‘But snoring is not really the issue, Randall, is it?’
‘But I never for one moment suggested that it was the real issue.’
‘After all, hay fever or no, lots of men snore.’
‘And were I one of them [meaning someone who ‘snored’ even during seasons when hay fever was not a factor], I would submit [meaning to Hope’s accusations] without hesitation.’
‘Why is it so important to you whether you snore or not?’
‘The whole point is that it is not important to me. That is my entire point. If I were, in point of actual fact, “snoring,” I’d have no trouble admitting it, assuming responsibility and taking any reasonable steps necessary in order to address the alleged problem.’
‘I’m afraid I still don’t understand. How can you even know for certain whether you snore or not? If you are snoring, then by definition you’re asleep.’
‘But [attempting to respond] . . .’
‘I mean, who can know?’
‘But [becoming more and more frustrated by this point in time] that’s the whole point, which I have tried here to explain I don’t even know how many times already: it is precisely when I am not in fact yet even asleep that she accuses me.’
‘Why are you getting so upset? Do you have some special stake in the issue of whether you snore?’
‘If I am, as you put it, getting “upset,” it is perhaps because I am somewhat irked, impatient or frustrated with these types of exchanges. The whole point is that I emphatically do not have a stake in the so-called “snoring” issue. The point is that if I were in fact“snoring,” I would admit it and simply roll over on to my side or even offer to go sleep in Audrey’s bed and not think twice about the issue beyond a certain natural regret that I had in any way disturbed or “compromised” Hope’s rest. But I do, however, know that one must be asleep to “snore,” and that I know when I am truly asleep and when I am not, and that what I do have a “stake” in is refusing to placate someone who is being not just irrational but blindly stubborn and obtuse in accusing me of something which I must be asleep in order to be guilty of when in fact I am not yet asleep, due largely to how tense and exhausted I am from the whole absurd conflict in the first place.’
The P.P.O.’s counselor, who appeared to be in, at most, his mid- or late 30s, and wore spectacles, had a large forehead which was domed in such a way as to suggest deep thoughtfulness, an appearance which was, it increasingly emerged, misleading.
‘And is there no chance—just for the sake, Randall, of argument—no chance or possibility, however remote, that you yourself might be being, as you put it, in any way stubborn or blind about this conflict in you and Mrs. Napier’s relationship?’
‘Now I must confess to becoming frustrated or even, if I might say so, somewhat annoyed or exasperated, as the whole point, the entire root of the unfairness and my frustration or even anger with Hope, is that I myself am willing to examine this possibility. That it is myself who am here, examining it, as you can plainly see. Do you see my wife here? Is she willing to come “lay [the problem] out” and look at it with a disinterested party?’
‘And can I ask why the thing with the fingers?’
‘But no, Ed [the P.P.O.’s counselor all but insisting on being addressed by his first name], if I may, the fact is that Hope is even now returning home from Exercise class or the cosmetician and is very probably in the tub stewing privately over the conflict and fortifying her position and preparing for another endless round of the conflict whenever she next dreams that I am keeping her awake and robbing her of her youth, vivacity and daughterly charms, while at the same moment I myself sit here in an unventilated office being asked whether I might be “blind.”’
‘So, if I am hearing you accurately, the real issue is fairness. Your wife is not being fair.’
‘The real issue is that it’s bizarre, surreal, an almost literal “waking nightmare.” My wife is now no one I know. She’s claiming to know better than I myself whether I’m even awake. It’s less unfair than seemingly almost totally insane. I know whether I’m sitting here having these exchanges. I know I am not dreaming this. To doubt this is insane. But this, to all appearances, is what she’s doing.’
‘Mrs. Napier might deny that you are really even here right now, you feel.’
‘That isn’t the point. The issue of my actually being here or not is merely an analogy intended to high-light the fact of my knowing whether or not I am asleep, just as you do. To doubt this would be the road to insanity, would it not? Might we agree on that much?’
‘Randall, here let me reassure you once again that I am not in any way disagreeing with you, but simply trying to make certain I understand this. When you are asleep, can you really actually know that you are asleep?’ . . . And so on and so forth. My hands often ached from gripping the vehicle’s steering wheel as I then resumed or continued the commute home along the Garden State Parkway from the Couple counselor’s office in a small collection (or, ‘complex’) of Medical and Dental buildings in suburban Red Bank. More generally, I began often to worry or fear that I would succumb to sleep deprivation or fatigue and might fall asleep at the wheel and drift across or ‘jump’ the median into on-coming traffic, as I had all too often seen the tragic aftermath of in my many years of commuting.
Then, while seated with Dr. Sipe at the table in what Raritan Club members often refer to as simply ‘19’ or ‘the Hole,’ another unwilled or involuntary interior tableau or, as it were, hallucinatory ‘shot’ or scene of myself standing, as a boy or small child, on a precarious or slanted surface at the foot of something resembling a ladder or rope ladder or rope, looking upward in child-like fear, the stairway, ladder or rope trailing down from some point in the gloom above, beyond or atop the great, stone icon or statue or ‘bust’ of someone too massively huge and ill lit for the face to be seen overhead (or, ‘made out’), I myself standing precariously on a rise in the statue’s great granite lap with one or both hands clutching or grasping the end of the rope, peering up, as well as with someone far larger behind me’s hand heavy upon my shoulder and back and a dominant or ‘booming’ voice from the darkness of the great stone head overhead repeatedly commanding ‘Up,’ and the hand pushing or shaking and saying ‘For God . . .’ andor ‘. . . Hope’ several times. ‘Father’—whose area of professional expertise at The Prudential is (or, rather, was) something called ‘Demographic Medicine,’ which involved his evidently not ever once, during his entire career, physically touching a patient—had always regarded me as a bit of a bore andor ninny, someone at once obtrusive and irrelevant, the human equivalent of a house fly or pinched nerve, and has made precious little effort to disguise this, although as a ‘Greatfather’ he has always been exceptionally doting and kind to our Audrey, which with Hope and myself goes a long way. When he concentrates on the clipped end to get it alight, he appears briefly strabismic or ‘cross eyed,’ and the hand holding the lighter shakes badly, and in that instant he appears every bit his age or more. The excised tip was nowhere in view. The whole room seemed somehow menacingly coiled. He and I both looked at the red end as he held the silver Ronson to it and drew and exhaled, trying to light it in a durable way. His wrists and hands were yellowish and somewhat freckled, not unlike a corn- or ‘tortilla’-chip, and the size of the flame and Cohiba made his very dry, narrow, furrowed, hunched and out-thrust face appear smaller and more distant than in reality it was; and this effect was not a visual distortion or hallucination but a common and simple ‘Illusion of perspective,’ not unlike a Renaissance horizon. The true flame was the one in the middle. Feigenspan’s slight tannic bitterness being also traditional. (The following, as well, being also typical of the exchanges with the second Couple counselor in his sterile, generic office in suburban Red Bank:
‘And it is not possible that some of these hallucinations you feel as though you are experiencing might be auditory? That you are sometimes rasping or snoring and do not realize it because you are, as
you put it, hallucinating?’
‘But I know when I am hallucinating. The photograph of your wife and daughter or perhaps conceivably stepdaughter or niece here on your desk—the daughter’s face is beginning ever so slightly to whirl and distend. That is a hallucination. I mean “hallucination” in the very broadest sense. These are not hallucinations which mimic reality or can be confused with it. Sometimes, for instance, trying to shave in the mirror, my visage will appear to have an extra eye in the center of my forehead, whose pupil is sometimes rotated or “set” on its “side” like a cat or nocturnal predator’s, or occasionally our Audrey’s chest on Parents’ Weekend at Bryn Mawr’s two breasts will go up and down in her sweater like pistons and her head is surrounded by a halo or, as it were, “nimbus” of animated Disney characters. When these hallucinations occur, I am able to say to myself, “Randall, you are hallucinating slightly due to chronic sleep deprivation compounded by discord and chronic stress.”’
‘But they must still be frightening. I know they would certainly frighten me.’
‘The point is that I know when I’m hallucinating and when I’m not, just as I also quite obviously know when I’m asleep or not.’) At which juncture an additional momentary, hallucinatory ‘flash’ or vision of our Audrey supine in a beached canoe and myself straining piston-like above her, my face whirling and beginning to distend as the tableau or Fata morgana shifts almost immediately back to the present day’s 19th Hole or ‘the Hole,’ with our Audrey—now 19 and burgeoned into full woman-hood or the ‘Age of consent’—in her familiar saffron bustier, ‘Capri’ style pants and white, elbow length gloves now moving smoothly or languidly among the tables, stools and chairs, languidly serving high-balls to wet men. Nor should one omit to add that Jack Vivien was now there, as well, at the window-side table in the 19th Hole with myself and Dr. Sipe, also with a beverage and seated on ‘Father’’s right or ‘off’ side. Jack Vivien wore none of the customary golfer’s jacket or visor, as well as appearing dry, unhurried and, as always, collected or unflustered, although he nevertheless still wore his spikes or ‘Golf shoes’ (the traditional shoe’s sole’s 0.5 inch steel or iron spikes being the culprit or component which conducts electricity with such ‘hair raising’ efficacy. The public course’s resident ‘Pro’ in Wilkes Barre, in my boyhood, for instance, was once struck and killed instantly by lightning, and my own Father had been in the trio of other golfers who had bravely remained in the open with the stricken lightning victim until a physician could be summoned and arrive, the ‘Pro’ lying prone and blackened and still holding the Twelfth hole’s flag [whose pole, or ‘pin,’ like traditional golfers’ spikes, was, in that era, still comprised of conductive metal] in his smoking fist.), and here the logistics of his entrance or ‘logic’ of the ‘coincidence’ which brought him, dry and, as it were, ‘bright eyed’ (Jack Vivien having bright or ‘expressive’ eyes in a markedly large, broad, if somewhat flat or immobile or ‘expressionless’ [with the exception of the animated, ‘thoughtful’ eyes] face, as well as a sharp, dark ‘Van Dyke’ style beard which served to compensate or de-emphasize the somewhat unusual qualities of his mouth’s size and position), to our table in ‘the Hole’ at this precise point in time is somewhat unclear and, in retrospect, contrived or, as it were, ‘suspicious.’ It is, for example, unlikely that Jack Vivien and Hope’s stepfather knew one another, as not only was ‘Father’ not a member of the Raritan Club and had played as a ‘Guest’ only once or twice prior to this time, but in reality Jack (or, more formally, ‘Chester’) Vivien served as a high ranking Employee Assistance executive at my own company (whose physical plant, or, ‘Nerve center’ was located in Elizabeth), a company which ‘Father’ had made rather a point, numerous times, of implying or characterizing as so ephemeral or unimportant to the region’s insurance industry as to have caused him never once to have encountered or ‘heard one word about’ it throughout his entire tenure at ‘The Rock.’ Nor did Hope’s stepfather appear to speak to, look at or in any way to acknowledge the presence of Jack Vivien (whom, through his role in the recent ‘snoring’ issue’s attempted resolution, I had gotten acquainted with rather well) as he got the thing finally alight and leaned back at a slight smoker’s angle in his ‘captain’s’ chair, smoking slowly and joining Jack Vivien (whose circumoral balbo or ‘Van Dyke’ was, admittedly, frankly and incongruously ‘merkin-esque’ or pudendal in appearance, I myself being far from the only person in Systems to remark this) in looking appraisingly at me as I covered first one eye and then the other (a well known ‘home-remedy’ for common optical illusions). It was clearly evident that ‘Father’ did not ‘approve of’ or like what he currently saw: an, as it were, ‘second string’ son-in-law with a mediocre Handicap and background in addition to a trivial or undistinguished career, one whose personal affairs were in disarray and appeared potentially ‘on the rocks’ over a conflict this trivial and absurd with a wife who was, herself, clearly merely suffering from either the ‘Empty nest’ syndrome, early symptoms of the climacteric or mere incubi or bad dreams (more clinically known as ‘Night terrors’), and yet could not manage to be assertive, assuasive or ‘man’ enough to convince her that these natural and de minimis causes were at their so-called ‘impasse’’s core, and who now seemed all too obviously to be working up the courage or ‘nerve’ to ask ‘Father’ himself to use his paternal influence or authority over Hope (pace that he was, of course, when convenient, merely or ‘just’ her stepfather, and in his pale eyes was what sometimes looked or appeared to be the terrible stepfatherly knowledge of what our Audrey could have been to me, perhaps as Hope—as well as Vivian [as she had ‘hysterically’ claimed to have later been professionally helped to ‘Recover’ unconscious memories of]—had once served as or been to himself; and it was not at all difficult to conceive almost at will a low angle image or vision or nightmarish ‘shot’ of his prone face just above, engorged and straining, one well freckled right hand clamped tight over Hope or Vivian [the two of whom appear almost ‘interchangeably’ alike in childhood photos] beneath him’s open mouth, and his crushing weight thoroughly and terribly adult) to intercede in the conflict, though it was neither the old man’s ‘place’ nor remote intention to do so, as anyone with any discernment or ‘eyes with which to see’ should be capable of seeing.
More specifically, it had been Chester A. (or, ‘Jack’) Vivien—age: ‘Mid 50s,’ Handicap: ‘11,’ marital status: ‘Unknown,’ and the Director of Employee Assistance Programs for Advanced Data Capture (our company’s legal name)’s Elizabeth operations—to whose coveted, corner office I’d finally gone with my ‘hat in hand’ in order to confide the entire absurd, seemingly quotidian or banal, conjugal ‘snoring’ impasse, and its escalating impact on my marriage, health and ability to function productively in my Dept. within Systems. This had been the prior March. Though his résumé included an ‘advanced’ or Graduate degree in the field of industrial psychology from Cornell University (which is located in northern or ‘up-State’ New York), Jack Vivien was no mere counselor or ‘front line’ staff for Advanced Data Capture’s ‘E.A.P.’ (as it is often known) program, but rather had been deliberately hired away from Weyerhauser Paper, Inc.’s Brunswick operation several years prior in order to specifically manage and oversee the entire ‘E.A.P.’ program, and now served also as ‘Administrative liaison’ for the company’s P.P.O. Group Health Plan program, which evidently required considerable managerial and accounting expertise, as well. Jack Vivien and I had always gotten ‘on’ and enjoyed a mutual regard. We were frequently (when his chronic lower back condition permitted) in the same flight at company tournaments during warm weather months, and sometimes enjoyed light conversation together in the cart on Par 4s andor 5s while waiting for other members of our foursome to locate an errant ball or ‘hole out’ on the hole’s green. More importantly, it was Jack Vivien who, in late March, had subsequently suggested or ‘Throw[n] out [the] idea [of]’ the reportedly highly respected Edmund R. and
Meredith R. Darling Memorial Sleep Clinic, which, he said, was affiliated or ensconced within the teaching hospital affiliated with Rutgers University in ‘in-State’ Brunswick, as a possible option. It had also been Jack—as opposed to either of the supposedly ‘expert,’ professional Couple counselors I had gone to some lengths to consult or ‘see,’ in desperation, some months prior—who had made an almost immediate ‘impression’ by quickly ‘Cut[ting] to the chase’ and inquiring—somewhat ‘leadingly’ or ‘rhetorically,’ but without condescension or a sense of being patronized—whether I myself, on balance, would prefer to prevail or ‘win’ in the conflict and be vindicated as ‘innocent’ or ‘right,’ on one hand, or would rather instead have Hope and myself’s marriage back on track and to once more derive pleasure in one another’s company and affections and to resume its being possible to get enough uninterrupted sleep at night to be able to function effectively and feel more like ‘[my]self again.’