Background is important. Things happen in the country that would never happen in the city. Things happen to people in strange places that would not happen to them at home. It isn’t true that people who cross the sea change their skies but not their natures. We are different, depending on where we are. What kind of room we are in can be critical. Even how it is furnished. And the view. And the light. Landscape matters. A lot can depend on the season, the weather, the time of day. (“How much a small moon can do.”) People do not want to believe this. It is like not wanting to believe, as Einstein said he could not, that God plays dice with the universe.
Dear Nona,
It is very late. I mean, it is very early. It is almost morning. I have not slept. I have been up all night, packing. Are you asleep? I hope so. Did you take a pill? I worry about you. You say the effects of insomnia are far worse than the side effects of the pills, but still, I worry. I love you. There I go again. You have told me I mustn’t, but I must, and I do, again and again. Forgive me. It is wrong, I know, and yes, yes, yes, you are right, dear Nona. It is not possible for me to be as in love with you as I am, or (I hear you correcting) as I think I am. It’s just this place, being away from home, things will look completely different once you are out of my sight— hear me repeat (for the thousandth time) all the reasonable things you tried telling me last night. And the whole time you were speaking all I wanted was to take your hands, to pull you to me and kiss your eyes and drink from your mouth— There I go again. Okay, okay. I will get up and go out now. I will take a quick walk around the house and pull myself together.
Back. The sun came up while I was out. Another glorious day. What a month this has been! But what does it mean to me now? The sun beams upon this page only to illuminate my foolishness, and the birds are jeering at me. I am babbling, forgive me. It is fatigue—nerves—the horror of leaving you. Let me come at last to the point. You will not see me at breakfast. In a few minutes I will take my bags and go very quietly downstairs to wait for the taxi I arranged last night to pick me up. You will not see me again. I know I promised that I would be at breakfast, to say goodbye to you and the others, but I cannot do it. I cannot bear to say goodbye to you, especially not with the others around. And so this letter. First, I want to tell you that you are wrong to believe that I will forget you when I go home. I don’t dare say that you have broken my heart, but you have changed my life, and I could never forget you. Second, I want to ask your forgiveness for all the trouble I’ve caused. I have brought inconvenience and anxiety and confusion into your life— I have behaved with perfect selfishness— and you have been kind and respectful and gentle with me, and I am grateful to you. I have no right to ask for anything more, but please, one thing: May I write to you? And will you write me back? It is this hope that makes it possible for me to leave you now: the hope that I might somehow go on knowing you, if only on paper.
(The taxi driver just honked his horn, though I specifically told him last night not to! Let’s hope he didn’t wake you.)
When I was out, I picked a rose. Now, before I leave, I will go to your room and slip the rose and this letter under your door. Don’t worry: the sun stealing through your window will not be more quiet than I. Sleep on, as I stand outside your door and picture your room: first light, the curves of your body under the blanket (stay warm, my dear; it’s chilly this morning), your books and your papers, your kimono lying across the chair. And as so many times before, I will summon all my strength to stop myself from opening that door and going to your bed—
Lyle
Nona wrote the answer to Lyle’s letter in her office, between classes. She put down the red pen with which she had been correcting homework and she took up a blue pen and she wrote:
I am home now. It has been two days. It is very strange to be back— I am sure it’s the same for you. I was sorry that you decided not to come to breakfast that last morning. Everyone missed you. I read your letter, of course. I don’t know what to say. If you want to write to me, of course you may, and of course I will write you back. I would write more to you now except that I am very busy —work and so on— and my mother is coming day after tomorrow, and her visits always send me into a bit of a tailspin. I miss you, of course. Thank you for the flower. I hope you are well.
She sealed the letter and laid it aside. Then she picked up her red pen again and went on correcting homework.
Nona’s mother Rosalind had been thirty years old when she had Nona. Seventy now, she lived alone in Los Angeles and seldom came East to visit her only child. She would not have come now, except that an old friend had died, and the funeral was in Riverdale. Nona did not get to visit her mother very often, either. She was grateful that her mother had four sisters living in or near Los Angeles, which is where they were all originally from. Another blessing to be counted was that Rosalind was unusually self-reliant. She enjoyed living alone. She knew how to keep herself busy and fit. She swam every morning, she still had the stamina to shop all day, and she loved to read. She read every night in bed, her book supported on a tray to which was attached one of those tiny lamps intended to allow reading without disturbing a partner, though there had been no partner to disturb in Rosalind’s life for many years. She could have left all the lights in the house burning, if she’d wanted. Her happiest times were when she began a book and was so drawn into it that she would stay up all night long until she had finished it. Then she would get up and fix herself a sandwich and have it with a glass of milk out on the patio; after that she’d go back to bed and sleep like a log. She said she was sure she got as much out of such nights as others did out of nights on the town. Her daughter’s insomnia bemused her. Why didn’t Nona just stay up and read? (Because she had to work the next day, Nona reminded her.)
Rosalind didn’t watch television, and like a lot of people who don’t watch television, she couldn’t resist throwing this up to others. She was forever quoting Frank Lloyd Wright’s definition: chewing gum for the eyes. She’d had a television long ago, but after it broke and she never got around to having it fixed, she realized that she didn’t miss it. When Rosalind came to stay with Nona and Nona’s husband Roy, though, watching television was one of her pleasures. She watched with the fascination of an alien. The commercials especially transfixed her. Every few minutes she let another exclamation escape. “Incredible!” “What a culture!” “It all goes by so fast!” “I had no idea!” “I’m still in the Stone Age!” And she laughed and she laughed.
Watching her mother before the television set, Nona remembered how, as a child, she would try to get Rosalind to watch TV with her, because that would have been something they could do together, while her mother’s reading shut Nona out. Every book her mother read was like another brick in a wall.
When she was a little older, Nona had tried to get her mother to share the books. But: Too old for you, Rosalind would say, taking the book out of Nona’s hands. Then, as now, the best-seller list was Rosalind’s guide, and so, though she read a lot of bad books, she read a lot of good ones, too. Still, they were not the kind of books that Nona, once she was old enough to read whatever she wanted, would have read.
Next to reading, Rosalind’s favorite pastime had always been shopping, and here again Nona found herself facing a wall, for be it for clothes or housewares or Christmas presents, shopping was an activity Nona loathed and always tried to avoid. All the years she had lived at home, and even after she had gone away to college, Nona had let her mother do her shopping for her. Might as well have had a son, Rosalind complained.
Nona never saw her mother for the first time in a while without experiencing a small thrill that had everything to do with Rosalind’s looks, which were neither youthful nor beautiful but undeniably striking. Unlike most people her age, Rosalind looked as if she was in command of her appearance. This had to do with certain decisions she had made years before. To wear only bold colors, usually red and black. To have her hair dyed, and to ignore her hairdresser’s advice to leave a streak or two of gray for a more natural look. For that was just the point: a good instinct had told Rosalind that, after a certain age, what would work best for her was a look that was honestly artificial. That many people thought she was wearing a wig was fine with her. And it was not that she was ashamed of her gray hair, she wanted you to know, but the truth was, very few complexions went well with gray hair and hers was not one of them. Black as licorice her hair was now. Sometimes she hid it all up under a turban. She made up her face: dark lipstick and powder and rouge, all applied with a heavy hand-no, not because her eyesight was failing. She wore bright-red nail polish. Perfume, always, and sometimes false eyelashes. Her favorite fabric was silk. She wore jewelry: large, plain, geometric pieces. The painted face, the red and the black, the turban, the silk, the Euclidean shapes-there was something mystic and ceremonial about her, Nona always thought: like a shamaness. (Roy’s first impression was of a deck of cards.)
Background is important. When Nona went to California and saw her mother against the palm trees and low roofs of West Hollywood, or in her own airy, light-filled house, Rosalind always looked taller, younger, and even more vivid than Nona remembered, with a touch of the glamour, perhaps, of one of those aging stars who lived in the hills nearby. In New York Rosalind seemed somewhat diminished, like a bright potted plant that has been brought into the shade. Smaller, muted, less substantial in some way-it may have had something to do with her sleeping in the living room. Background is always important.
Many people who saw Rosalind for the first time now imagined that, in her youth, she had been quite a vamp. Her son-in-law had made this mistake. But Nona knew that her mother had been a demure girl, a good Catholic girl in a good Catholic boarding school; a soft, shy girl in a white night shift, sleeping on a hard narrow bed; and when she slept on her left side she dreamed of entering a convent, and when she slept on her right side she dreamed of love. And for this Rosalind of so long ago, and so different from the later Rosalind, Nona felt an unnameable emotion that had all the tug of nostalgia, though Nona did not see how you could feel nostalgia for something you had never known. But if she were given the proverbial three wishes, one, at least, would be to go back in time and make friends with that tender stranger.
The devil asks us: if you could choose your family as you do your friends, would you choose your own? In the years when Nona had found her mother most maddening and herself least up to coping with her, she had been struck one day by the thought that, if Rosalind were not her mother, and if by chance she were to meet this vibrant, independent woman, she would like her very much; she would want to know her better. And constantly reminding herself of this had become part of Nona’s way of dealing with Rosalind, and of remaining fair. To judge one’s parents solely by how they had treated oneself was not just. Simple, obvious, it seemed to Nona now, but the path to that understanding had been long and steep. And that understanding, along with the understanding that her mother had suffered in life, had made relations with Rosalind finally bearable.
Rosalind, who had once lived in New York, hated that city, and it wasn’t just because the life she had lived there had ended unhappily. It was for all the usual reasons, too: the dirt, the curtness of the people, the Augusts and the Februaries, the tall buildings cutting off the sun. When she came it was never for long. This time it was for just four days. Those four days she would not go out much. She had old friends in New York, quite a few of them, but none that she particularly wanted to see. There would be one major shopping spree, and a visit with her daughter to an exhibition of Impressionist paintings. There would be dinner at an old neighborhood restaurant that she liked and that Nona and Roy always took her to. And there was the funeral, of course, which was held the day after she arrived.
That evening they had dinner at home. They had planned to eat outside, in the small back yard of Nona and Roy’s Village apartment, but it was September now, and the day had turned cool.
“Move to California, children,” Rosalind said, “and you can practically live outdoors. Doesn’t that sound good? And the food is so much fresher, too,” she added, poking at her salad.
“How was the funeral?” Roy asked, with a little frown that showed that he knew this might be a difficult question.
“Oh, funerals.” Rosalind shrugged. “They’re all the same. Weddings, funerals, they’re all so boring, so-unnecessary, I think.” (Just because she was always dressed for one didn’t mean that Rosalind liked ceremonies.) “If Nona didn’t live here, I wouldn’t have come at all. I haven’t seen Muriel for— what? Twenty years? Do you think she would have cared? Muriel wouldn’t have given a damn how many people came to her funeral.”
A mistake the living often make about the dead.
Rosalind turned to her daughter then and said, “So, did you have a good time, wherever you were? On your— retreat?”
Nona laughed. “I wouldn’t call it a retreat.”
“Where were you, exactly?”
“I told you. I was at Phoebe’s. She’s turned the estate into a kind of conference center. People go there all year for different events, but in the summer there’s usually some time when nothing is scheduled and the place is free and Phoebe invites people to come up and work or rest— and to keep her company, I guess. It’s pretty lonely up there. It was very nice of her to ask me. She said to give you her love, by the way.”
“Who?”
Rosalind’s blank look brought Nona a pang. Her mother really was getting old. “Phoebe,” she said. “Benedict’s daughter.”
“Oh! That’s right, that’s right, now I remember. You told me that. Well, you know, I barely remember them. I don’t think I’d recognize Phoebe if I ran into her on the street! So, did you have a good time?”
“I had a wonderful time. You can’t imagine how nice it was to get out of the city for a whole month. And I got a lot of work done.”
There was a pause. They had come to a subject far more chilling than the funeral: Nona was writing a book about her father.
“A whole month,” Rosalind said, deftly paddling away from the whirlpool. “You must have missed Roy.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And how is the teaching?” Rosalind rushed on, a little breathless, paddling harder. “I tell everyone back home all those funny stories, and they just love them. Oh, tell me more.”
And so, for the next several minutes, Nona entertained her mother with quotes from the foreign students whom she taught English. “My neighbor is Grecian, he has a beauty saloon.” “I take the fourth or fifth train to Brooklyn.” “A piano is heavy, I cannot heave it.” “We could not sleep last night because a dog was barfing.” “I wear the short skirt to please my thick boss.” “He was beside himself with rape.” “Bensonhurst is an Italian aria.” “The American writer Mark Taiwan.” “The American novel Passing Wind.” “The favorite thing of my wife is to hang and kiss her baby.” “In America is many foods, but here is eat only hen, is no eat cock.”
The fish was okay, Roy told himself. He had been worried that he had overcooked it. All in all, he was satisfied with the way dinner had turned out. A very light meal of fish, rice, and salad. Nona had asked him please to cook lighter meals for now; she had put on seven pounds while she was away.
Roy laid down his knife and fork and felt that familiar craving that he supposed would never go away entirely: he had felt it after every meal since he quit smoking ten years before. Resting his elbows on the table and his chin on his hands, he sat silently watching. Before him was a tableau of no small wonder: the woman he loved and her mother. Mystery and the Mother of Mystery.
Around Rosalind Roy was never really himself. She was one of those women who burn with a low but steady flame of resentment toward men, and in her presence Roy was aware of certain changes in his manner: speaking in a voice lower than usual; pretending to know less than he did, to be less capable and confident and sophisticated than he was; slouching (but careful not to appear too at ease), and practicing what is known to the religious as custody of the eyes.
Roy spoke to his mother-in-law pretty much only when spoken to, and that was not often. Rosalind seldom asked him how he was or what he was doing. She was one of the only people he’d ever met who showed absolutely no curiosity about his profession. It was doubtful that she could have told you much about where Roy was from or about his family, though of course she had been told these things. He had no idea (and neither had Nona) what Rosalind really thought of him. But he was used to her distance and he did not really mind it. Things could have been worse. She could have lived in New York. She could have come to dinner once a week and been openly hostile. It was enough for Roy that she was civil to him. Besides, Roy liked Rosalind.
“Oh, Nona, why do you have to do this? Why do you want to write this thing?”
Having steered clear of the whirlpool and left it far behind, Rosalind now turned around, paddled back, and dove straight into it. No one was surprised. It was her character.
For Roy, this was a cue. He did what he knew Nona would have wished him to do. He got up and cleared the table. In the kitchen he set water to boil for coffee. He brought out cups and dessert plates and the lemon poundcake he had baked that morning. Coming and going, he caught bits of a familiar argument. Privacy. In bad taste. All Sasha’s idea. Nobody’s business. Both women kept their voices calm, but now and then Rosalind let out a laugh in which anyone could have heard the scorn— and sharper listeners the anguish as well.
When the coffee was ready and Roy had sat down again, he saw that his wife had taken her mother’s hand.
“I told you, Rosalind,” Nona was saying. “Anything you don’t want in that book won’t be in it. Anything you don’t like will be taken out.”
Even as she said it Nona was wondering how on earth she was going to keep such a promise.
“That’s impossible,” Rosalind said, freeing her hand so that she could pick up her cup.
“Why?”
“Because I won’t read it.”
If she woke up during the night, as she often did, Nona would not look at the clock. Partly superstition, perhaps, though Nona was not superstitious. She was afraid that if she saw how late it was, she would have even more trouble falling back to sleep. It was the same when she was trying to get to sleep for the first time. She would know that it was getting later and later but would refuse to look at the clock to confirm this. That way she might be able to trick herself. The next day, if she did not know for sure how much sleep she had gotten, she could pretend that it had been enough. These were old stratagems for Nona, who had followed them ever since her sleeping troubles began, several years ago. Sometimes it got to be so late that the day broke, and then, of course, the game was up.
And so, waking now, Nona did not know and did not look to find out that it was four o’clock.
Her first feeling was regret for not having taken a pill. If she had, she would probably still be asleep. But she had drunk wine with dinner, and she had been very drowsy when she got into bed. She had not been worried about sleep then. Now she knew instantly what she was in for. She was as wide awake as it was possible to be. Beside her, Roy slept— soundly, as always, in accord with what seems to be a rule governing the spouses of insomniacs. He was snoring. Nona could hear the faint comical sawing noise through her earplugs. She had started wearing earplugs only recently— not because of Roy’s snoring, but because there was so much construction going on in the Village these days, and some of it went on at night.
Nona had an early class the next morning. She would be miserable all day if she didn’t get more sleep. Then, tomorrow night, she would go to bed exhausted, but even so she would have the same trouble falling asleep. She knew from experience that it could take weeks to break this pattern.
If she wanted a pill, she would have to get up and go into the bathroom. Another stratagem: Nona did not keep the sleeping pills by the bed. This was to help her resist, to prevent her from reaching for them too soon. They had to be a last resort, those pills. She and her doctor had worked it out. The dosage of each pill was low; it was important not to take more than one or two pills more than two or three times a week. If she took one now, she could expect to be asleep within fifteen minutes. (There had been a few exceptions to this rule, and those were nights Nona had done her best to forget.)
She got up and put on her bathrobe. It was not a kimono, as Lyle had called it; just a blue-and-white cotton flannel robe with rather wide sleeves. In the bathroom she took the bottle of pills from the medicine cabinet, opened it, and shook one out, all without turning on the light. She swallowed the pill with a little water cupped in her palm. Earlier, her mother had taken a bath and the air was still moist and tinged with the scent of patchouli from the soap that Rosalind never traveled without.
Back in bed, Nona relaxed. It was a help already just knowing that she would not have to suffer; the pill would mend her broken night. She curled against her husband, slipping an arm around his waist. Good, warm, solid Roy. What a relief it had been to get home to him. How changed everything can seem when you are in a strange place. She had promised herself that when she got back she would try to sort out the events that had happened while she was away. But so far she had not even begun to do this, and now was no time to try. Her breathing had slowed, her body felt increasingly light, but her mind was racing. Thoughts and images spun through her brain and as the drug took hold became both more vivid and more fragmented. It was like the earth-falling-away sensation and kaleidoscopic view of a Ferris-wheel ride. Nona saw her mother at table, the fish bones on her plate, her red fingernails. Roy standing by with a knife in his hand, and a grave, closed expression on his face as he cut the cake. What day was it? Was tomorrow Tuesday? A little jolt of anxiety, and Nona’s eyes snapped open. Her teaching schedule was different each day. Tuesday, yes. First class at nine. Another jolt. Had she corrected the homework? Oh, here they all were before her: a double row of foreign faces, staring uncomprehendingly at her and waiting for that miracle that they never quite stopped believing in: if they spoke to her often enough in their native tongue, one day she would speak it back. Now all the faces changed, becoming unmistakably American. Phoebe was laughing, looking as she did so exactly like her father Benedict. The bright waters of the lake ringing around them— a dozen people fitting miraculously into one rowboat— and the sound of Phoebe laughing became the sound of lapping water. Across the lake rose the mountain-and who had blown the giant smoke ring that had snagged on its top? Excuse me, Nona said, getting up, for she had remembered something urgent. She stepped out of the boat and into the woods. Ahead, crossing her path with slow, stately steps, was a deer. It turned its head toward her and Nona saw Lyle’s eyes staring imploringly across the wide dinner table. Patchouli, she said helplessly. But Lyle was already gone; he had entered the cave, parting the beaded curtain of the waterfall. Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat-what a sound, what a dreadful sound that was. Rosalind’s hand shook as she lifted the cup and saucer. The coffee spilled a map upon the tablecloth. Why, oh why do you have to do this thing? No harm done, said Benedict, who was dead. It was absurd for Roy to be outside in the back yard at this moment sawing down that tree, but he was her husband. What? A party at this hour? Were her neighbors mad? She would have to go speak to them. She got up and put on her best red-and-black kimono. Upstairs, the apartment door stood open. Now, who would have guessed their small building contained so huge an apartment? The ballroom was packed with dancing couples. As she stepped inside, someone stole up behind her, a large hand in a white glove lowered itself over her eyes, and she saw that all the dancers were naked. Another hand pressed her breast. She leaned back, a word was whispered into her ear, a magic word, a potent word, never to be repeated. She knew the incantation, but the poisoned wine had numbed her lips. It didn’t matter. It was over now. The lid of the sarcophagus was coming down. Her body went slack. She slept.
Sigrid Nunez is a Whiting-Award-winning fiction writer. Her stories in The Threepenny Review have included “Summer of the Hats,” “Chang,” and the present one, which became the opening chapter of her novel Naked Sleeper. She generally lives in New York but presently teaches at Smith College.
