By this time I�m ravenous for sleep, so I claw up towels and sweaters from my floor and string them up on my windows. I just keep adding layers, until my room is pleasantly dark again so I can�t see the shapes of the corners. But then I find that I can�t actually get back to sleep anymore�I�m the type of person who has a limit to how long she can keep her eyes open before sleep becomes impossible. It�s the stupid shades�if I could just have gotten them closed everything would have worked out, but now I can�t even muster the energy or anger to get out of bed and pull down my makeshift curtains. I just sit, and pretend to be a shell.
Water flows in me and, evenly like breathing, water flows out. I am deep inside the deepest caves in the ocean. Inside the Mariana Trench, maybe.
I hear Jon come home, hear him noticing my curtains, me on the bed, my eyes closed and bound with handkerchiefs because I couldn�t move to get my eye mask. When he peels down the towels and sweaters, he will see the spot I made on the bed, but I can�t move to warn him and he sits down.
Stands up. He says my name, and the date, and my birthday, and who the president is�I think he was thinking of shock victims, but what I have is the opposite of shock. Antishock. He keeps calling me, but I�m at the bottom of the Mariana Trench�I can�t very well answer him. Scientists haven�t found the bottom yet, but I know where it is. It�s at the bottom, next to me.
Eventually I surface. I climb through the caves, stressing and urging my fragile body to the top of this massive amount of water. I felt the tiny molecules of water abrading my skin. I felt all of this, and then all I could feel was Jon�s hands on my arms, squeezing and yelling and occasionally pleading for me to wake up. It all felt wrong, like a Lifetime movie�crazy girl lapses into a coma, emotional scene ensues. Commercial break.
I slide out of his grip like a jellyfish or a swan, and step lightly into my slippers. I begin to gather up my sheets.
I can feel his confusion, sticky and rough against my skin, poking through my nightgown. So I ask, kindly, if he could smile for me. I count his teeth and check again and again just to make sure. Jon has very soothing teeth.
It�s like he doesn�t understand that I�m fine, even though he�s got his mouth wide open to speak. I budge past him and dump my sheets down the stairs. I listen for the noise they make when they hit the stone floor below. Our floors are made of granite�old, old granite. They are freezing in the winter.
I wait for Jon to say something, but he�s moved on to just looking at me. I start to feel uncomfortable so I run out. I skid across the floor downstairs till I hit the porch, and dump the sheets in the wash. I�m adding soap when I notice the man in the black raincoat�well, notice his shoes, anyway.
He�s standing on top of the table I fold clothes on, right about in my blind spot. From what I can gather from the frenzied corner of my eye, he�s wearing loafers and white socks. I can�t quite see his face, but I�m terrified to try and move my head anymore. He would be able to tell, I know.
I realize that I�m still doing laundry�adding soap, finding the bleach, tossing in a half-cupful. I slam the washing machine door without really realizing it, and move on to the dryer. I clear out the dry laundry. I feel his dry eyes burning into me, but I scoop up the laundry and put it in the hamper, slowly and gracelessly.
He�s standing on my folding table, the one I hung a tapestry over. Each time I see the tapestry shake slightly in the wind, I get panicked again and imagine a man standing there�and then I realize that there is a man standing there and I haven�t anything to panic about anymore. It�s kind of charming.
I can hear Jon moving about upstairs, probably reading my journal. There are only about three things for him upstairs: me, the contents of my room (mostly just my journal) and the bathroom. I realized a few years ago that he likes to read my journal so I�ve been putting in little things for him: a dead cockroach, ticket stubs from the train, and, most recently, a pressed flower. I think the flower has a nubbin of fecal matter on it (not mine, mind you. I found it in a book at a tag sale and slipped it into my pocket. The book was Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy.)
Feces are nearly everywhere. A study done recently spot-tested various places in a girl�s bathroom for hygienic purposes�the sink, the floor, the toilet seat, the toilet paper, the door handle, the mirror, etc. They found fecal matter on almost everything except the toilet seat, and large smears of various bodily discharges on several imaginative places, including the top of the mirror and on the window panes. Some of the toilet paper had been splotched with feces and then rolled back up in the dispenser.
I try to tell Jon these things, but he says that he doesn�t care, or doesn�t want to hear about it. I like to imagine the tiny, tiny DNA strands on my fork at restaurants. It means I�m never alone.