A Thousand Sleepless Nights Read online

  Could leaving Silent Fields help cleanse her of her grief?

  Or did she settle for Parker and forget these foolish dreams? Bury the grief. Trudge forward.

  She turned back to the window. The snow fell in heavy folds of fat flakes, as it had been doing for almost twenty-four hours. This kind of storm was usual for this late in April. A freak storm. A sign, as Jetty might say. Sometimes the weather wants to tell us things, she’d said once or twice during a torrential downpour or too-hot day. Sometimes it’s a sign.

  Matilda peered out, looking for that sign.

  Sudden purpose and unusual bravery seized her by the throat. She pulled her old suitcase from under her bed—the kind women carried in black-and-white movies—and tossed it open. She threw in clothes, a random stack of books from her shelves, and the picture from her nightstand. She ran into the bathroom and grabbed her toothbrush and shampoo and brush. After throwing those on top of the clothes, she snapped the case shut.

  Click, click.

  Breathing hard, she kicked off her slippers and lowered her feet into her snow boots. She shrugged on her coat over her pink cotton nightgown and Jetty’s shawl.

  Logic and fear tried knocking at her door. Knock, knock. But she managed, for the first time in her life, to ignore them. She went with the daring.

  Down the stairs, out to the car. Kicking up wakes of powdered snow.

  Suitcase tossed in back.

  Keys in ignition.

  Driving out of town.

  As the snow finally stopped falling.

  Henry

  May 1, 1992

  Again he sat. At his table. In his spot. The brilliant spring sunlight poured in the tall windows, falling in white lines over his page. And again, he had nothing to write. With a huff, he stood and began to pace up and down the stacks. Sometimes a walk in the books helped a little. Afterward, he might eek out a half-decent sentence or two.

  As he walked, he punished himself.

  A year away from a PhD in creative writing with only a few decent short stories and a pathetic attempt at a novel to show for it. What is wrong with me? Did I pick the wrong career? Maybe I’m not a writer after all.

  Maybe …

  Henry stopped walking, he stopped thinking. Ahead of him, at the end of the hall of shelves, a woman was reaching up to replace a book. Surprisingly short, she needed to lift onto her tiptoes to reach the spot. Long black hair—like spilled ink, he thought—fell down her back, nearly to her hips. As she settled back to the ground, she tucked the hair behind her ear, in a swift, gorgeous movement that Henry felt in his chest.

  Henry blinked twice and then turned to run back to his table.

  The words!

  So many words raged at the tips of his fingers. The kind of words he’d always prayed for. He snatched up his pen and wrote as quickly as he could manage. Briefly, he wished he had a good typewriter. Maybe something old fashioned and reliable. It’d be so much faster than a pen.

  He knew the landscape of her body. He knew the peaks of her soul. He knew the caves in her mind. He knew her. And yet, each day he marveled at her as if she were an enigma. She was not what he had dreamed for—his dreams had never been this astonishing. She soothed his pain; she stirred his passion. Their love was not like the love of fairy tales. This was real. Connection, attraction, commitment, marriage. Real. Holding her hand walking down a foggy street. Smiling at her across a room. Watching anger spark in her eyes. Feeling the cool touch of her forgiveness.

  Every moment of every day was real. As it should be.

  Henry’s heart raced, his chest moving irregularly. People were glancing at him with wary looks, but he didn’t notice. The words were burning his page and sparking his soul to life.

  Finally!

  He looked up, a goofy grin on his face. Marveling.

  Then a thought: The girl.

  Henry scrambled out of his chair. There were still words unearthed and waiting to be catalogued, but he needed to find her first. He went to the right row of books. She wasn’t there. Oh, no. No. He hurried down the next row and the next, panic edging up his throat. What if I don’t find her?

  He stopped.

  What if I do?

  The woman stood only a few feet away, a fresh stack of books in her arms. An ID tag dangled from her neck, but he’d never seen her before. A new librarian? He could see her face better this time. Dark eyes, thick lashes, and sadness. He’d never seen anyone look so beautiful and so tragic at the same time. Like an outcast goddess. She looked lost and yet right at home. She carried the books like a newborn lamb and took a moment to look at each cover; a few made her smile.

  Henry wanted to talk to her, but just the thought made his freckled cheeks burn with shyness. He’d never had a girlfriend in high school and only once since he started college. Penny Goodman. A sweet girl, almost as shy as he. But in the end, more a friend than a soul mate. He’d certainly never looked at her and felt his gut burn like this. He’d never wanted to describe her skin or her hair with words that could melt candles.

  Henry was ready to run back to his table when the woman turned. She looked at him and he didn’t look away. Couldn’t. She blinked several times and then smiled. He felt that smile in every bone.

  His feet took him forward.

  “Can I help you find something?” she asked, her voice as soft and light as meringue.

  Henry smiled, his cheeks on fire with blush. “You’re new?” He pointed to her ID.

  She touched it. Something passed through her eyes. “Yes. Just started.” She lifted her chin to look at him properly; Henry was six foot five.

  “I’m Henry.”

  She smiled again, looking a little confused. “I’m Matilda.”

  Henry said nothing. He listened to his heartbeat and resisted the urge to touch her. The words raged in his head.

  Matilda shifted her books, pressing them into her hip. “Was there something you needed?”

  Henry blinked. “Uh, no. I just thought I’d say hi. I’m here a lot. I write. Over there.” He pointed dumbly and wanted to disappear.

  But Matilda smiled. “You’re a writer?”

  Henry shrugged, looked away. “Today I am,” he answered truthfully. He needed to get back to his table to let the words fly, but he didn’t want to leave her.

  Matilda nodded as if she somehow understood. “Well, good luck, Henry.” And she turned and walked away.

  Henry smiled as he watched her. Then he hurried back to his table to throw words at the world.

  All thanks to Matilda.

  Matilda

  May 1, 1998, six years later

  A lacework of sound moved through her sleep. Matilda floated among the black-and-white patterns, content. The effulgent clack and ding of the typewriter bounced on the edge of her consciousness like a lullaby. In the last six years, those sounds had forever imprinted on the tissue of her heart, the fabric of her soul. Those sounds were Henry. They were words, passion, life.

  The only other sound she loved more was that of Lucy laughing.

  Matilda woke slowly, pulled out of her lacy dreams by Henry’s mad, midnight typing. She fluttered her eyes, allowing for time to adjust to the cone of yellow light from his desk lamp. His tree-tall frame hunched over the black machine, fingers bouncing like raindrops on the surface of a lake. In the dim light, back curved, head dropped, Henry crouched over his desk, his work, like a ravenous predator. Matilda often thought he looked more animal than human when he wrote. Such ferocity, such a desperate need for survival.

  She sat up, looking over at Lucy’s crib, a small antique thing from the 1920s made of delicate dark wood spindles. It’d been nearly impossible to find a mattress that fit the crib. Matilda loved it.

  At eighteen months, Lucy slept peacefully—for once—petal-pink lips parted as she breathed deeply, her cheeks flushed, and dark-brown bobbed hair a mess across her forehead. Normally, the child woke at least three times a night, still wanting milk to lull her back to sleep even thoug
h Matilda had weaned her six months ago. But not tonight. Perhaps Lucy sensed the importance of a good night’s rest before a long and busy day.

  Matilda stepped out of bed, maneuvered around the packed and taped brown boxes, and slipped her arms around Henry’s neck. She kissed his cheek. “Noisy words tonight?”

  “Boisterous, raucous even.” He smiled. “Had to get them out before these things get packed away for a few days.” Fingers still plunking away, Henry nodded to his twin set of Remington Rand typewriters, circa 1937. Matilda wasn’t the only one with a quirky penchant for old things. Henry had stumbled upon the set at a garage sale shortly after they started dating. One morning run, a couple hundred bucks, and he’d never written on anything else. He’d written his first book, a collection of short stories, on these typewriters. When Matilda asked him why he bought both of them, Henry had merely shrugged. “It seemed sad not to, like separating siblings at an adoption. Plus backup and all that—they are really old after all.”

  The first thing he’d written on them was a love letter to her. She remembered the way he’d blushed and turned his chin down shyly when he handed it to her, the plain white paper folded in thirds. She’d smiled, a giddy thrill in her gut. And then the words he had written her had taken her breath away and filled her with a deep emotion she couldn’t name. She knew every line.

  Love has been compared to so many things. Grand things, beautiful things. But I won’t compare you to anything. I don’t want to make my feelings less than they are with an inadequate metaphor. So I say simply that you make me feel in ways I never thought possible. There was nothing until there was you standing in the books. I sit beside you and I breathe more air. I look at you and I see a universe. I touch you and I connect with everything that has ever lived. I kiss you and I exist.

  I choose to love you from this day forward and never stop.

  She’d never read such perfect words. Until his next letter, and the next. There were now two shoeboxes full of Henry’s love letters.

  Matilda looked around the drafty apartment with its now-bare shelves and naked walls. “I hate having all the books boxed up. Feels … wrong. Do you think the characters are suffocating?” she asked teasingly as she ran a hand through his mussed dusty-blond hair. When he didn’t answer, she added, “We’re going to have to build more shelves in the new place.”

  Henry nodded. His face had that look of far away focus, only half hearing as the words demanded his attention. She smiled to herself and kissed the side of his mouth, right where three freckles gathered together like a cluster of succulent berries. He smiled and continued typing.

  n

  “Lady Lucy, your chariot awaits!” Henry grabbed the child under her arms and swung her up into the air. Her delighted screams echoed back on the cold spring, Michigan air. Henry strapped Lucy into her car seat in the back of their 1955 Chevy Bel Air. The car Jetty had given Matilda on her sixteenth birthday. The car Matilda had fled Silent Fields in. Henry ran his hand over the bulbous frame, painted Tiffany Blue, as he went around to the driver’s side. The gesture made Matilda smile briefly; Jetty would have loved Henry. She still felt the loss of her aunt as keenly as the night Jetty had taken her last breath. She’d never really faced it or accepted it; it still made her hot with anger if she allowed herself to focus on it. So she didn’t think about it. She had Henry and Lucy now.

  “Are you sure we have everything?” Matilda asked, still standing on the steps of the old row house. She looked into her purse, feeling a sense that something wasn’t right. What am I forgetting? Wallet, Lucy’s snacks, diapers, wipes, sunglasses, and the only two books she couldn’t stand to pack away. She stared at the matching edges of the two copies of Henry’s first published work. As a playful joke, they’d given each other a copy as a gift on their last anniversary, only a couple months after the triumphant publication. It’d been quite the year, 1997: Henry’s book, Lucy’s birth, and their fourth wedding anniversary.

  “The trunk is full of books, the back is loaded with clothes, typewriters, and the kid,” Henry said casually. “That’s all we own.”

  Matilda looked at the sagging back tires of the Bel Air burdened with all that word weight. All those books they had bought together, and all of Henry’s from before. Her own books, of course, were still on the shelves of Jetty’s house. She didn’t think about that either. She pursed her lips, checked her bag again. “I have that feeling.” A breeze looped down from the sky, smelling of thick, wet snow. Matilda frowned as she looked up at the clear azure sky.

  Henry crossed over to her. At six foot five, he towered over her five foot nothing, and so stopped a couple of steps below her to position himself at eye level. He gripped her hips. “Just moving jitters. We have everything.”

  Matilda tried to push aside the worry. She knew they had everything. Just nerves. Just the newness. She sighed. “Okay, yeah, I know.”

  “Hey, do you remember what today is?” He smiled at her.

  For a moment, she didn’t know what he was talking about, her mind so muddled with this strange feeling. But then, “The day we met.” She couldn’t help but smile back.

  “Exactly. Our lucky day. So everything will be fine.”

  “Of course.” Matilda wanted to believe it.

  “Let’s go, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Matilda leaned forward and placed a kiss on Henry’s lips. He wrapped his arms around her waist and held tight for a moment.

  “Here we go,” he whispered.

  “Kansas City, Kansas—watch out!” Matilda smiled, trying to let humor lighten her anxiety. Not only did she have that forgetful feeling, but also something about moving back to Kansas made her uncomfortable. She hadn’t been back since the night she fled in her nightgown and snow boots. She’d never even called Parker to explain or apologize. She’d picked up the phone a hundred times over that first year, but could never face the sound of his voice on the other end. So she’d written a letter, a note really. Parker, I’m sorry. Matilda. She’d paid a courier service to deliver it so there’d be no postmark. The shame of it turned her stomach now, making it all so fresh. But Kansas City was hours away from Silent Fields, and their new house in a quiet neighborhood was perfect for raising Lucy and for Henry to finish work on his next book. It would be fine. Once they were there, the memories would subside back into their designated corner of her mind. This was a new beginning, a fresh phase of life with Henry and Lucy. Matilda didn’t want the mistakes of her past to taint it.

  Lucy called Mama from the car, and they crossed over. “Ready to go, Lucy?” Matilda asked.

  “Yeah,” Lucy said in her baby-voice, her round cheeks lifting in a smile. She offered that same yeah to nearly any question she was asked.

  Henry started the car, the solid old engine roaring to life. Matilda handed Lucy a small cup of Goldfish crackers as Henry pulled away from the curb. The first thrill of moving flopped in Matilda’s stomach. They were really going. Leaving Detroit and the apartment they’d lived in since they were married. Leaving behind life before they were parents. Now they would be small town folk, a regular family. Henry would write and teach at Kansas University. Maybe Matilda would volunteer at the local library. Lucy would be free to run around barefoot in a backyard with grass and trees and a garden. Just as Matilda had as a child under the care of Aunt Jetty.

  “Think this old beast can handle the two-day drive? Maybe we should’ve gotten something new,” Henry asked as they merged into traffic on I-94.

  “Let’s hope so ’cause it’s too late now. But it was making a funny noise yesterday when I went to the store.”

  Henry laughed. “It’s always making weird noises.” He looked at the gages. “We’re gonna spend a fortune on gas.”

  Matilda nodded. “We should learn to like new things.” She glanced back at Lucy, happily kicking her legs and shoving crackers into her mouth, one pudgy fistful at a time. Half of the food would end up a gooey mess in her seat. Her little eyes, finally changing color from t
he deep blue she’d been born with to a mixture of brown and green, much like Henry’s, watched intently all things out the window. Matilda had tried to brush her short hair this morning, give it some semblance of order, but like Henry, Lucy liked to run her hands through her hair and so now it looked like she’d stood in the wind. The little purple flower clip Matilda had put in was predictably missing.

  Matilda smiled.

  Next to Lucy on the seat were the two typewriters locked away in their black hard-leather cases. Matilda smiled at them too, thinking of Henry’s neurotic writing. “It’s all your fault,” he often told her when she found him up at night or missing a meal. “Until I saw you, the words wouldn’t come. Now they won’t stop.” Now there was one published collection of short stories and a half-finished novel. And a happy Henry. It’s all my fault, she thought with an inward thrill.

  She’d never loved anyone like she loved Henry. It was instant and almost overwhelming. When they first started dating, she thought she might drown in the sea of feelings he stirred in her. To this day, six years later, he could still make her feel that way—deliciously and deliriously lost. But he also made her feel calm and at home. Satiated. That feeling everyone looks for. He was her Enzo.

  Henry looked over at her now and smiled, his freckled face bright with the sun spilling in the window. He put his hand on her thigh, and she placed hers on top of his.

  The first day of the drive went smoothly. They stopped every couple of hours and let Lucy run around in the first park they could find. For the most part, she seemed content to watch the scenery buzz by and nap sporadically. They ate homemade cookies from dishwasher faded Tupperware and tuna sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. That night they took a room in a cheap but surprisingly clean hotel; Lucy snuggled into the bed between them.

  Matilda didn’t sleep at all.