The Sleepwalker(40)

“Go on,” he urged.

“What triggered it?”

“Your mother’s sleepwalking? Hard to say. We really don’t even know why it got worse. It could have been a sleeping pill. She was trying them when you were in high school. It could have been perimenopause. It could have been the idea you were growing up and would soon be leaving home. The parasomnia seemed to escalate your junior year of high school, when you were deep into the college process.”

“But when you were with her, she’d sleep through the night.” I wanted confirmation that my father had never had to wake my mother up in the midst of one of her episodes.

“That’s correct. As far as I know, whenever she left the bed when I was with her—here in Vermont or on vacation somewhere—she was wide awake. Not sleepwalking.” I noticed how carefully he had framed his response, how meticulously he had chosen his words. It was either the sort of answer an erudite college professor would offer, or the careful obfuscation of someone who had something to hide.

“Can I tell you something?” I asked him.

“Always.”

“Paige thinks she may have started sleepwalking.”

He sat forward and grew attentive. “Go on.”

“She thinks she moved her swim bag one night in August. Last week she woke up in the barn. In Mom’s car.”

“The first may be nothing.”

“And the second may be something,” I added, finishing the thought. I told him why Paige hadn’t said anything until now. I said she was worried.

“I’ll talk to her tonight,” he said.

“Should we be alarmed?”

“Alarmed may be too extreme a reaction. But after your mother’s disappearance, we should be attentive. Concerned. I may call the sleep center.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He shrugged. “Oh, I wouldn’t thank me. These days, I seem to be a study in ineffectiveness.” Over my shoulder there was a knock on the door.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“No. But I will be.”

“You and I can talk more tonight, too.” Then he motioned at the door. “Go ahead, open it,” he said.

I stood up and went to the door. In the frame was another student, a beautiful girl with clementine-colored hair cut into a bob and plate-round purple eyeglasses. I had acquaintances who dyed their hair just like that. She looked like she should be working in a store that sold vinyl records or vintage clothes.

“Ah, Sam, as always you are right on time,” my father was saying, his voice melodic and happy. “Lianna, this is Sam, a very gifted Elizabeth Bishop scholar. Sam, this is my daughter Lianna. Lianna is a very gifted”—and here he paused ever so slightly, and it left me feeling strangely insulted—“magician.”

I said hello to the girl and motioned at the seat in which I had been sitting, but she was already melting into it, kicking off her clogs and curling her feet beneath her. I tried not to read anything into how comfortable she felt around my father, but of course I did. Her socks were dainty; her jeans were tight. “You’ll be home for dinner?” I asked my father.

“Yes. Mexican wraps?”

“I can do better.”

He smiled. “You’re doing just fine. I think you’re doing great and I’m very, very proud of you.”





SRV IS SLEEP-RELATED violence.

SBS is sexual behavior in sleep.

The charges in SRV include murder and attempted murder. In SBS, there is rape. Sexual assault. Assault with intent to rape. Sexual misconduct. Indecent exposure.

In one study in The Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, the defendants who used sleepwalking as a defense for an SBS crime were acquitted nine out of ten times. The defendants who used sleepwalking as a defense for an SRV crime were acquitted four out of nine times—and the case was dropped in two others.

You take comfort in these odds if all you care about is acquittal. But someone has still been assaulted. Or raped. Or killed.





CHAPTER NINE


“OH, BOY,” SAID Paige slowly, her voice an absolute monotone. “A magic show in Montreal. Corny patter in French. Sign me up.” It was Saturday morning and she was helping me put the last of the vegetable garden to bed for the winter. I was dumping the ruins of the tomato plants—long, stringy tentacles that reminded me of the remains of the dead man o’ war jellyfish I had seen on a Florida beach as a little girl—into the wheelbarrow. I had told my father and Paige that I was going to the club with a friend from Amherst who lived in Montpelier. My father had asked whether this friend was a boy. He had seemed a little disappointed when I had said, no, it was a girl.

“English and French, probably,” I replied, correcting Paige.

“Well, corny is a universal language,” she went on, a study in sarcasm.

“You know, I don’t make fun of the things you love.”

“I love normal things.”

“And so do I.” I pulled from the earth another of the tomato cages. I was pretty sure that our mother had been all alone when she had pushed the prongs of it into the earth back in May. I would have been writing my final papers in Massachusetts and my father, most likely, had been at the college. He never helped with the garden. My mother usually planted it by herself. My mother usually did most things by herself. Even her job was far more solitary than not. It made me sad.