The little sleep: a novel

by Paul Tremblay

  I say, “So what’s with the Bozo the Clown getup?”

  Ellen walks into the kitchen. “I was shooting some kid’s portrait today and the little bastard wouldn’t stop crying until I put the pants on.” When Ellen isn’t her force-of-nature self in my apartment, she lives in the old family bungalow in Osterville, a small tourist haven on the Cape. In downtown Osterville she has a photography studio and antiques shop. She shoots kids, weddings, graduation pictures. Nothing fancy. She’s been doing it since my father died.

  “Wouldn’t a red nose and a horn get the job done? Maybe one of those flowers that shoots out water. You need to rely on cliché a little more.”

  “What, you’re an expert now? I got the shots.” She plays with her clown pants, pulling them up at the knee, making mini circus tents. “I need to change.” Ellen abruptly disappears into my bedroom and shuts the door.

  I pick up the cigarette butt off the floor and try to tidy things up a bit, putting dirty glasses and dishes in the sink, stacking magazines, moving dust around. I eyeball the couch to make sure it’s not still burning.

  I check my cell phone again, even though I’ve already checked for messages. Why wouldn’t she call me back? If this is supposed to be some super-special double-secret case, it’s not going to work out. The sleeping me should’ve told her thanks-but-no-thanks when she dumped those pictures on me. The sleeping me is just so irresponsible on my behalf.

  Earlier, I did a cursory Web search, reading blogs and message boards, finding no hint or threat of the existence of the photos, or a stalker, or a potential blackmailer. Everything from her camp seems as controlled and wholesome as can be. No one has even posted fake nudes of Jennifer yet, which is usually an instantaneous Internet occurrence once there’s a new female celebrity. I don’t get the lack of buzz. The irony is that if I posted the pictures, I’d likely be helping her career, but I’m not her agent.

  Ellen emerges from the bedroom. Her shoulder-length gray hair is tied up and she has on her black-framed glasses, thick lenses that enlarge her eyes. She’s still wearing the clown pants but has on a gray sweatshirt over LITHUANIA.

  I say, “Are you going to take my picture later? Maybe tie me up some balloon animals? I want a giraffe, a blue one.”

  She says, “Everyone at the Lithuanian Club will get a kick out of the pants. And they are comfortable. Nice and roomy.” She walks by and punches my shoulder. “So, should we do something for dinner?” Ellen never makes dinner a declarative statement. She’s earnest in the illusion of a choice being offered. It’s not that I can’t say no. I never have a reason to do so.

  I say, “Something sounds delicious, Ellen.” I have a gut feeling the case is slipping away, and if I let it get away I’ll be screwing up something important. This is my shot, my chance to be something more than Ellen’s charity-case son who works on glorified have-you-seen-my-lost-puppy cases and sleeps his days away in front of his computer.

  So let’s skip from plan B down to plan X. I know that Jennifer’s father, the DA, grew up in Southie and is around the same age as Ellen. Maybe, a long-shot maybe, she knows something about Jennifer, the first bread crumb in the trail.

  I say, “Hey, do you still watch American Star?” Plan X: asking Ellen delicate no-I’m-not-working-on-anything-really questions to defibrillate my dying case. I don’t have a plan Y or Z.

  Ellen looks at me funny, like I stepped in something and she’s not sure if she should admit she smells it. She says, “You’re kidding, right? I don’t miss a show. Never have missed a show in five seasons.”

  I know that, of course. She’s obsessed with American Star. She watched the first two seasons from Osterville and still had me tape all the episodes here.

  She says, “Why do you ask? Are you telling me that you’re finally watching it too?”

  I shrug. Shoulders don’t lie. My fedora doesn’t hide enough of my hairy face. It’s the proverbial only-a-mother-could-love face because the mug was reshuffled partway through the game. Ellen hasn’t once suggested that I shave. That means what it means.

  I say, “The show is kind of hard to avoid now. I had it on the other night, but I fell asleep.” Ellen is waiting for more, so I add, “Been hearing stuff about the local girl. She’s the DA’s kid right?”

  Ellen smiles. “I might be crazy, but it sounds like you’re pumping me for information. If you got something to ask, just come out and ask it. I’ll help. You know I want to help.”

  I can’t. I can’t let her know that I’m working on a case that potentially involves extensive fieldwork. Leaving the apartment and going out by myself. There will be no dealing with any of that conversation. She wants to be supportive only as long as I’m safe in the apartment.

  I say, “Nothing like that. Just having a conversation, Ellen. For someone who wears clown pants, you’re tightly wound.”

  Ellen goes into the kitchen and roots around in the freezer. She says, “Yes, she’s his daughter. She’s—what, about ten years younger than you?”

  Might as well be fifty years younger. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Ellen says, “There’s nothing good in there,” and closes the freezer. “I didn’t have time to pick up anything. We’ll have to go out. At least I’m dressed for it, right?”

  I stand in the kitchen doorway, holding up the frame. “Isn’t DA Times from Southie originally?” A softball question, one I know she can’t resist.

  “Hell yeah, he’s from Southie. He still owns a brownstone at the end of East Broadway. He doesn’t stay there anymore though. He rents it out.”

  “Do you know him at all?”

  “I know him well. Or knew him well, anyway. Billy Times and your father were close, used to pal around as kids. They lived in the same building in Harbor Point.”

  She hits the softball out of the park. Her answer isn’t what I was expecting. Not at all. I talk even slower than normal, making sure I don’t mess anything up, stacking the words on the kitchen table like bricks, making a wall; maybe it’ll protect me. “Really? You never told me that before.”

  Ellen says, “Come on. I’ve told you that before.”

  “No. You haven’t.” I’m not offering subterfuge here. I’m more likely to find Spanish doubloons in a handful of loose change than get nuggets of info concerning my father, Tim, from Ellen. She’s miserly with it, hoards it all for herself. I stopped asking questions a long time ago.

  “That can’t be right.” Ellen is trying for a light, jovial, fluffy-banter tone, but it’s faltering. “You just forgot.” She adds that last bit as an afterthought, each word decreasing in volume. The sentence runs out of gas, sputters, and shuts off. The sentence goes to sleep. Everything goes to sleep if you wait long enough.

  Now, what she said is not fair. Yeah, I forget stuff all the time, but she can’t pass off years of silence and daddy awkwardness on the narcoleptic me like that. I’d call her on the cheap shot, but that’s another argument I don’t want right now. Need that primed pump to keep spilling. I say, “Cute. So Tim and the DA were BFFs and wore each other’s varsity jackets?”

  “Yes, actually, they were best friends but no jackets.” Ellen laughs, but I’m not quite sure why. Nothing is that funny. “Those two used to be inseparable, always causing trouble. Nothing big, you know, typical Southie boys who thought they were tougher than they were.” She waves her hand, like she’s clearing the air of more smoke. Further details won’t be forthcoming unless I keep pecking away at her.

  Okay. This goes a long way toward explaining how Jennifer Times landed in my office with her slide show. Her daddy can’t take the case because people talk, word gets out, media sniffing around the DA, especially with his flavor-of-the-minute daughter smiling and primping all over the airwaves. So Daddy DA has Jennifer take her blackmail case, which is as sticky and messy as an ice cream cone on a summer Sunday, to an unknown lower-than-low profile investigator in South Boston, family friend and all that, a schlub willing to do all kinds of favors and keep things quie
t with a capital Q, all in the name of his own dear old dad. This makes sense, but the only problem is I don’t know any of this. I’m guessing. Maybe I was told a few days ago while the doctor wasn’t in. Or maybe I wasn’t told anything. Maybe …

  “Hey, Mark!”

  “What?” My body catches itself in mid-slide against the wall. Heavy feet move to get my weight back over them. They’re neither graceful nor quiet. They kick a kitchen chair and clap against the hardwood floor. Don’t know what my feet have against the floor, but they’re always trying to get away.

  Ellen is now sitting at the kitchen table, smoking one of my cigarettes. She says, “You were getting ready to go out, Mark.” She won’t say sleep. Not around me.

  As difficult as it is to cobble together some dignity after almost falling asleep mid-conversation, I try to patch it up. I’ve had a lot of practice. I say, “Would the DA recognize the Genevich name, you think?”

  “Of course. There’s no way he’d forget your father.” Ellen leans forward fast, stubs out her cigarette like she’s killing a pesky ant. She’s adding everything together and doesn’t like the sum. She’s going to tell me about it too. “Why do you care? What’s going on here, Mark? There’s something you’re not telling me. You better not be messing around with stuff that requires involvement with the DA. Leave that shit to the people who carry guns.”

  “Relax. There’s nothing going on. It’s just this all might be useful information. I’m supposed to ask questions for a living, right? Besides, a guy in my line of work having a potential family friend in the big office could help my cause.”

  Ellen stands up. Chair falls down. She’s not buying any of it. “What cause?”

  I like that she’s so riled up, on edge. She doesn’t know for sure I’m working on a case, but even she can sense something big is going on. It’s real. It’s legit. And thanks to her, I finally have my breadcrumb trail, or at least one crumb. I sit down at the table, take off my hat, run my fingers through my thinning hair.

  “I was speaking figuratively, Ellen. My general cause. Or someday, when I have a cause.” I wink, which is a mistake. My face doesn’t have a wink setting anymore.

  “You’re being awful strange tonight.” She says it to the table. I’m supposed to hear her but not give anything back. Fair enough.

  Worry lines march all around Ellen’s face, and not in formation. She taps the all-but-empty pack of cigarettes with her wedding ring. Tim Genevich is twenty-five years dead, and Ellen still wears the ring. Does she wear it out of habit, superstition, or true indefinable loss, so the loss is right there in plain sight, her life’s pain waving around for anyone to see? The ring as her dead husband, as Tim. My father on her hand.

  I lean over and snatch the last cigarette out of the pack. Ellen stops tapping with Tim. I light up and inhale as much smoke as I can, then I take in a little more. Exhale, and then I do some reiterating, just to be clear in our communication.

  I say, “Don’t worry, Clowny. I have no cause. The DA and I are just gonna get acquainted.

  SIX

  Tim was a landscaper, caretaker, winterizer of summer cottages, and a handyman, and he died on the job. He was in the basement of someone else’s summer home, fighting through cobwebs and checking fuses and the sump pump, when he had an explosion in his brain, an aneurysm. I guess us Genevich boys don’t have a lot of luck in the brain department.

  Three days passed and no one found him. He didn’t keep an appointment book or anything like that, and he left his car at our house and rode his bike to work that morning, so Ellen had no idea where he was. He was an official missing person. Got his name in the paper, and for a few days everyone knew who Tim Genevich was.

  The owners of the cottage found him when they came down to the Cape for Memorial Day weekend. The basement bulkhead was open. Tim was lying facedown on the dirt floor. He had a fuse in his hand. I was five years old, and while I’m told I was at the funeral and wake, I don’t remember any of it.

  I don’t remember much of Tim. Memories of him have faded to the edges, where recollection and wish fulfillment blur, or they have been replaced, co-opted by images from pictures. I hate pictures.

  Too much time has passed since my own brain-related accident, too many sleeps between. Every time I sleep—doesn’t matter how long I’m out—puts more unconscious space between myself and the events I experienced, because every time I wake up it’s a new day. Those fraudulent extra days, weeks, years add up. So while my everyday time shrinks, it also gets longer. I’m Billy Pilgrim and Rip Van Winkle at the same time, and Tim died one hundred years ago.

  That said, I do have a recurring dream of my father. He’s in our backyard in Osterville. He puts tools back in the shed, then emerges with a hand trowel. Tim was shorter than Ellen, a little bent, and he loved flannel. At least, that’s what he looks like in my dreams.

  Tim won’t let me go in the shed. I’m too young. There are too many tools, too many ways to hurt myself. I need to be protected. He gives me a brown paper bag, grocery-sized, and a pat on the head. He encourages me to sing songs while we walk around the yard picking up dog shit. We don’t have a dog, but all the neighborhood dogs congregate here. Tim guesses a dog’s name every time he picks up some shit. The biggest poops apparently come from a dog named Cleo.

  The song I always sing, in my dreams and my memories, is “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Tim then sings it back to me with different lyrics, mixing in his dog names and poop and words that rhyme with poop. He doesn’t say shit around the five-year-old me, at least not on purpose. The dream me, the memory me—that kid is the same even if he never really existed, and that kid laughs at the silly improvised song but then sings “Ball Game” correctly, restoring balance and harmony to the universe.

  Our two-bedroom bungalow is on a hill and the front yard has a noticeable slant, so we have to stand lopsided to keep from falling. We clean the yard, then we walk behind the shed to the cyclone-fenced area of weeds, tall grass, and pricker bushes that gives way to a grove of trees between our property and the next summer home about half a block away. Tim takes the paper bag from me, it’s heavy with shit, and he dumps it out, same spot every time. He says “Bombs away” or “Natural fertilizer” or something else that’s supposed to make a five-year-old boy laugh.

  Then we walk to the shed. Tim opens the doors. Inside are the shiny and sharp tools and machines, teeth everywhere, and I want to touch it all, want to feel the bite. He hangs up the trowel and folds the paper bag. We’ll reuse both again, next weekend and in the next dream. Tim stands in the doorway and says, “So, kid, whaddaya think?”

  Sometimes I ask for a lemonade or ice cream or soda. Sometimes, if I’m aware I’m in the dream again, I ask him questions. He always answers, and I remember the brief conversation after waking up, but that memory lasts only for a little while, an ice cube melting in a drink. Then it’s utterly forgotten, crushed under the weight of all those little sleeps to come.

  SEVEN

  William “Billy” Times has been the Suffolk County DA for ten years. He’s a wildly popular and visible favorite son. All the local news shows are doing spots featuring Billy and his American Star daughter. He hosts now-legendary bimonthly Sunday brunch fund-raisers—the proceeds going to homeless shelters—at a restaurant called Amrheins in South Boston. All the local celebs and politicians show their faces at least once a year at the brunches.

  Although I am Tim Genevich’s kid, I haven’t been on the brunch guest list yet. That said, Tim’s name did manage to get me a one-on-one audience with DA Times at his office today. What a pal, that Tim.

  I fell asleep in the cab. It cost me an extra twenty bucks in drive-around time. I stayed awake long enough to be eventually dumped at 1 Bulfinch Place. Nice government digs for the DA. Location, location, location. It’s between the ugly concrete slabs of Government Center and Haymarket T stop, but a short walk from cobblestones, Faneuil Hall Marketplace, and the two-story granite columns and copper dome o
f Quincy Market, where you can eat at one of its seventeen overpriced restaurants. It’s all very colonial.

  Despite naptime, I’m here early when I can’t ever be early. Early means being trapped in a waiting room, sitting in plush chairs or couches, anesthetizing Muzak tones washing over me, fluffing my pillow. An embarrassingly large selection of inane and soulless entertainment magazines, magazines filled with fraudulent and beautiful people, is the only proffered stimulus. That environment is enough to put a non-narcoleptic in a coma, so I don’t stand a chance. I won’t be early.

  I stalk around the sidewalk and the pigeons hate me. I don’t take it personally, thick skin and all that. I dump some more nicotine and caffeine into my bloodstream. The hope is that filling up with leaded will keep all my pistons firing while in the DA’s office. Hope is a desperate man’s currency.

  I call the DA’s secretary and tell her I’m outside the building, enjoying a rare March sunlight appearance, and I ask when the DA will be ready for me. Polite as pudding, she says he’s ready for me now. Well, all right. A small victory. A coping adjustment actually working is enough to buoy my spirits. I am doing this. This is going to work, and I will solve this case.

  But …

  There’s a swarm of ifs, peskier than a cloud of gnats. The ifs: If, as I’m assuming, the DA sent me his daughter and her case, why wouldn’t he contact me directly? Again, am I dealing with the ultimate closed-lips case that can’t have any of his involvement? If that’s right, and I’m supposed to be Mr. Hush Hush, Mr. Not Seen and Not Heard, why am I so easily granted counsel with the public counsel? He certainly seemed eager to meet with me when I called, booking a next-day face-to-face appointment.

  There are more ifs, and they’re stressing my system. Stress, like time, is a mortal enemy. Stress can be one of my triggers, the grease in the wheel of my more disruptive narcoleptic symptoms. I could use another cigarette or three to choke myself awake, freshen up in the smoke.