Page 95 of The Insomniacs
Later, at Zeke’s press conference, Sybil and Betty sat in the last row, and when it was over, Zeke’s driver deposited them back at Sybil’s house, where Zeke could have a little privacy. Pluto greeted them all like he hadn’t seen them just a few hours earlier.
In the months since her father’s arraignment, Betty had grown a little itchy—she still wanted to return to Georgia, extract Patience and her children from Matthew’s clutches, give the interview to Annabeth Collins, but Patience, as communicated through Levi, had been clear: She was going to detonate things from the inside. She didn’t want her younger sister entangled again, and it had to be done on her terms, cleanly, so her kids and her pregnancy—she was due in four weeks now—remained unscathed. Before Patience disappeared with Levi that morning, she’d promised Betty she could handle it. Would handle it.
“She will, Bets,” Levi said. “We will.” She hadn’t communicated with Patience since. She knew better than to risk her sister’s safety with Matthew; and she knew better than to risk the fact that her sister had been there that day in Reno. Betty had told Richard the fire started spontaneously, a coincidence upon her arrival. She didn’t think he believed her, but he didn’t much care. “I’ll call Simone,” was the only thing Richard had said. “She’ll want to know that we caught the guy who did this to Jules.” Then Betty called Levi from the flip phone and told himto go out and buy a regular phone like the rest of them. He didn’t have to cover his tracks anymore, didn’t have to worry about their fanatical father. Levi finished his trek and decided to stay in San Francisco now, try to plant some roots, and they texted and called freely, a relief, a gift, after so many years of covert back-and-forths.
Today, Zeke propped himself up on Sybil’s marble kitchen island. “I’m genuinely exhausted,” he said. “It turns out that being unemployed is extremely tiring.”
“It’s been, like, half a day,” Betty said. “You’ve literally been officially retired for five hours.”
Zeke had been offered a coaching position on the Mets and a broadcasting deal with the networks, but he’d turned them both down for now.Maybe I want to drive a UPS truck, he’d said last night.Maybe I just want to coach Little League, he’d mused. Sybil had rubbed the spot between his shoulder blades and nodded and said, “Yes, absolutely, all of that sounds wonderful.”
“Okay, but it’s been a very long day,” Zeke said, tilting his head up, winking. “Also, once athletes slack off, the cliff between healthy and sloth is a steep one.”
Betty rolled her eyes because Zeke Rodriguez turned out to be irresistibly charming now that she wasn’t running from everything. She watched Sybil delight in his ridiculousness, a smile building at the edges of her mouth that wasn’t too different from the one that Betty knew she wore when she would see Caleb waiting in Zeke’s lobby to pick her up for a date. When she got back in town from Reno, she called him and tried to explain, but Caleb already intuited most of what she needed to say. She liked this, the ease between them. She had no idea where any of it would go, but for once, she tried to simply be in the present, live for the moment. It was terrifying. And exhilarating. And she had earned it.
She called Natalie, too, apologized for blowing off the national commercial, but Natalie had seen the news about the man she now understood was Betty’s father and waved her apology off. “We’ll use this as emotional fuel,” she said. “You’ll be able to cry on cue. You really will be an actor’s actor!” Betty had two auditions lined up next week. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to be an actor, but she’d been training for it all her life, it turned out. She might as well monetize it for now. Plan B. Maybe there would be a plan C, eventually.
“I’m exhausted too,” Sybil said, refilling Pluto’s water bowl, giving him a treat for no reason other than he was a very good boy. “I might head up to bed.”
It was strange now, the good kind of strange, how once they got back from Nevada, sleep found them in fits and starts, but found them all the same.
“I might head up too,” Zeke said, and his eyes wandered toward Sybil.
Betty had her suspicions about what was building between them. Whenever they crashed at Sybil’s, Zeke slept in Charlie’s room, but Betty thought they were just trying to be proper around her, like two parents who didn’t want their kid to know they still had sex. She knew Sybil’s kids were teasing her, asking if they had a new famous stepdad yet, but Sybil just kept laughing at their texts because, Betty supposed, she’d been constrained by a man for twenty years and wasn’t ready to officially declare herself tied to another one. Even a very good man. Not just yet. But eventually, Betty surmised, she would be. She loved this for everyone involved.
“I’m heading up too,” Betty said, and made her way to the stairs toward Sybil’s guest room.
Downstairs, Sybil would wipe down the counters, tuck Pluto in, turn off the lights and shut down for the night. Then,when for so long, it felt like an impossibility, the three of them would slip into dreaming, soundly, restfully. Maybe they just needed each other, Betty would think before slumber took over. Maybe they just needed to know they weren’t alone, that they were tethered to something greater than themselves. Maybe this was its own sort of family, the one you choose, the one that finds you.
Because after so many months when their bodies betrayed them, at long last, they finally slept. Sometimes, when dawn broke through their windows, they would even remember their dreams. That they dreamt at all now felt like a little miracle. That, Betty would think, was how she knew she was finally living; that, she would believe, was how she knew she was actuallyfree.
