Read Online Nobody Is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Catherine Lacey
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was only to thank me for calling and to ask me to not call again.
I said it was tomorrow where I was and he said, yes, he knew it was tomorrow there.
I have to go , he said, but maybe you should call again. We should talk again. We should be trying to fix this, whatever this is. I feel strange that I haven’t heard from you, but I feel strange talking to you, too. Actually, don’t call anymore. I don’t think it’s a good idea.
Okay, I said.
It will be better this way, if we just don’t speak until you can tell me you’re coming home.
The calmness in his voice wasn’t at all convincing, and after I hung up the phone I imagined my husband told me he’d convinced the people in charge of the study to give him the information they’d gotten from me—the pictures of my brain, my answers, my data—and I imagined my husband saying this as if he was announcing a job promotion or that he had unexpectedly won a portion of a class-action lawsuit and as I walked back to Dillon’s house I wondered if maybe I hadn’t imagined my husband telling me this but maybe he’d really said it, really done it, and even though I understood why my husband might go to such anxious lengths to find out what, specifically, was wrong with me, this wasn’t a nice thing to hear or imagine hearing, and the little throbbing anger under everything my husband had said reminded me of how unfair feelings could be, of how our feelings had hunched up and backed away from us, left us looking at each other like strangers.
Hours later, falling asleep on a floor, I couldn’t quite parse a difference between what I’d imagined him saying and what he had actually said and I looked at the photograph of my husband again, the baby him, the he that he was long before we met, before I had even been born, and I remembered that morning when he told me I had lost my mind.
Okay , I said. You’re probably right. Do you want tea?
The things I disagreed with the most adamantly were often the most true, so I wanted to see what would happen if I just agreed. Maybe if I agreed he would have to be wrong and maybe this was the trick of being married to my husband: agreement.
I thought, for one nice moment, that I had discovered something, and then my husband asked if I was aware that I’d lost my mind or if it was something I was managing to overlook. I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not. He was never much of a kidder.
You know, I think I’ll make some coffee instead of tea , I said. Would you like some?
It’s a problem I’ve always had—doing the domestic things I didn’t actually want to do, but it always seemed to me that if I didn’t do them then they would never get done.
I’m asking you a question , he said. And it’s an important question. And it’s important to me that you think about it, that you think about what I’m asking you.
Okay , I said. You’re right.
Agreement.
I knew how he took his coffee, black and lukewarm, so I poured him a cup and I dropped an ice cube in.
* * *
On Dillon’s floor I tried to fall asleep by thinking of ice cubes melting in hot coffee and I thought of wild animals chewing smaller wild animals and I remembered what that nurse had said about the tubes of blood, that they always went to a safe place, and I wondered if my husband could have actually, in real life, talked to the neuroscientists from the study and I knew I didn’t want my husband to know all the facts about my blood and brain because that would give him another unfair advantage. I told myself that the neuroscientists had not, of course, told him anything, that they were trustworthy, that they kept their sides of agreements, and I remembered the tall, black-haired lab technician with the large, soft hands who had spread the cold jelly over my scalp and slid all the electrodes in between my hair, gently, like I was his child, and I believed he would never do anything wrong to me, the cold jelly on his fingers, a warm hand on my
I said it was tomorrow where I was and he said, yes, he knew it was tomorrow there.
I have to go , he said, but maybe you should call again. We should talk again. We should be trying to fix this, whatever this is. I feel strange that I haven’t heard from you, but I feel strange talking to you, too. Actually, don’t call anymore. I don’t think it’s a good idea.
Okay, I said.
It will be better this way, if we just don’t speak until you can tell me you’re coming home.
The calmness in his voice wasn’t at all convincing, and after I hung up the phone I imagined my husband told me he’d convinced the people in charge of the study to give him the information they’d gotten from me—the pictures of my brain, my answers, my data—and I imagined my husband saying this as if he was announcing a job promotion or that he had unexpectedly won a portion of a class-action lawsuit and as I walked back to Dillon’s house I wondered if maybe I hadn’t imagined my husband telling me this but maybe he’d really said it, really done it, and even though I understood why my husband might go to such anxious lengths to find out what, specifically, was wrong with me, this wasn’t a nice thing to hear or imagine hearing, and the little throbbing anger under everything my husband had said reminded me of how unfair feelings could be, of how our feelings had hunched up and backed away from us, left us looking at each other like strangers.
Hours later, falling asleep on a floor, I couldn’t quite parse a difference between what I’d imagined him saying and what he had actually said and I looked at the photograph of my husband again, the baby him, the he that he was long before we met, before I had even been born, and I remembered that morning when he told me I had lost my mind.
Okay , I said. You’re probably right. Do you want tea?
The things I disagreed with the most adamantly were often the most true, so I wanted to see what would happen if I just agreed. Maybe if I agreed he would have to be wrong and maybe this was the trick of being married to my husband: agreement.
I thought, for one nice moment, that I had discovered something, and then my husband asked if I was aware that I’d lost my mind or if it was something I was managing to overlook. I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not. He was never much of a kidder.
You know, I think I’ll make some coffee instead of tea , I said. Would you like some?
It’s a problem I’ve always had—doing the domestic things I didn’t actually want to do, but it always seemed to me that if I didn’t do them then they would never get done.
I’m asking you a question , he said. And it’s an important question. And it’s important to me that you think about it, that you think about what I’m asking you.
Okay , I said. You’re right.
Agreement.
I knew how he took his coffee, black and lukewarm, so I poured him a cup and I dropped an ice cube in.
* * *
On Dillon’s floor I tried to fall asleep by thinking of ice cubes melting in hot coffee and I thought of wild animals chewing smaller wild animals and I remembered what that nurse had said about the tubes of blood, that they always went to a safe place, and I wondered if my husband could have actually, in real life, talked to the neuroscientists from the study and I knew I didn’t want my husband to know all the facts about my blood and brain because that would give him another unfair advantage. I told myself that the neuroscientists had not, of course, told him anything, that they were trustworthy, that they kept their sides of agreements, and I remembered the tall, black-haired lab technician with the large, soft hands who had spread the cold jelly over my scalp and slid all the electrodes in between my hair, gently, like I was his child, and I believed he would never do anything wrong to me, the cold jelly on his fingers, a warm hand on my
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