“In Nora’s case, stress. You’ve got a highly sensitive child here.”
So I wasn’t crazy; I was sensitive. Wasn’t sensitivity a good thing? I’d had a stress reaction to those scary men. My dad promised he’d pay them so they wouldn’t bother us. After he paid, I could go back to being sensitive and normal again.
“Are there any drugs she can take?”
“I’m afraid not. The best thing is to try and reduce her tension. Nora needs to become aware of her emotions before they get the better of her. Help her identify anxiety, fear, anger, et cetera. Some kids don’t know what they’re feeling until they’re completely overwhelmed.”
My fainting stopped as I learned to pay better attention to my feelings. But I had more sleepwalking episodes after my father came clean about his real job to my mother and their terrible fights began. I didn’t confess then, either. I was afraid it would make everything worse. The sleepwalking ramped up again when we sold our house to pay his mob debts, and as my parents went through their divorce. Then it disappeared for six years. Until I was a college sophomore.
Axel Bartlett, my boyfriend since freshman year, had just broken up with me. He said he thought we’d reached a point where we should stop dating and “just be friends.” I was stunned and hurt. “You’ve met someone else,” I wept. He vigorously denied it. But I saw him that evening in the student lounge with his arm around a girl I recognized from our Crime Reporting class.
Grace and I were roommates by then. She woke up at three a.m. the following morning and discovered me sitting on the floor of our dorm room in my nightgown with scissors in my hand. Between the blades was the hoodie Axel had taken off and insisted I wear one night when we were both freezing in Washington Square Park. “Keep it. It looks sexy on you,” he’d said.
“Nora? What the hell are you doing?” Grace told me she asked, having no idea I was asleep. I woke up then, confused and disoriented. I stared at the giant heart cut out of the front left side of the sweatshirt I held, bewildered.
“Holy shit,” Grace said. “You must be really, really angry at him.”
Finally realizing what I had done, I was appalled. I told Grace about my sleepwalking history then, distraught that the problem had returned after so long a hiatus, and that I’d acted with such aggression. Grace was incredulous. “Seriously? You were sleeping? You looked wide-awake! That’s scary. That’s supremely scary, Nora.”
“Nora Scissorhands,” was how she referred to the episode.
It was the last one. Nothing remotely like that has happened since. The doctor was right. End of puberty, end of problem. It’s been twenty-one years. If I ever wake up in the middle of the night, I’m at home in my bed like any normal person.
From the Pequod Courier
Letters to the Editor
They’re back! Nora Glasser was right. The Summer People are turning into Fall People. Did anyone else notice how many of them were treating us to their usual rudeness on Halloween weekend? A BMW cut me off for a parking space on Halloween morning. I saw a Mercedes run the red light on Pequod Avenue. (Why aren’t the police ever around when that happens?) They bought out all the candy corn at Corwin’s Market. Next thing you know, we’ll be overrun on Thanksgiving and they’ll raid the pumpkin pie. Will they steal Christmas like the Grinch? Why don’t the Summer People stay where they belong until after Memorial Day? How will we deal with them all year round?
Dawn Murphy
Pequod, NY
Chapter Six
Mad. Sad. Bad. Glad. Those were the “check-in” words Dr. Nerves recommended to help me identify if I was feeling anger, grief, shame, or happiness. I had nothing to lose by trying the technique again. As I headed toward home, I determined that I was Glad. Glad that a sunny, crisp fall morning had arrived unexpectedly after the storm. A heroic day. Blue water sparkled in the harbor. Light played on the sailboat hulls. Some of Pequod’s citizens walked their dogs on the wharf. The world turns. It really does. But I was also Sad. Hugh had died too young and in such an awful way. Who took his life? Who slaughtered both of them?
Squinting, I flipped down the visor to block the sun as I drove back over the bridge. I caught my reflection in the mirror again. That scratch had grown redder. That mysterious scratch. You never had any physical marks from sleepwalking before. There it was. I’d finally let myself hear the whisper in my psyche. Had I begun sleepwalking again? After twenty-one years without any incidents?
I tuned out the worrying voice, even as the scratch’s unexplained source gnawed at me. So did my hunger. The clock on the dashboard read 10:11 a.m. I hadn’t eaten since Mao’s Chinese take-out shrimp and broccoli the night before. Despite everything, I had an appetite. As I turned off Crooked Beach Road onto the dirt lane that led to my driveway, I looked forward to fried eggs, a hot bath and clean clothes.
I live in the Coop, as it’s known. A white clapboard chicken coop. The long, low, shoe box–like structure sits at the back edge of a former strawberry farm next to a swath of county-owned woods. The landlords are Summer Weekenders, a gay couple whose renovated 1880s farmhouse is on the other side of the property and who had returned to their city residence in early September.
They did a lovely job on the farmhouse, forgoing the typical million-dollar expansion and staying within the existing footprint. They installed solar panels, a copper roof and oversize casement windows, but those cost more than they’d budgeted, and they couldn’t fix up the Coop as they’d planned. No solar for me. I have space heaters and a Danish woodstove, along with lots of old, leaky, wood-frame, six-over-six windows that fill the Coop with clear “vodka” light. The rent is reasonable, the place is charming and has real potential, but it’s freezing in winter.
When I spotted the red Prius parked in my driveway, I almost turned the car around. Grace had used her key to let herself in. As much as I’d wanted to see her earlier, I wasn’t up for her company. I was worn out and wary of questions. Grace is an expert interviewer; I could feel the heat of her grilling already. She’d want to know where I’d been. I was reluctant to admit, even to my best friend, that I’d been spying at the scene of Hugh and Helene’s murder. And that I worried I’d been sleepwalking. And worse . . . No, that was absurd, and I refused to even think about it.
I parked and walked wearily to the front door. As I reached for the knob, the door flew open. Grace stood there talking into her phone.
“She just got here, Ben. I’ll call you later.” She hung up and threw her arms around me. “Nora. I was so worried. You heard about Hugh and Helene?”
“Yes, I did. It’s horrible.”
She released me and stepped back, scowling down at the consequence of our hug: streaks of mud from my trench coat decorated her NPR T-shirt.
“Are you okay? Where were you?”
I hesitated. Was a lie of omission still a lie?