Sleepless Nights (5 page)

Outside, the pines stirred in the morning breeze, and the waves dragged shells in and out of the empty shore. Tom and I picked up our forks, and set about our breakfast in silence; Samuel had gone back to sleep. The house was utterly quiet.

6

Jeanie

O
n our third day in Connecticut, we took a long walk around the town of Sussex. (Personally I’d call it a village, but that bit of Frenchery seemed not to have made it across the Atlantic.) The center was basically one long street that fell into water at the end; the main road turned into a footpath which became a boardwalk, and then finally the river. A few miles south the river opened out into the sea, and in my mind’s eye the route continued—across the Atlantic, around Ireland’s choppy bottom, to England. You could see signs of English heritage everywhere, from the name of the town to the small village green, halfway along the street, to the
shape of the houses (simple and square). But those New Englanders had brought their own twist, since everything—houses, barns, garages, shops—was made of wood. Walls, roofs, doors, you name it; wood, wood, wood, not a brick in sight. I couldn’t help eyeing the wooden boxes and their wooden lids with an Englishwoman’s inevitable bewilderment. “They don’t look safe to me,” I said suspiciously to Q, standing staring at one from the middle of the long narrow street. “How come they don’t rot or burn down? What happens when your neighbor lights up the barbecue?”

The place was nice enough, but perhaps not quite as beautiful as it had been in its heyday; the paint on the houses was peeling, I noticed, the gardens were chock-full of weeds, and the chimneys were tipping slightly to the side, like women who’d taken to drink. The ships in the docks that fanned out around the coastline seemed to bring wrinkly-brown pleasure cruisers instead of roaring trade, and most of them stopped for an hour or two at most, sampling microwaved French onion soup in small restaurants with names like Kat’s Kozy Korner. Chain chemists and banks lurked down side streets in concrete bunkers marooned in asphalt. Q told me that Sussex was chiefly popular for its proximity to a very large “outlet mall” (a place where you could wrestle comrades to the ground for a cheapie pair of Calvin Klein knickers, apparently). Tourists generally preferred the charms of places farther along the coast (with more English names—Essex, Norwich, Old Lyme), towns that had a similar shape but more original buildings and more zealous old people committed to preserving them.

Paul, the man who owned our house, was apparently left it by an aged uncle, and I gathered he more or less ignored the town, focusing instead on his expansive dock. He also owned a place in somewhere called “the Hamptons.” I didn’t know what this was, or why it was plural, but Q and Tom discussed it with a slight air of consciousness, as if even mentioning the Hamptons in conversation gave you
an “in” to polite society. (I imagined an Edith Wharton novel, a place of tall white mansions reaching down to the sea, of conservatories filled with yellow roses lapped in eternal sunlight.)

We strolled down Sussex’s long main street, pushing Samuel, whose screams echoed up and down the narrow sidewalk. When he’d finally yelled himself into purple silence, we bumped the buggy up to a small coffee shop with cheery cotton curtains at the window, round wooden tables on a plain wood floor, and shelves piled high with model sailboats in full rig, and drank our cups of coffee in welcome peace. Q kept touching Samuel to check he was breathing until Tom impatiently slapped her fingers away.

“Jeanie, how are things with Dave?” Q began, glowering beneath her frizz across the table at Tom. “We were—uh—sorry he couldn’t come out with you, but it’s great he let you come for such a nice long stay.” She dropped a brown knobbly cube of sugar into her mug and vigorously stirred it with a plastic swizzle stick, then surreptitiously touched Samuel’s cheek when Tom wasn’t looking.

“Yeah—good thanks,” I replied cheerfully, “thanks for asking. Dave’s still having problems holding down a job, but it’s hardly surprising, given how much time he spends with his mum. She barely knows where she is most days.”

“And he’s very into the environment now, you said.”

“Mmm. It’s his latest thing. It was his flatmate Badger who got him onto it—”

“Badger?”

“Yup. He has a shock of white hair down the center of his head.”

“I see. Makes perfect sense.”

Tom seemed to be watching a game of rounders played with helmets on the green outside the window.

“And Badger is an eco-warrior, is he?” Q went on a few moments later (she was now holding Samuel’s tiny hand under the table).

“Something like that. He’s had a big effect on Dave. When we first got together, Dave was a tabloid reader,
Sunday Sport, News of
the World,
that sort of thing. Cigarette propped permanently over his ear. Favorite way to spend the weekend was down the pub. But over the past year he’s been taking a lot more responsibility for his mum, and Badger’s got him demonstrating against global warming and globalization. It’s quite sweet really. I’m not sure he always knows quite what he’s demonstrating against, but he does love a nice walk through Hyde Park with Badger.”

“Well, who wouldn’t,” Q murmured neutrally. She’d never been particularly fond of my boyfriends. “And you’re still getting on well, the pair of you? Is he—er—reliable, and trustworthy, and—”

“Faithful,” Tom supplied, still looking out of the window. I scowled at the back of his head.

“Of course,” I said crossly. “All of those things. And more.”

“More—?”

I expatiated further on Dave’s many, many virtues. “These last few months he’s been giving his dad every penny he has to help get the best care for his mum,” I explained earnestly, “even if it means he doesn’t have enough to pay his own bills. His sister’s always telling me he’s the best big brother in the world, and his dad depends on him. He would have been an amazing social worker, if he could’ve afforded to complete our course. He’s really
strong!
” I banged my hand on the table for emphasis; the cold dregs of our coffee jumped and shuddered in their corrugated plastic pots.

“Impressive,” Q admitted; I was proud.

“And he was happy for you to come out here for four months, was he?” Tom suddenly turned and looked me full in the face, green eyes sharp as glass. “I mean, it seems like a long separation,” he went on. “I’m surprised he was okay with that. Dave, I mean. You too.”

I picked up my tepid coffee and dashed a gulp down my throat.
I can’t believe you’re doing this,
were Dave’s actual words, as I recall, when I first outlined the plan. We were in our local at the time. He thumped his fist on the table until the beans-and-sausages shook and the barmaid appeared with a wary look in her eye. “A crook of
the finger and you’re off! One day it’s Alison, the next Q in America…And I don’t understand why, Jeanie, because they don’t really need you, but
I
need you. Your mother claims they need help with this baby, but as far as I can tell they’ve got plenty of money to get a nanny—a whole fleet of them if necessary. What happened to togetherness? What happened to
us
? How do you imagine we’re going to have a relationship on two different continents?”

“Dave,” I began miserably, reaching across the rough, knotty pine table for his hand, “see it from my perspective. This is my one opportunity to live abroad. My course will be finished, I won’t have a job, it’s the one time in my life I’ll be free to travel. And it’s my one chance to get to know Q’s little baby…”

“It’s your one chance to spend these four months with me,” he growled. “We won’t get this time back again, Jeanie. What’s passed is passed. And you just expect me to sit around waiting for you, do you?” he continued suddenly, with an awkward rasp in his voice. I felt my bottom lip wobble. “You think I’ll just be hanging around for you, good old Dave, waiting like a patient dog for when you’ve finished your travels?”

“Well, I can’t insist, but I was definitely
hoping
you would…” I replied miserably. “I mean, I’ll understand if you don’t want to, Dave, but I—I will be waiting for you—”

“And so will I, but the bloody difference is, I don’t have a choice,” he said angrily, and stood up to order another couple of pints. He sniffed loudly as he went, rubbing his arm across his nose in a single, characteristic gesture. I watched him lope across the bar floor, navigating the yelling, laughing crowds, the heaped coats and duffel bags, the strewn bar-stools, with practiced ease. I really like Dave, I thought to myself suddenly, and he is my boyfriend, but I can’t help wanting to see a bit more of the world than the inside of a London pub.

Q, I suddenly realized, was talking. “I don’t want you to worry about the cost of speaking with Dave; use our phone while you’re
here,” she offered. “If Dave can’t afford to ring you, just call him. We’ll pay. It’s the least we can do. Here’s the thing, Jeanie,” she continued, leaning across the table, “I know I was a bit negative about Dave when you first got together, but if he makes you happy—if he recognizes what he’s got—then that’s all that counts. I don’t care that he doesn’t have money—”

“Or a job,” contributed Tom, sotto voce; Q rolled her eyes. “There are lots of ways of working, I understand that,” she said firmly, as if she’d made up her mind about something. “Seriously, I do. Dave’s work isn’t the conventional sort, but it’s extremely valuable. Saving the environment—I don’t know what’s more important than that these days.” She smiled in what I’m sure she hoped was an understanding way. “Tom and I were talking about this. If Dave would like to come out and visit you once we get back to New York, we’ll cover the cost of his flight too. It’ll be tight in the apartment, the five of us, but we can manage.”

“Thanks,” I said, imagining Dave’s face. A trip to New York—! “That’s really kind of you, I don’t know what he’ll say—it’ll depend on his mother’s health, obviously. Plus there’s a beluga whale press release to complete, a new project of Badger’s,” I added importantly. And then, in response to a raised, delicately skeptical eyebrow from Tom, “Well, not just belugas, but all toothed whales; you have to think of the bigger picture, the full marine spectrum, obviously…”

“Obviously,”
Tom echoed, and then he sharply twitched Samuel’s blanket out of Q’s hand with a muffled exclamation. He went back to watching the funny rounders game out of the window, while Q moved her hand millimeter by millimeter closer to Samuel’s slumbering form.

7

Q

P
aul is coming to stay this weekend!” Tom announced delightedly, flicking his cell phone closed, and I struggled to produce an expression of appropriate joy. “Paul! Wow. That’s so great,” I said enthusiastically. “I’m pleased. In fact I’m
thrilled!
I can’t wait. Paul. Way-hey!”

My husband stared. “D’you have a crush on him or something?”

The truth was, I wasn’t making much sense anymore; I seemed to have the brain power of a flickering candle. After three nights of no sleep I was not actually a human being, but rather some sort of nonsentient lower organism. Something from the bottom of a pond, perhaps. Something without arms and legs that lies still and senses currents.

Samuel had given up sleeping and taken to crying instead. He’d had three screaming fits so far that day, each worse than the last. They came from what seemed like nowhere: one moment he was staring into blank nothingness, the next his face folded in upon itself, his mouth puckered up, his skin turned a mottled, blotchy red, and he began to yell.

The day didn’t start out too badly; for the first half hour or so after he woke up, Samuel was quiet-peaceful, even happy, snuggling into my shoulder, his round plump bottom tucked into my hand. In spite of my tiredness I tickled his toes, and laughed with him as he kicked and bounced, bounced and kicked, then reached hopefully
toward my face with stubby, interested, exploring hands. But then, just as I settled down for breakfast, everything changed; gurgles became whimpers, which became, in a fraction of a second, in the lapse of a heartbeat, a scream. The pitch of his shriek seemed to settle just under my ears and then, drill-like, bored its way up into the deep inner lobes of my brain. Everything turned cavernous, orange; the world dwindled to one child, one head, one mouth, one scream.

“Tom,” I said hesitantly to my husband, remembering all this, “d’you think Paul is going to want to spend a weekend with Samuel when he’s like—er—the way he is?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Q,” my husband scoffed, “all this screaming will be over by the weekend.
Obviously.
His crying jag is just a short-term thing.
Short-term.
Blink of an eye, it’ll be gone. Done. Over with.” (By which I realized that he too was losing the ability to construct grammatical sentences.)

I could only hope he was right, and that Samuel’s behavior would improve, because otherwise Paul would arrive here to find the three of us laid out cold. Either I would kill us all, or Tom would, or Jeanie. The poor girl didn’t sign on for this, and she was certainly not enjoying it. She’d rushed into the kitchen at eleven o’clock that morning to find me covered in sweat and shaking, Samuel writhing in my grasp like an armful of smoking serpents. “What’s going on?” she asked, confused, eyes still droopy, clutching her robe around her; Tom was out collecting bread for lunch (read: beating his head against a brick wall). “I don’t know,” I said, then repeated the words three times to make myself heard. “Can I do anything?” she yelled, uncertainly, shrinking away from me and the baby; I shook my head and shooed her out of the room. Alone with my son once more, I took a deep breath, a gulp of water, mentally shook myself, and tried a pacifier, but Samuel beat me off as if what I was actually trying to do was torment him with tiny red-hot needles dipped in acid.

“Anyway,” Tom went on, thoughtfully, peering down at Samuel, who was briefly asleep, “it’s probably louder than we think it is,
right? The crying, I mean. He’s our son, we’re hyper-conscious of him. I’m sure other people will sort of—er—tune him out…”