My Sweethearts: I’m taking a hotel room for the night. Don’t be worried: all I need is one night alone. That means I’ll be totally by myself. I might go to a movie and then I’ll go right back to my hotel room. Although I also might only go to a restaurant, so no movie, and read a book while I eat — I’m bringing several with me — and then back to the hotel to read till I fall asleep. Or I might do both, or all three: restaurant, movie, back to my hotel room to read and fall asleep. Maybe even a snack or drink or both in the hotel lounge before I go to my room. But I won’t be phoning you tonight. I’ll see you all tomorrow: Mommy, soon after hotel checkout time, when I get home around noon, and you kids when you return from school. What am I talking about? I’ll see Fanny when I pick her up at school to take her home. Same time, my dearie: 2:20, at the front entrance. I suppose my staying away for the night must seem like an odd thing to do. But I feel I need one complete day off with no contact or duties to do at home or in my work. Just to be free, so to speak. Or not “so to speak”: to be completely free for approximately one day. But then thinking about it as I write, it doesn’t seem that odd. In fact, maybe this is the solution to my feeling occasionally trapped at home. Is it really so bad to admit that’s how I feel from time to time? And if “trapped” is the wrong word, then just “overburdened and exhausted” sometimes? Because I’m sure you all occasionally feel the same way or something like it: school and the constant presence of your family, and other things. Anyway, see you all tomorrow. I already miss you — that’s not a line to make anyone feel better — but I’m also looking forward to my 20 or so hours alone. Your loving husband and daddy. He drives downtown and gets a hotel room, works out in the gym there, takes a swim, then a sauna and long shower. “Samson,” he says, pounding his chest. “I feel great.” Doesn’t want to be extravagant with himself — the room’s costly enough and dinner in the hotel will set him back a ways — but then thinks, Hell, this is the first time he’s done anything like this in his life, and for all he knows it’s well deserved, after all he’s done for his family and at work, and he gets a miniature bottle of vodka out of the room’s small fridge, empties it into a glass with ice, and drinks it while lying on top of the bed and reading today’s newspaper. “This is wonderful,” he says. “I’m so goddamn relaxed. Enough so to even talk out loud to myself and not worry about it, by gosh, and to say things like ‘by gosh’ too,” and gets out another vodka. He naps, has several nice dreams, goes to the restaurant downstairs, reads a book while eating and drinking wine, then goes to a play rather than a movie. The play’s dull and he leaves after the first act, goes to a different movie than the one he’d planned on seeing, and leaves it in half an hour because it’s so stupid and violent and sexually titillating: for kids, though not his. He stops at a bar on his way back to the hotel, starts talking to a woman on the next stool, she seems attracted to him, is quite pretty — beautiful, even, he thinks, and about thirty years younger than he — but meeting a woman or anything like that isn’t what he came in here for. He only wanted to feel what it was like again to have a drink at a bar alone and just sit on a bar stool and maybe order a hamburger and fries, even if he usually doesn’t eat red meat and stays away from fatty foods, and watch the TV news or some silly show while he eats, things he hasn’t done since about a month after he met his wife, except for the fries, most of them the last few years snitched off his kids’ plates at fast-food joints. Looks at his watch, says, “Excuse me, it’s getting late for me and I have to be up early. It’s been nice talking,” and she says, “One more round, how about it? We can go someplace else for it if this bar doesn’t suit you,” and he says, “No, it’s a perfectly nice place, and I’d really love to. But, you know, I’m married, so what would my wife and kids think if I told them? And if I didn’t tell them, how would I feel after?” and she says, “After what? What is it you think I’m proposing here? All I had in mind was another drink. Or even coffee or tea, if that’s your cup, because the conversation was interesting and we were getting along till you came on with all that stuff, or perhaps it’s too late for you for one of those too.” “Of course; I’m sorry. I worded it wrong. I didn’t mean anything by it. Just running off stupidly at the mouth for no good reason except, maybe — well, stupidity, which I apologize for, but I still have to go,” and pays the tab for their drinks. “Oh, thanks,” she says, faking a smile, “but maybe a couple of bills for the bartender, since he works hard at what he does and doesn’t get the proper appreciation,” and he says, “Sorry again. It’s been awhile since I sat at a bar and I forgot the protocol, though that’s no excuse,” and puts down several singles and leaves, goes back to his room and reads, and eventually drops off to sleep. He leaves in the morning, soon after he wakes up and does a few exercises and has coffee, drives home, and his wife says when he walks through the door, “Welcome back, traveler. That must have been fun, and we got along fine,” and he says, “I’m glad. And it was fun, all of it innocent, if you want to know, and all I needed. Kids get off okay?” and she says, “I had to call Meg to drive Fanny to school, but that was all right,” and he says, “Oh, darn, I forgot about that. If I had remembered I probably never would have gone,” and she says, “It was no problem. I arranged it last night and she got off in plenty of time. I’ve missed you,” and he says, “Me too with you, and I mean it,” and kisses her and steps back so she can see him and jiggles his eyebrows, and she says, “Sure, why not, but give me a few minutes, and don’t forget to take the phone off,” and goes back to their bathroom. “I can’t take it anymore; I should really get as far as I can away from here,” and she says, “And the kids?” and he says, “You’re right; what could I have been thinking? Forget I said it, and it won’t come up again, or I’ll try not to let it.” “I can’t stand it here anymore; I’ve got to get the hell away and stay there,” and she says, “Go if you have to, but it’s for sure not what I want you to do. Even if you said you were repulsed by me, I need you too much here,” and he says, “I know, and there’s certainly no repulsion, and I don’t really mean what I said; I was just spouting. But it is true that some part of me would love to set right off. To live in a shack and only have a one-speed bike, no car, a few of my books, my typewriter, and a library nearby — it could always order books for me from that state’s interlibrary loan system, I suppose. I’m saying, to be alone on my own again to do what I want when I want to, even to sleep as long as I want if I worked all night and am tired, and so forth. Or even if I didn’t work, if I just that day want to sleep and dream. But you make your decisions and you live with them. I mean, I make my decisions, or at least take certain directions that end up in a way being decisions, and you live with them. I mean, I make them and I live with them. And I should have said ‘em’ there, right? It goes better with the shack and no car and the one-speed bike and the woods — I forgot the woods before — or just something near the shore because there are always too many damn bugs and often very little wind to keep them off you in the woods. The shack, no matter where it was, would have to have electricity, I’d think, so I’d have heat and light. I wouldn’t want to rough it too much, since what I’d be interested most in is the solitude and time to do what I want, and not spend most of the days chopping wood and other activities like that just to survive. But we have a nice house, this house we have, and not a bad life. In fact, a pretty good life, everything considered. Our children are the best and I love you and think your feelings to me are mostly okay, though I have my moments when anyone would run away from me, and I know you’d love to get away too if you could, for a weekend or a month or however long you’d want to be by yourself for a change,” and she says, “True, but what can we do?” and he says, “Right; nothing. So I’m just dreaming here, and maybe not even of something I really want; it could be it only seems like I do when I get harried and overloaded with house, school, family, and my personal work.” He thinks, He’s had it for good here and has to get out, that’s all, and then laughs: what a stupid thought. Then for a weekend or week alone someplace, and he asks himself, Why? Like you said: you’ve had it up to here — your neck, the chin — so just to get away and on your own for a short period of time, and he says, “And that’ll help?” and he tells himself, How will you know unless you try? And if it does, then it’s an easy solution you can resort to whenever the same feelings about leaving or wanting to run away come up and family conditions permit it, and he says, “I don’t know, it all sounds so vague. Where would I go?” and he tells himself, Your favorite place: Paris. To walk around and visit its oodles of cathedrals, preserved writers’ homes, and museums. The Marmottan, with all the Monets. The new Van Gogh museum there, or is that only in Amsterdam? Then the new Picasso museum in the Marais — that I know I read about. And the biggie. What’s it called again? How could I forget it? Help me with this. The largest and possibly the most famous art museum in the world…. The Louvre! and he tells himself, Go to that one for several days. And more walking, but not to buy anything but a couple of souvenirs for your wife and kids, and don’t forget the great bistros, bars, and cafés. Then return home refreshed, revivified, renewed, re-re, happy to be back, even, and your family glad what the trip did for you, and he says, “I don’t like traveling alone. I become uncomfortably self-conscious, even when I’m walking in a strange city by myself. Maybe only in museums and train stations and metros, when there’s a ton of people there or the subway car’s crowded, do I feel comfortable alone. Besides, I want to talk to someone about the things I see and experience and eat. No, all I think I need is a few hours alone in my bedroom,” and he tells himself, Go to your wife, and say you were thinking just now of taking a week’s vacation to someplace like Paris, and see what she says. I bet she’ll say, What a great idea and you owe it to yourself for all the work you’ve done the last few years at home and school and it could be just the thing you need to re-re yourself for all the work you’ll have to resume the moment you return, and he says, “Listen, I think I know what’s best for me and my family, despite what she might tell me. And how do I know, if she did say that, that she wouldn’t be thinking, at the time, ‘I really need him here to help me but it seems he desperately wants to go’?” and he tells himself, She won’t think that. Or if she does, it’ll only be a little compared to what she knows is ultimately best for you and the family, and he says, “But suppose she really does need me there all the time to help or just somewhere close by?” and he tells himself, There are always the kids to pitch in, pick her up and stuff; they’re big and strong enough for that now. And if you don’t mind the expense you can have someone come in to look after her when you’re gone and the kids are at school, and he says, “Believe me, all I need is a few hours of quiet solitude in my room,” and goes to his wife and says, “I’ll be in the bedroom and I’m unplugging the phone there. If anyone calls me, say I’m resting or napping or busy with some very important work I have to get done, and that I left orders not to be awakened or disturbed to speak to anyone. Or put it any way you want — politer than that, of course — or just say I’m out. Or if you don’t want to lie — a sudden flu could be another good excuse — say that I’m—” and she says, “I get the point. You want time to yourself and don’t want to be interrupted. So go, nobody will bother you, and I’ll intercept all your calls and shush the girls if they’re making noise or talking loudly near your door, and also tell Josephine not to practice her piano and Fanny her violin till you come out,” and he says, “Thanks, I appreciate that. Though I do love their piano and violin playing, especially the duets, even when they hit bad notes, and Fanny can always practice in the basement. But I have to know I can be alone in relative quiet with my thoughts or my dreams or whatever I’m alone with in there for the next few hours, even the book I’ve been reading, while I lie on the bed, just to give my mind a break before I start trying to clear a whole bunch of things up,” and she says, “Like what?” and he says, “Things, things, I’ll tell you about it later. Though don’t worry. It has nothing to do with anything you did or even anything about you, not that you’re worrying,” and she says, “Now you’ve got me worried as to what it is and I feel almost certain that part or most of it has to do with me. But go, isolate yourself or whatever it is you want to do in there while you have the time and it’s quiet and the kids aren’t home yet.” He wants to get away from here, has to, he thinks, and then thinks, What in God’s name is he talking about? Just work out whatever it is without disturbing anybody. “Listen,” he says to his wife, “we’ve got to talk, it’s very important,” and she says, “Fine, let’s talk. You know me; I never feel we do enough of it about serious matters or the things that deeply affect us and might even be troubling us as a couple, mostly because you don’t like opening up. So give, what is it?” and he says, “Ah, nothing, it’s really not that important. If I think it is again, I’ll tell you,” and she says, “You change your mind because I was so eager to discuss it?” and he says, “No, it’s what I said. Suddenly I didn’t think—” and she says, “You’re terrible; you’re really quite terrible and a great big B.S. artist of the highest order, though you certainly fooled me,” and he says, “When?” and she said, “Oh, stop.” He’s got to get away from here, he thinks, for all the old reasons. It’s become too much, everything: the work, her illness, his ratty attitude about it sometimes and occasional rages, thrusting her empty wheelchair across the room and, when she falls out of it or the bed to the floor, lifting her up before she’s ready and practically throwing her into the wheelchair or onto the bed; he’s making everyone unhappy here, kids, her, himself, he doesn’t know how he can live with himself sometimes over the things he does, taking his older daughter to school after he’s railed at his wife the previous night for her clumsiness—“Do I have to follow you around with a damn dustpan and broom?”—and knowing she heard from her room and wanting to apologize, say, Daddy’s sorry for losing his head last night to Mommy and forcing you to hear it, but driving silently, maybe asking if she remembered to take her lunch; it’s cold — so is she wearing a long-sleeved shirt under her coat or a short? — not kn