Chapter One
We haven’t had sex in eleven months. Just shy of a year. More time than it
takes to grow a human being. I know it was eleven months ago for two
reasons: one, it was on our wedding anniversary and on wedding
anniversaries sex is a given and two, the next night was the incident with
the family room light. I was reading a book about a missionary family in
Africa I ordered after Oprah plugged it. I keep track of what I read on my
calendar and plus I remember wishing it weren’t our wedding anniversary
because I was at the good part but instead I had to pretend I didn’t know
Bob was simply going through the motions required of husbands celebrating
their wedding anniversaries.
So there we were the following night, in the second floor room that is,
after the kitchen, the nerve center of our house. Bob was at the computer
in the corner searching eBay for tennis rackets even though it’d end up
costing more for one on eBay when you factor in the shipping and handling.
“Why don’t you just go to Sportmart?” I’d asked earlier in the evening.
“I’m looking for the old wooden ones,” he said without looking up. “The old
Wilsons.”
I shrugged and went back to my book. I became so engrossed I remember
looking up and feeling shock that no, I wasn’t in a civil war in the
Congo, I was actually in my tidy three-story house on Chicago’s North
Side. I remember smiling and thinking I love it when that happens. When a
book’s so good you forget who and where you are.
I’d heard Bob sighing and pushing back from the family desk littered with
half-finished homework, field-trip permission slips and school reminders
on brightly colored paper. He crossed the room and flicked off the light
as he left and it took me calling “hey” for him to come back, switch it
back on with an “oh, sorry, I forgot you were there.” The worst part was
he wasn’t doing it to prove some point. He truly forgot I was in the room
with him. Which is exactly the point. We haven’t had sex since.
I know it seems like a silly thing, the light incident. But everyone has
that final straw, that moment of clarity when you can’t put your finger on
it, you just know there’s been a shift, a ripple in the atmosphere. The
little things have added up and finally you can’t take it anymore. We’ve
been quietly drifting into our own worlds for a while, Bob and I. I’ve
just been ignoring it. Up until now. And I can’t take it anymore.
Just last week I got buttermilk for the pancakes I decided to make for no
real reason. A special treat. I felt like making an effort for once. I got
the buttermilk because I know Bob likes it when the pancakes are richer.
Swanky pancakes he used to say in a tone that thanked me for going the
extra mile back when something like buttermilk was considered going the
extra mile. Last week not only did he not notice we were having something
other than cold cereal, but when I carefully slid a stack from the spatula
onto a plate waved me off and he said, “None for me. There’s that
construction on Irving Park so we’ve gotta get going. C’mon, guys.”
Our eight-year-old sons, Jamie and Andrew, were still chewing when they
grabbed their shin guards and soccer cleats. Sometimes I wonder if they
really are twins, they’re so different in looks and personality. Jamie
moves slowly and deliberately like he’s thought out every step he takes.
Before breakfast he lined up his guards and shoes neatly by the backdoor.
He put out two bottles of water, just to the side. He remembers the second
one because Andrew never does. Jamie has freckles across his nose. His
skin is so milky white you can see blue veins through it. His delicate
features I think will translate into a refined face later on. He is small
for eight and many people assume he is younger than his brother. Andrew is
solid and stocky with thick brownish-red hair and a Dennis the Menace
cowlick. He is exactly what you think of when you think of an
eight-year-old boy: messy, unkempt, fearless. If he falls down and cuts
his lip he spits the blood out and keeps going. He’s got a short attention
span but he was tested for ADHD and came up clean. I’ve had to tell Jamie
not to pick up after his brother, which he does on the sly because he
can’t bear to see his twin in trouble. In trouble Jamie looks wounded.
Andrew just tips his head back to roll his eyes at the ceiling and sighs
at the futility of parental warnings. Nothing gets through to Andrew;
everything gets through to Jamie.
“You know which field it is, right?” I ask Bob.
“I know which field,” he says, annoyed but pausing for a sneeze of a
second while he considers double checking.
“I’m just saying. It’s changed this season and you haven’t been yet. Boys,
you know which way to go, right? Take a right from the parking lot and go
over the hill, remember? Show Dad the way, will you?”
“Bye, Mom!” Andrew calls out.
“Tie your shoes, Andrew. Bob, get him to tie them up before he gets out of
the car. He’ll trip.”
“Yeah yeah yeah, tie your shoes,” Bob says. “Let’s go guys.”
The soccer ball is wedged between his arm and ribs. He drops the keys and
bends like a pregnant woman to pick them up, careful not to tip the
plastic grocery-store platter of doughnuts I got for halftime.
“Don’t forget the dry cleaning on the way back,” I tell him. “Hey-you want
steak for dinner? I’m going to the market.”
“Yeah, fine, whatever. Jamie, get a move on, kiddo,” he says from the door
to the garage.
Our backdoor opens to a stone path Bob and I laid when we first moved in
almost twenty years ago. We were house poor but thrilled to own in what
was then an up-and-coming neighborhood. We’d brought a boom box out back
and played the only radio station that came in. Jazz music. I lost steam
halfway through the job that was supposed to take only a day but stretched
out over two whole weekends because the pavers we’d chosen were
mismatched. There were countless trips to and from the outdoor landscaping
center. The second Saturday I lay back on the grass in the sun listening
to Miles Davis and Bob whistling then cursing. I remember staring up at
the clouds like a kid, smiling at life. We had a great house, there was a
light breeze and I was lying on land we owned, my bare feet on our grass.
I remember shading my eyes to watch Bob with a mathematician’s
concentration size up stone after stone over the shallow hole he had dug.
His college T-shirt was new then. It was a Squeeze concert tee from when
they played on campus. Our second or third date. Sophomore year. Boston
College. 1981. After the concert we got drunk at a keg party at his
friends’ off-campus house.
I was all over him back then. I thought it was sweet that he wanted to
take it slow. He said I was different. He said he didn’t just want sex, he
wanted to “go the distance.” He said he didn’t want to do anything to
“mess us up.” So we took it slow. We fooled around but nothing major. We
slept squeezed into my single bed under my Marimekko comforter to the
smell of ramen noodles and beer. I remember wishing he weren’t so sloppy a
kisser, but I figured it’d get better over time. It never did get better,
but I figured there were more important things in life than having to wipe
my mouth with the back of my hand after kissing him.
Our friends loved being with us because we weren’t the kind to couple off
and make the single ones feel worse for being single. We were the fun
ones. We went to parties and split up to talk with this friend and that-we
didn’t need to be together every second. In fact, it was not uncommon for
us to go a few days without seeing one another. Like during midterms.
Still, we’d always know where the other one was. We had our schedules
memorized. Sometimes I’d wait for him after his sports-medicine class and
get coffee at the student center cafeteria filled with flyers with
roommates, band members, used books, tutoring. We had so much in common
there was very little learning curve. We were both from Chicago, we’d both
gone to parochial high schools, we were both only children. My best
friend-my freshman roommate, Lynn-became his best friend. We double-dated
with Lynn and her various boyfriends. When she found herself in between
boys Bob fixed her up with his friend Patel from Delhi, India, but she can
be embarrassingly difficult if she doesn’t like someone and she didn’t
like Patel and Bob swore he’d never fix her up again but he did because I
begged him to and finally she clicked with Michael who she ended up
marrying and Bob was best man and I was maid-of-honor and it was all
perfect. Storybook. We got married when Lynn and Mike got back from their
honeymoon. We laughed and said we were like Fred and Ethel and Lucy and
Ricky. Then we ‘d argue about who got to be Lucy and Ricky and who had to
be Fred and Ethel. I’d imagined we’d live in houses next door to one
another. Lynn and I would quit our jobs to raise our kids together. We’d
have coffee after carpooling. Bob would play weekly pickup games with Mike
and they’d talk about how cool their wives were. I imagined Bob and me
spooning every night like we’d done in my dorm room. I wanted the
white-picket fence. I was sure we’d have children, but at the time, being
so young, I felt indifferent about it.
But somewhere in there I had doubts. I began to worry on the honeymoon
actually. We were happy in the Caribbean, Jet Skiing, parasailing,
snorkeling, sunset booze cruises with other honeymoon-ers, but I started
to notice we were running out of things to talk about. Like we’d had a set
amount of sentences in the bank and by the time the honeymoon rolled
around that savings account was empty.
On the beach one afternoon, gloomy clouds turned day into night and dumped
rain like they were punishing us. It happened so quickly we didn’t have
time to rush to the car, so we waited it out under our rented Heineken
umbrella that was as useless at shielding us from the tropical shower as
it was from the brutal white sun.
“Are you upset about something?” I asked him. “You’ve been so quiet.”
He shrugged and stared out at the kidney clouds.
“What is it?” I asked him. “I’m freezing-will you pass me the extra towel
in the bag?”
He was mechanical. His arm bent at the elbow, dipping into the bag on his
right, clutching the towel, passing it across to me on his left like
claw-a-stuffed-animal machines at supermarket entrances.
“It’s just …” he said, fixing his eyes at the clouds rolling away to refill
themselves. “This is it.”
“Wait, what? What’re you talking about? Are you freaking out? Do you wish
we hadn’t gotten married or something? Here, get under the towel.” I
pressed closer into him. “Aren’t you cold?”
“I’m fine. Forget it. It’s stopping. Want to go back to the hotel?”
“What does ‘this is it’ mean?”
He said, “Just forget it, okay? Forget it,” with a rattlesnake’s venom, so
I backed off. I was young and figured it’d all work itself out. I thought
it was a gloomy rainy day kind of mood.
I did wonder why we weren’t in the bedroom more. Our room had a king-size
bed with big fluffy pillows and equally soft robes in the closet.
Turn-down service included rose petals sprinkled on the bed. The hotel
catered to honeymooners. Lots of finger foods. Chocolate-covered
strawberries. I chalked his mood up to being exhausted from the swirl of
wedding planning. Bob’s always been an active guy so I knew going in it
wouldn’t be a languid lie-on-the-hammock kind of trip. On the last night
of the trip we went to a tiki-hut bar on the beach. We got a bucket of
beer and listened to the steel-drum band, nodding to the beat, looking out
at the ocean. Bob moved from beer to scotch. I’d only seen him drink
scotch once when he was with his fraternity brothers at a homecoming party
senior year. We watched the sunset. He jingled the ice cubes and drained
the rest of his drink, holding up the glass to signal the waiter for
another. I went to the bathroom, washed my hands, looked into the mirror
and thought, I think I just made a huge mistake. There was no one to talk
to about this but I worried. I worried and worried and worried myself into
a thick inertia that kept me canceling plans with Lynn and Mike for nearly
two weeks after we’d gotten home. I hadn’t wanted Lynn reading my mind.
The stone path isn’t a straight line. We thought it would be prettier
winding to the garage like a miniature Yellow Brick Road. Now we all use
the direct route across the grass. Lynn and Mike bought a house two
streets over in our tree-lined neighborhood that feels like the suburbs
but is just a few minutes from downtown Chicago. The two- and three-story
houses on our street are similarly designed with small squares of grass,
front porches, patios, decks and grass out back. Two-car garages that open
to a long narrow alley that requires a tap on the horn and a wave to
someone waiting politely to back out. Barbecues with large spatulas and
tongs. Brick chimneys. Wreaths and roping in winter. American flags in
summer. Indian corn in the fall. On any given week there can be three,
four visits from Boy Scouts selling wrapping paper or magazine
subscriptions, clipboards held by crunchy-granola college kids wanting to
save the planet, a local guy down on his luck offering to clean up leaves
with a flimsy rake he carries with him from house to house. In the winter
he comes to shovel snow off our short walkways up from the sidewalk. He
says we can pay him whatever we think it’s worth.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from Sleepwalking in Daylight
by Elizabeth Flock
Copyright © 2009 by Elizabeth Flock.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Copyright © 2009
Elizabeth Flock
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7783-2513-0
