Before I Wake by Robert J. Wiersema Page A

could accuse him of being was incredibly dense.
    SIMON
    Leaving the house—closing the door behind me, walking down the path and through the gate to the street—was the hardest thing I had ever done, and I did it twice every day, once before work and once after. I never looked back, worried I would see Karen watching me through one of the front windows, or maybe worried I wouldn’t.
    On the days I walked to work, I cut through Fernwood,taking the crow’s path downtown. The twenty-minute walk gave me time to consider things without interruption. And invariably, I found myself thinking about the same things.
    I had become a cliché—the older man who left his wife for a younger woman—but I certainly wasn’t going to use a midlife crisis as an excuse. I didn’t feel old, and Mary was certainly no ditzy trophy.
    I was keenly aware of how other people viewed the situation. My secretary, Sheila, no longer spoke to me—to either of us—with anything other than deliberately exaggerated professionalism. The associates never mentioned it, but I’m sure they spoke of it.
    Mary and I.
    Strange how a single phrase could signal so many changes. A few months before I had been part of “Simon and Karen,” almost a single proper name. Husband, wife, father, mother, family.
    Mary brought me more joy than I had felt in a very long time. I felt young again, open to possibility, in a way I’d lost. No. In a way I hadn’t even noticed I had lost.
    It’s not like I just walked away from my family. I wanted to be there for Sherry. I needed to be there with her, and twice a day wasn’t really enough.
    I had called Karen the first Sunday night after I left, asking if I could visit Sherry on my way to work the next morning. I was careful to keep my voice as detached as I could manage. For a long time Karen didn’t say anything, then she answered, “I suppose I can’t stop you.”
    I hadn’t missed a day since.
    And Mary understood.
    HENRY
    I spent whole days in the library. After I finished reading the morning paper, I would check out other parts of the building. The library was two full floors. Large windows on one sidelooked out over a glass-covered courtyard. Inside, the carpet was a dark orange-brown, worn thin in places by foot traffic. The ceiling was low, with all the ventilation and heat pipes exposed and painted brown. I was amazed by how many books and magazines and files there were, the dusty, dry smell, the billions and billions of words. I couldn’t remember ever reading a book. I had no idea there were so many.
    What really amazed me, though, was all the people who came in, finding books and leaving, or finding a place to sit at one of the tables and lingering, reading for hours if they wanted. Kids did their homework, people looked things up, or planned trips, notebooks open, stacks of reference books on the tables in front of them.
    And then there were the others.
    At first I only noticed them because they seemed so out of place. Their clothes were ratty, their beards grown in, with dirty, untrimmed hair and skin the color of concrete on a sunny day. They would take a newspaper or magazine and sit at one of the tables, slowly reading their way through from front to back. They couldn’t have missed a single word. Their eyes were haunted.
    It got so I recognized some of them from day to day. They always sat in the same places, and slipped away when they were finished. They never disturbed anyone and no one ever disturbed them. No one even seemed to notice them.
    Just like me.
    One day I was standing beside someone at one of the paperback racks, watching him choose things to read. One of the covers caught my eye. The book was dark red, and seemed familiar somehow. I pulled it from the rack to look at it. The front and back cover both said The Catcher in the Rye in bright yellow letters.
    I held on to the book and wandered back to the chairs