Steven Watson - Before I Go to Sleep

It felt as though everything was suddenly taking off, things were moving too fast for me to keep up with them. I could hear Ben, upstairs. The water had stopped running now, the boiler was silent. There must be a rational explanation, I thought. There has to be. I felt that all I had to do was to slow things down so that I could catch up, could work out what it was. I wanted him to stop talking, to undo the things he had said, but he did not.

“There’s something else,” said Nash. “I’m sorry, Christine, but Nicole asked me how you were doing, and I told her. She said she was surprised that you were back living with Ben. I asked why.”

“Okay,” I heard myself say. “Go on.”

“I’m sorry, Christine, but listen. She said that you and Ben were divorced.”

The room tipped. I gripped the arm of the chair to steady myself. It did not make sense. On the television, a blond woman was screaming at an older man, telling him she hated him. I wanted to scream, too.

“What?” I said.

“She said that you and Ben were separated. Ben left you. A year or so after you moved to Waring House.”

“Separated?” I said. It felt as if the room was receding, becoming vanishingly small. Disappearing. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. Apparently. That’s what she said. She said she felt it might have had something to do with Claire. She wouldn’t say anything else.”

“Claire?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. Even through my own confusion, I could hear how difficult he was finding this conversation, the hesitancy in his voice, the slow picking through possibilities to decide the best thing to say. “I don’t know why Ben isn’t telling you everything,” he said. “I did think he believed he was doing the right thing. Protecting you. But now? I don’t know. To not tell you that Claire is still local? To not mention your divorce? I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right, but I suppose he must have his reasons.” I said nothing. “I thought maybe you should speak to Claire. She might have some answers. She might even talk to Ben. I don’t know.” Another pause. “Christine? Do you have a pen? Do you want the number?”

I swallowed hard. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, please.”

I reached for a corner of the newspaper on the coffee table, and the pen that was next to it, and wrote down the number that he gave me. I heard the bolt on the bathroom door slide open, Ben come onto the landing.

“Christine?” said Dr. Nash. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Don’t say anything to Ben. Not until we’ve figured out what’s going on. Okay?”

I heard myself agree, say good-bye. He told me not to forget to write in this journal before I went to sleep. I wrote Claire next to the number, still not knowing what I was going to do. I tore it off and put it in my bag.

I said nothing when Ben came downstairs, nothing as he sat on the sofa across from me. I fixed my eyes on the television. A documentary about wildlife. The inhabitants of the ocean floor. A remote-controlled submersible craft was exploring an underwater trench with jerky twitches. Two lamps shone into places that had never known light before. Ghosts in the deep.

I wanted to ask him if I was still in touch with Claire, but did not want to hear another lie. A giant squid hung in the gloom, drifting in the gentle current. This creature has never been captured on film before, said the voice-over to the accompaniment of electronic music.

“Are you all right?” he said. I nodded, without taking my eyes off the screen.

He stood up. “I have work to do,” he said. “Upstairs. I’ll come to bed soon.”

I looked at him, then. I did not know who he was.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”

I have spent all morning reading this journal. Even so, I have not read it all. Some pages I have skimmed over, others I have read again and again, trying to believe them. And now I am in the bedroom, sitting in the bay, writing more.

I have the phone in my lap. Why does it feel so difficult to dial Claire’s number? Neuronal impulses, muscular contractions. That is all it will take. Nothing complicated. Nothing difficult. Yet it feels so much easier to take up a pen and write about it instead.

This morning, I went into the kitchen. My life, I thought, is built on quicksand. It shifts from one day to the next. Things I think I know are wrong, things I am certain of, facts about my life, myself, belong to years ago. All the history I have reads like fiction. Dr. Nash, Ben. Adam, and now Claire. They exist, but as shadows in the dark. As strangers, they crisscross my life, connecting, disconnecting. Elusive, ethereal. Like ghosts.

And not just them. Everything. It is all invented. Conjured from nothing. I am desperate for solid ground, for something real, something that will not vanish as I sleep. I need to anchor myself.

I clicked open the lid of the garbage pail. A warmth rose from it—the heat of decomposition and decay—and it smelled, faintly. The sweet, sick smell of rotting food. I could see a newspaper, the crossword part filled in, a solitary tea bag soaking it brown. I held my breath and knelt down on the floor.

Inside the newspaper were shards of porcelain, crumbs, a fine white dust, and underneath it a plastic bag, knotted closed. I fished it out, thinking of dirty diapers, decided to tear it open later if I had to. Beneath it, there were potato peelings and a near-empty plastic bottle that was leaking ketchup. I pushed both aside.

Egg shells—four or five—and a handful of papery onion skin. The remains of a de-seeded red pepper, a large mushroom, half-rotten.

Satisfied, I replaced the things in the bin and closed it. It was true. Last night, we had eaten an omelet. A plate had been smashed. I looked in the fridge. Two pork chops lay in a polystyrene tray. In the hallway, Ben’s slippers sat at the bottom of the stairs. Everything was there, exactly as I had described it in my journal last night. I hadn’t invented it. It was all true.

And that meant the number was Claire’s. Dr. Nash had really called me. Ben and I had been divorced.

I want to call Dr. Nash now. I want to ask him what to do, or, better, to ask him to do it for me. But for how long can I be a visitor in my own life? Passive? I need to take control. The thought crosses my mind that I might never see Dr. Nash again—not now that I have told him of my feelings, my crush —but I don’t let it take root. Either way, I need to speak to Claire myself.

But what will I say? There seems to be so much for us to talk about, and yet so little. So much history between us, but none of it known to me.

I think of what Dr. Nash had told me about why Ben and I separated. Something to do with Claire.

It all makes sense. Years ago, when I needed him most but understood him least, my husband divorced me, and now we are back together he is telling me that my best friend moved to the other side of the world before any of this happened.

Is that why I can’t call her? Because I am afraid that she might have more to hide than I have even begun to imagine? Is that why Ben seems less than keen for me to remember more? Is that even why he has been suggesting that any attempts at treatment are futile, so that I will never be able to link memory to memory and know what has been happening?

I cannot imagine he would do that. Nobody would. It is a ridiculous thing. I think of what Dr. Nash told me about my time in the hospital. You were claiming the doctors were conspiring against you, he said . Exhibiting symptoms of paranoia.

I wonder if that is what I am doing again now.

Suddenly a memory floods me. It strikes almost violently, rising up from the emptiness of my past to send me tumbling back, but then just as quickly disappears. Claire and me, another party. “Christ,” she is saying. “It’s so annoying! You know what I think is wrong? Everyone’s so bloody hung up on sex. It’s just animals copulating, y’know? No matter how much we try and dance around it and dress it up as something else. That’s all it is.”