So there, Sphinx. You didn’t know everything. But then, neither did Oedipus.
“Let’s see what the doctor advises,” he says. It is four P.M. and he is counting the hours until Aileen’s arrival and his nightly dose of Ambien.
*
GERRY WAKES UP in the middle of the night to the sound of a quarrel. Mama never raised her voice, he thinks. When his parents did argue late at night, he would have to tiptoe to the bottom of the stairs if he wanted to hear anything and, even then, it was difficult to make out the words.
But most of the time, he didn’t try to eavesdrop, he just stayed in bed, willing himself to go back to sleep. He starts to do that now. Maybe the Olympic swimmer has finally decided to spend a night here, he thinks. Maybe the sheikh is here, berating his staff. It would be just like Baltimore to erect a luxury high-rise in which one could hear the neighbors through the walls.
And then he realizes the two voices are female and coming from downstairs. Tiptoeing is out of the question, of course. Even if he were mobile, he would be nervous about standing at the top of those stairs.
One voice is clearly Aileen’s, only it sounds different from the way it usually does. Less flat, more passionate. I did what I had to do. Don’t second-guess me.
The other voice is higher, but not as loud; her words don’t carry as well. She seems to be asking questions, each sentence ending on a little wail. Do? Do? What are we going to do?
I had no choice.
Jesus, Leenie.
Leenie. Leenie. Gerry knows a Leenie. Knew. “I go by Leenie. Rhymes with Deenie, like in the Judy Blume novel.”
It’s as if his bed starts to float through the night sky, taking him to his past, the way the ghosts guided Scrooge through London. He is in his office at Goucher. Leenie has big thick glasses, she is round as a bowling ball. She has requested this office visit to explain why she wants to avoid participating at the next class, which has been designated a day of silence in support of LGBTQ people. He thinks that was the acronym at the time, although maybe the T and the Q hadn’t yet been added.
Leenie. Leenie Bryant. And she had a friend in the class, they were thick as thieves, a slender girl. One so thin and one so round they had looked like the number 10 when they walked side by side.
The thin girl had been named Tory. At least, that was the name she used for her short stories, anemic little sketches that always ended with someone’s suicide. “It’s short for Victoria,” she had told him, “but I prefer it because it rhymes with ‘story’ and all I want to do is write stories.”
Leenie and Tory. Aileen and Victoria.
What is happening? Why are two of his former students downstairs in his apartment, arguing? How did one of them become his night nurse? Why had Victoria not reminded him that she was in his class when she applied to be his assistant? I was there at the same time, but I majored in biology.
WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?
He must be dreaming or hallucinating. He will start cutting back on the Ambien, the oxycodone. He will, he will.
“I’m going to tell him.”
The voices stop. There is the thud of something falling, then a sound unlike anything Gerry has ever heard, as if a wild animal is rampaging. He would not want to see what’s making that sound.
Footsteps on the stair, heavy and slow; has to be Aileen. Leenie. Huffing, puffing, carrying something cumbersome in her hand. It’s the Hartwell, his first prize, a marble book on a brass base, his name and the year, 1986, inscribed on the book. The prize has sat on his desk in various cities for almost thirty-five years now, a testament to young promise fulfilled. Gerry has won other prizes since then, but none has carried the literal and figurative weight of the Hartwell.
There is something clinging to it, something dark, liquid, viscous, with pale flecks. He doesn’t want to think about what’s clinging to the statuette. Gerry glances at the clock. It’s eleven thirty P.M., thirty minutes left of April Fool’s Day. If this were a terrible practical joke, he wouldn’t mind.
“I’m going to have to get another freezer,” Aileen says. She puts the prize on his bedside table, goes to the kitchen, returns with a glass of water and his medication, including the calcium pill, which he usually doesn’t take two nights in a row.
He takes them. Who cares if he never wakes up?
1986
“THIS IS SO CIVILIZED,” Lucy whispered to Gerry. “None of that short-list savagery, no putting people through the suspense of it all for everyone else’s amusement. Just a dinner, a presentation, and ‘remarks.’ I love this.”