You’re not asleep yet?
There’s too much to do.
The most aggrandizing night he’d spent in the four-bedroom apartment was the last night. Stepping on the uncarpeted floors released echoes that reverberated off the walls land traffic on the nearby FDR roared, despite the late hour. He walked to the couch. This is a terrible night, he thought, not quite participating in the events of putting the finishing touches on the rooms - changing the fixtures, reapplying paint where it was needed most. He wouldn’t let himself sleep either, either because of nerves or because he felt defeat in doing so, allowing her to stay awake and suffer alone through the anxieties of their last night.
When did they get married? Not long ago. The ceremony was planned attrociously by her parents; his had long since cared to be a part of any more plans, they had gone through those trials and tribulations with their other five kids, all married and moved on. Now, it was his turn and it would at last be his own, or her own, it seemed, as her mother repeatedly phoned with more requests of what are the names on your list? Are they direct relatives or have you not seen them in a while? Are these your friends, or your cousins? What tables do you want, how do you want them arranged, etc, etc. Still the plans had had to go on, and somebody needed to finish them. He thought maybe if the mother had never intervened they might have gotten on anyways. Caught between the ceremony of planning ceremonies, a bitter hatred of ceremonies, and his wife’s seeming indifference as to the reason he asked her in the first place, “I love her” is what he told his brother - married for eleven years with six children and a drawn out mortgage. She was three steps away from the door, his brother told him; always, always three steps. He also said he could just feel it.
What? The younger asked.
Dead air.
Well, dead air still seems to suggest a lot, he thought as he heard his wife slide her chair hard against the kitchen floor, causing it to echoe repeatedly. Repeatedly. Maybe that’s why he carried this through, he thought; the wedding plans, her marrying him in front of an altar he never attended, even hated at most. He said he loved her twice in the park and she’d said she thought it was nice there in the park, sitting by the canoes and paddleboats, sliding in the giant lake. A huge tortoise floated to the surface, then disappeared and left behind small pockets of air.
It’s nice, isn’t it? she asked him.
What he asked.
Then you do want to get married.
Yes he said. Yes almost confidently.
By then he wasn’t as removed, or as distant, so he thought. He comes so close, every now and then, he thought, to seeing exactly what he was - not a man of action, but not a pedestal from which others, like his wife, could stand on and trophy off their better qualities. She also said that day at the park that he was a little absent-minded, and a little foolish, a little out of control, she said. "A little?" he asked. You spend a lot of your money, she said, and that other time, remember, you admitted there were things out of your control; like your showering, you said you didn’t like to shower every day, and that’s out of your control. They were talking a little later that night at a restaurant overlooking the giant lake, and he said, so there are no parts of you that you think are out of your control? No, she said, none. Then I almost feel sorry for you, he said. The apartment they had rented and moved all her furniture into; he only had a record player and a bed from his parents’ house; was big, near a highway and a little noisy. It was very noisy, actually, but they had grown used to it as everyone else who came to see it said they would.
“You’ll get used to it,” his uncle Joseph had said. “Damn, but it is noisy in there, no?” his uncle said a little later at a bar around the block. They had gone out for beer after packing all the furniture in. “Did you ever live anywhere else besides New York?” he asked his uncle.
“Yes,” his uncle said. “I lived in Louisiana for a little. In the army. Do you remember where your grandmother lived in Queens?”
Yes.
“I lived there most of the time. In the basement with my wife and Nicole. My mother lived upstairs with my sister, Mary Grace. Otherwise, just in Lousiana. I remember, this is horrible, the guy that owned the place, the barn we used to all sleep in, would take us down every Saturday night to watch his pigs give birth; it was horrible. Slime all over the hay and everything; little piglets running around and everything. Stay in New York, if that’s what you’re thinking. You never know who you’re going to run into anywhere else.”
The teapot was turned on. He heard the ‘click’ of the oven dial. She was getting ready for bed. He’d sleep with her even though she’d spent most of their nights in one of the other rooms, saying theirs was too humid to spend a night in. A lot of dead air, he mumbled in the living room. She stepped in, hearing him mumbling and asked, “What?” Nothing was the reply and he turned on a lamp. The light from the new fixture was strange.
“Where did you get that shirt?” she asked.
“I’ve been wearing it all day long,” he said.
She sat on the couch. A part of a thrill came back to him when the cushions buckled - recognizing it from nights they used to lie there on each other, moaning against the sound of after-hours traffic. She sat and kept her legs under her, leaned back and kept her eyes closed; until the pot in the kitchen started to boil and then whistle.