announce that he’d changed his mind and that he’d be having his coffee back in his room after all. But instead he said, “Look, I didn’t mean to interrupt your routine. So why don’t you two just go back to doing whatever it was you were doing before I came in, and I’ll figure out where to sit. All right?”
This seemed somehow to get though to them, because after a moment Lonnie left the chairs alone and went back to the sink and started washing the dishes again, and Mila sat back down at her usual place at the table and tried to pretend there was nothing out of the ordinary about Reid’s being there.
“Jeez,” she heard him mutter, as he wheeled himself closer and reached for his cup. “I just wanted some more coffee.” But he didn’t sound angry.
CHAPTER 12
Everyone has a breaking point, and Mila reached hers less than a year into her marriage to Brandon. It was a bitterly cold, late December afternoon, and the two of them had just carried their first Christmas tree into their apartment. It should have been a festive occasion, but Brandon was full of a silent fury that had Mila rushing into the kitchen as soon as they’d leaned the tree up against the living room wall.
“I’m going to make something hot to drink, cocoa, maybe,” she said, pulling off her hat and gloves and coat and depositing them on a chair at the kitchen table. She went to fill the teakettle, but Brandon intercepted her at the sink.
“What was that?” he asked her quietly. So quietly it scared her.
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb, Mila. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
Her hand shook slightly as she set the teakettle down. He was right. She knew exactly what he was talking about.
“What was that, between you and our neighbor?” he asked.
“Brandon, that was nothing,” she said, turning to him. “I’ve told you before. There is nothing going on between us. I mean, you were there. You saw it. All of it. He got on the elevator with us, and I didn’t even say hello to him. I didn’t even look at him. I ignored him. That was it. That was all.”
“You did not just ignore him, Mila,” he said, with barely suppressed rage. “You were flirting with him.”
“I was not flirting with him,” she insisted, anger rising in her. She tried to tamp it down now. If she’d learned anything over the last year it was that her anger only added fuel to Brandon’s fire, and his fire already burned white hot all on its own.
“Stop denying it,” he said, through clenched teeth. “Stop denying that even with your husband right there beside you, you sent him a message, loud and clear. You said ‘I’m interested.’ You said, ‘I’m available.’ You said, ‘Hey, my husband’s at work during the day, and I’m all alone. Why don’t we—’”
“That’s enough,” she broke in, too full of disgust to let him go any further. “This is ridiculous. There is nothing between us. My God, Brandon, even you should be able to see that.”
She didn’t see it coming. She never saw it coming. It was an explosion of heat and light and pain, and she screamed once and brought her hand reflexively to her left eye. “This is not over,” Brandon said, and he picked up the kettle and threw it against the wall above the stove with such force that Mila was afraid it would bounce back and hit her, too. But it clanged onto the floor instead, and Brandon stormed out of the kitchen and slammed the apartment door behind him. And Mila, who knew she needed to do something about her eye, and do it now, before it got too swollen, did nothing about it, and instead slid down, her back against the counter, until she was sitting on the kitchen floor.
She waited for the tears to come, but for once, they didn’t. She decided it was because she was too angry to cry. Brandon’s accusations, always unfair, seemed doubly unfair today. She had never flirted with their neighbor; she avoided him, and everyone else in their building, whenever possible. (She was convinced that they’d all heard Brandon shouting at her through the walls of their apartment or, worse, seen her with the black eye her sunglasses couldn’t completely hide or the bruised cheek her makeup couldn’t completely cover.)
Besides, not only was she not attracted to that neighbor, she wasn’t attracted to anyone anymore, and that included her husband. The night before, for instance, when Mila was changing into her nightgown, Brandon had come into their bedroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, his skin still wet from the shower, and Mila had felt revolted at the sight of him. Maybe this was why she’d bought the nightgown she was putting on then. It was flannel, ankle length, with long sleeves and a high neck. And why not? Sex was the furthest thing from her mind. And she figured if she covered every inch of herself, maybe it would be the furthest thing from Brandon’s mind, too.
Now, sitting on the kitchen floor, she took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying simultaneously to calm herself down and ignore her throbbing eye. But it wouldn’t be ignored. Already it was so swollen she could barely see out of it. She got up to get some ice and realized she was still shaking all over. Not from fear, but from anger. There was so much of it that had built up inside her, and not all of it, it turned out, was directed at Brandon. Some of it was directed at herself.
How could she have been so stupid as to marry a man who’d already hit her once? she thought now, filling a plastic bag with ice. And how could she have been so idiotic as to believe him when he’d promised it would never happen again? Brandon was a classic abuser, and theirs was a classic abusi
ve relationship. She knew this now; she’d researched domestic violence at the public library. The warning signs had been there from the beginning. Brandon’s jealousy and possessiveness, his need to know where she was and who she was with at all times, and his attempts, mostly successful, to isolate her from her family and her friends.
But understanding this didn’t change anything. She was still married to him, still sharing an apartment with him, still expecting him, at any minute, to walk through that front door. And she knew exactly what he’d be like when he did. When they were first married, he’d come home ashamed, and remorseful, and repentant. But lately, he’d come home still angry and, worse, resentful. He’d explain to Mila, at length, that what had happened was actually her fault, she’d backed him into a corner, provoked him, really, and given him no choice but to respond the way he had. And Mila, sickened by this logic, tried to remain as neutral as possible as she listened to his lecture. If he so much as glimpsed her disgust for him, the whole cycle would simply start over again.
But this wasn’t going to be like all the other times, she realized, her heart pounding with the knowledge of what she was about to do. She left the bag of ice in the sink, walked to the bedroom, grabbed a suitcase out of the closet, and threw it on the bed. Then she started tossing clothes into it. She did this haphazardly, without considering what she might actually need wherever she was going. But she filled the suitcase and jammed it closed, put on a pair of oversized sunglasses that would hide her swollen eye, and detoured to the kitchen to pull on her coat. She paused to rifle through her handbag. Her wallet had only forty dollars in it, but for now, that would have to be enough; she didn’t have time to go to the ATM. She stuffed the wallet in one of her coat pockets, stuffed her cell phone in the other, and, after a moment’s hesitation, threw her apartment keys in the wastebasket. She wouldn’t be needing those anymore.
And then she left. When Brandon came back, she’d be gone for good. The only problem, she thought, as she rode down in the elevator, was that she didn’t have any place to go. Brandon, with his constant neediness and insane jealousy, had chased everyone in her life away. She considered calling Heather or even her mom, but decided not to. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them. She’d gotten herself into this; she’d have to get herself out of it, too.