“I want you to tell me everything you know about her sleepwalking the last few years. Anything that’s happened this summer. Anything she might have said about it.”
“Why?”
“Because it might be useful,” he said, and then he paused. “And because I can probably relate.”
“Your mom was a sleepwalker?”
“No. I was.”
“You?”
He tapped his pen against his pad, once more unwilling to meet my eyes. “I actually met your mom some years back,” he said. “We were going to the sleep center at the same time. We met in the waiting room. It’s why I’m here now.”
The detective wouldn’t say why he didn’t want to speak with me in front of my father. When I suggested I go get him, he said only that he wanted to chat with me first. We could get him in a few minutes, he added. My sister, too, because he was going to want to chat with her as well. Besides, it was madness right now in the house, he observed. Madness. That was the word he used. He walked me toward one of the cruisers and opened the passenger’s-side door for me.
“Are you taking me somewhere?” I asked. I wasn’t precisely afraid of Rikert, but I was wary.
“Nope. Get in,” he urged. “You’ll be more comfortable sitting down.”
And so I did, but I kept my right leg dangling outside on the pavement so he couldn’t shut the door. He didn’t seem to care and went around the front of the vehicle, rapping the hood with his knuckles as he passed it. I stared for a moment at the radio microphone and then at the radar gun; I’d never seen one up close.
“A magician,” Rikert said when he got in. He removed a yellow pad from his leather attaché and then tossed the bag into the backseat. “I think that’s really interesting.”
“It’s not,” I corrected him, my voice cool. “I told you, it’s a summer job, mostly.”
“Times like this I wish there was a little real magic in the world,” he said. “Make disappeared people reappear. Make the kids in the Subaru I once found wrapped around a tree breathe again. Just get up and walk away from the wreck.”
“So you know my mom?” I asked. I had no idea where this was going, but I wasn’t happy with the digression.
“Yup. Sleep may not be as intimate as sex, but it’s a weirdly personal experience.”
The word sex stopped me. “Does that mean you two slept together? Not had sex, but…slept?”
“No. We were in separate rooms for the sleeping. But we had the same doctor. The same technician. And there’s no such thing around here as a sleepwalking support group, so we sort of created our own one.”
“God.”
“And when I saw your mother was missing, I asked my captain if I could help. I told him I knew her—and how I knew her—and he agreed it was in the best interests of the investigation for me to get involved. So, here I am.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Your mom and me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“We talked about why we were at the sleep center. Our sleepwalking. You assume everyone else is there for something like sleep apnea. But that wasn’t her deal, obviously. Or mine.”
“Did you ever meet outside of the sleep center?” I asked. It was a hunch and I thought—I feared—I knew the answer.
He hesitated. Then: “Yeah, we did. In fact, after we met that first time in the waiting room, we only met outside the sleep center. But we were just friends. And we were just friends in the context of our sleepwalking. We had something in common that neither of us had with anyone else.”
I thought of how Rikert didn’t want to speak with me in front of my father. I felt unsettled in the claustrophobic air of the cruiser, as if something was ever so slightly wrong and I was learning things my mother would never have wanted me to know. I watched the search teams, the state troopers, and the local police coming and going from our house. A second TV news van had rolled to a stop behind one of the state police pickups. Had there ever been this many people at one time in the Victorian? I doubted it. “How often?”
“How often did we see each other?”
I looked straight ahead. I nodded.
“I’m the one who usually asks the questions. It’s why I brought you over here,” he said, his voice light. When I remained silent, he continued, “We got together maybe eight or nine times.”
“Does my dad know you two are friends?” I thought of how I was referring to my mother in the present tense. I was afraid it would be disloyal and jinx any chance of her safe return by transitioning now to the past.
“We were friends. I hadn’t seen her in almost three years.”
“Did my dad know?” I asked again.
“There would be no reason why he wouldn’t. There was nothing illicit about our relationship.”
“Why did you two stop seeing each other?”
“No reason, really. I was promoted and transferred to Waterbury: the Criminal Investigations Unit. Your mother didn’t have clients in my neck of the woods. Plus I was traveling more. But the big reason, I guess, was that our sleepwalking was under control, so we no longer had that in common.”
“Was under control,” I repeated.
“I hear ya,” he said, and when I turned to look at him he was shaking his head. “Anyway, we talked about family, which is relevant because I know how much she loves you and Paige. And we talked about dreams, which are irrelevant when it comes to sleepwalking, but still pretty damn fascinating if you have a parasomnia—and you’re on really interesting drugs like clonazepam or imipramine.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Which is good!” he told me. “Your mom have any new friends?”
“You should ask my dad.”
“I will.”
“Because she probably told him more than she was likely to tell me.”
“Why?”
“Well, they’re married.” I watched him scribble a note on his pad. “And, remember, I’ve been away at school the last three years,” I said.
“You’d be amazed at what married people don’t tell each other.”
“I don’t remember her mentioning any new friends.”
“Ornery client, maybe?”
“Not one she told me about.”
“What dreams did she share with you when you were home?” he asked.
“She actually used to share more—when she was sleepwalking. But since she stopped—or while she stopped, since it’s pretty clear she started again—we don’t talk about them all that often.”
“What was the last dream you recall her telling you? Any you can think of her bringing up over breakfast this summer?”
“It’s weird.”
“All dreams are weird. Their secrets are encrypted. Was it a good dream or a bad dream?”
“Bad dream.”
“Sometimes I’m not sure which hits us harder,” he said, his voice growing wistful, “that relief when we wake up from a nightmare and realize it was just a dream, or the sadness when we wake up from a good dream—a really good dream—and realize that nothing was real.”
“And then there are moments like this: you’re wide awake and wish you weren’t. You wish it was just a dream.”
“That is the worst, I agree. So: that dream. Your mother’s bad dream.”
“She and the minister here were pulling dead bodies out of some weird underground bunker.”
“Who’s the minister?”
“Katherine Edwards.”
“Your mom isn’t a big churchgoer. Is your dad?”
“None of us are.”
“Where was this bunker?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she recognize any of the bodies?”
“She didn’t say if she did. And she didn’t sleepwalk that night. Obviously.”
“Tell me another.”
I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes, trying to concentrate. It was hot inside the cruiser, even with the passenger door open. “This was a while ago, when I was hom
e in the spring. We had a swimming pool in the dream. It was in-ground. It had screens over it. A plane crashed into the hill just beside it.”
“Little plane?”
“Big plane. Airbus kind of big.”
“More bodies?”
“Yes. And a lot of the locals were there, trying to help. The volunteer firefighters. Our neighbors. The guys out looking for her right now. Elliot. Justin Bryce. Donnie Hempstead. But, again, Mom didn’t get out of bed. She hasn’t gone sleepwalking in years.”
“Others?”
“There was a chimney fire, but it wasn’t this house,” I said, and I motioned with the back of my hand at our home. “It was, like, a house from her childhood.”
“In Stamford, Connecticut.”
I looked at him. “She told you a lot.”
“She liked that house. She loved the bookcases her mom and dad had someone build in the family room. She loved the brook in the backyard at the edge of the woods. What happened during the fire?”
I honestly couldn’t recall any more of that dream—or any other dreams. But the unease I had been feeling grew more pronounced; it disturbed me that my mother had shared so much with this stranger. They had discussed, it seemed, even their childhood homes. “I don’t remember,” I said.
“As far as you know, she’s been taking her meds?”
“As far as I know.”
“We’ll check, of course. And—just confirming—this is the first episode she’s had since she was treated, correct?”
“That’s right. It was the first time my dad went away since then. She only does this when he’s away. This was kind of a test.” And she failed it, I thought, but I kept the short sentence to myself. We failed it. I failed it.
“She have any problems sleeping?”
“Not that I know of. But, again, you should ask my dad.”
“How about you?”
“No.”
“Your sister?”
“Again, no,” I told him. “I want to go check on her—and my dad. Is that okay?”
“I’ll come with you,” he said. “I want to talk to them, too.” Then he handed me his card and we both climbed from the cruiser. “I’ll stay in touch, but you stay in touch with me, too. And Lianna?” I waited as he leaned over the roof of the car. “I’m going to say this one more time because I want to be sure you believe me: your mother and I were not having an affair. We were friends who shared one very uncommon personality trait. That’s all.”
I nodded. I wanted to believe him. But the idea that he was so adamant only made me more dubious.
THEY TELL YOU the term is “arousal disorder.” An arousal disorder occurs during NREM sleep. Non–rapid eye movement. Non-REM. The patient seems to be simultaneously awake and asleep. There are subsets: Sleep terrors. Confusional arousals. Sleepwalking. The patient is oblivious to the environment. The patient is, more or less, inaccessible.
In the morning, the patient is amnestic. The patient remembers nothing or next to nothing, or presumes that whatever occurred was merely a dream.
Merely a dream. Only a dream. Parents say that to comfort their children a dozen times when they’re young, right? “Shhhhhhh. It was only a dream.” They go to their room (if the children have not already come to theirs) and hold them tight, murmuring those magic words. Only. A. Dream. How many times did my own mother say that to me?
Arousal disorders are, most of the time, benign.
Only rarely is the term an inadvertent and wholly unintended pun.
CHAPTER FOUR
NOT QUITE THREE weeks after my mother had disappeared, I was folding laundry and practicing patter in my bedroom. It was a little before nine at night and my father had come home for dinner, spent a little time helping Paige with her analysis of the novel her class was reading, and then fallen asleep in front of the television downstairs. A glass, still a finger width of amber at the bottom, was on the table beside him. The scotch seemed to help him sleep.
I took real pleasure in folding laundry then, especially sheets and towels. I savored their warmth when I pulled them from the dryer, and I derived a strangely deep satisfaction from the rectangles and squares I would create. The stacks of ivory (sheets) and blue (towels). It was work that was orderly and utterly mindless. My thoughts could roam or I could rein them in and focus. That night I was thinking about a magic trick called the Square Circle, and how little kids absolutely loved it. I would show them an exotically decorated, bright yellow cylinder and a square cage that looked vaguely Ottoman: it had wire screens in frames shaped liked minarets. I would take great pains to show my audience that both the circle and the square were hollow—sometimes I would whisk my wand through the circle and run my arm through the square—before placing the tube inside the square. Then I would pull a dozen scarves from the cylinder, the scarlet and purple and canary-colored silks tied together so the rope would seem endless. And just when the kids would think that was it—the circle was empty—I would pull a Beanie Baby squirrel from inside it. I was tweaking my patter that evening because I was considering replacing the squirrel with a Beanie Baby kitten. The story would have something to do with a runaway kitten that was frightened. A scaredy cat. That would be the pun. The key would be to find a way to integrate the scarves into the tale. I wondered if Hello Kitty made kerchiefs or bandanas. They would have to be thin or I would have to use fewer of them, because the secret sleeve was only so big. But I thought the kids—especially the girls—would appreciate the kitten more than the squirrel.
I was bringing a stack of sheets to the linen closet when the phone rang. I put the laundry down on the hallway floor outside my parents’ bedroom and reached for the phone on the nightstand beside their bed.
“Hello?”
“Lianna, it’s Detective Rikert. How are you?”
I sat down—collapsed really—onto the mattress, suddenly scared. They had found my mother’s body. I tried to convince myself that he was just checking in again with nothing to report: he’d done that a week earlier, calling only to ask how Paige and I were holding up. But why would he do that at nine at night? This was different. This was not what my parents referred to as “normal business hours.”
“You there, Lianna?”
I swallowed. “Yeah. I’m here.”
“You okay? You don’t sound good.”
“You found my mother’s body, didn’t you?” My voice sounded very small and childlike in my head.
“No. God, no. I’m so sorry I scared you. I’m not calling about the investigation at all.”
“Okay.”
“This is about business, however; but it’s about your business.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is kind of last minute, forgive me. But I just got off the phone with my sister in Middlebury. Her daughter—my niece—is having a birthday party this Saturday. Feel like performing? Are you up to working?”
“How old is she?” I was fragile and didn’t want the hassle of working with middle-schoolers.
“She’s going to turn eight.”
“In that case, sure. What time?”
“It’s in the afternoon.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, you’ll do it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Excellent.”
“How many kids will be there?”
“No idea. I’ll have my sister call you with the details.”
“Will you be there?” The question was a reflex.
“Of course. My niece is a sweetheart. Her name is Julie.”
When I got off the phone, I saw that Paige was watching me. “Who was that?” she asked. She was wearing her reading glasses atop her head like a hair band. She was in her pajamas.
“A person with a job for me.”
“A magic show?”
I nodded.
“Then how come you look like you’re going to throw up?” she asked.
“I just…um…stood up too fast.”
“Can that really happen?”
“Yes.”
“How old is the kid? Four? Five?”
“Turning eight.”
Paige shook her head. “Wow. She’s in third grade and still wants a magician at her party. Can you spell loser?”
“Some people like my shows. Even older kids. Even people my age.”
“They don’t have to listen to you practice. Hello, Kitty? Seriously?”
“You were listening?”
“Not by choice.”
I grabbed a small throw pillow off the mattress and heaved it at her good-naturedly. I had no idea why I hadn’t told Paige that the person who called was one of the detectives; I just knew that I wanted—that I needed—to keep the information to myself.
Later that night, I watched my father dozing in the chair with the mesa-red Aztec upholstery. He had fallen asleep in front of a Red Sox baseball game. Our cat was sitting like a sphinx on the arm of the couch. The TV—the only television in our house—sat in a mahogany cabinet our mother had had specially built, and was surrounded by matching floor-to-ceiling bookcases. One of the shelves, which had a pair of glass doors, held the two biographies my father had written, including the British and French editions. I sat on the nearby footstool and looked at the not-quite-empty scotch glass on the table beside the chair. The alcohol was a beautiful color. I didn’t drink much at college, but I understood from a Valentine’s formal how good the warmth felt on your throat and chest when you took that first sip.
My father was part of a long line of New England writers who romanticized the Red Sox. When I was in high school, he had explained to me that the love was born of the team’s quixotic dream of derailing the Yankees and someday winning the World Series; the fact they often were tantalizingly close only deepened the allure. Since then, of course, the Red Sox have won multiple world championships. But in the autumn of 2000? Rooting for the Red Sox was an exercise in poetic heartbreak.
Finally I put my hand on the knee of my father’s khakis and gave it a gentle shake. He opened his eyes abruptly, startled, and for a split second seemed scared. Then he saw it was me and smiled. He had a strong jaw and a dimpled chin. His eyes were a moonstone, Ahlberg blue. His teeth were nearly perfect. And yet he looked now as if he were on the downward slope of middle age. He had aged in the past weeks. We all had. I recalled a sociology course I had taken the previous fall and a book with the term “sandwich generation.” I thought I was too young to be caring for my father on the one hand and raising Paige on the other. But I wondered if this was my destiny.
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