The Sleepwalker(35)

But what did it matter if those first memories were, in fact, fabricated? It mattered not at all. The images in my mind were all as pleasant and reassuring as the supermarket recollections that I was confident were real: all those times after Paige had arrived when it would be only my father and me, because my mother would be home with my baby sister. Two aisles away from where I was standing right now, poised behind the back of the cart, was the bakery section, where my father and I had picked out the cake mixes and the icings and the sprinkles and the candles for my tenth birthday party cupcakes. (I smiled almost reverentially at the memory, and how I had wanted cupcakes instead of a cake, and how each one had to be decorated a little bit differently—and how my father had obliged. Paige was still an infant, and my father had done most of the heavy lifting at that birthday party. It was a sleepover on a Friday night. The next day, Saturday, after my friends had gone home, my father had taken me to Boston and brought me to a place called Club Conjure, the shabby second floor of a comedy club where magicians performed on the weekend. I was awed. By the time I was twenty-one, I had performed there twice myself, once with Rowland the Rogue in the audience. He brought me flowers.) “Lianna?”

I awoke from the daydream and saw Marilyn Bryce was beside me. Marilyn was a friend of my mother’s who tended to drive my father a little crazy. She was a painter in one of the hills beyond the village of Bartlett. Sometimes both of my parents joked about what my father called Marilyn’s “peace, love, and tie-dye” vibe—which was shorthand for the fact that her paintings all looked like album covers from 1967 and there was always the chance when you dropped by her studio that you would be offered some pretty serious weed—but her canvases went for thousands of dollars in galleries in Vermont and two and three times that in Massachusetts and Manhattan. It seemed as if her husband, Justin, was rarely in Bartlett: he was either at one of his bistros in Middlebury or Burlington, or visiting other restaurants that he thought might have something to teach him. Their son, Paul, was three years younger than me, and the sort of kid who smoked dope with his mom and had all the drive of a well-fed house cat. He was, I presumed, a freshman in college, and it embarrassed me now that I had no idea where.

“Marilyn, hi,” I said, trying to focus.

The woman was wearing a black-and-purple peasant dress as a tunic over blue jeans. The dress had Arabesque stitching that reminded me of the designs on some of my magic tricks. She was tall and slender, her hair still a lush reddish brown: today it was in a long braid that fell to the base of her spine. She would have been beautiful if her eyes weren’t quite so close set. She was standing behind her cart as if it were a podium.

“I keep meaning to stop by the house and check in on all of you,” Marilyn said, and she shook her head and smiled in a way that at least hinted at self-loathing. Disappointment in herself. I hadn’t seen Marilyn since the very first days after my mother had disappeared. Marilyn, like most everyone else, had moved on.

“We’re okay,” I said.

“I’m sure you are, but only because you don’t have any choice but to be okay. When do you go back to school?”

“I’m not.”

“What?”

“I mean, I’m not this semester. I probably will in January.”

“God.”

“It’s fine.”

“Tell me more: How is your father? And Paige?”

“Like I said, we’re okay. Maybe a little shell-shocked. I mean, it sucks, but what are we supposed to do? Dad is teaching and Paige is going to school and swimming and I’m”—and I motioned at the cart overflowing with (among other things) paper towels and cat sand and coffee, cereal and cookies and beer—“I’m shopping.”

“So, you’re the glue.”

“No. I’m just…here.” I glanced briefly into Marilyn’s cart but suddenly felt this was invasive. Carts were public, and yet it felt intrusive to peer in. I looked away.

“Are there any new leads?” Marilyn asked.

“No.”

“How can a person just evaporate into thin air?”

“A person can’t.”

“Do you all need anything?”

I took a breath and thought about it. “Not really,” I answered finally.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” Then, almost impulsively, I said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything, Lianna. Anything.”

“Did you and my mom ever, you know, get high?” I had come across an article online that suggested marijuana might diminish a sleepwalker’s tendency to get up in the night. Most physicians saw no reason to believe this, but I knew Marilyn liked to smoke and I pondered the lengths to which my mother might have gone to dial down her sleepwalking. Also? I was curious. I wanted to learn what I could about my mother.

“No. Okay, yes.”

“You did.”

“Once in a while. Maybe twice. One time right after she left that architectural firm up in Burlington and needed to chill. Another time when your grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”

“That’s it?”

She looked around conspiratorially. It was as if she wanted to be sure we were all alone in the aisle. “I guess we did more than twice, in that case. Maybe three or four times. We also shared a bowl before you went away to school for the first time, and then again when Paul got into college last spring.”