The specific proposal, respecting which Hope agreed to at least ‘hear [me] out’ on a morning of low skies and light mist which made the small, decorative, ‘bay window’’s light in our breakfast nook appear shadowless and unreal and appeared to exaggerate the haggardness of our exhausted faces, was as follows: that if Hope would consent to attend Rutgers’ Edmund R. and Meredith R. Darling Sleep Clinic with me and place ourselves in the trained and respected Clinic’s Sleep researchers’ experienced hands, then, if the results of the Sleep Clinic’s study of our sleep patterns served, in any substantive way, form or manner to confirm her perceptions and beliefs in the dispute over my ‘snoring,’ then I myself would move immediately back into our Audrey’s former agapemone or ‘Guest’ room down the hall and consent to follow the Medical staff’s recommendations about treating my then presumably bona fide ‘snoring.’ (It is true, as a child, that I myself had evidently sucked or ‘nursed at’ my own thumb while asleep for such an extended period of time during my childhood that our family’s pediatrician in Wilkes Barre had finally directed my parents to coat or paint the nail of my thumb with an aversive tasting prescription lacquer or, as it were, ‘nail’ polish each night before retiring — at least, such was my Father’s stated recollection of anything unusual or out of the ordinary in my childhood sleep habits. [The Darling Sleep Clinic staff had required Hope and myself to fill out exhaustive, preliminary or ‘Intake’ reports on our present and past sleep patterns, including data as far back as possible, including, if possible, childhood.])
On his own, ‘personal’ time, over the course of several appointments and interchanges in his comfortably appointed ‘E.A.P.’ program office, Jack Vivien, despite his own ponderous work load, had helped me to prepare carefully for the presentation of this ‘last ditch’ proposal, during which I made certain to keep my facial expression and vocal tone non-accusatory and neutral other than a certain level of undisguised exhaustion (the previous night had been a particularly difficult or ‘bad’ one, with numerous awakenings and accusations). The suggestion of last ditch exhaustion or ‘giving up’ in the way I presented it in the breakfast nook, which, no doubt (as Jack Vivien predicted), made the proposal more impactful, was, in most respects, sincere or ‘heart-felt,’ although not, obviously, in the way Hope (who, too, appeared to have aged several whole years over the preceding Winter along with myself [though I would never have given voice to this observation aloud — be ‘Father’’s opinions on our marriage as they may, I do know enough about the dynamics of a solid marriage to discern the difference between honesty and mere brutality, and that tact and circumspection play as large a part in an intimate relation as candor and ‘soul baring,’ if not more], and who often complained that chronic lack of sleep [although she often was asleep; what she was, in reality, actually feeling the effects and complaining of were traumatic dreams or ‘Night terrors,’ though I, of course, once again kept my own counsel on these matters] produced a distracting ‘sound’ [or, rather, a mild aural hallucination — I literally bit my tongue in restraint when she discussed this putative ‘sound’] which mimicked the tone of a ‘Tuning fork’ or well rung bell) appeared to believe, her face, over the table’s center-piece, grapefruit and dry toast, flirting at times with vortical abstraction and pulses of virid color but managing to retain or ‘hang on’ to its visual or optical integrity or cohesion in the drained grey morning light in a way which seemed almost stubborn. Small framed and sharp featured, with a swart or tanned complexion and high-lighted hair in a tall ‘Bouffante’ which stood aloof and unchanging above the shifting tides of coiffure fashion, Hope’s strong will and refusal to be anyone other than ‘who’ and ‘what’ she was had been one of the original attractions between her and myself; and at this point, even during my exhausted presentation of the ‘last resort’ of the Edmund R. and Meredith R. Darling Sleep Clinic, I can even now remember remembering that I had never forgotten this, or been unmoved by her ‘inner fire,’ or ceased to (in my ‘way’) ‘love’ and find her desirable despite the fact that, even prior to the enervating dissolution of the present conflict, the intervening recent years had not been, as the saying goes, ‘kind’ with respect to Hope’s gynecic or womanly charms or appeal, although, in her own case, the spoliations of time have not resulted in the swelling, puddling, thickening or bloated effects of the aging process in both her stepsisters and (to a somewhat lesser extent) myself. Once voluptuous to the point of being nearly ‘Ruben-esque,’ Hope’s own aging or anility’s type has established itself as being primarily one now consisting of ‘weazening’ or desiccation, her skin toughening and becoming in places leathery in appearance, her dark tan permanent and her teeth, neck’s tendons and extremities’ joints appearing protrusive in a way they once never did. In brief, her over-all mien has taken on a lupine or predatory aspect, and what was once her eyes’ well known ‘twinkle’ has become a mere avidity. (None of this is, of course, in any way surprising or ‘unnatural’—air and time have simply done to my wife what they also ‘do’ to bread and hung laundry. Indeed, we must all come to terms with our own actuarial plight, so to speak, of which the ‘Empty nest’ is such a vivid mile post along the way of.) The natural but nevertheless terrible reality — albeit unspoken of in any viable union, over time — is that, by this point in our marriage, Hope was already
de facto or practically speaking unsexed, an, as the saying goes withered vine or bloom, and this somehow all the worse or ‘more so’ for all of her scrupulous devotion to self care and youthful desiderata, just as so many of her own other bloated or desiccant circle of friends and Book and Horticulture clubs’ middle aged wives and divorcées who habitually congregate together around the Raritan Club’s pool throughout the Summer season are obsessed by, as welclass="underline" the Exercise classes and caloric regimes, emollients and toners, Yoga, supplements, tanning or (albeit rarely mentioned) Surgical ‘work’ or procedures — all the willful clinging to the same nubile or ‘virgo intacta’ vivacity which their own daughters unknowingly serve to mock as they latterly blossom. (In fact, pace her natural verve and ‘esprit fort,’ it was often all too easy a matter to remark the pain in Hope’s eyes and her mouth’s crimped or ‘pinched’ set when watching or within the purview of our Audrey’s later, increasingly mature and comely peer circle, an anile grief so easily then transferred or ‘projected’ as anger onto myself for merely owning eyes with which to see and be naturally affected by.) One is, in fact, hard pressed to regard it as coincidental that all of these blossoming girls and daughters were, almost without exception, all dispatched to ‘out-of-State’ colleges, as with each passing year the mere physical sight of them became for their mothers a living rebuke.