(to write down messages in the night)

(to write down messages in the night)

                              A short story by Paul Crehan

“I can’t sleep,” he said.

Francoise looked up from her book and over the top of her reading glasses. “Maybe take another gummie?” she suggested.

George’s brow knit. Francoise said, “Don’t worry. I won’t let you throw yourself in the oven thinking you’re a leg of lamb.”

“Very kind of you,” George said.

“I’m an excellent wife. It’s five more milligrams. You’ll be fine. You’ll sleep.” She was still looking at him over the top of her glasses.

“What are you reading now?” he asked.

She glanced at her book. “Something. Grisham. I don’t know, but it’s good.”

“What’s it about?”

“About three-hundred pages,” Francoise said.

“Sounds riveting.”

“Take the gummie. Please.”

George got out of bed and padded to the bathroom. He retrieved the tin of gummies from the medicine chest, opened it up with the usual irritating difficulty, plucked up another strawberry-flavored gummie, and popped it into his mouth. He went back to bed.

“Can I talk to you a little—before this kicks in?”

Francoise took off her glasses and laid her paperback aside on the nightstand. She turned on her side to face George and snuggled herself into her pillow. “What’s up?” she asked.

“Do I make you happy, Francoise?”

“Oh, my god,” she said, and she pushed herself up to a sitting position. “It’s one of these.” She adjusted her pillow and the big decorative one behind it, and scooched her way back against them and into a comfortable position. This might be a while. “Listen. George,” she said. “I mean, really: Listen. Yes. You make me happy. Very happy. I am a very contented spouse. I love you and our life. What I don’t love is the stuff like this. Where you get these thoughts in your head that you’re not enough or not doing enough. And anyway, you don’t have to do anything. Just be who you are. You could, of course, be nicer to my mother.”

“But I am nice to her.”

“Nicer. As in genuinely nice. She is not the Wicked Witch of the West.”

“Okay, but she’s got north and south locked up.”

“Be that as it may,” Francoise said, “I am asking—here and now asking—demanding, that you make a little more effort with my mother. You do not have to be so wary around each other for the rest of my life.”

“I love this nightgown on you. I can always see your aureoles and nipples through it.”

“Don’t change the subject, and no, you’re not getting any tonight.”

“Might help me sleep,” George said.

“Good try,” Francoise said. “But did you hear me? I want you to be nice to my mother. Good to her. She’s been through a lot in life. A whole lot. You know?”

George knew. He knew very well. He sympathized. But he couldn’t stand the woman—and he could stand anybody. Else. But she made it clear from day one that she didn’t like him and never would. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it. I will.”

Francoise reached out and encircled his forearm with her hand. Squeezing it, she said, “Thank you.”

They spoke another twenty minutes or so about this and that; cabbages and kings. Francoise had back-to-back orals to hear tomorrow. Something about Etruscan pottery, then something about something else new at Pompeii. Man, Pompeii was the gift that keeps on giving. She needed to be fresh, alert; and yet, here she was—for him. He absolutely was not good enough for her. Maybe there was something wrong with her that she thought he was.

This second gummie was having no effect, sleep-wise. Maybe he felt a little more high than usual, but whatever—he wasn’t at all sleepy. Francoise began to drift from the conversation, and he encouraged it, pausing at length between whatever sentences he was making, and she fell asleep. He stretched himself over her body and turned off her nightstand light.

He settled back into the bed, on his side, and noted that he had left the bathroom light on. Shit. He got up and padded into the bathroom to turn it off. But he didn’t. He got into the bathtub. He laid himself back and stared at the vent above him. He counted the slats. Sixteen. Why that number? Because that was the number that filled out the size of the vent frame, he guessed. Not because 16 was the exact number necessary to make venting most effective. Or it was; was the exact number. He had never thought about this—whether there was an exact number of slats—if that was even the word used—that was necessary for the optimal functionality of a vent. He could go around and look at other vents, he thought—here or over at other people’s houses. Bob’s house. Or Bob could go count them for him. He could Google it, but it’d be a weird thing to Google, wouldn’t it? How many slats are there in a vent and why? Maybe it was easy, though. Maybe a lot of people thought about this. And—and!—they were angled. Why were they angled? This was wild. Why not straight up and down—no angling?

God, there was so much to think about in life. So many things going on, so much thinking about things. Somebody had to think about vents—and tubs!—why this material and this shape? Why not rectangular, for instance?

He could fill up the tub. Get out of his t-shirt and shorts—or not—who cares—and fill up the tub, nice hot water, comfortably hot, and jab the little scissors Franny had for—what were those little scissors for?—but anyway jab them into his wrists and jerk them across the one, then the other, fast, before he lost his nerve, before the pain won out and made him stop and scream, Franny! Help! But yes, just two little plunges and lateral jerks, and he could drift away as the blood streamed out. And he’d do it, too, if Francoise would not be destroyed by it, and for the rest of her life. Why did she love him?—because love him she did. He absolutely could not figure it out. There were things about him that were good. He could acknowledge that. He loved her. That was for sure. But why would the fact that he loved her be any reason that she should love him back? There was one-way love all over the world. But she loved him back.

He was funny; well, could be funny. And smart enough, but not her equal, which she knew and didn’t seem to mind. She was the well-known, even famous, Francoise Neame, archeologist. But he did show great interest in her work, and he knew that she liked that he did, though it was easy for him to do—because he found it really fascinating.

He was good at her faculty parties and receptions. Engaging, because somehow people found him engaging. He wasn’t lazy around the house. That was for sure. If anything, he was too meticulous. And he was affectionate. That was natural in him. And not that he thought of himself as particularly sexy, masculine and sexy, but he did have a big dick, and from her unfailing moaning and gasping and writhing around, he obviously knew what to do with it. But he knew that wasn’t the reason for a woman to actually love him and want to live with him. Francoise wasn’t his first lover. He’d had…six—no, seven—and they had all left him. And he wasn’t any different now than he had ever been—and Francoise, amazing Francoise, was the one who had stayed.

And he did this shit to her. Go on these jags where he self-doubted and in fact self-loathed, and he’d burden her with this fact; and that he couldn’t help it—couldn’t help burdening her with his…proclivity—made the self-loathing worse. So, why not just kill himself? Relieve her of himself. Her work would see her through. Keep her together and see her through, and either sooner or later, she’d meet someone who would help ease her pain, even make her smile again, and she’d be all right. And better off.

Where were those scissors? Therapy was not working. The drugs prescribed, eh, he should take them more regularly. He supposed that was a mistake—not to. He told the shrink—lied to him, actually—that oh, sure he was taking his meds.

He couldn’t really say why he didn’t commit to the course of drugs and why he cancelled so many of his appointments. Two other shrinks had cancelled him because of it. This one, though, he seemed to think that patience with him, with whatever all this appointment cancelling was about, was part of the therapy. Waiting the patient out. Waiting George out.

He hadn’t been like this 12 years ago when he and Francoise married. Not crazy like this. Not self-loathing. He remembered that he was funny and lively and up for making love anytime and anywhere, not just when the mood struck. Once upon a time, he’d  always been in the mood. He liked being around her. He still did. But he had so little to say. To contribute. Nothing to make her day. To make her smile. What was wrong with him?

He had read 47 books on mental disorders, depression, in particular, because it appeared that that’s what he might have. Depression. But it also appeared that that’s not what it was at all; nor any interesting existential condition—nothing that would get any beret-wearing Gauloises-smoking French intellectual to sit up a little straighter in his chair in the café and exclaim, Mon Dieu.

What he could do is write a note to Fancoise, telling her that he wasn’t doing this to her, but for her. There was only so much he could take, knowing that she could do so much better than him. He knew she loved him. Deeply. And because she did, he wanted her to have the best life possible. He knew—just knew—that it was out there somewhere—something so amazing that she couldn’t believe how incredible life was. She’ll end up thanking me for my wisdom, and the new life I’d made possible.

And she was smart enough to know that there was nothing she could have done, nothing more or different, to have saved him from this decision. She could dig for the answer—ha, that was funny—but she’d never find it, and even if she did, it would have nothing to do with her.

Yes, he’d write her a note like that. But the notepad and pen he kept in the nightstand drawer (to write down messages in the night) was, well, in the nightstand, and he’d have to get up out of the tub and go get it. He had a stray but germane thought: He wasn’t being selfish. He was being the opposite—generous and loving. Self-sacrificial for a greater good. He put his palms on the sides of the tub to push himself up and heard Francoise stir. He held his breath, thinking that that could help him hear better. She was getting up—out of bed.

He got out of the tub, quickly. He went to the sink…why was he here…why was he here…he quickly opened the medicine chest and took out…floss. She came into the bathroom.

“Hi,” she said, “what are you doing?”

“Something back here,” he pointed in a vague way toward the back of his jaw. He stretched the floss to the length of his arm. “Why are you up?”

“I’m up because that saltimbocca made me thirsty.” She moved to his side to get the plastic cup she kept in the chest. She’d do this—get thirsty late at night and need a cup of water.

She looked at him, at them, together, in the mirror. “Look at us,” she said, and she smiled, a soft smile, with so much behind it. She looked at his hair. She smoothed back that cowlick on the very top of his head. Failed. She always failed. But she always tried. She looked at them in the mirror, kissed him on the cheek. Padded back to bed. Forgetting—or not forgetting?—the water. Had she intuited something; a little something, yet big enough to make her get up?

George cut off the length of floss and dropped it in the trashcan. He put the floss container in the medicine chest. What was it like for her knowing she had nitroglycerine for a husband; a landmine for a husband; a grenade with a faulty pin for a husband? I mean, she had to know, right? Had to sense it? Or she didn’t at all, and more than likely, because he covered so well. Because who would choose to live around nitroglycerine?

He looked at her, on her side, already sound asleep. Switching off the light, he padded back to bed and the thought occurred to him—or no, it wasn’t a thought, really, but an image, an image of a bead of dew, filled with sunlight and beauty, but hanging from the very tip of a tendril and quivering in a wind.

He got into bed, spooned with her, arms around her, holding on for dear life.

He slept.

                                           The End