White Oleander - Janet Fitch [118]
“Claire, let me in.”
I heard the squeak of the bedsprings as she turned over, the effort it took to get up, stumble the three steps to the door. She fumbled with the lock. I opened the door and she fell back into bed, still wearing that red bathrobe. She pawed her way under the covers like a blind burrowing animal. Thank God, she wasn’t crying anymore, she was ready to pass out. I turned off Leonard Cohen.
“I’m so cold,” she mumbled. “Come in with me.”
I got in, clothes and all. She put her cold feet on mine, her head on my shoulder. The sheets smelled of sherry and dirty hair and L’Air du Temps.
“Stay with me, promise. Don’t leave.”
I held her cold hands, rested my head against hers as she fell asleep. I watched her in the light of the bedside lamp, which was always on now. Her mouth was open, she snored heavily. I told myself, things will turn out all right. Ron would come home or he wouldn’t, and we’d just go on together. He wouldn’t really send me away. He just didn’t want to see how damaged she was. As long as she didn’t show him, that was all he asked for. A good show.
21
CLAIRE WAS still sleeping when I woke up. I got up, careful not to disturb her, and went out to the kitchen. I poured myself some cereal. It was very bright, quiet, a pure crystalline light. I was glad Ron was gone. If he were here, there would have been phone calls, the whine of the coffee grinder, Claire might be up making breakfast with her smile painted on. I decided to stay in my silk pajamas a while longer. I got my new paints out and painted the way the light looked on the bare wood floor, the yellow tray of sunlight, the way it climbed the curtains. I loved when it was like this. I recalled days just like this when I was young, playing in a patch of sunlight when my mother slept in. A laundry basket over my head, squares of light. I remembered exactly how the sun looked and felt on the back of my hand.
After a while, I checked on Claire. She was still asleep. The room was dark gray, no morning light penetrated the west-facing French doors covered with blinds. It smelled stale. She had one hand flung across the top of the pillow. Her mouth was open, but she wasn’t snoring now.
“Claire?” I put my face right in hers. She smelled of sherry and something metallic. She didn’t move. I put my hand on her shoulder, shook her gently. “Claire?” She didn’t do anything. The hair stood up on my neck and arms. I couldn’t hear her breathing. “Claire?” I shook her again, but her head flopped like Owen’s giraffe’s. “Claire, wake up.” I lifted her by her shoulders and dropped her. “Claire!” I yelled at her, hoping she would open her eyes, that she would put her hand to her head and tell me not to shout, I was giving her a headache. It was impossible. She was playing a trick, pretending. “Claire!” I screamed into her sleeping face, pumping my hands on her chest, listening for her breath. Nothing.
I searched the bedside table, the floor. On the far side, I found the pills on the floor, along with the empty sherry bottle. It was what I’d heard falling when we were talking through the door. The pill bottle was open, the pills spilled out, small pink tablets. Butalan, the label said. For Insomnia. Do Not Take With Alcohol. Do Not Operate Machinery.
The sounds I was making were no longer even screams. I wanted to throw something into the fat ugly eye of God. I threw the Kleenex box. The brass bell. I knocked the bedside light off the nightstand. I pulled the magnet box from under the bed and threw it across the room. Ron’s keys and pens and clippers fell out, the Polaroids. For what? I ripped the blinds off the French doors, and the room blinked bright. I took a high-heeled shoe from the foot of the bed and smashed through