into her parents’ room. Once, she’d walked out the front door, but Will had been following her and managed to guide her back to her room.
At camp, she’d once woken up a few feet from the cabin, and her counselor, a snarly teenage girl with horrible acne, was behind her, looking like she’d just seen a ghost. “What the hell?” the counselor had said. “You’re, like, possessed or something.” From then on, Claire had a note in her camp file that said PRONE TO SLEEPWALKING. PLEASE MONITOR.
But she’d thought she’d outgrown this little habit. All those years that she lived in apartments in New York, she never even worried that she’d do such a thing. And here she was, standing outside in winter in the middle of the night.
A few nights later, it happened again and Claire woke up standing on the front porch. Ruby was right behind her, her head tilted as if she was getting ready to bark. Claire hurried back into the house, locked the door, scooped Ruby up, and headed to her room, where she scrunched underneath the covers and tried to get warm again.
Telling her family was out of the question. Weezy would freak out, Martha would insist that she needed to go see a therapist, and Will would start trying to figure out how to lock the doors so that she couldn’t get outside. The whole family would talk about it at dinner for weeks. Martha would pretend that she knew the medical reasons for sleepwalking, as if being a nurse qualified her to diagnose Claire. No, it was out of the question.
The next night, Claire put a stack of books in front of her door, so that she couldn’t open it without knocking them down, which she hoped would be enough to wake her up. She was pleased with the plan, pretty sure that this would keep her safely inside. Although she did go to bed every night a little afraid that she was going to wake up somewhere strange.
AT THE END OF FEBRUARY, the whole family came down with the flu. It was a flu that sent each of them running to the bathroom again and again. Just when one would flop down on the couch, dehydrated and exhausted, the next one would hear a rumble in their stomach and get up, clutching their middle and running out of the room.
Martha and Claire lay on the couch, trying to watch a movie, but they couldn’t get through much before one of them had to leave. They were starting to get delirious. The flu had been going on for almost three days now and there was no sign of its slowing down. They had all said out loud that they might be dying.
“We look like a diarrhea commercial,” Claire said. Martha started to laugh. “What?” Claire asked.
“A diarrhea commercial? I know what you mean, but it sounds like you’re talking about an ad that’s selling diarrhea.”
“Oh yeah,” Claire said. She started to laugh too. “I meant like Pepto-Bismol or whatever.”
The family shuffled around in their pajamas, getting ginger ale and toast from the kitchen and then heading back to the couch or their beds. For the first time, when Max called, Claire told him truthfully that they hadn’t talked about him and Cleo in days. “We’re too busy talking about each other’s shit,” Claire told him. “You’re off the hook.”
“I think I might be coming down with something too,” Lainie said to Claire on the phone.
“Well,” Claire said, “you would know if you had this.”
“Yeah, I just feel so pukey all the time. Great. I’m sure the worst is coming.”
But then a couple of weeks later, Lainie called and asked Claire if she could go out for a little bit. “Brian’s watching the boys,” she said. They met in Lainie’s driveway, and Lainie drove to the Post Office Bar, a place that they used to frequent during the summers when they were home from college.
“This okay with you?” she asked.
“Sure,” Claire said. “I haven’t been here in forever.”
They ordered two drafts of some sort of amber beer, and a basket of Parmesan-garlic fries, which looked like frozen french fries that had been warmed and covered with grated cheese, but were actually not bad. The bar was empty, except for one older man at the end of the bar, who was doing a crossword puzzle and drinking. Claire wondered where he went in the summer, when this place was overrun with underage kids and