The Sleepwalker(16)

“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.

“Lianna,” he murmured simply.

“I thought you might be more comfortable if you went to bed.”

“Thank you.” He gazed over my shoulder at the television and saw the score. “When I dozed off, they were winning. No longer, it seems.”

“Sorry.”

“I was having the most lovely dream.” Briefly he studied his wedding band. Then he rubbed his eyes.

“What was it?” I asked.

“I was reading aloud to you from one of Roald Dahl’s books. The BFG, I believe. We were on a plane to Disney World. I was doing my terrible Scottish accent, and a fellow in one of the seats ahead of us turned around. He was British and disabused me of the notion that my brogue had the slightest basis in reality.”

“That really happened, Daddy. I was, like, seven.”

He shook his head. “In my dream, the other passenger was the BFG himself. The Giant.”

“Oh.”

“But what was beautiful was that your mother was asleep against the window. Remember how she always loved the window seats on planes?”

“I do,” I said. Sometimes I wanted to correct him when he spoke of his wife—my mother—in the past tense. But I never did. Who was I to condemn what I knew in my heart was realism? I was not at that place yet, but I understood that eventually I would get there.

“That was the best part of the dream,” he went on. “The presumption of normalcy. Your mom with her head against the window.”

“She does sleep great on planes.”

He grinned a little mischievously: “She was always well medicated: Xanax. And the wine helped. And the white noise.”

“Maybe the sleep doctors should have explored white noise or wine.”