Tom began sleepwalking again when they moved to the new house. His mother would come into his room in the morning, only to discover mud on the carpet and grass stains on his feet. She said nothing except, "Wake up, dear," and waited until he was out of the house before she began fretting.
Her husband had been a sleepwalker as well. Night after night she would wake up to find the sheets thrown aside, only the indentation of his body left in the mattress, his warmth already gone. She would always rise, throw a robe over her nightgown, and run outside to find him. In the beginning she had called his name, but eventually she had learned that Edward couldn't hear her in that state, even when she caught his arm and spoke directly into his face. The only thing she could do was guide him firmly back to the house and into bed, while he looked over his shoulder with unseeing eyes, yearning for whatever had drawn him out into the night in the first place.
She never learned what it was. On one of his midnight searches, Edward crossed a street to find it and was hit by a truck.
Things had been hard after that, but she lavished her love upon their son instead. It had frightened her when he too started sleepwalking the night after the funeral. She consulted a family friend.
"He may be trying to look for his father," Carlos suggested. "Instead of dreaming, he actually goes out and seeks Edward."
She shuddered. "Sleepwalkers aren't that purposeful, are they?" But what had been so compelling to draw Edward from her side? It hurt to think that she hadn't been able to give him everything he needed: love and companionship and a child, a well-kept home and his every domestic need provided. And yet something had still been lacking.
For Tom too, now? She tried to be twice as much of a mother, to make up for Edward's absence. She packed him lavish lunches and filled his day with play dates, took him to watch G-rated movies and tucked him in every night at nine o'clock, kissed his forehead, and prayed.
But the next day she would always find his footprints in the garden.
She had chosen the house for its small size--suitable for the two of them--and its proximity to his school, so he wouldn't have to adjust to new classmates. A change of place without all the empty spaces to remind them of Edward would help, she had thought. The real estate agent had tried hard to push the garden as a plus, but she had no green thumb, and it was overrun with wisteria vines and wild rose bushes. She had figured they could simply keep the back door locked and get their ration of greenery from the evenly-mowed lawn out front.
At first she wondered why Tom, obviously capable while sleepwalking of opening and closing doors and minding the small set of steps out back, could not manage to pull on socks and shoes before venturing outdoors. But a few minutes of thought cured her of her annoyance over the dirt tracked into her neat house. At least Tom was not heading out into the streets, where he might meet the same fate as Edward.
One night, she deliberately made herself a cup of coffee at nine o'clock, and settled herself at the kitchen table. She had never stayed up past midnight before. Her days were rigidly scheduled, and her body followed the clock she set for it. But tonight she grimly clung to her caffeine and waited.
Tom's door opened. Barefoot, he walked through the kitchen and then out into the garden. She followed and stood in the doorway to watch him.
There was a maple tree in the corner; he went straight to it and clambered up its trunk with an agility that bespoke prior experience. She drew in a breath to shout at him and make him get down immediately, but then she remembered that he would not hear her.
He climbed high enough that the branches began to bend dangerously under his weight. He hung onto the limb with both hands and swung his body down, landing perfectly. Then he threw his arms up the way a gymnast would after a successful vault, and then he laughed.
She froze. She hadn't heard Tom laugh for a long time.
There hadn't been any laughter in her house for a long time. Even when Edward had been there.
She remembered one more thing Carlos had said before they had parted. "Give the boy a little room, won't you?"
She had stiffened, appalled at the suggestion. She had been so certain that what Tom needed was more of her in his life. But maybe her mothering had grown claustrophobic. Maybe he did need some space apart from her, space to grow and be himself.
And hadn't Edward too once been more spontaneous, back in their days of courtship? Somehow, once they had married, she had fit him into the neatly bordered hours she lived by. It had been comfortable for her, but perhaps dull for him. And when the daily routine had grown so cloying that he had escaped during the only time he could, when he was unconscious...
She watched Tom play in the garden for a little longer, and then went back inside. She shouldn't let her presence invade on this short period of release. Her own sleep that night was restful, and when she went to wake her son up the next morning, her smile wasn't forced at all.
Tom was a dutiful son by day and a free wanderer by night. His sleepwalking troubled her no more. It freed both their hearts, for it allowed him to avoid a paradox.
Yune would like to mention that the title for this piece was taken from a poem by Edward Hirsch.