My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Though she first obtained her many prescriptions in the winter, it was not until summer that the narrator dove headlong into her project. Now in mid-June and having recently obtained more heavy-duty sedatives, she spends the first week of her hibernation in a blissful haze, not even leaving the apartment for her usual bodega coffee. One day, Reva stops by and expresses concern for the narrator, believing it’s unhealthy to sleep so much. The narrator dismisses her. Reva says the narrator is using sleep to avoid her problems. The narrator says she has no problems.

In the beginning of the project, the narrator has a lot of strange dreams, many of them about her dead parents, to whom she was never close. These disturbing dreams usually involve some painful relational element and old, unwelcome emotions. The narrator’s father is always sick when he appears in a dream—and those dreams are the worst. When such nightmares wake her, she promptly downs whatever pill is available and falls back asleep, unwilling to sit with the acute unease. In her waking hours, she often thinks of her parents’ house in Poughkeepsie, which she has not visited since they died.