David Wallace - Oblivion

Since our Audrey had graduated as Salutatorian of her class and left the ‘nest’ of home for her freshman collegiate year at out-of-State Bryn Mawr (although she calls home faithfully once or twice a week) the previous Autumn, my wife and myself’s marriage’s single major conflict has now been over the fact that she now suddenly claims that I ‘snore,’ and that this alleged ‘snoring’ was preventing or depriving her of much needed sleep. I will, for instance, be lying quietly supine upon my back with my forearms and hands arranged across my chest (which is the customary way I prepare to gradually relax and fall asleep), and our bedroom upstairs will be pleasantly dark and quiet, with refracted lights from the light traffic on the quiet or ‘tree muffled’ residential intersection below running slowly across the bedroom walls and elongating, distending or collapsing interestingly at the north and east walls’ angles, myself gradually relaxing and descending in peaceful increments towards a good night’s sleep, until Hope suddenly cries out angrily in the darkness, claiming that my ‘snoring’ is making it impossible for her to fall asleep, and insisting that I either turn on to my side or else leave and go sleep in the ‘Guest’ bedroom (which is what, by unspoken agreement, Audrey’s former childhood bedroom is now referred to by us as) and to ‘for God’s sake’ grant her some ‘peace.’ This now occurs almost nightly — more than once on certain nights — and is intensely frustrating and upsetting. In my relaxed state, the sudden vehemence of her crying out floods my nervous system with adrenaline, cortisol or other stress related hormones, and the violence with which she thrashes up to a seated position in her bed — as well as a note of deep vexation or even hostility in her voice, as if this were an issue which had been silently aggravating her for years and she had finally come to the end of her ‘rope’ or ‘last straw’ with it — produces in myself a set of natural, physiological ‘stress’ responses which, subsequently, make it nearly impossible for me to fall asleep, sometimes for hours or even more.

In the past, particularly during head colds, or in some calendar years’ Summer months when the ‘pollen count’ is high and my hay fever is active or severe (I suffer from hay fever, and as a boy, in Wilkes Barre, my sister [whose allergies were even more severe than my own, as well as suffering from congenital asthma] and myself had to be brought by our mother twice a week to the local pediatrician for allergy shots for several years), I have, admittedly, suffered occasional bouts of snoring which have disturbed or awakened Hope in the course of our marriage. But these past bouts or episodes had always been easily resolved by her gently suggesting that I roll on to my side, which I always, immediately and without objection, did, often resolving the problem without either of us even coming fully awake — the whole exchange was friendly, and so unexceptionable that Hope could often compel me to roll over without awakening me or getting either of us ‘worked up’ or aggravated.

Thus it was not, I had originally planned to aver either during the ‘back’ nine or in the 19th Hole, that I claimed, as do some husbands, never to ‘snore,’ nor that I am unwilling to roll to one side or the other or to take reasonable steps to accommodate Hope when something has caused me every once in a great while to rasp, cough, gurgle, wheeze or breathe in any way obstructedly in sleep. Rather, that the true, more vexing or ‘paradoxical’ source of the present marital conflict is that I, in reality, am not yet truly even asleep at the times my wife cries out suddenly now about my ‘snoring’ and disturbing her nearly every night since our Audrey’s departure from home. It is very nearly always within no more than roughly an hour of our retiring (after reading in our beds for approximately one half hour, which is something of a marital ‘ritual’ or custom), at which time I am still lying in bed on my back with my arms arranged and my eyes either closed or relaxedly watching the walls’ and ceiling’s angles and distending exterior lights through the blinds, continuing to be aware of every sound but slowly relaxing and ‘unwinding’ and descending gradually towards falling asleep, but not yet in fact asleep. When she now cries out.

The real issue, in other words, is that it is Hope (who is well known for falling asleep the moment she has closed her current ‘livre de chevet,’ replaced it on her night-stand and struck the light in the brushed steel sconce above her bed — as opposed to myself, who have been a difficult and somewhat, as it were, ‘fragile’ or ‘delicate’ sleeper from childhood onwards) who is, in point of fact, asleep at these junctures, and dreaming, said dreams evidently consisting, at least in part, of the somewhat paradoxical belief and perception that I myself am asleep and am ‘snoring’ loudly enough to — as she puts it—‘wake the dead.’

I do, of course, have my personal faults, as do all or most husbands; but ‘snoring’ during the year’s cold weather months (like most, my hay fever is seasonal or, more technically, an ‘Auto-immune system’ response to certain classes of pollen) is not one of them. Not, of course, that it would even necessarily constitute an actual ‘fault’ as such, as it would not be an action which I was performing ‘consciously’ or had any voluntary control over. But I do not. Nor am I in the habit of being incorrect or confused about whether I myself am asleep or not — and it is an established fact in our marriage that it takes me far longer to truly fall asleep than it does Hope or my erstwhile first wife (we had joked about it together many times), as well as longer to fully awaken. Hope, in particular, moves quickly and easily between states of consciousness which, for me, are — due, perhaps, to professional stress — somewhat of a struggle. One could point to, for instance, the fact that it is nearly always myself who drives when driving any appreciable distance as a couple, or that it is frequently I who must rouse or shake her gently awake at the shore, or in front of the Home entertainment room’s television, or often at the end of a long piece of music or theater.

Since the prior Autumn, however, there simply has been no reasoning with her on this point. She steadfastly avows, in other words, that my putative ‘snoring’ is a waking reality instead of her own dream. And in the dark of our bedroom, when she suddenly wakes and cries out in such a way that I am myself jolted up-right, with adrenaline coursing through my system (just as when the telephone rings at night, its signal or ‘ring’ now piercing in a way which daylight never makes it), there is in her ‘snoring’ complaint a note of near hysteria which makes it perfectly evident that she has been asleep, or else has been in the type of semi-waking, oneiric state in which some people ‘“talk” in their sleep,’ confabulating past and present and truth and dream, and ‘believing’ it all in such a way that there is simply no reasoning with someone in such a state.

And yet I have largely refused to patronize or placate her about something which simply was not true. There are, even in marriage, limits. After an initial period last Autumn in which I would attempt to argue or reason with Hope ‘in situ’ in the darkened bedroom, informing her that I was in reality not yet asleep and to simply go back to sleep and forget all about it, that she was only dreaming (a response which so irked and provoked her, however, that her voice would begin to rise sharply in such a ‘tone’ as to so upset me that any chance of real sleep would then be impossible for the next several hours), I then, subsequently, attempted or tried refusing to respond ‘in situ’ or to in any way acknowledge her complaints that I was keeping her awake, instead waiting for the morning of the next day to remonstrate that I had not yet even been asleep, and to mildly observe that her agitated dreams of my ‘snoring’ were becoming worse and more frequent, and to urge her to make some sort of appointment and perhaps inquire about a prescription. And yet Hope has been wholly obdurate and unyielding on this point, insisting that it was I who was ‘the one who’s asleep,’ and that if I could or would not acknowledge this, my refusal to ‘trust’ her indicated that I must be ‘angry at [her]’ over something, or perhaps unconsciously wished to ‘hurt’ her, and that if anyone around here needed to ‘make an appointment’ it was myself, which according to Hope I would not hesitate to do if my respect and concern for her even slightly outweighed my own selfish insistence on being ‘right.’ Worse, on certain mornings, was when she, as it were, ‘took a page’ from her ‘true’ or biological sibling, Vivian (a twice divorced ‘halogen’ blonde and devotee of numerous so-called ‘Support’ or ‘self help’ groups and movements, to whom Hope was extremely close before their ‘falling out’)’s lexicon and accused me of being ‘in denial,’ an accusation any denial of which was held, of course, to be evidence in its own favor, maddeningly. Once or twice, however, in the early Winter months, I admittedly yielded and did, with a frustrated groan or sigh, take my own bed’s bedding down the hall to the ‘Guest’ bedroom and attempt to ‘drop off’ or sleep there amidst all of the frilled pastels, saffron joss and boxed detritus of our Audrey’s recent adolescence, lying perfectly still and motionless and scarcely breathing, and straining to hear, down the hall, any sounds of Hope perhaps once again sitting up-right and accusing a now empty or unoccupied bed of ‘snoring’ and ‘keeping [her] awake’—which would be indisputable proof of just who was asleep and who merely the innocent subject of someone else’s dream of being kept awake. Lying there alone, I envisioned something like myself hearing the vexed cries and complaints and arising instantly to quickly traverse the hallway, bursting through our bedroom door with something resembling a triumphant ‘Aha!’ —so filled with frustrated and aggrieved hormones, however, and devoting so much effort and close concentration to vigilantly listening for any sound or movement from our bedroom, that I got scarcely one iota or ‘wink’ of sleep the entire night in Audrey’s former bed, and yet had, nevertheless, to still arise and go forth to attempt to stagger through my professional responsibilities at work and both sides of the lengthy commute the following day with my entire body, mind and psyche on the edge of what felt to be nearly complete collapse. It was, I was, of course, aware, perhaps petty to be so fixated on vindication or ‘proof,’ but, by this point of the conflict, I was often nearly ‘not’ or ‘beside’ myself with frustration, choler or anger and fatigue. One must understand (as it was my original intention to attempt to explain to her stepfather) that though, as in any marriage, Hope and I had had our fair share of conflicts and difficult marital periods, the evident vehemence, anger and persecution with which she now dismissed my protests of being awake at the crucial junctures of alleged ‘snoring’ were unprecedented, and, for the first several weeks of the dreams and accusations, I was concerned primarily for Hope herself, and feared that she was having a more difficult time of it adjusting to our Audrey’s ‘leav[ing] the nest’ than it had at first appeared ( pace that it had been Hope, even more than Audrey herself, who had insisted or ‘lobbied’ for an out-of-State college, the relatively nearby Bryn Mawr and Sarah Lawrence Colleges having been Audrey and myself’s tacitly agreed upon choices as a compromise or [in the language of insurance regulation] ‘Technical compliance’ with this priority), and that this difficulty or grief was manifesting itself as sleep disruptions and unconscious or misdirected anger or ‘blame’ at myself. (Audrey is Hope’s child by her first, short lived marriage, but was no more than a toddler when Naomi and myself’s own divorce was declared ‘Final, a mensa et thoro ’ and Hope and myself were free to marry, which occurred sixteen years ago this coming August 9th. For all practical purposes, she is, essentially, ‘my’ daughter as well, and I too found her physical absence and the house’s strange new silence and schedules and the gamut of readjustments difficult, as well, as I tried to repeatedly reassure Hope.) After some further time had passed, however, and all attempts to discuss the conflict rationally or induce Hope to consider even the mere possibility that it was she, not myself, who was in reality asleep when the alleged ‘snoring’ problem manifested itself led only to a further entrenchment or ‘hardening’ in her own position — the essence of her position being that I myself was being irrationally ‘stubborn’ and ‘untrusting’ of what she could plainly hear with her own two ears — I essentially ceased, then, to say or do anything in the way of ‘in situ’ response or objection when she would suddenly sit violently up in bed across the room (her face often inhuman and spectral in the bedroom’s faint light because of the white emollient cream she wore to bed during the cold, dry months of the year, and distorted unpleasantly by vexation and choler) to accuse me of ‘snoring horribly’ and demanding that I roll over at once or be exiled again to Audrey’s former bed. Instead, I would now lie perfectly still, silent and motionless, my eyes closed, pantomiming a deeply sleeping man who could not hear or in any way acknowledge her, until eventually her pleas and vituperations trailed drowsily off and she would settle back with a deep and pointed sigh. Then I would continue to lie supine and motionless in my pale blue flannel or acetate sleep wear, still and silent as a ‘tomb,’ waiting silently for Hope’s breathing to change and for the slight, small chewing or grinding sounds she produced in sleep to indicate that she had once more fallen back to sleep. Even then, however, sometimes she now once again bolts awake only moments later, once again sitting up to accuse me of ‘snoring’ and angrily demanding that I do something to halt or impede it so that she might finally have some ‘peace’ and be able to sleep.