Джойс Оутс - Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars

UPSTAIRS, SHE WAITED.

Lying on her bed positioning her head on pillows trying not to provoke a headache. Between the folds of her brain were slivers of glass. Take care! She’d had too much to drink, and too much to eat. She’d meant to loosen her belt but discovered she was not wearing a belt. The waistband of her black silk slacks was cutting cruelly into her (soft, flaccid) flesh.

The little white antidepressants had failed to dissolve into her bloodstream and were floating there now like phosphorescent globs of detergent in a stream.

Mom! Why are you just standing there?

What is wrong with Mom? Half the time we come into the house she’s just—standing there like a zombie…

For God’s sake, Mom. What is wrong with you?

She’d liked Mommy. She’d been a young Mommy.

But Mom was something else. Mom meant you are not yourself but a part of someone else. Belonging to someone else.

You had to be My Mom, Our Mom. You could not be just Mom.

It would not be said A Mom was awarded the highest honor of the nation yesterday at a president’s reception in Washington, D.C. It would not be said A platoon of Moms marched into and massacred a border village yesterday. It would not be said A gathering of Moms unveiled a stunning new medical arts center. Nor would it be said Mom Arrested on Rape Charge. Mom Indicted.

Now that Whitey had gone away nothing was certain. The sky had opened. Like venetian blinds yanked open. What was beyond the blinds you hadn’t seen before, could be just another wall. Or a corner of sky.

“What? Who is—” Wakened with a start. She’d thought that someone had entered the room to check on her where she’d fallen asleep in so awkward a way, her neck was aching badly. And her bladder aching badly.

Nearly midnight. Thank God Thanksgiving Day 2011 was ended.

Went into the bathroom to use the toilet. Not walking very steadily. Over-bright lights. Beyond the glare she could not see her face clearly which was a blessing. Mom, for God’s sake. That lipstick is not flattering.

Suddenly she remembered: Steve!

She’d left him downstairs in the TV room. In the recliner.

If he fell asleep watching TV she would wait for him to come upstairs but if he failed to come, she would sigh and go downstairs, two flights of stairs, to wake him, and bring him back upstairs. It was cruel to let the husband sleep in the TV room and crueler still to pretend that you were not aware that the husband was sleeping in the TV room in the recliner that would cause his neck and his spine to ache.

Two flights of stairs she descended, and there was Steve on his recliner in the TV room as she’d left him, now asleep and breathing laboriously through his mouth. Reflected light from the TV played on his face that was slack in repose and looking years older than his age. Gently she extricated the TV remote from his fingers and switched off the TV.

How welcome, the sudden silence! For a moment she feared that Steve would waken. But he did not.

She saw, he had not opened the folder. Of course, he had not touched the folder. He’d drunk two-thirds of the club soda and had set the bottle on top of the folder where it left a ring. One of his legs had slipped from the recliner and lay at an odd angle like a broken or paralyzed leg.

“Steve. It’s me.”

And, “Steve? It’s not too late.”

Great annoyance she felt for the sleeping husband, yet sympathy as well. His neck would surely ache, and his spine. He would need help on the stairs. He would be embarrassed, needing his wife to help him out of the recliner and onto his feet and up two flights of stairs. He was not old, even if his back ached and his legs felt weak!—he was far from old. The wife would disguise the awkwardness of the occasion by counting One-two-three! Up!— as you’d joke with a young child.

Discreetly the wife took up the folder, beneath her arm. She would hide it away in a drawer in the bedroom. She would hide it from the husband until another, more appropriate time.

In the night. In the wind. A sound of distant voices, laughter.

She is not certain if she has been awake, or is waking only now. The room is lightless in a way that presses against her eyeballs, like invisible thumbs.

Fumbling for the bedside lamp but her fingers grope in the dark, in vain.

Or perhaps she is in another bed. In another room for she has been expelled from this room, in which she had slept for so many years with her beloved husband.

He is sleeping now in the earth, the husband. It is lightless there, moist and cold though not freezing for the earth is protective of those who lay beneath it.

Snow lies thinly over the grave markers, the tall grasses behind the darkened house. In the fast-running creek, snow melts without a trace.

She has removed the stack of books from beside her bed. Dog-eared at page 111 The Sleepwalkers has been returned to Whitey’s bookshelf in another part of the house.

There are other books here now, on her bedside table. Slender books of poetry, a book of black-and-white photographs.

It is the eve of her wedding. Not to Whitey but to another—his face is obscured.

Yet, Whitey observes. Whitey has not ever ceased observing.

Toss the dice, darling. Be brave!

She is apprehensive for she is going to be married, she is going to be a bride (again).

Is she expected to wear white? A long white gown, a white veil? She has no white shoes, she is undecided what to do. In the end, she supposes she must go without shoes, barefoot.

The white bridal gown will be a sheet wrapped about her. Her arms crossed over her chest, for warmth.

Wind chimes!—that is what she has been hearing.

Close behind the house, wind chimes above the deck, in the lowermost limbs of trees. Who had placed them there? Possibly Jessalyn herself, years ago. In this bed Whitey had lain with his arms behind his head and Jessalyn beside him utterly content listening to rain, wind, the sweet sonorous chimes from somewhere beyond the darkened room.

So beautiful. It’s like heaven here. I love you.

Her head! Such pain. Excruciating like nails driven into her brain.

And shortness of breath, and extreme fatigue. So that the thought comes to her almost as a relief that she has died in this strange breathless place in the mountains, she has passed away.

A man whose face she can’t see is asking with some urgency: Darling? Can you open your eyes?

Gripping her hand as if to steady her. For the way down is steep, two hundred stone steps. Yet, she is lying very still in this unfamiliar place—atop a bed with a hard mattress—struggling to breathe. What an effort it is to open her eyes for the mildest light makes her cry out in pain.

Church bells, nearby. Exuberant, over-loud as deranged wind chimes.

It is a fairy-tale place. A fairy tale gone wrong.

What you deserve. How dare you imagine you can leave us.

Outside the windows of the beautiful old Quito Hotel, Quito, Ecuador. In the historic center of the old Incan city in the Andes, on a high hill amid rooftops of many colors. A nightmare of crammed-together dwellings, narrow passageways, crimson bougainvillea —a tropical flower unknown in the northern state in which Jessalyn has lived her entire life.

Wanting to show her beauty, he has said. The beauty of the world.