The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian

I WAS FOLDING laundry on the living room floor Monday morning, listening to music as I worked, when I heard the doorbell. I saw it was the minister and ushered the woman into the house. I was relieved—no, I was downright proud—that the kitchen was clean: I had loaded the dishwasher and sponged off the counters after I had gotten Paige off to the school bus and our father had left for the college. Katherine Edwards had been the pastor at the church for at least twenty-five years, a little longer than my parents had lived in Bartlett. She was wearing khakis and a navy cardigan sweater, but her wire-rim eyeglasses still suggested “attorney” to me. The woman’s hair looked a little more gray than some days, but her eyes had their usual sparkle. She was smiling, but all that did was remind me that I had been hungover in Gavin Rikert’s bed yesterday morning when this woman was preaching at the church maybe a third of a mile away from where we were standing right now. I punched the stop button on the CD player.

  “I just thought I would see how you’re doing,” she asked me. “Your dad home?”

  “No, he’s already off to Middlebury. Do you want some coffee or tea? I think we even have apple cider.”

  “I’m fine. I just came from a breakfast meeting. Your dad called the other day, and I said I’d drop by.”

  I was almost incredulous at the idea of my father phoning the minister, but kept my surprise to myself. “What about?” I asked simply.

  “Your mother—of course.”

  “Of course.” I motioned at the front hall behind me. “Want to come in? I was just finishing the laundry. My very exciting life.”

  “I will, thank you.” She started to slip off her pumps, but I told her that wasn’t necessary. The pastor took one of the barstools around the kitchen island, and I took another.

  “You’re a good egg,” Katherine said. “You’re taking wonderful care of Paige and your dad, I can tell.”

  “I guess. Who knew I was such a nurturer?”

  “I gather there’s no news about your mom. That was the impression I got from your dad.”

  “Can you tell me more about why he called? I mean, was it something specific about my mom?”

  “Oh, it was a very brief conversation.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “You have a magic show next weekend, don’t you?” she asked, instead of answering the question.

  I nodded. “Eliza Bowen’s birthday party. Thank you again for that lead.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “Not really. She’s three years younger than Paige.”

  “Well, be warned. She’s a hellion in Sunday school, I hear. Her teacher dreads class some mornings. So…don’t thank me for the lead just yet.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  The woman gazed at me a little more intensely. “Tell me honestly: What do you need? What can I do? What can the church do?”

  I looked away; I couldn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “I must admit, I feel the deacons haven’t done enough, I feel I haven’t done enough. My husband definitely doesn’t feel any of us have done enough.” Her husband was a therapist, but I wasn’t sure where his practice was. They had twin sons a few years older than me. One, I knew, was in grad school. The other? I had no idea.

  “I’m being totally serious: I don’t know what I need. I don’t know what we need. I just don’t. I mean, we don’t even go to church. I’m surprised my dad called you.”

  The minister shrugged. “Is that it?”

  “No. But I feel bad.”

  “This isn’t about that. No quid pro quo, I promise.”

  “Do you think there’s any chance she’s still alive? Is it crazy to hope?”

  “You’re talking to someone who spends her Sundays telling people to have faith…”

  “I hear a but coming.”

  “But I don’t think it’s likely. I’m sorry, Lianna.”

  I looked at the stack I had made of my sister’s folded shirts. “So she’s in heaven,” I murmured.

  “Yes. Absolutely. No buts there.”

  “Even though we don’t really go to church.”

  “Again: no quid pro quo.”

  “I had an interdisciplinary course last year about heaven. Philosophy and religion. There were some versions of heaven where my mom would have been much happier than others.”

  “Well, heaven on earth for her was always you and your sister. I hope you know that. Your mom once said you were the most good-natured little girl on the planet. It was after one of her miscarriages. She told me she felt guilty about wanting another baby so badly.”

  I thought about this. My mother certainly knew Katherine, but I couldn’t recall the two of them ever speaking about anything of consequence. Had she actually reached out to the pastor? “My mom told you about the miscarriages?”

  “Yes. A miscarriage isn’t a state secret,” she said. Her eyes went soft and she took one of my hands in both of hers. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. And one time I happened to be at the hospital visiting someone else and I saw your mom was there. She had four?”

  “Five,” I corrected her. God, it was just so many, I thought. So very many.

  “Anyway, she did talk to me about it. About them. She said she’d loved being a sister, and wanted you to have a sibling. And she really enjoyed being a mom. But I think she always wanted to be sure that you knew how much you were loved, too.”

  “I never doubted it.”

  “How many times did you save her life? Twice? Three times?”

  “That’s how rumors get started. It was just the once—that night on the bridge. And maybe I just saved her from a broken leg.”

  “Rumors are awful things,” said the minister, and she sounded a little exasperated. She released my hand and sat back on the barstool. Something about her tone caused me to tense.

  “What rumors are out there about my mom?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what she was referring to, but I assumed the stories involved my mother’s sleepwalking.

  “It’s all just gossip. It’s all meaningless.”

  “Nothing that’s awful is meaningless. If something is awful, it has power. It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It still has power.”

  Katherine folded her arms across her chest. “You are a very wise girl.”

  “Curious, mostly.”

  “You’ve probably heard this,” she began, her voice hesitant, “but some people think she was meeting someone the night she died.”

  “Yup. I know there are rumors out there that she just ran off—you know, left Dad and Paige and me—which is crazy.”

  “Those ones are crazy, I agree. Just think of how much she loved you and Paige. And while the idea she was meeting someone is unlikely, I can see why that one has legs. There’s no sin as much fun as adultery, is there?”

  “Are there any names?”

  “No.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  I didn’t believe her. I had the distinct sense that either she was shielding me or was simply unwilling to gossip. “What about my dad?” I asked, trying a different tack.

  “What about him?”

  I shrugged, hoping it would make my question seem more casual. “Are there any rumors about him?”

  She shook her head and dropped her gaze for a fleeting second. Then she looked up and sighed. “Fine. If you must know, there’s one story swirling around that your mother was with a woman from the college the night she disappeared. Supposedly, your father was having an affair and the woman just showed up at your house. Didn’t know your father was out of town. She knocked on the door in the middle of the night, and something happened.”

  “God,” I mumbled, and then added quickly, “Sorry.” I had never considered that my mother might have been challenged by another woman. The other woman. I thought of the Elizabeth Bishop scholar with the clementine-colored hair. Sam. Samantha. I recalled the girl in the cosmonaut T-shirt on my father’s side of the desk. Did he flirt with students my age? Of course he did. But until I h
ad watched those other girls make themselves at home in his office, I would have presumed an affair would have been with a woman closer to his age than mine. Perhaps I was wrong.

  “It’s okay,” Katherine said, and she smiled. “But don’t believe it. It’s just a story.”

  “I guess.”

  “Your mother would be very, very proud of you. I hope you know that. She’d be very proud of all you’re doing for your dad and Paige.”

  “She’d also be frustrated that I wasn’t back at school. She’d be feeling guilty about that.”

  “Maybe.”

  “So, why did my dad call you?”

  Katherine smiled a little enigmatically, and then nodded. “We’re back there, aren’t we?”

  “It can’t be any weirder than the stuff we’ve already talked about. It just can’t.”

  “Your father is looking for closure. He’s not sure what that means, which is why he wanted to talk.”

  “Closure?”

  “At some point, it may be time for a memorial service—with or without your mom’s body. That’s what your dad wanted to discuss. He wanted my opinion about timing. About when. About when—”

  “My dad is not real religious,” I snapped, cutting her off and surprising us both with my vehemence. But the idea of a memorial service irritated me. The word closure annoyed me.

  “No, he’s not,” she agreed, responding to my pique with unflappability. “I believe he was thinking about the community. About her friends. About your grandparents. Your aunt. About you and Paige. He was thinking about how none of you have been allowed to grieve.”

  “She hasn’t been gone all that long. It’s been a month and three days.”

  “You’re right. And I didn’t mean to suggest that your dad had given up hope. All hope. I probably shouldn’t have said anything. He just wanted to start a…a dialogue about when it might be time. You need to mourn. You deserve to mourn. You need to heal.” The woman was saying more, trying to explain what she was thinking and what my father might have been thinking, but I was no longer listening. I looked out the kitchen window at the trees behind our house. It was only the twenty-fifth of September, and already this year a few were as bare as the middle of winter. I wondered if it was because we’d had so little rain.

  An idea had begun to form in my mind when the minister had alluded to the rumors and innuendo that had followed my mother into the night: I needed a gossip. I needed someone who, unlike the pastor, lacked any sort of filter—someone who talked to a lot of people and would have no reluctance to share with me the hearsay that Katherine wouldn’t. And that person existed behind the deli case at the Bartlett General Store, the woman who had made for my family all those Mexican wraps that autumn. Her name was Peggy and she had a son in the marines and a daughter in the navy, and she absolutely loved to chat. She wasn’t mean-spirited, but neither was she especially circumspect.

  She was, as I hoped, alone behind the deli counter making sandwiches and wraps when I stopped by the store later that morning. The owner, a woman my grandmother’s age who had bought the store with her husband well before I was born and still showed no signs of slowing down, was behind the front register, laughing with a pair of linemen for the power company.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this early in the day,” Peggy said, smiling, when she saw me.

  “A first, right?” I agreed.

  She was slicing tomatoes and stopped to ask if I wanted the usual. I said sure and watched her go to work on the wraps. As she did, she asked if I’d had a nice weekend and how my father and Paige were doing. I said they were hanging in there and then volunteered that I had gone to Montreal to see a magic show.

  “With your sister?” she asked.

  “No. I was with a friend from school.”

  “Boy?” she asked hopefully.

  “No. Just a friend.”

  She looked disappointed and it seemed this was my moment. I leaned in and said conspiratorially—lowering my voice—“Can I ask you something?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “Have you heard any stories about my mom in the last month or so?”

  “Like what?”

  “You see people. You know people. People talk to you,” I said, hoping to flatter her.

  “They do. People will say anything here some days.”

  “I’ll bet they do,” I agreed.

  “They always ask me if we have any news about your mom. You know, because we have a police scanner.” I nodded. Of course they did. The store was the communications hub for the village. Prior to cell phones and the digital age, we would actually leave messages for each other at the front register. Even now, in the year 2000, if you had to leave town in a hurry and needed someone to milk your three-hundred-pound llama, you dropped by the store. If you simply had to know why the fire engines just left the station, you gave the store a ring. And if you wanted the very latest on that missing Annalee Ahlberg, here was the source.

  “Things like sightings?” I asked.

  “Oh, sure. And everyone who was out looking for her that first day wants to know if we’ve heard something. Anything. They feel sort of an investment. Especially Donnie.”

  “Donnie Hempstead?” I asked. “Why Donnie?” I recalled that he was among the first people my father had asked me to call after I’d told him that my mother was missing.

  She looked around uneasily. “I don’t really want to go there, Lianna.”

  “Why?”

  “No.”

  “Please?”

  “You really don’t know?”

  I waited. Finally she shook her head, self-conscious, and fiddled with the tie of her apron. “There are stories—none true, I am quite sure—that your mother was meeting him.”

  I was stunned but tried not to show it. “You mean the night she disappeared?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Because people think the two of them were having an affair?”

  “Some people. Not me,” said Peggy. “I know it’s ridiculous. It’s just crazy.”

  When I thought of Donnie now, I thought first of the tall, athletic fellow with a trim beard in blue jeans and a white T-shirt, a radio on his hip, the day my mother disappeared. He was a volunteer firefighter, too, and some sort of money manager by day. He had a couple of boys, one in the elementary school and one in Paige’s class in the middle school. He traveled a bit, I believed, but he worked mostly from his home. My mother liked him; she liked his wife, Erin, too. The three of them were on the same schedule at the gym. She had designed the aqua solarium addition to their home: a dome big enough to house three chaise lounges, a glass table, and a heated saltwater pool a dozen feet in diameter.

  “They were just friends,” I said.

  “Of course they were. And she was just friends with Justin Bryce. But there are rumors about him, too.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I know.”

  “His wife, Marilyn, was one of my mom’s best friends,” I reminded her. I didn’t add that I couldn’t imagine my mother with a balding foodie who thought French fries in a blue cheese sauce was haute cuisine.

  “I remember.”

  “My mom was a sleepwalker,” I said, hoping I sounded definitive. I regretted coming here; I regretted what I had begun. This had been a mistake. “The parasomnia occurred when she was alone—when my dad was away. My dad was gone that night in August and she went sleepwalking. We both know that’s what happened. That’s all that happened.”

  “I agree, Lianna. I agree. But you asked me. People like to talk. I probably shouldn’t have said anything,” she said, and she stared down at the ingredients on the cutting board in front of her.

  “Do the police know about these rumors?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Did you tell them?”

  She looked up and met my eyes. “They never asked me,” she said, and she sounded disappointed.

  When I got home, I took the three wraps she had made for me an
d threw them away. It would be a long time before I would be able to bring myself to return to the store.

  “I’m too old to go trick-or-treating,” Paige said to me as we drove home from the pool Monday evening. She had been trying to stuff her wet towel into her swim bag, and had just given up and tossed it into the backseat.

  “You’re twelve,” I reminded her, though I understood that seventh grade was about the last year that kids in our community took the night seriously. I had been suggesting costumes. I recalled how two years ago our mother had worked with Paige to transform the girl into a tombstone angel. I had been at college, but our mother had taken lots of photos. The costume demanded what must have been vats of gray acrylic paint, because it had to smother an ankle-length white dress—gathered to look like a robe—an iconic drama mask (tragedy), toy store wings, and a wig. Annalee Ahlberg had loved Halloween, and I recalled fondly all the years my mother had taken me trick-or-treating, and all the costumes she had designed. I had been an octopus one year and a spider the next, the great papier-mâché legs recycled from the previous year’s sea creature. When I had been Artemis, my mother had sewn the costume herself and found me a spectacular bow and arrow from a client in an archery club. One year, when I was in first grade, the two of us went out together on Halloween night as mother-and-daughter devils. I was six, and it was only from the photos I would study later that it dawned on me that my mother had been having fun with the idea of a hot mom: the mama devil costume was skin tight and sexy as hell.

  “I just don’t feel like it,” Paige grumbled.

  “Well, it’s not even October first. You might in a few weeks.”

  “Nope.”

  “Is it that I’m not Mom?”

  “No.”

  “Because I can help you come up with something awesome. I mean, obviously I’m not Mom. Halloween was kind of her thing. But I’m not a moron.”

  “You’ll just put me in a belly shirt like a harem girl.”

  “God, you sound like—” I stopped myself midsentence.

  “I sound like who?”

  “I wasn’t going to say anyone in particular. I was going to say you sounded cranky. That’s all.” I kept my eyes on the meandering two-lane road up the hill into Bartlett, the asphalt paralleling the Gale River, but I felt Paige staring at me. My sister didn’t believe me. “How much homework do you have tonight?” I asked, changing the subject.