Those summer nights nothing helped. The minute she got into bed her sadness began to smother her. She’d toss and turn, trying not to panic at the thought of a Jack-less future.
Much later, when Marla got home, she’d peek into Lizzie’s room and, seeing that Lizzie was still awake, she’d come sit next to her and hold her hand, and quietly say, “Come on, now, breathe with me,” and, holding Marla’s hand, breathing along with Marla’s breaths, Lizzie could finally let go of another day without Jack and sleep.
When Marla couldn’t be there, James sat at the side of her bed, breathing her to sleep. When he took her hand one night, he said, “Lizzie, listen. Jack is an asshole. I never liked him and I thought he was totally wrong for you. You’re better off without him.”
Lizzie wanted to insist James didn’t know what he was talking about, but she couldn’t formulate the right words to contradict him. It was extraordinarily comforting to have James and Marla with her, knowing they loved her. Even at the time, and more so as the years went by and she looked back on those summer months of Jack’s inexplicable silence, Lizzie knew that this was a great kindness Marla and James were doing her.
“Lizzie, why don’t you just write Jack? Or even better, pick up the phone and call him,” Marla asked one night in July. And then Lizzie had to admit to her that they’d never really talked about things like what town in Texas he grew up in, or what his father did, or if he had brothers or sisters. Lizzie realized that she really didn’t know much about him, except that he loved poetry and hated football. She knew it was a small town in Texas, near nowhere in particular, and that was about it. Marla sighed. You could eliminate Dallas and Austin and Fort Worth and Waco and San Antonio and Lubbock and Houston and there were still a lot of places in Texas fitting that description.
“How could you not know where he’s from? Surely that would come up in the conversation one time or another. You were inseparable for the whole quarter.”
Lizzie felt obscurely ashamed. “I don’t know, James. We didn’t talk about things like that. I didn’t ask him about it, I guess. I don’t know why. We were too busy doing other things.”
“So now he’s back home in Podunk, Texas, about to marry his high school sweetheart, who waited four years for him to graduate and come back to her and make babies together.”
Marla wasn’t happy with this. “God, James, shut up, that’s really cruel and you’re totally not helping, you know,” but Lizzie only shook her head, defeated. What was there to say? That was as likely a scenario as anything she could think of. And she had thought of it.
By the middle of August, when they felt they’d taught Lizzie how to breathe herself to sleep, Marla and James asked if she would be okay staying by herself so that they could go home for a couple of weeks. Although Lizzie dreaded being alone, she felt she could hardly tell them not to go. Final exams began later in the week, and maybe the concentrated study she’d need to do would either exhaust her into sleep or at least keep her mind on a non-Jack track.
The first night they were gone was the worst night she’d so far had that summer. Her eyes felt too gritty to close and she felt too jumpy to settle down. She got up and drank a cup of warm milk with brandy and went back to bed. An hour or so later she got up and had a cup of chamomile tea and went back to bed. An hour or so after that she got up to pee and came back to bed, straightening her pillows so she could sit up and reread her favorite sections of I Capture the Castle, which she normally found extraordinarily comforting. Then she turned out the light and played the easiest variant of “A . . . My Name Is Alice.” Then she started reciting all the Housman poems she knew. Then she got up again to check on some verses in “Shot? So Quick, So Clean an Ending?” that she’d forgotten, probably because they were too sad. Then she got back in bed and recited the corrected verses to herself. Then she got up to pee again. Then it was morning and Lizzie had to get up for good and go to her geography class.
As she sat down and took out the textbook, the girl sitting next to her said, “You look terrible.”
“I know,” Lizzie said, appreciating the frank assessment. “I can’t fall asleep anymore. It’s been like that for months.”
“You should go to Health Service. I hear they’ll give you sleeping pills if they think you really need them.”
Okay, Lizzie thought, I can do that.
The nurse took Lizzie into an exam room. “Dr. Teacher will be in soon,” she said as she closed the door. There was no chair, so Lizzie perched somewhat precariously at the edge of the examination table while she waited. She was all ready to have a light introductory exchange with him about what it was like being named Teacher and choosing to be a doctor, but it was clear as soon as he came into the room that there wouldn’t be any light conversation forthcoming. He studied her chart for a few minutes, although what there was to study on it was a mystery to Lizzie; it was the first time she’d ever gone to the clinic.
Finally he looked up at her. “Bultmann,” he began. “Any relation to—”
Lizzie didn’t let him finish. “My parents,” she said shortly.
He looked a shade more interested in her. “Lovely people,” he said. “Simply brilliant, both of them. You’re very lucky, you know. They’ve both made significant contributions to the field.”
Lizzie’s heart sank. This was already not going well.
“The nurse says you’re interested in some medication for sleeping.”
“Yeah,” she began. “It’s just that finals are coming up and I haven’t been able to sleep and if I could just get some sleep . . .”
“Ah, you’re taking some advanced psychology courses, I presume, to follow in your parents’ footsteps?”
“No, no.” Lizzie knew she sounded horrified but couldn’t help herself.
“If not psychology, then what?”
“Uh, a grammar class, and another one in, you know, geography.”
“Those must be fascinating,” Dr. Teacher said in a tone of voice that made it clear he didn’t think it was fascinating at all. “By the way, I’ve always wondered what your mother’s maiden name was.”
Lizzie was bewildered but still game. “LeVine.”
“Ah,” he said triumphantly, making a note in the chart. “Well,” he went on, “do we have any idea of what’s causing this inability to sleep?”
At this point the last thing Lizzie wanted to do was talk to Dr. Teacher any more than she absolutely had to.
“No, not really. It’s just become a lot harder to fall asleep recently.”
“Ah. Do you have a boyfriend?”
“A boyfriend? Um, I guess not, no, not currently.”
“But you did have a boyfriend?”
“Well, yes, I guess so.”
“Recently?”
“Sort of recently. Sure.”
“But you don’t any longer. What happened?”
Lizzie stopped to think. How could she answer that? She didn’t know what had happened.
“He graduated.”
“This past May?”
Lizzie nodded.
“So you broke up?”
Yes, she admitted, they’d broken up.