Sleeping Awake (2 page)

“Yes,” Bryn replied. “She’s the one
who rang me, you know. What with you disconnecting your phone and all, I had no
way of contacting you. Thanks for doing that, by the way. It really showed how
solid a friendship we have.”

“I’m sorry.” I leaned over and
kissed him on his cheek.

“Whatever.” He waved his hands
again. “Go and get the ruddy glasses.”

I walked through the house with a
slight bounce in my step, marvelling at how my feet didn’t quite seem to touch
the floor. For the past year, the ground had been their best friend. My steps
were still slow, but I did not drag my feet along the wood as I used to. Bryn,
I could remember. Bryn I could more than handle. There were no bad memories
attached to Bryn.

Bryn and I met after we were placed
in the same homeroom during our junior year of Lycée Olivier Dumas, a private
French high school on the Upper West Side. I was the sulker in the back, sullen
and bored by the triteness of the education system and my desire to be anywhere
but there. He was the blonde-haired, blue-eyed British import who exploited his
good looks by posing bare-chested for Abercrombie and Fitch on a giant
billboard above Times Square.

Our homeroom teacher, Madame Qui, a
real tub of lard if I ever saw one, barely had time to say, “Con-chuh-bayer,”
before Bryn cleared his throat.

“Is there a problem, Mr.
Conchobair?” Madame Qui’s owlish eyes ogled at us from behind her glasses.

“Yes,” Bryn replied in his
perfected drawl. He had an uncanny way of letting people know just what he
thought of them without actually saying it. “My surname is not
‘Con-chuh-bayer.’”

Madame Qui looked down at her roster
and frowned. “But it says…”

“It’s pronounced ‘Con-ah-war.’” Bryn
replied. Under his breath, I heard him mutter, “Perhaps it’s time that you
learn to pronounce things other than the names of desserts.”

I giggled, and he looked over at
me. It was probably the first time that he ever noticed me; I didn’t blame him.
It probably didn’t help that I avoided the lunchroom and the morning mass. Too many
people, too much noise.

“Saint Clair, Nor-rah.”

“It’s Nwor-ah,” I snapped.

“Pardonne?”

“It’s Nwor-ah,” I repeated. “You
know? Pronounced the way that it looks…
en français
.
Vous parlez le
français, non?
”

I didn’t bother to wait for her to
yell at me and threaten me with a conduct mark. “I have a headache,” I
declared. “I’m going to the nurse.”

When I left the Sick Bay at the
beginning of the first period, Bryn was waiting for me.

“I have to hand it to you, Nor-rah,”
he said, handing me my forgotten bag. “That was some rather surly behaviour
back there.”

“Whatever, Mr. Con-chuh-bayer.”

We’d been best friends ever since.

“Con-chuh-bayer!” I sang as I
returned to my room.

Bryn turned slightly and smiled
from his position before my window. “That was fast, Nor-rah.”

“Fill her up!” I thrust my glass
into his hand and did a little dance as he began to pour.

“I like your backyard.” Bryn turned to gaze out at the
deep red and orange of the setting sky. “Reminds me of my villa in Strawberry
Hill.”

“Well that’s the whole point,” I said.

“To remind me of my villa?” Bryn leaned casually
against the window. He looked perfectly at ease. I envied the way that he could
look so relaxed, no matter the circumstance.

“Just Jamaica, fool.”

“Oh right. I’d forgotten that your mother’s side is
Jamaican. My au pair was Jamaican, you know.”

“I’m not surprised,” I replied. “London is the new
Kingston.”

“Indeed it is,” he turned away from Maman’s version of
paradise. With a look of firm resolve on his face, he added, “
So now that we’ve gotten
the formalities out of the way, are you going to explain to me why you’ve been
home for three days and haven’t called your one and only mate?”

I didn’t reply. What could I have
possibly said that would be sufficient enough to excuse my behaviour, which was
perfectly normal to me and so obviously offensive to him?

“How was the psych ward?” he tried
again, returning to his usual dry humour.

I shrugged my shoulders and patted
the spot beside me on the bed. Once he sat down, I curled up in his lap and
leaned my head against his chest. “I like how you smell…”

“Noira, I’m being serious,” he
said. “Do you think that being at Golden Ridge has helped you? I don’t know why
you refused to let me come and visit you!”

I sat up and looked him in the
eyes. “I couldn’t let you see me like that, Bryn. It was bad enough having
Maman visit me every week.”

“But…”

I pressed my fingers to his lips.
“I went to Golden Ridge because I had a manic episode that induced a nervous
breakdown. I went mad. I stopped eating and sleeping, and I had slashes all
over my arms and legs from cutting myself… I looked like an extra on a Tim
Burton set. I did not want anyone to see me in that state. It’s as simple as
that.”

“Noira, nothing is as simple as
that,” Bryn replied. There was a slight twitch in his jaw. “I’m supposed to be
your best friend, and yet I never knew that you were struggling. If you had
said something, I would have come straight away. I would have taken care of
you. You wouldn’t have had to…”

This conversation was what I had
foreseen when I refused to allow Bryn to be added to my list of approved
visitors. I knew that he would take my failure personally. It was enough
knowing that my cycles between mania and suicidal thoughts was also chewing
away at Maman; I didn’t trust myself to have the will to live if Bryn had
arrived with the same cloak of insurmountable sorrow that Maman donned every
day for me. She always tried to disguise it with her makeup and her constant
smiles, but like everything else, it had a distinct odor, and the air was
always sour with her pain.

“Bryn, let’s not do this right
now,” I said, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “We can save the depressing
conversation for another day.”

I resumed leaning my head on his
chest, content to listen to the steady beat of his heart.

After a while, his chest rose more
than usual, and he let out a loud sigh. “Are you happy now and ready to face the
world?”

“Are you?” I replied.

**~*~*~**~*~**

Being at home was no better
than being at Golden Ridge. From the cradle to the grave, I was to be shuttled
from one prison to the next.

Maman and Cienna were clearly
on a mission to cement me firmly on the path of normalcy. They thought that I
didn’t notice what they were doing. My IQ was 150; I was smart enough to know
that they were never going to give me a moment by myself.

Maman might as well have slept
in my bed for all the times that she kept coming to check on me during the
night. Cienna was running out of ways to compliment my dismal appearance. She
no longer knocked on my door with a smile on her “I just came to say ‘Hi!’”
face after Maman left for work in the mornings and her patrol shift began. My
room had become her room, apparently. My mid-century chaise was covered with
various fashion magazines waiting for her to just breeze in, sans announcement,
and read them all day as she waited for Maman to come home and relieve her.
Except for a photo shoot that she went to last week, wherever Cienna went in
the days, I followed.

Now, Camelea was my warden.
Though she and Maman didn’t know it, I had been on my way to the kitchen the
night before and had heard Maman giving her the “We’re all in this together”
speech as I walked past her room door.

“We have to form a solid
support system for her Camelea, or else she’ll never get through this,” Maman
implored.

I could picture Maman’s
face—the slight frown, the premature crow’s feet that would dust the corners
of her eyes as she narrowed in on Camelea. The way that she would hold
Camelea’s gaze until whatever words of protest melted down Camelea’s throat. It
was the look that struck fear and swayed opinions in her favour. Even I, no
matter how familiar I was with the Look, had no other choice but to succumb to
it.

“Oui Maman,”
Camelea said a few seconds
later.

“Bon,”
Maman replied.

When I returned from getting
my glass of water, Camelea and Maman were in my room. Camelea’s eyes narrowed
as she saw me. I rolled mine in response.

“If you need anything
tomorrow,” Maman began, “Camelea will be here.”

I took a seat on the edge of
my bed, brought the glass to my lips and took a long, slow sip.
“D’accord.”

Maman’s face softened as she
smiled. Though I couldn’t see them, I knew that beneath the concealer, the
foundation, and the eye shadow were deep purple rings around her—medals,
you could call them, gained from championing me to good health and forgoing
sleep in order to do so.

I knew that I should have felt
some kind of remorse for my mother’s deteriorating state, but I was beyond
capable of that. My twice-daily cocktail of get-well-pills had rendered me
incapable of feeling anything beyond the desire for the sleep that never came.

“I’ll leave you both to
discuss your day tomorrow,” Maman announced.

I could have laughed.
Camelea’s jaw twitched as Maman almost skipped, beaming all the while, out of
my room.

I tried, and failed, to
remember the last time that Camelea and I had been alone in the same room.
Perhaps it had been while we were still living in Paris. Perhaps it had been
immediately after our move to New York and before my need to have the family
cheerleaders root for my seemingly impossible breakthrough. Perhaps it had
never happened at all.

Camelea’s eyes rested on me. They
grew smaller at a most alarming rate, until it was nearly impossible to tell
whether or not she could actually see me. I didn’t break contact.

“I’m only doing this because
it’s my Christian duty,” she whispered, least Maman heard, I supposed.

“I figured as much,” I
replied.

“It’s what Jesus would do,”
she continued. Her fingers wound themselves into the tightest of fists around
her rosary.

“Amen.” I raised my glass.

I could hear Camelea’s sharp
intake of breath. She looked like a lizard as her throat puffed up. It was as
if she was trying to inhale all of the air in the room. She left without saying
another word. The next day, she didn’t so much as come and ask me if I wanted a
glass of water. Still, I was glad for the peace.

At least there was silence
during the nights at Golden Ridge. At least there were no infernal questions
about if I’d given much thought to whether or not I wanted to go back to school
in the fall or the spring. At least Anne-Marie, my nurse, didn’t give a damn
about what either Monique Lhullier or Vivienne Westwood was creating.
Anne-Marie would never try and get me to wear tulle anything, and I doubted
that she even knew the difference between a V-neck and an A-line.

I’d imagined a summer of
undisturbed slumber, but I should have known better; my jailers would never let
me sleep away my life. It made me wonder what really awaited me in the
afterlife.

Since I was finally alone,
when the time came for me to take my medicine after lunch, I threw the five
pills down the toilet: Cymbalta for the depression, Geodon for my psychotic
episodes, Lamictal for the mood swings and Clonazepam for the daily anxiety
attacks. It wasn’t as if they were bringing me happiness. I crawled into bed
and closed my eyes, hoping for sleep, even though I had long since given up on
it. I was so very tired of living in a haze.

*~*

I was never too sure if I had
slept during the night. I would often come to the realization that I had been
staring at the wall, but I was never certain if I had been staring for a very
long time, or if I just woken up. This started happening once I’d been switched
from Lexapro to Cymbalta. The Lexapro had been successful in stopping the
depression, but only because it made me spend my days and my nights asleep.
Once I switched to Cymbalta, sleep stopped being my friend. I wasn’t depressed
any more; I became devoid of energy. It didn’t help that shortly after taking
the Geodon, I always had an overwhelming desire to sleep. I ran on autopilot
with a bubble of permanent haze threatening to suck me in.

I called it sleeping awake.

Two mornings after Camelea had
failed to watch me take my medicine, and had I stopped taking my medication, I
once again found myself staring at the wall. This time, however, it was because
I felt as if I had left my brain in the other room. I tried to sit up and felt
a jolt of electricity surge up my chest and straight to the centre of my brain.
ZAP, like a baseball had been smashed into the back of my head after sailing
through the air at 65 mph.

“Fuck,” I hissed. I was going
through withdrawal. I laid back down and waited a few minutes for my heart to
stop racing before trying again. The room began to spin as my feet touched the
ground, and I had to grab the bedpost in order to steady myself.

“Fuck!”

I didn’t dare shower, least of
all I experienced another shock and slipped and fell in the tub. For the first
time in a long time, I was absolutely ravenous. I dressed as quickly as I could
and made sure to hold on to the railing as I descended the stairs. When I
finally made it to the kitchen, it was to find Cienna eating her customary
baguette with Nutella and orange marmalade.

“You look cheerful,” she
observed, reaching for the coffee cup.

I shrugged, taking the kettle
off the stove and pouring out the contents into the sink.

“Why do you always use a fresh
pot of water for your tea?” she asked.

“Because the tea leaves need
oxygen in order to steep. Over-boiled water doesn’t exactly offer that, does
it?” I replied, reaching for my jar of tealeaves and my teapot.

“That sounds like too much
work for me; I’ll just stick to the coffee.”

I rolled my eyes. She would
say that; the only thing that was worth exerting energy for that girl was haute
couture.

“There’s an art to making tea,
you know,” I said, pouring exactly one quarter of a cup of water into my teapot
and placing it in the microwave. Teapots needed to be hot in order for an
excellent brew.  “Not every pot of piss can be called tea.”

“Are you English or French?”

“Fuck off Cienna,” I hissed.

“Calm down,” Cienna muttered.
“I just find it strange, that’s all.”

“Indeed.” I brought my teapot
to the kettle as soon as I heard the whistling, and poured the water over the
tealeaves. “I find it strange that your daily breakfast routine involves eating
something which has two primary ingredients of sugar and oil.”

Cienna shrugged. “It tastes
good, doesn’t it?”

“To each its own,” I replied.
I set my teapot on the table and sat across from her.

After pouring myself some tea,
I took up that day’s edition of
Le Monde
and began to read the front
page. I hadn’t been to France in almost twelve years, but I always knew what
was happening there.

“They passed the burqa ban in
the lower parliament,” Cienna said. “
The vote was 335 to 1. It goes to the Senate on September
20.”

I lowered the paper. “Thanks
for that, Cienna.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, not
looking at all sorry. “It’s just that I have a bit of a quandary, and it
requires your undivided attention.”

I put down the paper and took
a sip of my tea. “What exactly is this problem of yours?”

“It’s about the charity event
this evening,” she explained.

I closed my eyes and gripped
the edge of the table tightly as another jolt of electricity zapped my brain. I
had read somewhere that Cymbalta and Lamictal withdrawal could last as long as
three months.

Once the jolts had subsided, I
felt safe enough to respond. “I know how to behave at public functions, Cienna.
You needn’t worry about my embarrassing you.”

It was a testament to Cienna’s
self-centeredness that she did not notice my odd behaviour.

“Good,” she said, squirming in
her seat. “I love you as much as one can a perpetually depressed older sister,
but seriously! I’m meant to be modelling down the runway at a breast cancer
benefit, not fretting about whether or not you’re looking at the hairstylist’s
scissors with a little too much lust in your eyes!”

I choked on my tea as I began
to laugh.

Cienna scowled. “It’s not
funny!”

I rolled my eyes and struggled
to catch my breath. Honestly, if there were a prize for the World’s Vainest
Person, Cienna would win it by a landslide. Nothing can come between her and
her precious haute couturist extraordinaire-supermodel ambition.

“In any case, that’s not the
quandary,” Cienna continued, chewing on her lip.

I raised an eyebrow and made
another attempt at drinking my tea.

“My quandary lies in not
knowing what to wear tonight.”

I put down my teacup. “Cienna,
do you mean to tell me that you interrupted my morning routine because you
don’t know what to wear to the event at which you will be modelling? You will
be wearing whatever outfit is put on you, you stupid cow!”

“You don’t understand!” Cienna
said, slamming her hands on the table. Her cheeks were a mad shade of red as
she huffed and puffed away. “I have to mingle with the crowd after we model the
pieces that are to be auctioned off. I have to network, Noira. No one is going
to look better than me!”

I simply stared at her.

“Black is out of the
question,” she rattled on, nodding in my direction. “You will be wearing black.
If Camelea and I never dress like twins, I’m not about to start doing so with
you.”

I
tried not to throw my cup at her. All that I could do was hold a steady, icy
gaze. She held the edge of the table. It was what she did whenever Maman was
giving her this same look and she was trying not to squirm.

Watching
her, I imagined that this must be how Maman’s cross-examinees felt sitting
there in the courtroom after lying that they would tell the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth so help them God, and then finding out that
they couldn’t bear false witness under Maman’s menacing glower. She looked a
bit like a bulldog, all huffy and puffy and ready to chow you down.

“Really,
Noira, I promise that I’ll leave you alone after you help me pick a dress,” she
said, squirming a bit in her seat.

I
said nothing.

“I’ve
already narrowed it down to three dresses, so all that you have to do is watch
me model them and tell me which one you like the most.”

I
contemplated her offer. An entire day free of Cienna’s endless chatter seemed
like a reasonable reward for half-hour or so of her madness. With any luck,
she’d be too busy at the auction to pay any attention to me. Not going with her
was out of the question. Maman was away for the weekend, and Cienna was taking
her warden responsibility
very
seriously.

“Fine,”
I replied.