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11:37 PM was awfully bright, Norman thought. The moon was hidden behind thick May clouds, so the beams it cast couldn’t have been clear, but all the same, the curtains of the Chambers home glowed a dull blue. Norman was curled up on the couch with a pillow pressed to his chest and the radio on in hopes of drowning out his racing heart. He knew shouldn’t have been up so late, not with how frayed his nerves were, but it was for precisely that reason that he couldn’t sleep.
He hadn’t slept in a long time.
Norman?
Sometimes he tried to shut his stinging eyes, but the paranoia was too strong to sleep. If he could turn the station past a whisper without disturbing anyone, he’d be pacing the length of the living room to get the electricity out of him, but instead he had to make do with the sudden, painful twitches sparking from his spine. His stomach ached with hunger, but the very idea of eating something made him nauseous, even before the added worry about leaving his back exposed.
The station was set to classical— it was one of few still online in the dead of night, and he had foolishly hoped the instruments would let him fall asleep. Obviously that wasn’t happening, though. Still, it was nice to have the sound.
Norman put a finger on the dial and rolled it until a voice came into focus. Two voices, in fact, then three. He crossed his arms again and settled back, clinging to the thin warmth of his borrowed blanket and pillow.
He couldn’t quite make out the words. No, that wasn’t right, he could, but they felt… disconnected, as if only stray syllables were getting through, unable to arrange themselves into a larger, more meaningful whole. But the voices were soft, slow, soothing, not scraping against the static in his head but rolling over it like ocean waves in easy repetition, like his Mother’s voice when she read him a bedtime story.
It had been a long time since he’d gotten one, but even then, they’d had their nightly ritual. She would tuck him in, kiss him on the cheek, ruffle his hair, and said she loved him very much. I love you too, he echoed. Sometimes, when he was very young, he’d ask her to stay, and they would lay there in his small bed, curled up tight with each other, breath and pulses synced, as if they were one person.
He held the pillow tighter and tried to ignore himself.
The people on the radio seemed to speak with such ease, and Norman wondered if they had rehearsed their conversation, including the odd tangents they trailed down before dragging themselves back on track. Though his thoughts slipped from him like water, he could repeatedly piece together what they were talking about. Loss. An odd topic for the midnight news, odd enough that he briefly considered that the radio was reading his mind. He brushed the fantasy aside, or at least tried to, reasoning it would always be relevant over this decade. If not from bullets abroad, then open scars back home.
But she didn’t go out the same way. Norman wasn’t exactly sure how she had, though. Sheriff Chambers assured him it was suicide, given the note in her handwriting, and true, Norman had never seen it before, but still, but still he had thought— he thought he had planned— his stomach twisted in guilt— and she said so, you naughty boy, what have you done? But no, no, she couldn’t, she was dead. She was dead.
I miss her a lot, one of them was saying. Norman hadn’t caught who he was referring to, but any further context was absent. Mother, wife, sister, he wondered as the man went on speaking. But I’m glad, because that sadness is a kind of joy. When you miss someone, it’s because you loved them, because they were a joy upon this world.
And then the music came through, a jaunty series of notes that sounded incomprehensible in sequence, as if played backwards or underwater. Over top, a woman’s voice read out a number, and while it took a moment for Norman to recognize its shape past pattern, he hesitantly scribbled it down on his forearm in fingernail. A prayer line, she said. Ah, that explained things.
His legs had gone stiff from lying curled up for so long, such that when he went to stand, his knees ached with every subtle movement, and he had to lift his legs by hand until they’d loosened up enough to let him travel to the telephone. He followed the furniture and walls, where the floor had sunken in and wasn’t going to crack. The routine was familiar, being the same he followed at home when he went to get a glass of milk from the kitchen.
The handle rattled against the base when he picked up the phone, and for a moment he froze, suddenly concerned that someone would be coming down the stairs to snap at him.
No one did.
Still, he winced at every click and whir the dial made as he inputted the numbers, and when a voice picked up on the other end, he kept his own low.
Praise the lord, this is Ruby.
Praise the lord.
For a moment, there was silence, then she asked, What can I help you with?
Norman, he added hastily.
What can I help you with, Norman?
To tell the truth, he wasn’t sure, only that there was a conversation meant for him, and they put on a number, so he had to call it, but what obligation the Lord had for him was only cotton in his head, not any true direction.
My mother, he started, then hesitated, and began again, A b-broadcast earlier, I wanted to know…
How could he even begin to explain? He didn’t know what he’d done, and he could hardly tell a stranger. Even less so over the phone, wire-tapped, they’re watching you, waiting for a confession.
I miss her a lot.
She must have meant a lot to you.
Mm-hm. She was good. She was good.
Then she will always be with you. The Lord ensures it, and He will guide you on your path.
I… I don’t think…
Norman?
I’ve done something terrible.
The Lord is always willing to forgive.
The phrase was familiar; it caught in the back of his head like a fishhook, making something in his mind go numb and limp, a memory dragged from the ocean. It wasn’t fact or narrative, but somatic, a faint feeling of his elbows propped up on the thin mattress, his fingers twined too tight, his nails digging into the webbing of his hands as he stuttered, stumbled, mumbled through a plea only he could hear.
He couldn’t call on the words now. It had been a long time.
Pray for me? he asked.
Of course.
And she recited something, not to him, but that he could hear, and though he couldn’t make the fine meaning out through the archaicisms, the rhythm eased him in the way the words rang and repeated, running over each other like a river’s steady lullaby.
His head was fuzzy when she finished, but when she prompted him the second time, he mumbled an amen. The handset fell into the switch too loudly.
Norman?
He snapped his head up at the word, then replaced the phone with more finesse. It wasn’t where the sound came from, and the voices didn’t match, but he told himself he just hadn’t hung up.
He dropped himself back on the couch, shifting into the cushions as someone pulled the blankets over him.
Norman, the silence called again. Now he was certain. It wasn’t quite sound, and even less thought, instead something in-between and outside. A verbal tinnitus, maybe. His head did hurt, after all, but he wasn’t sure if it was the regular chronic aches or the insomnia. Probably both.
A hand brushed through his hair, and the dust of confusion settled. He did not open his eyes, but even then, he could trace her shape in the darkness, a deeper shade of colorless blue under his eyelids.
She was watching over him.
Always.