Talk Before Sleep

by Elizabeth Berg

  “Well … ”

  “I know, I know I was wrong. But I’d thought … oh, I don’t know, I thought he’d never really prefer anyone to me. In spite of all that had happened between us, I was surprised to see him that way. I’d wanted him to let me come home. I wanted to go home. But I saw pretty clearly then that it wasn’t going to happen. Anyway, the next day I called him and apologized and told him to apologize to her, too.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. And the day after that I called you and told you I wanted to die.”

  “Yes, I remember that day. We were eating fried chicken. You were eating sleeping pills.”

  She smiles, looks around her room, then at me. “That’s why I wanted Joel around. So I could have some things back. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “I’d been feeling better. I was happy again. And I can’t help it, I like men to like me.”

  “I know. We all do, goddamn it.”

  “I actually started to think I was going to make it, too. I thought if I just believed I was going to live, if I acted like it, I would. But I’m not going to make it, Ann. I know that.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “I know that and you do too, and so does everyone but L.D.”

  I swallow, feel like crying, but I won’t.

  “I feel like shit, Ann. I really feel terrible.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? What’s wrong?”

  “I didn’t tell you because I was feeling great. Really! But then yesterday, the same stuff started happening. I can’t breathe, my back hurts so bad, especially at night. And I feel like … I feel so … sort of … vague, you know? It’s not just weakness, it’s vagueness.”

  “Did you take—”

  “Yes, I did everything. I called the doctor, I took the pills. I think it’s just my time, now.”

  “Well …” I look around the room helplessly, wonder what to do. I don’t know what to do. “Have you told anyone else?”

  “You do that.”

  “You want me to tell people?”

  “Yes. Okay? I want to feel … free.” She leans back against the pillows, closes her eyes.

  I look at the top of her head. It is rosy pink, delicate flesh. I put my hand there and feel the heat of her life, I feel life. “Don’t go,” I say, a quiet, involuntary request, and she smiles, a tiny thing, full of fatigue and empty of hope.

  “Ruth.”

  She opens her eyes, hands me an envelope lying next to her. It is full of the pictures Sarah took at the party. Looking at them, I see now that we are all too bright, all desperate and pretending, but with our fear betraying us anyway. The last photo is a double exposure, showing Ruth as being in two places at once. She looks see-through, sitting squarely before her easel, but also floating slightly above herself, looking off to the side and reaching out toward something. She sees me looking at it, takes it from me and looks at it again herself.

  “It’s a double exposure,” I say. “That’s all.”

  She smiles bitterly. “Come on. You know better than that.”

  That night after dinner, I pack a suitcase. Meggie is sitting on the bed watching me. One of her sneakers is untied, and I bend down to tie it for her. Ruth helped me pick those sneakers out. I put my face in my hands, then I feel Meggie’s hand on the top of my head. “It’s okay,” she says. And then, again, “It’s okay, Mommy.”

  I look up at her, attempt a smile.

  “When are you coming home?” she asks.

  “In not too long, I think, Meggie.”

  “In two days?”

  “I don’t know, honey. Maybe. I don’t know. But Daddy will be here. He’s going to go to the office just while you’re at school. Then he’ll work from home in the afternoons, so he’ll be here with you. That’ll be kind of fun, huh?”

  She nods.

  “And I’ll call you every day. And you can call me if you need to. Whenever you want.”

  “Okay.”

  I get up from the floor, sit beside her on the bed. “I’ll miss you, but I really need to be with Ruth now, okay?”

  Another nod. “Is she going to die now?”

  “I think so.”

  “When will you?”

  “Not for a long, long time. Not until I’m a very old lady. Not until you’re an old lady yourself.”

  “Oh. How do you know?”

  “Well,” I say. “I just do.”

  She is visibly relieved. And in her acceptance of my false assuredness, I find relief, too. Ruth once told me, “I think one of the reasons we have children is to believe everything all over again. And I’m not talking Santa, here, either.”

  We keep everyone away that first night. Ruth says she wants to settle into herself, think about what to do. “All I know right now,” she says, as we lie in her bed together that night, “is that I want to be here. I want you guys around me. You and L.D. and Sarah and Helen. And Michael, of course. He’s coming home from school tomorrow night. Those are the only people I want here anymore. I don’t want to have to deal with anyone else.”

  “What if Eric wants to come?”

  “No. We’ve said our good-byes.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “It wasn’t so bad,” she says. “It was actually kind of nice. We had an hour-long phone conversation last night. We’ve made peace with each other.”

  “And what about Joel? He wants to be here, I know.”

  “Oh, I know, but …” She shrugs. “I don’t want him to come. Something changes when men are around, even good ones.”

  I shake my head. “It’s so funny that he just appeared like that. I like him. And I feel so bad that … I think you could have been …”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “That just doesn’t matter anymore.” There is such private peace in her voice. I can’t know how she got to where she is now. I can only see that she is there. She turns on her side, faces me. “Listen, you need to get this, okay? I’m okay about dying. I am. I just want to do it as right as I can, I want some control. I mean, I don’t want a religious service. And I want all of you to say something about me at the funeral. Will you?”

  “Oh, God, Ruth.”

  “And I want you to take me to a cemetery tomorrow. I think I know where I want to be buried. Sarah found it; she likes it, too. My spot would be by water. And there are two trees there that will bloom in the spring.”

  I swallow, nod okay.

  “That will be good, to have flowers there every spring, won’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I want an angel on my grave. A grown-up woman angel, with huge wings that look really powerful. Like she works out. I’ve been dreaming about angels. I think they’re real. I want one on my grave.”

  “Okay.”

  “So that’s it. Tomorrow you’ll take me to the cemetery. And then tell the others they can come visit whenever they want. And we’ll just … wait. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She sighs. “Okay.”

  “Ruth?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you really think this is it? I mean, doesn’t this feel … impossible?”

  “Not any more.” She puts her hand over mine, holds it. “I’m sorry.”

  I start to cry and she says, “Don’t. It’s okay. It’s okay. I feel … like I’m behind the camera now, and not in front of it, do you know what I mean?”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t know what you mean. I feel terrible.” I cry harder.

  “Stop it,” she says. “Listen to me. My perspective is different. I see everything differently. I’m telling you that it’s okay and I want you to believe me. In some perverse sort of way, I’m looking forward to it. I mean, I finally get to see what happens, you know what I mean?”

  I nod. “I guess so.”

  “The only scary thing is how alone I’ll be, doing it. I mean, even with you here. I wish I could get together a bunch of women like me—God knows we’re all over the place. I c
ould round up a bunch of us terminal breast cancers and we could jump off a cliff together, like those buffalo. We could all experience death in the same way, at the same time, and then it wouldn’t be lonely. We’d all die together. And then we’d all rise up together, check each other’s teeth for lipstick before we entered the pearly gates.”

  “Wait a minute,” I say. “What are you talking about? What buffalo?”

  “Someone told me this, I forget who. That’s how the Indians got their buffalo, they chased them over a cliff. I suppose the Indians thought they were pretty clever. But I think maybe those buffalo knew, that they chose that way to die. It was better than arrows, better than dying one by one.”

  “It’s like Thelma and Louise,” I say. “They went off a cliff together rather than be killed the other way.”

  “I know. They were the real Buffalo Gals.”

  We stare at each other. There is a moment, and then we are both laughing. I get the TV guide and we watch a rerun of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Then Ruth is tired, wanting to go to sleep, so I make my bed in the living room. Ruth sits in a chair, supervising. “Get that flowered quilt out of the linen closet,” she says. “You can’t put that ugly plain one next to your skin.” Then, abruptly, “I want you to make more friends.”

  I look up at her, surprised.

  “I’m worried about you,” she says. “What will you do without me?”

  I shrug, put the pillowcase on the pillow, throw it on the bed.

  “Ann?” she says.

  “What?”

  “I’m really glad you’re here.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Come tuck me in.”

  I follow her into her bedroom. Her gait is slow, slightly unsteady. She crawls under her blankets, pulls them up high. “Keep my shade open. I want to see the stars. I always like to see the stars before I go to sleep.”

  “Okay.”

  “Remember when we slept under the stars?”

  “Yes.”

  “You kissed me.”

  “I know.”

  “Good night,” she says, and I lean down and kiss her cool and perfect forehead. There is no fever here. Her forehead is fine.

  We went camping just last summer, because Td never gone and Ruth thought that was crazy. “You have to sleep under the stars at least once in your life,” she said. “There is nothing like it.”

  “It’s uncomfortable,” I said.

  “It’s not.”

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “I’ve been in a sleeping bag. It’s not comfortable. You can’t get proper alignment.”

  “Ann,” she said, “you are lying under the fucking stars. You don’t think, oh, jeez, I wonder if this is hurting my posture.”

  “I didn’t say anything about ‘posture,’” I said. “I said alignment. You just can’t he right. And it’s uncomfortable. There are rocks under you. And little hills and valleys, things like that. And killer wildlife all over the place just waiting for you to go to sleep.”

  “I’m taking you this weekend,” she said.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Can’t make it.”

  “Nine o’clock Saturday night, I’m picking you up,” she said. “Bring your sleeping bag and your analgesics.”

  We laid out our bags that night, and she was right, I looked up at the sky and it was all I thought about. I felt suspended in time and in space. I believed myself uniquely privileged at the same time that I understood my connection to the millions of humans who had done this before me and would afterward.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” Ruth asked, lying beside me.

  “Yes.”

  “Does anything else matter now?”

  “No.”

  “Do you find that comforting?”

  “Yes, but scary, too,” I said.

  “Are you scared?”

  “Well, I don’t know if ‘scared’ is the right word. I just feel how unimportant we are.”

  “But that’s good.”

  “I don’t think so. I mean, I want to mean something. I want it to matter that I’m here.”

  “Ah, make your mark, huh?”

  “Don’t you?” I asked.

  “I think …” she said. “I believe you make your mark inside yourself. I think we’re meant to use every single thing we’re given. I want to act on every impulse.”

  “I want more. I want someone to know I was here.”

  “But you still have to start with yourself,” she said. “You have to let yourself know you’re here. Take things in. Let things happen. Everything.”

  I was quiet for a long time, then said, “I know I don’t do that. Do I?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what makes me scared.”

  “I know.”

  “But also, I’m not like you.”

  “Not in all ways.”

  “I don’t think in any, Ruth. I mean, you’re my best friend. I admire you. But we’re very different.”

  “We’re more alike than you think.” She rose up, leaned over me. “Do you think I’m pretty?”

  “I think you’re beautiful. Everybody does.”

  “Have you ever thought about loving me?”

  “I do, I do love you, that’s what I meant.”

  “No. I mean, physically loving me.”

  “No!”

  “No?”

  “Well, I’m sorry, Ruth, but no, I haven’t.”

  She put her face down close to mine. I didn’t move. She put her hand along the side of my face, pushed my hair back, raised her eyebrows slightly. I didn’t move. The stars surrounded her, they and her face were all that I saw. And then she pulled away, lay back down on her bag, started laughing.

  “What?” I asked, embarrassed and a little angry.

  “You should have seen your face!” she said.

  I leaped up, lay on top of her, and kissed her passionately. Then I got back into my sleeping bag.

  After a stunned moment, she said, “Well, congratulations! A plus.”

  “How come you’re always the teacher?” I asked.

  “Well,” she said. “I’m not. Obviously.”

  I closed my eyes. I went to sleep.

  It was weeks later, while I was lying in the bathtub, as a matter of fact, that it came to me that I could be pleased about what happened, that it wasn’t something that diminished me, but rather made me fuller, and richer. I saw that every person is a multifaceted and complex being, worthy of respectful exploration and discovery; that this longing we can’t name and try to cure with relationships might only be us, wanting to know all of our own selves. I felt like I was starting to learn, and I sort of whooped a little in happiness, like a cowgirl. Meggie, who’d been walking by the bathroom door, called in, “What happened? Are you all right?” I said that nothing was the matter, that I was just fine, just an old cowgirl taking a bath.

  “You’re not a cowgirl!” she said, laughing.

  “Why not?” I said. “It’s up to me.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. Which was odd, because it was everything.

  The noises of Ruth’s house at night are still unfamiliar to me. It takes me a long time to fall asleep. I am also thinking, how can I just go to sleep? There must be something I can do. How can I just lie here and be sleepy and comfortable and normal and have nothing be wrong with me, nothing hurting in my body? I think of Joe telling me, “You have to remember that this is happening to her, okay? You have to differentiate yourself. Or you can’t help her.”

  “What do you know about it?” I said. “You don’t know anything about it!”

  “I know she wants you to stay yourself,” he said. “I know she wants you to be happy.”

  “You don’t know anything,” I said.

  But of course he did. I’ll do Ruth no good by regretting that I’m not dying, too. But I can’t help it. I regret that I can’t jump off with her, hold hands, take a step and fall, looking up at the sky the whole way down.

  In the morning
, I push open Ruth’s bedroom door, lean in to see if she’s awake. There is a flock of birds in the trees outside chattering outrageously, ruffling up their feathers, cocking their heads in the too-bright way of the mechanical toy. I’ve been at the living-room window drinking coffee and watching them for a while, wondering as usual at the secret kind of consensus they seem to keep. Who will decide, and at what moment, that they should take off together, fly obliquely across the winter sky in their ragged but purposeful formation? Do they know where they’re going?

  Ruth is sitting up, looking out the window at the same tree I’ve been watching. I nod a greeting, give her my coffee, then stretch out beside her. There is a slat of sun lying along her face, the light illuminating the tiny golden hairs along her ear. Below the curl of cartilage, I can see the reddish glow of blood in her lobe. I remember holding Meggie when she was a baby and nursing her, seeing the same thing. She held tightly onto one of my fingers, and we rocked slowly back and forth in front of the tiny window in her room. I used to think that if someone about to commit a crime looked up and saw a silhouette on the shade of a mother rocking a baby, it would be enough to stop them. There was sometimes a wonderful breeze, and the curtain would billow out dramatically, then be pulled up close against the screen, tangolike. I would watch Meggie’s face, think of all that lay ahead of her. Someday she would say in words what it was she wanted; someday she would walk in the door, lunchbox clanging into her leg, and I would open it at the kitchen sink and see what she had chosen, what she had rejected, all without me. Every maturational milestone seemed a miracle to me, because it was Meggie who would be doing it.

  Ruth is quiet, sipping coffee and staring straight ahead, and I close my eyes, continue thinking my own thoughts. Today we are going to a cemetery. I wonder how Ruth’s mother would feel if she were alive, watching the daughter she held in the rocker die, driving her to graveyards as though they were apartments for rent. It seems the most unfair and impossible of things: how can a baby you bring into life leave it before you? What sense is there in that? Of course, if there is one lesson grief teaches, it is that there is no sense in some things. Still, I know if Ruth’s mother were alive, she would handle this, draw from the reservoir of sacred strength that women are born with. She would wear clothes whose very smell comforted Ruth, she would put on an apron and make her soup and butter her toast and help her to walk to the bathroom when she needed it; and when things turned the worst, she would not leave. Women do not leave situations like this: we push up our sleeves, lean in closer, and say, “What do you need? Tell me what you need and by God I will do it.” I believe that the souls of women flatten and anchor themselves in times of adversity, lay in for the stay. I’ve heard that when elephants are attacked they often run, not away, but toward each other. Perhaps it is because they are a matriarchal society.