The Hopefuls(76)

“That’s not true,” I said. “You’re a great writer. You’ve done an amazing job so far. Just because you’ve never done these things before doesn’t mean you’re not good at them.”

“That’s exactly what it means,” he said. That was the only time he ever admitted exactly how this campaign made him feel. He was failing just by waking up each day, running a race with his legs tied together, no chance of catching up.

Candace Elroy also had a private plane at her disposal, borrowed from her father’s company, a fact that was always mentioned at least once during one of our long car rides. One day, when we’d spent over ten hours driving, I said, “I bet she has one of those really small planes. The kind that are super scary to fly in because it seems like they could fall right out of the sky. We wouldn’t want to be in a plane like that anyway.”

Everyone in the car, even Jimmy, who was driving, just turned to look at me, and then turned back without saying a word.

I felt horrible for Matt. I really did. He was struggling and there was nothing I could do to make it better. I tried to be supportive, to talk to him about how hard this must be, to reassure him that he was doing all he could, but often it felt like I was making things worse. Once, I said, “It must be so frustrating to put everything into a race and still be losing.” He turned to me, like I was stupid for thinking such a thing, and said, “It’s not like this is a surprise. We always knew this would happen.”

He was so angry that he couldn’t even remember what he was angry about. He shut down in a way I’d never seen before, acting like a sullen teenager, not looking at me when I’d talk to him, grunting in response. Often, I’d say something to him and he’d pretend not to hear me, hoping that I’d go away if he ignored me long enough. I didn’t know how to deal with this, so mostly I’d just stand there and say, “Matt,” over and over, until he’d looked up from whatever he was doing, already annoyed by my presence, and finally answer me. “What?”

—

Ten years earlier, Matt and I had gone to South Africa for our honeymoon. He’d been dying to go to Cape Town and thought a safari would be amazing. I agreed, because I didn’t really care where we went—our honeymoon, I assumed, would be amazing no matter where we were.

The flight to Cape Town was over twenty hours and I barely slept. Still wired from our wedding weekend, I sat awake on the dark plane while Matt snored beside me. We’d both taken Ambien, but it didn’t work for me—I’d woken up after only about thirty minutes, feeling nauseous and disoriented. When we landed, I was so exhausted that I had trouble walking through the airport. Everything was so loud and bright and I kept tripping over my feet.

“I’m so tired I can’t see straight,” I said to Matt.

“I told you to sleep on the plane,” he said, like staying awake was a poor choice that I’d made. I walked behind him trying not to fall, stepping where he stepped, keeping my eyes on his feet.

That night, I crawled into bed, took another Ambien, and closed my eyes, hungry for rest. But three hours later, I sat up in the dark room, my heart racing, my mouth dry. I looked over at Matt and for a few minutes didn’t recognize him, had no idea who was lying next to me. Finally, my mind cleared and I remembered: That is my husband, I’m on my honeymoon. And then I tried (unsuccessfully) to go back to sleep.

We were in South Africa for fifteen nights, and I spent most of them staring into the darkness and wanting to cry, because more than anything, jet lag is lonely. During the days, I’d nod off at lunch, beg Matt to go back to the room in the afternoons for a nap. Once, I laid my head down on the table in a restaurant like a child, not caring what anyone around me thought.

“Maybe I have a resistance to Ambien,” I told Matt.

“I don’t think that’s the problem,” he said.

It was the worst during the safari. At night, the noises around us made me shiver, and the days made me feel like I was losing my mind. I’d look at the animals—so large, so beautiful, so frightening—and I’d tell myself to pay attention, to appreciate that I was seeing a lion, an elephant, a goddamn hippopotamus. But I was so tired that my eyes pulsed, light danced in my peripheral vision, and all of it felt unreal, like watching a nature documentary on PBS.

Matt wasn’t very sympathetic toward me. If anything, he was irritated that my insomnia was interfering with our trip. “You need to get on schedule,” he’d say, not bothering to hide his impatience. And soon, it wasn’t just at night that I didn’t recognize him. I’d look at him through my foggy eyes as we walked around in a foreign country and think, I don’t know you at all. I married a stranger.

After we were back in New York and sleeping again, I didn’t tell anyone about my jet lag or the thoughts I’d had about Matt. It didn’t seem normal, so when people asked about the trip, I just said, “It was amazing. A once in a lifetime experience.” And after enough time had passed, I almost believed it.

But that year in Texas, it started happening again, and there were times that Matt seemed unfamiliar to me, when even his voice wasn’t his own. I remember once staring at him across the room, an expression on his face that I’d never seen before, his eyes blank and unreadable, and my chest got so tight I could barely breathe, because I didn’t recognize him at all.