Sleepwalking in Daylight

  I jump at the sound of a knock at the front door. Thank God they’re here. They’ll fix the cable box upstairs and I can get going.

  I open the door and instead find two serious-looking teenagers in matching white shirts, thin black ties, neat backpacks, holding bibles. They’re probably Cammy’s age. Normally I would have politely said it’s not a good time or I’m on the phone could you come back, knowing I’d screen door knocks the rest of the day. I’ve signed a petition now and then but generally I close the door pretty quickly. Today I find myself inviting them inside. They look neither surprised nor pleased to have a shot at saving me. They look like this is exactly what would happen at this house in this nice neighborhood with its nice yards and nice families.

  “We’d like to talk to you about our savior Jesus Christ,” the thinner of the two says. They take their backpacks off at the same time. They are standing at attention in our small front hall. I hold my arm out for their jackets and drape them on the coatrack. It’s hard to keep them up for all the fleeces and raincoats. I remind myself to sift through our coats later to free up some hooks.

  “Come on in. Have a seat. Would you guys like something to drink? I’ve got Coke. And juice,” I say.

  I want them to stay. I don’t know why but I want to talk to them. Maybe this will lead me to some awakening. Maybe this will be the change I’ve been waiting for.

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” the other one says. He is hefty. He wears Buddy Holly glasses. He has terrible acne, the kind he’ll need sandblasted off later. “Can I ask you about your spirituality?”

  I sit across from them on the chair by the fireplace.

  “Make yourselves comfortable.” I say this because they’re perched on the edge of the couch. Like they’re prepared to be shown out within minutes. I wonder why, then, they didn’t look pleased to have made it into this living room. “Are you hungry?”

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” the thin one says. He has a buzz cut and between the two of them I feel like I’ve been transported into the fifties. Which is about right. A bored housewife waiting for a visitor. Happy and eager to entertain whoever happens to stop by.

  “Are you on a pilgrimage?” I ask them. I don’t know why but I find myself interested in why they’re here. “Did your parents travel with you? I don’t really know how it works. Like is it Buddhist monks spending a year traveling without worldly goods?”

  I’m aware I seem silly. Part of me wishes Cammy were here. The old Cammy. I could make her sit down with us in the living room. She could learn something. See the bigger picture. I wouldn’t feel so alone.

  “It’s not exactly like that, ma’am,” the thin one again. They speak robotically. Like they’ve memorized a script.

  “Do you get scared going door to door like this, without any family with you?”

  “We’re each other’s family, ma’am. That’s kind of the point,” the pimply one says. “The Church of Latter-day Saints is one big family. We support each other spiritually and emotionally. And, if need be, financially.”

  “Mostly we stand shoulder to shoulder looking up to our savior Jesus Christ,” the thin one says. I see him looking at the palm of his hand and I realize not only is he nervous but he’s cribbed notes there.

  “Is this a mission then?” I ask them.

  “It’s a calling,” Hefty says. “To share knowledge we’ve received by revelation from the Holy Ghost regarding eternal gospel truths.”

  “It’s an opportunity to serve,” Skinny says.

  I don’t find their memorized speech creepy, like I might have on another not-so-lonely day. It’s comforting. These two boys comfort me. They fill the silence.

  The doorbell rings and I jump. They blink at me with their innocent eyes. Sheltered boys who have enough courage to go into strangers’ houses. They’ve seen nothing of the world and here they are in Chicago going door to door. I’m assuming they’re from Salt Lake City but maybe they live nearby, come to think of it.

  “Just a sec,” I say. “It’s the cable guy. I’ll be right back.”

  What the hell am I doing? These could be robbers casing the joint. Dressed like Mormons. Genius when you think about it. I walk to the door and think fine. Let them take whatever they want. I don’t care about any of this shit. They can have whatever they want.

  The cable guy has a huge key chain clipped to his wide belt. I wonder what a cable guy needs with all those keys.

  “Hi. It’s the box upstairs. In the bedroom,” I say. “It just stopped working all of a sudden.” I hurry him upstairs so I can get back to the Mormons.

  “Sorry about that,” I say. “What were you saying?”

  “Can we ask you about your spirituality? Do you believe Jesus Christ is our savior?”

  It’s not that easy, I think. You don’t know it yet, I want to say to them. Life hasn’t broken your spirit yet. A savior? Please.

  “I guess I do, yes.” I don’t know why I say this. My parents were lapsed Jews. Jesus Christ doesn’t exist for Jews. But if I tell them this they’ll leave and I’m desperate for them to stay. Why, I have no idea.

  “Ma’am?” the cable guy calls from the top of the stairs. “Yeah, I found your problem.”

  “Just a second.” I hold up a finger to the boys.

  The cable guy starts talking while I’m hurrying up the stairs. “See, you got yer box and yer switch and you got yer restart and there’s a difference no one seems to notice. And here’s yer situation, someone turned the box off. Maybe they thought they were powering the TV set off, maybe not. Who’s to know. Anyway, lemme show you how to boot it back up in case for next time.”

  He shows me the tiny restart switch. I sign his papers and he jingles his way out of the house leaving dirty footprints on the cream-carpet mistake in the upstairs hallway.

  “Okay.” I plop back into the living-room chair. “Sorry about that.”

  It appears they’ve been reading their bibles.

  “Have you received the sacrament? The blood and body of Christ our Lord?” Skinny asks.

  I don’t care about the sacrament or any of that shit.

  “Let me ask you something,” I say. “What does your religion say about family?”

  “Family?” Hefty looks defensive, as if I’m bringing up the whole polygamy thing. Or maybe he’s skeptical. Like I might be a lost cause and maybe they should leave and try the next house over. I want to tell him they’re all lost causes. Everyone on this block. I can’t think of one person who’d invite them in like I have.

  “Yeah, family. Busy families who don’t have time for anything anymore. Or, um, families that aren’t close. You know. Fighting. That sort of thing.”

  The skinny one elbows the other one and quickly leafs through his book. He’s thought of the answer.

  “We believe in,” he says, still flipping for the right page, “ah, we believe in—here it is!”

  “Oh, yeah,” Hefty mumbles. He looks disappointed he wasn’t the one to think of it first. “Family Home Evening.”

  “Here we go,” Skinny looks up to make sure I’m listening. He starts reading aloud. “‘Family Home Evening is an evening set aside for family activities, discussions and instruction. Church leaders do not schedule meetings or activities on Monday nights so that families can be free together.’”

  He’s proud he’s answered my question.

  “Monday nights,” I say. “Huh.”

  I cannot imagine us doing this. I try to picture us gathered around a Scrabble board fingering the wooden squares. Rearranging them on our stands. I’d spell out N-O-T-H-I-N-G. I wonder how many points I’d get for that one.

  “Do you guys do that with your families? I mean, do you actually practice that?”

  They both shift in their seats. Hefty says, “Well, we try to. Yeah. I mean, yes. We do have family nights.”

  “What’s your position on piercings?” I ask. This comes out of nowhere. I hadn’t expected to ask it. Now that I have, though, I’m curious.
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  “Piercings?” They look at each other. I think they’re glad to be tested like this. They’re used to being quizzed. Looking to their book is familiar. They’re in school still. This is not so different from that. This is their community-service project I bet. They can report back that they enlightened a heathen.

  Hefty is the one to look it up. He wants to read aloud this time.

  “‘Church members are encouraged not to disfigure their bodies with tattoos or piercings.’” He looks up at me, making sure this is what I was asking about then he continues. “‘If girls or women desire to have their ears pierced, they’re encouraged to wear only one pair of modest earrings.’”

  He closes the book. They look at me expectantly. Like they’re at a batting cage, waiting for the next ball to shoot out of the machine.

  The phone rings.

  “Maybe we should come back?” Skinny says.

  “One sec. Just one second. Let me see who it is, in case it’s one of the kids.”

  It’s Cammy’s school.

  “Hello?” I’m watching the Mormons whisper to one another.

  “Mom? Can you come get me?”

  Her voice sounds funny.

  “Cam? What’s wrong?”

  “Just … can you just come get me?”

  “It’s not even lunch period yet. Are you sick?”

  I can hear her sniffing. She’s crying. She’s not calling from her cell. She’s in the main office. If she were in trouble, though, someone else would’ve called me.

  “Mom?”

  “I’ll be right there. Watch for my car. Or … do you need me to come in?”

  “I’ll be out front.”

  “Stay inside. It’s chilly out.”

  “Just … come, okay?”

  “I’m leaving right now.”

  A knot cinches in my stomach. I grab my purse and keys from the kitchen counter.

  “Ma’am?” one of the Mormons calls out.

  “Oh God, I forgot! I mean, gosh.” I’m already halfway out the backdoor. I hurry back inside. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

  I rush back through the living room to the front door to let them out. “This is so rude of me. Sorry.”

  Hefty is struggling to get his arm through the second backpack strap. Out of habit I reach out to guide his arm. I’m a pro at untangling children’s limbs from all sorts of objects. The Mormon flinches, mutters “I got it” and whips around to face me like I was going to stick a Kick Me sign to him. Oooooh. He was the kid everyone picked on in school.

  Skinny’s halfway down the front steps when he turns and gives it one last shot.

  “Mrs.—um—Ma’am?”

  “Yes?” My fingers are already gripping the car key with the serrated edge facing up so I don’t have to waste time fumbling in the dark garage.

  He waits for me to give him my full attention, which is kind of ballsy for a timid clip-on-tied Mormon. It occurs to me that he probably feels more confident talking God outside, where he can beat a fast retreat if he’s shooed away or challenged, which I’m sure he probably is. Somewhere along the timeline God became controversial.

  “Can I ask you one last question?” Skinny squeaks when he talks and I’m guessing that given his age the puberty ship’s already sailed, so every day he wakes up knowing there’s no hope for a voice change. These two are quite a pair.

  “What?” I ask. Hurry up hurry up I’ve got to go I’ve got to go I’ve got to go.

  “Do you believe in God?” His head’s tilted up like he’s daring me to answer.

  I consider how to answer and settle on short and sweet.

  “Nope,” I tell them. “No. I don’t believe in God.”

  I’ve known this for a long time. I’ve ignored it because I want the kids to believe. I want them to go to church … oh, screw it. That’s not it. I’ve ignored it because it’s not what you’re supposed to say. At least not in my world. You’re not supposed to say you don’t believe in God. It’s not what you’re supposed to think.

  They both look like I have shot a puppy in front of them, so I’m guessing even though Skinny had looked defiant in asking, neither of them realized they were talking with a bona fide heathen. I bet that’s what’s ticker-taping through their heads right now. She doesn’t believe in God? will ping-pong back and forth between them, their own lore from this journey or quest or whatever it is.

  Cammy! Shoot, I’ve got to get going.

  “You don’t believe the Lord is our salvation?” Hefty looks as if his merely whispering this is blasphemous. Skinny looks from him to me. I remember they’re just kids. Kids starting out on what will surely be a fruitless Laurel and Hardy pilgrimage.

  “Actually, that’s really what it is,” I say, jingling my key chain in the universal signal that it’s time to go. “I don’t believe in God, but more than anything, I don’t know that I believe in salvation.”

  I close the front door on the Church of the Latter-day Saints and hurry through the backdoor to about the furthest thing from a Latter-day Saint I can think of.

  Turning right onto Clark I think to myself that if I’d had time I would’ve explained that no, that’s not it either. It’s that I’ll believe in salvation if our marriage works. I try to make the yellow light but don’t. A hunched elderly woman has to push her walker in an arc around the front of my car. The guy behind me isn’t letting me back up so I’m stuck in the middle of the crosswalk. If I’d had more time I’d have told the Mormons my whole belief system has been shattered. Mothers dying, children struggling, love vanishing, a marriage so fragile it could splinter in a light wind … where’s God been for all this? Huh? That’s what I’d have said to the Mormons if I’d only had more time.

  I don’t see her at first. I slow to stopping across from the front door expecting her to come hurrying through it, but I notice something stirring by the garbage can by the hedgerow along the side of the building. It’s Cammy. Her face is streaked. Her lips are blue from the cold. She’s more crumpled than usual. She rushes to the car like it’s a sniper zone.

  She smells musky, like sweat. Close up I see it’s mascara streaking her cheeks. “Oh, my God, Cam, what happened?”

  Once the car door closes she’s crying. “Go. Can we just go home?”

  I pull away from the curb. “Okay. Okay, we’re going home.”

  It’s hard but I give her a little space before I start asking questions.

  I wonder whether I should turn on the radio. Usually that calms her. Gives her the background noise she sometimes needs to get her talking, although that didn’t seem to do the trick this morning so I decide against it.

  “Honey? Cam?” At the stoplight I reach across to push the curtain of hair behind her ear. Instead of flinching and backing away from my touch like she does these days, she lets me stroke her head. “What is it, honey?”

  She cried the whole way home. I tried everything I could to get her to tell me what was going on but she wouldn’t. She kept shaking her head no.

  “Did someone do something to you?” I ask as we pull in to the garage. Her cries stop at my question. I’ve landed on it.

  “You can tell me,” I say. “What did they do to you?”

  She’s never said so, but I’m sure she takes a lot of heat from the other kids about the Goth thing.

  She’s looking down at her hands. She’s picking her black nail polish off. Her fingernails are chewed below the quick.

  “Cam?”

  She looks over at me. I can see the makeup around her mouth is gone. About the shape of where a clown would paint a huge red frown.

  “What happened to your face?”

  She looks back down. She wanted me to see.

  “Nothing,” she says.

  “Something happened, Cammy. Please tell me. Please.”

  I scramble for the right questions to ask. I’m at a loss.

  “Did you get in a fight with someone?”

  “No.”

  “Did someone hurt you?”

/>   “I’m going inside.”

  “Talk to me, Cammy. Tell me what happened.”

  She climbs out of the car, dragging the black bag she wears crisscrossed. A messenger bag she saved up for when backpacks became “retarded” last year. It has a pin that reads I Hate Everyone on the strap.

  I rest my head on the steering wheel. I need to follow her inside. I need to push gently, get her to open up. Make her forget she hates me. I need to be a good mother. I need to pull myself together.

  I’m so tired of this.

  CAMMY

  The Vicodin’s taking forever to kick in. At least I think it’s Vicodin. Paul said it was but you never know with him.

  I never thought we’d start doing it at school. Will waved me over to his car when I went out back to smoke during free period. I don’t buy cigarettes. I bum them from this girl Waverly who looks like she watches too much Japanese anime. She wears her hair in two little-girl buns and red-and-white striped tights with oversize black romper-stomper boots. I don’t really know her but she doesn’t care that I ask her for one, like, every day.

  Anyway, there’s Will leaning against the side of his car smoking, nodding for me to come over so I’m like wow finally we’re going to hang out in daylight instead of like vampires. But then he’s like get in and he’s in the car and the next thing I know he’s got his pants unzipped. Right there at school. I told him I had to go and he’s all yeah, right. Then he’s got his hand on the back of my head and he’s strong. Plus, he’s got a fistful of my hair so I couldn’t get away anyway. It kind of hurt the way he was pushing and pulling my head but I couldn’t say anything obviously. I choked at one point because I couldn’t breathe all that easily he was going too fast and pushing me too hard and he’s like do it right, bitch. After, when I sit up straight, I see Missy Delaney walking back across the parking lot from cheerleading practice or something and right when I’m wiping my mouth we lock eyes. She knows. She looks at Will then back at me. She looks over her shoulder at me again before she goes through the backdoor.