I wanted to reward my father’s attempt to rise above his despair and show some interest in life—in my life, in my sister’s. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I had had lunch with the detective, especially given the murkiness of my mother’s relationship with the man. I still had a feeling that this needed to be a secret. So I lied to him: “I read and watched it drizzle. It was kind of heavenly.”
“You didn’t leave the house?”
“Not until I picked up Paige after school and we went to the swimming pool.”
He nodded, but said nothing more. In another life, he would have asked me what I was reading.
“Are you dreaming a lot these days? Like more than usual?” Paige was asking me.
I was sitting at my desk and smoking a bowl. The nearby window was open an inch. I had carried our portable TV with the VHS slot up to my bedroom and was watching a video of a magic show I had been given at a magic “emporium” in Somerville. The store was actually what had once been a dining and living room in a rundown house in a once-proud neighborhood that was starting to grow seedy and tired. The shop was reminiscent of a dangerously overcrowded antique store, except instead of porcelain lamps and davenport desks, piled high and crowding the sofas and chairs were brightly colored wooden boxes and metal canisters—all with politically incorrect depictions of men and women from Asia and the Middle East—and top hats and wands. Dingy paper bouquets and worn silks, their once neon colors faded with time, cascaded from the shelves that climbed high on one of the walls. I used to go there soon after I started college in Massachusetts, making the pilgrimage whenever I was anywhere near Boston. The owner, a gentleman older than my grandfather with knobbly, age-spotted hands, had once been a rather successful performer who went by Rowland the Rogue. His real name was Lindsay McCurdy, and he was nothing like a rogue in real life. He was sweet and actually a little shy at first. My grandparents lived nearby in Concord, and on one of my family visits my sophomore year I had brought my parents and Paige to Somerville to meet him. Four of my illusions had once been his, and two of them he had given to me simply because I would have tea with him when I was in the area. Like most magicians, he was a wonderful raconteur, and he would regale me with tales of his late lovers, his partners, and his assistants. But unlike many magicians—and unlike most men of his generation—he was a really thoughtful and engaged listener. Although I saw him only seasonally, in some ways he knew as much about my life as anybody. I loved his emporium. I loved him. I had sent him a note two weeks after my mother disappeared, and he had written back using one of his old, elegant fountain pens with an italic nib. The letter was beautiful. It was not precisely a letter of condolence since my mother was missing, not dead, but it was at once realistic and deeply comforting. I considered now whether I should go visit him.
“Maybe. I guess I’m dreaming more,” I answered Paige. I paused the cassette as the magician—a fellow in his midthirties, perhaps a half century younger than Rowland the Rogue—was striking a match and about to transform the flame into a live dove. Already there were two birds beside him. I wondered if I’d ever work with live animals. I had no idea how I’d care for them at college—assuming I returned to college (no, I told myself, I would, of course I would)—and then there was the whole animal rights dilemma. I was confident that PETA didn’t approve of using birds and bunnies in magic acts. I was pretty sure that I didn’t, either. But a live animal? It always left an audience awed. The rabbit in a top hat? It was iconic.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Paige wave one of her hands theatrically, as if the room were awash in teargas. There was no point in snuffing the bowl now. I didn’t like to smoke around Paige, but I was busted. I might as well finish it. My sister was in her pajamas and had appeared rather suddenly in the doorway to my bedroom. “Why do you ask?”
“Sometimes I worry I’m going to wind up like Mom.”
Instantly I understood how the question was connected to our mother’s disappearance. My kid sister’s worries were crazy, but she still needed reassurance.
“I wouldn’t fret even a teeny bit,” I said finally. “Pardon the bad pun, but I would lose exactly zero sleep over that.”
“A person who has a parent who sleepwalks is ten times more likely to sleepwalk than someone who doesn’t.”
I knew there was a genetic component because of those incidents I’d had as a little girl. But ten times? Clearly Paige had found the statistic on a website or in a library book. Maybe she had come across it in our own Mayo Clinic Family Health Book, the doorstop of choice for hypochondriacs everywhere. The number was meaningless, I presumed, and I was certain that I would still believe it was meaningless even if I hadn’t lit up a few minutes ago.
“Well, then: I was the one who got it,” I said, hoping this would be comforting.
“Yeah, right. How many times did you actually get out of bed? Twice? Three times?”
“It was more than that. Way more than that. At least that’s what they tell me. I think it went on for two years.”
“Mostly you just sat up in bed and didn’t recognize Mom and Dad.”