The Snore Code

by Jennifer Wortman

My husband’s snores blasted and purred, murmured and buzz-sawed. They consoled and cajoled, questioned and complained. Sometimes they said, “Kick me.” But I just lay there, meditating on the sounds emerging from his snout.

He claimed I snored too. I didn’t believe him—not because I didn’t think I was capable of snoring, but because I couldn’t imagine a time when I was asleep and he was awake. Then again, he went to bed later than I did. After a late night he’d burrow beside me and I’d reach for him like a fallen blanket until we’d drift off. I’ve always had sleep troubles. And other troubles. But his body against me was all joy and comfort, the world our bed, edges fluffed.

Back then, I liked to inhale him. I’d say, “You smell like a baby,” and he’d warmly lecture me on biological imperatives and neurochemistry and how our bodies were programmed to view relationships as baby-making drugs. His scent, he insisted, was an olfactory hallucination: he didn’t smell like babies. Eventually the baby-making drug would wear off and a hell, tedious or vigorous, would emerge. Which was why, after the disastrous demise of his previous relationship, he had sworn off love for good. But he claimed he couldn’t pass me up. He didn’t have words for my smell except that it was intoxicating. 

In time, we made our babies, two girls, and as the years went by, we’d become more attuned to each other—but at the cost of other attunements. Sometimes his snores were the closest we came to sex: the rhythm, the penetration, the stimulation.

My husband had been experiencing discomfort while swallowing. I figured the doctor would recommend a diet change or, at worst, minor surgery. He was healthy; I was the one who got sick a lot, who’d had a headache all day, who’d hardly given his appointment the next day much thought. On that day the doctor found a growth; soon my husband was the one who was perpetually sick.

In the months after he died, my insomnia got worse. His absence in our bed was so palpable I sometimes reached to it for comfort. I staggered through my responsibilities: caring for my nine- and twelve-year-old daughters, my online teaching and freelance editing, the bare minimum errands and household chores. Sleeping pills didn’t do it for me: they had no effect on my sleep but kick-started my depression. And natural supplements worked like a Band-Aid on a gut gash.

One desperate night, I decided to record myself during my stray stretches of sleep. If I could capture my snores, I could play them back and fool my mind into thinking my husband had returned. Perhaps I could buy another hour or two of rest.

Listening to the recording the next morning, I experienced déjà vu. I knew those snores, their jagged rhythms and random volumes, their mix of gruffness and amiability, the anger and relief they repeatedly aroused in me. They were my husband’s.

I needed a reality check. I could have asked my daughters before dropping them at school. But I didn’t want to cause them more pain. Plus, they didn’t have my constant up close experience of his snoring. I knew of only one person who could set me straight.

When my husband was still semilucid but subfunctional, he recruited me to be his amanuensis. That was the word he used: the painkillers released all kinds of rubble from his brain, and the word “amanuensis” rolled forth again and again. He seemed to take joy in its obscure mouthfeel: “Will you consent to being my amanuensis?” Then he’d charge me with some communication from his email account, starting with, “This is Lila, writing for Paul,” and who knew what would come next? It was unusual for my husband to command me in this way, but I embraced that strangeness. Anything to nudge me from our reality. To the ex-girlfriend responsible for his near-spurning of love, he dictated this missive: “I’m dying. I want you to know that although our breakup was your doing, I stopped wanting you long before. I care about you in a generic human way and wish you well. Still, if you see me on the other side, walk the other way. Sincerely, Paul.”

I had never met the ex-girlfriend, but from the stories I heard, I wasn’t a fan. Still, when I imagined her getting this email, I felt for her. My relationships before I met my husband had ended horribly and I’d played my part. So I wrote to my husband’s ex:

I’m writing to tell you that I have cancer and am not long for this world. I remember with fondness the good times between us and forgive your part, and apologize for mine, in the bad. Wishing you and yours all good things. With affection, Paul.

As my husband’s condition worsened, checking his email fell low on my long to-do list; by the time I saw her reply in his inbox, I was too exhausted to open it, and he was too far gone to understand it. 

Now, in the wee hours, I searched her name in his email account, pulled up the months-old email, and read:

I’m sorry to hear this, Paul. Thank you for the note. I wish you well, too.

That was it? How could this woman have been capable of passionate transgressions? What’s more, how could my husband have ever thought he’d loved such a woman? 

I hit Reply.

Greetings, I wrote, then deleted. In hopes of securing her compliance, I decided to mimic her reserve. This is Paul’s wife, Lila. He died in February. Please review the attached recording and tell me what you hear. 

Not long after, she answered. My condolences, Lila. I hear snoring.

Whose? I wrote back.

That’s an odd question. I don’t know. 

I wanted to rage at her. But I didn’t reply. I received no more messages from her. 

For the next few nights, I played the recording on a loop. The snores helped me sleep and disrupted my sleep and helped and disrupted my sleep again. I wasn’t any better rested, but I felt different, and that was worth something. Some part of me dreaded the sameness more than anything. It was an adolescent impulse, the same impulse that, in the calm of our second decade together, sometimes led me to pick ridiculous fights with my husband.

 Perhaps that same adolescent impulse explained why, a week after I’d contacted her about the snores, I tried my husband’s ex again. 

Could you please review the recording again and confirm that you don’t recognize the snores? I wrote.

Why? she wrote back.

I resented the question. I was the grieving widow; couldn’t she have the decency just to answer?

I think the snores on the recording might be Paul’s, I wrote. You’re the only other person who slept beside him for years. There’s no one else I can ask.

I have reviewed the recording and I can’t say whose snores those are, she wrote back.

Remember, I wrote, when you cheated on Paul your whole last year of college and broke up with him on his birthday? Remember when he emailed you that he was dying and all you could say was “I’m sorry to hear that”? Remember when I told you Paul died and all you could say was “My condolences”?

She didn’t reply. 

It was a lonely time. Before, the freedom my job gave me to work from home, and the solitude from my daughters being in school, had thrilled me; now those very things made me feel lost in space. I even missed my girls’ fighting. 

There were two men I sometimes slept with and it almost felt like actually sleeping: the surrender, the mindlessness, the fog upon reentry. “What are you thinking about?” one of them, a divorce lawyer, would constantly ask. I kept my thoughts to myself; any offer of the intimacy he craved would heighten his resentment for craving it. Or maybe that was me. The other man, my neighbor, never asked what I was thinking and I liked it that way. Except sometimes his eyes asked me, or his hands, or his cheek against my neck, and I could have told him a thought or two, but I didn’t want to make him sad and I didn’t want to lie.

A thought I’d been holding on to: Might my husband consider my current trysts cheating? If something of him endured, would he hate me the way he’d hated his ex? Of course not, I told myself. Then I’d tell myself, Of course you’d think that. Then I’d tell myself, Only assholes say, “Of course.”

One night, after my insomnia shoved me from bed again, I opened my laptop and wrote to my husband’s ex:

I apologize for my previous email. I am lonely and sad and angry and desperate. I miss Paul very much.

Instantly, she replied:

I understand.

It was 3 a.m. in Colorado and she was on the West Coast, so 2 a.m. there. Perhaps she was more like me than I thought.

Trouble sleeping? I wrote.

Always.

Me too. 

Maybe, after everything, this woman would become my friend. There would be inside jokes, drunken confessions, conflicts flared and resolved, the stuff of a heartwarming B-grade indie movie.

I studied the ex’s thumbnail photo. She was a flamboyantly plain woman: no makeup, stringy hair, ruddy skin, a satisfied smile. 

I waited. She didn’t write back. I retreated to my bedroom, hit Play on my phone. The snores brushed against me, like bristles, like fur.

Days passed. The bad sleep continued. I almost nodded off in the car. I poured juice into my girls’ cereal. I called one of my online students “Carol” though her name was “Sue” and there was not, nor had there ever been, a “Carol” in the class. I fell asleep, after sex, in my neighbor’s bed, something I’d promised myself I’d never do. One especially miserable, mishap-filled day, I found the ex’s email, and I wrote her again:

Could you give the recording another listen?

Yes, she responded. A little later, she wrote, The snores perhaps sound like Paul’s.

I’d thought I wanted her to keep telling me the snores were just snores, to be the voice of reason that coaxed my brain into shape. But the thrill her words sent through me said otherwise.

Another message from her arrived: I’ve been thinking of him.

What have you been thinking?

How much I loved him.

How dare she imply this was her loss too. Now it was my turn not to write back. 

I returned to bed and played the recorded snores on blast. They hurled against my eardrums. What if they were sending messages, a nasal Morse code of sorts? The idea kept me wide-eyed.

I tried to transcribe the snores with symbols representing duration, timbre, pitch. It was hard work. I was not the kind of person who could crack a cipher. If I had the intelligence, I’d never know, because I lacked the patience. My husband had been the kind of person who could crack a code, and maybe his ex was too. I’d learned from Googling her that she was a biology professor. She knew things I didn’t.

The next night I sat at my computer, contemplating contacting her again. Just as I opened my email, a new message from her appeared. I shoved aside the notion that we had a cosmic connection, but the possibility sidled back up.

Tell me more about the recording, she wrote. 

I explained about my insomnia, my newfound relationship with my husband’s snores, my desperate attempts to get more sleep by recording my own. 

But those couldn’t be my snores, I wrote. I’m a small woman. They’re too loud.

She responded a few minutes later: Snoring volume has to do with the narrowness of the throat airway. The more relaxed the throat tissue, the narrower the airway, which causes stronger vibrations and louder snores. A person’s size isn’t the major factor.

This was the most she’d written to me in one shot. I wanted to encourage her to say more. But I also wanted to convince her I was right. 

Paul was way more relaxed than I am, so I’m sure he was louder. Plus, on camping trips when we shared a tent, the girls never complained about my snores, just his.

A pause. I thought he didn’t want kids. 

He didn’t, I wrote. Until he met me. 

Another pause from her. Maybe I’d gone too far.

Thank you, she finally wrote. For telling me that. I never wanted kids. I always wondered if I did the right thing, leaving him. Now I know I did.

After that, we wrote back and forth every night. There was an unspoken sense, I think, that what we were doing must take place under the cover of dark. Instead of switching to direct messages or texts, we continued to use email. We’d harnessed the tools of the old to mimic the new. That was the spirit we needed to channel: the hopefulness without the insecurity.

I found out the ex was going through a divorce. Her husband had cheated on her. Karma, she called it. It seemed her hard exterior included a crystal or two, which is to say she sometimes entertained mystical ideas. She spoke of her spirituality like a scientist, called it a “symptom of her desperation.” I confessed my theory that my husband was communicating with me by injecting his snores through my body.

Do you think my theory’s just a symptom of my desperation? I asked.

 Obviously, she replied.

Can you prove it? 

In the airtight, scientific sense, probably not. But it doesn’t matter. The origins of your belief are distinct from the substance of the belief. The fact that your belief is or isn’t borne of desperation doesn’t necessarily mean your belief isn’t true. 

You think it’s true?

No. But that’s not the same as proving it false. Still, not being able to prove falsehood isn’t evidence of truth. 

I understood, now, what had brought her and my husband together. He loved sorting through the fine points of logic. I imagined the two of them, head to head, identifying straw men and red herrings. The vision, surprisingly, didn’t bother me. 

But what if Paul is communicating something through me? What if there’s a message in there for you? Wouldn’t you want to hear it?

Yes, she finally wrote.

Are you good at cracking codes?

Very. 

So why not try? What have you got to lose?

I would say my dignity and self-respect, but my estranged husband already took that. So nothing, I suppose. I’ve got nothing to lose.

I know it feels bad to admit that, I wrote. But also good. It’s freeing. Like in that Janis Joplin song.

Kris Kristofferson, she replied. But yes.

I decided she was my best friend. Whereas in the depths of my despair, I had once taken a perverse pleasure in announcing, upon inquiries about my well-being, “My husband is dead!” I now took the opportunity to update people about my relationship with the ex. “I made a new friend. And you won’t believe who it is!”

I told them we were both insomniacs. I reported her preternatural ability to send me emails right when I sat down to write one to her. I described her seeming reserve and underlying warmth, her fetching mix of fine-tuned reason and foxhole spirituality, her marathon running and furtive smoking. I bragged that she was the only woman in her university department, that she did home repairs off YouTube videos and then instructed me from memory, that she listened to music only from the radio because she felt we had too much control over what we consumed; she found value, she said, in having songs forced on her. I loved her surprising way of “thinking outside the box,” a phrase I used to hate but no longer did. Together, we occupied the perimeter of many boxes: the box of female romantic rivalry, the box of scientific materialism, the box of physical distance, the box of healthy sleep routines. When she ran into her ex snuggling up with his new woman in a restaurant, she emailed me: 

I didn’t know whether to stay or go. I didn’t want to let them chase me out but I also didn’t want to be in there. So I froze like an idiot.

They’re the idiots! I replied.

That doesn’t make sense, she wrote, but thank you. That helps.

When, during a bad fight, my oldest daughter yelled that she wished I’d died instead of her dad, the ex gave me solace:

 Don’t take it personally. Her prefrontal cortex is still developing, so her amygdala is dominating her decision-making.

I don’t know what that means, I said, but thanks. That helps.

We would joke about how the snore code, once we cracked it, would provide answers to all that ailed us. Perhaps, we proffered, it would heal the world.

As the weeks passed, I stopped needing the snore recording. I slept for longer stretches, eventually falling into a slumber so deep I’d awaken with a start, feeling I’d missed something important. I’d run to the computer to check for an email from the ex, worried she’d think I’d spurned her. I’d write an apology and within minutes, she’d write back. I was sort of happy, as happy as I could be. Both the divorce lawyer and the neighbor noticed my improved cheer; I let them think what they wanted about it. They were the only two people with whom I didn’t discuss the ex. Even my girls, sensing a rare spark from me, had come to rely on my chatter about her, whom I’d referred to as “an old classmate of Dad’s.”

Sometimes I imagined the ex whisking through our living room to answer the door when I couldn’t. Or talking my oldest down from an emotional ledge. Or stirring up a healthy soup. 

I was thinking, I wrote her one night, that you could visit. I hit send before I could second-guess myself. A part of me knew I’d regret it, that my invite might knock the pleasant equilibrium we’d reached off track. But my husband had been my closest friend. If she couldn’t take his place, at least I could draw her near.

She didn’t answer that night. I wondered whether she was sleeping well again. 

Another night of silence went by. My newly acquired stretches of sleep cracked to bits. I wanted to play the snore recordings again, but I refrained. If the ex was going to deprive me of the comfort of her words, I reasoned, then I too would deprive myself of comforts, an act of solidarity that would somehow reignite our friendship. I opened my email, stared at my invitation, willing her to reply with a big bold yes. Then I did it again, and again, into my waking hours, though we rarely communicated by day. Perhaps, I reasoned, only her schedule, and not her feelings, had changed. 

 After seventy-two long hours had passed, I tried again. 

Hope you’re well, I wrote. Have you given any thought to visiting? We could go to the mountains with the girls for a couple days. Pitch some tents. You could hear the snores live, gather more intel, I half-joked. 

Still, nothing.

I wondered if she was sick. Or dead.

I spent a lot of time probing our emails for answers.

“What are you doing?” my youngest asked in a concerned voice she’d taken to using with me, and I’d taken to letting her. 

“I’m trying to read between the lines.”

She leaned over my shoulder. “You invited her here?”

“Yeah. Should I not have?”

She shrugged. “I thought you don’t like visitors.”

“This is different.”

“We’ll go to the mountains with you,” she said. “Without her. If you want.”

I thought of getting them to the mountains: the solo planning and packing, the winding drive rimmed with death. The nights extra dark, each noise extra loud. The tent, extra empty. 

“Do you want to go to the mountains?” I asked.

“If you want to.” 

“I’m asking what you want,” I said in my nicest mom voice. 

Her big eyes froze open, her lips pressing together like they did when she got caught in a fib. “It’s okay,” I said. “You can tell me.”

“I want to go to the mountains with you and Dad,” she rasped.

I started playing the snore recording again as I went to bed and when I woke up during the night. I carried on whole conversations with the snores, made them tell me what I wanted to hear, all contradictions: You’re not crazy; I’m speaking through you. You’re crazy with grief and why wouldn’t you be? Our girls are fine. Our girls need you. My ex is trash, just like I told you. She’s just going through a hard time and she’ll come around. Whatever happens with her, I’m right here with you. Whatever happens with her, it’s okay to move on.

The more I conversed with the snores, the less I believed what they had to say. Even if they belonged to my husband, so what? I could not hug or fuck the snores. The snores could not pitch a tent or drive the kids to school or knead the knots in my back when I told them about my day. They were just a wisp of corporeality, another faceless exchange. 

After a week of the ex’s silence, I decided to email her again. To tell her how much she was hurting me. But when I opened my computer, I found an email from her, newly arrived.

 I apologize for not writing sooner. I appreciate your invitation to visit but I must decline.

Such coldness. But that was part of why I liked her. 

Why?

Her reply came instantly: My husband has come back. We’re trying to work things out. 

I didn’t understand. What did her husband’s return have to do with us? But, then, maybe I did understand. It had never occurred to me she’d reunite with her husband, perhaps because I’d never reunite with mine. When my husband was dying, his body a sheaf of sticks wrapped in nerves, laying my hands on him scared me. My first thought, after he expelled his last breath: I could finally touch him without hurting him.

But we can still write, right?

I think it would be best if we stopped.

I took this in. She was treating me like a paramour. I might as well have been for the sorrow I felt. Then I felt a stab of joy.

Are you expecting a happy ending from this? I dashed off. Won’t happen. It was my resentment talking, but my resentment was right. If the love didn’t die, the beloved would.

I’m not concerned with endings, she said. 

Congratulations, I wrote. Then: I owe you an apology. My first email to you, on Paul’s behalf, was a lie. Paul forgave you nothing. In fact, he wanted me to tell you that he’d stopped loving you long before you broke up with him. He also said that if you see him in the afterlife, to walk the other way.

If he was still so angry, the ex wrote, he must have really loved me.

Published August 22nd, 2021