Sleepwalking in Daylight

by Elizabeth Flock

  I keep hoping one day we’ll be poring over old family photos and laughing at the absurdity of this phase of hers. I pray it’s a phase. I wonder if my mother thought the same about me. I’ve studied the handful of pictures of us, looking for clues in her smile.

  Was she as proud of me as she looked standing next to me and Dad at junior-high graduation or was there something she was hoping would change in me?

  And that picture of the two of them flanking me on one of our summers at the rented lake house on the Indiana dunes—a photo taken by a stranger who may have marveled at the perfection of the shot. It was perfect. The water sparkled under a sky so bright they were squint-smiling. They were tanned. Dad was in his swimming suit, offhandedly holding the bucket of water we used to pat the sand on the outer edge of the castle. Mom was looking straight into the camera, a breeze blowing some hair loose from the ponytail that made her look twenty-one instead of thirty. She was in a one-piece that had a simple, flattering band of white cutting across the navy, just under her bustline.

  By far my favorite picture of all of them is the one of me and Mom on a large easy chair that used to sit by the fireplace at my old house. I’m on her lap, maybe five or six years old, and she’s reading to me, we’re both unaware of dad and his camera. The book is tilted up so I can see it’s James and the Giant Peach. I’m not looking at the clever illustrations, I’m staring up at her, leaning across her chest and twisting my head to watch her ruby-red lipsticked mouth form the words. Sometimes, if I try hard enough, I can hear her voice reading to me. Not long after she died I bought the book and split it open to about where she might have been in the picture and I read silently, every other word in her voice which was still so fresh. Now it hurts to look at because I can’t conjure up her tone anymore. It’s been too long. I’ve forgotten what she sounded like.

  Here is my daughter sitting cross-legged on her bed. What would she do if I died? What if I had a heart attack—would she feel guilty about our relationship?

  “Take out your earphones.” I flap my arms to get her attention.

  “Jesus,” she says. “You scared the shit outta me. Don’t you know how to knock?”

  “That’s it,” I say. “Take out both your earphones. Put your cell phone down. Don’t you dare talk to me in that tone of voice. This is stopping right now.”

  “What’re you doing?” She flails her arms trying to stop me from ripping the iPod out of her hands. “Stop it! Give it back! What the hell?”

  “I’m sick of your iPod. I’m sick of your cell phone and your thumbs and the laptop you throw around like it’s nothing to you, totally replaceable. I’m sick of this fucking act of yours and yes, I just said fuck so you can stop with that look like you’re storing up something to throw back at me.”

  “What’re you doing? You’re like possessed,” she screams. “What’re you talking about?”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about,” I say. “This. This whole thing we’re doing has got to end. You skulking around like you’ve got this miserable life. The locked doors. The secrets. The hair, the clothes, the makeup. I’m sick of it.”

  Something clicks in her and now she’s staring at me with a blankness I can’t read. From whipping anger to this cold stare. She’s frightening.

  “Can’t we just stop this little game and be real?” I don’t ask it, I say it.

  “Be real?” she snorts, and looks away. “That’s just perfect. Be real.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean—that’s just perfect? What’s your point, Cammy?”

  “Just forget it.”

  “I’m not going to forget it. Talk to me.”

  “Why are you screaming at me?”

  “Because I can’t reach you and I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Just get out! Get out of my room!”

  “This is my room.” I match her screams. “Your father and I own this house, so this is our room. Don’t you dare talk to me this way.”

  She sniffs back tears and folds over herself in a groan that sounds so much like a growl I actually feel scared, expecting a Linda Blair moment. Holding her knees snug she rocks back and forth for what’s probably ten seconds but it could have been ten minutes it was so awful to see. Then she snaps out of it and suddenly she’s a blur of motion, standing and whipping her iPod at me and if I hadn’t ducked it would’ve hit me in the mouth instead of shattering against the wall like it did.

  “I hate you.” She bends over to get some power into her lungs.

  “So original,” I say.

  “You’re so funny.” She’s fighting tears. “Sorry I’m not original.”

  The crying turns to hyperventilating sobs and I watch her deflate to the ground. “Just … just leave. Please. Just leave me alone.”

  “Cammy …”

  “Seriously, just leave.” She is withered, her voice nearly a whisper; she’s deflated from the yelling. “You can have my cell and my computer, I don’t care. Just take them and leave.”

  “Honey …”

  “Mom, seriously—” she looks like Alice Cooper with her mascara running down those white cheeks “—I can’t talk now. Please. I’ll talk later, I promise. I just can’t … talk … now.”

  I close the door quietly, and part of me is relieved because I’m spent, too, and I don’t have the energy for any more of her. Maybe I shouldn’t have left her alone, but at the end it was the old Cammy looking up at me, begging me to leave her alone. So I will. She’s been so tired lately, maybe it’s exhaustion.

  She’s driving me insane, I write. My daughter is driving me completely insane. You watch: Lexi will get to be a teenager and you’ll want to jump off a bridge. I thought we’d dodge this bullet since Cammy and I were so close but no go. Just had to vent. G2G. Love, Sam We meet the following day and he listens. Craig’s elbows are on the table. He cups his coffee with both hands. He doesn’t say much but then I didn’t really want him to. I walk out of Starbucks feeling lighter, less burdened by my daughter. He makes me feel like skipping.

  I’m aware I’m editing the things I share with him. I don’t tell him about the silences. About how I listen to Bob chewing over the boys’ chatter and I struggle for something to say that will elicit more than yes-and-no answers. Or how I’ve always marveled at my parents and how they were always talking to one another, so much to say, so much to laugh about. I don’t tell Craig about the politeness I used to think was us being respectful of one another. Plenty of our friends insult or nag their husbands or wives. At first it seemed as if we were simply taking the high road. I never thought it was a lack of anything of substance to say. Politeness became indifference. As in:

  “What do you want to do for dinner?”

  “I don’t care. What do you want?”

  “I don’t know. No preference. Do you want to eat in or go out? Or we could order out if you want.”

  “I don’t care.”

  What used to pass for manners turned into inertia. Soon it felt foreign and selfish to say, “You know what? I really want Thai tonight,” because he never did say much about Thai so I’m sure he’d agree just to be nice, but it’d ruin the meal if I thought he was suffering through something he didn’t want to do. I could tell he felt the same way.

  I chose not to tell Craig about Bob’s feeling nothing and how I lie awake feeling the suffocation of a different version of nothingness. I haven’t admitted to Bob that I feel the same way. I know he feels pigeonholed by his words and how he’s issued this indictment. We’re not in love. We’re not out of love. We don’t feel anything. Maybe we feel a longing for something more from each other, but at the end of the day that’s doesn’t account for much. On the digital clock by my bed, the colon separating the hour from the minutes blinks an imprint into my eyes and I feel like I’m trying to keep myself afloat but I’m hanging on to sand. In these small dark hours, lying next to him wide awake I feel a guilty triumph that I haven’t told Bob the same thing. He lost his footing with his words.
Lately he’s been solicitous of me in that way people are when to apologize out loud would be an admission of a failure. Saying that one word—nothing—shifted the balance of power and I feel liberated by it. There’s nobility in it.

  I don’t tell Craig this. To tell Craig my husband feels nothing toward me will make him look differently at me. I get the feeling he’s got the same crush on me I have on him. I don’t want to tell him Bob reads books like it’s a contest. Some weeks he reads two. Thick ones. Biographies. It only took him five days to learn everything there is to know about Aaron Burr. It took Jack Kerouac three weeks to write On the Road. It took Bob three hours to read it. When he finished he rubbed his neck, put it on the pile of books he’s read and moved over to the rickety old bookcase to pick out his next one. No, I don’t tell Craig this.

  The next time we meet I venture to the place we’ve carefully avoided. But friends talk about their marriages, right?

  “I still don’t get why you want to walk away from your life,” I start. “We’ve talked about everything under the sun but our marriages. You seem like you’ve got it all together. I know you miss certain things in your life, but in general, just so you know, one friend talking to another, you seem like you’ve got it nailed.”

  “That’s what it looks like on the outside,” he says. “On the surface. But there’s no intimacy in my marriage—I don’t mean physical stuff necessarily. I mean emotional intimacy. I sound like such a girl right now, Jesus. It’s just … that connection, you know? That’s everything. Well, Lexi’s everything. Honestly, she’s what keeps me going.”

  I’m excited he’s confided in me. I hadn’t imagined he’d be this candid. Somehow I love knowing he’s not intimate with his wife. Which means I’m not a true friend. True friends would want the other to be happy and fulfilled. Fuck that. We both know what this is. I’m totally infatuated. I stay on course, though.

  “How can you live like that?” I ask him. “I mean, the way you are. You’re so … so … I don’t know. You’re so full of life. But that’s the opposite of what you’re living day to day. How is that okay? I’m truly asking because that’s what I ask myself, too. Speaking for myself, it’s getting harder and harder going home after talking with you. It’s like reentry from outer space back to earth. Do you feel that way? Like you’re two different people—one way with me and one way at home?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  We’re both swirling the coffee in our cups. I’m struggling with what to say. I can feel him doing it, too.

  I’m the one who breaks the awkward silence.

  “So how’s Fluffy?”

  He looks up. I can see he’s relieved to be on safer ground.

  “Fluffy’s doing fine….”

  I listen to him tell me about Lexi and the kitten and all is right with the world.

  Cammy

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Friedman,

  We received the requested letter from your daughter’s doctor and are saddened to hear of her condition. Because all the required documentation has been provided we are hereby releasing the information we feel is medically relevant.

  Cameron’s birth mother did not reveal or disclose any prior illness, familial or individual. There are notes in her prenatal report that indicate she may have acquired a sexually transmitted disease but blood tests did not confirm this preliminary diagnosis, so we can only assume the notes were from anecdotal and initial examination. Blood tests taken at the time indicate the birth mother was in fact a serious drug user and traces of methamphetamines were noted. The examining physician noted that the birth mother admitted to using mushrooms and cocaine prior to finding out about her pregnancy, but further questioning revealed that use did not stop in the first trimester of her pregnancy. She was encouraged to stop drinking alcohol, but in her file it was noted that she appeared intoxicated on at least two separate occasions during her second trimester. For that reason, the pregnancy was considered high risk.

  In the years since Cameron’s birth and adoption, laws have changed drastically and have eased with regard to confidentiality of both birth mothers and adoptive parents. In cases such as Cameron’s, when dire medical needs require it, we are compelled to reveal the mother’s identity in order to help in your search for answers. Below please find the information you requested. We sincerely wish you well and hope for the best for Cameron and your entire family. Please contact us if you have any further questions. Biological mother: Geraldine Wilkes

  Mother’s DOB: March 12, 19?? (Mother did not specify. Uncooperative)

  Infant place of birth: Chicago, Illinois

  Adoption papers filed: May 29, 1994

  Adoption consent: affirmative

  Medical examination of infant: clear

  Age of child at time of adoption: 2

  Biological parent contact information: none provided

  “Holy shit,” Ricky says when I show him the letter. He’s wearing this stupid-ass button-down shirt that makes him look like he’s in a boy band. “Holy shit. Your mom was a fuckup.”

  “Fuck you, I can’t believe you just said that,” I say. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “Sorry. Sorry, sorry. Don’t cry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. It’s just … oh Jesus, stop crying. I just mean—I mean, it’s weird, right? Like it must be in your blood from her.”

  I’m trying that thing where you swallow before a sob. It’s supposed to make you stop crying right then but it gives me the hiccups. I go to my bathroom to get a glass of water to drink upside down like I’ve always done. It’s not really drinking it upside down, it’s bending over and sipping it while the tip of your head is pointed toward the floor. Works every time. My bathroom’s a mess; even I can see that. The hair dryer cord’s tangled with the flat iron and I must’ve forgotten to turn it off because it’s burned a V into the floor. What the hell? I thought tile didn’t burn. They’re already pissed because I spilled black nail polish on the counter and even nail polish remover won’t get it off so they’re calling in someone to get it scraped off and I’m supposed to pay for it. What a joke since I have like zero dollars and zero cents. I dropped my black eye shadow and the shadow part cracked and got all over the sink and the floor and I forgot to wipe it up so when I stepped in it I kind of tracked it back into my room, onto my carpet. I threw one of my long dark skirts over the footprints so I’m okay for now. But the thing is, I haven’t washed the skirt in like forever and it’s the one I was wearing when I barfed in back of the library and since it scrapes the ground I got barf on the bottom of it so it smells and now I think it’s making the carpet smell, too. Good. Maybe they’ll replace it like I’ve been begging them to do. I want to paint my room to get these baby lavender walls over with. I wanted dark red but my dad says it looks like blood so I guess it’s a no-go.

  “What’re you doing?” Ricky’s knocking on the bathroom door. “Cam? Come out. What’re you doing?”

  He’s loud through the wood but the water in the sink drowns him out. In the cabinet underneath I reach in back of this old lunchbox-type makeup kit my best friend in fifth grade, Hannah, gave me. I keep forgetting to throw it out. In back is an old film canister I found in the living-room closet where Dad keeps all the camera equipment and some old 35mm rolls. I decide to take whatever my finger fishes out like a fortune cookie and lucky for me it’s a Vicodin. I tap another one into the palm of my hand because one doesn’t work well for me.

  “Cam. Come out,” Ricky’s saying.

  “Jesus Christ, what’s your frigging problem?” I say on my way back across the room to my shitty bed with the shitty dark pink/light pink comforter I picked out when I was like eight.

  “I thought you were like shooting up or something.”

  “Nice. Thanks.”

  “What’re you going to do?” he asks. He’s lying on the floor with his head propped up on his backpack like you see tourists doing on long layovers in airports. “We could totally People-Find her now that we have all this. In,
like, two seconds we could find her. You could call her.”

  The goddamn Vicodin hasn’t kicked in and now I remember it works faster if I’ve eaten something. I’m so not hungry though. I’ve got to calm down. What’s wrong with me? I should get something to eat. Maybe a banana. Maybe I should call her right now. Get it over with. First I should plan what to say. That’s gay. Maybe some yogurt. Then I remember I’ve got a joint Paul gave to Will to give to me which he did when he drove me to behind the Dumpster in back of the Blockbuster a few blocks from school.

  “You’re getting stoned?” Ricky’s all freaked now. “What if your parents smell it?”

  “What’re you, five? Anyway they’re clueless. I’ll just tell them it’s that scented candle they gave me at Christmas. That thing smells up the whole house when I light it. Open the window, will you?”

  I stuff a towel along the bottom of the door and pull the box fan in front of the windowsill but facing out so it can suck the smoke out.

  “Why don’t you just try it?” I’m holding in the smoke, pulling it in deeper before exhaling like Paul does. He blows it out like he’s smoking a cigarette not a joint. He calls it a stick. When he passes it to whoever he’s sitting next to, he says, “Want the stick?,” and he hands it over like it’s a peace pipe. No one ever says no to one of Paul’s sticks. You don’t say no to Paul.

  “Naw,” Ricky says. “The fan’s blowing it back into the room, you know. You should face it the other way.”

  “But then it would blow more in, if it’s facing inside. Shit, you’re right. It’s going right back. What the hell?”

  “Maybe it’s a sign,” he says.

  “What’s that mean?”