Elizabeth Flock - Sleepwalking in Daylight

Selected praise for Sleepwalking in Daylight

“Flock draws astute parallels between the alienated Cammy and Sam—living in a sexless marriage, bored with driving to endless soccer practices and sick of being the devoted mom … Filled with perceptive, dead-on insights into both teenage angst and the common pitfalls of marriage in the middle years.”

—Booklist

“Elizabeth Flock offers us a haunting look at the challenges and responsibilities of raising a small family in suburban America. This is a cautionary tale about the perils of narcissism and living in denial.

Once you pick it up, you can’t not read it to the very last page. Sleepwalking in Daylight will be remembered for a very long time.” —New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank

“Elizabeth Flock’s Sleepwalking in Daylight is a painfully emotional mother-daughter story told in the voices of Samantha and Cammy, in alternating chapters. Samantha is so wrapped up in herself that she can’t fathom Cammy’s unhappiness. Cammy secretly tries to find her birth mother, certain that her ‘real’ mother will understand her as Samantha does not. Flock tells a disturbing family story in two authentic voices.” —Boston Globe

“[A] terrific novel … [Samantha] is still married but she’s fallen in love with someone else—and is desperately trying to reconnect with her goth-obsessed teenage daughter.”

—Parenting magazine, “Recommended Read”

“Elizabeth Flock is a skilful storyteller, and the suspense is genuine as we watch Cammy sink deeper and deeper into her pain. Samantha is indeed ‘sleepwalking in daylight’ and the reader wants to scream at her to wake up.”

—AuthorMagazine

“Have you ever opened your eyes and realised that you’ve been sleepwalking through your life? If so, this is the novel for you. Sleepwalking in Daylight is heartfelt and poignant, unique and memorable. Elizabeth Flock’s characters feel real, her dialogue is first-rate. The story is rich and resonates long after the last page has been turned. This novel isn’t about the perfection of life, but rather, how life’s imperfections make it all the more precious.” —John Shors, bestselling author of Beneath a Marble Sky

Also by Elizabeth Flock

EVERYTHING MUST GO

ME & EMMA

BUT INSIDE I’M SCREAMING

Sleepwalking in Daylight

Elizabeth Flock

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Jill Brack

Acknowledgments

The writing of this novel took place during perhaps the most wrenching two years of my life and would not have been possible without the loving support of friends and family. To say they held me up and put me back together during a nearly unbearable time would be an understatement—they did so much more. For a multitude of reasons, both personal and professional, I will be forever grateful to Mary Jane Clark, Joan Drummond Olson, Bruce Fine, Mary Chase-Ziolek, Jodie Chase, Dotty Sonnemaker, Catherine DiBenedetto, Kat Mosteller and Kim Merenkov.

My heartfelt thanks to my editor, Susan Swinwood, and to my agent, Larry Kirshbaum, both of whom patiently and brilliantly guided and shaped this novel through its many incarnations. I am deeply grateful, too, to Margaret Marbury, to Kathleen Carter at Goldberg McDuffie, to John and Fauzia Burke and the team at FSB Associates.

There is nothing like the bond between siblings, who know you best and keep you anyway. I hope Peter, Katherine, Regi and Jill know how much I love them and appreciate them daily. My girls, Emily and Lizzie, fill me with pride and happiness. I love and adore them beyond measure. As I do their father, Jeffrey. That will never change. Ever.

My parents are without question the strongest, most generous and loving human beings I have ever encountered. Their arms and hearts are open to all their children and grandchildren, but I fear I may have tested this more than the rest. My one hope is that they know how deep and profound my love is for both of them. Their marriage has lasted more than four decades and is the gold standard for how to do it right. Because of them, I believe in love.

And in the end that is what this book is about: love. Plain and simple.

We haven’t had sex in eleven months. Just shy of a year. More time than it takes to grow a human being. I know it was eleven months ago for two reasons: one, it was on our wedding anniversary and on wedding anniversaries sex is a given and two, the next night was the incident with the family room light. I was reading a book about a missionary family in Africa I ordered after Oprah plugged it. I keep track of what I read on my calendar and plus I remember wishing it weren’t our wedding anniversary because I was at the good part but instead I had to pretend I didn’t know Bob was simply going through the motions required of husbands celebrating their wedding anniversaries.

So there we were the following night, in the second floor room that is, after the kitchen, the nerve center of our house. Bob was at the computer in the corner searching eBay for tennis rackets even though it’d end up costing more for one on eBay when you factor in the shipping and handling.

“Why don’t you just go to Sportmart?” I’d asked earlier in the evening.

“I’m looking for the old wooden ones,” he said without looking up. “The old Wilsons.”

I shrugged and went back to my book. I became so engrossed I remember looking up and feeling shock that no, I wasn’t in a civil war in the Congo, I was actually in my tidy three-story house on Chicago’s North Side. I remember smiling and thinking I love it when that happens. When a book’s so good you forget who and where you are.

I’d heard Bob sighing and pushing back from the family desk littered with half-finished homework, field-trip permission slips and school reminders on brightly colored paper. He crossed the room and flicked off the light as he left and it took me calling “hey” for him to come back, switch it back on with an “oh, sorry, I forgot you were there.” The worst part was he wasn’t doing it to prove some point. He truly forgot I was in the room with him. Which is exactly the point. We haven’t had sex since.

I know it seems like a silly thing, the light incident. But everyone has that final straw, that moment of clarity when you can’t put your finger on it, you just know there’s been a shift, a ripple in the atmosphere. The little things have added up and finally you can’t take it anymore. We’ve been quietly drifting into our own worlds for a while, Bob and I. I’ve just been ignoring it. Up until now. And I can’t take it anymore.

Just last week I got buttermilk for the pancakes I decided to make for no real reason. A special treat. I felt like making an effort for once. I got the buttermilk because I know Bob likes it when the pancakes are richer. Swanky pancakes he used to say in a tone that thanked me for going the extra mile back when something like buttermilk was considered going the extra mile. Last week not only did he not notice we were having something other than cold cereal, but when I carefully slid a stack from the spatula onto a plate waved me off and he said, “None for me. There’s that construction on Irving Park so we’ve gotta get going. C’mon, guys.”

Our eight-year-old sons, Jamie and Andrew, were still chewing when they grabbed their shin guards and soccer cleats. Sometimes I wonder if they really are twins, they’re so different in looks and personality. Jamie moves slowly and deliberately like he’s thought out every step he takes. Before breakfast he lined up his guards and shoes neatly by the backdoor. He put out two bottles of water, just to the side. He remembers the second one because Andrew never does. Jamie has freckles across his nose. His skin is so milky white you can see blue veins through it. His delicate features I think will translate into a refined face later on. He is small for eight and many people assume he is younger than his brother. Andrew is solid and stocky with thick brownish-red hair and a Dennis the Menace cowlick. He is exactly what you think of when you think of an eight-year-old boy: messy, unkempt, fearless. If he falls down and cuts his lip he spits the blood out and keeps going. He’s got a short attention span but he was tested for ADHD and came up clean. I’ve had to tell Jamie not to pick up after his brother, which he does on the sly because he can’t bear to see his twin in trouble. In trouble Jamie looks wounded. Andrew just tips his head back to roll his eyes at the ceiling and sighs at the futility of parental warnings. Nothing gets through to Andrew; everything gets through to Jamie.