Nocturnals

by Edited by Bradford Morrow

  Yes I am the one, the one to blame. Yes you are blameless.

  Yet one day the husband was heard, in a distant room, calling, “Help! Help me!”—his voice ringing through the house like something buzzing and careening in terror, striking walls.

  The wife froze where she stood. That’s to say, where she stood the wife froze.

  That’s to say, the wife did not precisely freeze in place, though she was shivering with cold, a chronic sort of clammy-damp cold that had lodged in the marrow of her bone like an insidious leukemia; rather, the wife for a fleeting ecstatic second contemplated the luxury of not hearing the husband’s call for help, her excuse being that she was in a faraway room, or had turned on a faucet, or perhaps she was in the garage where daylight was not blinding. Just a moment, a precious moment of freedom, then—“Yes? What is it? Where are—” The wife hurried upstairs to a room where she discovered the husband standing on a chair barefoot, precariously balanced, gripping the clawhammer in one hand and with the other clinging to a window frame to prevent a fall, his flushed face glaring and hair sharply receding from his forehead lifted in tufts of rage.

  “Help me! For Christ’s sake don’t just stand there …”

  Of course, the wife hurried to help the husband, steadying his tremulous legs (so thin! the muscles seemed to have atrophied) so there was less danger of falling as he resumed his task of nailing another blanket over another window, providing too a (thin, narrow) shoulder for the husband to lean heavily upon, as he stepped down from the chair.

  “Thank you! What would I do without you, darling”—a remark of such jocose grimness, the wife could imagine the words uttered through the gritted teeth of a death’s-head.

  The (happy) surprise was, each of them was discovering how yoked together they were in the aftermath of what is (commonly, promiscuously, banally) called trauma. Unavoidable in the intimacy of marriage?—each wondered.

  “We have each other”—the wife dared to suggest, with a shiver of hope.

  “We have each other”—the husband echoed, with a shiver of dread.

  Nightgrief. No need to speak of it, as bog creatures have no need to speak of the bog in which they dwell, companionably.

  *

  Soon it was discovered that even in the shimmering hell light of summer an entire (new) life was possible, after dark.

  In the (master) bedroom alone a galaxy of TV possibilities. Full range of cable channels including Spanish-speaking. Streaming films, DVDs. A new flat-screen TV seemingly floating in place, matte black when turned off, sleek and handsome, larger than the flat-screen in the basement that they no longer watched, ever. At their fingertips on their laptop keyboards the ubiquitous Internet, “social media”—an infinity of distractions, each of which demanded immediate intense attention.

  Insomniac hours. Eyes that fail to close. Brains that fail to shut off. Here were the (home) cures.

  Meals in front of the TV replaced meals in the kitchen, dining room—rooms fraught with anxiety like bad bog smells. Meals delivered to the front door or defrosted in the microwave replaced meals (lovingly, tediously) prepared in the kitchen with “fresh” ingredients. (With astonishment and chagrin the wife recalled those years, which constituted at least one-third of her life. What on earth had that charade been? Had she been performing an arcane rite—mother, provider of food? Household good sport, mediator of disputes, never failing to smile? None of it had mattered in the slightest, as it turned out. She thought it bizarre, she hadn’t guessed.)

  Neither had much appetite any longer. Indeed, appetite had become a problematic issue. Once you’ve lost your appetite you have lost your comprehension of what appetite is, or was. (Yet, what could lost possibly mean, in this context? If lost, lost where? There can be no category of sheer lostness. And how could an instinct so rudimentary, yet so abstract, as appetite, become lost?) Yet, with or without appetite, the couple discovered that the distractions of an animated screen made it possible to eat, if only mechanically, and certainly possible, in fact quite pleasurable, to drink—white wine, whiskey. (The white wine wasn’t invariably chilled, and the husband, who’d favored Scotch whiskey over ice cubes, no longer troubled much about ice, for the walk downstairs to the kitchen and back upstairs was a bore.) A pleasurable sort of hypnosis in staring at fleeting images on screens, sudden swells and crescendos of “music” to signal meaning—no need to speak though sometimes by mutual consent, though wordless, one of them hastily switched a channel with the remote, or hastily pressed mute.

  For even nightgrief must be protected. Nightgrievers cannot be too vigilant.

  Of course each tried to read, in private. Recalling that some of the most intense experiences of their lives had been in (serious) reading. Yet each was discovering that books had become problematic since what had happened in the late winter of dripping eaves, thunderous skies. Requiring concentration, conscious involvement. It was disappointing—alarming—that neither the husband nor the wife was capable any longer of reading, except for short periods of time. No sooner was a sentence read than its meaning was lost. Gamely the wife tried to (re)read one of the favorite books of her previous life, Jane Eyre. (The very paperback, with an introduction by her English professor at Bard, she’d read and diligently annotated in college.) But the paragraphs were too long, turgid; by the time she came to the end of a paragraph she was obliged to reread it; if she was being honest, she could not allow herself to push forward but must read, reread, and (re)reread, the same numbing words. The husband found that he could not sit still long enough to read as he could recall reading in the past. He too had a cherished book to (re)read—John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, also in a paperback heavily annotated by the husband a lifetime ago in law school in New Haven. But his skin itched violently, distracting him. His scalp itched, he scratched with his nails and drew blood. For reading involves a strict linear progression of thought and an effort of memory; books involve pages that are meant to be turned, and pages contain lines of print that descend in a specific, immutable order, and “print” must be decoded in the brain, thus requiring a participatory sort of consciousness, the most exhausting sort of consciousness. In frustration the husband tore out pages of A Theory of Justice, crumpled them in his fist—“Fuck ‘justice.’ Fuck its guts.” In another room, the wife stiffened in fright but did not hear.

  The solace they craved was not to be found in books. True solace was a passive and narcotic activity of (semi)consciousness that required no personal involvement—staring for hours at a glassy screen upon which images moved ceaselessly, music swelled, subsided, swelled ceaselessly whether a human consciousness was present or not.

  Venturing out after dark was another sort of adventure, risky and thrilling (at first). Guiding yourself by the headlights of a vehicle that are aimed straight ahead and do not waver. So that even if you are forced to drive along certain (familiar, terrible) streets and roadways, you will find that the terrain has altered simply because it is night and not daylight, which was the condition in which you’d most frequently experienced these (familiar, terrible) streets and roadways.

  For instance, instead of Northway Mall, a vast sinkhole they would never (again) approach, there was Southbridge Mall, a forty-minute drive along relatively unfamiliar roads. Parts of the mall remained open until midnight and so here was an oasis of festive lights, a floating island thrumming with a particular sort of after-dark suburban life: fast-food restaurants, “quality” restaurants with liquor licenses, a glittery CineMax boasting twelve theaters.

  The promise of Southbridge Mall was that it could be experienced as “new”—even brand-name stores and franchises could appear legitimately “new” in the unfamiliar setting. A multitiered burbling fountain at its center, architecture that differed perceptibly from the architecture of the Northway Mall (though created by the identical architectural firm)—here was a new planet to be explored cautiously, its dangers not immediately apparent until, on their third visit, forced to wear tinte
d glasses in the fluorescent glare, thinking to see a film at the CineMax, they chanced to discover on the lower mall level a row of garish fast-food restaurants adjacent to a video-game arcade swarming with teenaged boys from which, dazed and staggering, migraine tears streaking their cheeks, they fled.

  Weeks, months. One hundred eighty-two days, one hundred eighty-three. …

  Without their having realized, the (deadly) zenith of summer had passed. From now on days would be shorter, nights longer. From now on, the air would be easier to breathe.

  Gravity was on their side now. Gravity would ease them downward.

  A day when anything might happen. The wife might decide, for instance, to do the laundry. Run the dishwasher (crammed with plates, cutlery haphazardly rinsed). Clean the house. At least, parts of the house that were not, by mutual consent, off-limits. In the early hours of the morning, that’s to say in the blackest hours of the night, tugging the vacuum cleaner from room to room, a bracing activity, caffeine fueled. Stray thoughts were muffled by the reassuring roar and under cover of this roar the wife repeated the statement she’d given to authorities: “We had no idea.” Clearing her throat, more calmly: “We had no idea. My husband and me …” Seeing with satisfaction how bits of dust and grime were sucked up into the vacuum bag. How easy housecleaning was, and how visibly dirt might vanish! That is, the sort of dirt detachable from a surface.

  Stains were another matter. Stains in carpets might be left for another time.

  The husband too might rouse himself from the TV screen that left him dazed and enervated to make minor repairs in the house with his screwdriver, pliers, clawhammer, and handful of nails. One of the husband’s happiest discoveries had been his toolbox, stored out in the garage. Sometimes, not invariably, the husband wore work gloves. On his head, pulled low on his forehead, a carpenter’s cap imprinted with Dutch Boy in white letters he’d found in the garage. For in the aftermath of what had happened in the room at the top of the stairs, which had not been fully understood by either the husband or the wife, the house had begun to deteriorate in a sort of delayed shock as in the aftermath of an earthquake. Wall light switches failed to turn on lights, toilet tanks ran water incessantly. Dripping faucets, stuck doors. Loose tiles that had to be glued or hammered into place. Ill-fitting windows requiring caulking. Carpets infested with moth larvae, which had to be dragged out into the garage and sprayed. The husband became quickly winded, having to squat, or kneel, or strain his arm and shoulder muscles, or his neck. The husband’s spine ached, from his having dragged the heavy and resistant living-room carpet across a floor. (How old was the husband now? Dimly recalled his last birthday, in his previous life, might’ve been—forty-five?—forty-nine? Like the wife, whose last birthday had been her forty-first, back in January, the husband did not expect to have another birthday.) Bits of grit fell into his eyes, which were still reddened and swollen and failed to focus correctly. His heartbeat was erratic, whether with dread or a sort of ecstatic joy that the worst had happened, and so could not (again) happen. Yet there was pleasure in such elemental tasks of repair and renovation, which could be immediately seen and appreciated by the other occupant of the (depleted) household. Especially tasks requiring the clawhammer, which had begun to fit the husband’s hand with a mysterious elation.

  Muffled by the hammer’s pounding, the husband repeated the statement he’d given to authorities in a voice of stunned wonder: “I had no idea …”

  Like nocturnal creatures they were becoming adjusted to night. By midautumn they might have found themselves blind in daylight like those poor mules who’d been worked for years in mines, discovered to be blind when at last they were brought back to daylight.

  Now there was a distinct solace in the passage of time that had been loathed before. Now there was the promise of night expanding as autumn, then winter, advanced. Ever more, each day was eclipsed by night. The couple could, if they wished, leave the safety of the house earlier—on the darkest days, when the sky was a thick crust of shale-like clouds, steely gray, canyons of rubble, as early as 6:00 p.m. though this was a risk for (possibly) they might see someone, an individual or individuals, or an entire category of individuals, they did not wish to see.

  Discovering how certain stores were best patronized by night in any case. Safeway, Target, CVS, Home Depot, Walmart—cavernous spaces in which, in evening hours, there were no long lines at checkout counters, and rarely children. Only just adults like themselves, somber faced, pasty skinned, pushing their carts and keeping their eyes to themselves.

  Why, we are the walking wounded! Who would have known there are so many of us.

  Sometimes in these mammoth bright-lit stores the wife might wear her stylish pinkish-gray sunglasses, for so many articles on six-foot shelves, so many competing and jangling colors, made her head ache. The husband might wear his ultradark glasses for his eyes were (still) reddened and swollen with a look now rather of anger and incredulity than nightgrief.

  Reduced staff at checkout counters, especially as closing hour (11:00 p.m.) approached. The wife found it uncanny how, observed at a little distance, certain of the clerks stood immobile and stiff as mannequins in their sexless store uniforms; only when you approached them and triggered a motion sensor did they “wake” to attention with friendly smiles and store greetings—Hello! How are you this evening!

  As she’d disliked the largest of the stores in her former life so the wife retained a slight aversion for these in her present life, much preferring the smaller, more easily navigated Safeway, which resembled in certain respects the grocery store in her own neighborhood where she’d shopped for fifteen years, yet differed enough from that store to erase, or to lessen, the wife’s inclination to unease and anxiety in a public place; her sense of being, as she’d tried to explain to the husband, unmoored and drifting.

  (Often, when the wife spoke to the husband in a public place, in a quiet, confiding voice, the husband behaved as if he had not heard; indeed, as if there were no one close beside him murmuring into his ear. Enough times this had happened that the wife began to doubt her own existence, to a degree.)

  (Or was the husband simply becoming hearing-impaired? That morning in late March when the wife had screamed to him from the room at the top of the stairs, the husband had not seemed immediately to hear.)

  One problem with late-night grocery shopping was that “fresh produce” was likely to be wilted and picked over. “Fresh-caught fish” lay dispiritedly on melted ice, meats had turned gray. Even canned soups, a staple of the couple’s meals in front of the TV screen, were often depleted on shelves, and baguettes, the husband’s favorite bread, were frankly stale. When you wanted to ask a store employee a question, there was no one in sight.

  Yet the wife rejoiced that no children rushed about at this hour. No young adolescents were to be seen. Adult shoppers appeared harried, distracted, poorly groomed, and no one to be envied.

  Blessed quiet!—the wife drew a deep breath. No need to steel herself against a rude intrusion.

  Except, a minor incident, pushing her cart down the aisle of cereals between shelves of cheerily colored cereal boxes, predominantly bright yellow, reassured that the husband, often sulky and disoriented prowling the Safeway aisles for his own particular foods that he could not trust the wife to choose, was nowhere near, the wife stumbled, seeing, or imagining that she saw, a slender fugitive figure in T-shirt and jeans just ahead, slyly disappearing around a corner—“Oh! Wait! Don’t leave me—” the wife heard herself cry in the instant before all the blood drained out of her head, all the strength drained out of her legs, and the soft underside of her chin struck the cart handle, a good smack that woke her to the folly of her behavior.

  Flushed and chagrined, jaw hurting like hell, but grateful that the husband had not been a witness.

  Of course there was no slender shimmering-transparent figure in the next aisle, or anywhere in sight. The wife recovered at once, sensibly.

  Impressive, the way
in which a rapidly accelerated heart on the very cusp of tachycardia begins to slow, informed by a signal from the brain, sensibly.

  Why didn’t you have two of them for Christ’s sake. If one is lost, the other will take his place, couldn’t have been that difficult to figure it out, right? Weren’t you always supposed to be smart?

  Grateful the husband hadn’t seen, would never know. Grateful.

  But then, worse, despite the warning, recklessly the wife insisted upon returning to the Safeway because it was convenient, because the husband complained less bitterly about the selection of his particular foods in the Safeway, near the end of October on a very dark starless night when the air smelled mildly of sulfur, and the electricity in the grocery store shivered and shuddered as if it were about to go out, once again the wife was pushing her cart alone, once again grateful that the (sulky) husband was elsewhere searching for his longtime favorite brand of pickles; the wife turned a corner out of the canned-soup aisle to see a lurid Halloween display: stuffed scarecrow figure, carved pumpkin head grinning, baggy T-shirt, jeans, around its neck an eerily realistic noose—not a mere loop of clothesline but an actual hangman’s noose composed of a terrifying number of coils, at least ten, fixed in place by a perfect knot.

  This time, the wife fell in a dead faint. No time to suck in her breath, cry out. Struck her head on the edge of a shelf, slid onto the floor, on her side, consciousness obliterated in an instant as a light switch is turned off.

  Waking then, faces looming above her, the husband’s sharp scolding voice—“That’s my wife. I’ll take care of her”—lifting her beneath the arms, shaking her awake, panic in the husband’s reddened and swollen eyes only the wife might have discerned if she’d been able to see. No need for anyone to call 911, the husband insisted, no need for an ambulance, absolutely not, no emergency, he would take his wife home, walk her out of the store since by this time the wife was revived, or nearly; the wife was herself again, or nearly; embarrassed at having caused a scene, attracted the attention of several shoppers, Safeway employees, more witnesses than she’d have imagined possible at this hour. Wincing with pain, right temple, right arm, fingers on her right hand felt mangled where she’d fallen on them but really, truly—she was all right, she was fine.