He awoke, tangled in a sheet, the pink blanket on the floor, defrauded by his dream. It was still dark. The naked light of early morning filtering in like dust from the other side of the room. Peter stared at his watch, but he couldn’t quite make out the time — his eyes, he discovered, not yet open. Nagged by a lingering sense of his dream, flying an erection like an American flag on a national holiday, Peter tried, without much luck, to go back to sleep. What was there to do? What else?
After a few minutes of deliberation — what the hell! — he knocked on Lois’s door. When there was no answer he knocked again — a little harder this time. He heard Lois stirring — desire quickened by anticipation. He knocked again, shaking the door.
“Who’s that?” she called, her voice tremulous.
“It’s me. Peter.” He opened the door to show her that it was all right.
“What do you want, Peter?” she said in a child’s voice, hidden by the covers, a tangle of hair the only sign of her. “What time is it?”
“I had a dream about you,” he said, feverish — for all he knew, still dreaming.
“Uh huh.” A noise of acknowledgment. “I sleeping, Peter.”
Leaning over her, he kissed the top of her head, a strand of hair coming off in his mouth. She murmured something in her sleep.
His feet were getting cold and he thought of climbing into bed with her to warm them. He called her name instead, his patience killing him.
She sat up abruptly, looked at him with one eye. “Peter? It you? You frightened me.”
“Sorry. I had a dream about you, Lois, and I wanted …” He saw now that it was a mistake. (The woman in his dream had been someone else.)
She reached out as if to touch his face, but then absently withdrew her hand. “I’m not awake yet,” she said, staring ahead of her without the focus of sight, possessed by the memory of sleep. “Was the sofa uncomfortable for you?” she asked after a moment. “I’ll be glad to change with you. As soon as I have the strength to get up.”
He bent forward and kissed her, her mouth closed, indifferent. “I wanted to kiss you,” he said.
“You have,” she said, lying back with a smile, closing her eyes. “I’ll see you in the morning. Have lovely dreams.”
Lovely dreams he didn’t need. But he said good night to her again — what else? — then hung on a few minutes, watching Lois curl like an unborn child into the protection of her covers.
His first idea when he got back to the living room was to put on his socks and shoes, find his coat, and go home. He got as far as his left sock, tearing a hole in the heel, when he decided in the lethargy of depression — he would have to wait a half-hour for a train if he went now — that he might just as well go back to sleep. His watch, he took the trouble to notice, had twenty minutes after five. He covered himself with a sheet — his left sock still on — and closed his eyes. When he looked at his watch again, it was twenty-three after five. He sat up, tense with exhaustion, enraged at himself. He had misjudged Lois, misconceived what she wanted of him, taken pity for something more. A talent he had, it seemed to him, for not seeing what was there to be seen. Patton was a joker. Perfectionist? It was a joke. No one had further to go than Peter Becker. All he wanted to be was a little competent in his life, a little wise, a little decent, a little brave, to be loved and admired by his son, by Lois, by Diane, by others, to be able to love, to tell a funny joke every once in a while. And a few other things, odds and ends, immortality. Not much. It was better, when you had a tendency to be anxious like Peter Becker, not to think about the things you wanted; in fact, it was better still not to want them. But how could you change human nature?
Peter had one shoe on, was putting on the other, when Lois called to him from her room.
He didn’t answer at first, planned, if he could stick it out, not to answer. Lois’s door opened. “Peter?”
“Yeah,” he conceded.
“I was afraid you had gone. I thought I heard the door slam.” She stood in the doorway of her room, frail in a white nightgown, her hair in a thick braid down her back. “It was probably a dream.”
“I’m still here,” he said.
“I know that,” she said. “I can see that you’re still here.”
He waited for her to say something about his shoes being on — a little guilty about it, a little nervous — but she seemed not to notice, or if she did, she chose for some reason to ignore it.
“Thank you for staying,” she said gratefully. She blew him a kiss, whispered something unintelligible (love you, it sounded like — ah, the vanity of not hearing!), then she disappeared into her room, the door closing soundlessly behind her.
After that he went back to bed — with his shoes on — and in no time was on the way to falling asleep. As he dozed he heard the sound of a siren outside; it was either the end of the world, he decided, or a fire somewhere, but he was asleep before he had time to worry about it, dreaming. He had lovely dreams. And when he awoke there was a woman in bed next to him. He had only to reach over and touch her to know who it was. He didn’t forget much.
| 3 |
They were having breakfast. “Why the hell don’t we get married again,” he said to Lois.
“Why don’t we?” she said, buttering a piece of toast.
“You mean it?”
“Do you mean it?”
“Lois, I’m asking you to marry me,” he said.
“I know, Peter,” she said, looking at him out of the corner of her eye, like a child. “I know. I’ve already accepted.” When he looked at her closely he saw that she was wearing a black veil, the same one as before.
He awoke in a sweat, terrified. And what was he afraid of?
| 4 |
It was a tricky business, looking forward to something. After months of anticipation, the day before Phil was scheduled to arrive, Peter came down with a bad back. Its cause was obscure. He had merely, it seemed — perfectly all right when he went to sleep — awakened with the back, barely able in the morning to get out of bed; the pains, like thieves, taking him by surprise. Peter chose to not think about his back, on the theory that the pains would go away if he pretended they weren’t there, but intead of going away they got worse. It got so that almost every movement, even the slightest turn of the head was an agony — the torment at times so great that he had to hold on to something until it passed. In the afternoon he went to a back specialist Lois had recommended to him — a man who had once, some years before, treated her father.
“The only cure for what you have is rest,” the specialist told him after a rather cursory examination, which consisted of poking him a few times in different parts of the back and asking if it hurt. “I could strap that back for you, but I won’t guarantee a hundred percent that it will relieve the pain. For something like what you have, in my experience the best thing is rest.” The specialist was a remarkably vigorous man of about seventy, pot-bellied and tough, with a slightly bent-over walk, as though he had some kind of chronic back condition.