The Innocent Sleep

by Karen Perry

  “That tree is fucking huge,” he said, casting his eye over it. “I think we got carried away.”

  “It’s a big room.”

  “It’s not that big. You’d need a ballroom to fit that tree.”

  “I love it. I think it’s perfect.”

  “The angel will have vertigo. Maybe we should cut a bit off the branches?”

  “No! Leave it! Wait until I’ve the lights and the decorations on—then it won’t look so monstrous.”

  “Do you think that’s why they call it ‘trimming the tree’? Because you always end up hacking bits off it just to get it to fit in the room?”

  “No hacking bits off it, Harry. Just leave it be.”

  I had the lights untangled and was standing on a chair, trying to loop them around the top of the tree.

  “Are you sure you should be doing that?” Harry asked, watching me with a doubtful expression. “A woman in your condition?”

  “Oh, please. Don’t start that now.”

  “Start what?”

  “The overprotective routine.”

  “Why? Did I do that before?”

  I turned and looked at him.

  “Harry? Are you serious? With Dillon, you hardly allowed me to move. I couldn’t leave the house without an escort. You’d have a fit anytime I carried a few plates from the table to the sink!”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes!” I laughed. “You were a nightmare.”

  This was something new. Dillon had started creeping back into our conversations. For such a long time, I had closed my mind to that whole chapter of my life. I had buried it deep down in the dark recesses of memory. But now, with this new life started inside me, I found I was able to open the door just a chink and let a little light in. Gradually, bit by bit, we were reclaiming ourselves as parents. We were reclaiming our son—our memories of him. The pain was still there—it never really went away—but it had softened. The sharp edges of it had grown blunt. I was finding that I could say his name and hear it said back to me without feeling that instant rush of sadness, that well of melancholy springing up.

  “So do you think you have enough decorations?” Harry asked, peering into the large box stuffed full with angels and Santas, reindeers and bells and stars.

  “It is a big tree, need I remind you?”

  He had picked out a wooden angel with movable arms, and with one finger he was causing the arms to rise and fall, rise and fall.

  “Seriously, how long have you been collecting this stuff?”

  “I don’t know. Years. What can I say? I love Christmas.”

  “Other people love Christmas. With you, it’s an obsession.”

  He paused and looked down for a moment, his eyes growing dreamy with some old memory.

  Then he said, “Do you remember that Christmas tree we had in Tangier?”

  I stopped draping lights over the branches.

  “We must have been the only people in the whole of Morocco who had a real Christmas tree. Jesus!”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I stared at the string of lights in my hand.

  Harry said something else, but I had stopped listening. I turned the lights over in my hands, and ever so slightly my hands began to tremble.

  “Robin? Are you all right?”

  I looked down at him and saw the concern in his eyes. My hands were steady now, but something had come over me.

  “I’m tired,” I said. Getting down from the chair, I dropped the lights onto the couch. “I’m going to lie down.”

  I didn’t look at him as I left the room.

  * * *

  On the last Saturday before Christmas, I was in the homewares department of Brown Thomas with Liz, both of us attempting to cram all of our shopping into a couple of hours. Guilt plagued me as I eyed the price tags and thought about my mortgage payments and my reduced working hours and wondered how on earth I was going to stretch my budget to buy presents for my family. I was flustered and hassled and overheating.

  “What do you think about this for Andrew’s mum?” Liz asked, holding aloft a blue bread bin with a walnut lid. “It’s ridiculously expensive, but does it look it? I don’t want her to think I picked up some cheap tat for her, especially as she’s cooking Christmas lunch for my whole brood.”

  “It looks fine.”

  “Hmm.” Liz frowned and returned the item to the shelf.

  “Can’t Andrew shop for his own mother?”

  “Ha!” she laughed. “If I left it to Andrew, he’d just get her a gift card. Or, worse, he’d present her with a check.”

  “What’s he getting you?”

  “A gift card,” she intoned humorlessly. “Don’t say it, Rob. I know—the romance is dead.”

  I smiled and picked up a jug, turning it over to check the price.

  “How about you?” she asked. “Are you still dead set on having your folks over for Christmas?”

  “Yep. It’s all arranged. The goose has been ordered, the wine and champagne have been bought—”

  “Fair play to you. Just don’t kill yourself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, Robin, you know what I mean. Cooking, entertaining, preparing the house. You’re like Nigella Lawson on speed when it comes to these events. I just don’t want you overdoing it, that’s all. Not in your condition. Not after the scare you’ve had.” She eyeballed my belly dramatically, and I laughed in response.

  “Relax. It’s nothing lavish. Just Christmas. And besides, Harry is digging in to help.”

  “Is he now,” she remarked skeptically. “I bet he’s overjoyed at the prospect of Christmas with the in-laws.”

  “Actually, he’s been fine about it. I expected some resistance, but he’s been great. Brilliant, in fact. He’s taking care of the shopping and cleaning up the house. All I have to do is cook. So between us, we have it all covered.”

  “Good. Glad to hear it.”

  She picked up a Le Creuset pot with an air of mild distraction and asked, over her shoulder, “How has the move worked out? Has he sorted out his studio yet?”

  “Yes, I think so.” My mind went instantly to that box of sketches I had discovered, the drawings of Dillon, and I wondered whether they still sat there, hidden away in the dark. Since that night, I had not set foot in the studio. Resolve had gathered inside me to ignore all that. To put my back to it and face the future. That was what mattered now.

  “His London trip went well,” I carried on in a voice full of optimism. “I think some work will come out of it.”

  “Oh yeah?” She glanced across at me. “Well, that would be great. So long as he’s not spreading himself around too much. His work is wonderful, of course, but hardly prolific in recent years.”

  “Listen to you! Worrying about Harry’s workload.”

  “Yes, I do worry,” she replied sharply, suddenly serious. “I don’t like the thought of him committing to things he can’t deliver on. Not with his history.”

  “Liz…”

  “Tell me to piss off and mind my own business if you like, but you’re my oldest friend, Robin, and I wouldn’t be that friend if I didn’t tell you that I worry about Harry when he’s put under pressure. I know how sensitive he is. And I can’t bear the thought of his old trouble returning. I hate to think of you having to go through all that again.”

  “It won’t,” I said solemnly, and in that moment I believed it. “He’s fine. We’re fine. More than fine, in fact. All of that is behind us now.”

  Instinctively, my hand went to my belly. She caught the movement and nodded slowly, her expression softening.

  “It’s funny, I didn’t think you guys would have another baby.”

  “Really?”

  “I wasn’t sure if either of you had the heart for another go on the merry-go-round.”

  She smiled then, the brightness coming back to her face. Glancing down at the Le Creuset casserole dish in her hands, she remarked, “Right then. I’m getting this. She can always re
turn it, can’t she?”

  “Yep.”

  “Here, hold it for me a sec,” she said, dumping the heavy dish into my arms and rooting in her bag for her wallet, and it was as I stood there, clasping the dish to my chest, that I saw him. My heart beat wildly, and the casserole dish almost slipped from my grasp.

  He was leaning forward, peering with great concentration at a display of coffee machines, and as I moved toward him, he looked up and I caught the sudden flash of consternation crossing his face.

  “Hello,” I said, trying to sound calm, trying to keep cool, but all the while I stared at him, not really believing it to be true. Everything about it was wrong: the wrong time, the wrong place. After all these years, here he was standing before me, in a department store in Dublin—it seemed incongruous, perverse almost.

  The look on his face changed then, something about it closing down. A defensive look.

  “Don’t you know me?” I asked with a nervous smile. He was still just standing there, spooked into silence, and I felt my face burning.

  “Of course I know you, Robin.”

  My mouth was dry as paper, my body steaming under my clothes.

  He looked older, his hair running now to gray at the temples, lines fanning out from his eyes, and two deep creases traveling from either side of his nose down to the corners of his mouth, like brackets. His clothes looked expensive and warm. I found myself more distracted by this than by the rest of his appearance. I guess it was because I had never known him to wear anything other than cotton or linen, fabrics flimsy and cool enough to cope with the muggy Moroccan heat. It was disorienting, seeing him muffled up in cashmere and wool.

  “What are you doing here?” I blurted out, the words sounding rude and abrupt. I was flustered, acutely aware of Liz looking up from her bag, her eyes passing over this tall stranger with the American accent who had brought flaming color into my cheeks.

  “Shopping,” he remarked with a shrug that seemed to express discomfort more than nonchalance. “Same as you, I guess.”

  “No, I mean in Ireland.”

  “I know. I was just kidding.” His eyes flickered over me, and I felt my cheeks glowing crimson and regretted my lack of makeup, my choice of shoes, the shabbiness of the coat I was wearing, my disheveled hair.

  “Eva’s mom is sick. We came over to be with her.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  He shrugged then. “She’s old.”

  “Is she in the hospital?”

  “Yeah. That’s why I’m in here,” he added, his gaze wandering briefly around at the brightly lit store. “Killing time while Eva visits.”

  “And your son?”

  “He’s with her,” he said quickly, his eyes looking past me to a point over my shoulder.

  Something froze inside me. The shock of seeing him again robbed me of even a solitary thing to say. Beside me, Liz cleared her throat, and I turned to her, distracted, and saw her offering him an inquisitive smile and watched as they introduced themselves, shaking hands across me, but it was all a blur, too bizarre to be real, and there followed a long, awkward pause before he nodded with an air of finality and said he’d better get going. He told Liz it was nice to have met her, and then he fixed his eyes on me and I felt his penetrating stare.

  “It was good to see you, Robin.”

  “Yes. You, too.”

  He turned and walked quickly away, and it was only as I watched his retreating form that all the things we should have said to each other came rushing back to me: he hadn’t inquired after Harry, we had barely talked at all about Eva or Felix; I hadn’t asked how long he might stay.

  “So?” Liz demanded, looking for gossip. “Are you going to tell me who that long, cool drink of water is or not?”

  He was at the top of the escalator, not turning to look back. A few seconds later, he was gone.

  “He’s no one,” I said flatly, but my heart was racing. “Just someone I used to know in Tangier.”

  * * *

  I remember it. I remember it like it happened yesterday.

  A café near the Place de France. The air stale with smoke. Shadows gathering in the corners where the walls met the ceiling. A lizard skittering over the floor. Cozimo was reclining languidly on a couch; Harry was leaning forward, leafing through some old book of Cozimo’s with a growing excitement. They were all there—Sue, Elena, Peter, our little coterie of expats—and others whose names and faces I have since forgotten. I was sitting on the floor, cross-legged, sipping my beer in a silent rage.

  “You’re very quiet tonight,” Cozimo said, and I looked up to find his bright little eyes fixed on me with an inquisitive stare.

  “She’s sulking,” Harry said, not looking up from his book. “Cozimo, these pictures are amazing. Where did you get this book?”

  “I won it in a card game,” he answered quickly, his eyes still on me.

  I wondered if this was true. I wondered whether half the words that came out of that dry little mouth contained the slightest grain of truth.

  “Why are you sulking? Surely you have not been arguing? You are both too young and too beautiful to waste time on such nonsense.”

  “Christmas,” Harry said, casting a glance in my direction before returning to his book.

  I rolled my eyes and let out a small sigh of exasperation. I hated the way Harry did that—shared our arguments with everyone else. He couldn’t respect the privacy of our conflicts, didn’t even seem to understand why I should want them to remain just between us.

  “Christmas?” Cozimo repeated, confusion clouding his sharp features.

  “She’s pissed because I won’t go home for Christmas.”

  Cozimo looked from one of us to the other, his palms held up to signify his lack of understanding. Why should something so trivial cause us to argue?

  “Harry, please don’t,” I said in a low voice, but he didn’t seem to hear me.

  “Robin is your typical Irish atheist. There is no God except at Christmas. And then it’s all about the baby Jesus and midnight Mass and the turkey or goose dinner with the family and all that bullshit.”

  “It’s not bullshit.”

  “It’s ‘Ave Maria’ and ‘O Holy Night’ and ‘Hark! the Herald Angels Sing’ until you want to kill yourself.”

  “Stop it, Harry.”

  “And of course you can’t have Christmas in a warm climate,” he went on. “Even though Jesus was from the Middle East. No, no. Christmas must be cold. It must be celebrated with trees native to Scandinavia. You don’t tart up your mantelpiece with olive branches or palm leaves. It’s holly and ivy all the way.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  I looked up. I didn’t know the voice—low tones and the slow drawl of an American accent. The face was new to me, too. Cold blue eyes, high cheekbones, a cleft chin beneath a wide, unsmiling mouth, blond hair worn long and slick, swept back off his face to reveal a widow’s peak. A face that was knifelike and sharp, yet there was no denying he was handsome in a boyish kind of way. His age was difficult to guess at—he could be twenty-one or forty-four. He lounged on a sofa, holding himself perfectly still, his shoulders giving a slight shrug as he repeated his question.

  Harry looked up at him and let out a soft chuckle.

  “Don’t tell me. It’s got you all misty-eyed too, huh? Feeling a longing for the snowy hills of Vermont, are we?” he asked, not unkindly.

  Again the shrug. “Sure. Why not? Christmas means home to me. Home and family. Although I’m from Oregon, not Vermont.”

  “Vermont. Oregon. What does it matter? Surely you’d prefer to be here in Tangier, where life is real, where life is happening, than wrapped up in some Coca-Cola–inspired festivities with a bunch of relatives you can hardly bear to be in the same room with?”

  “Yeah, I understand why you might think that. And I respect that that’s the way you feel. But I have to admit that those Coca-Cola ads really get me going. They always have. It’s the same with Budw
eiser Christmas ads. If that makes me some kind of consumer sucker or sad fuck, then whatever; so be it.” His hands rose in a brief gesture of mea culpa. He added, “And I happen to like my relatives, too. I guess that makes me really uncool, huh?”

  Harry was staring at him, mystified. I could see that he didn’t know what to make of this guy with the casual manner, his direct approach, his “I am who I am and I don’t give a fuck what you think” attitude. I could tell Harry felt a longing to mock him, and yet this man, this stranger, could not be easily dismissed as another sap, another dim American. His quiet conviction and solid confidence gave me to understand that he was the type of man to stand his ground, the kind who would not back down from confrontation. He had a direct stare that might be seen as a challenge.

  I don’t remember much else about that night. I know that I didn’t speak to him—Garrick—nor he to me.

  The days and nights passed, and Harry and I reached a kind of unspoken truce on the subject of Christmas. I agreed to stay in Tangier with him, and sometime in the New Year we would have my parents over—a compromise, then.

  I saw him sometimes—Garrick—in the bars and cafés we used to go to, mixing with the same crowd. Another hanger-on, another one of Cozimo’s eclectic gang, although even in a crowd, he always seemed alone to me, aloof and isolated. We never spoke, and I felt he hardly noticed me. I noticed him, though—the tall, faintly bored American with the piercing gaze. I learned about him through tidbits of gossip I gleaned from other people’s conversations. The picture that emerged was incomplete and conflicted. He was a rich kid, a trust-fund baby, with nothing to do except wander around Europe and North Africa, spending his money. He was a poet, a philosopher, an art dealer. He worked for an NGO. He had dropped out of Cambridge or Yale or the Sorbonne. He had been a successful financier before burning out and growing disgusted with capitalism. He had lost his wife in a tragic accident and was looking to lose himself in Tangier. Like so many others drifting through this continent, he was running away from himself.