It was hard for her to get to sleep. Dr. Lewis had said it could be the Prozac, but it had been hard before. She lay in bed and listened as the nighttime sounds came. Joe in the bathroom. The TV downstairs. Much later, the click of the garage door.
Falling asleep was letting go—Dr. Lewis had said that, too. Letting go of the wish for sleep. Sometimes she felt she was close, but then she would notice she was close and
that
would wake her. “Ah, yes,” Dr. Lewis had said with a smile. “That old trick.” Yesterday, for the first time, she’d seen him at his office in Burlingame. Mondays at four-twenty—that was going to be her regular time. She would also see him Thursdays at three-fifty. His office was in an old house, and she’d sat on a nice leather chair and talked to him across a blue rug, and it had been stranger than strange.
Lauren dipped and rose, dipped and rose. It seemed that she would never sleep, but with each dip she lost consciousness, first for just a few seconds, then for longer and longer. She didn’t know that she slept, and so her sleep was not restful. It felt like no sleep at all.
Liz’s was the opposite, a sleep so deep she didn’t stir when Brody came in. She was far gone, dreaming of little girls in Christmas dresses. He was chilled from sweating in the cold night air, and he showered, but still she didn’t know a thing. She didn’t know when he got into bed, didn’t know when he turned from one side to the other, his shoulder aching, his mind restless until he took himself to the top of Keyhole and pointed his skis down the mountain.
Joe was thinking of skiing, too, or dreaming of it. Not a specific run, more the swoops and jumps, the fine tailspray of powder. He might wake—he often did lately—and if that happened he’d bolt upright and then get out of bed. Waking in the night was new, though he recognized something very old in it, and whenever it happened he half expected the hall light to go on, his mom or dad to hurry in, tying the belt on a bathrobe, saying,
Shh, shh, what is it, you had a bad dream, it’s OK.
Or not saying that, not saying anything. Sometimes he remembered things he wasn’t sure had ever happened.
If he woke, he would turn on his desk lamp and open his astronomy book. It was a textbook, kind of dry, but he liked it, liked reading it, especially at night. He had another astronomy book, about the constellations, but the constellations didn’t interest him; they were too much like fairy tales, myths, fantasies of the kind Trent read. Stars were just stars, as far as Joe was concerned. Not parts of stories.
26
S
he parked at the end of the block, in front of a house where a party seemed to be ending: people spilled down the walk calling goodbye, happy holidays, see you in the New Year. She’d been at a party, too: her book group’s annual gift exchange. Locking her car, she could feel the glass of wine she’d drunk, a band of warmth across the bridge of her nose and onto her cheeks.
It had been a strange evening. For the first time in weeks she’d known exactly what Liz was doing, and because she’d known, she’d been unable to stop picturing it: Liz in a church in Palo Alto; Liz and Brody and Lauren and Joe, lined up in a pew; Liz in a dressy top and maybe her diamond earrings, holding a program in the way she always held programs, with both hands, her thumbs forming a triangle on top of the paper; Liz waving at people, nudging Brody to wave, waving some more.
It was on Sarabeth’s calendar was how she knew. “Rbt & Marg concert.”
Of course it’ll be boring,
Liz had said back when she first told Sarabeth to mark the date.
You should come.
The night was cold and damp. Sarabeth walked past the Heidts’ house, which was decorated with colored lights along the rooflines and a grove of giant candy canes at the edge of the front yard. Last Christmas they’d gone away for a week, and she hoped they were going away this year, too.
She turned up the driveway. She’d forgotten to leave a light on, and her house was almost invisible. Back from the street, hidden from the moonlight by trees, it was little more than a dark mass. She passed the Volvo, slowing as the light from the street ebbed. She was just a few yards from her steps, picking her way along the walk, when a figure loomed up before her, someone on her porch, and she screamed.
“It’s me, it’s me,” Mark said, stepping toward her. “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t know how not to scare you. I knew this was going to happen.”
Her pulse raced, and she turned her back on him and burst into tears.
“Sarabeth, I’m so sorry.”
She sobbed into her hands. She heard someone call her name, and she looked up to see Rick Heidt standing in his kitchen doorway, the room lit behind him.
“Oh, Rick,” she called. “I’m sorry. I’m OK.”
“We heard a scream.”
“I thought I saw something. But it was nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
On her porch, a creak suggested some movement by Mark—deeper into the darkness.
“Yes, I’m fine. But thanks so much.”
He waited a moment before moving back into the kitchen. “Anytime, you know. We’re here.”
Once his kitchen light was off, she turned around. She could see Mark now, his tall body outlined against her front door. She said, “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.”
She found her keys. Taking a deep breath, she stepped up onto the porch, then stood next to him as she unlocked the door. Inside, she groped for the light switch. He was still outside, and she flipped on the porch light and gestured for him to come in.
He hesitated. “Is it OK?”
He looked more put together than the other time—shaven, less hollow eyed. He wore a red plaid scarf around his neck.
“I got your message,” she said.
He inhaled and lifted his shoulders, then sighed and let them drop. Nothing would happen: she decided it in that moment. Knew it. Decided it.
“I’m going to have some tea,” she said. “Mint. Would you like some?”
“Please.”
She led the way into the kitchen. There were dirty dishes on the counter, two pieces of apple browning on a cutting board. She took her kettle and filled it, then set it back on the stove. “Hang on a sec,” she said, and she moved past him through the doorway, to the stuff on the living room floor. She picked up the two mugs and brought them back into the kitchen. She turned the water back on, waited for it to get hot, and then washed them thoroughly. She faced him.
“Have you cheated on her before?”
At once he shook his head. Then he put his fingers over his mouth and said, “Sort of.”
“How do you sort of cheat? Does it depend on the meaning of the word ‘is’?”
He half smiled. “She knew about it.”
“She gave you permission?”
“It was more a matter of looking the other way.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s none of my business.” She got out the tea bags, tagless little paper squares. She dropped one in each mug.
He was standing in the middle of the room, his coat still buttoned, his lips pale and chapped. He unbuttoned his coat, loosened the plaid scarf. He went and leaned against the wall. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“You live alone here. It doesn’t seem like you date. I’m just wondering—” He broke off talking and shrugged. “I mean…”
“You’re wondering what I do for sex?”
He barked out a laugh but didn’t correct her.
The kettle began to whistle, and she turned around and switched off the gas. She thought of the dreams of his naked body, of his hands all over her, that had gripped her for at least a week. She faced him again. “I have a vibrator.”
His cheeks reddened a little. “And that works for you?”
“Not that well. I haven’t figured out how to program it to say it loves me.”
He smiled, but after a moment he moved to the table and sat down and put his face in his hands.
She filled the mugs with water and brought them over, set one near his elbow. Taking the chair opposite his, she said, “I did it for over a year. Guy with two kids.”
He looked up. “And a wife?”
“And a dog and a cat and a hamster.”
“Really?”
“I think they had a goldfish.”
He lifted his mug. “I guess it wasn’t a good idea, huh?”
“Not for me.”
He blew into his tea and sipped noisily, then put the mug down and rested his chin in his hand. He looked closely at her, and she saw creases bracketing his mouth, the way his cheekbones jutted out under his eyes. It came to her that she didn’t know what his face looked like, not really.
He held out his free hand, and she put hers in it. “What’s she like?” she said.
“Which one?”
“Either.”
He thought for a moment. “She’s wiggly. And sticky. And when I give her a cookie she makes this excited little squeak, like a monkey.”
“I assume this is Maud.”
They both smiled. After a moment he squeezed her hand and let go. He picked up his tea and blew into it again.
“Are you guys talking?”
“Mary and me? Sure, about diapers. And soy milk, and blackout shades.” He took a sip of tea. “Actually, that’s not true. But it’s hard to have much of a conversation about how freaked out I am. I mean, who has time?”
Sarabeth thought of the years when Lauren and Joe were young, how she’d almost lost Liz then—had felt, many times, that she
had
lost her. But then she’d miraculously call at a time when the kids were sleeping, or at preschool, and Liz would say, “Oh, thank God, I’ve been dying to talk to someone who doesn’t need something from me.”
Had she lost Liz now?
She looked at Mark again, his big hands wrapping the mug. She said, “What did you talk about before?”
“Nothing,” he said with a shrug. “Everything.”
She blew into her tea. Steam still rose from the surface, and she wondered how he’d been able to drink his. She brought her mug close to her mouth and just held it there, letting the warmth bathe her upper lip.
“Mark?” she said.
“Don’t tell me it’ll be OK.”
She didn’t. Instead, she looked at his hands, at the bones of his wrists. She imagined a life of talking about nothing and everything: a consummation—how did it go? A consummation devoutly to be wished.
With a sheepish smile, he dug into his jeans pocket and tossed something onto the table. It was a condom. She put her mug down and reached for it. After a moment she opened the package and pulled the condom out. She brought it to her nose, and it smelled like plastic, which it was. She and Billy had used condoms, condoms and her diaphragm simultaneously. No risks. She remembered a time when she tried to roll the condom off him, during sex; she just wanted to feel him inside her, no latex between them, just once. She’d just finished her period, which he knew. But he pulled out and rolled off her right away, then sat up and said in a voice so firm it scared her,
No.
Mark took the condom from her. He pinched the tip and unrolled it little by little. When it was open he laid it on the table between them. It was odd to see one open on a table, the blousy shape, the thinness. After a moment, he turned it so the tip was facing her. “Pow,” he said.
They talked a little more, and then she saw him out and cleaned the kitchen and got into bed. It was very cold. She thought of getting a heating pad, but she knew her body would warm the sheets after a while—slowly, the way a single body did. Everyone was in bed now: Jim with Donald, Liz across the bay with Brody, Mark with Mary. She didn’t know what to do with it, how she could see bodies in beds and how she was one. It was dizzying to go up and down like this: others as if from far above, and herself here. She saw a pool of light on the couples, light in the spaces between them, the spaces they defined by lying together. It was in a light like that that she wanted to live. With Billy the light hadn’t fully existed because she’d been unable to keep it with her when she was alone. Or it had existed, but it was a false light, light like a false spring, flowers blooming too early and doomed to die. She thought her mother had been a flower sort of like that, a flower that lacked the support of a stem: all blossom, already browning at the edges.
When the weak December sun woke her eight hours later, she was thinking this again, seeing it: tender petals tinged by their unhappy fate, evident if you looked. She lay in bed, and her room—her life—seemed a place she had wandered into by accident. Bedroom to bedroom, dust to dust. On Cowper Street there must have been a time when her parents had lived together in a pool of light, but she could not remember it. Always, they had been separate, and she separate from them. And yet this morning she had a feeling of some other story than the one she knew. What if she could find it and furnish it with happy times? What would she put in it? Her mother and herself, on the floor with blocks, building and laughing. Her parents holding hands on the living room couch. Her father taking her to the park while her mother stayed home and happily cooked the family’s favorite dinner. She could invent all kinds of things, and once invented they could take on substance, mass; they could go head to head with what she knew. Which, then, would be more real? Her mother and herself on the floor with blocks, building and laughing: could she say absolutely that it hadn’t happened? Her eyes welled, streamed. She lay in bed, got up, ate, returned to bed. Minutes turned to hours. Still she stayed in bed, while shadows moved across the floor, tracking the progress of the day.
In the evening she got up. She went into her workroom and calmly began cutting bits of scrap paper into squares. Last year she had done nearly this, made tiny books as gifts. Tonight she was on to a lampshade. “Patchwork,” she would call it. On a white background she glued the squares: some were translucent, some were opaque; some of the colors were pale, some were dark, some were bright. What she liked was the way they looked together, how each was its own but also part of what they all were together. In randomness there lay a secret order, or so it was sometimes nice to think. She left the work to dry, ate bread and fruit, got back into bed. She slept fitfully, waking to images of Lorelei and herself, of Liz and Lauren, of Mary and Maud. The men were standing against the walls of her bedroom, guarding her. Rick Heidt was there, too.
In the morning she took a bath, lifting one leg and then the other to shave away the long wiry hairs of winter. She sank under the water, lifted her head, and thought fleetingly of Glenn Close in
Fatal Attraction,
bursting from the bath, a woman who had been stirred, whisked, beaten to a frenzy. By passion, by desperation.
She got out of the tub, dressed, went into the kitchen. Why the same thing every day, why tea and then coffee? She wanted cherry cider; she didn’t know why.
She bundled up and left the house, out for the first time since Tuesday. It was Thursday now, and the world was as busy as ever—busier, because Christmas was just three days away. Andronico’s was mobbed with couples and families, everyone pushing carts loaded with food. She collected cherry cider, out-of-season asparagus, and a miniature key lime pie. She didn’t even need a basket.
Her hair was still wet, and as she walked home she felt her toes going numb from the cold. What would she do when she got back—drink cider, peel asparagus, return to the patchwork lampshade? Something she’d possessed earlier was gone again now.
She was panting lightly when she got home, her breath just visible in the cold air. The Volvo was gone. Up the empty driveway she walked, into her house, into her kitchen. She thought to check for messages, thought she hadn’t been gone
that
long, lifted the handset anyway. To her surprise, the stutter tone. She realized she wanted a message from Mark, and she put the handset back in the cradle. But she couldn’t live this way.
She lifted the handset again and got to her voice mail, and the voice said, “Sent. Tuesday. At nine-seventeen p. m.” Tuesday? she thought, but then there was no more time to think because Liz’s voice was saying: “Are you there? It’s me—Liz. Sarabeth? Are you there?” There was a pause, and then she said, “I miss you. Call me.” And standing in her kitchen, Sarabeth burst into a thousand pieces of bliss that rained lightly and colorfully onto the floor.