The Hazards of Sleeping Alone (16 page)

“Okay.”

Joe pauses, then says, “Don't worry. This will all be okay.” His words sound awkward, even tender, and Charlotte just manages to hang up the phone before she starts to cry.

When she hears the noise, Charlotte goes through all the usual motions: panic, sweat, racing heart, bedside light, eyes adjusting, reality sinking in. Clock check: 1:47
A.M.
She gets up and turns the Dream Machine off, then stands still, listening. Faintly, she hears it again: voices. Under her bedroom door, she sees a bar of light. Charlotte pulls on her robe, steps into the hallway, and blinks into the brightness. Lights are on in the living room, kitchen, even the bathroom. But the sounds are coming from outside, on the patio. She can make out Emily and Walter, but there are other voices, ones she recognizes but cannot place.

Charlotte starts toward the sliding door, then hears a burst of loud laughter and picks up her pace. It's much too late for them to be making this kind of commotion; the neighbors are going to get angry.

When Charlotte yanks back the sliding door, four heads turn in her direction. She processes the scene quickly: Emily and Walter occupying one of the chairs, Emily in his lap, Walter resting one hand on top of her head. Cross-legged in the other chair is a woman Charlotte doesn't know, and sitting on the ground, propped against the house, is a man. The woman holds the glowing stub of a cigarette. The man is smoking too, legs bent, an unfinished carton of Thai food resting on his knees. On the table are the remnants of the six-pack of Sam Adams Summer Ale: the cardboard box, scattering of twisted caps, empty amber-colored bottles glowing orange in the porch light.

“Hey!” Walter shouts. “Charlotte!” He is seemingly oblivious to the time, to his voice. Charlotte looks quickly at Emily, who flinches for just a second. Then the flash of guilt is gone; she is still angry.

“Is this your mom?” the woman says eagerly.

“Yeah.” Emily looks at Charlotte. Even in the darkness, Charlotte can see the clenched knot of jaw below her ear. “Mom, meet your mystery neighbor.”

The woman untangles her legs and stands, transferring her cigarette to the opposite hand. Charlotte watches her wobbly approach across the fake stones. This is B. Morgan? The woman she's been hearing upstairs for the past two months? It can't be. B. should be in her early thirties, thirty-five at most. This woman must be pushing forty, despite her best efforts to appear younger. Her hair is dyed an unnatural black, tapering to sharp points by her ears. She's wearing a jean jacket over a tight pink shirt and a pair of jeans, the jacket and jeans two slightly different shades of blue. The whole outfit is unflatteringly tight, serving only to accentuate the slight bulge of her belly, the plumping of middle age. Her face is soft, vaguely self-conscious.

“I'm Bea.” The woman extends her right hand. “I live upstairs.”

Charlotte pauses, disoriented. Could her name actually be “B”?

“It's Beatrice,” Emily supplies, reading her thoughts. “Bea, this is my mother. Her name is Charlotte.”

“Yes,” Charlotte says, taking Bea's limp hand. “Charlotte Warren.”

“Nice to meet you.” Bea smiles a warm, crooked smile.

Charlotte withdraws her hand, gives her terry-cloth belt a tug.

“And this is Bill.” Bea gestures to the man on the ground. “My boyfriend.”

“Pleasure,” Bill says, forking up some pad thai.

“We met them in O'Grady's,” Emily says. “It's a pretty good bar, right around the corner. Ever been there, Mom?”

Charlotte glances at her daughter. Walter raps his knuckles on top of her head, as if in reprimand.

“Have you, Charlotte?” Bea says, her face furrowing in genuine confusion. “I don't think I've ever seen you there—wait, have I?”

“Oh, no,” Charlotte assures her.

“Mom keeps to herself,” Emily says.

Charlotte looks again at her daughter. Is she just angry about earlier, or has she been drinking? She turns to Walter as if for a signal: a firm shake of the head, a thumbs-up, an assurance that he would not have let that happen. But Walter is taking a swig from his bottle. Charlotte feels deserted. It's the same way she felt as a child when her parents had a few glasses of wine. They would grow giddy, distant, distracted, becoming other people, people who existed in a world apart from hers. She looks at the empty bottle on the table; it could belong to any of them.

“Still,” Bea says, “isn't that funny that we've never run into each other? Being neighbors and all?” She laughs, and Charlotte recognizes it as the laugh from the stairwell, though it sounds different coming from these slightly overlapping front teeth. Bea's red lipstick clings to her mouth unevenly, darker on the edges and faded in the center from beer bottles and cigarettes.

“It is strange, I guess.”

“It's fucked up,” Emily snorts. Walter reaches a hand around her face to cover her mouth.

Bea takes a final drag, then leans down toward Bill. She grinds the stub of her cigarette into what Charlotte realizes is serving as an ashtray: a Thai carton, presumably empty, propped precariously on the lopsided stones. Charlotte feels herself
beginning to sweat. She wants nothing more than to just get off the porch and back into bed. She wishes she'd never known this was happening, that she'd slept right through it. Still, she can't leave without saying something about the neighbors. Not only are these people on Charlotte's porch, making too much noise, but Bea Morgan is one of them. God knows what kind of reputation she has at Sunset Heights.

Bea goes to sit back down, then stops. “Oh, did you want to sit here, Charlotte?”

“No, no, I'm fine.”

“Seriously, I'll take the floor.”

“I'm going back to bed,” Charlotte says firmly, with a look at Emily.

But it is Walter who responds, albeit sluggishly, the rules of conduct triggered somewhere in his brain. “Aw, did we wake you up?
Again?
“ A broad smile stretches across his face. “You'd think I could make it through one night here without waking you up, huh, Charlotte?”

His words are slurred slightly. Charlotte doesn't like talking to him like this. He is not the same boy he was this afternoon. All the pieces are there—his politeness, his light, teasing affection—but they are blurred by alcohol, and devalued.

“Oh my God,” Bea says, clapping a hand to her mouth. “We woke you up?”

“Oh, no no,” she says, though she has no idea why this should be surprising. It's two in the morning. Then again, Bea's night has probably just begun. “I was already awake.” It has become her mantra this weekend. “In fact, I should go back to bed.”

“Us too,” Bea says quickly. “Come on, Bill. Get up.”

“Guys, you don't have to—” Emily says.

“It's late. Bill's half asleep already.”

Bill hoists himself from the ground as Bea hugs Emily and Walter. “Next time you're in town, we're all going out.”

“Definitely,” Emily says.

“Take care, guys,” from Walter.

“See you soon.” Bea smiles at Charlotte. “Neighbor.”

She gives a flustered wave to the patio at large and then, to Charlotte's chagrin, steps through her sliding door. She watches as Bea and Bill cross her living room, exiting by her foyer. Granted, it's a quicker route than walking all the way around the house, but she's still shocked they would walk through without asking. Then it occurs to her they've probably been traipsing in and out of her house all night. Using her bathroom, picking through her refrigerator. Bill was probably peeing just yards from where Charlotte lay asleep. She vows never again to use the Dream Machine.

Standing on her patio in the middle of the night, clutching her bathrobe around her, Charlotte feels what is becoming a familiar sense of disbelief. Walter and Emily are cuddled in a chair as if their earlier conversation never happened, as if there is not a baby growing between them. The smell of Thai is overbearing, mingling with the beer's sour afterhaze. Charlotte wants to pry open Emily's mouth and check her breath.

Instead, she begins to tidy up. She picks up the now-empty Thai cartons, the makeshift ashtray, the empty cardboard shell of the six-pack.

“Just leave it, Mom,” Emily says, but Charlotte ignores her. Walter has leaned his head back and closed his eyes—is he asleep? disinterested? unconscious?—as Charlotte picks up as much as her arms can hold and walks inside.

In the kitchen, she is detached. Efficient. Scraping the insides
of cartons into the garbage disposal. Throwing empty boxes in the trashcan. Compressing the six-pack into a tidy cardboard square. But in the bottom of the final carton, oily droplets clinging to its inner walls, she sees a nest of cigarette butts in a puddle of “brown sauce,” and it is this that finally brings tears to her eyes. She puts the carton down, sags against the refrigerator door. Then, afraid Emily or Walter might find her, she bolts for the bathroom and locks herself inside.

Pressing her forehead against the mirror, she smells smoke, probably bar smoke that clung to Bea and Bill as they washed their hands in her sink. When she goes to sit, she sees that the toilet seat's been left up. She slams the lid down, only to be taunted by the ridiculously fluffy cover. She considers sinking to the tub ledge, but it seems so melodramatic. She's seen people in movies sinking to tub ledges, clutching at shower curtains, and it's always struck her as over-the-top. But maybe it isn't. Maybe the tub ledge is actually the last refuge of the truly devastated, the locked-in-bathrooms, foreheads-pressed-to-mirrors, and she's just never felt quite that desperate before.

It's the flat fish swarming the walls that keep Charlotte at eye level. Leaning against the sink, she examines herself in the mirror glass. She studies her naked face, her matted hair, her worn orange robe; she cannot believe two strangers just saw her looking this way. She is furious at Emily for bringing them here without asking, for letting her look so old and unkempt and foolish, for taking such liberties with her home, breaking its seal, disrupting its routine, forcing all these introductions, these interconnections, these stimuli—smoke and neighbors and Thai food and beer bottles and laughter splitting apart the quiet night—forcing the circles of her life to widen and widen when all she wants to do is stay inside and untouched and alone.

From upstairs, Charlotte hears the bedsprings. She doesn't know which is worse, imagining attractive, exotic strangers or knowing who is really up there: soft, drunk, insecure Bea and Bill. She squeezes her eyes shut, wanting to plug her ears, take a pill to make her fall asleep and wake when it's light and quiet and everyone is gone and all of this is over. To think she was worried about Emily not feeling comfortable here, not feeling like she could treat the condo like home. To think that she, Charlotte, was craving company. She wants nothing more than to have her house back to herself.

Heading back to the sliding doors Charlotte feels unsteady on her feet. From the doorway, she sees Walter and Emily haven't moved, except now they are kissing. Emily is curled up in his lap, his face tilted back and obscured by her long tangle of brown hair. But instead of retreating, Charlotte steps outside and begins collecting the empty bottles to drop into the recycling bin.

“Mom,” Emily says, her voice flat. “What are you doing.”

“Cleaning up.”

“Do you have to do it now?”

“Well, someone has to sometime.” She places three bottles into the bin, careful not to let them clank.

“We'll take care of it. Just leave it.”

“I'll help,” Walter says, starting to slide her off his lap.

“No, Wal.” Emily puts her hands on his shoulders.

Charlotte stares at her daughter. “Emily, have you been drinking?”

“Just because we were kissing doesn't mean we're drunk, Mom.”

“Have you?”

“Maybe I have. Maybe I haven't. It doesn't matter anyway.”

Charlotte crosses the patio and picks up the half-empty bottle left beside Bea's chair.

“It doesn't matter if I'm poisoning the baby,” Emily says, louder. “Because
I'm not having it.
”

Charlotte pours what's left in the bottle onto the lawn.

“You're killing your grass,” Emily mutters.

Charlotte spins to face her. “Well you're killing your baby!”

Only after she yells does she realize how late it is, and how loud she was. Gently, she places the bottle in the bin. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Walter is standing. For a moment she thinks he might be rising with her, in an act of solidarity. Instead he walks off into the backyard without a word. Maybe he's so drunk he doesn't realize where he's going. Maybe he's lost and thinks he's back in New Hampshire.

“Where is he going?” Charlotte demands. She can barely contain her whisper.

“He's getting wood.”