David Wallace - Oblivion

By this point in time, the Spring thunderstorm’s downpour had receded or ebbed to the point that individual droplets’ impacts’ sounds were individually countable against the striped canvas awnings of the 19th Hole’s large bay windows — meaning being discretely audible, but in sum arrhythmic and not what one would term pleasant or soothing; the larger drops sounded almost eerie or, as it were, almost ‘brutal’ in their impact’s force. Inside, Hope’s father was leaning back and slightly to the side in his heavy ‘captain’s’ chair, running the fine cigar over his upper lip in order to savor the aroma as he searched in a side pocket (this is what is making him lean; it is not a distortion) for his clip’s special monogrammed case. Without informing Hope (an omission which was, I confess, petty, and that I was in all likelihood unwilling, by that point in the conflict, to give her the ‘satisfaction’ of it), I, during my annual Physical exam, requested a referral from our P.P.O.’s Health Plan’s ‘Primary care’ physician to one of the Plan’s designated ‘Ear, Nose and Throat’ specialists, who then subsequently examined my nasal passages, sinus cavities, trachea, adenoids and ‘soft’ palate, and pronounced that he saw no evidence of anything unusual or out of the ordinary. I later, however, made the mistake of ‘throwing’ this clean bill of health ‘up’ in Hope’s ‘face’ during one of the increasingly heated and upsetting arguments (these often occurring over the following morning’s breakfast) respecting the so-called ‘snoring’ issue, whereupon Hope seized on my failure to have told her about the ‘E., N. & T.’ referral as evidence that I ‘. . kn[e]w the snoring [was] real,’ and was secretly concerned about it, and that I had been unwilling to tell her about the appointment in advance for fear that the specialist’s diagnosis would identify something amiss in my ‘soft’ palate or nasal passages and that I would have to admit openly to her that the ‘snoring [was] real’ and that all of my accusations that she was asleep and simply dreaming that I was snoring had been merely so much self serving ‘denial’ and ‘projection’ of the problem on to the ‘victim’ of it (referring to, of course, herself). These brief, bitter arguments — which came in waves or clusters throughout the Winter- and early Spring months, and most often tended to occur or ‘erupt’ at breakfast, fueled by a sleepless night and anxiety about facing the demands of the coming day on insufficient sleep, and were often so bitter and upsetting that I would then go through the subsequent commute and the first several hours of work in some type of emotional daze, mentally ‘re-playing’ the argument and conceiving of new ways to present or arrange evidence or catch Hope in a logical contradiction, sometimes going so far as to interrupt work in order to jot these ideas or cutting rejoinders down in the margins of my professional Day-planner for possible future use — were terrifying in their sudden heat and the speed with which they escalated in intensity and ‘spleen,’ as well as in the way Hope’s dry, dark, narrow, increasingly haggard face across the breakfast nook sometimes becomes nearly unrecognizable to me, twisted, distorted and even somewhat repellent in its anger and stony suspicion; and, for my part, I must confess that, at least once or twice, I had felt an actual urge to strike or shove her or up-end the nook’s breakfast hutch or table with rage, so ‘beside myself’ with irrational rage had I been ‘driven’ by the strange, stony, bitter and irrational obdurance with which she would flatly refuse to consider — to acknowledge even the bare possibility, despite all of the reasonable rebuttals, rejoinders, reasoned arguments, evidence, facts not in dispute and citations of precedent (there had, in the course of our marriage, been other conflicts in which Hope had been utterly convinced of the validity of her position, but had had to acquiesce in the face of subsequent proof that she had, in point of fact, been wrong, and had then had to apologize) which I advanced — that it was I who was awake and she who was—‘just possibly’—asleep, and that the ‘snoring’ issue was in point of fact in reality ‘[her] issue’ and was in fact capable of real resolution only by her ‘making [some kind of Medical, or even psychiatric] appointment.’ My hands sometimes literally trembled or shook with frustration and fatigue related disorientation as I started my vehicle, with a series of rapid, indistinct and unwelcome ‘images’ or hallucinatory distortions often also moving in rapid, arrhythmic succession across my ‘mind’s eye’ as I undertook my commute north up the Garden State Parkway. (In one of the most heated and upsetting of these arguments, I had only brought up the Ear, Nose and Throat examination as evidence that at least I, unlike Hope, was willing to entertain at least the possibility that I was somehow wrong and might in reality be somehow truly ‘snoring,’ and thus that any workable compromise or resolution was going to be impossible unless there was at least some slight mutuality about our willingness to concede, pace the information of our senses, at least the ‘theoretical possibility’ that we might be wrong about just who was asleep and dreaming and\or ‘snoring’ and who was not.)

Also, by this point in time, our routine (or, ‘ritual’) for preparing to retire and go to sleep in the bedroom had also often become almost indescribably tense and unpleasant. Hope often would not acknowledge or speak to me, and when, from my side of the room, I ‘caught her eye’ as she was emerging from her clothes closet or the washroom or applying emollient at her beige enamel ‘Vanity’ ensemble’s lighted mirrors, her expression was often that of someone regarding a distasteful stranger. (Hope’s stepfather and stepsisters, Meredith and Denise [or, more familiarily, ‘Donni’], are also accomplished at this expression, as I first noted upon my first or initial introduction to her family, which occurred at a dinner at Dr. Sipe and his wife’s large, Victorian style home in the historical ‘Fourth Ward’ district of West Newark, in the course of which, at two different points, ‘Father’ asked me some type of personal or biographical question and then, in the midst of my attempt to reply, interrupted in order to publicly indicate that he was becoming impatient or wished that I would ‘Cut to the chase’ in a blunter or apparently more time efficient way.) Often, by the time the bedroom’s lights are now extinguished, I will have become so over-wrought and tense that any likely prospect of falling asleep in the near future vanished altogether, despite the fact that I was often now so exhausted as to literally tremble and my vision, as mentioned, regularly went in and out of different states of exaggerated focus, depth and abstract flux or ‘retroussage’ —for instance, the way Audrey Bogen’s once fresh, voluptuous and innocent face seemed to tremble or shudder on the edge of exploding into abstract shards when she brought Dr. Sipe’s ash-tray, which was formed of heavy, black glass and emblazoned with the Raritan Club’s heraldic crest and Latin motto—‘Resurgam!’—in virid red.

As well, of course, as the fact that the absurd ephemeracy, triviality and obvious displacement or projection of the whole ‘snoring’ conflict — of which, between Hope and myself, only I seemed truly aware or frustrated at the absurdity and irrelevance of the whole conflict — made it that much worse. I myself simply could not believe that Hope and myself’s relationship at this crucial, ‘Empty nest’ point in our marriage could founder on such a trivial issue, one which, even in far less happy or viable unions than our own, must, for the most part, be resolved or ‘worked through’ rather early on. Like conflicts concerning, for instance, partners’ differing communicative ‘styles,’ amounts of time spent together as opposed to physically apart, division of responsibilities for household tasks and so forth, mutual compatibility of sleeping ‘styles’ and arrangements is simply part of the domestic compromise of living with a spouse, as, of course, almost every man of any worldly experience knows. I could not, for several weeks or even months, even bring myself to raise the issue of the conflict with personal friends or family. It simply seemed too silly to credit. I even went so far as to try consulting or ‘seeing’ a professional Couple counselor — again, an action undertaken on my own and, as it were, ‘sub-rosa,’ as I knew quite well Hope’s, her stepfather’s, and the bulk of her true and adoptive family’s (with the exception of Vivian, whose allegedly ‘Recovered’ memories and hysterical public accusations at the extended family’s Holiday get-together at Paul and Theresa’s extraordinary vacation home off the Manasquan inlet had led to herself and Hope’s ‘falling out’ and to the entire extended family’s unspoken prohibition of any mention of the entire subject, besides which were Dr. Sipe’s own sentiments respecting the issue of ‘therapy’’s eligibility as a Medical expense for the purposes of Health Care plans and ‘Managed Care,’ which were well known and vociferous) feelings vis à vis the ‘therapy’ issue, and knew also, by that point, that Hope’s flat, tight-mouthed refusal, were I to broach the issue, even to consider ‘seeing’ the counselor with me as a ‘couple’ would frustrate and aggravate me all over again, and simply escalate or further the scope of the marital conflict — only, there-upon, to my considerable chagrin, to repeatedly have, suffer or endure a series of ‘therapeutic’ exchanges such as, in substance, the following: