AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Now, as I waited for him, I wondered if it wasn’t the other way around. Because he thought I was so troubled by sex, it was affecting him. He would never, ever admit that he could be affected, but deep down inside his angry heart, those feelings surely twirled about and worried him. What would bother him the most, and what did he fear other men would think about him? That he couldn’t satisfy his wife, that he couldn’t produce a child? Not Arden Lowe. He wouldn’t stand for that.
I turned over in bed and closed my eyes. He was taking so long. How long did he expect me to wait? I fought sleep, but it was heavy tonight and easily forced my eyelids closed. I had no idea what time it was when my eyes snapped open, but I saw that the light beside me was still on, so I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and looked at the clock. It was well after one. Arden hadn’t come up. Where was he? Had he started drinking again? Had he fallen asleep on the sofa? He’d be upset with himself, I thought. I put on my robe and slippers and went out.
I had just started toward the stairs when I saw him. He looked like he had fallen asleep in the living room. His hair was wild, his shirt was unbuttoned and out of his pants, and he wasn’t wearing his shoes. But he wasn’t coming up the stairs. He was coming from the direction of the first Audrina’s room and Sylvia’s room.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“What you should have been doing,” he said. “Why didn’t you?”
“Do what?”
“Come and get her.”
“Why?”
“Why? She was making enough of a racket in that damn rocking chair. I thought someone was cutting up the floor. She’s lucky she didn’t go over backward in it, the way she was rocking back and forth. I heard it above me. I didn’t know she would go rocking. It sounded like animals eating away at the roof. You were dead asleep, so I went to check, and there she was, rocking away. Do you know why? She thinks your father talks to her when she’s rocking.”
“I know,” I said, a cold chill rushing through me as I recalled my own rocking-chair memories and my childhood faith in its power to take me into another world. “I’m sorry. Where is she?”
“I got her out of that chair damn fast and practically dragged her back to her room. I imagine she’s fast asleep, which is exactly where I should be,” he said, and walked past me toward our bedroom.
“I’m sorry, Arden,” I said again.
He paused and looked back at me. “I told you years ago that we should throw that chair out, empty that room, and give away all those toys and things. Maybe now you’ll listen. I can get someone here tomorrow to take it all away.”
“I can’t do that, Arden. I just can’t.”
“Suit yourself. I’m tired, and I have to get up in a matter of hours,” he said.
I went to Sylvia’s room and looked in on her. She was asleep, her blanket up to her waist, but her hair was down. She always liked it up when she slept. A few times when she was younger, she got strands of her own hair in her mouth and choked on them. I watched her sleep. There was something more about her, something different, I thought, and stepped closer to get a better look at her face.
She was smiling.
Maybe she was having a pleasant dream. I wouldn’t want to interrupt that. I fixed her blanket a little better and then returned to our bedroom. Arden was already curled up, clutching his pillow like a life preserver.
The funny thing was, he was smiling, too.
Shadows in the Darkness
Arden was up, dressed, and gone before I got up. I had to wake Sylvia, too. For a moment, she acted as if she didn’t know where she was, but it wasn’t unusual for her to wake up with a look of confusion on her face. It was almost as if she never expected there would be another morning. I wondered what sort of dreams she might have had.
Did she dream?
Sometimes I felt a little confused when I first woke up, and I imagined everyone did at one time or another. For a moment or so after you awaken, no matter who you are, how intelligent or mature you are, you can feel like a stranger in your own room, in your own house. You have to let everything you know and have gotten used to as belonging to you return, sort of fade in like a movie scene. Sunlight awakens it all, pulls it all out of the shadows, and fills your eyes and your mind with your identity. If you are pleased with who you are, you are happy, grateful, even relieved, but if you are not, you wish you hadn’t woken up. You wish you had remained in your dreams being who you’d rather be, what you’d rather be.
Did Sylvia ever hate who and what she was? There were many times when I did. Did she look with envy at me, or had she felt envy toward Vera, especially when Vera had returned from her failed marriage, looking prettier and more sophisticated? Could Sylvia even experience jealousy? She never complained about one of us having more than she had. Vera used to claim that when Sylvia was very young, she was jealous of Billie’s wagon, a device Billie used to get around because she had lost her legs to diabetes, but I never believed much in the things Vera would say. She was the epitome of jealousy in this house, her eyes of green envy converting anything beautiful that any of us had.
Once Sylvia realized what was happening when I woke her, she usually broke into a beautiful smile. This morning, however, she looked happier than I had seen her in a long time. She was, in fact, radiant. She wasn’t groggy or sleepy and moved quickly to get out of bed. There was excitement in her eyes and an eagerness to start the day that I didn’t often see, especially when Vera had come back to live with us and tormented her every chance she had.
When she stood, she stretched and looked at me as if I had just popped out of thin air.
“Hello, Audrina.”
“Good morning, Sylvia. I overslept, so it’s later than usual.”
“Me, too. What do you want to do, Audrina?”
“Do?” I asked, smiling with amusement. She never began a day asking me that.
