“Who is it, Mommy?” she asked again when I didn’t respond.
“Just an old friend,” I said, trying to settle my jittery voice as I opened a kitchen drawer—the closest thing to me—and slid it inside. I’d find a better hiding spot later after she’d gone to sleep. I could feel my cheeks inflame, my hands start to shake.
“Are you mad at me?” Jessie asked then, eyes swelling with tears, mistaking what I was feeling for anger when what it was was sadness and regret and shame.
“No, baby,” I said, dropping down to my knees and drawing her into me. “Mommy could never be mad at you,” I told her, and then I smiled as widely as I could and grabbed a hold of her hand. “How about some ice cream before we get ready for bed?” I proposed, and of course there was no hesitation, no wavering. Jessie screamed an easyyes!while jumping up and down, and so we carried bowls of chocolate ice cream onto the front porch to eat, watching as the sun made its final descent beneath the horizon. I helped her with a bath and we read about the wild rumpus. I tucked her into bed. She asked me to lie with her as she always does these days, and so I curled under the covers beside her, and she pressed her body into mine, a lean arm flung across my chest, pinning me down.
This was everything I ever wanted and more.
I lay there until her breaths became flat and slow, and then I returned to my own room. There I sat on the bed, clutching the photograph of Aaron in my hand, still trying to catch my breath. This photograph had been hidden beneath the bed for years. I’ve known it was there, of course, but couldn’t bear the idea of looking at it, not until it was forced quite literally into my hand. It was the only keepsake I kept of him, just the one single photograph—not our wedding photographs, not my engagement ring—because in it, he’s looking away. He’s not looking at me, and so I can’t see that love and adoration in his eye.
I can’t see the anger.
I stare at the photograph, wondering what Aaron must look like now. Is he graying slowly like me, or is his hair still a chestnut brown? Is he fuller around the middle, or maybe he’s more slim? And then I start to wonder if he’s eating okay, if he’s sleeping okay, if some other woman now spends her nights beside him in bed. My mind gets stuck there, a skipping record. I can’t unsee this image, imaginary as it may be, of a woman lying beside Aaron, peacefully asleep—her head tucked into the crook of his arm, his hand on the small of her back—where I used to be.
I won’t let myself dwell on the past.
I move quickly, having to get rid of the evidence before Jessie wakes up and goes snooping again. I put the photograph where she’ll never find it, and then, when it’s done, I tiptoe back into Jessie’s room and stand there at the edge of the bed, forcing the past to some locked chamber in my mind, the same spot where that woman’s voice is buried, the high-pitched squeal as she chased me down on the street.
Get your hands off my child.
I slip back under the covers beside Jessie so that when she awakes in the morning, she’ll never know I was gone. A simple sleight of hand.
jessie
That night, I climb into bed with my clothes still on. I don’t bother changing them. I just want to get into bed, to be in bed. The bed used to be my safe place. But after all these nights not sleeping—eight of them, eight days and nights without sleeping now—the bed is my torture chamber too.
I read once about a man who died because he couldn’t sleep. Fatal familial insomnia, it was called. Within twelve months from the time symptoms appeared, he was dead.
I think this is what’s happening to me.
It started with a single bad night of sleep. For whatever reason, his mind wouldn’t shut off. Wouldn’t let him rest. One night turned into two, and before long he’d gone weeks without a decent night of sleep.Relaxed wakefulnessis what it was called, though it was anything but relaxed. He never made it past stage 1 of non-REM sleep, the stage between wakefulness and sleep. He never dreamed. It was a light sleep at best when he was lucky, lasting less than ten minutes at a time, the kind of sleep interrupted by a hypnic jerk, by an overwhelming sense of falling.
I have it worse, I think. Because a light sleep, to me, would be a dream come true.
He walked the earth in a stupor, asleep but awake. Awake but asleep. He spent his days in a hallucination of sorts, not sure if he was alive or dead. He heard buzzing noises all the time. People calling out his name though no one was there. A voice whispering odd decrees on repeat.Just do it already. Just jump.A hand touching his arm and he’d whirl around, agitated and afraid, to find himself alone. The panic attacks were infinite. His brain was on overdrive all the time. There was no way to hit the switch and shut it down.
As a result, his brain’s tasks were all out of whack. His muscles twitched. His heart raced. His blood pressure soared. Coordination was lost. He could no longer function properly. It went on like this until he died.
The most gruesome part? Though the body goes to pot, the mind does not. Thought processes remain relatively intact. They’re clued in completely to their own demise.
The ill sweat profusely.
They stop eating, speaking.
They shrivel to nothing but a glassy-eyed stare, eyes shrunken to mere pinpricks, like mine. And then they die. Because, after those long, agonizing nights lying in bed, failing to truly sleep, fatal familial insomnia is nothing but a death sentence for them. The grim reaper coming to steal their life.
I’m waiting for my time.
I sit up in bed. I don’t delude myself into lying down because I know I won’t sleep. And so I sit, engulfed in blackness, legs pulled up to my chest. The blanket is kicked to the end of the bed because, though it’s cold in the carriage home, I’ve begun to sweat. The sweat, it gathers under my arms and in my hairline. My palms are damp with it. The soles of my feet. The skin between my fingers and toes.
My heart beats rapidly.
My head spins.
I stare into blackness, seeing things that I hope are not there. I go through the motions. The typical night, thinking the morbid thoughts, followed by the grieving ones where I miss Mom so much it hurts. It’s a pain in my sternum this time, like heartburn or indigestion. Except that it’s grief.
And then when I’m done grieving, the self-loathing comes, where I despise myself for all of that which Iwould’ve,could’ve,should’vedone differently. Said I love you while she could still hear me. Hugged her longer and with more frequency. Run a hand over the dark chocolate fuzz that had started to regrow on her scalp after her last round of chemo was through.
