Nobody Is Ever Missing: A Novel by Catherine Lacey

Author:Catherine Lacey [Lacey, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374711283
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2014-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

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.

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