Sleepwalking

  “Well, Claire,” her mother said. “What do you plan to do with this expensive education you’re getting? Are you planning on doing nothing and going out to save the Indians, like your sister?”

  Joan had stayed out in Arizona to live and work on a Walapai reservation. She saw the family once every few years, usually only for deaths or celebrations. Claire remembered her as being very tan and lean, her arms heavy with turquoise bracelets. When the two sisters embraced the last time Joan came East, Claire thought Joan smelled of the desert.

  “I don’t know what I plan on doing,” Claire answered. “I’m only a sophomore. I have a little time to think about it.”

  “You sound just like your sister,” her mother said. “She always told me, ‘Leave me alone, I have plenty of time, don’t hassle me.’ Then when she got out of school, she had no career plans at all. No skills, either. Nothing. You may major in English or whatever, Claire, but you’re going to need something to fall back on.” She began to scrape celery, the pale green threads flying into the garbage pail.

  “Why are you so bitter?” Claire asked softly.

  Her mother turned. “Bitter,” she said after a moment. “You think I’m bitter? Wait until you turn fifty; you’ll see that there’s nothing to tap-dance about.” She resumed her scraping.

  Claire flicked on the blender, crushing some pineapple for dessert, and the kitchen became a battleground of noises. In a few minutes, with nothing left for either of them to do, there was quiet once again. “I’m sick of this,” Claire said. “You’re so nasty about everything. And Daddy is no better. He doesn’t do anything; he just sits in the den all day.”

  “He has things on his mind,” her mother said.

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “A real smart-ass you turned out to be.”

  “Why aren’t you ever nice to me?” Claire asked.

  Her mother came close, waving the celery scraper in the air. “Look, Claire,” she said, “I don’t know what you want from me. You come home on vacation and give everybody a hard time. Things are difficult for all of us, you know. Why don’t you try to accept things a little more? There’s really nothing else we can do. Just stop questioning everything for a while, criticizing everything. We’re all doing our best. Please, Claire, for me, okay? It gives me such a headache.” As though to illustrate, she put down the scraper and lifted her hands to her head, forming a steeple that covered her eyes.

  It was an awkward moment. Claire wondered if her mother was about to cry, if she should leave the room or possibly even apologize. But what would she apologize for?

  In a second her mother dropped her hands, and her eyes were as clear and hard as ever. She had been nowhere near the point of tears. It seemed to Claire that all important confrontations between the two of them took place in the kitchen. She was reminded of something she had learned in high school Social Studies—about the high incidence of an army winning a war when it is fought on its own turf. Her mother was certainly the one in her element here, surrounded by gleaming copper and Formica, in the room where she had spent countless hours over the years.

  Claire could not stay in the kitchen any longer. She went to the hall closet and put on her down jacket. “Where are you going?” her mother called as the front door closed.

  It did not feel much better to be outside, although that was no surprise. Everything reminded her of childhood: the orange basketball hoop over the garage which was missing its net, and the hump in the driveway which she had stumbled over once, chipping a baby tooth. On the Danzigers’ street, the split-level houses stood one after the other in rows a few yards back from the gutter, like attentive parade watchers.

  Every evening the very last child on the block wheeled his bicycle home while it was still light, baseball cards flicking gently through the spokes, and the eight or so feet that separated the identical houses were just enough to keep sound insulated, just enough to keep family troubles within the family.

  It began to do something—sleet, drizzle, hail, she couldn’t tell which. She could feel wet chunks falling into her hair, and she made her way back home. Inside, dinner was already on the table, and her parents sat in their chairs, their forks poised in the air.

  “We would have waited,” her mother said, “but I had no idea of where you ran off to, and the food started to get cold. Sit down and join us. It’s meat loaf.”

  It was as if nothing had happened. And really, Claire had to admit, nothing had.

  Later that evening Julian called. “Hello,” he said when she answered. “I miss you madly.”

  Claire unlooped the cord from where it was caught around a plastic plant and carried the phone halfway down the basement stairs. She liked to talk there; it was dark and silent. “I miss you too,” she said.

  “Have things been so terrible at your house?”

  “Yes,” she said. “They have.”

  “Oh,” Julian said. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “What have you been doing?” Claire asked.

  “Reading, mostly. Just one book. Guess what it is.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Just guess.”

  “I hate guessing games. If you’re going to tell me, tell me.”

  “Okay,” Julian said. “I was planning on waiting until we got back to school. I’ve been reading Sleepwalking.” His voice was hushed. “You know, Claire, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read. Lucy Ascher is really fine. You have good taste.” He paused. “And besides, you taste good.”

  Claire did not laugh. He should know by now, she thought, that most things did not strike her as funny. Maybe that was the reason he said silly things to her, to try to change that. One night, during sex, he whispered, “You know something, Claire? There’s a vas deferens between us.” She had not even smiled, but he didn’t seem to mind. It was as though he were keeping himself amused.

  “Are you still there?” Julian asked on the phone. “Hello, Claire?”

  “I’m still here,” she answered. “I just don’t know what you expect me to say or think. I mean, am I supposed to congratulate you for reading Lucy Ascher’s book? Is it supposed to be some great feat?” Claire felt an obscure resentment. She wanted Lucy Ascher to herself. She did not want Julian snuggling up, trying to join in, as if it were a great game. Claire wanted to be the only one in the world who loved Lucy Ascher. She knew this was impossible and even silly, but she enjoyed pretending that she was Lucy Ascher’s disciple, the only one in the world who felt such far-reaching sorrow and joy when thinking about her. A passion of that sort is not something you share with another person. It would create a threesome—an ungainly, cumbersome triangle. Claire suddenly felt protective, as though something were about to be taken from her.

  This time it was Julian who did not say anything for a while, although she could hear him breathe. Through his mouth. “You know,” he said at last, “I thought you would like it. I figured it would bring us closer together. I never know what’s going on inside your mind, so I counted on the book helping me to understand a little better.”

  “Well,” Claire said, “you were wrong. I’m sorry, you were just wrong. That’s all there is to it.” Then she hung up on him.

  She had never done that to anyone and had always thought it very rude when she heard of other people doing it. She pictured Julian on the phone in his family’s library, or whatever room he was in, somewhere deep inside his plush brownstone. There would be corking on the walls, she imagined, and the whole room would be done up in soft beiges and browns. He would be sitting on the edge of a deep corduroy couch, holding his touch-tone receiver a few inches from his ear, bewildered as he listened to the dead line.

  Claire crouched on the stair in the darkness, holding herself tightly, and rocked back and forth. She had done this when she was very small, and it had always made her feel better. But now she suddenly beca
me aware of how foolish it all was. She should calm herself down and call Julian back, ask his forgiveness and say she did not know what had come over her—it was just one of those things. But she did not want to. She wanted to stay in the basement forever, a kind of subterranean Mrs. Rochester.

  “Oh, yes,” her parents would say whenever they had company, “we have a daughter. She lives in the basement, and we have not seen her for a few years. We send her meals down on a pulley. Still, it’s better than nothing, wouldn’t you agree? Our two other children are no longer with us. Our son died and our elder daughter has gone off with the Indians. Claire is all we have.”

  Claire stood and walked upstairs, bumping the telephone over the steps behind her. Nothing made her happy except Lucy Ascher—that was what it all came down to. All of the squabbling with her parents and with Julian had no bearing on anything; she was just marking time. School meant nothing to her—she read all of the texts assigned and she diligently typed up her term papers, but she never paid close attention. She knew many college students felt a kind of apathy; she had overheard a couple of students having a conversation one day on the lunch line. One of them told the other that he was depressed, that he felt disinterested, alienated from the rest of the world, that he saw no point in going on with anything. His friend had smiled and told him in a sure voice that he was suffering from existentialism, the adolescent disease.

  All around her, people complained of having a void within them that could not be filled. The difference between her and them was that she had something to fill her void. The only problem was that she did not have enough time in which to do it. There was course work to contend with, and Julian, and her family. Her head buzzed with trivial chores and responsibilities.

  She did not speak to Julian for the remainder of the vacation. She refused to phone, and she knew that he had too much pride to call her again. She spent almost all of her time in her bedroom, reading Lucy Ascher’s poetry, slowly regressing into the routine she had followed in high school. Each evening she selected a poem to be read first thing in the morning. She slept fitfully; her nights were filled with broken-up, puzzling dreams that made her call out in her sleep. She woke very early, with the birds screaming outside, and read poetry in the dim light of her room. Her parents ignored her.

  She went back to Swarthmore on a Sunday, arriving in the evening. The campus was covered with snow and looked quite beautiful. Everything was still; many students had not yet returned. Claire dropped her orange valise in her room and walked across the green. The snow was up to her shins, but she liked the feel of coldness seeping in over the tops of her boots. She knocked on the door of Naomi’s room. She had not been there in a long while, and she wanted to talk to her.

  “Come in,” Naomi called. She and Laura were sitting on the floor, drinking tea they had brewed in an illegal hot pot.

  “Well, hello,” Laura said. “Fancy seeing you here.” Her voice was cool.

  “I’m in bad shape,” Claire said from the doorway. “I need you two.”

  “You need us?” Laura asked. “After snubbing us for half a semester, you suddenly need us? I can’t tell you how flattered I am.”

  “Come on,” said Naomi before Laura could add anything more. “Leave her alone. What’s the matter, Claire? Is something really wrong?”

  Claire came in and sat down on the floor between them. She had spent many nights sitting in that very same spot, and the wood felt comforting now, familiar. “I just can’t get by anymore,” she said. “I’ve completely fucked up everything between Julian and me. I can’t stand the idea of going to classes, or writing papers, or sleeping with Julian, or anything. It’s all a nightmare to me. I hated being home, and I hated coming back to school.”

  “Do you know what’s causing it?” Naomi asked, pouring her a mug of tea.

  “I think so,” Claire answered. “I mean, I know so.” She told them about how she had discovered that Lucy was the only thing that mattered in her life. When she finished speaking, the three of them sat and drank their tea in silence.

  “You know,” Naomi said finally, “we’re all pretty obsessed with our poets. Most people think it’s pretty sick. But you have to forget all that. You just have to go with your instincts, Claire.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Naomi said in a quiet voice, “I went through a similar time last summer. I was really unhappy and out of things. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was working as a waitress at that awful resort on the Cape; you know all that. Anyway, I was wrapped up in Sylvia that summer, just like I am now, but it sort of incapacitated me then. I used to drop trays and daydream and take long walks by myself down the beach. This is going to sound really stupid, but one day I was serving these two men their drinks, and one of them said to the other, ‘Well, Phil, here’s a hair of the dog that bit you,’ and they both laughed and downed their drinks.”

  “I don’t understand,” Claire said. “What’s the point?”

  “I haven’t gotten to that yet,” Naomi said. “I realized right then that what I needed was a hair of the dog. I mean, in order to be cured of Sylvia, at least to the point where I could think about other things occasionally, I had to immerse myself a little more in her. I had to take a risk.”

  On her day off, she had borrowed a car from one of the other waitresses and driven to Wellesley, the town in which Sylvia Plath grew up and where her mother still lived. She parked the car in downtown Wellesley and walked to the block where Plath’s house was. She sat down under a tree directly across the street and waited for something to happen. She watched the house all morning—an old white frame house with a neatly trimmed front lawn. After an hour had gone by, the door opened, and an elderly woman walked out. She got into the car that was parked in the driveway and drove off. Naomi recognized her at once as Aurelia Plath, mother of Sylvia. She sat unmoving under the tree and waited for another hour. The car drove back up, and Aurelia stepped out, her arms laden with grocery bags. She fumbled with a key ring and let herself into the house, closing the door behind her. She had not noticed Naomi. That was all that had taken place. But it had been enough—that little, tantalizing slice of Plath life, the wisp of a white curtain that showed through the living-room window, the dark, hazy shapes inside that were pieces of furniture. Naomi stepped out from her place under the branches and drove back to the Cape, satisfied.

  “I don’t know,” Claire said. “I don’t think I could ever do anything like that—spying, I mean. I would feel very sneaky.”

  “But is it enough for you just to read Ascher’s books? Does that make you happy enough?” Naomi asked.

  Claire thought about this. “No,” she said slowly, “I guess it doesn’t.”

  The tea was getting colder. Claire wrapped her hands around the mug, capturing the last bit of its warmth.

  “I think you should go there.” Claire was startled—it was Laura speaking, angry Laura, who had not said anything for nearly an hour. “I did a similar thing,” she admitted. “I went to see Anne Sexton’s grave. I spent the afternoon at the cemetery, kneeling in the grass in front of the gravestone. I know they say you’re not supposed to do that, because it’s like stepping on the person herself. Somehow, that thought appealed to me. Not stepping on her, just being with her. I knelt on the grass, and I felt I was really there, with Anne, on a typical day of her life. It was as if we were two good friends having a casual conversation. I talked to her about a lot of things—her poetry, of course, and her marriage, and then we got around to the subject of death. I even cried a little. She wanted: ‘Rats Live on No Evil Star’ put on her headstone. That’s a palindrome, a phrase that reads the same backward and forward, that she saw painted on the side of a barn somewhere and always loved. She said she wanted it to be her epitaph. I put flowers there when I left that afternoon—a big bunch of peonies.”

  Claire did not know what to think. It was getting late now. Sh
e should either go home or stay for a marathon evening. What was it, she wondered, that attracted the three of them to their poets? Why not pick a living, happy poet whom you could write to and maybe even hope to meet someday? The fact that all three of the poets were suicides made it even worse; when Claire thought of Lucy Ascher in her last hours, she wanted to cry. She wanted to swoop down and pull Lucy off that bridge.

  “Were you planning on having a meeting tonight?” she asked timidly. “If you don’t want me to come, I’ll understand and all.”

  Naomi smiled. “What do you think we’re doing right now?” she asked. “What do you think all this talk is?”

  It was true. They were all sitting in a huddled little group, a troika, speaking their innermost thoughts about their poets. “In that case,” Claire said, “I’m glad to be back.”

  Laura slid in closer, and the circle tightened. Naomi lit a hand-dipped candle, shut off the lights, and the scent of bayberry rose and filled the room. It was just like old times.

  Part 2

  chapter six

  In the early morning Lucy bent and ran her hand under the bathtub faucet, checking to see if it was warm enough. Warm enough for what, though? She was not altogether sure. You were supposed to run water into a bathtub when you slit your wrists; that was all she knew. She was not sure if it coaxed the blood, or if it just made you more at ease and let you fold first into sleep, then death.

  The bathroom seemed especially bright that morning. “There was nothing anywhere that gave evidence of human usage,” she later wrote in her journal, “with the exception of a single long, blond hair delicately snaking across a tile on the wall.” She turned off the tap and stepped into the shallow water. It was quite hot, and vapor lifted up from around her ankles. She felt self-conscious, posed as she stood naked, like Botticelli’s Venus. Lucy had taken off her terrycloth bathrobe and now it lay in a soft, sad bundle in the corner. She sat down on the very edge of the tub and picked up the razor she had placed there. So this was really it.