This Lullaby(51)

It was July 15. In two months, give or take a few days, I would be packing up my two suitcases and my laptop and heading to the airport, and seven hours later I would arrive in California to begin my life at Stanford. There was so little written between now and then; even the day I left was hardly marked, except for a simple circle in lipstick I’d done myself, as if it was a big deal only to me.

“Oh, man,” Chris grumbled from in front of the fridge. I glanced over to see him holding an almost empty bag of bread: all that was left were the two end pieces, which I suppose have a real name, but we’d always called the butts. “He did it again.”

Don had lived alone so long that he was having trouble grasping the concept that other people actually came after him and, sometimes, used the same products he did. He thought nothing of finishing off the last of the orange juice, then sticking the empty carton back in the fridge, or taking the last of the usable bread and leaving the butts for Chris to deal with. Even though Chris and I had both asked him, oh so politely, to write things down when he used them up (we kept a list on the fridge, labeled GROCERIES NEEDED) he either forgot or just didn’t care.

Chris shut the fridge door a bit enthusiastically, shaking the rows of Ensures that were stacked there. They clanked against one another, and one toppled off, falling back between the fridge and the wall with a thunk.

“I hate those things,” he grumbled, stuffing the bread butts into the toaster oven. “And, God, I just bought this bag. If he’s sucking down those Ensures, why does he need to eat my bread anyway? Isn’t that a complete meal in itself ?”

“I thought so,” I said.

“I mean,” he went on as the music picked up in the next room, all yeah-yeah-yeahs, “all I’m asking for is a little consideration, you know? Some give-and-take. It’s not too much to ask, I don’t think. Is it?”

I shrugged, looking again at that lipstick circle. Not my problem.

“Remy?” My mother’s voice drifted from the study, the typewriter noises stopping for a second. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Sure,” I called back to her.

“Bring me some coffee?” The typewriter started up again. “With milk?”

I got up and poured a cup almost to the top, then dumped in skim milk until it reached the rim: one of the only things that we had in common, completely, was taking our coffee the same way. I walked over to the entryway to the study, balancing her cup and mine, and pushed aside the curtain.

The room smelled like vanilla, and I had to move a row of mugs—most half full, their rims stained with the pearly pink that was her “house lipstick”—aside to make room. One of the cats was curled up on the chair next to her, and hissed at me halfheartedly as I slid it out of the way so I could sit down. Next to me was a stack of typewritten pages, neatly aligned. I was right: she was really cooking. The number of the page on the top was 207.

I knew better than to start talking until she was done with whatever sentence, or scene, she was in the midst of writing. So I pulled page 207 off the stack and skimmed it, folding my legs beneath me.



“Luc,” Melanie called to the other room in the suite, but there was only silence beyond. “Please.” No answer from the man who just hours earlier had kissed her under a shower of rose petals, claiming her in front of all Paris society as the one he loved. How could a marriage bed be so cold? Melanie shivered in her lace gown, feeling tears fill her eyes as she caught sight of her bouquet, white roses and purple lilies, lying where the maid had left it on the bedside table. It was still so fresh and new, and Melanie could remember pressing her face to the full blossoms, breathing them in as the realization that she was now Mrs. Luc Perethel washed over her. Once, the words had seemed magical, like a spell cast in a fairy tale. But now, with the city lit up through her open window, Melanie ached not for her new husband but for another man, in another city. Oh, Brock, she thought. She didn’t dare to say the words aloud for fear that they would be carried away, soaring out of her reach, to find the only one true love she’d ever had.



Uh-oh. I glanced up at my mother, who was still typing away, her brow furrowed, lips moving. Now, I knew that what she wrote was pure fiction. After all, this was a woman who’d been constructing stories about the lives and loves of the rich while we were clipping coupons and having our phone cut off on a regular basis. And it wasn’t like Luc, the cold new husband, had a fondness for Ensures or anything. I hoped. “Oh, thank you!” My mother, spying her fresh cup of coffee, stretched her fingers and picked it up, taking a sip. She had her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, no makeup, and was wearing pajamas and the leopard-print bedroom slippers I’d gotten her for her last birthday. She yawned, leaning back in her chair, and said, “I’ve been going all night. What time is it?”

I glanced at the clock in the kitchen, visible through the curtain, which was still swaying slightly. “Eight-fifteen.”

She sighed, putting the cup to her lips again. I glanced over at the sheet in the typewriter, trying to make out what happened next, but all I could see was several lines of dialogue. Apparently, Luc did have something to say after all.

“So it’s going well,” I said, nodding toward the stack next to my elbow.

She flopped her hand at me in a so-so kind of way. “Oh, well, it’s smack in the middle, and you know there’s always a dull spot. But last night I was just about asleep when I had this inspiration. It had to do with swans.”