Orbit 5 - [Anthology] Read online

  I light a cigarette and walk around the house to enter the kitchen, where I make coffee and a sandwich. It is two-thirty, but sleep seems a long way off now, unwanted, unneeded. Toward dawn I take a sleeping pill and fall into bed.

  Roger, Sid and Doug invite me to have dinner with them in Hawley on Saturday, and I accept. The mountain road is very bad and we creep along in the station wagon that they have brought with them. No one is talking, and we all glance back at Somerset at the turn that used to have a tended scenic overlook. The trees have since grown up, and bushes and vines, so that there is only a hint of the town below us. Then it is gone, and suddenly Sid starts to talk of the experiment.

  “I think we should call off the rest of it,” he says.

  “Can’t,” Roger says. “Eight days isn’t enough.”

  “We have a trend,” Sid says.

  Doug, sitting in the back seat, speaks up then. “You’ll never keep them all here for two more weeks.”

  “I know that, but those who do hang on will be enough.”

  “What’s the matter?” I ask.

  “Boredom,” Sid says. “Good God, what’s there to do in such a place?”

  “I thought that was part of the experiment. I thought you wanted a place with no external stimuli.”

  “Quote and unquote,” Sid says. “Staunton’s idea. And we did, but I don’t know. The dreams are strange, and getting stranger. And we’re not getting along too well in the daytime. I don’t know how your people stand it.”

  I shrug and don’t even try to answer. I know he won’t understand. Traffic thickens when we leave the secondary road for the highway on the other side of the mountain. It feels cooler here and I find that I am looking forward to a night out with more excitement than seems called for.

  We have drinks before dinner, and wine with dinner, and more drinks afterward, and there is much laughter. Doug teaches me three new dance steps, and Roger and I dance, and I find myself thinking with incredulity of the plan I have been considering to take Father out of the nursing home where he belongs and try to care for him myself. I know that he will never recover, that he will become more and more helpless, not less. How could I have planned to do such a thing? He needs attendants to lift him, turn him in bed, and at times to restrain him. I have tried to think of other alternatives for him, but there are none, and I know that. I know that I have to write to the director of the home and apologize to him.

  At eleven Roger says we have to go back. Doug passes out in the car as soon as he gets inside, and Sid groans. “There he goes,” he says. “So you do me tonight.”

  “Where are the others?” I ask.

  “On strike,” Roger says. “They refused to work on Saturday and Sunday, said they needed time off. They want to forget their dreams for a couple of nights.”

  “I’ll do it,” I say.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. I’ll do it. You can wire me up and everything tonight.”

  It is agreed, and we drive back over the mountain, becoming more and more quiet as we get to the old road and start to pick our way down again. By the time we get back to Somerset, and I am feeling soberer, I regret my impulsive promise, but can think of no way to back out now. I watch Sid and Roger half carry, half drag Doug from the station wagon, and I see the flutter of his eyelids and know that he is not as drunk as he would have us believe. I start to walk to my house, but Roger says for me to wait, that they will drive me and bring me back with my pajamas and things, so I stand on the porch and wait for them, and I stare across the street at the vacant theater. I know that three nights ago I imagined the past, but since then I have been taking sleeping pills, and my nights have been quiet, with no more hallucinations or dreams.

  My house is noisier than usual. I glance at the two boys, but neither of them seems to notice. They sit in the living room and wait, and ahead of me on the dark stairs the rustlings hurry along; they pause outside my parents’ room, scurry down the hallway and precede me into my room, where, when I turn on the light, there is nothing to see. I know it is the settling of floorboards untrodden for eleven months, and rushing air, and imagination. Memories that have become tangible? I don’t believe that, but it has a strangely comforting sound, and I like the idea of memories lingering in the house, assuming a life of their own, reliving the past.

  I fold pajamas and my housecoat, and grope under the bed for my slippers, and the thought comes that people are going to know that I spent the night at Sagamore House. I sit on the bed with my slippers in my hand and stare straight ahead at nothing in particular. How can I get out of this? I realize that Somerset and New York are arguing through me, and I can almost smile at the dialogue that I am carrying out silently. It seems that my strongest Somerset argument is that if I am going to live here with my invalid father, I can’t return with a reputation completely ruined. I know what Somerset can do to a woman like that. But I’m not going to come back with him, I answer. Or am I?

  It is getting very late and I have to go through with it; I have promised. Reluctantly I take my things downstairs, hoping that they have left, but of course they are still sitting there, talking quietly. About me? I suspect so. Probably I puzzle them. I regard them as little more than children, boys with school problems to solve. Yet we are all in our twenties. I suppose that because I have my degrees and a position of responsibility, my experience seems to add years to my age, and even as I think this, I reject it. Sid has told me that he spent three years in the army, served in Vietnam, so what is my experience to his? Sid has tried to draw me out, has visited twice, and has even gone canoeing with me, but standing in the doorway looking at them I think of them as so very young, prying into things they can’t understand, trying to find answers that, if found, will make them question all of reality. I shake my head hard. I don’t know what I’ve been thinking about, but I feel afraid suddenly, and I suspect that I have drunk too much earlier, and I am so very ... weary. Sleeping pills leave me more tired than the insomnia they alleviate.

  They make small talk that I recognize, the same sort of small talk that a good doctor uses for a nervous patient before measuring his blood pressure. I am churlish with them in return and we go to the sleep lab silently. I understand all of their equipment and I have even had electroencephalograms made when I was studying, so nothing is new to me and the demonstration is short. Then I am alone in the darkened room, conscious of the wires, of the tiny patches of skin with adhesive gel tape that holds the electrodes in place. I don’t think I’ll be able to go to sleep here wired up like this, at least not into the deep sleep that should come in an hour or so. I deliberately close my eyes and try to picture a flame above my eyes, over the bridge of my nose. I know that I can interrupt my alpha waves at will with this exercise. I imagine Roger’s surprise. But suddenly I am thinking of S.L. and I blink rapidly, wondering what kinds of waves I am producing now for them to study. S.L. won’t go away. I ask, what does the S. stand for, and he smiles broadly and says Silas. Does anyone name children Silas any more? So I ask about the L. and he says Lerner, which is perfectly all right, his mother’s maiden name, but he doesn’t like the idea of going around as S. Lerner Wright. It is a farcical name. He is S.L. Lying in the dark room of the almost empty hotel, I can think of S.L. without pain, without recriminations and regrets and bitterness. I remember it as it was then. I loved him so very much, but he said not enough, or I would go with him to Cal Tech and become Mrs. S.L. Wright, and forever and ever remain Mrs. S.L. Wright. I realize that I no longer love him, and that probably I didn’t even then, but it felt like love and I ached as if it were love, and afterward I cut my hair very short and stopped using makeup and took several courses in night school and finished the next three years in under two and received degrees and a job ...

  I am awakened by the telephone and I lift it and mumble into it. “My car isn’t working right, trying to back up on the road into Somerset and can’t make it go. I keep slipping downward and there is a cliff in fron
t of me, but I can’t back up.”

  I dream of the telephone ringing, and it rings, and I speak, less coherently, and forget immediately what I have said and sleep again. In the morning I have memories of having spoken into the telephone several times, but no memories of what I said. Sid enters and helps me out of the bird’s nest of wires. I wave him away and stumble into the bathroom where I wash my face and come really awake.

  Sid? I thought Roger was the meter man of the night before. I dress and brush my hair and put on lipstick, and then find them both waiting for me to have breakfast with them. Sid has deep blue circles under his eyes. At a sunlit table with a bowl of yellow roses and a few deep green ferns, I wait for them to break the silence that has enveloped the three of us. There is a sound of activity in town that morning, people getting ready to go to church in Hawley, cars being brought out of garages where they stay six days of the week, several people in the hotel dining room having an early breakfast before leaving for the day. Many of them stay away all day on Sunday, visiting friends or relatives, and I know that later the town will be deserted.

  “So they talked you into letting them wire you up like a condemned man?” Dorothea stands over the table accusingly. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course. It’s nothing, Dorothea, really nothing.”

  She snorts. “Up all night, people coming and going all night, talking in the halls, meetings here and there. I never should have let them in.” She is addressing me still, but the hostility in her voice is aimed at the boys, at Staunton, who has just entered the dining room. He joins us, and there are dark hollows under his eyes. He doesn’t meet my gaze

  We have coffee in silence and wait for our orders. I finger a sensitive spot on my left eyelid and Sid says quickly, “One of the wires came off during the night. I had to replace it. Is it sore?”

  “No. It’s all right.” I am upset suddenly by the idea of his being there in the night, replacing a wire on my eye without my knowing. I think of the similar role that I play in my daily life and I know how I regard the bodies that I treat. Irritated at the arm that has managed to pull loose a needle that now must be replaced in the vein. Never a person, just an arm, and a needle. And the quiet satisfaction when the dials are registering correctly once more. I feel the frown on my face and try to smooth it out again.

  Staunton has ordered only toast, juice and coffee, and he is yawning. He finishes his last crumb of toast and says, “I’m going to bed. Miss Matthews, will you join us here for dinner tonight?”

  The sudden question catches me off guard, and I look at him. He is regarding me steadily and very soberly, and I realize that something has happened, that I am part of it, and that he is very much concerned. I am uneasy and only nod yes.

  When he is gone I ask, “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Roger says.

  Sid pours more coffee and drinks it black. He is looking more awake, as if he has taken a bennie or something. “We have to talk with you, Janet. I’d like you to hear some of our tapes, including your own, if you will.”

  “You should get some sleep,” I say irrelevantly.

  “This afternoon? Can you come here, or should we bring the stuff to your place?”

  “You got him up last night?”

  Roger nods. “I felt I should.”

  I watch Myra and Al Newton leave their table, stop at Dorothea’s counter to pay the bill and leave, and I am struck by their frailty. They both seem wraithlike. Is anyone in Somerset under sixty? I suppose the Newtons must be closer to seventy-five. I ask, “Where are the other boys this morning?” The dining room is empty except for the three of us.

  “A couple of them are out fishing already, and the rest are probably still sleeping. I’m taking Victor and Mickey to Hawley to catch the bus back to Boston later today,” Roger says, and then adds, “Probably Doug will be the next to go.”

  “Doug? I thought he was one of the more interested ones in this whole thing?”

  “Too interested, maybe,” Roger says.

  Sid is watching both of us and now he leans forward, resting his chin on his hands, looking beyond me out the window at the quiet street. “Janet, do you remember any of your dreams from last night?”

  I think of what I said over the telephone. Scraps here and there. Something about putting flowers on graves in one of them. I shake my head: nothing that I can really remember.

  “Okay. You’ll hear them later. Meanwhile, take my word for it that some of the guys have to leave, whether they want to or not.” He looks at me for another moment and then asks, in a different voice altogether, “Are you all right, Janet? Will you be okay until this afternoon? We do have to process the tapes and record the data, and I want to sort through all of them and pull out those that seem pertinent.”

  It is the voice of a man concerned for a woman, not of a graduate student concerned for his project, and this annoys me.

  “Of course I’m all right,” I say, and stand up. “For heaven’s sake, those are dreams, the dreams of someone who had too much to drink, at that.” I know I am flushed and I turn to leave. Have I embarrassed them with erotic dreams, concerning one of them perhaps? I am very angry when I leave Sagamore House, and I wish I could go up to the sleep room and destroy the tapes, all of them. I wish Dorothea had shown just an ounce of sense when they approached her for the rooms. She had no business allowing them to come into our town, upset our people with their damned research. I am furious with Sid for showing concern for me. He has no right. In the middle of these thoughts, I see my father and me, walking hand in hand in the afternoon, heading for the drugstore and an ice-cream cone. He is very tall and blond, with broad shoulders and a massive chest. He keeps his hair so short that he seems bald from a distance. He is an ophthalmologist with his office in Jefferson, and after they dam the river he has to drive sixty-three miles each way. Mother worries about his being out so much, but they don’t move, don’t even consider moving. On Sunday afternoon he always takes me to the drugstore for an ice-cream cone. I blink hard and the image fades, leaving the street bare and empty.

  I am too restless to remain in my house. It is a hot still day and the heat is curling the petals of the roses, and drying out the grass, and wilting the phlox leaves. It is a relentless sun, burning, broiling, sucking the water up from the creek, leaving it smaller each day. Without the dam the creek probably would dry up completely within another week or two. I decide to cut a basket of flowers and take them to the cemetery, and I know the idea comes from the fragmentary dream that I recalled earlier. I haven’t been to the cemetery since my mother’s funeral. It has always seemed such a meaningless gesture, to return to a grave and mourn there. It is no less meaningless now, but it is something to do.

  The cemetery is behind the small white church that has not been used for six years, since Brother MacCombs died. No one tried to replace him; they seemed tacitly to agree that the church should be closed and the membership transferred to Hawley.

  It is a walk of nearly two miles, past the Greening farm where the weeds have become master again, past the dirt road to the old mill, a tumbling ruin even in my childhood where snakes curled in the shadows and slept, past the turnoff to Eldridge’s fishing camp. I see no one and the sounds of the hot summer day are loud about me: whirring grasshoppers, birds, the scuttling of a squirrel who chatters at me once he is safely hidden.

  The cemetery is tended in spots only, the graves of those whose relatives are still in Somerset have cut grass and a sprinkling of flowers. My mother’s grave is completely grown over and shame fills me. What would Father say? I don’t try to weed it then, but sit down under a wide oak tree.

  I took at the narrow road that leads back to Somerset. Father and I will come here often, after I have made the grave neat and pretty again. It will be slow, but we’ll take our time, walking hand in hand up the dirt road, carrying flowers, and maybe a sandwich and a thermos of lemonade, or apples. Probably if I start the proceedings d
uring the coming week, I can have everything arranged by next weekend, hire an ambulance and a driver ...

  I am awakened by rough hands shaking my shoulders. I blink rapidly, trying to focus my eyes, trying to find myself. I am being led away, and I squirm to turn around because I feel so certain that I am still back there somehow. I almost catch a glimpse of a girl in a yellow dress, sitting with her back to the oak tree, but it shimmers and I am yanked hard, and stumble, and hands catch me and steady me.

  “What are you kids doing?” I ask, and the sound of the voice, deep, unfamiliar, shocks me and only then do I really wake up. I am being taken to the station wagon that is parked at the entrance to the lane.

  “I’m all right,” I say, not struggling now. “You woke me up.”