Kids Like Us

by Hilary Reyl

  Asparagus Man is different from Mr. Swann. Mr. Swann is aware that he is not well adjusted, and this makes him suffer. Asparagus Man thinks he is well adjusted. He does not seem to be suffering at all. But he is not well adjusted.

  When Asparagus Man made his toast to Mom tonight, he was proud. He had a picture of Mom in his head that was very selfish, even if he was pretending it was for everyone else.

  I wished I could look at Asparagus Man directly. A few glances showed me that his goatee has grown longer since our restaurant dinner, an asparagus tip goatee. And because his black T-shirt was so tight, I could see that his shoulders are very thick.

  Asparagus Man is not a complete stranger. He is a familiar sound, color, even a smell. But not yet a person. And here he is claiming to know Mom better than the rest of us, to tell us who she is. This is not okay.

  At dessert, when he got up again and raised another glass and said, “Sam, you sure make us feel loved,” Mom smiled her warm smile at him. This made me nauseated.

  Marcel says that “a fantasy of love is often a fantasy of place.” Asparagus Man was happy on our terrace on a beautiful summer night in the French countryside. This place was making him think he might love Mom. But Mom is not his to love.

  When Asparagus Man asked me what was in my cassoulet, I answered “Beans.” When I didn’t make eye contact, he must have assumed I was rude. Although Mom has probably explained to him about me. In any case, he didn’t try to talk to me anymore.

  I decided to try to stop focusing on Mom and Asparagus Man and to watch Elisabeth and Arthur the art director instead. I saw that Elisabeth was laughing in the way that shows her gums, which means she is not trying to hide them. She was wearing a black sleeveless dress that she made, with silver buttons down the front. Three of the buttons were undone instead of the usual two.

  Arthur’s furry outline was becoming friendlier. While he talked to Elisabeth, he took smiling bites of his cake. She was also eating her cake in between talking and laughing. This symmetry between them gave me a good feeling.

  When I looked over at Mom again, the good feeling was ruined. This is what she was doing: she was pretending to laugh, silently, with her face in her hands, at something Asparagus Man had said. She was showing him with a sign that he was funny. She was not being truthful. I recognize this from a description of the fake laugh of a horrible phony named Madame Verdurin.

  Search was under my knee on my chair. I took it out and turned to the page with the laugh. Since I have certain pages folded over, it was easy to find.

  She released a little cry, closed her bird-like eyes and plunged her face into her hands, not leaving anything in sight, she seemed to be forcing herself to repress and stifle a laugh which, were she to abandon herself to it, would have driven her into a faint.

  I’ve learned that it is rude to take out Search at the table. But everyone was busy talking. They were yelling about the hundreds of fireflies that were starting to flicker around us. I figured they wouldn’t notice me reading. They didn’t.

  When Mom and Elisabeth served third helpings of dessert to the little clan, Fuchsia started laughing about how she was going to have to either stop eating this cake or throw it up.

  Even though I should recognize Fuchsia’s comment as a joke, the idea of Papa’s and my quatre-quarts as throw up made me unhappy. I had to leave the table. But I didn’t want to be inappropriate to Mom’s little clan by bolting away. So I decided to announce that I was tired.

  Only, because I was nervous, it came out wrong.

  “Excuse me. You’re tired. You need to sleep,” I said too loudly.

  Mom winced.

  Before anyone could realize I’d made a mistake, Elisabeth saved me from across the table. “You’re right, I am tired and I do need to sleep,” she said. “No one can read me like my brother. Let’s get up to bed, Martin. We both have to study tomorrow.”

  Arthur smiled at her through his beard.

  I looked up at Mom and saw her smiling too.

  I wanted to be straight with Mom. “Actually,” I blurted, “I meant to say that I was tired.”

  “Well, who says there’s a law against meaning two things at once?” asked Elisabeth. “It’s called a double entendre, right?”

  “Right,” echoed Arthur.

  I nodded. “Yes, it is.”

  Asparagus Man winked at Mom. She may have winked back. I hope not.

  As I was leaving, Asparagus Man, pointing to my book, asked if I was going upstairs to wait for my mother’s kiss. Asparagus Man was trying to show us that he was familiar with Proust, since Marcel does wait in agony for his mother’s goodnight kiss for a lot of the first section. What he showed was that he doesn’t know anything about me, since it’s Papa I am waiting for.

  I did not respond to Asparagus Man.

  I suddenly wished Papa and I hadn’t been so inconsiderate with our messes when we baked together. I pictured our kitchen at home, dusted in flour, the mixer paddle dripping batter into the sink full of dishes.

  There is a buttery, sweet smell from the oven. Mom looks around at the chaos and sighs.

  I’m very careful these days to clean up after myself in the kitchen, but I’m afraid it’s too late.

  Tuesday, May 31

  7:00 a.m.

  Yesterday, I was supposed to see Gilberte at school. I had this idea that we were going to wander off to Chenonceau together, straight into the poster from Elisabeth’s wall. I couldn’t focus on anything else.

  When I didn’t see her in history class or in the hallway or the cafeteria or the yard, I asked Simon if he had an idea where the girl I call Gilberte was. We were outside after lunch. He laughed at me about the old-fashioned name. He said I must be imagining her. There is no Gilberte in this school.

  I should have told him she was the girl from the pool in the white bikini, but I couldn’t. My chest was squeezing into itself. I didn’t mind Simon teasing me, but I did mind getting no answer. My breathing got shallow. I got scared I might groan.

  Then Simon changed the subject. He asked if I could mention him to Mom because he is going to go for the casting call tomorrow morning for extras in her crowd scenes. He said he knew me well enough to ask, which was confusing. I stopped trying to look at his face and went back to looking at his shoes, like on the first day of school. His shoes are always the same black Doc Martens, except for when he wears his brandless flip-flops at the pool.

  I wanted to believe him that we were becoming friends, so that it was okay to ask for favors. Like it was a sign of trust. But he was ignoring the thing I was trying to ask him. We were both totally focused on our own favors.

  I told him I didn’t know about any casting call for extras. He kept saying that he was going to go try out and that it always helps to have a connection. Then he asked me if I’d seen Gloria Seegar yet. I was so nervous that I repeated his question. Twice. “Have you seen her yet? Have you seen her yet?” Then finally I managed to tell him yes, I had seen Gloria Seegar. All I wanted was to learn about Gilberte.

  “Why are you teasing me? Pretending not to know about the casting?” he yelled. “You’re acting like a snob.” He walked away from me.

  At lunchtime, I didn’t eat. I didn’t even go to the cafeteria. I stood in the concrete schoolyard, waiting for her even though it was pointless. I waited like Mr. Swann used to wait for Odette on nights when it was too late to hope. I stood there watching the pigeons “posed like antique sculptures waiting patiently to frame her image.” She did not come.

  When the bell rang for class to start, I didn’t go back inside the school building. I texted Layla that I hated France. It was 4:00 a.m. Layla’s time so she shouldn’t have gotten back to me for a while. But she immediately shot me a video of her hands on the keyboard playing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones.

  Layla is a gifted pianist. She has a perfect ear. She can play anything she hears right back, like theme music, movie scores, and commercial jingles.
But the songs she is into are all really old ones by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. She says that these songs “run the gamut of human communication and can convey any message.” Layla really talks like that. She has a setup for her phone on her piano so that she can show you her fingers while she plays. Although she can play anything, the classical music I listen to doesn’t mean much to her.

  Thanks, I texted back.

  You’re welcome. Do you think our phones are instruments of communication or torture?

  Today, I am going to school again, even though yesterday Gilberte never showed. She broke the agreement we made at the pool. Maybe she will come today. Or maybe not. She might not take our agreement as seriously as I do. Marcel had this same problem with his Gilberte too.

  4:46 p.m.

  Before school, I had breakfast with Elisabeth. It was sunny. I found her at the table on the terrace, staring into space instead of doing her chemistry on her laptop, which was open beside her giant molecule book. I brought the bread, which was pain de campagne, the cutting board, the knife, the plates and spoons and butter knives, the napkins, the butter, and the rhubarb jam. I made her coffee in the metal percolator. I warmed milk for her coffee. I got myself a glass of orange juice because I am not supposed to drink coffee.

  “Wow, thanks, Martin,” she said.

  She was wearing her black cotton bathrobe that is very worn and thin. Her hair was down, which is happening more and more these days. It made soft curls where it hit her shoulders. I wondered if she forgot to put it up because she was thinking about Arthur.

  Wondering about people’s motivations is called “conjecture.”

  I decided to ask her about Arthur. “Elisabeth,” I said, “you don’t look sad about Jason anymore. Is this because you are starting to be with Arthur?”

  “Arthur is so much cooler than Jason.”

  “How do you know that right away? How can you be sure you’re not making it up?”

  “Because it’s obvious that Arthur is a secure person. Jason is an opportunist. He’s always trying to figure out how he can get ahead, but his idea of what’s ‘ahead’ is always changing. He cares too much about appearances. That’s why he’s dating a skinny actress now.”

  I did not argue that something that seems obvious doesn’t have to be true. So I said I agreed about Jason being unreliable and vain. Then I asked her to please explain how Arthur is a secure person.

  “Well,” Elisabeth said. “Take the way he deals with Mom on the movie. He totally respects her vision of what it should look like, but he also has his own vision. He’s not threatened by her, so he doesn’t try to act smarter than her like some younger guys would. He doesn’t lose sight of his own opinions either. He’s like a scientist. He weighs all the possibilities and keeps them in his head at the same time until he figures out which one is right.”

  “You’re a scientist too,” I said, loving the parallel.

  “That’s part of why we get along so well.”

  “Were you sure about him the very moment you saw him?”

  “I was, but I couldn’t see it because I assumed he was way too old for me. Seven years seems like a lot. Then, one day we were talking and it was like all of a sudden it was clear.” She looked at me. She sipped her coffee. “Why are you asking me? Not that I mind or anything. Can you tell if you like him yet?”

  She’d asked two totally different questions. I answered them one at a time, out of order. “First of all, I am starting to like him. I’m going to make a real effort to look through all the facial hair next time I see him. Second of all, I am asking because I am looking for new ways to make friends.”

  She smiled and started eating.

  The flies were making their music around the rhubarb jam, which, thankfully, Asparagus Man has not been around to steal. It’s almost gone, though. I’ll get some more for Mom. They sell it at the bakery where the madeleines are. Where I’m going to take Gilberte.

  I keep having visions of her eating.

  After breakfast, Elisabeth changed from her bathrobe into her hawthorn dress and drove me to school.

  The sky was cloudless. Gilberte had to finally come.

  She didn’t. And the sky got cloudy as the day went on.

  11:30 p.m.

  Not long after Papa went away to prison, Mom took a trip to Paris to scout some locations for a movie she never ended up shooting. To cheer me up, she brought me home a re-creation of Proust’s magic lantern that she found in a museum, the Musée d’Orsay. It was supposed to project the same colorful medieval prince and princess on my walls that Marcel saw in his room. She said it would change the color of my light the way it changed his. When she pulled it out of her carry-on bag, she was super excited. Elisabeth explained afterward that Mom was trying to show me that she understood my Search obsession too. She wanted to prove that losing Papa wasn’t such a disaster after all.

  The magic lantern terrified me. I hated the colors changing all the time in unpredictable ways. I hated the idea that my own room could suddenly become a different place. I threw the lantern away in the kitchen garbage.

  Mom cried.

  I told her not to worry. Marcel was scared of his lantern too.

  Wednesday, June 1

  6:15 p.m.

  I asked Elisabeth to drop me off early at school this morning.

  “Are you meeting your Gilberte girl?” Elisabeth asked while we drove.

  “I hope so,” I said. “She hasn’t been there for two days, but maybe she will show up today.”

  “Does Simon know what’s going on with her?”

  “Simon doesn’t know any Gilberte.”

  “What do you mean he doesn’t know her?”

  “He says there is nobody called Gilberte at the lycée. But I’ve met her, and so has he. I’ve seen him talking to her. So that’s not true.”

  “Don’t you think this girl probably has another name?”

  These questions made me tight inside.

  Elisabeth changed the subject. “How is Simon?” she asked.

  I was grateful to stop talking about Gilberte’s name.

  “Simon is going to be an extra in Mom’s crowd scenes. I asked her to pick him, and she did. She doesn’t agree that he looks like the Bellini portrait, though. She almost didn’t recognize him from what I said. But I’d given her the right name, so it all worked out.”

  “That’s nice of you to help out a friend.”

  “I’m trying.”

  We stopped talking and drove.

  After Elisabeth dropped me off, I stood in the schoolyard in a spot where I could see both entrances. I couldn’t leave or stop looking around because Gilberte might come from any direction. Marcel would call this yard “an immense expanse of space and time.”

  Kids started to trickle in like extras. A lot of them were smoking in the street, stepping on the butts just before they came into the schoolyard. Nobody I know at The Center smokes, but I have gotten used to the cigarettes here more quickly than I thought I could. I can look at the smokers as long as I don’t have to look directly into their faces. I wonder if, when I am old like Marcel at the end of Search, the clothes they are wearing now, the Converse, the Doc Martens, the skinny jeans, and the Hilfiger T-shirts, will have become beautiful, lost things from the past.

  I was thinking about changing fashions when I saw Gilberte approaching. She was not smoking. She was wearing a black cotton sundress with a thin rope belt and gladiator sandals. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. I realized that her hair wasn’t as red as I’ve been picturing it. More blond.

  I went right up to her, keeping my eyes up, even though her feet are pretty.

  “Ça va?” she asked, meaning, “Have you missed me?”

  “Ça va,” I answered, meaning, “I’ve been looking for you for two days.”

  “Where have you been?” I asked. This is proof that I know Gilberte well. I could never ask a stranger such a direct question.

  “My baby sister was sick and my
parents had to go to work, so I had to stay home with her because she couldn’t go to her day care with a fever. Normally my mom or dad would have skipped work, but they’ve been doing some important planting.”

  “My friend Simon has a baby brother he takes care of,” I said. This wasn’t a normal way to have a conversation, but I needed to make the link.

  “I know,” she said.

  “You know Simon?”

  “Yes. Of course. That’s how I met you.”

  “Well, he told me he has no idea who you are.”

  I recognized confusion in her eyes, which I saw, for sure, were not blue. They weren’t black either. My Gilberte’s eyes were brown. Marcel’s Gilberte does not, ever in the book, have brown eyes. I am going to overlook this.

  “He’s such a joker,” she finally said. She sounded annoyed. I hoped she was not annoyed at me, but I’m not always a great judge of other people’s irritation. I can be more annoying than I feel. So I worried I might have offended her by revealing Simon’s lie or joke or whatever it was. Only it was Simon’s fault for pretending not to know Gilberte.

  Now I realized that when Gilberte first talked to me at the pool, it was because I was hanging out with Simon. She was friends with Simon. She paid attention to me because I was with him. And she wondered who I could be. The new boy? The American? The famous movie director’s son? The special-ed kid?

  Certain things were beginning to fall into place. But they were knocking other things out of order. Although it was confusing, our situation was cool because it was like a novel. The idea came to me that Simon must love Gilberte too, that this was why he was throwing me off track with lies. Of course, Simon and I weren’t alone. Everyone in town must be in love with her. I pictured boys and men all around, checking her out through car windows. I must be jealous. Like Mr. Swann. It’s a weird feeling. There’s some pain. It’s also exciting because I’m part of something, like a small cloud in a dark storm.