Up All Night

It wasn’t unusual for Hank to be up all night, wandering through the neighborhood, at first seeing the gilded lights on in the apartments and houses, but as the hours slipped by, seeing window after window going dark like velvet.

He didn’t sleep.

Couldn’t sleep.

Had forgotten how to sleep.

Didn’t want to remember.

That’s not to say he never shut his eyes. When he was on the bus, sometimes he’d nod off. When he was at work, there were moments when the projector was doing its own thing and he leaned back in his chair and thought of her. Dreamt of her.

But those were fleeting minutes. Not enough to write home about. Not enough to count as sleep. Perchance, and all that jazz.

He ran the projectors at one of the few theaters that still used film, and his fiefdom smelled of sawdust and celluloid. He always took the last shift, not having any sort of qualm about closing up the theater at 2 or 3 a.m. He enjoyed solitude and silence, and if it was popcorn-scented, all the better. He’d pour the dregs of the last pot of coffee into his mug and drink the bitter brew as he walked home.

He wasn’t afraid of the dark.

He was afraid of the dreams.

Since Vivian had… left… and his bed felt empty in a way it hadn’t ever felt before, he didn’t go into the bedroom. He curled up on the second-hand sofa with a scratchy blanket he couldn’t remember the origin of and he let late-night TV wash over him. Black-and-white flickers of The Honeymooners and The Twilight Zone.

He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d slept for real. But he thought it might have been the night before the end. When she’d lived with him, they’d fit together like puzzle pieces. She nestled against him. He could hold her to him all night, feel her body against his body, drink in the way that her hair felt like silk and smelled like honey.

He’d been through breakups before, but this was different.

He’d been left before, but this was different.

All the other ends paled when lined up to this one. They were make-believe, baby steps, let’s play pretend. This was like having his heart torn out by wild animals and still having to get up and go to work.

The problem with sleeping was that he’d dream she was in bed with him. He’d dream that everything was okay, and that he would be able to put his arms around her and hold her to him, nuzzle his face against the nape of her neck, hear her sigh. And he’d wake up with a start, only a few minutes after closing his eyes, and the TV would be glowing, and he’d be clinging for life to an old sofa cushion.

Hank had film of her, from back when people took movies. He had home movies on Super 8 Which he kept in a secure box and never, not ever looked inside. He knew she wasn’t really in there, just like he knew she wasn’t really in the box on his dresser.

A different kind of box.

His best friends didn’t even bring her up anymore. It’s as if grief has an unspoken time limit, and he’d surpassed it. They had moved on, and so should he, was the sensation he got, and if he dared broach the subject in any way, they made a big production of distracting him.

Bill wanted him to date again.

Stan said he should climb a mountain in a faraway country.

Jay was the only one who didn’t chime in. He would just watch Hank, and he didn’t interrupt if Hank talked about her, and he didn’t change the subject. He didn’t do much of anything. It was why Jay was Hank’s best friend. Sometimes, when they were out doing nothing—taking a walk, sitting at a bar—Jay would say something nice about Vivian. Just a few words, and it was as if he were telling Hank it was okay to talk about her. 

He hadn’t slept in a long time, and Jay was the one who seemed the most concerned. At first, Hank had slept because of the pills. The doctors gave him the pills without hesitation, because the grief had manifested in a way that made him wander the streets, and his family had taken him to the doctor and he’d been so dazed that he’d simply nodded, taken the prescription, and let someone fill it for him.

The sleep on the pills was nothing. No dreams. 

It was only later, when he’d kicked the drugs forcefully and viciously that the dreams came.

Jay was the one who said to look at the movies.

“I don’t know,” Hank said.

“Yeah, you do.”

“I can’t,” Hank said.

“Yeah. You can.”

So that's how they ended up at the theater at 1 in the morning with the Super-8s all spliced together and the special projector, and Hank set it up so the movies would play on the big screen, and he and Jay sat in the back row together.

At first, Hank didn’t watch. He knew that the movie was playing. The quality of light had the magic glow. But he looked at his lap instead. Jay grabbed one of his hands and held it tight, and he said, “She wouldn’t want you to be like this.”

Hank took a deep breath, then he sat back in the chair and he watched. He watched Vivian celebrate a birthday. He watched a picnic in the park. He watched her at the beach. He hadn’t been paying much attention when he’d strung together all these different moments to make one long reel, and the images weren’t in chronological order, so that sometimes she was a little too thin. Or a little tired looking. And then there she was healthy again.

He was crying in the theater watching, god, the tears just coming unbidden, unstoppable. But he felt something shifting in him. Instead of hiding her, he was acknowledging her. Instead of pushing her way down deep inside, he was embracing her. Allowing her to live and mug for the camera and make funny faces and hold up a glass of wine and mouth, “I love you.”

When the film finished, and the screen was blank again, he and Jay sat there together. Vivian was all around them. He could feel her. As if every frame had duplicated an image of her, and all the Vivians were seated in the movie theater chairs.

His face was wet, and he wiped his eyes on his sleeve. He was still holding Jay’s hand, but it wasn’t weird.

They shut everything down together without saying a word. They walked home sharing a package of licorice he’d stolen from the candy counter. And that night he slept. Really slept. For the first time in six years.