Hello, he said.
Hello? he said.
I said his name.
I said, It’s Elyria.
He said, Ha.
Then we were quiet for I don’t know how long. A big truck drove by. The man who was driving was hooting at the radio, the sound of a crowd cheering.
I went to New Zealand.
I know.
And I should have told you.
My husband inhaled fast, tried to make a word and didn’t.
Well? he asked.
Well, what?
Do you have something to say?
I don’t know.
You don’t know.
I’m not sure.
He did the inhale thing again. Well, if it’s all the same to you I’m going to get back to work now. The next time you call you might want to have something to say.
And the line went dead and a machine woman started speaking, asking for more money, saying, Please, saying, Have a nice day.
I slung my backpack on, walked down an alley, put my backpack down, and crouched over it to have an almost-human moment. I felt like I got close to being a rational person right then, phlegm dripping in my throat, face turning red. In this situation, any rational person would be hurt, would feel lost, and being hurt and feeling lost would cause her to do a real thing, to really cry. A rational person would feel upset instead of just knowing she was upset. Her feelings would show up in her body as if she had no choice in the matter and this would cause her to realize she needed to find a way back to her home, to her real life that was somehow going on without her. She would immediately go to an airport and buy a plane ticket. She would start practicing her apologies on the flight and when she got back home she would start seeing a therapist to prove to herself and everyone else how sorry she was, how wrong she was, how much she needed help. And if she was lucky, her husband would work hard to forgive her — he would work at forgiveness every day like it was an extremely difficult equation. And slowly, eventually, they would go back to being okay, to being a two-piece team moving through life. And when this rational person was in therapy she would talk about things like her dead sister and her monster mother — and where the hell was her father, anyway? — and through all this she would make progress in her therapy and when someone asked how she was she would say, I am okay; I’m in therapy; we’re sorting things out; we’re making progress. But first this rational person would need to get to an airport and buy a plane ticket straight back home and before she could do that she would need to have the courage to do that and before she could have the courage she would need to want to have the courage, to need to want to try to have the courage to say, I give up, I was wrong, take me home.
In my almost-human moment, I felt the tears building up behind my eyes, bubbling there, humming like a teakettle before it boils, but I didn’t cry. Blood rushed around in my body like it was being chased, but then it stopped — maybe it realized there is nowhere for blood to go but around and around and as I thought this I knew I wasn’t always a rational person, or even a nice one. I stood up straight, put myself back in order, and tried to figure out where to go next.
23
He said the night terrors had never happened before me and I could never decide if that was comforting or not comforting, if it meant I brought the worst out in him or if it just meant that the majority of my husband was a mostly nice thing — and maybe the realest part of my husband was unaffiliated with the screaming, violent version that shook us both awake some nights. Still, I couldn’t forget that there was a distinct possibility that it was me and the way I handled or not quite handled my wifehood that had unhinged this part of him. I had disrupted him. I was the catalyst that began the bad in his life, and I would continue to be a long series of disruptions to him and I was always going to bring out his ugliest side, and my sleeping beside him would always stop him from being able to really sleep.
In the early months the night terrors just made sleeping a kind of roulette and there was something perversely satisfying about waking up to his frayed screaming (when life seemed more like a soap opera and less like a life) but that was before the choking began, before the nights his hands would creep across my collarbone and tighten around my neck, and though it usually only took a few small hits to his chest or face to make him stop, a few nights I had to hit him harder than what seemed safe and though he never shut my trachea long enough for me to pass out he sometimes came close, pressing down for a moment, a wink in my throat. When he slipped out of a terror, eyes still shut and jaw slack, he’d fall limp back to his side of the bed and sometimes he’d go immediately back to sleep, and on those nights I’d get out of bed, shaking with adrenaline, and go to the living room couch with my neck bent against the armrest, chin on chest, mind on husband, eyes on window, waiting for some kind of sign, some kind of evidence, some kind of kindness or understanding to tell me, Self, it is all fine and okay. Close your eyes. Tomorrow it will all be fine. But I never have been the kind to keep a back-stock of that kind of kindness, the way that other people do, taking care of themselves and others, being ready to forgive.
Other nights, my husband would stay awake and we’d play out the same script:
Did it happen?
Yes.
Elly, my God, Elly, I’m so sorry. Elyria.
And he’d wrap over me and my throat would feel rug burned where he’d twisted the skin.
Elly, talk to me.
But what was there to talk about? What could I say? I had seen how a corner of my husband wanted to stop all the air in me.
Go back to sleep, I’d say.
What was it like this time?
The same.
Did I hurt you?
No. Let’s go back to sleep.
This looks like it hurt, Elly.
He’d drag a limp finger over the red lines his hands had left.
I’m fine. We’re fine.
And he’d keep staring, waiting for me to say what I knew he needed to hear, something I said so much I wondered why he didn’t just say it for me after a while.
I’d say, I know you didn’t mean to.
I knew that he didn’t mean to, or I think I knew he didn’t mean to, or it was better to believe that he didn’t mean to, but I wondered how I knew, for certain, that he didn’t mean to, or if a more accurate thing to say would be that I trusted that he didn’t mean to, but if I actually did trust that he didn’t mean to, I should have just said that I knew he didn’t mean to, which I obviously didn’t know for certain since I would stay awake for the rest of the night wondering how I could know, for certain, that he didn’t mean to, and what did my lack of certainty mean about how much I trusted or did not trust my husband, about how well or not well our marriage was going, the possibility that we each wanted to cause severe damage to the other, and there was the fact that the only way I could defend my husband’s night terrors was to believe that they were an entirely separate phenomenon from him, but I also knew that was incredibly unlikely or actually impossible because my husband was mostly his mind and I believed his mind was what made the night terrors happen. And it’s still unclear to me why a person has abilities that they do not want to have, why a person feels things that person doesn’t want to feel and why that person doesn’t feel things that person does want to feel, and why a person falls out of love when being in love was such a good thing to be in, and why a person makes loud and clumsy attempts at midnight to kill the life one could reasonably expect that person to want to preserve.