My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Things change for the narrator in November. Before, she’d been able to sleep without interruption. But now, she starts to do things in her sleep, like rearrange her furniture. She also apparently makes trips to the bodega, which she remembers only when she wakes up and finds a bag of chips beside her, or empty cartons of chocolate milk on the table.

The narrator’s new inability to “trust her[self]” stresses her out to the point that she considers installing video cameras to record herself. But seeing footage of her unconscious actions “would only prove to be a document of [her] resistance,” she knows, and so she doesn’t go through with this plan. Instead, she ups her dosage of Xanax. This causes her to lose track of days, and she ends up missing her scheduled appointment with Dr. Tuttle. Dr. Tuttle leaves her an angry voicemail, but she seems back to normal when the narrator calls back to apologize and reschedule.

The narrator also starts to chat with strangers on AOL that month, usually blacking out and sending them sexual messages and nude photos. She takes to turning off her phone, sealing it Tupperware, and hiding it in the back of a high-up kitchen cabinet, but she always finds the powered-on phone beside her upon waking. When the narrator tells Reva what she’s been up to, Reva changes the narrator’s AOL password. This stalls things for a while, but in the meantime, the narrator takes to writing humiliating letters to Trevor in her unconscious state.

Reva starts visiting less and less. Now, instead of acting dramatic and concerned, she simply gives the narrator a summary of what she did that week and an overview of current events. The narrator tells Reva she appreciates Reva’s efforts “to be more sensitive to [her] needs.” The narrator, meanwhile, doesn’t tell Dr. Tuttle about her blackouts, fearing Dr. Tuttle would stop prescribing her medications if she knew. Instead, she tells Dr. Tuttle that she’s having more trouble sleeping. Dr. Tuttle takes this to mean the narrator has built up a tolerance to the drugs, and she ups the narrator’s dosage in response. She also gives her a sample bottle of a new drug, Infermiterol.

At the Rite Aid, while waiting for the pharmacist to fill her prescription, the narrator browses the shelf of used DVDS for sale and spots 9 1/2 Weeks, which is one of Trevor’s favorite movies. He claimed it made him want to experiment sexually. She recalls a humiliating experience in which he inserted an unpeeled banana in her mouth and forced her to stay there, with her eyes shut, or else “he’d punish [her] emotionally,” in the narrator’s words. He came back a while later and removed the banana from her mouth and replaced it with his flaccid penis. In retrospect, the narrator realizes she’d misunderstood “Trevor’s sadism as a satire of actual sadism.” Another day, after a subsequent humiliating sexual experience, Trevor left the narrator for (in his words) someone who wouldn’t “pull pranks for attention.”

Back in the present, the narrator returns to her apartment with her newly filled medication prescriptions. She thinks about Trevor incessantly for the next few days and uses all the self-control she has to avoid calling him. She thinks she might feel better if he were dead, since alive, she still entertains the dim hope of reconciliation. Sleep, she realizes in these moments, has not made her less nervous or anxious—underneath it all, everything comes back to “getting back what [she’d] lost.”

The narrator recalls her last interaction with Trevor, which happened on New Year’s Eve, 2000. She’d invited him to a party. He reluctantly agreed to attend but assured her that he had other plans and would only stay an hour. They meet at his Tribeca apartment and then head to the party, hosted by a video artist Ducat was representing at the time. The artist projected live births taking place in a Bolivian hospital. Trevor dislikes the exhibit, though not because he finds it “exploitative.” In a cab afterward, the narrator asks Trevor if he even likes her. Out of anger, she says, “I love you.” He exits the cab, hardly acknowledging what she said.

Back in the present, Christmas Day arrives. Reva leaves the narrator a voicemail wishing her a Merry Christmas. The narrator stumbles downstairs in her slippers to pick up some coffee at the bodega. She picks out a Klondike bar and M&M’s and promises to pay the Egyptian man back. He reminds her she still owes him from last week but lets her take the items. Upon returning to her apartment, she wonders whether she wishes she could open the door and walk into a new apartment—into a new, bright life. But she can’t imagine what that life would look like. 

Back at her apartment, the narrator turns on a movie. Reva drops by midway through to find the narrator on the floor. She helps her up, and the narrator notes that Reva’s face is swollen and caked with makeup. During a commercial break, she announces that her mother died. “Shit,” is all the narrator can say in response. Reva thanks her and cries to herself. The narrator pops one Infermiterol to tune out Reva’s sadness.

The narrator awakens later to find Reva gone and her coffee table covered with unopened boxes of Chinese takeout. To her surprise, Dr. Tuttle is calling her—apparently to return a call the narrator has no recollection of making. During that call, the narrator apparently had been “questioning [her] own existence,” which concerns Dr. Tuttle. The narrator insists she was just “philosophizing.” She claims she just hasn’t been sleeping enough. Dr. Tuttle accepts this explanation and suggests the narrator continue to take the Infermiterol. 

After hanging up with Dr. Tuttle, the narrator listens to a voicemail Reva left her in which she gave her details about plans for her mother’s funeral. It will be held on New Year’s Eve. Reva gives the narrator directions for how to get there. The narrator ignores the voicemail and heads to the bodega, where one of the Egyptian workers explains that she owes him money for the seven pints of ice cream she bought last night. The narrator has no memory of making this purchase.

The narrator returns to her apartment, pops another Infermiterol, and takes inventory. She sees the uneaten pints of ice cream and observes that her bedroom furniture has been rearranged. She realizes she has done a lot of “sleepshopping” and “sleepsmok[ing],” too. She draws a bath but doesn’t remember getting into it. Later, she wakes up on the LIRR (a train that runs from Manhattan to Long Island) wearing jeans, old running shoes, and a white fur coat she doesn’t recognize.