The Sleepwalker(79)
“You’re right,” my grandfather said. “After all, look how well she did with Paige!” He was joking, of course, a reference to the simple reality that my sister was something of an athletic outlier among us. But boyish? Not Paige. It was an offhand remark about one of his granddaughters that was nonsensical, and maybe another day I would have let it go. Looking back, my father certainly planned to. But I didn’t.
“Since when is it boyish to be a great athlete? Kind of a sexist thing to say, don’t you think, Grandpa?” I asked, and I put my arm around Paige’s shoulder, squeezing it through the down of her parka. I was hoping to convey solidarity, nothing more.
“You’re right! I am showing my age. I’m sorry, Paige,” he said.
But Paige surprised me; she probably surprised us all. She ducked out from under my arm, pulling away swiftly, and stood with her back to the gallery glass. “I don’t need you to defend me,” she snapped, setting her jaw stubbornly. “And I don’t need you to say you’re sorry, Grandpa. I just don’t. Mom…”
“Mom what?” I asked. All of us—my grandfather, my father, and I—waited.
“Mom knew me better than anyone,” she said, and she shook her head, a little disgusted with the three of us. “And I knew her better than anyone.” Then she used her fingers to brush her windblown black hair back behind her ears and glared at us, her head lowered ever so slightly. I almost told her she was beautiful when she was mad—because she was—but I didn’t dare say another word.
The rest of my family returned to Concord late that Friday afternoon, but I stayed in Boston and met my college friend Erica, whose family lived in Brookline; she’d taken the Green Line into town but said she would drive me back to my grandparents’ after we had a drink. She was twenty-one now, too, and it felt very grown-up to be able to meet at a bar in Boston and each of us have a glass of wine. Erica had never been the stoner I was, though she drank considerably more keg beer at college than I ever did. I had seen her once since we had left Amherst in May, and that had been at my mother’s funeral. We hadn’t gotten to speak very much that day; she had driven up from the college that morning and driven back that afternoon.
We met at five thirty outside the bar, arriving there at almost the same moment, and when we peered inside from the doorway we saw beneath a galaxy of Christmas lights that it was packed shoulder to shoulder with raucous people in their twenties and thirties, and it was so loud it would be impossible to have a meaningful conversation. There was no place to sit. We would get hit on by young stockbrokers and young advertising executives, and it was absolutely no place for a real reunion. We left and started walking aimlessly down Boylston toward the library and Copley Square, and it was dusk and the streetlamps were beautiful. It felt like it might snow.
I noticed that Erica didn’t want to talk about college, changing the subject gracefully whenever I mentioned what had once been our shared world. I could tell she felt bad that I wasn’t coming back in the spring: it was as if she were leaving me behind. But when she brought up my mother’s death, trying to deflect my inquiries about her thesis or our mutual friends, I brushed her aside. I needed a respite after last night’s videocassettes and the fact that I had just spent all day with my family. So she actually asked me about my magic, feigning interest in the children’s parties that—other than Gavin and the local elementary school and the ski slopes—were the only part of my life that existed outside of the red Victorian. I looked at her and raised an eyebrow. My magic, it seemed to me that moment, was ridiculous. Lianna the Enchantress was ridiculous.
“I miss watching you practice!” she insisted, and I thought about all the times I had made her watch me make scarves disappear in ornate little boxes or paper flowers appear in what had been empty glass vases. I stood up straighter as we strolled; suddenly I was afraid I was collapsing in upon myself, shrinking with sadness and loss. I wanted Gavin, I realized, I wanted that feeling of anticipation I had when I knew I was going to see him; I wanted that rush I felt when I was back in his arms.
“I think my sister will have a stroke if she hears me one more time,” I said, and I could sense how remote I sounded.
Erica said nothing in response—really, what was there to say?—and it’s possible that our friendship might have begun to evaporate forever right there on Boylston Street. We had lost all commonality, and now we would just grow apart. But then an empty cab stopped at the traffic light, and Erica abruptly pulled me inside it.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“One of my friends from high school is having a party. She has her own apartment now in Cambridge.”
“Really? I won’t know anyone.”
“Doesn’t matter. It will be good for you. It will be good for us.”
The taxi smelled of beer even worse than the bar, and when I looked down I saw why: an empty Heineken bottle was on its side, the last of its contents on the floor mat. When the cabbie accelerated through the light, the bottle rolled against the bottom of the seat and tinkled with a weirdly appropriate holiday-season cheer. The driver heard it, swore in a language I didn’t recognize, and stopped at the next red light. There he climbed out, opened the back door, and grabbed the bottle with the urgency of a mother plucking a child from harm’s way on a busy city street. He was furious. He slammed our door and dropped the bottle into a metal garbage can on the corner—or, to be precise, smashed it into the garbage can. We could hear it break even inside the vehicle. When he got back in, he turned to us and said, his dark eyes piercing us with rage, “My cab is not a speakeasy. No drinking, do you two understand?”