The Sleepwalker(27)

I looked at the Game Boy. “Can two people play Mario Brothers?”

“No, they invented and designed the whole thing without a multiplayer mode.”

“You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?”

Paige nodded. “Uh-huh.” Then: “You’re going to suck at first, but I can teach you.”

“Thanks.”

She shrugged and moved over, giving me more room on the bed. That night we would play the game for close to an hour, and although I thought Mario looked ridiculous—blue overalls barely restraining a throw pillow of a paunch, a tennis ball for a nose, and a pair of great hairy wings for a mustache—he would come to me in my dreams.



The next morning, I made Paige her lunch for school and then phoned one of the girls I would have been living with had I returned to college. Erica was a double major in chemistry and political science who was going to change the world by irrigating Central Asia. I had been friends with her since we had had rooms next to each other our freshman year.

We discussed how little news there was about my mother and then segued somehow to the guy Erica was thinking of dating. Erica talked about our mutual friends, telling me what they were doing and whom they were seeing. What they were planning or hoping to do in eight or nine months when school (at least their undergraduate years) was behind them. She asked me if I had heard from David, another senior in whom I had admitted some interest as classes had been winding down the previous May, and I said I hadn’t since those very first days after my mother had disappeared. But, then, I hadn’t reached out to him either, and the reason had something to do with Gavin: the detective interested me a bit like a thunderstorm. Erica did not bring up any mutual professors, because we had none. Finally she asked me whether I was returning for January term and the spring semester. I supposed Erica was dressed by now, and in my mind I saw her in her crewneck sweater the colors of corn silk and red maple leaves. I presumed that her hair was brushed. Me? I was still in the gym shorts and T-shirt I had slept in. My hair was, I feared, a rat’s nest.

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s still the plan. Coming back.”

“J-term?” she asked, using the shorthand for the brief burst of classes that some of us took in January.

“Maybe. Maybe February. In time for the spring semester.”

The college had filled what would have been my bedroom in the suite. The dormitory flat had four bedrooms, a living room, and a bathroom. Erica said the new girl was quiet and nice and more or less fit in. “Have they told you where you would live?” Erica asked hesitantly.

“No. But I haven’t really talked to them.”

“When do you need to let them know?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you think you need to get on that?” Erica asked, a ripple of urgency marking her tone. “At least find out the deadlines?”

“Probably.”

“Because you are coming back. Right? You just said that’s the plan.”

There was a line in one of my father’s poems that I tried now to recall. It was about how we work to reject the realities right in front of us. It wasn’t a great poem, but it was better than most of them. It was one that I believed should have been published somewhere. “Who would take care of my sister?” I asked Erica. “Who would take care of my dad?”

“Latchkey. Paige would thrive as a latchkey kid.”

“No, she wouldn’t. No one thrives as a latchkey kid.”

“And isn’t that your dad’s problem?”

“Spoken like a true younger sister.”

“Spoken like someone who’s worried about her friend.”

“I learned something this weekend,” I told her, wanting to change the subject.

“Oh?”

“Remember when I told you about my mom’s miscarriages?” It had been our sophomore year, one of those revelatory conversations I occasionally had with my close friends during finals week when we were taking breaks from the papers we were writing in the small hours of the morning.

“Yes,” she said, drawing out the word expectantly, curious.

“My dad thought he might have been responsible for them.”

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything. I was…oh, what the hell…I was snooping through my mom’s computer. I was reading some of her e-mails. And I found a pretty recent one about a study he wanted her to read. It was about male chromosomal abnormalities. He said her miscarriages all those years ago might have been his fault because his little dudes were DNA-challenged.”

“What did your mom say?”

“She said to let it go. My dad was just bouncing around an idea. But it made me sad that he was still thinking about that. Still feeling guilty. Based on the e-mail, it was something he had considered—something I guess both my parents had considered—as the reason for all those miscarriages between Paige and me.”

“Your dad’s sweet.”

“He is. I’m worried about him.”

“And I’m worried about you. There’s something else going on inside you, I get it. You’re not ready to come back to school now. I understand. But you will be ready in three or four months, I’m telling you that. And you need to plan for that eventuality now.”