Kids Like Us

by Hilary Reyl

  I texted Layla an update.

  She sent me back a link to her new YouTube channel. I clicked on a line that said For Martin.

  The screen opened to a close-up of her hands on the piano. For a few seconds, her fingers rested on the keys. They trembled. Then they lit into notes I recognized instantly.

  In secret, Layla has learned the musical phrase at the heart of my sonata. On her keyboard, she was playing the violin line, which is the melody. It’s a miracle.

  At first, I played the clip over and over in my room, watching her tiny wrists and big hands closely. After an hour, I took my phone into the hawthorn bushes. I stood there and listened to Layla, thinking of her and of Alice, and of the misunderstood composer of the sonata, Vinteuil. Mr. Swann knew Vinteuil personally but never put him together with this music. Vinteuil seemed way too ordinary to have done anything so beautiful.

  Everything is mixing now. Layla, in faraway LA, has been reading Search and learning my music so that I can play it here in France in the bushes where I once felt the gaze of Gilberte, who is not Gilberte but Alice. All the elements of my life are streaming together. It should be very confusing. But it isn’t. It’s my madeleine.

  Papa says that categories are way less absolute than we believe. His biggest hope for me is to stop being so categorical.

  In my collection there’s a postcard of a Flemish painting from 1670 by Pieter de Hooch. It’s a woman, sitting by a cradle. And behind her, in a half-open doorway, is a little girl wearing a long white apron. Papa gave it to me because Search describes Mr. Swann’s hearing the melody in the Vinteuil sonata like “those interiors by Pieter de Hooch which are deepened by the narrow frame of a half-opened door, in the far distance, of a different color, velvety with the radiance of some intervening light, the little phrase appeared, dancing, pastoral, interpolated, episodic, belonging to another world.”

  I found this postcard and I turned it over to the blank side. This is what I wrote:

  Dear Papa,

  I miss you and wish you were here to talk to me about a girl I have met who has been in an accident. I thought her name was Gilberte Swann at first, but it’s really Alice Corot. This would be horrible if you hadn’t worked so hard to teach me not to be too literal-minded. I hope you didn’t confuse yourself while you were busy helping me out. I think about you all the time. It’s because of you that I can be happy.

  Love, Martin

  I screenshot the front and the back of the postcard and emailed it to Papa in jail. He will see it the next time he is allowed to check his email in the prison library.

  Papa being in jail is my fault.

  He was worried that I was too rigid and always putting things in categories. So he decided to teach me about the difference between fantasy and reality. He said that “in order to understand the nuances of reality,” you have to be able to “dive into fantasy.” You can’t have one without the other. “They set each other off.”

  When we started out, he told me there was a real contrast between fantasy and reality, like black and white. But as he kept talking about it, he started thinking there wasn’t such a major difference after all. That’s when he got confused. He was trying to help me be less “literal-minded” and more “adaptable.” He even started mixing up when parts of his investing work were real and when they were imagined. That’s how badly he wanted me to get better.

  It was the same with literal and figurative language. Papa told me that literal language tells things straight. Figurative language uses comparisons and metaphors. Most people get this difference on instinct, even if they don’t have the fancy words to describe it. I had to learn it from Papa, with lots of examples from Search. Like when Marcel stands in front of the hawthorn bushes, breathing in their scent, he spends his time “losing and finding their invisible and fixed odor, uniting with the rhythm of their flowers, thrown here and there with a youthful joy and at unexpected intervals like certain musical intervals.” Papa and I read that long sentence together about the hawthorn flowers and the musical intervals. We read it a bunch of times. He said he was realizing the flowers were the music, and the music was the flowers. I wasn’t so sure about this, but I could tell he would be happy if I said that in the end there was no difference between figurative stuff and literal stuff. It would mean I was getting more flexible. So I agreed with him because he was doing his best.

  We went through the same thing with style and substance. When we baked the quatre-quarts cakes that drove Mom so crazy, Papa would always unmold them carefully from the pan so that they looked as perfect as possible. Julia Child said that “presentation is nine-tenths of the meal.” The way you present something is as important as the thing itself. In fact, it is the thing itself. Papa explained that to make a cake, we took style and substance and mixed them together, like we mixed together flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. We took our ingredients and transformed them in the oven to make something new. “We merge style and substance into a single, beautiful baked good,” he said.

  This idea that there is no difference between the way things appear and the way they are was sometimes confusing to me. And it was very confusing to Papa. He lost sight of how money is not a metaphor. For most people, their money is very, very literal.

  Papa did not plan to steal from his clients. He was sure he would make their money back eventually. When he lost it, he did not tell them. If they asked for their profits back, he paid them with money from other clients. For eight years, Papa hid this from his boss, Frank, who is an old friend from college. Frank let Papa work from home so that he could take care of me. Papa thought if he kept the right outlook, he would eventually make back enough money to pay everybody and make profits for Frank’s small company, which is called a “boutique firm.” He got caught. Frank went bankrupt.

  Mom yelled at Papa, “Are you delusional?”

  The family was in the kitchen. There was no question of cake-baking that day. Frank had just come over to tell us “exactly what has been going on” with the hiding of the lost money until it was too late to do anything about it. Papa apologized. He said it was complicated and he never meant for this to happen. Frank left in tears.

  Papa argued to Mom that his behavior was a “form of optimism.” He couldn’t believe it all wasn’t going to work out as long as he kept trying, which has always also been his attitude about me.

  Mom repeated that he was delusional.

  Elisabeth was also very angry at him. She screamed, “It wasn’t like we needed the money! Why were you acting so desperate? Like you needed to steal to pay for Martin’s care or something? What, are you nuts, Papa?”

  He shrugged and looked at the floor.

  Papa is not bad. He is good. He got delusional from spending too much time caring for a kid like me. By trying to loosen me up so that I could deal with the real world, he lost his own sense of it. The only other person who can see this is Layla. She has banked hundreds of hours of on-screen experience with characters clinging to irrational beliefs. So she knows exactly what I’m talking about.

  There was a trial that lasted three months. Then Papa was sentenced to five years. I will be twenty when he gets out. I haven’t been to visit him yet, but Elisabeth has promised to take me when we get home. The prison is a four-hour drive north of home.

  The last time we were alone together, Papa and I had breakfast. We spent the whole morning talking about Proust, which was much realer to us than that Papa was going to jail later that day. We went back to familiar places in the book. It made us comfortable. We ate the same thing we always eat for breakfast: toasted baguette with butter and rhubarb jam.

  Wednesday, June 22

  5:10 p.m.

  This morning, we were allowed back at the hospital. Elisabeth drove me again. We left at 9:00 a.m. Mom was long gone. She is into the final week of her shoot, so she is working almost all the time.

  I asked Elisabeth to stop at the boulangerie on our way so that I could buy a bag of madeleines to give to Alice i
f they let me see her. I was so focused on giving the madeleines to her that I didn’t even stop to worry about the male baker who was there instead of the usual woman in the pink apron. I forgot I get nauseated when I talk to strangers. I burst through the door and up to the counter.

  I used to think that because I felt I already knew her, Alice was inside my bubble. Now I see that I’m someone who can fall in love outside myself.

  When I got to the counter, I asked for six madeleines. Things seemed almost easy.

  But if Search has taught me anything, it’s that love is a struggle. When the baker asked me, “Vous désirez autre chose?” which means “Would you like something else?” I suddenly lost it.

  “Vous désirez autre chose?” I echoed. I went on a loop. “Vous désirez autre chose? Vous désirez autre chose? Vous désirez autre chose?”

  He interrupted me. “Ça va?”

  Instead of answering him with a flat Ça va, I repeated his question back to him. “Ça va? Ça va? Vous désirez autre chose?”

  Finally, I shut up and paid him. I even got out a Merci.

  “Merci!” he shot back, laughing.

  The madeleines were still warm.

  In the car, I told Elisabeth about a time when Papa said to Mom that she shouldn’t react so negatively when I repeated people’s words back to them. I was twelve. He told her she was scaring me with her intensity, which was true.

  He said, “Echolalia is not a moral failing.”

  Mom sighed. “You’re right, it’s not a moral issue, and I’m treating it like a moral issue.” Then she admitted something, which doesn’t happen a lot. “I’m scared for my son. When you’re scared, you don’t always think clearly.”

  “Believe me,” Papa said, “I know.”

  When I was finished telling this to Elisabeth, she said, “I miss him too, Martin.”

  At 10:06, we arrived at the hospital. I told Elisabeth I could find my own way.

  I didn’t see Monsieur or Madame Corot in the waiting room. The moths had gone to school and wouldn’t be here until late afternoon. This was my chance. I asked a nurse if I could see Alice. I was holding my bag of madeleines. I looked up from her clogs to her face so that she wouldn’t decide I was strange. It was hard work, and it paid off.

  The madeleines smelled buttery and sweet. The nurse looked down at the bag in my hands. She smiled. “Ça sent bon,” she said. Then she told me to follow her.

  The nurse opened the door to Alice’s room, which was very dimly lit. She was sitting up in bed, wearing an eye mask. Her face turned toward the sound of the door.

  “Maman?” she asked. There was anxiety in her voice. It must be so scary to be blind.

  “No,” I said, “it’s me, Martin.”

  The nurse watched Alice to make sure that she recognized my voice and that I wasn’t some stranger pretending to be her friend. Alice smiled so bright that I was sure her eyes were sparkling under her blindfold.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she said.

  “Of course I’m here.”

  “I thought maybe . . .” She didn’t finish.

  I wasn’t sure if I should touch her.

  She reached out her hands, batting the air, searching. So I took her hands and gave her the paper bag to hold. Her hands were even softer than before, like they’d been resting.

  “I brought you some madeleines,” I said.

  “Merci,” she said. Then she paused for a minute. “I’m sorry I left Simon’s party without telling you. I couldn’t find you. I was planning to come right back. Maybe you were disappointed? You had some idea of me that isn’t true. Now you see I’m not that person.”

  “I do. And that’s not a bad thing,” I said. “And I’m not disappointed at all.”

  When she frowned, I said, “I’m sorry I threw up all over everyone.”

  “That’s okay.”

  After that, we had trouble finding what to say, especially with the nurse standing there. Finally, I came up with, “So, does your head hurt?”

  “A little. It’s much better, though. I want to take this mask off, but I have to keep it on for another two days because of the concussion. Then I should be okay. My chest hurts because of my ribs, but that will go away.”

  “Do you want to hear our music?” I asked.

  “Sure.” She smiled.

  I sat on the edge of her bed. I put one of my earbuds in her right ear and one in my left ear.

  We listened. It was like we were coming home.

  I forgot that the nurse was there until she interrupted us. “I’m sorry, but Alice needs to rest now,” she said. “You’ll have to go. You can come back later.”

  “I am resting!” Alice said. “Please let Martin stay. I’m so bored in here by myself.” Her voice moved along with the music in our ears.

  The nurse couldn’t hear. “You can come back later.”

  “Wait! We haven’t eaten our snack yet.” Alice tried a new tactic. “Don’t you want a madeleine, Martin?” She held the bag up in the air and moved it around like it was searching for me.

  “Don’t you want a madeleine, Martin? Yes, I want a madeleine, Alice,” I answered, taking the bag.

  We offered one to the nurse, who said no but that I could stay another few minutes.

  I placed a madeleine in Alice’s palm and watched as she gently folded her fingers around it. She held it for a second, touching it with her fingertips like braille. Then she ate it.

  I ate one too.

  Instead of handing her the next one, I held it up to her mouth and brushed her lips with it. She smiled and took a bite, licking the ends of my fingers. My fingers tingled.

  “Delicious,” she said.

  I decided not to eat any more madeleines myself. I fed them all to her. I brushed her cheeks just below her blindfold and let her lick my fingers some more. My fingers felt bursting, like seedlings.

  The nurse said I had to leave the room.

  At 10:50 a.m., Alice’s parents came into the waiting room with the baby in a stroller. Her mother wasn’t wearing her soft sleeping clothes anymore. She was wearing long dark-green shorts and work boots with garden dirt on them. The dirt reminded me of Marcel shadowing Odette in the Bois de Boulogne, watching everyone whisper behind her. I used to dream of crossing Madame Corot’s path, and now here she was saying hi to me and telling me to “come again tomorrow” because I obviously cheer Alice up. It was as if I had become friendly with the sun.

  For the next two hours, I sat and read Search and listened to my music.

  “I hope I’m more like Marcel than like Mr. Swann,” I said to Elisabeth in the Smart car on our way home. It was 1:05 p.m.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, but she was looking hard at the winding road and her voice was somewhere else.

  “There’s a big contrast between Marcel and Mr. Swann as far as their autism goes. Mr. Swann is stuck in his references. He can’t get past them, and so he’s always disappointed. Marcel uses references to imagine stuff. For him, names and places make his imagination go nuts. So he’s not stuck. In his mind, he can go all over the place. This makes all the difference. Alice’s life lets me imagine so many things.”

  “That’s great, Martin.”

  I didn’t detect sarcasm in her voice, but I did detect distraction. Elisabeth was not here. I got quiet. I wasn’t unhappy.

  11:45 p.m.

  At home, Bernadette and I made ratatouille. She told me we had to cook the tomatoes, with the onions, at the beginning, so they lost their water. I’ve always added the tomatoes at the end. Now I get why my ratatouille has been soupy. Bernadette’s is better. Only I wish she wouldn’t dice her vegetables so small. She goes at them with a cleaver until they are tiny. I like chunks.

  The people who ate the ratatouille, besides me and Bernadette, were Elisabeth, Arthur, and Mom. This list is important because Asparagus Man is not on it. Elisabeth and Arthur ate with me at 8:00 p.m. Then they went to a movie. At 9:20 p.m., Mom came home. I expected both do
ors of her car to open, but only the driver’s door did, which was a relief because I haven’t been able to talk to Mom all by myself for a long time.

  Mom sat in the kitchen at the small table with the yellow-and-white-striped cloth and ate two bowls of ratatouille out of one of the green elephant-ear bowls that we also use for coffee in the morning.

  “This is exactly what I need after my crazy day,” she said. Then she smiled at me, the crinkling, not-tense smile. She said, “This is different from the ratatouille you make at home. It’s thicker and richer. I like it.”

  “It’s Bernadette’s way. She taught me today. She cooks the tomatoes first instead of last.”

  “And you’re okay with it not the same?”

  “I like it.”

  “That’s so wonderful! You and Bernadette cooking together! You guys have bonded, right?”

  “Yeah,” I answered. “Bernadette’s cool.”

  “Oh, Martin, you are making so much progress!” She clapped her hands.

  “You mean I’m getting more general-ed?”

  As soon as I asked this, her smile changed to the one where her cheekbones pop because she is trying to manage a worry. She reached over and squeezed my hand. Her skin is dry, like soft paper.

  “No, Martin. I’m sorry, that came out wrong. I don’t want you to be general-ed. I want you to be happy. And you seem happier lately. That’s all I mean. You’re trying a new ratatouille recipe and you’re trusting Bernadette in the kitchen, and you’re making friends. It’s all good, right? Are you happier? Is having a girl like Alice for a friend making you happier?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. Then it hit me. “Getting close to Alice is making me realize how much I have to lose.”

  “You sound like your father,” she said. I didn’t hear bitterness. Her smile changed back to the real one again.

  “Me like Papa? Is that bad? Or is that good?”

  “I’m trying to state a fact the way you do, without judgment. I’m trying not to be such a perfectionist.”