Where I'm Calling From

anything, just about, to be able to go to sleep, and sleep the sleep of an honest man. Why do we have to sleep anyway? And why do we tend to sleep less during some crises and more during others? For instance, that time my dad had his stroke. He woke up after a coma-seven days and nights in a hospital bed—and calmly said “Hello” to the people in his room. Then his eyes picked me out. “Hello, son,” he said. Five minutes later, he died. Just like that—he died. But, during that whole crisis, I never took my clothes off and didn’t go to bed. I may have catnapped in a waiting-room chair from time to time, but I never went to bed and slept.
    And then a year or so ago I found out Vicky was seeing somebody else. Instead of confronting her, I went to bed when I heard about it, and stayed there. I didn’t get up for days, a week maybe—I don’t know. I mean, I got up to go to the bathroom, or else to the kitchen to make a sandwich. I even went out to the living room in my pajamas, in the afternoon, and tried to read the papers. But I’d fall asleep sitting up. Then I’d stir, open my eyes and go back to bed and sleep some more. I couldn’t get enough sleep.
    It passed. We weathered it. Vicky quit her boyfriend, or he quit her, I never found out. I just know she went away from me for a while, and then she came back. But I have the feeling we’re not going to weather this business. This thing is different. Oliver has given Amanda that ultimatum.
    Still, isn’t it possible that Oliver himself is awake at this moment and writing a letter to Amanda, urging reconciliation? Even now he might be scribbling away, trying to persuade her that what she’s doing to him and their daughter Beth is foolish, disastrous, and finally a tragic thing for the three of them.
    No, that’s insane. I know Oliver. He’s relentless, unforgiving. He could slam a croquet ball into the next block—and has. He isn’t going to write any such letter. He gave her an ultimatum, right?—and that’s that.
    A week. Four days now. Or is it three? Oliver may be awake, but if he is, he’s sitting in a chair in his hotel room with a glass of iced vodka in his hand, his feet on the bed, TV turned on low. He’s dressed, except for his shoes. He’s not wearing shoes—that’s the only concession he makes. That and the fact he’s loosened his tie.
    Oliver is relentless.
    I heat the milk, spoon the skin from the surface and pour it up. Then I turn off the kitchen light and take the cup into the living room and sit on the sofa, where I can look across the street at the lighted windows. But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window-maybe rearrange all the furniture.
    The things that go through your mind when you can’t sleep! Earlier, thinking about Molly, for a moment I couldn’t even remember what she looked like, for Christ’s sake, yet we were together for years, more or less continuously, since we were kids. Molly, who said she’d love me forever. The only thing left was the memory of her sitting and weeping at the kitchen table, her shoulders bent forward, and her hands covering her face. Forever, she said. But it hadn’t worked out that way. Finally, she said, it didn’t matter, it was of no real concern to her, if she and I lived together the rest of our lives or not. Our love existed on a “higher plane.” That’s what she said to Vicky over the phone that time, after Vicky and I had set up housekeeping together. Molly called, got hold of Vicky, and said, “You have your relationship with him, but I’ll always have mine. His destiny and mine are linked.”
    My first wife, Molly, she talked like that. “Our destinies are linked.” She didn’t talk like that in the beginning. It was only later, after so much had happened, that she started using words like “cosmic” and “empowerment” and so forth. But our destinies are not linked—not now, anyway, if they ever were. I don’t even know where she is now, not for certain.
    I think I could put my finger on the exact time, the real turning point, when it came undone for Molly. It was after I started seeing Vicky, and Molly found out. They called me up one day from the high school where Molly taught and said, “Please. Your wife is doing handsprings in front of the school. You’d better get down here.” It was after I took her home that I began hearing about “higher