1 On February 17, 1988, I woke up from my sleep to a series of sounds: first, the phone on the other side of the bed rang, waking us up at 5:04 in the morning, no doubt something happened Disaster; then, I heard the pouring rain beating on the roof of our old Victorian house, which was creeping into the basement from everywhere; and finally, the little pop of Hugh's lower lip, perfectly spaced , like a metronome.Twenty years of poof.I could hear it even when he was awake, after dinner, when he sat in the high-backed leather chair, reading psychiatric publications stacked high off the floor.This sound seems to have become the rhythm of my whole life.

The phone rang again.I lay there waiting for Hugh to pick up the phone, I'm sure it was one of his patients, probably the paranoid schizophrenic, who called last night convinced he was besieged by the CIA in Atlanta In a federal government building downtown.The third bell rang, and Hugh reached out to fumble for the microphone. "Yes, hello," he said, his voice rough and sleepy.I turned my back to him, looked at the twilight of morning light coming through the wet window at the other end of the room, and remembered that today was Ash Wednesday, and I couldn't help feeling guilty.My father died on Ash Wednesday, when I was nine years old, in a way that seemed inexplicable to everyone but me, and which was at least partly my fault.The ship caught fire and the fuel tank exploded, they said.A few weeks later, the wreckage of the boat washed ashore, including a stern board emblazoned with "Jessie Sea."He named the boat after me, not my brother Mike, not even my mother whom he loved dearly, but me—Jessie.I closed my eyes and saw the smoky flames and the roaring orange light.An article in the Charleston paper said the explosion was suspicious, that there had been some kind of investigation, but nothing had been found - all that Mike and I had learned from newspaper clippings in my mother's dresser drawer. arrived.The mother's dresser drawer was a strange and secret place full of cracked rosaries, discarded saints and holy cards, and a statue of a baby Jesus with a missing left arm.Mother didn't expect us to dare to touch those tattered holy goods.

For more than a year, I set foot in that ghastly sanctuary almost every day, obsessively reading the article, especially the line: "Police speculate that sparks from his pipe caused a fire at the leaking fuel line." The pipe was my Father's Day gift to him.Before that, he had never even smoked.Whenever I think of my father, I think of the word "suspicious" and of today's special day when people around the world - me, Mike and my mother - put holy ashes on their foreheads in church , my father was reduced to ashes.However, this is just one of the many taunts of fate. "Yes, of course I remember you." I heard Hugh say into the microphone, and my thoughts were jerked back to the phone, to this hazy morning.He said, "Yes, we're fine. How are you doing?" That didn't sound like a patient.Nor our daughter Dee, I'm sure of that.I could hear it in the formal tone of his speech.I wondered if it was one of Hugh's colleagues, or one of the interns at the hospital.They sometimes call for cases, but usually not at five o'clock in the morning.I slipped out of bed under the covers and walked barefoot across the room to the window to see how heavy the rain was, and see if it would pour back into the basement and blow out the pilot light on the hot water heater.Looking out the window at the icy pouring rain, the pale blue mist, and the already flooded streets, I shivered and wished our house would be easier to warm up.I almost drove Hugh crazy when we bought this big, impractical house.Even though we've lived in the house for seven years, I still refuse to criticize it.I love the sixteen-foot ceilings and the frieze windows with stained glass.And that tower—omg I love that tower so much.How many houses have such towers?You have to climb a spiral staircase in the tower to get to my art room.My art room is a converted third-floor attic with a steeply pitched ceiling and a skylight—so secluded and charming that Dee called it “Rapunzel’s tower.”She always teases me about it. "Hey mom, when are you gonna let your long braids down?" That was when Dee was naughty, that's what Dee was, but we both knew what she meant - I'd gotten too closed Self-defense.It's so traditional.Last Christmas, when Dee was home, I magnetized a caricature of Gary Larson on the fridge, declaring myself "the greatest mother ever alive."In the cartoon, two cows stand on an idyllic pasture.One cow said to the other, "I don't care what people say, I'm not satisfied." I was trying to tease Dee with a little joke.I still remember Hugh laughing after watching it.Hugh had been interpreting people like a Rorschach test all day long, and he didn't see any tricks.It was Dee who stood in front of the cartoon for a long time, and then she gave me a strange look.She wasn't smiling at all.

To be honest, I feel restless all the time.That started in the fall - a feeling of time passing, delayed and imprisoned, I didn't even want to go up to the art room.It feels like a sinking container that suddenly floats up—a surprisingly dissatisfied cow on a pasture.Chewing the same grass over and over again.This feeling intensifies as winter approaches.When I see a neighbor running on the sidewalk in front of my house, I imagine him training for the climb of Kilimanjaro; or, a friend at my book club, detailing the rubber straps she wears Or, the experience of jumping off a bridge in Australia; or - and this is the worst possible scenario - a TV show of some intrepid woman sailing alone in the blue waters of Greece.Beneath all of this, there seemed to be a shimmering stream of blood/fluids/wine, life, whatever it was, that fascinated me.It made me feel deprived of the immensity of the world, of the extraordinary feats that people do in life—even though I don't want to do anything equally concrete.I don't know what I want, but the desire in my heart is real.That morning, as I stood at the window, I felt that longing again, and it crept within me so swiftly and quietly that I couldn't explain it myself.Hugh seemed to think that my little depression, or whatever it was that I was going through, was because of Dee going away to school, the same old empty nest thing.Last fall, after Hugh and I helped Dee settle in at Vanderbilt, we scrambled home so Hugh could play a tennis game he'd been training hard all summer." Annual Cancer Research Fundraising Competition".

For three months, he's been out in the Georgia heat, practicing twice a week with a handsome Prince carbon-fiber tennis racket.As a result, I cried all the way home from Nashville.I kept picturing Dee standing at the dorm door waving goodbye as we drove away.She touched her eyes, her breasts, and pointed at us—an action she's been doing since she was a child.Eye.Heart.you.I can't take it anymore.When we got home, despite my protests, Hugh called his doubles partner Scott and asked him to play in his place.Hugh stayed home and watched a movie with me. The Officer and the Gentleman.He did his best to pretend he liked the film.The deep sadness I felt in the car that day lasted for two weeks and finally passed.I do miss Dee - of course I do - but, I believe that's not the crux of the matter.Hugh has been pushing me lately to see Dr. Ilker, a psychiatrist who works with him.I declined on the grounds that she had a parrot in her consulting room.I know this will annoy Hugh.That's certainly not the real reason - I have nothing against people keeping parrots, other than the fact that they keep them in small cages.I just used it as an excuse to let him know that I didn't take his advice seriously.It is rare for me to go against his wishes so much. "So what if she has parrots?" he said. Letter by letter, recombining them, hoping to arrange some brilliant sentences to explain the development of things today.There was a resistance in me.I occasionally fantasize about seeing Dr. Ilk in my mind.I'd tell her about my father, and she'd hum along and take notes in her little notebook—that seemed to be the only thing she did.I pictured her bird as a brilliant white parrot perched on the back of her chair, babbling nonsense and repeating, like a chorus in a Greek tragedy: You blame yourself, You blame yourself, you blame yourself. "Not long ago—I don't know by what force—I told Hugh all these fictional scenes of meeting Dr. Ilker, even including the parrot. Hugh laughed." Maybe, you just need to look at the bird Parrots will do. "He said, 'Your doctor Ilker sounds like an idiot. "At this moment, Hugh was across the room, listening to someone on the phone, muttering 'ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm'''''''''''''''''''''' his face, Dee called "a big frown." ". You can almost see the various pistons bobbing up and down in his brain—Freud, Jung, Adler, Hoo Ernay, Winnicott. The wind was blowing on the roof and I heard the house singing again - always - that operatic sound like the "scream" of Beverly Hills, as we like to say ...and the door that won't close, the ancient toilet that suddenly refuses to flush ("Toilet's constipated again!" Dee would exclaim), and I'd have to be constantly on the lookout for Hugh to keep those who lived in his study fireplace He likes to joke that if we get divorced one day it will be because of the flying squirrels. But, I love it all, I really do. I just hate the water in the basement and the drafts in the house in the winter. Now, due to Dee was a freshman at Vanderbilt, and the house was empty—I hated that.

Hugh sat hunched on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees, the first two vertebrae protruding from under his pajamas.He said, "You know this is serious, don't you? She needs to see a doctor—I mean, a real psychiatrist." Hugh seemed to be speaking condescendingly, which he doesn't usually do, but, I It was already certain that the caller was an intern in the hospital.I looked out the window, and the whole neighborhood seemed to be flooded with rain, and the houses—some of them as large as arks— seemed to be breaking off their foundations and drifting down the street.I don't want to think about going out in this bad weather, but I definitely will.I'd drive to the Church of the Sacred Heart of Mary on Peachtree Street and have ashes on my forehead.When Dee was a child, he mistakenly called the church "The Church of the Scary Mary".We both still sometimes call it that now, and it occurred to me how apt the name was.What I mean is: if Mary was alive, as many people believe, including my tirelessly Catholic mother, she might actually be terrified.She was on an incredible platform—the perfect mother, the virtuous wife, the paragon of perfect motherhood.She may be standing on top looking down, hoping to find a ladder, a parachute, or anything that will help her get down.After my father died, I went to church every year on Ash Wednesday and never missed a single one—none.When Dee was a baby, I took her there and wrapped her up like a Native American baby in thick blankets, complete with pacifiers and bottles of expressed breast milk.I don't know why I'm so persistent-going to the "Spirit Mary Church" year after year.The priest's dull and monotonous prayer: "Remember, you are dust, and you will return to dust." A smear of holy ashes was placed on the forehead.All I know is that I keep my father alive in my heart this way.At this moment, Hugh stood up.He said, "Do you want me to tell her?" He gave me a look, and I felt a wave of fear come over me.I imagined a white wave coming up the street and sweeping past the gazebo that old Mrs. Vandyfer had built next to the driveway on the corner.The wave, not a tsunami-like wave, but a glowing mudslide on the hillside, rushed towards me, sweeping away all the ridiculous gazebos, letter boxes, kennels, telephone poles and rhododendron bushes.A sweeping, devastating sweep. "Your phone," Hugh said, and I stood still as he called my name, "Jessie, phone. It's for you." He held out his hand and handed it to me, sitting on the bed, his thick hair The back of his head was cocked like a child's, and his expression was serious and disturbed.The windows were drenched with rain, and countless silvery fine raindrops fell on the roof.