It's the full moon streaming in through the window, I think, that wakes me.
My consciousness unfolds quickly. I open one eye in the still dark of the chilly morning, squinting just enough to see the clock.
But standing between my eye and the clock's face, and distorting its numbers, is a glass of water to assist in swallowing the two little pills waiting for me in the demitasse cup in the lineup.
I down the pills with the entire contents of the glass. Sophia Loren once said, "The secret to my beauty is hydrating. I hydrate immediately every morning with at least two glasses of water, and more throughout the day."
For years, I resisted pills, a natural aversion to medication, until my husband scolded that I was the only person in the world our age that didn't take pills for something. I see clearly now, through the empty glass, that it is 4 a.m., and I pull the blankets over my head for a few more minutes because the bedroom is freezing.
My foot slithers over to the other side of the bed, making first a circle, then a jab. Nobody's there.
He must be up, I think. Sometimes if my husband can't sleep at night, he gets up to read for an hour in the room beyond the kitchen. I pull on socks and a sweater and shuffle out there to make the coffee, noticing in the hall mirror how old and puffy I look — nothing at all like Sophia Loren. But I do feel hydrated.
He's engrossed in his book. I call out "Good morning" when I enter the kitchen and am startled when he screams, throwing his book into the air, followed by an expletive that is not, in turn, "Good Morning!" Surely, isn't mine the most familiar voice in his life, as his is, in mine?
"Sorry," I whisper. "Who did you think it was, if not I?"
I stop to consider sound — particularly of the voices we know. In a world so saturated with noise, perhaps we have become unaccustomed to hearing the sound of a singular voice unless engaged in a conversation. But buried instincts kick in if we concentrate.
I recall, when my kids were little, being in crowded spaces — a park, a playground, or at the beach. One would think the cacophony of dozens (or even hundreds, at the beach) of voices might drown out any chance of recognition. But even in a multitude of little voices all screaming, "Mommy!" I could recognize the voice of my child. Most parents can. Cats do. Birds do. Grandmothers do, on a good day.
My friend told me an amazing story of his uncle's that left me with goose bumps.
A comrade of his was caught and put in a Japanese prison during World War II, incarcerated for more than two years in solitary confinement in a block of cells where he could see no one but his guard. He could hear a fellow prisoner in the cell next to him, though, and when the guard was not present, they began to communicate in soft voices.
As one would imagine, they shared their lifetimes of stories over what must have seemed an eternity of monotony and misery. Their shared whispers surely saved them from madness.
When one of them was moved, he left without ever having seen that friend on the other side of the wall, never knowing if he had been, or would be, released later, or killed. Fifty years passed when unbeknownst to either, the two were at a reunion of veterans, and in a crowded room of loud chatter and reminiscing, one was stunned by a familiar voice behind him.
He turned, recognizing no one. But he grasped the shoulders of a man, by following his voice.
"You were a prisoner? You were in the cell next to me?" An emotional reunion ensued, one during which a lifelong friendship was sealed.
I make the coffee and some toast, water a few plants, listen to the weather report on the radio, rinse off a couple renegade dishes from last night's supper.
When I glance out at the chair where my husband has been reading "The Prague Cemetery" by Umberto Eco, he is gone, the book still open, but face down now, on the footstool.
I tiptoe back to the bedroom, still dark, and see his familiar form under the sheets. In my quietest whisper, I ask, "Are you asleep?"
"Yes."
I move away, understanding from hearing his voice and its familiar nuance, that this "Yes" means, "No, but I'd like to be."
I leave quietly to find my own book.
Susan S. Emerson is a regular Times columnist.
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