The Sleepwalker(33)

“It means likelihood,” she said. “Odds, right?”

“Right. It’s when we try and get a sense of how likely it is—how probable it is—that something is going to happen. And here’s why it matters: even if my arousal disorder was only a pediatric problem, it means that I inherited sleepwalking from Mom. And if I did, the probability falls that you did—or you will. And then there is this: Have you ever had an incident? No. Never.”

She looked at me. “That’s not true.”

“Seriously? When? I think Mom or Dad would have told me.”

“Well, you think wrong. I told Mom. I don’t know if she told Dad.”

I tried to clear my head and focus. “Tell me what happened,” I said.

“One night in August—about a week before Mom disappeared—I think I went downstairs.”

“You think?”

“My swim bag wasn’t where I’d left it.”

“Maybe you forgot where you put it.”

“It was on the floor in the den by the TV set. I always leave it by the front door so I don’t forget it.” Paige was as meticulous about her swim bag—always packing a dry towel, a dry suit, and her goggles—as she was her ski gear. Sometimes her wet towel wound up in the back of the car on the way home if it was warm out, because she would walk from the pool to the car in her suit, wearing the towel like a skirt. But before leaving the house, she always double-checked that she had what she needed in that bag.

“So one time you just put it down in the den by mistake,” I said. “Or maybe Mom or Dad moved it.”

“Also, it was unpacked.”

“Unpacked?”

“Everything was on the rug.”

“What did Mom say?”

“She said I was worried for nothing. She said I just forgot to pack it. And even if I had gotten up in the middle of the night, she said it was probably a one-time thing.”

“Okay, then. It sounds like the odds you were sleepwalking are pretty slim.”

She took a deep breath: “But then this happened: last week, I woke up in the barn.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. I was in Mom’s car.”

“At night?”

“Uh-huh. The middle of the night. And I don’t remember walking out to the barn or getting inside. I don’t remember getting behind the wheel. But there I was.”

“You’re sure?”

“Gee. Did I wake up in my bed or outside in the barn? Hard to be sure,” she said sarcastically. “Of course I’m sure.”

Paige had been one of those kids who’d always loved to sit on our mother’s or father’s lap and steer the car as a little girl. Now, though she was still a few years from even a learner’s permit, our parents would let her back in and out of the barn. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “Why didn’t you tell Dad?”

“I didn’t want to worry Dad. He’s kind of a mess. And I’m telling you now.”

I thought about this. “Well, thank you.”

“I mean, I guess I should have made a bigger deal about the swim bag in August. But we were all freaking out because Dad was about to go to that conference. You know, his first big trip leaving Mom. I didn’t want to ruin everything and prevent him from going. I guess Mom didn’t either.”

I understood completely, and I didn’t want her to become any more alarmed than she already was. “I get it,” I said. “At some point we should probably let Dad know. I really don’t think it’s a big deal, so you shouldn’t either. But let’s find a moment in the next couple of days when you or I can tell him.”

“Okay,” she agreed. Then she sat back against my headboard and folded her arms across her chest. “So what do you think of your odds and probabilities now?” she asked me.

“I think you worry too much,” I told her, smiling.

The image on the TV screen was still frozen where I had paused the cassette. The magician had just returned the second dove to the cage on the table beside him. For a long second we both stared at it. The magician had tattoos of the sun and a crescent moon on his neck.

“What do you remember about your own sleepwalking?” she asked me after a moment.

Like most sleepwalkers, I recalled almost nothing. I really had but one memory: waking up and my mother was sobbing. It was one of those horrific, perfect storms. It was ten at night and I was six. In my memory, my mother was writhing alone on the floor of the bathroom off the master bedroom, curled up almost in the fetal position beside the tub. She was wearing a white nightshirt and there was blood on one of her thighs. I was clutching a portable, plastic Barbie dollhouse. I had no idea how or why I had woken up, or what I was doing with the dollhouse in my arms. I had been oblivious to my mother’s crying. My father had gone outside to bring the car to the front steps from the carriage barn. I had been terrified when I had woken and seen my mother in that condition, and I had dropped the dollhouse onto the tile, breaking off a part of the roof and the wall. A small, sharp piece of plastic had shot into my mother’s face, nicking her just below her eye, and the blood had mixed with her tears, making the wound look far worse than it actually was.

Years later, my mother would explain to me what I had walked in on: the third miscarriage. It was starting and my mother knew the feeling, having endured it twice before. She was going to lose another baby.