Read Online The Hazards of Sleeping Alone by Elise Juska - Free Book Online Page B

He doesn’t require much.” Emily looks up. “Is it okay?”
    Charlotte stares down into the white slopes of the sugar, feeling something twist in her chest. She forces her gaze to the coffeemaker, the slow, methodic drip of it, trying to keep her pulse from racing. She reminds herself of her daughter’s sadness the night before. The exhaustion on her face this morning. The sleepy, squinty eyes. The left side of her face still creased with pillow marks.
    â€œOf course,” Charlotte says, trying not to sound devastated. She caps the sugar bowl with what she hoped would be a brisk clap, but instead is a barely audible clink. “Of course it’s okay.”
    She waits for Emily to offer something more, some urgent reason, some couldn’t-be-helped explanation for Walter’s visit, but she doesn’t. In fact, she doesn’t seem that surprised. Is it possible she knew about it? That they planned it together before she left? The mere possibility that Emily could have known Walterwas coming—
wanted
Walter coming—is even more awful than the prospect of his being here. Maybe her funk last night wasn’t because she was mad at him, but because she missed him. Because she was miserable here without him. Maybe the reality is simply this: Emily would rather spend the weekend with Walter, whom she sees every day, than with Charlotte.
    â€œSo!” Charlotte’s voice is unnaturally loud. She opens the cabinet, plunks two mugs on the counter: WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY and YOU CAN’ T BE COOL WEARING FUR. “What time will Walter be getting here?”
    â€œNot until late. Around two, probably.”
    â€œTwo—”
    â€œ A.M. ”
    Of course. There would be no way Walter could arrive from New Hampshire by two in the afternoon, yet this entire visit seemed so surreal Charlotte was leaving nothing to chance.
    Emily reaches one hand from the folds of the blanket, plucks absently at the bunch of grapes. Something about the lackluster way she pops them in her mouth, letting the spiny stems fall to the table, angers Charlotte. She yanks open the refrigerator and reaches for one carton of regular milk, one of soy.
    â€œSo,” she says again. She must remain focused on the details. “He’ll leave New Hampshire tonight, then?”
    â€œAfter he gets out of work.”
    â€œDoes he have a car?”
    â€œNo.” Emily sighs, as if reminded of the burden of being the sole auto owner. “Train.”
    â€œAnd how will he get from the train to the house?”
    â€œCab.”
    â€œCab?” This was a foreign concept in Millville, New Jersey. Had Charlotte ever even
seen
a cab since moving here?
    â€œThat’s what he tells me.”
    â€œShouldn’t you pick him up at the station?”
    Emily simultaneously raises her hands, shoulders, and eyebrows in an exaggerated
don’t-ask-me.
“He says he doesn’t want me waiting in the dark. Apparently, an empty train station at two in the morning is no place for me to be.” The resentment in her tone is not surprising. Emily has never liked being seen as vulnerable, as needing protection. Though Charlotte, much as she dislikes Walter at the moment, is glad he’s insisted on this.
    â€œPlus,” Emily says, “he doesn’t want to inconvenience anyone.”
    A little late for that, Charlotte thinks.
    â€œYou won’t even have to get up when he gets here. I’ll listen for him. You’ll sleep right through it. I promise.”
    Charlotte slams the gaping refrigerator door. “And he’ll be staying until—”
    Emily gives her a quizzical look. “Sunday?” She phrases it like a question, to reinforce the obvious. It is the twenty-two-year-old tonal equivalent of the schoolyard phrase Charlotte hated most when Emily was a child:
No duh.
It was always delivered with such condescension. “No duh, Mom,” Emily would say, if Charlotte