Flows Interrupted
Nights I couldn’t sleep.
Maybe you know the feeling. That sticking moment when you turn to the clock in the dark and find you’ve been lying there for two hours. Or longer. The night-dread creeps up your nape and none of the shadows look right — the desk’s shadow too long, the nightstand’s too short, and the light spying through the window-curtain too crooked. The thought haunts the blackness and you jam your eyes shut to avoid it: I’m not getting any sleep tonight.
Time turns hot and liquid — viscous, like a soup with too much water boiled away, and the lumps won’t pour right no matter how you beg or threaten with the spoon. Nothing like daylight time, which at least lets you pretend it flows evenly. Rivers and sweet melodies, even the sunshine itself is a kind of flow, you know —
No. I can’t let myself think about that.
Missing one night’s sleep isn’t a disaster. You’re a little groggy, sure, but a steady IV drip of coffee will keep your eyes open. Slack a little more than usual when the boss isn’t hanging on your elbow at the office. Sure, your eyes feel a little hairy and the caffeine kicks the anxiety to number eleven, but you’ll survive. The worst part is the drive home, where you can hardly resist letting your eyes slide shut as you go limp at the wheel and curve into the flow of traffic —
But you survive the first day. And the second, which is a little worse. And the third, which is a little better.
Emily came back, dark of hair and dark of eye, on the fourth day. I’d just made it back from work, thoughts a whir of cars and guardrails and phantoms of glass shards that might have been, but I noted it was strange that her car wasn’t in the driveway. One knee crossed over the other, she didn’t look up at me as she leafed through some French book. Seated on a gliding rocker, back and forth, back and forth.
Some arcane thing about capitalism and schizophrenia. I’ll never know why she reads the stuff.
She didn’t say anything all day. Didn’t look at me. Didn’t come to bed as I turned in for the night, already knowing sleep would elude me yet again. Just sat there, gliding, back and forth, back and forth.
Normal people read ghost stories.
I hadn’t slept since the night she left. Couldn’t sleep now that she was back.
After lying in bed long enough to salve my conscience that I’d tried — this was the fifth day — she finally glanced up at me as I groped toward the bathroom. She had such lovely wistful sad dark eyes. Not a trace of a smile. Still with that book on her knee. In all her life I’d never known her to be so engrossed in her reading.
She still said nothing, although I thought I heard a trickle of laughter as I shut the bathroom door and headed for the shower. I like my showers icy cold. Or at least I take them that way because it keeps me alert. Emily hated cold showers. Thought it was a bullheaded male idea. So whenever we would shower together it would be almost scalding, hot enough to leave our bodies pink, almost red as the streaming water flowed —
On the way to work, I noticed a wide gap torn in the guard rail over the middle of the bridge. The river flowed narrow but deep below the main span. Not a quarter-mile away there was a little park where I’d taken Emily for our first date. We’d sat by the river and I’d laughed at her because she couldn’t swim.
No telling how long the gap had been in the guardrail.
I can’t tell you what we fought about the night she’d left. You know how it is. Start with one thing and by the time it’s over you’ve covered every topic on earth. Every pain. Every wound. Every interruption. When you get wound up or sleepy you don’t think so clearly.
So what if I said I never wanted to see her in this life again? We all say things we don’t mean.
Besides, I knew she’d be back.
“I missed you so much!” Emily said as I pulled into the empty driveway.
Her lips tasted like chilled strawberries.
I hope I can get some sleep tonight. It’s been five days.
But life is grand.