This Place of Wonder (11)

None of which helps me fall asleep.

I haven’t been able to sleep very well, not for ages. I thought this would get better with giving up the booze and getting into healthier habits, but that does not seem to be true.

What I do know is that lying here, trying not to think about drinking, is counterproductive. Trying not to think about anything is impossible. Leaving the puppy asleep, I swing my legs out of the bed and putter toward the door in my pajamas. They’re soft, pretty, and I have a dozen pairs thanks to Meadow and my dad, who sent care packages every week with all kinds of things like this—pajamas and soft socks, organic lip care and expensive oils for my hair.

The house is dark. I tiptoe past Meadow’s door, wondering again if I made the right choice. Should I have let her sleep in the bedroom where she spent so many years? I worried that it would make her sad, and I also really didn’t want to sleep in my teenage bedroom and feel all the things that would bring up—the roots of my talent for obsessive love affairs, for obsessive thinking, ruminating, unhappiness. I’ve got enough feelings to sort out without facing my own teenage angst.

The stairs are cold underfoot. There was talk for years of installing underfloor radiant heat, but the cost was prohibitive. When I lived here I wore slippers with rubber soles because the tiles are not only cold but slick. Tonight I’ll just live with it.

In the kitchen, the light is on over the stove. I open the fridge and just stand there, staring at the well-stocked shelves. Pellegrino and Topo Chico and other bottled water I know costs a fortune. The cheese drawer is full. Plump red grapes fill a yellow glass bowl, and small plastic containers hold portioned celery and carrot sticks, deli turkey, pickles, and condiments.

Not a single bottle of wine or beer or hard seltzer, which is what I’m subconsciously searching for. When I realize it, I sigh and reach for the grapes instead. The glass bowl makes a clank against the counter, and I remind myself to be careful here. The kitchen counters at the house at the winery were softer, polished wood. Another memory flashes, me and Josh on a random summer evening before the pandemic, listening to the calm melodies of Fleet Foxes or sometimes Bach or other baroque music, which Josh loved. On my own I tend toward female singers, everyone from Joan Baez to Pink, but I never insisted on my music with him. I didn’t mind his choices, after all.

I stand there, wanting. Wanting, wanting, wanting in a way that’s both pointed and vague. Wanting the life I destroyed, and not wanting it at the same time. Wanting one more day in the before times, wanting to yell at my father, wanting—

Well, wine, mainly.

Rubbing my tongue over my teeth, I turn and start going through the cupboards, looking for something. Anything to ease this hunger for the thing I can’t have. Riffling through the pantry I poke through jars of rice, pasta, odds and ends that only a serious cook would bother with, preserved lemons and black cardamom and tinned tiny fish.

Where the fuck is the candy?

Finally, I find a Christmas tin, stuffed away forgotten in the back, and pop the lid off. Mother lode! Butterscotches and peppermints twisted into cellophane, some chocolates that have gone pale on the edges with age, an unopened bag of ribbon candy, and another of the old-fashioned hard candies that look like they’ve been sliced. I carry the whole big metal box out to the kitchen and pour it on the counter, spin open a butterscotch, and greedily pop it into my mouth.

Oh. Yeah.

The outside has that slight stickiness of age, but the sugar washes through my mouth, down my throat, hits my pleasure centers, and immediately some of the anxiety slides out of my body. Sucking on it happily, I turn the bags over to check the expiration dates: 6-3-17.

The chocolates are dead, then. I toss them in the trash. The rest are hard candies and should still be okay. At least until I can get something else in here.

Somewhere behind me or below me comes a sound. A soft thud and then something I can’t quite identify—a little animal noise, maybe. I pause to listen, the hair on the back of my neck rising.

When I was a kid, I thought this place was haunted. It has so many alcoves and arches and rooms all opening one into another, the kitchen to the dining room to the salon to the patio to the living room to the stairs, that you could almost imagine a shadow running ahead of you into the next room. It was the biggest house I’d ever walked into, never mind lived in. When my mother died, we were living in a one bedroom with a galley kitchen, which would have all fit right into the salon.

When I listen, nothing more comes, and my greed overcomes my fear of walking spirits. I pick out another handful of candies to try—a long wavy piece of red ribbon candy, a bunch of the little slices, more butterscotches, which I stuff in the pockets of my pj’s.

Another noise alerts me—this time more of a creak. I frown, listening hard, not chewing so I can hear, but it doesn’t come again. Is it the puppy?

No. Coming from another direction. Probably the old house settling.

Or my dad, hanging around. “Don’t even think about it, Dad,” I say. “I still won’t talk to you.”

The room is silent. With my pockets stuffed full of candy, I head through the patio doors to the pool area. Outside, the sky is clear and starry, the edges washed out at either end by light, but in the middle is a host of stars. I think of the desert, shockingly filled with stars, so many it’s hard not to get dizzy. As a city girl, I almost fell over the first time I saw the stars over the desert.