Two Birds, One Stone

18. Day Dream

I turned over beneath the sheets, pulling the blanket over my head to keep out the cold air from the fan. Moments later, I was too hot, and I pushed it down to my knees. Over and over I turned, never quite comfortable enough to sleep, too hot and too cold, too worried about everything.

About Stevie. About Jamie. About high school and college and my family and my future.

Sleep had been hard to come by these last few nights. It was like every time I turned off the lights and lay down in bed -- every time it was just me and my thoughts, no work or distraction -- my mind turned into an impossible maze, where there was no exit, and every dead end was something to worry about. That was all I had done these last few nights, it seemed -- worry.

But I would rather worry at night than worry during the day.

As I shifted yet again, the silence in my room -- and throughout the entire house, no doubt -- was pierced by a sadly familiar sound: the yelling voices of a man and a woman, not clear enough for me to make out the words but too loud to be blocked out by the covers.

I sighed and rolled onto my back, giving up on falling asleep anytime soon and letting my eyes peel wide. The ceiling stared back at me, blank and calm -- there was no noise of scuttling or scraping, so it seemed the squirrel that lived up there at least hadn't been woken by my parents' screaming.

I waited for them to get tired and resign as they always did -- Mom saying she couldn't do this right now, Dad saying there was no getting through to her, the two of them taking very opposite ends of the bed with backs turned to each other and fingers gripping the covers. But the minutes seemed to stretch on forever, and after ten, I was sick of it; I yanked my pillow from under my head and pressed it around my ears, only succeeding in muffling the noise to a dull (but equally annoying) ring.

It was nothing new. My parents hadn't gotten along -- genuinely gotten along, not the front they put on for family friends and us kids -- since sometime around 2004.

I didn't normally react. I was as used to hearing them fight as I was used to seeing them laugh or smile.

Yet for some reason, as I laid the pillow back beneath my head, I felt an unhappy tumble beneath my chest. It moved down to my stomach and became a churn, then up to my heart where it left a scorch mark. I took a deep breath and told myself not to get upset. I reminded myself that this was normal, and that there was no reason to think about it; no reason to worry. But I couldn't relax, and my restlessness remained.

My memories projected themselves onto the ceiling in my mind -- I saw the first divorce, when I was five and Stevie was eight and Jacob was still a baby. The three of us moving back and forth each week with bags of our things. I saw Danica, brown haired and short; a few months later, Patrick, dark-skinned and tall. Fast forward and the second round of divorces came -- my mom left Patrick for a young Swedish model, my dad and Danica argued their way into a courtroom. All the while, Stevie and Jacob and I packed our things and moved from her house to his house to her house.

Next, I saw Top-Hat Henry. Mom never married Henry -- and Dad never married Coleen with the Green Glasses. Same with Redhead Richard and Triplet-Daughters Luisa. They came and went, just like we came and went. But there was always a move -- sometimes just to a new house, sometimes to a new school, sometimes even to a different city, though we always ended back here.

Two white weddings in one year -- sandy beaches in July, ice sculptures and Christmas trees in December. After a while, you get sick of the magic of matrimony, and your parents scold you for not smiling in the photos, and the guests ask you why you aren't eating.