Before I Wake

by Robert J. Wiersema

  “That’s a month!”

  “Mom, you were just here three weeks ago.”

  “But that was before—”

  “Before what, Mom? Sherry’s the same as she ever was.”

  I could hear her sigh over the phone. “I know how tough it must be for you,” she said. “To have everything you believe—or don’t believe, I guess—fall apart with this proof.”

  The conversation degenerated from there.

  So when the telephone rang again, mere minutes after I had hung up, I hesitated.

  “It’s up to you,” Simon said. “The machine will pick it up if you don’t.”

  I decided to chance it.

  “Karen, it’s Jamie.” I waved Simon’s concern away. He turned back to his cooking. “I just saw you on the news. How are you holding up?”

  “Fine, I suppose.”

  “Are you guys really sure about this, this whole thing with letting people in to see Sherry? It’s going to turn into a zoo.”

  She was repeating my own fears back to me. “We don’t really have a choice in the matter.”

  “Well, yes, you do.”

  “We can’t just—” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “I suppose.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “Do you need any help? I know you’ll have Ruth there. But Simon?” She trailed off.

  “Simon’s still here.” He glanced toward me at the sound of his name. “He’s cooking dinner.”

  “Ah. Well, he’s going to have to go to work, and, well, I seem to have the time…” I hadn’t often heard Jamie at a loss for words.

  “I’d really appreciate that,” I said. “We’ve got no idea what to expect.”

  “I’d be happy to come over.”

  “Thanks, Jamie.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be there, what, eight o’clock? Just to be sure everything’s all ready? Or should I come earlier?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Whenever works for you. I’m just happy you’re coming.”

  “Me too. I’ll see you Monday morning, then.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jamie wants to help on Monday morning,” I explained when I hung up.

  He nodded. “Good. We’ll need as much help as we can get.”

  “Are you going to be here?” I asked, not even realizing the enormity of my question until he glanced at me. “I mean, don’t you have to go to work?”

  “Actually, I thought I’d call in, take some personal time.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “Really.”

  I was speechless for a moment. “Okay, then. Jamie will be here, and Ruth, and you and I. We should be okay.”

  He returned his attention to his cooking. I took a sip of my wine. “Have you spoken to Mary?” I asked before I lost my nerve.

  He shook his head. “No, not yet. I’ve left a couple of messages.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “What? Why?”

  “This must be very hard for her. And you.”

  He looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. “Grab a plate,” he said. “Dinner’s ready.”

  After we had been eating in silence for several minutes, I said, “Can I ask you something, Simon?”

  “Of course.” He was watching me warily.

  I set my fork on the edge of my plate and picked up my wineglass. “You and Mary. How long had that been going on, you know, before…” I took a sip of my wine.

  He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I…it was…I don’t know, I guess a year or so before I moved out.” He spoke without looking at me, without meeting my eye.

  I shook my head. “I never even suspected.”

  He nodded, still looking away.

  “I was…stunned,” I continued, filling up the empty spaces between us.

  At this, he turned to me. “Do we have to talk about this now?” he asked quietly. “Haven’t we got enough other stuff to worry about?”

  “I’m sorry. I was just—”

  “Don’t be sorry. But let’s not talk about it, okay? Not right now,” he said.

  I bit my lip. “Okay.”

  But I needed to ask him why. I needed to know why, after being together for more than fifteen years…

  “No. Not okay,” I said. “I’d like to know why.”

  “That’s fair, I guess,” he said as he stood and picked up the bottle. Filling both of our glasses, he added, “Why don’t we go sit in the family room?”

  HENRY

  Tim was on the roof of the library, leaning against one of the ventilation shafts, looking up at the sky. The smoke from his cigar seemed to shine as it curled away, the tip an orange glow.

  I had to wait for him to look up at me.

  “I’ve been doing some reading,” I said.

  “Ah, yes. Well, come and sit down. Tell me what you know.” He gestured at the roof, his motions a shadow against a shadow, barely visible.

  I was carrying several books, and holding my place in one with my index finger, but I managed to settle myself next to him.

  “Isn’t it a gorgeous night? A little cold, but look at those stars.”

  “I’ve been doing some reading,” I started again.

  “Would you like a cigar?” he asked. “I’ve got a couple of extra. I steal them from the shop around the corner.”

  I shook my head. “No, no. I don’t smoke.”

  He shrugged. “You’re missing out. There’s really nothing quite like it.” He held the cigar before him at arm’s length, rolling it between his fingers. “More of a meditation than a vice, really.”

  “I’ve been reading…” I tried again.

  He sighed, took a gentle pull on his cigar. “Let me guess: you’ve discovered old Ahasuerus?”

  “What?” I had no idea what he was talking about. I carried on, trying to keep my thoughts organized, grateful to have his attention. “There’s a story,” I fumbled with my books for a moment before realizing that, even with the light of the city around us, it wasn’t bright enough for me to read. I had to rely on my memory. “There’s a story, in the Bible—”

  “Not in the Bible,” he interrupted. “Apocryphal. Scholars seem to think it was added in the Middle Ages, but accounts go all the way back to the time of the Gospels.”

  I shook my head, amazed. “So you know.”

  “You’ll find, young Henry,” he said, “that there’s not a lot that surprises me anymore. Not for a very long time. But tell me, what did you find?”

  “There’s a story, about a man who was cursed—”

  “Punished.”

  I glanced over at him, but I couldn’t read his expression in the dark. “Doomed to wander the world until the end of time because he hit Jesus when he was on his way to be crucified.”

  “The avenue of sorrows…”

  “So he was cursed—”

  “He didn’t hit him.”

  “What?”

  The tip of his cigar glowed as he took a long pull. “The Jew. The Wandering Jew. He didn’t hit Christ. Oh, I know what the books say. This man pushed or shoved or hit or spit on Christ as he walked the avenue of sorrows toward Calvary, dragging his cross.

  “Truth is, Ahasuerus was a shopkeeper. A simple man. A wife, six kids. And that day was just like any other day. Another execution. A couple of thieves, another one of those cult figures. Jerusalem was full of them in those days.

  “Crucifixions were like big festivals. There was always a parade. People would follow the Romans and the victims along the route by the hundreds. A good day for business if you were lucky enough to have a shop right on the route like Ahasuerus did.”

  I could almost picture it in my mind as he spoke.

  “Christ was weak. He’d been beaten, he hadn’t eaten in days. The cross was heavy, and he couldn’t continue. So he stopped in the doorway of a shop. Right in the doorway. And the shopkeeper came out, took a look at the crowd of people following along behind the Romans
, took a look at this, this criminal who was blocking the way into his store, and he told Christ to move along. Told him that he couldn’t stay there.” His voice dropped. “So Christ turned to him and said, ‘I won’t wait here. But you will. You’ll wait until I return.’ And he picked up his cross and carried on to Calvary.”

  Tim blew a big cloud of cigar smoke into the night. “The shopkeeper didn’t think anything of it. Just another day. Another execution. He forgot all about it until his wife died, years later. And then his children died. Not young. They had lived their whole lives. It’s a terrible thing when a child dies before his parents. It’s unnatural. But the shopkeeper outlived his children. And his grandchildren. And on his hundredth birthday, this shopkeeper, who had meant no offense, was still thirty-eight years old, the same age he had been on the day of Christ’s crucifixion. He hadn’t changed. He hadn’t aged, not even as everyone he loved grew old and died around him.”

  “And then?”

  He continued speaking into the middle distance. “He ran. There was nothing else he could do. There were obviously powerful forces at work. He had stepped between—”

  “Between?”

  Tim shifted. “Imagine a curtain on a stage. Out front, there are people, there’s laughter, there’s life. People making their entrances and exits. All of us merely players and all that. And backstage, backstage are the forces that make it all happen, the things that you don’t see, the mechanics of the world. The Wandering Jew had stepped between, between life and the mystery behind the curtain. He was no longer of the world onstage. He couldn’t stay.

  “No one knew him. No one knew that he was the same man. No one could know. He obviously couldn’t stay there. So he took another name, and he ran. And he’s been running ever since.”

  “So this,” I gestured with the book. “The story’s true?”

  Finally he turned to me. “You’ll find that many of the stories you’ll read are true. Stories like the Flying Dutchman. Thomas the Rhymer. Dorian Gray. Prester John. The Emperor Barbarossa. The lore is full of stories of people who have stepped between. And there are hundreds—thousands—about whom nothing is written.”

  He took a long breath through his cigar.

  “You.”

  He was telling me what I already knew, what I had put together without being able to put into words. What I knew, without believing. “Me?”

  He nodded.

  “You’ve stepped between, Henry. Just like we all have. Whether it was when you hit that little girl with your truck or when you tried to kill yourself, you stepped between.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve had centuries to think about this, young Henry, and I don’t understand it either. I just know. You’ve stepped between, outside of the world you knew, but still connected to it.”

  “Is that why no one can see me?”

  He nodded. “You’re not a part of that world anymore. You have your own story now. The only people who can see you, who can hear you, are people inside your story. People who have a role to play.”

  “People like you.”

  His smile disappeared. “And others. You must be careful, Henry, not to assume that you’re invisible to everyone. There are people who have reason to see you. They won’t always be jolly fat men with a love of books and good cigars.”

  I waited for him to continue. He didn’t.

  “Why can’t I remember anything from before?”

  “When you tried to die, you left your life behind, even your memories of it, but you couldn’t pull away. Your story wasn’t done. That’s why we’re here, waiting.”

  “Waiting? Is that it? Am I being punished for hitting that little girl? Am I waiting for the Second Coming?”

  He chuckled. “It’s strange to talk like that, isn’t it? As if the Second Coming of Christ were a new movie or something, a finite time. I don’t know what you’re waiting for, Henry. I don’t know what forces are at play for you. I know that the Wandering Jew is waiting to make his amends. He’s waiting to apologize, to beg for forgiveness, and he has to wait for Christ to return for that to happen.” The cigar had burned down to a stub, and he dropped it to the roof between his feet, where it smoked for a long moment, then slowly went dark.

  “How do you know so much about this?” I asked quietly.

  He rose to his feet, stretching himself against the chill that the roof had brought to his muscles. “Time,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”

  Then he walked in silence back to the stairwell and disappeared inside, leaving me alone with the stars and the city.

  SIMON

  “I don’t really get it,” I muttered, shaking my head, once we were sitting. Karen was on the couch and I was on the loveseat, with the wine bottle on the table between us. “I don’t understand this need to talk about everything. Not just you, but everyone. Why do people think that if they know everything about a given situation, it’ll be better somehow?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe because knowing the truth, even if it’s unpleasant, is better than not knowing. Or imagining. I just need to know why you threw everything we had away.”

  “I don’t really understand it myself,” I said. I braced myself. “This will sound stupid. Clichéd. But I suppose there’s nothing really original about any of this, is there?” I sipped before continuing. “We went out for a drink after work. There was a whole crew of us. Stevens had just”—I thought for a moment—“Stevens had just won Dempster, and we all went out to celebrate.” I could remember that night with perfect clarity. “Mary had been working for the firm for maybe a couple of months? No more than that. We sat next to each other. Had a few drinks.”

  “Did you sleep with her?”

  I shook my head. “No. Not then. We just talked. She asked me, point blank, if I was jealous of Stevens. I mean, Jesus, Kyle Stevens? But for some reason, I told her the truth. I told her I was.”

  Taking a swallow of wine, I could picture the sweater she had been wearing, how her hair, still long at that point, was held back with a comb that came from India, the smooth skin at the base of her throat. I remembered wanting to feel the pulse beating there. More than that, though, I could remember the tremendous openness of her expression as she asked me about my jealousy; her forthrightness, her attention.

  “I mean, Stevens, Christ, what a yutz. But she read it right. He was coming off the biggest case of his career, and I was jealous. And I admitted it.”

  “You never told me.”

  “No, I never did.”

  “But you told her.”

  I nodded. “Yes.” I tried to figure out a way to put my thoughts into words. “She had no expectations of me. I could say, I could do anything. I felt—”

  “Free,” she finished.

  It was the word that I had been going to use, but hearing it spoken aloud, especially in Karen’s voice, I could see it wasn’t right. “No. No, that’s not it. I felt genuine. I felt like I could be myself.”

  She seemed shocked. “But we’ve always been honest with one another.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “I guess I should know better than to believe that, shouldn’t I?” She shook her head. “So what else didn’t you tell me the truth about?” she asked. “Beyond the obvious, of course.”

  “It’s not about honesty, so much,” I tried.

  “Then what is it about?”

  “It was about me. At least, me more than it was about us. I just…I felt like I hadn’t been able to be myself for a long time.” I waited.

  The reaction I had been expecting didn’t come. She blinked, trying to understand. “But I never—”

  “It wasn’t you,” I interrupted. “This isn’t, this was never about you.”

  “Then what is it about?” she asked.

  “It’s about us, I guess. In part. About the relationship. The roles we played—”

  “What roles?” she asked, sliding sarcastically over my word.
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br />   I thought for a moment. “Do you remember how hard it was, back when we were trying to get pregnant?”

  She nodded.

  “How hard it was on you?”

  “And you were there for me.”

  I nodded this time. “Yes. Yes, I was.” I tried to smile. “But who was there for me?” She gaped at me. “That sounds stupid. Stupid and selfish and weak, but it was like I didn’t have anyone. Anyone.”

  “You had me,” she said quietly, already knowing herself that this wasn’t true.

  I shook my head. “How could I talk to you? You were so scared, so upset. Could I have told you how scared I was? How would you have reacted?” I didn’t allow her a chance to answer. She didn’t need to. “It would have made everything worse.” I tried to make the words, the terrible words, make sense.

  She bit the inside of her lip as I spoke, staring into her glass.

  “So I didn’t. I couldn’t. I just kept it all in. I was trying to be strong for you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, without looking up.

  “No, it’s just…That was the right thing to do. I know that. It was the only thing I could do. But I ended up being stuck in that role. Always strong. You leaned on me—”

  “I leaned on you,” she whispered.

  We sat for a long time without speaking, without looking at one another.

  “Why didn’t you ever say anything?” she said finally, setting her empty wineglass on the coffee table, next to the bottle. “To me, I mean.”

  “I didn’t even know anything was wrong,” I answered. “Until Mary asked me about Kyle Stevens, and then I knew that there were some things that I just couldn’t talk to you about anymore. Things that, by the way we had defined our relationship, couldn’t exist in it.”

  “And Mary was someone you could be honest with.”

  “She was someone I didn’t have to play a role with,” I corrected.

  She smiled wryly at me. “It’s the same thing.”

  I didn’t know whether to agree or disagree.

  It was dark when the stranger arrived at the newspaper building. He had left this stop for last; the editor of a newspaper would always be near his newsroom until the next day’s issue was safely put to bed.