dream.
And not his problem.
Radar packed up his bag, climbed into the back and within minutes was out cold.
Three men in a white cargo van, asleep.
Then the first man opened his eyes, sat up in his seat, started the engine and turned back onto the winding mountain road.
Eleven o’clock Saturday morning, one white cargo van headed due north.
Chapter 8
IN THE PAST SIX MONTHS, ever since That Day, I’d taken to avoiding sleep. There was a phase, maybe around the second or third month, where I was nearly phobic about evenings. If I just stayed awake, kept my eyes open, my body moving, somehow, I could keep tomorrow at bay. Because I didn’t want it to be tomorrow. Tomorrow was too scary a proposition. An unnamed deadline where I’d have to make major life decisions about my marriage, my family, my future. And maybe, tomorrow was just too sad. Tomorrow was loneliness and tenement housing units and Friday-night cockroach raids and every lesson I had learned in childhood and wanted so badly to leave behind.
So for a while I didn’t sleep. I roamed the house. Ran my hand across the granite countertops in the kitchen, remembered the day Justin went with me to the quarry, where we gazed at slab after slab of natural stone. At the exact same moment, we’d both pointed to this one, then laughed like two schoolkids, giddy to discover we shared the same favorite color or pet or sports team.
From the kitchen, I’d journey down to the wine cellar, housing bottles I’d meticulously researched and stocked to impress Justin, his business associates, even his crew. You’d be amazed how many drywallers, plumbers and other general contractors know their wines. With success, everyone cultivates tastes, until even the most ruggeddirt hauler can appreciate a well-balanced Oregon Pinot Noir or a more robust Spanish red.
Justin was sleeping in the basement apartment at that point. The au pair’s suite, people called it, except we’d never had a nanny, preferring to raise our daughter ourselves. The door was at the opposite end of the hall from the wine cellar. During my nightly roamings, I would stand in front of it, sheltered by the deep dark of a windowless basement. I would place my hand upon the warm wood and wonder if he was on the other side, actually asleep. Maybe he’d gone back to her. Or maybe, a thought so painful it bordered on nearly intoxicating, he’d brought her here.
I didn’t open the door. Never knocked, never tried to peer beneath it. I would just stand there, thinking that at one time in our marriage that would’ve been enough. My mere presence would’ve spoken to him, beckoned him like a magnetic force, until he would’ve thrown open the door, grabbed me into his arms and kissed me hungrily.
This is what eighteen years of marriage does to a couple. Minimizes the polar fields, mutes the laws of attraction. Until night after night, I could stand in a darkened hallway just eight feet from my husband, and he never felt a thing.
Inevitably, I would return upstairs, arriving outside my daughter’s bedroom. Again, no knocking, no entering, no disturbing of a private space where I wasn’t wanted anymore. Instead, I would sit on the floor in the hallway, lean my head against the wall and picture the white-painted shelving unit positioned on the other side. Then, by heart, I would systematically catalog each item that had been placed there. Her ballerina music box from the first time we took her to see The Nutcracker . A jumbled pile of her most beloved childhood paperbacks, Where the Red Fern Grows, Little House on the Prairie, A Wrinkle in Time , placed haphazardly on top of her more neatly organized hardcovers such as the Harry Potter series and the Twilight saga.
She’d gone through a horse-crazy phase, which would explain the herd of Breyer horses now relegated to the back corner of the lower shelf. Like her mother, she had an eye for beauty and an urge to create, hence the random collections of
And not his problem.
Radar packed up his bag, climbed into the back and within minutes was out cold.
Three men in a white cargo van, asleep.
Then the first man opened his eyes, sat up in his seat, started the engine and turned back onto the winding mountain road.
Eleven o’clock Saturday morning, one white cargo van headed due north.
Chapter 8
IN THE PAST SIX MONTHS, ever since That Day, I’d taken to avoiding sleep. There was a phase, maybe around the second or third month, where I was nearly phobic about evenings. If I just stayed awake, kept my eyes open, my body moving, somehow, I could keep tomorrow at bay. Because I didn’t want it to be tomorrow. Tomorrow was too scary a proposition. An unnamed deadline where I’d have to make major life decisions about my marriage, my family, my future. And maybe, tomorrow was just too sad. Tomorrow was loneliness and tenement housing units and Friday-night cockroach raids and every lesson I had learned in childhood and wanted so badly to leave behind.
So for a while I didn’t sleep. I roamed the house. Ran my hand across the granite countertops in the kitchen, remembered the day Justin went with me to the quarry, where we gazed at slab after slab of natural stone. At the exact same moment, we’d both pointed to this one, then laughed like two schoolkids, giddy to discover we shared the same favorite color or pet or sports team.
From the kitchen, I’d journey down to the wine cellar, housing bottles I’d meticulously researched and stocked to impress Justin, his business associates, even his crew. You’d be amazed how many drywallers, plumbers and other general contractors know their wines. With success, everyone cultivates tastes, until even the most ruggeddirt hauler can appreciate a well-balanced Oregon Pinot Noir or a more robust Spanish red.
Justin was sleeping in the basement apartment at that point. The au pair’s suite, people called it, except we’d never had a nanny, preferring to raise our daughter ourselves. The door was at the opposite end of the hall from the wine cellar. During my nightly roamings, I would stand in front of it, sheltered by the deep dark of a windowless basement. I would place my hand upon the warm wood and wonder if he was on the other side, actually asleep. Maybe he’d gone back to her. Or maybe, a thought so painful it bordered on nearly intoxicating, he’d brought her here.
I didn’t open the door. Never knocked, never tried to peer beneath it. I would just stand there, thinking that at one time in our marriage that would’ve been enough. My mere presence would’ve spoken to him, beckoned him like a magnetic force, until he would’ve thrown open the door, grabbed me into his arms and kissed me hungrily.
This is what eighteen years of marriage does to a couple. Minimizes the polar fields, mutes the laws of attraction. Until night after night, I could stand in a darkened hallway just eight feet from my husband, and he never felt a thing.
Inevitably, I would return upstairs, arriving outside my daughter’s bedroom. Again, no knocking, no entering, no disturbing of a private space where I wasn’t wanted anymore. Instead, I would sit on the floor in the hallway, lean my head against the wall and picture the white-painted shelving unit positioned on the other side. Then, by heart, I would systematically catalog each item that had been placed there. Her ballerina music box from the first time we took her to see The Nutcracker . A jumbled pile of her most beloved childhood paperbacks, Where the Red Fern Grows, Little House on the Prairie, A Wrinkle in Time , placed haphazardly on top of her more neatly organized hardcovers such as the Harry Potter series and the Twilight saga.
She’d gone through a horse-crazy phase, which would explain the herd of Breyer horses now relegated to the back corner of the lower shelf. Like her mother, she had an eye for beauty and an urge to create, hence the random collections of
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