The Weight of Night

by Christine Carbo

  The wet boughs of the pines glistened in my beam. The sound of the water running from the gutters filled my ears, and I glanced back at the house. When I turned back to the woods, I suddenly thought I caught a glimpse of something pale or light-colored, something or someone moving through the trees like an apparition. I wondered if it was a deer. I moved closer, walking east toward the Middle Fork River, which cuts through West Glacier not far from my dorm. Sure enough, weaving among the trees, Gretchen was heading toward the river.

  “Hey,” I called, but she didn’t hear me. “Gretchen,” I yelled louder, but she kept going deeper into the thin stretch of forest beside the river. “What the hell?” I said to myself. I began to run to catch her, dodging tall, skinny pines dripping with rainwater. I reached her just as she began wading into the river. She stumbled on some slippery river rocks, almost fell, but kept going. She seemed clumsy to me, as if she’d been drinking.

  “Gretchen,” I yelled firmly. “What are you doing?” She still didn’t turn, and something about her movements made me understand that she was sleepwalking. I ran into the water after her. I knew there was a sudden drop in the river. Rapids formed ahead and white water rippled like fluttering ribbons. If she was sleepwalking, she could drown. I caught up with her and grabbed her arm, but she threw my hand off, mumbling something.

  “Gretchen, stop,” I said firmly. She did not look right. Her eyes were glassy, her face expressionless, but she fought me anyway. I pulled her in toward me and wrapped my arms around her to restrain her. Her arms flailed and she struck me across my chin. I tried dragging her back to the riverbank, but she continued to struggle. She jerked her arm and broke free, splashing down into the water. It was still shallow and she sank down on her butt to her waist.

  I kneeled down and grabbed her shoulders. She felt chilled, and I could see the frigid river water begin to wake her, an ounce of recognition filtering back into her eyes. She blinked several times and looked around in the dark, then flinched when she realized she was in water and stood up quickly, almost falling again. “Gretchen,” I said. “It’s me, Monty.”

  She looked at me, confused. “Where am I?” she asked groggily.

  “In the Middle Fork. You fell asleep. I think you were sleepwalking.”

  She stared at me, her skin ghostly in the starlight, then burrowed her face in her hands. “Oh, God,” she said.

  “It’s okay, come on, let’s get you dried off.”

  Gretchen began to shake her head back and forth, “No, no, Monty. I’m so sorry.” She took off, stumbling over the rocks back to shore, and began to run, her wet jeans swishing and her shoes slapping the ground. I yelled for her again. “It’s okay,” I said and took off after her. When I reached her, I grabbed her arm. “Gretchen, just stop, will you?”

  She looked terrified, panic-stricken.

  “Just calm down. It’s okay. You were just sleepwalking.”

  Her face looked strained with more layers of pain than I’d ever seen in her—than I’d ever seen in anyone, even my tormented mother. I knew in that moment my suspicions were correct: something haunted Gretchen Larson deeply. “I have to go. I have to go now.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But—”

  “Just please.” She stared at me, her shoulders trembling. Her expression pleaded for me to say nothing more, so I didn’t. A profound sadness revealed itself in her eyes and hit me like a spear. I moved back a step. Then she ran into my place, grabbed her things, threw them in her car, and drove away soaking into the wet night.

  After her taillights disappeared around the bend, I looked up. Stars pocked the sky between sinister charcoal-colored clouds that continued to shift. I’d somehow glimpsed something that Gretchen clearly didn’t want me to see. The agony in her eyes and the fear roiling beneath the surface told me that much at least. I continued to watch the remaining rain clouds move like ghosts, exposing new pieces of the brilliant sky and hiding others. “Gretchen,” I whispered into the fresh air that the storm had left behind. “What’s this all about?”

  17

  * * *

  Gretchen

  I RECALLED WHAT I had dreamed when I fell asleep at Monty’s. I don’t often remember them when I’ve had a parasomniac event, but every once in a while I do. Per had been ahead of me skiing, his strides long and graceful—ethereal—his skis barely even touching the ice, as if he were hovering. I was watching him, studying him, trying to follow him and be as smooth as he was—free and untethered—but I wasn’t nimble at all. I was having trouble, my edges catching on watery, sticky ice chunks that clung to the smooth undersides of the long, narrow skis. I wished I had put wax on them and cursed that I couldn’t catch him. He continued to ski—or fly, really—under an azure sky, until it abruptly shifted and became washed out. The ice began to crack, loud and fierce like thunder with fissures spreading out into expanding spidery veins. I tried to ski faster and faster, but I couldn’t make headway. Per went crashing down, falling to a strata below, screaming, “No, Gretchen, no, stop.”

  I strained against the slushy muck, trying desperately to catch him, to reach him with the rope I had in my pack, but I couldn’t get any closer. The nearer I thought I came, the farther out he seemed, his cries growing fainter and fainter, the sense of his person shape-shifting from Per to Wendy’s son, Kyle, to Jeremy and back to Per again.

  I took off my skis and tried to run, but I felt like I was walking through mud, my feet heavy like lead. I trudged on though; I had to reach him, but he was yelling at me not to, to leave him alone. And someone else was calling my name from behind. I didn’t dare turn and look because I had to save my brother. It was my turn to save my brother. Then I fell myself, my butt freezing on the slushy ice, and each layer split around me, swallowing me in piercing cracks.

  When I finally came to, I was horrified to see I was outside in the night, that I’d fallen in the river and was soaked from the waist down and that Monty was trying to restrain me from going in deeper.

  When I come out of one of these events, I’m like a toddler for a moment, unable to make my limbs move the way I instruct them, as if I need someone to hold me up. I feel dizzy. In a few moments, though, it comes back, and when it did with Monty, I ran. I drove straight home, shaking and blasting the heat in my car. The dusty scent of it, since it hasn’t been used since winter, hit me like an admonishment, as if the fusty, stale air pushed out stored-away memories that shouldn’t be exposed.

  I drove, my headlights exposing the debris from the storm: snapped branches and smaller, torn green-leafed stems tossed about. When I reached my house and let myself in, I peeled off my pants, took a hot shower, and changed into a robe. I sat in my kitchen with some tea. The storm had completely passed, the electricity in the air gone, and it was dead quiet—no crickets, no wind rustling the trees, no sirens or car honks from town.

  I still trembled, mostly from my frazzled nerves and not from the cold, as I sipped chamomile tea and cursed myself for letting my guard down at Monty’s. I had been more tired than I thought. Of course I had, how could I not have considered that I might fall asleep if I let myself sink into a comfortable armchair and close my eyes for a moment while listening to the wind and the rain? Stupid, so stupid, I thought.

  When I had first come to Seattle, I stumbled through my days numbly, like a zombie, but sometimes I’d get so homesick and lonely that I’d regularly take the ferries around Puget Sound just to remind myself of the ones that traversed the fjords and the North Sea. During the summer, my family and I sometimes used to drive to a town called Larvik just to catch the boat to Frederikshavn in Denmark, a busy port where we’d go for the weekend to visit friends of my parents who also had kids around the same age as Per and me.

  One time, in Seattle, on the way back from Vashon Island, I saw a young couple who had taken their bikes over for the afternoon and were also heading back to the city. It was a beautiful summer day, the bre
eze blowing through the open windows on the boat and the smell of salt water filling my nose. The woman, maybe in her late twenties, was beautiful, like a princess. She had pale skin, almond eyes, and shoulder-length cinnamon-colored hair that blew across her face in the wind. She wore a casual pastel dress and rested her slim hands on her bicycle handles. Her mate was equally handsome—her prince, as the fantasy goes—with thick dark hair swept to the side and a nice, twinkling smile. She said something in his ear that made him laugh. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek and she sighed in contentment.

  The image of them together has always stayed with me—a snapshot in time in my mind—not because I’m the kind of female who’s fallen for the Prince Charming fairy tales. If anything, fairy tales never impressed me, and it was always someone’s mind that enthralled me more than their looks. If I let the cynical side of me play it out, I would guess that the pair didn’t even end up together, that they broke up or divorced somewhere along the line, but the sweet moment struck me so poignantly on the boat ride because it was one of the first times I realized I would never have that kind of intimacy. I couldn’t be trusted to have that kind of connection. My sleep disorder and my history would always be the sharp needles pricking and bursting any blooming bond. I’d always be watching other couples from the outside: people getting engaged, marrying, buying houses, creating homes, and starting families. People going on outings and vacations together and sharing dreams. Of course, later I had my brief marriage to Jim, but he was only a friend, and we never even lived together. I was relieved when it ended, even though I continued to value his friendship.

  I took another sip of tea and thought of my fate, how I had resigned myself to it, made peace with it—a life of solitude after what I’d done to Per. There was no choice but to accept it. But sometimes I wondered how I could continue to walk the tightrope of wanting so many things and knowing I couldn’t have them, knowing that deep down I didn’t really want a companion, that I was capable of harming the very person I wanted to protect.

  No, just because I liked Monty and just because he made me feel things I hadn’t felt in a very long time—made me tingle with emotions I didn’t even understand when I least expected it—didn’t mean things would change. I would never let myself harm anyone again. I couldn’t bear it. I sat in my peaceful kitchen, finished my tea, and went to bed, making sure I was secure in my sleeping bag and mittens.

  I always felt like I was one step away from being found out—that people sensed the secret hidden in me. Now Monty had not only sensed something, he’d witnessed it. In the morning, I knew that I needed to scrape some courage together in case Monty decided to tell someone or bring it up again.

  • • •

  When I arrived at the lab the next morning, I went straight to the police garage to see what else, if anything, had been discovered. Ray was still working with dust, Superglue, and fluorescent light. He had pulled trace the entire day before using tape strips and a vacuum for the floorboards and carpeting. Taping is a wearisome task, as is processing latent prints, but Wendy had also worked late into the day yesterday, finishing the pulling of prints and creating the print cards to scan into the system. She was currently back at the office still trying to find hits on the few additional unidentified ones she’d obtained, besides the boy’s whose she’d found the evening before. I left Ray to his work and went to the office.

  “G,” Wendy said when she saw me walk in.

  “Hi,” I said back. “Get any more hits besides the boy’s?”

  “Yes. To Stewart, one of the farmhands.” I knew that our database had over 200,000 sets of 10-prints, prints rolled—or nowadays, scanned—when a person was arrested. Wendy’s job consisted of comparing unknown prints to the identified ones in the system as well as to any elimination sets we’d taken, such as Stewart’s and hopefully Brady’s. “I should tie things up here by the end of the workday. I’ll let you know if I’m able to make any additional matches besides these two sets. Since the truck was wiped down, I’ve only got a few—one from the rearview mirror, and two from the side windows for a total of three clear prints. The gearshift and the radio were wiped down too thoroughly to get anything else.”

  “Right, like we figured.”

  I left Wendy to her work and went back to my office to study the photographs and other data we’d gotten on the truck so far, when Wendy came in a few hours later, smiling.

  “Guess what?” she asked.

  “You’ve matched the prints.”

  “Actually, yes, the county scanned Brady for the agents and sent them to us. I’ve got a match from the mirror to his set.”

  “Okay, good work. At least there’s only one unidentified print left. I’ll let them know.”

  “Okay, but guess what again?”

  “You’ve found something else?”

  “No, I’m sorry, but it’s still great news.” Wendy’s face lit up. “My dad just called. He said he’s spoken to Kyle and he’s on his way to my office.”

  “Oh. Wendy. I’m so glad.” I stood, walked around my desk, grabbed her arm, and squeezed.

  “Yeah, it’s a relief.”

  “Where’s he been?”

  “Camping with his friends. Just as I figured. I’m so relieved and angry at him at the same time. I’m sure they’ve been on one big bender. When he comes, I plan to take his keys, take him straight home.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. “Anything you need. Just make sure you finish checking that last unknown and get me the data before you leave for the day.”

  “I can’t believe it’s already close to four. I’m exhausted.”

  “You worked late last night. Go get your boy home. I’m so glad he’s safe,” I said.

  “Me too. Thank you for everything.”

  “There’s nothing to thank me for. Just make sure you’ve finished running the comparisons to that last unknown before you leave.”

  “Yes, mother,” she smiled, seeming lighter on her feet than she had all week.

  Mother. Mor. I thought of the word. I hadn’t used it in so long, I no longer recognized how it felt in my mouth. For the first year after I came to the States, we tried to stay in touch, but the overseas phone calls were expensive and awkward and eventually they petered out.

  For no particular reason, I thought of a time almost three months after it happened, at the end of March, when the days were still cold, and the light dull and pointless. I sat at the kitchen table trying to do a math problem—one of those puzzles about a train leaving a station and going a certain speed. I couldn’t think through the static in my mind and the problem seemed to circle around in my head.

  My father had not returned from work yet. It had become like that. Instead of staying to have coffee and breakfast, he’d leave early and come home past dinnertime. The three of us had been walking around the house like ghosts for three weeks after the hospital—after two months of testing and treatment—released me with specific instructions for how to handle my disorder. I had been assigned a social worker to help me stay on track with schoolwork while I went to see a therapist and other sleep specialists twice a week. In the meantime, I was to stay home, which was fine. I had no desire to go to school or do anything else ever again.

  An outside lock had been placed on my bedroom door and only my parents had a key. Sometimes my mother wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning and would forget to open it. I was afraid to call out and bug her. I didn’t feel I had the right to, so if I had to go to the bathroom, I’d just hold it until she’d remember to come open my door.

  That particular March day, while I was working on math, my mother came into the kitchen. I watched her open the refrigerator and stare into it. She just stood before it, not grabbing anything. The automatic light from inside shone on her ratty sweater, which she hadn’t changed in weeks. There wasn’t much food in the fridge. I could see why she didn’t take anything
. The endless meals from neighbors and friends that came in the beginning—when we had no appetites anyway—­had dwindled or been tossed out, uneaten by my father. She finally shut the door without taking anything.

  “Do you want me to make you something?” I asked, clutching my pencil tightly.

  She flinched, surprised I’d spoken. When she turned to me, I caught a flash of disgust. Her hair wilted around her face and dark circles draped under her eyes. She shook her head no.

  “I could go to the store if you need me to,” I offered.

  “No, it’s fine,” she said, her voice hoarse from disuse. “If you’re hungry, I can give you some money if you want to get something for yourself.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  She looked out the window. The snow had turned to slush, then refroze. I watched her stare blankly at the driveway. I grabbed my coat and went out the front door. I found the snow shovel and began to try to clear the frozen slush, but it wouldn’t budge. I kept digging the blade of the shovel into the frozen ridges, chipping chunky pieces of ice and scattering it in all directions. I was trying to help, to do something useful. I looked back into the kitchen window, but it was empty. She had left, perhaps gone back to her room or maybe even Per’s. Sometimes she would fall asleep in his room for hours, and I’d find her on his bed, tangled in his duvet. I stared at the empty window. The glass looked like a black sheet of ice, not a window to a warm home. What could I say to her or ever do that could possibly help?

  I stood, holding the shovel. Stupid, I said to myself, realizing that if she’d seen me jabbing at the ice, she’d have thought about only one thing: my strong arms swinging the fire iron.

  • • •

  Forty-five minutes later, I still needed to know if Wendy had come up with a match on the unknown set of prints she’d lifted, and I wasn’t sure if Kyle had made it in yet. I walked down the hall, past the humming computers and the microscopes. Wendy’s door was open, so I went right in, saying, “Knock knock.”