Chapter 11.
Breathing Room.
Carol.
Carol had nothing but nightmares.
She stirred an hour or so before midnight, squeezing out of a tiny hole in their tent and standing as still as she could in the clearing. Sometimes she would go out in the yard back home and stare at the sky. She was never sure what she was looking for, only that she had never found it.
It was cooler out, but the ground was still hot on her feet. A cold wind was blowing through camp, bringing in a storm.
She meandered through the darkness, using the meager light of the moon and the smoldering remains of their campfires to guide her. She went toward the cliff first, but it was too dark to see the lake below. And the woods were inky black. Carol could not make out anything beyond the first line of trees. Crickets chirped and frogs gulped, but nothing large stirred.
Carol ended up at the RV, her hand on the ladder. Andrea and Amy would be sleeping inside, so she tried to be quiet on the way up.
She peeked over the top, and Dale looked over, frowning, "Is it midnight already?" It was dark enough to obscure his expression, but not the snowy glint of his beard.
"Not yet, sorry," Carol answered in a whisper, going to sit beside his lawn chair. She stretched her legs out, glad the metal was still somewhat warm. "I was just taking a walk."
He smiled. He was a kind man. "Well, I guess that's allowed. Got a lot on your mind?"
Carol shrugged. She did, but none of it was up for discussion. Her problems were private, between her and her family. "How do you keep watch in the dark?"
"I mostly just listen at night," Dale admitted. "I like this shift because you get to watch the moon ascend, but tonight the damn thing is behind the clouds. You know, I had a telescope when I was a kid, and I could spend hours just staring into it."
She followed his eyes up to the sky, where dark clouds were rolling over the moon, periodically hiding it from view.
Dale spoke, his tone reverent, "The true joy of the moonlit night is something we no longer understand. Only the men of old, when there were no lights, could understand the true joy of a moonlit night." He smiled at Carol, "Yasunari Kawabata. He was a Japanese novelist. His writing was lyrical – kind of fitting, don't you think?"
"It is."
He sunk into a thoughtful silence, gazing upward for a while.
"What did you do, before this?" Carol asked. She hated the silence.
He smiled – a smile like he knew that she was looking for a distraction. "I did a lot of fishing, some bits and pieces everywhere, really. But when I was a young man, I was in the army. I was a pilot." He gestured upward, "I mostly flew at night, when all you could see were dots on a radar. Once you get over the fear of crashing into some invisible mountain, you get addicted to the freedom. It feels like that, like falling."
Carol said, "My father was in the Navy."
He allowed another thoughtful silence, and then said, "You know this RV is sort of new to me. I bought it two years ago, on a whim, and then I made all these plans – without consulting my wife, always a wise move." He smiled and cleared his throat. "We were going to travel around the country together, you know? Sleep where the gas runs out. But she died before we could go anywhere. I was heading off on my own when this all happened, and now the RV is sort of a centerpiece for our camp. It's weird, how things end up."
Carol was surprised he was so open with her, but the silence of the night seemed a warm companion for conversation. She almost felt safe enough to voice her own thoughts. "When I thought Ed was gone I… I had never thought about what my life would be without him. We married young. I was seventeen."
Dale nodded thoughtfully. "What about you? What did you do before all this?"
"I was at home with Sophia for a while." Carol realized suddenly that she had not done much, aside from raising her daughter. Her life could be summed up in just one sentence – she was a mother. She was satisfied with that. She also realized she had not had many friends since she got married, and the only people she had been able to talk to through the long years were her husband and her daughter.
It was thrilling, to think of the conversations she could have.
Dale took on a wistful tone, "We wanted kids, my wife and I, but it just wasn't meant to be, I guess." He looked over, smiling so the whites of his teeth showed in the night, "You know, the world is changing. If you ever wanted to remake yourself, be someone else, now would be the time."
Carol was curious, but she kept her thoughts to herself.
"I should get back to Sophia."
"Right. Of course." Dale saluted her, "I'm up here most nights, if you ever want to talk."
Carol left the RV reluctantly, taking her time navigating through camp. She laid down beside Ed on their double cot and stared at the ceiling, drawing patterns with her imagination.
He was scowling in his sleep.
She tried to believe what Dale had said, but the more she thought about it, the scarier it was. Her life was never going to change because of its fundamental truth – she was a mother. She had to look after her daughter, and there was no way she could do that alone, especially now that the world was changing. He could change his life all he wanted because he was alone.
Carol felt guilty it had even crossed her mind.