JOE AND EVE ate Shabbat dinner in the dining room, uncluttered now that he had moved the boxes into the living room, and she hadn’t even asked. The light switch for the chandelier had stopped working. Eve didn’t mind. The fixture was ugly, and some of the globes were cracked. She much preferred the honeyed glow from the candles in the two silver candelabras, an engagement gift from Joe’s parents. The lighting, lovely and soft, hid the spiderweb of cracks on the walls and ceiling.
Over Ruth’s potato leek soup, Eve told Joe about Nancy and Brian Goodrich.
“Two lives gone because of a tragic mistake, just like that.” Joe snapped his fingers. “I don’t know about you, Eve, but this makes what happened less creepy. You and I—we’re nothing like the Goodriches. I feel better about the house.”
“Me, too.” She really did. “Speaking of the house, I saw cracks on the bedroom wall, above the headboards.”
Joe nodded. “The house is settling. It happens.”
“But we painted less than a week ago, Joe.”
“I guess the house has its own schedule.” He smiled. “We have touch-up paint, babe, so there’s no problem.”
Joe insisted on clearing the table and doing the dishes. Eve, still suffering from the hangover-like aftereffects of the migraine, took two Advil tablets and had read a chapter of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo when Joe joined her.
Joe fell asleep first. Eve took an Ambien and twisted the outer shell of the Shabbat lamp on her nightstand until the room was dark. Drifting off to sleep, she realized she’d forgotten about the Advil she’d taken earlier and wondered if mixing the two pills was dangerous. She could check the package warnings, but unless she was prepared to make herself gag and cough up the Ambien, which she wasn’t, what was the point? She wasn’t really worried.
This time she dreamed she was at her parents’ house. Her mother and father were seated on low folding chairs in their living room. Sitting shiva for Eve. The third low chair, Joe’s, was unoccupied. Eve found Joe leaning against a wall. She saw the slim, brown-haired woman sidle next to him, saw them link their hands, just for a second, when no one was watching.
No one except Eve.
Saturday morning Eve stayed in bed while Joe attended Shabbat services at the synagogue on Chandler, a five-minute walk from their house—another selling point.
“Sure you don’t want to come with me, babe?” Joe said before he left. “You might feel better if you get out, and you’ll meet people in the community.”
Eve was sure.
She wasn’t sure, for the first time since they had started chatting on J-Date, about Joe. She accepted that the nightmare was a product of her unsettled imagination, compounded by the tragedy that had befallen the house’s previous owners. But dreams had a purpose, didn’t they? Wasn’t she supposed to learn something from them?
And what did she really know about the man she’d met on an Internet site less than two years ago? She had never caught Joe in a lie, but then, she’d never questioned anything he’d told her. She’d checked him out before they met—that was only prudent, and she would have done so even without her parents’ urging. She had spoken to his rabbi (“A great guy, Joe!”), had heard positive comments from friends of friends. The Stollmans, her mother had learned, were solid people, well liked by the San Francisco Jewish community.
Eve knew that Joe had spent a year in an Israeli yeshiva after high school and had worked as a day trader in Brooklyn before returning to San Francisco, where he obtained his administrator’s license in a nursing home. Eve knew little about his six-month marriage. Joe didn’t like to talk about his ex-wife. All Eve knew was her name. Karen.
None of which was damning, Eve had to admit.
Eve knew what Joe would say if she told him about the woman in the dream. A figment of your imagination, babe. You’re insecure. You’ve always been insecure about your looks.
That was true. But . . .
Eve got out of bed and searched through Joe’s things, first in the armoire, then in the dresser. She found nothing suspicious, no references to another woman, no photos. In Joe’s nightstand she did find every note she’d written to him since they’d met, every card she’d given him.
Joe loved her. How could she have doubted him?
The door to the bathroom was open. She stepped inside. The room would be beautiful when it was finished, airy and spacious, so elegant with the white marble.
She frowned. Nails were protruding from the cement backer boards. Stepping closer, she noticed gouges in the boards. She examined the bottom of the shower. The marks and cracks on the mortar were back.
“KEN IS GOING to quit,” Eve told Joe when he returned from shul. “I wouldn’t blame him. This is crazy, Joe.”
Joe examined the nails, studied the mortar.
“Let’s eat,” he said.
He was quiet over lunch. When they finished dessert, he said, “I have to tell you something, Eve. You’re going to be upset, but I’m hoping you can keep an open mind. Okay?”
Eve gripped the edge of the table. He wanted a divorce. He wanted to be with the brown-haired woman in Eve’s dreams. “Okay,” she said. As if she had a choice.
“I’ve been thinking about the bathroom,” he said. “The marks, the nails.”
The bathroom. In her relief Eve almost laughed.
“Is it possible—don’t answer before you hear me out, okay?—is it possible that you’ve been walking in your sleep and doing stuff you don’t remember?”
“You bastard.” Her lips were white.
“You’re taking Ambien every night, right? Ambien makes some people hallucinate, Eve. It can make people walk in their sleep and binge without knowing what they’re doing. It was in the news, remember? We talked about it. There are cases of people who didn’t know they were driving, for God’s sake.”
Eve shook her head.
“Think about it, babe,” Joe said. “That’s all I ask.”
Eve went back to her bed. When Joe came into the room she turned on her side. A moment later he was lying next to her.
“Eve, you know I love you. The Ambien is the only thing that makes sense.”
“The floors are ruined.”
“What?”
“The hardwood floors we just paid two thousand dollars to refinish? There are tons of scratches. You probably made them when you were moving the boxes.”
Joe rolled onto his back. “You didn’t say anything.”
“Well, now I am.”
He sighed. “What is this, tit for tat?”
“There are scratches on our bedroom floor, too.”
“You helped me move the beds, Eve. We were both careful about the floors. Maybe Ken’s guys did it.”
“Why don’t you tell him that, Joe? He’ll charge us double for redoing the shower pan, again.”
Eve gazed out the window.
THAT NIGHT SHE didn’t take an Ambien. She dreamed she was at her parents’ house. Joe and the brown-haired woman—Eve hated her!—were alone in a hall. She heard Joe whispering, “You can’t imagine the hell I’ve been through, Eve was so crazy.” She heard the woman saying, “No one blames you, Joey, everyone knows she was suicidal.”
And then the voices: Leave, leave, leave, leave, leave.
Sunday morning she told Joe she hadn’t taken an Ambien.
“And?” he said.
“You were right. No nightmare, no voices.”
He grinned. “Well, now we know. I’m sorry about the floors, Eve. I should have been more careful. We’ll get them redone after everything’s finished. And don’t worry about Ken. I’ll smooth things out, guy to guy. It’ll cost us, but the main thing is you’re okay. This is great, babe, isn’t it?”
“It really is,” Eve said, trembling with hate so strong, it frightened her.
Joe would tell Ken. They would laugh about it, guy to guy, Hahahahah, women, when it was Joe who had damaged the shower and walls, deliberately.