Oblivion_ stories - By David Foster Wallace Page 0,104

or that it is frequently I who must rouse or shake her gently awake at the shore, or in front of the Home entertainment room’s television, or often at the end of a long piece of music or theater.

Since the prior Autumn, however, there simply has been no reasoning with her on this point. She steadfastly avows, in other words, that my putative ‘snoring’ is a waking reality instead of her own dream. And in the dark of our bedroom, when she suddenly wakes and cries out in such a way that I am myself jolted up-right, with adrenaline coursing through my system (just as when the telephone rings at night, its signal or ‘ring’ now piercing in a way which daylight never makes it), there is in her ‘snoring’ complaint a note of near hysteria which makes it perfectly evident that she has been asleep, or else has been in the type of semi-waking, oneiric state in which some people ‘“talk” in their sleep,’ confabulating past and present and truth and dream, and ‘believing’ it all in such a way that there is simply no reasoning with someone in such a state.

And yet I have largely refused to patronize or placate her about something which simply was not true. There are, even in marriage, limits. After an initial period last Autumn in which I would attempt to argue or reason with Hope ‘in situ’ in the darkened bedroom, informing her that I was in reality not yet asleep and to simply go back to sleep and forget all about it, that she was only dreaming (a response which so irked and provoked her, however, that her voice would begin to rise sharply in such a ‘tone’ as to so upset me that any chance of real sleep would then be impossible for the next several hours), I then, subsequently, attempted or tried refusing to respond ‘in situ’ or to in any way acknowledge her complaints that I was keeping her awake, instead waiting for the morning of the next day to remonstrate that I had not yet even been asleep, and to mildly observe that her agitated dreams of my ‘snoring’ were becoming worse and more frequent, and to urge her to make some sort of appointment and perhaps inquire about a prescription. And yet Hope has been wholly obdurate and unyielding on this point, insisting that it was I who was ‘the one who’s asleep,’ and that if I could or would not acknowledge this, my refusal to ‘trust’ her indicated that I must be ‘angry at [her]’ over something, or perhaps unconsciously wished to ‘hurt’ her, and that if anyone around here needed to ‘make an appointment’ it was myself, which according to Hope I would not hesitate to do if my respect and concern for her even slightly outweighed my own selfish insistence on being ‘right.’ Worse, on certain mornings, was when she, as it were, ‘took a page’ from her ‘true’ or biological sibling, Vivian (a twice divorced ‘halogen’ blonde and devotee of numerous so-called ‘Support’ or ‘self help’ groups and movements, to whom Hope was extremely close before their ‘falling out’)’s lexicon and accused me of being ‘in denial,’ an accusation any denial of which was held, of course, to be evidence in its own favor, maddeningly. Once or twice, however, in the early Winter months, I admittedly yielded and did, with a frustrated groan or sigh, take my own bed’s bedding down the hall to the ‘Guest’ bedroom and attempt to ‘drop off’ or sleep there amidst all of the frilled pastels, saffron joss and boxed detritus of our Audrey’s recent adolescence, lying perfectly still and motionless and scarcely breathing, and straining to hear, down the hall, any sounds of Hope perhaps once again sitting up-right and accusing a now empty or unoccupied bed of ‘snoring’ and ‘keeping [her] awake’—which would be indisputable proof of just who was asleep and who merely the innocent subject of someone else’s dream of being kept awake. Lying there alone, I envisioned something like myself hearing the vexed cries and complaints and arising instantly to quickly traverse the hallway, bursting through our bedroom door with something resembling a triumphant ‘Aha!’—so filled with frustrated and aggrieved hormones, however, and devoting so much effort and close concentration to vigilantly listening for any sound or movement from our bedroom, that I got scarcely one iota or ‘wink’ of sleep the entire night in Audrey’s former bed, and yet had, nevertheless,