The Hazards of Sleeping Alone Read Online Free PDF Page B

feel a need to be a highly opinionated person. Some people just weren’t cut out for it.
    On the phone, explaining mindfulness, Emily’s voice had alternated between loud and muffled. Charlotte had pictured the portable pinned under her daughter’s chin, resting in the bony hollow of her collarbone. She hadn’t seen Emily’s new home and naturally was imagining the worst. Brown tap water. Moldy tub tiles. Weeds growing through the floorboards. Roommates in bare feet or bath towels or worse.
    â€œHang on a sec,” Emily said, and Charlotte wondered what she was doing. Talking to one of her new family members? Talking to Walter? Kissing Walter? Unzipping Walter’s—She blinked away the thought.
    â€œSorry. Back.”
    Charlotte heard the clicking sound that she recognized as Emily’s tongue ring swatting against her teeth. It was a habit that usually signaled something was making her agitated. Charlotte wondered if it was their conversation, or something else.
    â€œWhat was I saying?”
    â€œI was doing the best laundry I’d ever done.”
    â€œRight.” Emily paused, exhaled a long breath. For a second, Charlotte was convinced she detected Walter’s breath on the line too. Maybe he was on a different extension, listening to their conversation. Worse, maybe his face was huddled next to Emily’s, nibbling her ear above the phone.
    â€œBasically,” Emily said, “mindfulness comes down to living in the moment.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œNo matter what you’re doing. Even if it’s the most boring, mindless thing in the world. Don’t you think that makes so much sense?”
    â€œOh, yes,” Charlotte answered automatically. At the moment, her main concern was not sounding foolish, especially not with Walter possibly listening. Maybe, if she acted as though she had a firm handle on this mindfulness business, they could move on to something else.
    â€œThe whole practice really boils down to
awareness,
“ Emily went on.
    Charlotte felt the beginnings of a headache, each temple a pulsing dot of pain.
    â€œBeing aware of your breath. Being aware of your body.”
    â€œI
am
aware of my body,” Charlotte snapped, a touch more defensive than she meant to be. Emily’s tongue ring clicked, twice.
    Well, it was true: she
was
aware of her body. She was meticulous about her doctor’s appointments. She had regular mammograms and dentist’s cleanings. She knew all there was to know about what had killed her parents: her father’s cancer (stomach, liver, and finally brain, phases of hope and hopelessness strung out over seven years like some kind of extravagantly awful tease) and her mother’s sudden heart attack two years later. She wasaware of the risk factors, vigilant about the symptoms. She’d memorized the cycle of her seasonal allergies, her stubborn patches of dry skin, the right eyelid that twitched when she was tired. “I’m in perfect health,” she said. “Just ask Dr. Weiss.”
    Emily laughed the
Oh, Mom!
laugh. “Not that kind of aware,” she said.
    Charlotte felt tired. She wondered if it was possible that the human body existed on a sensory plane that other people experienced but of which she was biologically deprived, and therefore couldn’t understand—like a blind person who couldn’t begin to conceive of sight.
    Focusing on the bumper sticker in front of her, Charlotte tries hard to be mindful. She listens to her breath: yes, there it is. She hears it. She tries to be
aware
of her breathing—is that the same thing as listening to it?—and notes it going in and out, in and out. She knows this can’t be what Emily was talking about, that “being aware of your breath” implies something much deeper, more internal, involving the whole body. But when Charlotte tries to be aware of her whole body, she succeeds only in being aware of her