“Not much. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“How come you haven’t been smoking marijuana the last couple of days? Did you get super high in Montreal? Is that why you didn’t come home? Or have you stopped?”
“I didn’t get high in Montreal, but I wouldn’t say I’ve stopped. I just haven’t the last few days. No big reason.”
“I haven’t smelled any on you.”
“I would think that would make you happy.”
“Is it me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Well, you don’t have to stop because of me. I feel bad enough as it is that you’re stuck here.”
“I told you the other day: don’t feel bad. I’m not just here for you and Dad. I’m here for me. I’m not ready to go back to school.”
“Would you do me a favor?”
“Probably.”
“My coach was telling me that it’s time for me to go away in the summer, so I can keep skiing. Swimming is good, but it’s not skiing. He thinks two of us—me and Lucy—are ready for Chile. We would spend part of next summer there training.”
My first reaction was that Paige would be thirteen next summer. In Chile. I thought of all those little girl gymnasts in Russia and Romania and, I guessed, the United States who had no childhood because they were always in training. I wondered who the adults would be who would be caring for the kids like my sister.
“Would Coach Noggler be there?”
“Of course not! It’s not like he’s my private coach. It’s, you know, a summer camp. It’s just a summer camp for really good skiers.”
“So, what do you want from me? What’s the favor? Do you want me to lobby with Dad so he lets you go?”
“He’ll let me go. He won’t care.”
“Of course he’ll care! What are you talking about?”
“He loves me, I get it. I just meant he’s in la-la land. I need you to help me do stuff like get a visa and fill out the forms.”
“How long is the camp?”
“Either two weeks or four weeks.”
“Wow. A month in Chile. Not shabby.”
“Think of how easy your life will be.”
I shook my head. “You don’t make my life hard.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’ll talk to Dad,” I said. “I’ll bring it up at dinner tonight. And maybe after dinner you can show me the website for the camp so I can get the full scoop. And I’ll call your coach tomorrow.”
“Thank you. And one more thing.”
“What?”
“We need to make sure I’m not sleepwalking by then.”
“I talked to Dad. I told him.”
“I know, he talked to me, too. But he didn’t seem that worried. And my appointment at the sleep clinic isn’t for, like, six or seven weeks.”
I was relieved. I hadn’t realized that our father had scheduled an appointment. “Have you had another event?” I asked.
“No.”
“Okay, then. You’ll have seen someone at the sleep center months and months before Chile. All good.”
“When’s yours?”
“When’s my what?”
“Your appointment.”
“I’m not going to the sleep center. Not an issue in my life.”
“You know that’s not true. Dad told me it once was. He said you were the sleepwalker before Mom. He wants you to go to the sleep center, too.”
“He does?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He’s made me an appointment?”
“I think so.”
“Well, that’s news to me,” I said, but I made a mental note to talk to our father about this. I hoped he was merely trying to make Paige feel less singled out and alone, but I felt jittery inside. In truth, I knew very little about my own personal history with parasomnia.
“So, you’ll keep your mind open about Halloween?” I asked, mostly to bring the conversation back to a topic that didn’t cause either of us anxiety. “I don’t want you to be disappointed when you wake up on November first.” I glanced at her and decided that she was at least considering the notion. Then she reached for the radio and scanned the stations until she found a song we both liked.
After dinner, in the dark, I walked toward the streetlights in the center of Bartlett. I had cleared the table, as I did always, so neither my father nor Paige would have to. My sister could do her homework and my father could read or watch TV and sip at his scotch until he dozed off. But then I had a change of heart and decided I would clean up later: I left the dishes in the sink and on the counter, went to my bedroom for my dope and my pipe and one of my college hoodies, and I started off toward the village. At dinner I hadn’t mentioned that the minister had come by, though I had told Katherine that I would let my dad know. Nor had I confronted him about what the minister had said about closure; I hadn’t asked him why he hadn’t spoken to me first. I didn’t want to have this conversation in front of Paige. I wasn’t sure I wanted to have this conversation at all. A memorial service? It was too soon. It angered me that my father was giving up so publicly. First Paige. Now my dad. Didn’t he have an obligation to carry the torch the longest?
Instead I had brought up Paige’s sleepwalking over dinner, and her appointment at the sleep center.
“Yes,” my father said. “It’s not for a little while, but I believe we have Dr. Yager’s very first opening.”
“And me? Paige said you thought I should go, too.”
He looked embarrassed, and he reached for his scotch to stall. I couldn’t decide whether the issue was that he had forgotten to tell me that he honestly believed I should be tested, or that he had forgotten to tell me that he had offered Paige a white lie to make her feel less uncomfortable with the process.
“Yes,” he said after taking a sip. “I’ve talked to our health insurance company. They’ll cover you both.”
“But why me?” I asked, strangely and unexpectedly alarmed by the idea that he had spoken to our health insurance provider about me already.
“Oh, only because you are your mother’s daughter. I love you girls, and I want to be sure you will both be safe when you sleep. No mystery. No mystery at all.” He smiled, trying his best to recover. “And while a sleep study sounds unpleasant—I know you’ve both heard about the wires all over you, the monitors, the camera—everyone manages to fall asleep.”
“So we’re both going to do it?” Paige asked.
“Yes,” he said. “The very same day. But, again, I’m not all that worried about either of you. I’m just not. Remember, Paige, you’ve really only had one event.”
Paige corrected him, reminding him about the swim bag. “That was far more likely your mother or me being absentminded,” he replied. “The testing will give us all closure.”
Closure. The word came to me again as I walked alone to the bridge. First the pastor had used it when she had come by that morning. Then my father had used it at dinner. It rattled me.
I hadn’t thought much about the specifics of my mother’s funeral or a memorial service—what it would look like. Feel like. Who would speak and what we would sing. I tried to think of hymns and realized I only knew Christmas carols. Yes, my mother was gone. Probably she was dead. But only probably. Not definitely. I myself was still dazed. We all were. And I was still reeling at the world of adult secrets that swirled about me like fallen leaves in an autumn windstorm. I wondered if I was keeping secrets from my father for the simple reason that I believed he was keeping secrets from me. But then I chastised myself: Was he keeping secrets from me or shielding me as a parent? There was a big difference. There certainly were things I didn’t tell Paige because my sister was twelve.
When I got to the bridge, I walked to the exact spot where I had found my mother and parked myself on the sidewalk there. I leaned on the concrete parapet, my elbows roughly where my mother’s bare feet had been, and looked down at the Gale River. I reached into the hoodie’s kangaroo pocke
t for my dope and packed myself a bowl. And then, for the first time in a week, I allowed myself a small buzz and tried to relax.
My mother never told me what she recalled from the walk that had led her here that night, naked and alone. There were so many things I would never know about her and so many things I would never understand. In the days that followed that somnambulant journey, when—always so tentatively—I had asked her what she remembered, my mother mostly had blushed. She had been evasive. Were the recollections that taboo? My father apparently thought so. My mother, I believe, was ashamed.
It seemed unfair to me to be ashamed of your dreams. We can’t control our dreams any more than we can control the weather or the tides.
My mother never mentioned what she recalled—if anything—from that night when she had spray-painted the hydrangea, either. At least she hadn’t told me. She never shared with me where she went in her dreams.
Because, technically, she hadn’t been dreaming. She had been sleepwalking. I knew the difference.
I tapped out the ashes and did something I hadn’t done in ages. I packed a second bowl.
I inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in my lungs, and closed my eyes. Another word came to me, suicide, and I wondered what it would be like to stand on the balustrade as my mother had. I thought it was interesting that no one devoted much energy to the possibility that my mother had killed herself. Certainly I hadn’t. But why would we? Annalee Ahlberg loved her daughters. Her depression had never been debilitating. And hadn’t it been under control? I thought once more of the spectacular energy she had put over the years into her girls’ Halloween costumes. Sometimes into her own.
Still, one night the woman had come to this bridge and nearly hurled herself off it.
There was a bright half-moon tonight. There were no clouds. I looked down at the water, which was lower than I could ever recall. The water here was so clear that during the day a person could look down and see the rocks beneath the surface. Now, at night, I could see only the boulders that broke the plane like icebergs. Some were the size of Volkswagen Beetles; some were bigger still.
I guessed I could walk across the river without getting my hair wet in this section. The riverbank sloped farther than usual because of the drought. It was a long drop from here on the center of the bridge, and with the water so low, longer than usual.
I had been to funerals before. Although my mother’s parents were both still alive, my father’s parents had passed away: my grandfather when I was in kindergarten and my grandmother two years ago. Had those services helped my father? I supposed so. They hadn’t really helped me. The truth was, I had been saddened by the death of each of my grandparents, but not overwhelmingly so. They had each been sick awhile before they died. They had each been in pain. They had each, my father had reassured me, been ready.
I watched the small constellation of stars emerge in the bowl when I took one long, last drag. I blew the smoke straight into the air and thought, I am a dragon. The idea made me smile inside. I placed the pipe on the balustrade.
Almost as if daring myself, I climbed onto the parapet, first kneeling and then, ever so slowly, climbing to my feet. It was perhaps four feet high and little more than a foot wide. It was not as ornate as the ones on the bridges that span the Tiber or Seine, but it had a series of spindles below the balustrade that were rather elegant for the Green Mountains. I spread wide my arms to steady myself, prepared to jump (or fall) back toward the asphalt on the bridge if I felt myself losing my balance. When I was standing up, I allowed myself a glance down at the water. The elevation here was high enough that most likely I’d die if I landed in any manner but feet or legs first. And then I’d wind up crippled. A paraplegic, I guessed. Maybe even a quadriplegic. It wouldn’t be pretty. It would be painful.
No, I’d die that way, too: I’d drown because I wouldn’t be able to swim to the side.
I stared up at the moon, my arms still spread like wings. I craned my neck and liked how it felt. I stretched my fingers and recalled how my mother had stood here with her arms at her sides. My naked mother. That naked angel. Her skin had struck me as especially pale that evening, the alabaster of renaissance statuary. I wondered what it would feel like to stand here, a nude at night, alone with the moon. Had my mother been howling inside or was she as serene as the seraphs spanning the Tiber or Seine?
I had an idea; no, I was experiencing a craving. Here was the difference between a want and a need. This was not something I could do; this was something I had to do.
I made sure of my footing and then pulled my hoodie over my head and tossed it behind me onto the sidewalk. I unbuttoned my flannel shirt and carefully slipped that off, too. A part of me thought, I am stoned and I am out of control, but it didn’t stop me from reaching behind me and unclasping my bra. I watched it fall and was disappointed that it didn’t drift like a kite. Shouldn’t lingerie float to the earth in slow motion?
I heard a vehicle in the distance, the growl of a pickup. I wondered if the truck was coming this way. I ran my fingers over the goosebumps on my arms, and I blinked at the tears that for reasons I couldn’t fathom were starting to pool in my eyes. Perhaps somewhere nearby was my mother’s body. Or had its final journey begun downstream of where I was standing now—near where the shred of her nightshirt had been discovered?
I unzipped my jeans. I unbuttoned them. It was only as I was starting to pull them down below my hips, taking my panties with them, that I remembered I was wearing my sneakers. I couldn’t take off my pants without first taking off my sneakers. This was…logic.
I started to kneel so I could untie them, planning to begin with my right foot, but suddenly the toe of my left foot was slipping on a stone or thick twig—no, it was my pipe, my goddamn pot pipe—and I was falling. For a second I was suspended, tottering, a tightrope walker losing her balance and about to plummet from high above the circus ring, the audience gasping, but it was only a second, because although I was stoned I was able to think street and hurl myself toward the sidewalk instead of the river. I landed hard on the asphalt—beyond the sidewalk—palms out, and rolled onto my side. Instantly I felt the road burn on my hands and my shoulders, but somehow I managed not to crack my skull on the ground.
On the road perpendicular to the bridge the pickup rumbled by, and I felt the bridge shudder, but the driver didn’t notice me. I collapsed onto my back, breathing heavily with relief and disgust. I was topless, I was stoned, and (now) I was crying.
Slowly, carefully, I sat up and checked myself. My hands were bleeding, but not horrifically so. Same with a long scratch on my side. Mostly my wrists hurt, but the pain was not incapacitating. I rolled my eyes as if someone were actually present, and patted myself down: I was not merely checking for broken bones (which I thought were unlikely), but actually reassuring myself that I was alive. That I was fine. I hadn’t fallen into the river and died instantly by smashing my head on a rock. Or in minutes by drowning. When I stood, I saw my pipe on the ground near my feet. Near my clothing. I reached into the sweatshirt for my baggie and opened it, sprinkling the dope into the river, though I guessed most of it would waft in the night breeze into the brush along the banks. Then, even before getting dressed, I reached down for my pipe and hurled it as far as I could into the Gale River. Somewhere downstream I heard a small thwap as it parted the plane of the water.
I ONCE HAD a lover who didn’t mind the sleepwalking. It was the sleep sex that was the problem.
And I once had a lover who didn’t mind the sleep sex. It was the sleepwalking that ruined our relationship.
For me, the trouble always was this: I knew what I had done.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE NEXT MORNING, in the fifteen minutes between when Paige left for the school bus and my father left for the college, I confronted him in the kitchen. He had a stack of student compositions in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other. He was about to head out the door.
“Why do you really want me to go
to the sleep clinic?” I asked him point-blank.
He stared at me, but I couldn’t decide whether his gaze was angry or defensive. Clearly I had caught him off guard. “So Paige feels less frightened,” he said finally. “Frankly, I think she’s being a bit of a worrywart. A drama queen. I’m really not all that concerned.”
“Don’t you think you should have asked my permission?”
“Your history is actually far more extensive than hers.”
“So you just went ahead and made an appointment? You should have checked with me.”
“Why? Because your calendar is so busy?” he asked, in an acerbic tone he rarely (if ever) used on me.
“What does that mean?”
“It means nothing,” he said, softening. “I’m sorry. I know you’re struggling—like me. That’s all I meant.”
“Honestly, how worried are you about her—about either of us?”
“Honestly? Not in the slightest. This is all just a precaution,” he said, and then he put his glass in the sink and pushed past me. I wasn’t sure I believed him.
It wasn’t lunchtime yet, but already I viewed the day as a small victory: apparently, neither my father nor Paige had noticed the scrapes on my hands over breakfast. My right wrist was sore, as were my ribs, but neither was incapacitating and I had gotten dressed. Most importantly, no one had witnessed my debacle last night on the bridge. Now I was sitting across from Marilyn Bryce in her home on one of the hills high above the village. Marilyn’s painting studio was in an old sugarhouse behind their home, near a pond the Bryces had constructed some years ago. It was just the two of us, and we were sitting in the family’s living room with its spectacular view of Mount Lincoln, one of the few four-thousand-foot massifs in Vermont. I was on the couch and Marilyn was on a burgundy pouf. She had set the tea service between us, on a round table fashioned from an antique milk jug and a dark marble saucer the size of a manhole cover. I watched in silence as she poured what she called the oolong tea from the special red clay pot she had brought back from China; the tea had been steeping inside it for precisely three minutes. The woman had used the timer on the oven.