The Innocent Sleep

by Karen Perry

  “After all this time? You still think that?”

  “What if someone sees him? What if someone recognizes him?”

  “What are the chances? And besides, he’s changed. It’s been five years. He looks different. He’s like you now. Not her.”

  He let that pass, but he felt the cold, hard silence that slipped between them whenever Robin was mentioned. He gave in to her after that. He had to. His guilt, her grief, and the promise they had made each other when first they had taken him: to stay together. The three of them were a family. They would not be separated.

  Going through passport control at Dublin Airport, he felt the sweat breaking out all over his body, a prickle of nerves running over his skin. Not until they were sitting in a taxi bound for Wicklow did he begin to relax a little.

  Eva’s mother was in the hospital in Dublin, and they spent those weeks shuttling back and forth between the Wicklow hills and the city. Eva liked to take the boy with her when she visited, but Garrick rarely joined them. His aversion to hospitals, honed during the long season of Felix’s illness, held fast. At first, their excursions into the city made him nervous, but in time he relaxed, let his guard down. They seemed to exist in a sort of limbo—waiting for the woman to die. They knew it would not be long.

  A morning in November. He remembered it clearly. Snow piled up on the verges of the roads as they made their way north, toward the city. Slow traffic on a Saturday morning held up by the road closures and diversions. A protest march. It had taken time to find parking. Then there was the long walk to the hospital. On that day, the old woman was barely lucid, slipping in and out of consciousness. She didn’t seem to recognize any of them, and Garrick’s presence alarmed her.

  In the corridor, Eva squeezed his arm.

  “Don’t take it personally,” she told him. “She’s confused, that’s all.”

  “I’ll go get the car,” Garrick said.

  He had planned to pick them up at the entrance, but when he reached the car, he realized that it would take at least an hour for him to drive back to the hospital. The march had moved south, toward the quays, blocking the roads that led to his destination. It would be quicker for Eva and Dillon to walk toward him, and he could pick them up halfway.

  And so he called his wife’s cell phone and made the arrangements. One phone call. One snap decision.

  In the time it took them to reach him, the damage was done. The slipup made. After five careful years, all it took was a phone call and the whole plan came undone.

  * * *

  “If you believe nothing else, believe this: we didn’t go to Tangier with the intention of taking Dillon,” he said. “That was not what we had intended, however bad it looks.”

  A chance came, and they took it.

  That was what he told them, when he reached that part of the story.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  HARRY

  His voice as he told us his story seemed distant, the tone almost private, as he brought us down the meandering route that led to his terrible act. I tried to listen, Dillon. I tried hard to concentrate, to fix my attention on the story, for it was important to me to know what had happened to you. But the words just fluttered past me, barely brushing against me. In no way did they penetrate the surface of my thoughts. The truth was, I couldn’t take my gaze off you. My eyes feasted on your very being. To see you again, Dillon, to know that you were alive—I felt overcome. You stood next to him—Garrick—with a stillness I found admirable in such a young boy. A grave look had taken hold of your face, and the wariness in your stare pained me, Dillon. I could hardly wait for a time when all of this would be behind you, the healing done. For now, his arm was around you, and I saw your pajama bottoms peeking out from under your jeans.

  Robin’s eyes were on me and, turning to meet them, I could see that the fear was gone from them. Her gaze was steady, sincere, and even though it remained unspoken, I knew that I had been vindicated. She leaned forward, straining toward you, Dillon; she ached to hold you, as I did, but was frightened of overwhelming you, of scaring you away. I looked at her, experiencing that whole range of emotions, and all the love I had ever felt for her suddenly burst back into my heart.

  And then the words dried up. Garrick’s story had reached its end. A silence came over the room. I realized that you were all looking at me, wondering what I would do, and I remembered with a kind of hot jolt that I was holding the gun. No sooner had I been scalded with that realization than a shadow moved across the doorway, and we all turned to stare at the woman who stood there.

  We had all forgotten about Eva. But there she was, her face a pale oval in the gloom. She took a moment to assess the situation, then cried out in fright. Rushing to Garrick’s side, she knelt by you and grabbed you into her embrace. There was something feral about her action, the way she swooped you up into her arms—protective and defensive all at once, like an animal snatching her young from a predator. She turned on me then, her eyes bright and cold as snow, her voice a snarl: “You can’t have him.”

  We all scrambled to our feet, the air charged with this new electricity, and I felt the gun heavy in my hand, felt all the possibility contained within it, how I could use it to take control. And yet, she had you in her arms, Dillon. I could not wave a weapon at my own son.

  Garrick was the first to speak, his tone low and careful.

  “Eva, stay calm, honey. We will get this all straightened out, but you gotta stay calm, okay?”

  Only she was well beyond that. Shaking and scared, with tears brimming in her eyes, she clutched at you tighter, Dillon.

  “We shouldn’t have come back here,” she said, convulsing with emotion. “We shouldn’t have taken the risk.”

  “Eva…”

  “It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have brought you both with me.”

  Garrick seemed reluctant to say anything, but he obviously did not want to see Eva in distress. “We agreed, Eva. Your mother…”

  She dropped her head and dipped her face so that it rested on your crown, her arms about you, Dillon, and she seemed to drink in your whole being. In a disquieting way, I suppose, she was already taking her leave of you, already preparing herself for that unbearable loss, trying to gather up as much of you as she could so that she could save her memories of you in these final minutes, to make them rich and solid enough to last a lifetime. I knew all that and felt the slow corrosion of pity working away at my resolve. Dillon, it almost worked.

  In that moment, Garrick moved around her, and I had to focus suddenly as he was coming toward me, slowly, carefully, his palms held up as if to show that he meant me no harm. But we were well past that. I tightened my grip on the gun.

  “Not another step,” I told him.

  “Let them go, Harry,” he said quietly. “The rest of them. Let them go. Let’s you and me sit down together, alone, and work this thing through.”

  “No.”

  “Come on. Be reasonable. Let Eva and Robin take Dillon outside, where it’s safe.” And then, in a lower voice, he said, “I don’t want him here in this room with that gun.”

  As he spoke those words, my eyes flickered to your face, Dillon, and I saw how it was pale with fear, and I felt a moment of crushing shame, to think that my actions had inspired that fear. And all at once the years were falling away and I was back there on that street in Tangier, dust in my eyes, blinking in disbelief at the emptiness, the terrible vacuum that stood in place of my home, my sleeping son.

  I bent my head and closed my eyes, passing a hand over my forehead. I was a mess. What a way for you to see me, Dillon. Bedraggled, beaten, sore. I don’t think I would have recognized myself. A hand pressed gently against the small of my back and my eyes flared open, my hand shaking, and I saw Robin there, leaning into me, her arm about me.

  “Please, Harry,” she said gently. “Let him go. I promise I won’t take my eyes off him. I won’t let her take him. Not again.”

  I gazed into the warmth of her eyes and I s
wear, in that moment, I could have fallen into her arms. She looked at me again, and I could feel the love, the old love. Wherever it had gone, it was back. It was like something physical in my gut, a presence in my blood.

  “All right,” I said, my voice breaking. It was the thought of being parted from you again, Dillon, even for just a few moments. The thought of you leaving my sight once more filled me with a deep foreboding.

  You looked at me, then to Eva and Garrick.

  Garrick managed to whisper to you: “It’s okay, Dillon. This will all be over soon. Go with Mom. You’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. I will see you soon.” His eyes widened.

  Eva was shaking. I couldn’t look at Robin, lest I lose my resolve.

  Eva went to embrace Garrick, and then you looked at him one last time. Maybe you did get on with him, maybe he was good to you, but you did not walk over to him. Instead, you turned and gazed into your mother’s eyes. You seemed to know what was happening.

  “I’ll be okay,” you said, your voice clear and calm. How brave you were, Dillon. I imagined holding you then for the first time in years. I leaned toward you and took in your every sinew, inhaled the smell from your hair. You did not resist. Even when I kissed your cheek.

  “Dillon,” I said, but I could not finish what I wanted to say. I was overcome. And then you let yourself be taken by your mother, away and into the night. My heart lurched. I ached, every pore of me ached, at seeing you leave again.

  * * *

  We watched you silently—Garrick and I. He was slumped in the corner by the stairs, one hand pressed against his ruined face. I was by the door. Together we watched the backs of the three figures as they descended the steps, down into the darkened slope of the garden. I had my back to Garrick, which wasn’t wise, but the fight seemed to have gone out of him the moment I’d agreed to let you leave. He seemed spent. And so I followed the shapes of the ones I loved for as long as I could. Distantly, I heard a car, and saw the sweep of headlights across the driveway. But the distraction was fleeting. I kept watching until the darkness swallowed you up—until there was nothing left of you.

  * * *

  You probably want to know what happened then. You may already know. Or you may have worked it out for yourself.

  Either way—this is how it went for me.

  The car zoomed into the driveway, spitting up gravel on all sides. It drew to a sudden halt, and Spencer got out. His face had a toughness about it, a knowing fierceness, but there was apprehension there, too. “Harry, what’s going on?”

  I knew from the tenor of his voice that he was frightened, and that scared me even more. I experienced a fleeting moment of clarity, as if I had stepped outside my own body and could see precisely the mess I had gotten myself into. The gun pressed hotly in my palm.

  “Stay back,” I shouted from the doorway.

  He came forward. “Harry, for fuck’s sake, put that thing down.”

  I didn’t. Instead, I aimed it at him. There was a scream, a cry of fright. Whose voice was it? Robin’s? Eva’s? For all I know, it could have been my own. Retreating quickly, I slammed the door shut, my hands shaking. Then, leaning in to steady myself, I pressed my forehead against the hardwood door.

  It was almost as if I had forgotten about Garrick.

  I had found you again, Dillon. That one thought played through my head. And then the strike came, a sharp blow to the back of my head. I felt it acutely and fiercely, and I dropped to the ground. Blood was pouring into my ear. A soupy, disorientating flow. I lay there, paralyzed.

  He stepped over me, pulled open the door, and I stirred from my fearful paralysis, tackling Garrick and rolling him onto the ground. I had thought he was spent, but I felt the strength in his body, sinewy and tough. He gripped my arms and pulled me under him, and I reached up and clawed at the wound on his face, causing him to cry out in rage and pain. And I, too, was enraged. Incensed. My ear was full and my hair was matted with more and more blood, and as it dripped into my mouth, I spat at the man who had taken you.

  The door was half open, our bodies jammed against it, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw half a dozen Chinese lanterns float into the air.

  “What the fuck?” Spencer came running toward me and Garrick, but he was stopped in his tracks by the gunshot.

  At first I thought it was fireworks or one of the Chinese lanterns exploding into the night. But there was no fantastic spillage of light and magic. Garrick must have prized the gun from my hand or picked it up after it had fallen; I don’t know. But I do know that this time the first sensation was not visual. The bullet went through me so quickly that the first thing I felt was lightness.

  It felt like I was floating.

  How could the knuckle of lead have done any damage traveling through me so fast, this little package propelled by gunpowder—but it did, Dillon.

  And it was amazing, the tumbling mélange of images that came to me then.

  Garrick’s face retreated, and Spencer cradled my head in his arms.

  Sound and sense revolved into each other and what came to me was the Egyptian boy prince, the boy on a horse, the red flag, the sun and the dry cobbles of Tangier. Your singing, gurgling childish sounds, your whimper and your playful digs. Your nighttime embrace, your “Dada” in the dark, your tickles and giggles and rousing temper, your tears and your laughter. Your paint-stained hands in Tangier, Dillon. All of it a boon and precious cargo carried to me then—its happy host.

  So now you know, Dillon. That is what happened.

  A cold, white day of protest in Dublin is how it started, and as I drifted into another state of being, into the cold embrace of another winter, I was not saddened, Dillon; I had found you after all. Instead, the one burning, shining desire within me as my life left me was to paint one more canvas. Can you believe it, Dillon?

  And what is the image, what was the image to be? From whence does it come? My dying imagination or a faint memory of our first times together?

  Dearest Dillon, does it matter?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ROBIN

  On a late afternoon in September, I find myself sitting alone outside a café in the heart of the medina. It is the kind of place that appeals to the tide of tourists who browse through the stalls of the Petit Socco, looking for a refuge from the fierce trade of that market, the haggling and the hassling, the guides and the touts, seeking out a chair in which to sip mint tea while watching the world go about its business here in Tangier. The waiter, a young Moroccan with a quick smile and distracted eyes, listens while I tell him my order, then gives a dismissive nod and wanders off in an unhurried manner. All around me are Americans, Italians, French nationals, and Australians, some still bearing enthusiastic looks, others with the slump of the weary traveler, all on plastic seats pulled up to rickety tables that front the square, bathed now in the gentle heat of the declining sun, the shadows lengthening as evening draws in.

  Of all the people in this busy place, I am the only one who sits alone.

  The coffee I ordered comes, plonked down without ceremony.

  “De rien,” my waiter intones without feeling when I thank him, then drifts away to another table, his tray held aloft, skimming the heads of the customers seated around me.

  I take a sip, then fiddle with my cell phone. One of the women at the next table leans in to impart some confidential information to her partner, who then swivels in his chair and gives me a brief, appraising look before turning away. I am distinctly aware, in this moment, that I am a woman alone in this place. It is at once strange and yet familiar, too. The sights and smells reach some inner part of me, caressing the touchstone of memory, stirring it up again. The grand silhouettes of the tall palm trees that line the perimeter of the Petit Socco, black against the evening sky and its puckering of gray clouds scudding the horizon, the gentle lull in commerce that takes place at this hour of the day before the evening traders arrive to set up their stalls, the smell of exhaust fumes from waspish mopeds mingling with t
he sharp cleansing scent of the mint tea being brewed up and down this strip of cafés—all of it blends and rises up around me in a miasma of familiarity. And yet there is something profoundly wrong about being alone here in this place, in this city, where so often I had been with Harry.

  But then, of course, I am not alone. My children are with me. Right now, they are at the Mendoubia Gardens with their uncle Mark and his girlfriend, Suki. An hour has passed since I watched them go, that happy group, the boy carried aloft on his uncle’s shoulders, the baby kicking her legs in her pram. I had kept my eyes on them until they disappeared from view, an involuntary clutch about my heart as I lost sight of them. An hour, and only now, with the coffee warming my throat, do I start to relax. Yet still, I keep my mobile within easy reach, one eye watchful for an incoming call or text.

  “Take some time to yourself,” Mark had said to me. “Make the most of us while we’re still here.”

  “I don’t know,” I had said, chewing my lip, reluctance pulling me back.

  “We’ll be gone tomorrow, and then you’ll be wishing you had let us take the children off your hands while you still had a chance.”

  And so I had put my fear aside and let them go.

  I am unused to being alone, not quite sure of what to do with myself. There is no book in my hands to amuse or distract me. I fiddle with a sachet of sugar, sip from my cup, and all at once, without warning, I am back there, on that cold winter day, in that lonely abandoned place, pulled by the drag of memory, and I recall with piercing rawness the events of that terrible day.

  * * *

  We hurried down the steps, down, down into the shadowy garden, gray in the dim light. The snow lay thickly about the house, and I labored to plow my way through it, my heart beating high and light in my chest, the metallic taste of blood in my mouth from where I had chewed the inside of my cheek in those nervous moments before fleeing the house. My coat was too hot, the sheer weight of it hampering my movements. Sweat formed under my clothing. My whole body felt liquid and heavy. And underneath my ribs, my heart hammered away with fear and uncertainty. Every step I took put distance between us and the danger that was contained within that house. But I had left Harry behind.