of his niece, or at least not opposed to her. He made her macaroni and cheese and got her milk in a sippy cup, which she immediately poured down her shirt. For the rest of the day, the little girl was slightly damp and smelled sour. When Claire got up to leave, she leaned down and touched the top of Jude’s head.
“ ’Bye, Jude,” she said.
“ ’Bye, stupid,” Jude replied.
She and Fran never went out, which suited her just fine. Sometimes they picked up food or got takeout, but mostly they just sat in the basement. “Don’t you two ever want to go out to dinner?” Lainie asked. Claire knew she thought it was weird, but to her it would have been weirder if they ever left the basement.
“Not really. We’re fine just hanging out,” she said.
It wasn’t just that she never wanted to spend money (which she didn’t), but it was like they both knew that their relationship, or whatever it was, worked best in the basement. If they took it out into the light of day, it would be different.
All through high school, Claire had imagined what it would be like to date Fran. Fran now seemed like a different person than the one she used to spend hours thinking about. In high school, Fran had worn a gas station shirt to school almost every day. It was navy and had the name BUD stitched above the left breast pocket. She would wonder what it would be like to lie next to him, rest her head right on top of the BUD.
She remembered the way Fran would sometimes take huge sandwiches to parties, how he would sit, stoned, in the middle of a room and shove a sub in his mouth, letting lettuce and onions drop all around him, like he was the only person in the room, or really, like he could give two shits about what these people thought of him anyway. In her whole life, Claire was pretty sure she had never felt that comfortable.
Sometimes when she was with him now, she would have a moment where she’d think, I am lying in bed with Fran Angelo. It was a strange, out-of-body experience, like when she used to get stoned in college, stare in the bathroom mirror and think, That is me. That is me looking back at me, until she got dizzy and had to leave the room.
WINTER SEEMED LONELIER, although Claire couldn’t say exactly why. She was barely home, but when she was, the idea of going somewhere else seemed so hard. It was like the idea of putting on boots and a coat exhausted her.
She didn’t spend as much time at Lainie’s, mostly because with the three boys stuck in the house, it seemed smaller and much more crowded. The last time she’d been over there, Jack spent most of the time leaping from the couch to the table to the chair. “I can’t touch the ground,” he screamed. “It’s lava and if I touch it, I’ll die.” Then he’d leapt back over to the couch and hit his arm on Claire’s nose. “Ow!” he yelled. He cradled his arm against his chest with his other hand and glared at Claire like she’d hit him. “That hurt,” he told her.
Martha had gotten in the habit of coming into Claire’s room every night. She’d sit on the edge of Claire’s bed and rattle off a list of things she’d done that day. She talked about her job and Max and Cleo. It didn’t matter if Claire answered her or even really listened. It was like Martha just needed to hear herself talk.
Claire tried to be patient with her, but it wasn’t easy. Most of the time she just wanted to be left alone. She found herself shutting her bedroom door early, turning off the lights and getting into bed so Martha would leave her alone.
One night, Claire woke up outside the house in her pajamas. She stood there, heart pounding, and realized that she must have sleepwalked out of her room, down the stairs, through the garage, and outside.
There she was, barefoot, staring right into the living room and trying to figure out what had happened. It felt a little like waking up in a hotel room on vacation and not knowing where you were for a few minutes—only so much worse. Claire hadn’t sleepwalked in years. As a child, she’d occasionally wander out of her room and down to the kitchen or