Sleepwalking Read online

  The house was spotless; it had not looked better in a long time. She had slipped so easily into the Aschers’ lives, and now she was just as easily slipping out. The speed of things awed her. Ray wrote out a check for the past week’s wages, and she gave the Aschers her school address, in case they wanted to keep in touch. Then she went to pack her clothes, leaving Julian downstairs with Helen and Ray. She wondered what they would all find to talk about, what common ground they had. She bunched everything up in her old orange suitcase and stood in the middle of Lucy’s room and looked around. It was empty and probably would stay that way.

  She was not done with Lucy; chances were that she never would be. She would still lie in her bed at night and recite “Of Gravity and Light” until she had lulled herself to sleep. Sometimes, if she needed to, she would light a bayberry candle and sit cross-legged on her floor until the sun came up. She felt a rush of feeling as she stood in Lucy’s room, but it passed quickly. The window was open slightly, and a breeze made the curtains move. She could smell the salt water.

  Ray drove them to the train station. They all sat up front because the back seat was loaded with crates of ungraded term papers and examination blue books. Claire looked over her shoulder. Helen was standing on the front porch, watching her go. Some of her hair had come loose and was blowing in her face.

  No one talked much during the drive. Claire fiddled with the radio knob until she found some vague music. Drops of rain began to dot the windshield. When they got to the station there was still half an hour until the train was due to arrive. Ray got out and stood under the overhang with them. “I’ll wait here with you,” he offered.

  “We’ll be okay,” Claire told him. “You might as well go back.”

  Ray shrugged. “Well, have a good trip,” he said, and then he moved away from her and out into the rain. There were no other cars in the parking lot. This was the easiest way for him—passively drifting from a conversation, from a goodbye. He stroked the ragged edges of his beard as he walked to the car. She watched as he got in, hoisting himself onto the seat, yanking the safety belt across the diagonal of his broad chest. He paused and rolled down the window a crack. “Goodbye, Claire,” he said softly, and before she could respond he had rolled the window back up and started the engine.

  Julian touched her lightly on the shoulder. “Claire,” he said.

  She turned to him and had to force herself to focus. “I guess I should call my parents,” she said. “What will I say? I hate this kind of thing.”

  “Just go get it over with,” Julian said, and he reached into his pocket and drew out a handful of silver. “Here,” he said. “Take what you need.”

  “Julian the provider,” said Claire, and he smiled.

  There was a telephone around the other side of the station house. Julian leaned against the brick wall and waited for her. She dropped coins into the pit of the phone. The gears were set in motion, and she was calling home.

  “Mom?” she said when her mother answered at last. “It’s me.”

  “Claire.” Her mother said her name simply, just a small exhale, the sound of air being released. That was all it took to say her name.

  “Mom, I’m coming home,” she said as casually as she could but feeling as though she were telephoning from overseas, as though she had been waiting on a long line of soldiers who were all calling their families.

  There was a pause, and then her mother said, “I knew you would eventually. That’s what I told your father.”

  “My train gets in at six thirty-eight,” said Claire. “Can somebody meet me?”

  “I’m in the middle of cooking,” her mother said, “and your father is going over to the gym soon.” Her voice trailed off. It was the same as always—that admixture of love and stinginess. Her parents could give only so much. Something made them hold back, even at crucial moments. “I guess I could manage to put up the roast and then pick you up,” her mother said. “Somehow, I’ll be there.”

  Claire could picture the scene at home. It was a rainy Sunday afternoon, and her father was probably reading one section of the Times in the den. Her mother, in the kitchen, was probably reading another. She wondered if she would end up like them—defeated. But she knew, really, that there was a lot more to her parents than defeat. Even when you gave everything up and stopped in your tracks, there were thoughts whizzing through you all day, and all night in the form of dreams. Her parents were caught.

  “Goodbye, Mom,” Claire said, and she hung up on all that she knew so well—the anger, the hesitance, and most of all the sadness that managed to poke through.

  She began to gather her things. The orange suitcase made her feel very young. She had carried it with her everywhere—to visit Joan on the reservation once, to go on a school trip to Washington, D.C., to travel with her family to Europe during that awful summer. Now she was taking it home with her, slightly more worn, the handle taped.

  The gates went down, and Claire and Julian walked out onto the platform. She thought about all of the people who traveled by train every day. They always seemed to have a real destination—a home with dinner waiting, a spouse, a parent, a child. She thought of all the embraces some of them would find when they stepped off the train—all the conversations, and later that night all the bed covers that would be turned back, the windows that would be checked, the lights that would be turned off, so that the family could go to sleep, safe under their low roof.

  Claire and Julian boarded the train. She would get off at Babylon, and he would continue on into New York. “I’ll call you tonight,” he said, and she nodded. “I think it will be okay,” he added, and even though it was such a broad phrase that it could refer to anything, she was somehow comforted. He was such an optimist. He threw hopeful words out at her indiscriminately, like handfuls of grain, trusting that at least one of the things he said would come true.

  “I guess so,” she said.

  They selected a seat at the end of the car. Claire swung her suitcase onto the rack above her head, then slid across the vinyl seat until she was close to the window. There was an hour’s ride ahead of her. Soon she would be home again, where her mother and father waited for her with open, rigid arms.

  Meg Wolitzer’s novels include The Wife, The Position, The Ten-Year Nap, The Uncoupling, and The Interestings.

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  For a complete list of this author’s books click here or visit www.penguin.com/wolitzerchecklist