Sleepwalking by Meg Wolitzer

body was cool, straight, efficient. Smells and tastes did not lure her from sleep in the middle of the night. She had no fur, she had no heat.

chapter three
    On Julian’s birthday she bought him a red scarf. It was very long, and he wound it around the both of them. They stood in her room with their faces pressing hard against each other. He kissed her, and she could feel heat and dampness against the wool of the scarf. She was reminded of walking to school in winter, all wrapped up by her mother against the cold, breathing open-mouthed into cloth.
    Claire liked giving presents. A year before Seth died she gave him an Etch-a-Sketch, a toy they had loved when they were little and had misplaced long ago. Somehow their coordination was off now, and they couldn’t make any interesting designs. The box showed elaborate pictures of flowers and animals and sailboats. They turned the knobs for an hour, then gave up. “We were better at this when we were eight,” Seth said. Theyput the toy away, and never used it again. It was still sitting in an old chest in the playroom.
    No one had touched the toy chest since Seth died. It was big and made of stiff cardboard, with bright blue stars pasted all over it. Claire knew the contents without having to look inside. Every game stayed with her, and so did the memory of afternoons of play. There was benign Candyland with no words, just pictures of jaunty peppermint sticks and chocolate bars, and you moved your marker blithely around the game board, knowing that nothing really bad could happen to you. There was Go to the Head of the Class, which only lasted a few months because the reams of questions got used up. Somewhere at the bottom there was Twister, and this offered the most focused memory of all. Their father had brought home the big flat Twister box one evening for no particular reason, but just as a surprise. This was uncharacteristic of him, but Claire did not say anything. She watched as her father spread out the vinyl mat on the living-room rug. It had a vaguely unpleasant odor to it, like a bed-wetter’s rubber sheet. Still, she was excited. Even their mother agreed to play, in the capacity of referee and spinner.
Left hand red, right foot green
. Directions were called, and soon they were a family tangled up. Claire wrapped her arms around her father’s waist to touch a distant green circle. She was on all fours, and Seth was wedged beneath her, squirming. Her mother gave the spinner a good flick and called out, “Left foot yellow!”
    The three of them slowly toppled in a heap, like the fall of an ancient, crumbling building. Claire lay there, breathinghard, her arms and legs mixed up with everyone else’s. She had wondered how she would ever be able to grow up and move away from home, like her sister Joan, who went to college in Arizona. There was so much to connect people in a family; even if you weren’t close, you still had shared histories. How could you ever leave?
    “I can’t bear to come East,” Joan said over the telephone. “I’m doing such good work here, and I have a whole new life.” But there had been one time when Claire had felt very close to her. Joan was home for a rare Christmas-vacation visit. The two sisters sat in the bathroom, in front of the big wall mirror, and Joan set Claire’s hair with pink curlers. “Wait until Mom sees,” Joan said. “She won’t even recognize you.”
    Claire giggled at the excitement of this new allegiance and then sat quietly as her sister’s hands, damp with setting gel, moved slowly through her hair, parting it and rolling it close to her head. Claire felt a swell of love for Joan, and she knew why: you love the people who take care of you. She closed her eyes and felt like a patient dog being petted over and over on its sleek, waiting head.
    No one had really taken care of her since then. Julian tried, but it just wasn’t right. She felt his bewilderment and inexperience, and she thought that he could