The Hazards of Sleeping Alone (10 page)

Charlotte looks at her daughter. To her relief, she finds a smile on her face.

“B. Morgan?” Emily whispers.

Charlotte nods, chewing on her bottom lip.

They listen, watching each other, as the floorboards begin to creak. A loud thud—a shoe kicked across the room?—is followed by the sounds of bodies tripping, stumbling lustily across B. Morgan's bedroom floor. Charlotte remembers what Emily said earlier and is flooded with unwanted images of handcuffs, whips, ropes. Within seconds, the crunching of bedsprings echoes through the ceiling. Charlotte feels her face turn red.

“My God.” Emily flops backward on the couch and picks up the Victoria's Secret catalog. “That is the most boring prostitute I've ever heard.”

When Charlotte hears the knock, her beside clock glows 2:37
A.M.
Fear follows its usual progression: moment of alarm, surge, sweat. Racing heart. Bedside light. Quick survey of room to recall herself to where she is, the borders crystallizing between being asleep and awake. It takes a moment to realize that, while usually these knocks are only in her head, this one is real. She hears it again, then remembers Walter. The knock is tentative, probably not loud enough for Emily to hear.

Charlotte gets out of bed and pulls on her old orange robe. The butterflies, she notes, are beginning to fray around the wings. She waits a moment longer, ear to door, making sure Emily isn't getting up. But there's the knock again: a notch louder, but nothing capable of waking Emily.

Charlotte knots her belt around her middle. She thinks despairingly of her bare face and worn robe and pillow-matted hair before stepping out of her bedroom and into the hall. She unbolts the front door and opens it just a crack. Sure enough, Walter is squinting in the fluorescent glow of the porch light. Behind him, a taxi is winding down the driveway toward the street.

“Charlotte?” Walter whispers.

“Yes?”

“I thought Em was going to let me in.”

“She's asleep.”

“Oh.” He pauses. “Oh, man. I'm sorry.”

A moth finds the porch light and flings itself, buzzing, against the glass. In the square of orangey light, Walter looks different than he did at graduation. What he wore that day—the short Afro, the blue jeans, the scruffy hint of beard—is the way Charlotte has been picturing him ever since. Tonight, he has on sneakers and running pants with white stripes down the sides. He's clean-shaven, his hair coiled in braids, or cornrows—are they still called cornrows?—tight against his head. The earrings and eyebrow ring are missing. The wooden cross around his neck remains.

“I'm sorry,” he says again, shifting his feet. “Em was supposed to let me in. You were supposed to sleep right through it. I'm really sorry.”

Charlotte can't help but feel a little sorry for the boy. She feels the chill creeping in from outside and knots her robe tighter, folds her arms across her chest.

“It's fine.” She whispers too, though she's not sure why. After all, the idea is to wake Emily. “I was awake anyway.”

Walter half nods, clearly not believing her. Behind him, the
cab's taillights disappear, the rumble of the engine melting away.

Charlotte clears her throat and speaks louder. “Well, come on in.” She widens the door a bit. “It's too cold to stand out there.”

She takes a step backward and is so preoccupied with her blank face and ratty robe that she's caught completely off guard when Walter, stepping over the threshold, says, “Good to see you again, Charlotte,” and enfolds her in a tight hug.

It happens so quickly, she doesn't have time to react. Her chin is pressed against Walter's collarbone. Her arms, still folded, are lodged awkwardly between her chest and his. She has no free hand to return the hug, or even pat his shoulder in a maternal sort of way, and before she knows it, he's standing in the middle of the foyer a good three feet away.

Charlotte shuts the door, feeling herself redden. She hopes she hasn't offended him by not returning the hug, hopes he can't see her face. In the weak light spilling from the hallway, she can barely make out his. She can see, however, that he's still holding his duffel bag.

“Can I take your bag, Walter?”

“Nah, I got it.”

“How about a drink? Some water? Or—root beer?”

“No, thanks.”

“I have beer, too. Sam Adams Summer Ale. How about a Sam Adams Summer Ale and something to eat? I have some pasta alfredo I can heat up. Take me two minutes. You must be starving.”

“I'm good.” He laughs a little, shifts the bag to his other hand. “I've been enough trouble already, waking you up.”

“I was awake anyway.” For some reason, she wants him to believe this. “I was.”

“All right.” He nods. “Okay. Well, I appreciate it.”

A sleepy voice calls out from the living room. “Wal?”

“Hey in there,” Walter says. His voice instantly loses its formality, growing tender. “Wake up, sleepyhead.”

“What are you doing?” Emily murmurs.

“Talking to your mom.”

Charlotte looks at her feet.

“She had to get up to let me in.”

“Oh,” Emily says, the word riding on a long yawn. “Sorry, Mom.”

Walter adds, “Sorry again, Charlotte,” before moving in the direction of Emily's voice. The dark in the living room is fuzzy, gray-black, tinged with the faint light from the patio. Charlotte can just make out Emily's silhouette sitting up, Walter's form easing toward her. When she lifts her face toward his, Charlotte hurries back to her room.

C
harlotte watches the clock. She's perched on the edge of her bed, hands folded in her lap. She's quarantined herself to her bedroom until 9:30
A.M.,
not wanting to emerge too early and risk waking Emily and Walter or, worse, interrupt something—changing, fighting, cuddling, God knows what else—by coming out too late. Best to catch them somewhere between deeply asleep and fully conscious. Nine-thirty seems right.

She focuses on the objects on her dresser, trying to keep her mind a blank. Framed photo from her parents' wedding. Bottle of Jergens extra-moisturizing lotion. Domed gold clock, its elegant hands like the stems of typewriter keys. The purple perfume bottle Emily once bought her at a yard sale, its ornate pump and tassel so unlike Charlotte they struck Emily as hilarious.

Charlotte tries to fill her mind with these things, their angles and colors and shapes. Unfortunately, she can't keep her mind from sneaking out the door, down the hall, and to the living room, where she imagines Walter and Emily entwined in the
tangle of sheets. What were they wearing? How were they sleeping? Was Emily sleeping on her back, like she always used to? Or did she fit inside him, curled on her side, his breath on her neck?

She stares at the limp chain dangling from the ceiling fan. Its tarnished beads look like a string of black-eyed peas. She realizes she'd forgotten to remind Emily how the sofa bed worked—well, not forgotten. To have acknowledged that the sofa turned into a bed would have been acknowledging that Walter and Emily were sleeping in a bed, a reality Charlotte was trying her best to avoid. If they didn't have a conversation about it, she wasn't condoning it. Nor was she objecting to it. She'd left out an extra set of bedding without comment, stacked under the extra set of towels. For all she knew, Walter slept on the floor.

Of course, if the sleeping arrangements had really been bothering her, she should have spoken up. But really, when? This plan had been dropped on her so abruptly. Maybe if they'd stayed up gossiping and eating Thai food out of cartons like she'd wanted to, she could have brought it up when the moment felt right. But now a sleeping precedent had been set. To object tonight would be silly.
We live together!
Emily would argue.
We sleep in the same bed every night!
Charlotte doesn't want to make any more waves, especially now that Walter's here. And even if they did sleep separately, where would they go? Emily would sleep with her, she supposed, Walter would take the couch … oh, it was simpler to just not ask.

When the filigreed tip of the minute hand grazes the six, Charlotte stands. She gives herself one more quick survey in the mirror. Unlike last night, today she is fully showered, concealed, arranged. She even took special care with her makeup, applying a light foundation all over her face to make up for the sight she must have been at 2:37
A.M.
She opens the door. No sound from
the living room, but the world outside is awake. She hears the slam of a car door, the rustling of leaves, bark of a dog. She can even smell a neighbor's coffee brewing. Yes, she thinks: her timing is right. Not too early, not too late. She'll make pancakes. No—too sizzly. Muffins. Quiet dollops of batter and a silent thirty-minute bake.

Charlotte steps lightly toward the kitchen, calculating how much flour she has, whether the blueberries she bought Monday will still be fresh, and is startled to find Walter sitting at the table. He's paging through the well-worn
People
and sipping coffee from
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY.

“Hey.” He smiles and raises his cup. “Morning, Charlotte.”

He's wearing the same running pants he arrived in, dark blue with stripes down the sides. A ribbed gray tank top bares his muscled arms. And the jewelry is back: ring in his brow, diamond in each ear.

“Walter, I—I didn't expect to see you up so early.”

“I've been up a while.” He shrugs. “Em's the sleeper. I like to get the day going, you know?”

She does know, more than he knows. She looks at the full coffeemaker, usually her first stop, and is at a loss for what to do.

“Hope you don't mind I made the coffee.”

“No, no, not at all.”

“It's one of my talents.”

“Oh?”

“Seriously, I make a good cup of coffee.” He grins. “Woodworking and coffeemaking. Not a bad package, huh?”

Charlotte can manage nothing but a nervous smile. It sounds as if Walter is kidding, or flirting—is he flirting? Whatever his tone, she doesn't understand it. Maybe his humor is young for her, too hip, or too, well, urban. Urban? Does she mean black?

“Nice day out, huh?”

“Oh, yes.” She glances toward the window. “Lovely.”

In truth, the sunlight is so bright she finds herself squinting. Walter opened the blinds all the way; usually she leaves them half open, slanted upward, giving her just enough light to see by yet total privacy from her neighbors.

“Bright,” she adds. The light makes the braids glisten in Walter's hair. The silver ring glints in his eyebrow. When she turns to the cabinet, white spots swarm before her eyes.

“Good day for a jog,” Walter says.

Maybe he'll take a jog right now. “It is.”

She opens the refrigerator, extracts a carton of milk from the door. It occurs to her that Walter must have been in here—for the coffee grounds, if nothing else—and this makes her feel acutely embarrassed. She scans the contents: Slim-Fast shakes, fat-free margarine, low-cal whipped cream. She pictures the Weight Watchers Smart Ones stacked in the freezer, their fancy menus—piccatas, marsalas—packaged into lonely, frozen portions for one. Her mind races to the bathroom cabinets: wrinkle concealer, wart remover, antacids in assorted tropical fruits.

Charlotte shuts the refrigerator, not caring if the noise wakes Emily. She
should
be woken. She invited Walter and should be out here keeping him entertained.

“Hey, this any good?”

She turns to see Walter flipping through the book still sitting on the windowsill where Emily left it. She can hear Emily ranting about corporate book clubs:
The books are all the same, Mom! Mediocre writing with an unrealistically hopeful ending!

“I'm enjoying it,” Charlotte says carefully. She likes the hopeful endings, even if they do sometimes feel a bit forced. “But—I didn't choose it.”

“One of Em's?”

“It's for my book group.”

“Yeah?” Walter says, scanning the back cover. “What's your book group?”

Charlotte wishes he would just leave her and her things alone. Put down the book, stay out of the fridge, stay away from the coffeemaker, do not open the bathroom cabinet, do not touch the blinds, do not feel obligated to make comments or ask questions. She feels like a charity case: the girlfriend's mother the boyfriend must treat politely until the girlfriend shows up.

“It's just a group of women,” Charlotte says, pouring carefully. “Friends from my old neighborhood. Not even friends, exactly—our children went to school together.”

“Okay,” Walter nods. “Friends by default. So how does the group work?”

Charlotte stirs a half teaspoon of sugar into her cup. “It's not too exciting, really. We just read a book each month, then get together to talk about it.” She puts her spoon down. Then, because she feels too awkward drinking standing up, she pulls out a chair and perches stiffly on the edge.

“I'd love to get into something like that.” Walter cracks the book open and now appears to be reading the inside flap. “How does it work? Who picks them?”

“Well—” Discreetly, Charlotte scoots a few inches back on her chair until her whole rear is safely on it. “First we tried rotating—you know, one person choosing the book each month. But that didn't work very well.”

“How come?”

She takes a sip of coffee. It is good, she has to admit, less watery than when she makes it. “Some people have very different tastes, for one. Some were just petty about it, refusing to
read what others picked because they hadn't liked the book
they
picked, or they didn't like them personally, that sort of thing. People can be difficult for the sake of being difficult.”

“I hear you,” Walter says, shaking his head. He picks up his coffee mug, watching her over the rim. “What book did you pick?”