responsibilities as she was given. She would be glad to research and visit with different providers, write letters, do mailings. It became quite clear to me they were merely taking advantage of her. but like someone absorbed by one of those cult religions, she became a devotee of the charity events. Her name would be included on the list of organizers printed on the invitations, and for her that was an
accomplishment.
Every time I saw Kirby he smiled, but in a way so different from the smile he used to have. It was as though he and I shared a very intimate secret we kept from Mommy. I had no reason to feel this way. I told myself, but it didn't stop me from feeling it. and I was terrified that Mommy would see the exchange between us one day and wonder why. For now, however, she was as absent from my life as I had been from hers.
Eventually she even began to neglect Kirby. By month's end I saw they were doing more and more things separately. He was off on trips supposedly to find out about this investment or that. I noticed that a number of things took him to Las Vegas. too. A part of me was happy about this. Whatever activities he was involved in kept him from approaching me. It had been nearly two months since we had last gone sailing together, for example, not that I would have gone if he asked now.
Actually I was rarely in the mood to do anything physical. whether it was with him or not. My reading suffered as well because my eyes would drift from the page. and I would focus on something off in the distance and fall into a kind of trance, not realizing I was doing so until I blinked, looked at my watch, and saw I had let nearly twenty minutes drift away.
And then a strange thing happened. I began to have great difficulty falling asleep at night. Some nights I would lie there and stare at the ceiling waiting for my eyes to close and stay closed. I didn't sleep, but often, as in a dream, the faces of the people I had known since Daddy's death appeared like pictures projected on the wall. There was Autumn Sullivan, her face writhing with anxiety because of what the girls had revealed about her abortion. There was Augustus Brewster almost struck dumb by his grandmother's passing, and there was poor Randy struggling to get out his words. Winston seemed forever in a dark corner, watching me, smiling softly. Suddenly there was the light of morning sweeping him away with the shadows. and I hadn't bought a single hour of sleep.
It made me lethargic most of the day, Vaguely I understood that something very serious was
happening to me. It was as if my identity, my selfawareness, was dissipating, thinning out until I was translucent. People would soon see right through me. and I would totally disappear just the way Augustus Brewster used to predict he would, and no one would even notice. I blamed it all on my insomnia.
One night when Mommy was out at one of her meetings and Kirby was off doing whatever things he was into those days, I snuck into their suite and rifled through Mommy's medicine cabinet to find her sleeping pills. I knew she often relied on them. I hated taking any pills at all, but I was at a point of near madness from the many sleepless nights and decided I had no choice.
I took one and went to bed. It made me doze and even drift off for a few hours. but I woke in the middle of the night and remained awake again, the same faces parading on the walls of
darkness around me until the sun's rays burned through and around the curtains.
Encouraged by the few hours I had achieved, however. I took two pills the following night and slept longer. After that I began to rely on the pills more and more and eventually sent one of our servants to the pharmacy. The prescription permitted one more refill. I didn't tell Mommy about it, of course. Now I had my own.
Sleep became an avenue of delightful escape. I loved wrapping my blanket around myself and drifting into the haze. There were no simples, no hard memories to confront, no decisions to make. In sleep I was truly free and undisturbed. I felt no guilt, no insecurity. I needed no defenses,
Vaguely I knew my appearance was changing. I woke and didn't bother to brush my hair. Sometimes I didn't shower, either. I never put on makeup, not even a little lipstick anymore. I wore the same dress for days. Mommy noticed my hair and remarked about it, but she was so absorbed in her charity and social events she didn't see much more, which confirmed my mad suspicion that I was truly slowly disappearing.
I wasn't sure whether Kirby noticed or not or, to be even more accurate, cared or not Something was occupying his mind and his time, too, these days. He was in and out without so much as saying hello to me. I thought perhaps he was disgusted with me or with what I had let him do and had chosen to ignore me.
Then one night, the time being so blurred in my memory, he came to my suite. I was already in bed, captured within the powers of the pills, slumbering like someone in hibernation. What was real and what was part of my dream world were indistinguishable. I heard a knock, but in my mind the knock was within a dream. It was Daddy. He had come to my bedroom in Norfolk.
"Are you awake?" I heard.
"Yes," I said eagerly. I could feel the deep, happy smile carving its way into my face.
In my memory there was a full moon. and I had forgotten to close the curtains. The room was so bright with its illumination it looked as if it was an fire.
"Hey," he said. "How are you doing?"
"I'm fine. I'm glad you're here," I said.
I felt him sit on the bed, and then I felt his hand wipe the strands of hair from my cheeks.
"I've been thinking about you a lot. I'm sorry I haven't been around much these days, but that didn't mean you weren't in my thoughts. I wanted to give more time to you. I feel terrible about filling your heart with expectation and then not fulfilling my promise.'
"I know you do, but it's all right," I said, still smiling, my eyes still closed.
"I don't want you to feel alone or last, Grace." Grace? Why doesn't he call me Sailor Girl?
"You're missing a lot in your life. You're wasting the best years. You can't continue to live this way, shut up inside. As I tried to show you before, you've got to learn to let yourself feel, experience. grow. Whoever has tried to be with you was just wrong or didn't know what he was doing or, even worse, was simply too selfish. The best lover is one who gives as much as he or she gets."
I felt the blanket sliding down my shoulder until it was at my waist.
"Sleeping in the nude these days? Or did you just forget to put an a nightie?" he asked, and laughed.
"I must have forgotten," I said.
His fingers traced down from the back of my neck, down over my spine, moving the blanket farther until it was around the middle of my legs, just under the inside of my knees. His hand moved as softly as a breeze over my tush, as he used to call it.