The Hazards of Sleeping Alone (7 page)

“Fine,” Emily concedes. She's peeled apart a spring roll and is now dissecting its insides like a lab experiment. “You're busy. I respect that.”

Charlotte pops an unknown vegetable in her mouth: white, seemingly innocuous, shaped like a poker chip. Her throat burns.

“But dating doesn't have to mean a total lifestyle change, you know?” Emily says. “It might just add some spice to your life.”

Maybe I don't want more spice in my life, Charlotte snaps, but only on the inside. She stares at the forbidding orange-red sauce that has now pooled in front of her, invaded her sinuses, tinged everything on her plate a warning shade of red. Her throat is burning, nose starting to run. Suddenly she feels intensely resentful of everything: the Thai food she was made to eat, the worry she's continually made to feel, the footsteps she treads in tiny, careful circles around her daughter, only to get ridiculous inquiries about her love life in return.

Beau.
What a silly phrase. It's so old-fashioned. Embarrassing.

Charlotte plucks a napkin from the plastic holder and looks directly at her daughter. “Why aren't you eating?”

Emily pauses for a second, then says evenly, “I am eating.” She picks up a wrinkled pepper, leans her head back, opens her mouth, and drops it in.

Charlotte looks away. She presses the napkin to each eye. She hopes Emily knows it's the spices that are making her cry.

“Mom.” Emily sighs. “I don't have an eating disorder, if that's what you're worried about.”

“That's not what I'm worried about.” Charlotte blows her nose.

“Right.”

“I mean, well, fine. Yes. It did cross my mind. Because you've barely touched your dinner.” She folds the used napkin into a tiny, damp square and places it in her lap. “But I didn't really think you had one.”

“Good. Because I'm not that trendy.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

Charlotte picks up a teabag and fingers the paper tassel. “Good Taste Tea Bag,” it says, in sticklike orange letters.

“Want me to put on some water?” she asks, knowing the answer.

“No, thanks,” Emily says. “You should try some, though. It's good.”

“Oh, I could never drink tea before bed.” Charlotte laughs. It's an unattractive laugh, bitter and self-deprecating. “I'd lose more sleep than I do already.” Then she scrapes back her chair and starts packing up the leftovers, pinching the plastic lids to the sides of the sagging foil containers.

Emily uncrosses her legs and stands to help. “You know what you need, Mom?” she says, her voice more gentle.

“Hmm?”

“Sleepytime tea. It'll put you right out.”

“Wouldn't that be nice.” Charlotte picks up the bowl of half-melted ice and dumps it in the sink. The truth is, she's considered taking something to help her sleep, but the thought of being alone in the middle of the night, drugged, semiconscious, makes her feel more vulnerable than she does already.

“Just don't take No-Doz.” Emily starts stacking dishes. “Janie took it cramming for our Chem 101 final and didn't sleep for the next four years.”

Charlotte pauses, dripping foil pan in hand. “Janie Grobel?”

“She got addicted to it.”

“She did?”

“She started taking it to help her study and got completely hooked.” Emily is carrying a stack of dishes to the sink, where Charlotte stands frozen to the spot. “Senior year we had this whole intervention thing where we flushed all her pills and Janie started freaking out.” She starts scraping plates into the garbage disposal. “It was all very
90210.
”

“Why didn't you ever tell me?”

Emily turns the disposal on and raises her voice. “I don't know. I mean, over-the-counter caffeine pills? It's kind of lame as far as addictions go.” She flicks the disposal off and looks at Charlotte's face. “Oh, come on, Mom. Please don't get all freaked out.”

But it's too late. Charlotte
is
all freaked out. She can't help but
be
all freaked out. She pictures little Janie Grobel, Emily's roommate freshman year at Wesleyan, a sweet blond girl from Minnesota. She was on the swim team and always had a pair of pink goggles dangling around her neck. Her mother used to send the girls packages of home-baked banana bread.

Watching her daughter, Charlotte feels fear. The same fear that creeps over her when she sees drunk driving commercials. The same fear she feels watching
20/20
and
Dateline
about raves and date-rape drugs and AIDS. The fear she felt reading
Reviving Ophelia
(a book group favorite) and absorbing story after story of happy, well-adjusted adolescent girls who suddenly, and with no warning, turned addictive, delinquent, rebellious. Now, like then, Charlotte senses the presence of an ambiguous, dangerous world—a world of girls addicted to over-the-counter pills and girls staging interventions and girls growing fur because they've starved all their body fat away—a world from which she can't begin to protect her daughter. She can't protect her from these dangers because she doesn't understand them. Because she isn't even aware of them. When she hears about such things, and thinks of her own sleepless nights, she sees her fears for what they really are: imaginary.

C
harlotte waits in the kitchen. Emily is still asleep, a pink tangle of blankets on the living room couch. It's good for her, Charlotte thinks, sleeping late. She must need it. Charlotte herself has been awake since 7:04
A.M.,
trying to be as quiet as possible. She bypassed the coffeemaker, knowing it would hiss and gurgle. The teapot would whistle, the toaster pop, the microwave drone and beep. The
Today Show
was out of the question. She settled for a glass of lemonade, skipping the ice.

Now it's 11:33
A.M.
Charlotte tugs at the belt of her old bathrobe, orange stitched with yellow butterflies. Carefully, she peels over a page of the
Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook,
the third cookbook she's scanned for recipes with arugula. As it turns out, these are not easy to come by. She wonders if it could be used as a substitute for something else. Mixed greens in the Twelve-Hour Vegetable Salad? Radicchio tossed with toasted walnuts and gorgonzola?

When the phone rings, Charlotte stumbles over the chair trying to get to it. “Hello,” she whispers, glancing at the couch.

“Hello?” The background is loud with the sound of machinery. “Charlotte?”

It's Walter's voice. “Yes?”

“Hey, how you doing? It's Walter.”

“Walter.” From the living room, she hears a stir. “I'm fine.”

“Listen, I'm at work, so I've only got a minute. Think I could speak to Em?”

“Well, just a—let me check.” Charlotte carries the cordless to the couch, where Emily's head has emerged from the nest of blankets, watching her with a sleepy squint.

“Honey?” Charlotte cups the receiver and speaks softly. “It's Walter.”

Emily extends one thin arm to take the phone, then burrows back down in the covers. “Hi,” she says, pulling the blanket to her chin.

Charlotte returns to the kitchen. She feels oddly purposeless. If she strained, she knows she could make out Emily's conversation, and this makes her feel intrusive. She wishes she had a bigger house, more places to retreat. She heads for the bathroom, where she dabs a spot of concealer under each eye. She runs a brush through her hair, colored an even brown, and checks the roots. Just a hint of gray. In the bedroom, she changes out of her bathrobe and into a blue cable-knit sweater and a pair of jeans. She sucks in as she zips, then yanks the sweater down, concealing the slight bulge in her belly. She gained twenty-five pounds when she was pregnant with Emily, and lost just ten of them; the other fifteen she has carried ever since.

By the time she emerges, Emily has moved onto the patio. Charlotte can see just half of her through the stripe of glass unobscured by curtain. She's still wrapped in a pink blanket, huddled in a cushionless aluminum chair, cradling the phone to her ear.

It can't hurt to make coffee now. Charlotte gets the pot brewing, sponges off the counters, rinses a bunch of grapes and sets them in a bowl. She hears the suck of the patio door being pulled open. Emily shuffles into the kitchen, blanket clutched around her head.

“Good morning!” Charlotte chirps.

“Morning.” Emily curls up in a kitchen chair, depositing the cordless on the table. Remembering her warning of the night before, Charlotte doesn't ask questions. She concentrates instead on topping off the sugar bowl.

Then: “Walter's coming.”

Charlotte's head snaps up. “Coming?”

“I know, I know, it's totally short notice—”

“Coming
here?
—

“It's not a big thing. Really. He doesn't require much.” Emily looks up. “Is it okay?”

Charlotte stares down into the white slopes of the sugar, feeling something twist in her chest. She forces her gaze to the coffeemaker, the slow, methodic drip of it, trying to keep her pulse from racing. She reminds herself of her daughter's sadness the night before. The exhaustion on her face this morning. The sleepy, squinty eyes. The left side of her face still creased with pillow marks.

“Of course,” Charlotte says, trying not to sound devastated. She caps the sugar bowl with what she hoped would be a brisk clap, but instead is a barely audible clink. “Of course it's okay.”

She waits for Emily to offer something more, some urgent reason, some couldn't-be-helped explanation for Walter's visit, but she doesn't. In fact, she doesn't seem that surprised. Is it possible she knew about it? That they planned it together before she left? The mere possibility that Emily could have known Walter
was coming—
wanted
Walter coming—is even more awful than the prospect of his being here. Maybe her funk last night wasn't because she was mad at him, but because she missed him. Because she was miserable here without him. Maybe the reality is simply this: Emily would rather spend the weekend with Walter, whom she sees every day, than with Charlotte.

“So!” Charlotte's voice is unnaturally loud. She opens the cabinet, plunks two mugs on the counter:
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY
and
YOU CAN' T BE COOL WEARING FUR.
“What time will Walter be getting here?”

“Not until late. Around two, probably.”

“Two—”

“
A.M.
”

Of course. There would be no way Walter could arrive from New Hampshire by two in the afternoon, yet this entire visit seemed so surreal Charlotte was leaving nothing to chance.

Emily reaches one hand from the folds of the blanket, plucks absently at the bunch of grapes. Something about the lackluster way she pops them in her mouth, letting the spiny stems fall to the table, angers Charlotte. She yanks open the refrigerator and reaches for one carton of regular milk, one of soy.

“So,” she says again. She must remain focused on the details. “He'll leave New Hampshire tonight, then?”

“After he gets out of work.”

“Does he have a car?”

“No.” Emily sighs, as if reminded of the burden of being the sole auto owner. “Train.”

“And how will he get from the train to the house?”

“Cab.”

“Cab?” This was a foreign concept in Millville, New Jersey. Had Charlotte ever even
seen
a cab since moving here?

“That's what he tells me.”

“Shouldn't you pick him up at the station?”

Emily simultaneously raises her hands, shoulders, and eyebrows in an exaggerated
don't-ask-me.
“He says he doesn't want me waiting in the dark. Apparently, an empty train station at two in the morning is no place for me to be.” The resentment in her tone is not surprising. Emily has never liked being seen as vulnerable, as needing protection. Though Charlotte, much as she dislikes Walter at the moment, is glad he's insisted on this.

“Plus,” Emily says, “he doesn't want to inconvenience anyone.”

A little late for that, Charlotte thinks.

“You won't even have to get up when he gets here. I'll listen for him. You'll sleep right through it. I promise.”

Charlotte slams the gaping refrigerator door. “And he'll be staying until—”

Emily gives her a quizzical look. “Sunday?” She phrases it like a question, to reinforce the obvious. It is the twenty-two-year-old tonal equivalent of the schoolyard phrase Charlotte hated most when Emily was a child:
No duh.
It was always delivered with such condescension. “No duh, Mom,” Emily would say, if Charlotte told her the school bus was late, or to take an umbrella because it was raining. “Yeah, Mom,” Joe would chime in. “No duh.”

“He'll just ride back with me, you know?”

“Right.” In other words, Walter would be here to suck up every last moment they had together. It would be too kind of him, too humane, to leave them with a few hours, minutes, to say good-bye. She feels her face beginning to get hot. “Of course.”

Charlotte faces the counter, takes hold of the smooth Formica
edge. She can feel herself beginning to lose control, the pressure of tears building behind her face, stiffening in her jaws. It isn't just that Walter is coming, but that it's all happening so casually. So nonchalantly. A quick phone call, a few details, and voilà: the plan is in motion, the weekend ruined. And there is nothing Charlotte can do about it without looking like the bad guy.

The more she thinks about Walter, the angrier she gets. It's galling, really: intruding on their weekend, imposing on the hospitality of a woman he barely knows. Even if Emily and he had come up with this plan together—even
if
—Walter should have had the sense to refuse. He should know by now that Emily can be reckless, spontaneous, irrational sometimes. He should know he needs to be the one with the head on his shoulders. She wonders about Walter's sense of manners, his upbringing. What must his parents be like?