He opened his eyes and saw that she was on the bed facing him now, and he wanted to rouse himself to console her. But his body felt heavy — the sudden heaviness you feel when you’ve been treading water and are about to sink, a signal from your body that it isn’t worth it to fight anymore. He was lying on his back, hot and heavy on the mattress, and she was on her side, supporting herself on one arm, her free hand resting on the sheet. If she were to put her hand on him, that little bit of added weight would push him under. He looked at her hand, and not at her face. It was such a small hand, the fingers long and thin — he had forgotten if he had ever held such a hand when he was young, when his own hand was smaller.
She had once said that he was a coward. Cowardly to leave his family and not totally cut the tie. Cowardly to go, and cowardly to return, and all the time he was in Connecticut feeling heavy — his heart heavy. He felt old, and more tired than he felt when he was physically tired, driving home late to his mother’s house in Rye. The truth was that he didn’t have much grace. He could have eased Louise into discussions, but he hadn’t. Louise could still take him by surprise, and he was afraid of that. The only thing that had taken him by surprise that had been a good surprise, a surprise he could deal with, had been Nina. When she had opened the door and he had seen the man standing there, he had misunderstood, in a flash, what kind of scene he had walked in on; and he had only been able to stand there, as stunned as he was when somebody pulled a trick on him on the telephone, unable to think about what was happening but staring at her breast, the robe fallen away so that he saw the curve of her breast almost to the nipple. He had no idea what he would have done or said if she had not spoken. He could imagine standing there still.
At the hospital, it had seemed that he was watching the action from a great distance, as if he were standing outside a dance hall where strobe lights were flashing. The hospital had seemed garishly bright, and he had closed his eyes often, needing to rest them. When he opened them, he would get a flash of something new, something he would only see quickly: the blood-covered shirt, the notebook that was open and then closed, a needle going into Louise’s arm. When he blinked the needle had been pulled out; Louise had been standing and then she was sitting. He saw people but not groups of people; a nurse’s hand, but not the nurse’s body. His son, in a white bed: For a second he had seen all of him, a little boy in a bed, but then he had seen only his eyes. John Joel had said that Mary was a bitch. His mouth had moved, but nothing else, and he had wanted to move toward him, but the nurse had stepped in. He blinked, and then the nurse was between him and his son, and he was staring at her hand, turning. The corridor stretched before him, long and narrow and bright; and from there, somehow, to the inside of the car, with Louise on the seat beside him. Then he managed to focus on the important things, one by one: key in ignition, hand on wheel, foot on accelerator. He had gotten to New York the same way. He had not seen the whole backyard, but only the tree under which it had happened; and then he had seen his car, gotten into the car, and from there to New York it was a series of simple, mechanical movements. They tell you when you are learning to drive not to stare straight ahead, but to take in what is happening around you. Next to him was an empty seat. He looked at his hands on the wheel, then through the windshield, and then at the speedometer: He watched the needle climb and climb until he was going the right speed. He knew that he was falling asleep, and that he shouldn’t sleep. Her hand was on his chest, but he had been wrong — it was inadequate to hold him down. He wasn’t heavy, as he had thought, but light, speeding.
“What’s the matter?” she said, when he sprang up from the bed.
He stood in the room, shaking sleep out of his head. He had to go back, but he was afraid to move out of the room, afraid to move from the spot he stood in. Nina was standing beside him, pulling his arm the way Brandt did, but she had more power. She could lead him back to the bed. He blinked, and he was sitting on the bed, Nina’s arm around his shoulder, Nina pressing up against him. She was crying. He talked to her, said words, said something, but she kept on crying. Talking to her was as futile as trying to get to the top of the stairs. Time had stopped. He was telling her that they were stopped, and she was shaking her head no. She didn’t believe him? He decided to trust her. He smiled and pulled her down on the bed with him. If time hadn’t stopped, then it was safe to sleep, and when he woke up things would go on. It was possible that things could go on. If he slept, it did not mean that he would sleep forever.
“What are you going to do?” she said.
He thought that she knew him so well that she had read his mind. He thought she was asking him whether or not he was going to stay awake.
On his side, next to her in the bright room, he slept.
He dreamed that Nina was on a train. It was a train in a foreign country, a train somewhere in Europe, and it was winter, a bright day, bare trees and bright sun as the train took a curve and straightened again. She had on a winter coat, black, and she was sitting in a compartment alone, on a long wooden bench that faced another wooden bench. She was looking at the haze of passing scenery out the window. And then a couple came into the compartment, a man and a wife. They had a newspaper with them, the New York Times, and when they put a section aside she asked to see it. They were surprised that she was also an American. Just the three of them, two facing one, Nina in her black coat. She had taken the paper, unfolded it, turned the page, and there was his picture. Sitting on the train and opening a newspaper she had found his obituary, and that was how she learned that he was dead.