Oblivion_ stories - By David Foster Wallace Page 0,105

to still arise and go forth to attempt to stagger through my professional responsibilities at work and both sides of the lengthy commute the following day with my entire body, mind and psyche on the edge of what felt to be nearly complete collapse. It was, I was, of course, aware, perhaps petty to be so fixated on vindication or ‘proof,’ but, by this point of the conflict, I was often nearly ‘not’ or ‘beside’ myself with frustration, choler or anger and fatigue. One must understand (as it was my original intention to attempt to explain to her stepfather) that though, as in any marriage, Hope and I had had our fair share of conflicts and difficult marital periods, the evident vehemence, anger and persecution with which she now dismissed my protests of being awake at the crucial junctures of alleged ‘snoring’ were unprecedented, and, for the first several weeks of the dreams and accusations, I was concerned primarily for Hope herself, and feared that she was having a more difficult time of it adjusting to our Audrey’s ‘leav[ing] the nest’ than it had at first appeared (pace that it had been Hope, even more than Audrey herself, who had insisted or ‘lobbied’ for an out-of-State college, the relatively nearby Bryn Mawr and Sarah Lawrence Colleges having been Audrey and myself’s tacitly agreed upon choices as a compromise or [in the language of insurance regulation] ‘Technical compliance’ with this priority), and that this difficulty or grief was manifesting itself as sleep disruptions and unconscious or misdirected anger or ‘blame’ at myself. (Audrey is Hope’s child by her first, short lived marriage, but was no more than a toddler when Naomi and myself’s own divorce was declared ‘Final, a mensa et thoro’ and Hope and myself were free to marry, which occurred sixteen years ago this coming August 9th. For all practical purposes, she is, essentially, ‘my’ daughter as well, and I too found her physical absence and the house’s strange new silence and schedules and the gamut of readjustments difficult, as well, as I tried to repeatedly reassure Hope.) After some further time had passed, however, and all attempts to discuss the conflict rationally or induce Hope to consider even the mere possibility that it was she, not myself, who was in reality asleep when the alleged ‘snoring’ problem manifested itself led only to a further entrenchment or ‘hardening’ in her own position—the essence of her position being that I myself was being irrationally ‘stubborn’ and ‘untrusting’ of what she could plainly hear with her own two ears—I essentially ceased, then, to say or do anything in the way of ‘in situ’ response or objection when she would suddenly sit violently up in bed across the room (her face often inhuman and spectral in the bedroom’s faint light because of the white emollient cream she wore to bed during the cold, dry months of the year, and distorted unpleasantly by vexation and choler) to accuse me of ‘snoring horribly’ and demanding that I roll over at once or be exiled again to Audrey’s former bed. Instead, I would now lie perfectly still, silent and motionless, my eyes closed, pantomiming a deeply sleeping man who could not hear or in any way acknowledge her, until eventually her pleas and vituperations trailed drowsily off and she would settle back with a deep and pointed sigh. Then I would continue to lie supine and motionless in my pale blue flannel or acetate sleep wear, still and silent as a ‘tomb,’ waiting silently for Hope’s breathing to change and for the slight, small chewing or grinding sounds she produced in sleep to indicate that she had once more fallen back to sleep. Even then, however, sometimes she now once again bolts awake only moments later, once again sitting up to accuse me of ‘snoring’ and angrily demanding that I do something to halt or impede it so that she might finally have some ‘peace’ and be able to sleep.

By this point in time, the Spring thunderstorm’s downpour had receded or ebbed to the point that individual droplets’ impacts’ sounds were individually countable against the striped canvas awnings of the 19th Hole’s large bay windows—meaning being discretely audible, but in sum arrhythmic and not what one would term pleasant or soothing; the larger drops sounded almost eerie or, as it were, almost ‘brutal’ in their impact’s force. Inside, Hope’s father was leaning back and slightly to the side in his heavy ‘captain’s’ chair, running the