He lay spread-eagled on the bed, staring at the palmetto bug on the ceiling directly above his head. Why didn’t it move? Was it dead? He had been watching it for almost an hour now, waiting for one of the bristly legs to budge. He never took his eyes away; he refused to even blink, willing his eyes to remain open even when tears gathered in little pools and burned down the sides of his face.
With the tips of his fingers he could just reach both sides of the king-sized bed. He grabbed the edges and pulled, flexing the mattress slightly. He wondered: If he pulled hard enough, could he wrap it around him? There was only a bottom sheet on the bed, and it hadn’t been changed in weeks. It didn’t matter; he was the only one who slept on the bed anyway, and he didn’t really sleep—that had stopped weeks ago.
He had lost the ability to reach a state of sleep; he was like a man in a dark cellar feeling along the wall for a light switch—some mental mechanism that would turn off all the pain and regret and bring on welcome oblivion. But he could find no switch; the walls were bare. Even when he did occasionally slip into unconsciousness, he would suddenly jerk upright like a dozing man who had slipped beneath the water of a bath. At first he could sleep only a few fitful hours each night; later, it was only an hour or two; now he couldn’t even close his eyes. He felt like a starving child standing at the back door of a bakery night after night, hoping that the door would open and some crumb would be thrown to him—but it never happened.
He didn’t even undress anymore—there was no point. He knew that sleep was gone forever; he wasn’t sure why he came to bed at all. It was a sort of penance—a ritual he had to perform each night to remind himself of what he had become: He was the undead, doomed to lie in darkness while eternally awake.
He rolled his head to the right and looked at the empty closet. He wondered where she was tonight. He wondered if she could sleep. He wondered if she had a new husband now, with a new daughter who was still alive. He wondered if she had forgotten all about her, and the thought made his eyes begin to burn.
He had not forgotten. He would never forget. And he would never rest until he had made things right.
He rolled to his feet and stood on the bed. With the butt of his palm he crushed the palmetto bug against the ceiling, then hopped down onto the floor. For an instant he thought he felt rested—but the feeling quickly passed. He no longer felt rested; he no longer felt tired either. He felt—electric, as though he were a machine that could run as long as it remained plugged in. It would run as long as it needed to run. Who knows—it might even run forever.
He crossed the hall and entered a second bedroom—her bedroom. The room felt different the moment he entered it; this room wasn’t empty like the other one was. This room was still full—full of her. The closets were still lined with dresses and shoes, and the chest of drawers was still stacked with neat little piles of cotton and silk. There were still photographs on the desk, though they now rested in a thick layer of dust; there was even a purple-and-gold LSU pennant that hung above the bed. The room was still full because she never really left; she didn’t pack her things and decide to run away like his wife did—she would never have done that. She was gone only because she was taken away—taken away from him.
He stretched out on her bed, being careful not to wrinkle the comforter or disturb the throw pillows at the head. He looked up at the ceiling; it was pure and white. He closed his eyes for a moment, but he knew that even here he would not sleep. He didn’t want to sleep; he wanted to feel her presence, which was never far away—but here it was so very real.
Speak to me, sweetheart—speak to me.
Silence.
He got up from the bed and carefully smoothed the comforter, erasing any sign of his intrusion. He crossed the hall into the bathroom—her bathroom. He switched on the light and found the medicine cabinet open wide; the shelves were empty, except for one small orange plastic bottle on the center shelf. He took out the bottle and opened it; he shook two pills into the palm of his hand. He tossed the pills into the back of his throat and swallowed quickly because the pills had no coating on them and they were bitter. He bent down and took a drink directly from the tap.
He set the bottle back on the shelf again and closed the cabinet door; when he did, he found a message written in lipstick on the glass. “Daddy,” it said at the top, and under that simple greeting was the name and address of a man.
At the bottom of the mirror a closing comment had been added. It read: “He was one of them too.”
Thank you, sweetheart. Thank you for speaking to me.