The Hazards of Sleeping Alone (36 page)

It's true: Charlotte was always painfully aware that her life with her daughter was not a given. That her situation was fragile, precious. She didn't have the luxury of other mothers, mothers whose children were stuck with them, so to speak. How she envied these women who had their daughters in their houses year-round, who knew for sure they'd be there until they left for college, slumped over bowls of cereal in the mornings, sprawled in front of the TV at night, fruit shampoos crowding the tub ledge and shoes piled on the landing and phone cords straining around bedroom walls and under closet doors. These women could afford to get angry with their daughters without fear they might pack their bags and leave. Ultimately, it was probably why Emily's personality grew so forceful: it had the room to grow, the space to fill, her mother too afraid that if she boxed her daughter in, she'd fly away.

“I wasn't being dishonest,” Charlotte says. “At least I wasn't
trying to be. But maybe you're right, about the other—being afraid you would leave me.” It hurts to even say it. “I knew how much you loved Seattle. It was definitely hipper than New Jersey.”

The word sounds so wrong coming out of her mouth—is it even a word, “hipper”?—that both of them smile.

“So I guess it did worry me,” Charlotte concedes, laughing a little. “There I go again, huh? Agreeing with you again?”

Emily sniffles, but laughs too. Charlotte feels her lungs expand, her heart relax. She knows she could end this conversation now, duck out a side exit, and some part of her deeply wants to, but another part of her can't. She's always known Emily was strong, but she's realizing now just how much bravery it requires to simply be honest. Charlotte wants to be that strong too. She hears last night's conversation in the barn with Walter unspooling in her frozen ears:
Sometimes you sell yourself short. You know what's going on.

“But sometimes—”

Emily looks at her.

Charlotte chooses her words carefully. “Sometimes, I feel like you do things I won't agree with, just
because
I won't agree with them.”

“Like what?”

“Like—” She thinks for a minute. “In ninth grade, when you painted your bedroom black.”

Emily laughs. “Okay.”

“Or in college, when you pierced your belly button. Or when you dated that boy who was a Communist. Or going on that no-eggs diet, or ordering Thai food when you came to visit.” She hesitates. “I hate Thai food.”

“Why did you eat it then?”

“Because you made me.”

“I didn't
make
you,” Emily says. “I'm just trying to open you up to new things.”

“New things I don't like!”

“How do you know you don't like them? You don't even try them!”

Charlotte falls silent, chastised. “I guess I feel sometimes like you choose things I won't like. Just like you do things I won't like. Because you know they'll make me feel—” She pauses, then yields to herself. “Scared.”

Once released, the word feels heavy in the atmosphere, not floating but hunkered down, solid as a coin in a fountain. Maybe it's the cold, Charlotte thinks. Unlike the wind or the waves, this cold air doesn't whisk conversations away; it makes the words feel permanent, every breath and sigh frozen into place.

Emily tucks her chin in her mittened hands. “Mayyybe.” She draws out the word as if reluctant to commit to it. “Maybe when I was younger, like with the belly button. But not now. I don't make decisions to freak you out, we just have different tastes. We have different opinions. Besides, that's not even true anymore,” she says, looking up. “Because you like Walter.”

It's true. She
has
grown to like Walter. Simultaneously, she realizes, Emily seems to be having doubts about him. It occurs to her that this—she, Charlotte—might be part of the reason Emily is losing interest. Maybe the fact that she likes Walter is making Emily shy away.
That's what you do, Em,
Walter had said.
You throw yourself into something, but soon as you convince everybody else, soon as there's nothing to fight against, it's not worth believing in anymore.
Was
she
the thing Emily was fighting? Was Walter more attractive when he was controversial? Because initially,
they were a radical idea: an interracial couple, unmarried, pregnant. But now that the world was accepting them—even
supporting
them-Emily was pulling away.

“Yes, but—” Charlotte lowers her voice to a murmur. “But now you're having doubts.”

Emily says nothing. Charlotte wonders if she heard. Cold has coiled under her blanket, swollen her toes, lodged in her jaws like two aching copper pennies. “Aren't you?” she asks, a note louder.

“I guess,” Emily says. “Yeah.”

As much as Charlotte sensed this, it hurts to hear. She tucks her hands between her thighs. “Honey,” she says, “do you like Walter less because I like him?”

“Mom, seriously.”

“Do you?”

“It's not that simple.”

“Maybe it is.”

Emily shakes her head. “It isn't.”

Charlotte waits for an explanation, but Emily doesn't offer one. She starts picking at her bridesmaid blanket, a pink taffeta patch coming loose at one corner.

“Walter's a good man,” Charlotte says, keeping her voice low. “And he's the father of your child.”

Emily frowns. “So that means …”

“I just don't want you to make a mistake. Walter loves you.” She recalls the conversation around the dinner table on Thanksgiving, about pregnancy and Emily being in labor. She remembers the genuine concern that filled Walter's voice that night, the wave of pain that rippled across his face, and suddenly she feels angry. “I sometimes wonder if you know how lucky you are.”

“I know I'm lucky.”

“Do you?” Charlotte snaps. She feels her eyes water and widens them defiantly, letting the cold air touch her eyeballs, drying them on contact. “Do you really? Do you know how lucky it is to have someone who cares about you that much? Someone who winces at the thought of your pain? Do you know how
rare
it is to have that?”

Emily stops picking at the blanket and looks up. And at the same moment, Charlotte feels herself disengage. She is exiting the conversation, buoyed by alarm at her own outburst, focusing on Emily's chunky, mittened hands. Her mind spirals back to the mittens Emily loved as a child. Freezy Freakies. She can picture them in the hall closet on Dunleavy Street, blank puffs of white except for the body of a peacock: featherless, just a stem with head and feet. Once the mittens hit the cold, its plume would surface, the feathers made of brightly colored hearts. Once Charlotte had felt a draft in the living room and found Emily kneeling on the kitchen counter, window yanked open, dangling the mittens outside to watch the hearts rise.

But now Emily is looking at her closely. “It's not that rare.”

Charlotte looks up and is surprised to see her eyes are teary. “What isn't?”

“Having someone care about you. People have that all the time.”

People.
Charlotte widens her eyes until they burn.
People who aren't Charlotte.

“And they
should.
“ Emily sits up straighter, brushing at her eyes. “This is why you should get out more, Mom. Because it kills me to hear you say that. This is why you shouldn't be alone.” Her voice is getting louder, hands fluttering like wings in Charlotte's peripheral vision. “Because it's not enough.”

“What?” Charlotte blinks, eyes filling the moment their guard is down. “What's not enough?”

“Me.”

Charlotte looks out at the stars. As if from a distance, she hears Emily's voice drifting toward her. “I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately,” she says. “You being alone. And what happened after Dad left.”

It's the first time Charlotte's heard her call Joe “Dad” since she was in high school, but it's not nearly as jarring as the statement itself.
What happened,
she said. But nothing
happened.
If anything, life after the divorce went on more smoothly than it did before. There were no glitches, no ruptures, no conflicts. Charlotte had made sure of it.

“What do you mean?”

Emily pauses. “We're being honest, right?”

Charlotte nods.

“Well.” Emily crosses her arms across her chest, mittened hands hugging her shoulders. “I think after he left, and it was just the two of us, you kind of stopped living for yourself. You started, kind of, substituting my life for yours.” She sighs, and the sigh takes shape, a cloud hovering for a moment before dissolving into the darkness. “Walter and I have been talking about this, and—”

A horrible picture enters Charlotte's mind, shattering the calm: the two of them—worse, four of them—sitting around the kitchen table, smoking cigarettes and comparing childhoods, laughing at Mara's pompom picture, using words like
dysfunctional
and
codependent
and
completely fucking nuts.
And Walter, hand clasped over his heart, saying:
My parents are two of the greatest people on this earth.

“I think it's helped me see some of this stuff more clearly,”
Emily is saying. “You were really lonely-I mean, understandably. But then, because you were unhappy in your own life, you started living through mine.” She concludes in a rush. “I mean, I don't know, maybe this is all completely off, but it's possible the reason you never wanted to disagree with me was that if you're that involved in somebody else's life, then they do something you don't agree with, then where do you …”

Where do you turn?
Charlotte closes her eyes and completes the question.
Where do you go without a life that is your own?
It isn't crazy, she thinks, and squeezes her eyes shut, jaws singing with cold. She's wandering deep in the heart now, squeezing through its narrow stairwells, groping its smooth velvety walls. Her only option is to move forward and trust she'll emerge safely on the other side.

“I know it was all because you care, Mom.” Emily's voice is gentle. “It all comes from love.”

It all comes from love.
Walter had said this, hadn't he? Last night, in the barn, reassuring Charlotte about him and Emily.
It
all comes from love,
he'd said.
It all comes from the right place.
Emily is quoting him directly. Or else, she realizes, Walter was quoting her.

Emily is sitting forward now, face bright and urgent. “I mean,” she says, “can you imagine it? Us sharing a life?” Her tone is more animated, cheeks flushed with the cold and the effort. “It would never work. I'd drive you crazy. I sleep until the middle of the afternoon. I drink soy milk. I'm constantly piercing things.”

She smiles, hopefully and through swelling tears, and Charlotte feels a rush of love. Love for her daughter, love for her trying to make her smile at the same time she's telling her something she so needs to hear.

“Not to mention,” Charlotte adds, “you have a treacherous staircase.”

Emily's expression hovers for a moment, unsure whether Charlotte is criticizing her or playing along, then melts with relief. “And a school with no report cards,” she smiles, joining in.

“An obstetrician who wears blue jeans.”

“Exotic spices.”

“Tofu turkeys.”

“A litter box.”

“Love Butter.”

“Mom!” Emily shrieks, and her face freezes, mouth open. “You were spying!”

“I wasn't
spying.
I just—saw it.”

“How?”

“I don't know. I needed something in the cabinet.”

“Oh, my God.” Emily starts to giggle, the sound loose and uncontrolled, like a rolling marble. “You must have died. I would have paid money to see your face.”

She laughs harder, and the sound is contagious. Soon Charlotte finds herself laughing too, both of their faces turning pink, the sight of the other making each laugh harder. It occurs to Charlotte how close the mechanics of laughing are to crying: the same watering of the eyes, expunging of the insides, aching in the chest.

“This,” Emily says, as they calm down, “is why you need to get out there.”

“Out where?”

“The dating game.”

Charlotte wipes her eyes. “And why is that?”

“Because you need some Love Butter of your own.”

Though usually her instinct would be to snap, “Don't be silly,” something about the cold and the laughter and New Hampshire make Charlotte feel reckless, fancy-free. “Actually,” she says, “Bea's trying to set me up with someone.”

“What?” Emily's eyes bulge, and she stops laughing. “Who? Wait—forget that. It doesn't matter. You're so going. Bea wouldn't set you up with a loser. So wait—who?”

“One of her regulars. At the—” She considers saying Friendly's, but sidesteps it. “The restaurant.”

“Age?”

“Mid-fifties.”

“Job?”

“A sales rep. Pharmaceuticals.”

Emily taps her top lip. “Maybe he can score you some sleeping pills.”

“Emily.”

“I'm kidding. Name?”

Charlotte pauses, then bites the bullet. “Howie.”

She can see Emily trying to suppress a smile, then they both burst out laughing again. It's not very nice, Charlotte thinks. She'll do it just this once, to get it out of her system. The laugh feels good, and necessary, like a final purge, the last firm shove out of the labyrinth of the heart and back into the world.

“Who cares.” Emily shakes her head. “Names can be misleading, right? Look at Walter. He's nothing like a
Walter.
”

Charlotte nods, remembering their long-ago conversation on graduation day. Now she can't imagine Walter being named anything else.