Sleeping Girls Lie

Sleeping Girls Lie
This and Remember When Falling are two pieces of a series of stories I'm working on called Spiral Notebooks. This story comes before Remember When Falling.

It was a quiet room. With heavy old furniture and deep carpet that ate the sound of footsteps. The chairs were large, behemoth relics of an earlier prosperity, the arms shiny-slick from the passing of many hands.

It was here Leah liked to sit, in this room that time forgot. It was the only truly quiet place she had ever known. She liked the elderly furniture and tintype pictures; they made her feel less like a new child in a young world. The weight of the room grounded her, gave her a sense of permanence. She could weave her dreams and fancies here without worrying that they would whisk her away to an empty place with no exit.

This was everyone’s complaint against her. That she lived in her castles in the air instead of storing them away until old age and the badge of senility could justify them. The other complaint, most often uttered by her lover Joseph, was that she was too detached. He claimed that trying to really know her was like looking at the sky from underwater, beautiful, but indistinct and distant.

She mulled over this as she sat in her quiet room. Was she really so opaque? So wispy and ethereal? Leah could find no answer to this question. Occasionally, she felt that things were only true when they were written in black ink on the white sheets of her notebook. She was not concrete, but these notebooks were. Between notes for Spanish class and grocery lists, she wrote the world as she saw it, or would like to see it.

As she toyed with these thoughts, another continually pushed itself to the front. It was a sense of loss, but not regret. There was no room in her mind for regret. She would be sorry to leave this room, this old house that she and Joseph had furnished with grandparent castoffs and flea market prizes. This was the only place she had ever felt truly at home. It was the only place that had ever been hers.

She heard the screen door shut like a gunshot. Unbearably light and quick steps moved towards the room where she sat. Leah knew it was Joseph and she knew that he was upset. She did not hear the door open, she looked up and he was standing in the doorway, looking at her.

He had loved to look at her from the moment he met her. It was not that she was pretty, or anything out of the ordinary, it was a look she had, of studying everything, of always standing a bit apart. She was in this world, but not of it. And he was the same. For years he had searched for her, not knowing it was she he sought. Leah had known immediately, she had seen the same look in his slate eyes, how he held a cigarette pinched tight between his fingers, like a talisman to keep the world at bay. So naturally they had slid into each other, and played with the other’s mind like children with new Christmas toys. They had found this house, had made it theirs, living with little money, but many books and much love. And yet, he still could not fathom her. There was a part she would not let him know. He sometimes despised those tatty notebooks she kept so meticulously sorted in milk crates. Joseph felt that those cold, dead pages where her true lover. She stored in them all the things she would not let him have. It was only when she slept that he could see into her. Her mouth pressed into a little line, eyes closed tight, she looked so young. Even in her sleep she fought all ties and restrictions, kicking covers off to throw a leg into the cold air.

Leah suddenly stood and broke his thought. She began pulling books from their conjugal shelf.
“Your father called me today. You’re really going? I didn’t think you would.” He said in a detached voice.
She paused book in hand and turned to face him. “Yes, I’m really going. I have to.” She said.
“What are taking with you? How long of a trip will this be?” he asked.
“I’m taking a small suitcase, and of course my bag.” She answered.

Joseph knew this bag well. An old black messenger bag, the pockets held shut with safety pins and the bottom repaired with duct tape and thick thread. He often thought the bag was analogous for Leah herself. Something broken that was just barely made whole, something pieced and patched, held together by sheer stubbornness and force of will.

Joseph walked to the old wing back chair and sat, avoiding the broken spring. “So you don’t love me anymore?” he said, wondering at how far away his own voice sounded.

“It’s not that.” She said, her back towards him. “It’s just, there’s something I need to find.”
“Will you come back when it’s found?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It depends on what I find. I hope it leads back to you, but I don’t expect you to wait.” She said.
“I knew you were too young when we started this, but I hoped, I hoped I would be enough he said. “I sometimes feel like I played you a mean trick when I fell in love with you, like I took advantage of your youth, you fell in love with having an older man, not with me.” He said.

“That’s not true.” She said, walking to where he sat. She knelt in front of him, hands on the holes in his blue jean knees. “I fell in love with you because you were intelligent and you knew what it was to be alone. I love you because when you tell me I’m beautiful I believe it. Because you see my currents and whirlpools, not just the still surface. Because you can spend the day in bed reading. Because you’re like me, looking for something that maybe can’t be found.” She finished, leaning forward to lay her head in his lap.

“But I did find what I was looking for, it was you.” He said. “I wanted to find someone who was not a paper doll person. Someone in whom the fire would burn but not consume. Another sport, a quirk of nature and nurture, a partner in existential ennui or whatever big words you want to use. This wouldn’t be so bad if you would tell me, if you would trust me and let me help you. If I just knew why.” He stood, stepping around her to the middle of the room, his steps silent on the carpet.

Joseph’s eyes fell on the milk crates full of notebooks and he suddenly hated them, hated them for understanding, and hated their shiny, mocking covers. Jealousy welled-up, these inanimate objects had been raised to the level of enemies or co-conspirators.

Leah looked up. “I can’t explain it, I don’t know how.” She said.

Joseph felt a snap in his stomach, like a taut line finally cut. He snatched a milk crate up and overturned it. “You can tell these goddamn notebooks, but you can’t tell me?” You can sleep with me, eat with me and love me but you can’t explain to me? What about this?” he said waving a notebook. “Are the answers in here Leah? Could I use these like a Rosetta stone to your riddles?” he yelled with a violent shake, while white pages covered in black settled to the floor like dirty snow.

Leah dropped to the floor, gathering pages and tucking them into the skeleton remains of the notebook.
“Why won’t you let me see them? Why can’t you tell these things to me? Why are you so determined to carry everything alone? Give me something for Christ’s sake, tell me, and make me understand.” Joseph said.

Leah gathered up a notebook and flipped through pages. “You want know why I tell everything to these books? Because I have terrible thoughts, because my anger is like poison, I’m afraid of destroying the only beautiful things I have. I don’t know how to put them in words that you will understand. Here, here,” she flipped a page and began to read, “It struck me the other day, that I have to go away. That I need to run or fly, somehow I need to find a place where I belong. My love for Joseph is so beautiful, like water beads on flowers, or the gossamer strands of an abandoned web, but it’s so fragile. It’s the only connection I have; the one thing that I know is right, but I will destroy it. When you have nowhere to belong, everywhere feels like a prison. And I can’t help but rattle the bars.”

She turned another page. “Oh, here’s your answer,” she began again to read, “Again I know that I need to go. It’s not a place I’m looking for, but a connection, I need to find where I fit into this world. Why am I not like anyone else? Why am I like this? Why do I need to run? Because I’ve just turned 24 and everyone I know is trying to fit me into place, but I’m like a triangle peg that they can’t find a place for. Joseph talks about getting married and buying a house. My father tells me that it’s time to grow up and find a real job, cut my hair and dress like a young woman. Everyone I know is pushing for the American Dream. They want things to fall into place. A nice house, a big car, 2.3 kids and a tedious, sustainable job. And they want to die in their beds surrounded by insipid offspring who will continue on and keep grass from growing in the ruts. They know where they belong. They are a part of this life that keeps eluding me. They have membership in a club that I don’t know the secret handshake for. And I hate them for it, for knowing who they are and what they want, while I’m like a kite with no string.

These things are not for me; I can’t be satisfied with them. There is something inside me that will not let me live like a punctured slowly leaking balloon. I know my fate, if I do not make terms or find a map or something I will go nova, like a star that finally has enough and explodes in a cosmic tsunami of light and energy. In my dreams I become atoms, strings, particles, tiny yet infinite, a little piece of everything. It’s my own version of nirvana filtered through physics. I want to be a part of it… I want to belong.” She finished and caved into herself. Joseph saw that she expended all the anger, all the hate and she was empty again. He sat down behind her and put his arms about her.

“I’m sorry. I really am. I see now. It’s hard to be young. It’s harder still to be young and different. There’s nothing wrong with you.” He sighed.
“I want to be what you want. I’m sorry. I just can’t be yet, I have to go.” She said.
“I don’t want you to be what I want. I want you to find your place and be who you are. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have attacked you like that. But you can tell me these things. I won’t hate you for it. And I won’t leave you.” He guided her shoulders so that she was facing him. “Go, but be careful and let me know how you are.”

She leaned into him and placed her mouth against his ear. “Read the notebooks while I’m gone. And see if you still love me in the same way. Wait for me, I’ll come back.” The final words were a whisper and she was gone. The room seemed empty and old. Notebooks covered the floor and he lifted the closest one. He really did understand. He had been that young once, that unsure, he had been awkward and disconnected. She would come back and he would be waiting, with the lights on and a home for her.