Sarah Dessen (18 page)

Dexter walked up the front steps to the door, Monkey bursting forth and bustling around, sniffing at the bags, until they both went inside and the door slammed shut behind them. Something told me, as I stood there, that I should just turn around, go back to my car, and drive home as fast as possible, then lock every door and window and hunker down to protect my dignity. Or my sanity. So many times it seemed like there were chances to stop things before they started. Or even stop them in midstream. But it was even worse when you knew at that very moment that there was still time to save yourself, and yet you couldn’t even budge.

The door swung open again, and there was Monkey, panting. Above him, dangling past the doorframe from the left, was one hand, fingers gripping a bright blue fork, wiggling it around suggestively, as if it was some kind of signal, spelling out messages in supersecret spy code. What was it saying? What did it mean? Did I even care anymore?

The fork kept wiggling, beckoning. Last chance, I thought.

I sighed out loud, and started up the steps.

The lizard room door opened behind me and Chris came out, in his work uniform, carrying a few empty jars of baby food, one of the daily diet staples of the lizards. He cocked his head to the side, shutting the door behind him. “Sounds like that album with the Norwegian song on it,” he said.

“Nope,” I told him, starting down the stairs. “It’s that one where they’re all in the window, looking down.”

He nodded, and fell into step behind me. When we reached the kitchen we saw the bead curtain was drawn across the entryway to the study, and beyond it Paul’s voice had given way to John Lennon’s. I walked over and peered through the curtain, impressed by the stack of paper on the desk beside her and one burned-out candle. She had to have had two hundred pages, at least. When she was rolling, nothing could stop her.

I turned back into the kitchen and pushed aside two empty cans of Ensure—I was determined not to clean up after Don, although I was tested daily—before fixing myself a bowl of oatmeal with bananas and a big cup of coffee. Then I sat down, my back to the naked woman on the wall, and pulled the family calendar—a freebie from Don Davis Motors, featuring Don himself smiling in front of a shiny 4Runner—off the wall.

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.

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.

“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.”

I waited. But that appeared to be all she would tell me, as now she’d grabbed a nail file from the mug stuffed with pens and pencils and was at work on a pinkie, shaping it deftly.

“Swans,” I said finally.

She chucked the nail file down on the desk and stretched her arms over her head. “You know,” she said, tucking a stray hair behind her ear, “they’re dreadful creatures, really. Beautiful to look at but mean. The Romans used them instead of guard dogs.”

I nodded, drinking my coffee. Across the room, I could hear the cat snoring.

“So,” she went on, “it got me thinking about what cost beauty. Or for that matter, what cost anything? Would you trade love for beauty? Or happiness for beauty? Could a gorgeous person with a mean streak be a worthy trade? And if you did make the trade, decide you’d take that beautiful swan and hope it wouldn’t turn on you, what would you do if it did?”

These were rhetorical questions. I thought.

“I just couldn’t stop thinking about it,” she said, shaking her head. “And then I couldn’t sleep, either. I think it’s that ridiculous tapestry Don insisted we hang on the wall. I can’t relax looking at all these carefully stitched depictions of military battles and people being crucified.”

“It is a little much,” I agreed. Every time I went into her room to get anything I found myself somewhat transfixed by it. It was hard to tear your eyes away from the panel that illustrated the beheading of John the Baptist.

“So I came down here,” she said, “thinking I’d just tinker, and now it’s eight in the A.M. and I’m still not sure what the answer is. How can that be?”

The music faded out now, and it was very, very quiet. I was sure I could feel my ulcer stirring, but it might have just been the coffee. My mother was always very dramatic when she was writing. At least once during every novel she’d fling herself into the kitchen, near tears, hysterical that she’d lost any talent she ever possessed, the book was a quagmire, a disaster, the end of her career, and Chris and I would just sit there, silent, until she wailed out again. After a few minutes, or hours, or—in bad times—days, she’d be right back in the study, curtain closed, typing away. And when the books arrived months later, smelling so new with their smooth, not-yet-cracked spines, she always forgot about the breakdowns that played a part in creating them. If I reminded her, she said writing novels was like childbirth: if you truly remembered how awful it got, you’d never do it again.

“You’ll work it out,” I said now. “You always do.”

She bit her lip and glanced down at the page in the typewriter, then out the window. The sunlight was spilling in, and I realized she did look tired, even sad, in a way I hadn’t noticed before. “I know,” she said, as if only agreeing with me to move past this. And then, after a quiet second or two, she switched gears completely and asked, “How’s Dexter?”

“Okay, I guess,” I said.

“I like him very much.” She yawned, then smiled at me apologetically. “He’s not like the other boys you’ve dated.”

“I had a no-musician rule,” I explained.

She sighed. “So did I.”

I laughed, and she did too. Then I said, “Okay, so why’d you break it?”

“Oh, the reason anyone does anything,” she said. “I was in love.”

I heard the front door swing shut as Chris left for work, yelling a good-bye behind him. We watched as he walked down the driveway to his car, a Mountain Dew—his version of coffee—in one hand.

“I think he’s going to buy her a ring, if he hasn’t already,” my mother said thoughtfully. “I just have this feeling.”

Chris started the engine, then pulled out into neighborhood traffic, turning around slowly in the cul-de-sac. He was swigging the Mountain Dew as he drove past.

“Well,” I said, “you would know.”

She finished her coffee, then reached over and brushed her fingers over my cheek, tracing the shape of my face. A dramatic gesture, like most of hers, but it was comforting in that she’d done it for as long as I could remember. Her fingers, as always, were cool.

“Oh, my Remy,” she said. “Only you understand.”

I knew what she meant, and yet I didn’t. I was a lot like my mother, but not in ways I was proud of. If my parents had stayed together and grown to be old hippies singing protest songs as they washed dishes after dinner, maybe I would have been different. If I’d ever seen what love really could do, or was, maybe I’d have believed in it from the start. But too much of my life had been spent watching marriages come together and then fall apart. So I understood, yes. But sometimes, like lately, I wished that I didn’t, not at all.