The Hazards of Sleeping Alone (25 page)

“You're so organized,” he continues, dropping his hands in his lap. “You're so together. And I'm like this big, sloppy kid. How and why did you put up with me for so long?”

She was wrong. Joe isn't criticizing her, he's criticizing himself. And it isn't like him; he never used to put himself down like that. Then again, her frame of reference is fifteen years old. God knows what's really gone on in Joe's life those fifteen years. Still she finds it almost impossible to reconcile this bitter man with the easygoing, fun-loving guy Joe used to be. He's still easygoing, she supposes, but it used to be so genuine. Now it seems more by design than by instinct.

“Charlotte,” Joe says, breaking her reverie. “Did you hate my whistling?”

“What?”

“I ask because Valerie”—his tone has an air of drifty nonchalance, though Charlotte is quite sure there's nothing nonchalant about it—“she hates my whistling. I'm wondering if it bothered you too.”

“Not really,” Charlotte lies.

“Are you lying?”

“No.” She amends, “Kind of.”

“So it bothered you.”

“Only sometimes.”

“But you never said anything.”

“That's because I was shy.”

“No.” Joe shakes his head. “It's because you were nice.”

He's looking at her closely. Too closely. It's an odd look, one she hasn't seen in many years—his eyes squinting, face soft—as if seeing her, literally, in a different light.

Then he smiles. “Want to fight about it?”

“Not really.”

“Oh, come on,” he teases. “We're just starting to get good at the fighting thing.”

“What do you mean?” She knows what he means.

“The other week, on the phone. Our first real fight. Only took us nine years of marriage and fifteen years of divorce.”

Their eyes meet, and the equation is so absurd, they both start laughing.

“I'm not good at fighting,” Charlotte apologizes. It occurs to her she's often apologizing around him. “I get too flustered.”

“It's an acquired skill,” Joe says. “I've just had a lot of practice.”

Smiles fade. Silence enters. Not a cautious silence, but the opposite: Charlotte feels like she could ask or say anything. This conversation, this whole scene, feels oddly removed from the parameters of real life. Joe is so honest, and so unfazed by being honest. Nothing she says could possibly compare to the kind of soul-baring, dish-throwing West Coast drama that he's used to. He could be her real-life Internet, telling her WHAT YOU WANT TO KNOW.

She looks at the ground, at her feet folded neatly at the ankle. Joe's teenage-style sneakers stretch presumptuously across the stone floor. “We're very different,” she says, looking up. “Aren't we.”

To her the line felt brave, but Joe shrugs it off. “Everybody's different.”

Charlotte looks again at the ground. “Do you think there's such a thing as good different and bad different?”

“Nah. Doesn't work like that.” Joe hoists himself higher in his chair. “Too easy. It's not about good or bad, just being able to appreciate the differences. No matter what they are.”

“What about you and Valerie? Are you different?”

He barks a laugh. “That's an understatement.”

Different how? she wants to ask. Different in a good way? Instead she says, “Oh,” and they continue sitting, letting the untold story seep into the silences between them. Joe picks up his glass and looks inside it. Charlotte realizes he hasn't taken a sip since they first came outside.

Then he says, “It's not an ocean.”

“What?” She looks at him.

“The view, at my house. It's not an ocean.” He meets her eye, lips quirked in a meek smile. “It's a lake.”

“A lake?” Charlotte pauses. “Emily always said it was an ocean.”

He raises his eyebrows and shrugs. “Then Emily said wrong.”

Charlotte stares into the backyard, her own version of a “view,” and tries to reconstruct the mental panorama she's carried with her all these years. Joe would have no idea how often she's imagined this mythical deck of his, the place he and Valerie retreat after fighting, where they are magically cured by the pounding ocean and the tangy sea air. So, she thinks: there's no drama after all. No crashing waves to suck up their angry words and pull them away from shore. Instead the water is flat, placid, unresisting, words simply falling and sinking to the bottom like pennies in a fountain. She wonders how else Emily may have stretched the truth.

“What do your students call you?” Charlotte asks suddenly.

Joe looks up, as surprised by the question as she is. “My students?” He seems to think for a minute. “Some call me Professor Warren. But most call me Professor Joe.”

It's so perfect she can't help but smile. “Do they have crushes on you?”

“Some.” He puts his glass down and folds his arms across his chest, amused. “Next?”

She only pauses for a second. “Do you know what mindfulness is?”

“Mindfulness?” His eyebrows fly up, but he doesn't break stride. “Let's see. Mindfulness. I believe I do.”

“Do you believe in it?”

“Sure. If by believing in it, you mean believing it's a crock of shit.”

She laughs out loud.

“Anything else?” Joe is studying her face again, but the amusement is gone. He's watching her with a curiosity so intense she feels a tingling up and down her spine. From beyond the yard a wind lifts up, making a far-off porch chime rattle. The dry leaves rustle in response:
shhhh, shhhh.

“I don't think so.”

“You sure?”

“Well,” she says, “there might be one thing.” The breeze feels cool on her warm cheeks. She fixes her eyes on the forgotten pink hair band. “Do you think that I'm maternal?”

She expects a laugh, but Joe doesn't laugh. Nor does he ask why she's asking. “You, Charlotte,” he says, “are maternal. You of all people.”

She feels her heart leap and, as if a switch were flipped, her eyes fill.

“You are mother,” he says, watching her closely. “That's your thing. The love of your life. Mothering and coping mechanisms. Mothering
as
a coping mechanism. It could be your business card.”

“But,” she says, licking her lips, vision blurring, needing to be sure. “I know I care about being a mother. But
am
I motherly? Am I—comforting?”

“You are comforting,” he says. “Yes. You are.”

Through her tears, Charlotte catches that expression on his face again. For a moment she wonders, wildly, if he might kiss her. Maybe it's the champagne, or her overactive imagination. Is it merely kindness on his face? Is it sympathy? She blinks back her tears, and when her vision clears, she can see: after all these years, all his waiting, Charlotte has revealed something unexpected. Finally, she's surprised him.

Alone that night, Charlotte feels the pressure of the past. Joe's presence lingers in the empty house, scenes from this weekend blurring with moments from fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years ago. Joe staring at her with wide eyes. Tapping a finger against her temple. Reaching across the kitchen table to grip Emily's hand. His white teeth stained red. The gentle, curious expression on his face that afternoon. The three drops of red wine sunk permanently into the kitchen table.

Charlotte stares at those drops now, willing them to sink into the wood and disappear. But like her memories, they are stubborn. She marvels at how much Joe has changed; at least, how much she thinks he has. Maybe she's not remembering him honestly. Have Seattle and Valerie made him that much harder? Or are her memories just inaccurate? Maybe he was never so lighthearted. Maybe there was always a sad complexity she didn't see, or didn't choose to see.

Because she knows the story of their marriage, and in it, Joe never acted this way. Then again, the details she leans on—the hidden wedding lists, soapy backrubs, her bitten fingers, his narrowing eyes—have been so carefully honed over fifteen years, polished into so smooth a plotline, that she can't be sure anymore they really happened that way. Maybe, if asked to tell the
story of their marriage, Joe would remember different details entirely. Hers are shallow memories, really, never venturing too far beneath the skin. As harmless as her old, stock answer when people asked her what happened: “It just wasn't meant to be,” she'd say, then smile to let them know she was still functioning. If they looked particularly concerned, she'd roll her eyes, as if relieved.

She tightens her sash, as if tucking in her body might rein in her thoughts. It's useless. Despite Joe's drunkenness, his presumptuousness, there's something about him that still, even after all these long years, gets under her skin. Something she finds compelling, even a little frightening. Yes, he's a careless man. Reckless, dramatic, messy. But so earnest in his messiness. So sincere in his shortcomings. There's so much
sprawl
to him—blurted thoughts and unfiltered feelings and crossed lines—that his personality invites mistakes. And yet, that messiness allows for the possibility of surprise, for moments of unexpected loveliness.

Now the house is empty, just how she wanted it, but the emptiness feels like absence. It seems impossible that just twenty-four hours ago Emily and Walter were tangled on her couch, Joe snoring on the hard foyer tile. He was barely conscious when Walter steered him toward the sleeping bag. He didn't even get inside it, but splayed on top, fully dressed, legs askew—he always slept that way, Charlotte recalls, taking up most of the bed.

She folds her arms across her belly, gathering herself to herself. But the memories crowd her, insisting on themselves. Joe's sporadic snoring, his curly mat of chest hair, skin that was always warm to touch. The first time they slept together (in either sense of the word) was on their honeymoon in Virginia Beach. They were on a tight budget, so options had been limited.
What Joe had really wanted was to drive to southern Florida, rambling aimlessly down Route 1 to just “see what we see.” Charlotte had imagined this was the kind of thing the women at work would have thought “spontaneous,” but she cringed at the planlessness. She pictured run-ins with bikini-clad collegiates and aging surfer bums who would keep Joe up all night, drinking rum and swapping stories. In private, she dreamed of Maine: a little B & B with a quiet porch and sweet, kindly, snowy-haired owners. But when she dared mention this to Joe—offhandedly, as if the idea had just occurred to her—he kissed her nose and said, “You just described your parents' house.” Charlotte never mentioned it again.

So Virginia Beach it was: a compromise both financial and emotional. Joe joked about the appropriateness of the “virgin” in Virginia. Charlotte booked a room at the Drift Inn and Sea, which was on a traffic circle but promised to be just a short walk to the beach. On their first day, he bought her a black T-shirt that said “Virginia Is for Lovers!” in glittery aqua blue. Somewhere there exists a picture of her wearing it, sitting in their hotel room with Drift Inn and Sea stationery and paper-capped drinking glasses lined up beside her on the fake wood desk.

Charlotte had always envisioned honeymooning couples as lingering over romantic dinners, while the other diners flashed them smiles and waiters knowingly looked on. But Joe had planned to spend the better part of five days in their hotel room. Instead of being a source of public envy, Charlotte felt illicit: squirreled away in a bed that wasn't her own, under a comforter made of slippery peach-colored polyester. She felt apologetic around the maid, self-conscious while she slept. And Joe had hung the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign on their doorknob, which seemed so blatantly sexual it was embarrassing.

“Relax,” he whispered, his face hovering above her, colliding with the cheap seascapes hanging on the wall.

Charlotte closed her eyes and tried, despite the dull pain.
Good night, ankles,
she thought.
Good night, toes.

“Just give in to it,” he said. “Just let go.”

Give in to what? she worried silently. What was she letting go of?

Afterward, he asked, “Were you close?”

“I think so,” she told him, and because he looked so sad, added, “Yes.” She knew it was what he needed to hear. Then, because she felt so guilty and confused, she hid her face in his hot, damp shoulder.

“We'll get there,” he told her, pressing his lips to the top of her head. “It just takes a little time.”

At first, Joe liked that she'd never had an orgasm. It added to his sense of challenge, his mission to “unlock” her. But soon, like other parts of her biology, Charlotte began to wonder if the orgasm was another basic malfunction. Maybe she simply wasn't capable of having one. Six months passed, then a year, and Joe wasn't so reassuring anymore.

“What's the point,” he would say when they climbed into bed.

“What do you mean?” Charlotte asked him, anxious. She wanted them to have sex, not because she especially enjoyed it, but because she worried what it might mean if they didn't.

He rolled away from her and focused on the alarm clock, jabbing at the “time set” button: 6:31. 32. 33. 34. 35. “I feel like I'm in this alone,” he spoke to the clock, red numbers skittering by. “I don't know what else to do, Char. Maybe you're never going to get there. Maybe you're never going to get there with
me.”

“It's not you,” Charlotte said quickly, and this she wholeheartedly believed. “And besides, I don't care, it doesn't matter—”

“Of course it matters.”

“But why?” she said, feeling desperate.

“If you'd ever had one,” he said, switching off the bedside lamp, “you wouldn't have to ask.”

Charlotte believed this was probably true. Still, she had no problem missing out on orgasms. She planned on missing out on lots of potentially pleasurable things: Godiva chocolates, gondolas in Venice, tropical islands. Plus, orgasms weren't proving to be pleasurable; they were causing her nothing but trouble. She didn't need them. She didn't even want them. And if this didn't bother her, why should it bother him?