Tips for Living(21)

“Nothing, kiddo.”

When we reached the theater, he pulled into the back lot and surveyed our surroundings nervously before parking the car.

“Really, what are you looking for?”

“Let’s hurry so we score some popcorn before the trailers start,” he said, ignoring my question.

We went into the lobby and joined the concession line. The men walked in seconds later. There were two of them in sharp-looking overcoats, sunglasses and shiny shoes. The tall one unhooked the velvet rope. Nobody behind us said a word when they cut the line, I think because of the bullying energy they gave off. I grabbed my dad’s hand, intimidated.

“Hello, Nathan,” said the short one with the newspaper rolled up under his arm. He had a small, pointy head with a lot of dark, fine facial hair. Like a rat. How did my father even know this man?

“Hello, Brizzi.”

“Have we done something to offend?”

“No, not a thing. We’re all good here.”

Brizzi leaned down until his face was inches from mine. He stank of cigarettes, and his teeth had brown stains. There were tiny pimples on the pale skin around his wispy moustache. My father tightened his sweaty grip on my hand. I squeezed back, afraid.

“You think your father is telling the truth?” he hissed.

“Please. Leave her out of it,” my father whispered, sounding desperate, which only increased my alarm.

“He says he’s not upset with us. So why do you think he’s been avoiding us? Not answering our phone calls? Not showing up for our appointments? Not very polite, is he? Could it be he’s forgotten his debts?”

Now I was petrified.

“She’s only a kid. Please.”

Brizzi straightened up and touched his sunglasses. He sucked in air between his teeth, took the rolled-up newspaper and tapped my father’s chest.

“Because you asked nicely, we’ll just have a brief mano a mano out there,” he said, aiming his paper across the lobby toward a metal door marked EMERGENCY EXIT.

The taller man, who had a shiny, hairless head and was built like a giant thumb, unhooked the black velvet rope from the stand again and gestured for my father to walk through the opening.

“Wait here, Nora.” My father released my hand. I tried to take it again, but he waved me back. His voice was sterner than usual, his face tight. “We’re just going to talk for a minute.”

The men flanked him as the three walked across the royal-blue carpet. I looked on helplessly, my heart thundering in my chest. Before they reached the exit, my father glanced back at me. He had that look in his eyes, like the soldier in the Tarzan film who slipped into a pool of quicksand. When the sand reached his chin, he stopped yelling and struggling, but his eyes still screamed—the way my father’s were screaming right then.

I felt like I was going to explode and collapse all at once. I wanted to save him, but my feet were lead. My skin felt hot, and then someone turned the lights out. The next thing I knew, I was floating on my back in an ocean of blue carpet looking up at concerned but unfamiliar faces. Until my father pushed through them. He knelt down and cradled my head, searching my eyes with a pained expression.

“Kiddo, kiddo, kiddo,” he said.



I’d been afraid to wake my parents the night of that first sleepwalking incident. They’d ask a lot of questions. It could lead to telling them how anxious I was about those horrible men. My father was in enough trouble already. He’d begged me not to say anything to my mother about what happened at the movie theater. How could I speak of it without betraying him? I went back to bed, but I lay there with eyes pinned open. The next day, I was sapped.

The following night, I woke up standing in the kitchen. The house was dark except for bright moonlight coming through the white eyelet curtains on the windows. So quiet I could hear the crickets outside and the faint hum of the clock on the wall oven. The clock said 1:12 a.m. There was an open kitchen drawer. On the counter above it, something slender and silver glinted in the moonlight. My mother’s favorite Wüsthof carving knife. Her largest and sharpest carver of flesh. Someone had taken it out of its velvet-lined case in the kitchen drawer. Did I do that, too? My twitching gut said yes. I put the knife back and tiptoed up to bed.

I stayed awake and worried again. If I told my mom, she would be so angry with my father, she’d divorce him. Maybe I should talk to Aunt Lada? I would be staying at her apartment in the city that weekend—one of the rare occasions my mother let her babysit. She thought Aunt Lada was a questionable influence. “That Ukrainian boyfriend of hers? Does he even work? And they both smoke those disgusting cigarettes.” Balkan Sobranies. “God bless the stink of Minsk,” Lada would say whenever she lit one up. Lada has never been to Minsk. She’s only seen pictures my Minskian grandfather took.

But I didn’t speak of it to Lada when I arrived—you can’t just launch into something like that. I’ll try at dinner, I thought. No. I’ll say something after we watch our television shows. The big perk at Lada’s was staying up late with her, watching television shows.

Sybil. Of all the movies that could have aired that night, an old TV movie called Sybil was on. The story of a woman with multiple personalities. A woman who had other people living inside her who did things she never would.

“You’ll get nightmares. She’s bezumny,” Aunt Lada explained as she turned the television off before the second commercial—after Sybil had punched her hand through a glass window during one of her episodes.