When the Lights Go Out(57)

Jessie had found it under my bed, of course, where she’d been snooping. The photograph had been stashed inside an envelope, inside a box, and under the bed, the kind of thing one didn’t just happen to stumble upon. She went searching for it. Or rather she went searching for something and she found it, because up until a few minutes before, she didn’t know this photograph existed, the photograph I’d snatched all those years ago in the yard of our cottage, a photograph of our glorious view—the lake with a sailboat out at sea—meant to be only of the lake and the sailboat, though Aaron stepped into the frame just as I took the picture. He’d apologized and later, after the pictures were developed, we’d laughed over it. Aaron thought he’d ruined my photograph, but what he’d done was the opposite of that. He’d made it perfect. He’d made it complete.

Up until a few minutes ago, Jessie didn’t know Aaron existed because those Who’s my father? questions have only just begun to surface, and so far I’ve been able to quell them all with the suggestion of milk and cookies or ice cream.

“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 easy yes! 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 wakefulness is 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.