Sarah Dessen

by This Lullaby (v5)

  “And makeup,” Talinga added.

  “And nails,” Amanda said, “if you stop wiggling around, goddammit.”

  “—and be completely smitten,” Lola finished. Then she did two more small snips and ran a hand through my hair, checking her work. “God, you had some split ends. Disgraceful!”

  “What in the world,” I said slowly, “makes you think I’ll go through with this?”

  “Because he’s good-looking,” Talinga said.

  “Because you should,” Amanda added.

  “Because,” Lola said, whisking the cape off me, “you can.”

  I had to admit they were right. Paul was good-looking. He was also funny, pronounced my name right, had a firm handshake—and, okay, nice hands—and seemed to be a good sport about the fact that it was such an obvious setup, exchanging a wary expression with me when Lola “just happened” to have a gift certificate from my favorite Mexican place that she was suddenly sure she’d never use.

  “Do you get the feeling,” Paul asked me, “that this is out of our control?”

  “I do,” I agreed. “But it is a free dinner.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Good point. But really, don’t feel obligated.”

  “You either,” I told him.

  We stood there for a second while Lola and Talinga and Amanda, in the next room, were so quiet I could hear someone’s stomach growling.

  “Let’s just go,” I said. “Make their day and all.”

  “Okay.” He smiled at me. “I’ll pick you up at seven?”

  I wrote down my address on the back of a Joie business card, then watched as he walked out to his car. He was cute, and I was single. It had been almost three weeks since Dexter and I had split, and not only was I dealing with it, we’d almost finessed the impossible: a friendship. And here was this nice guy, an opportunity. Why wouldn’t I take it?

  One possible answer to this question appeared as I was walking out to my car, digging in my purse for my keys and sunglasses. I wasn’t looking where I was going, much less around me, and didn’t even see Dexter come out of Flash Camera and cross the parking lot until I heard a loud clicking noise and looked up to see him standing there, holding a disposable wedding camera.

  “Hey,” he said, winding the film with one finger. Then he put the camera back up to his eye and bent back a bit, getting me from another angle. “Wow, you look great. Got a hot date or something?”

  I hesitated, and he took the picture. Click. “Well, actually . . .” I said.

  For a second, he didn’t move, not winding the film or anything, just looking at me still through the viewfinder. Then he took the camera away from his eye, then smacked his forehead with one hand and said, “Ouch. Oh, man. Awkward moment time. Sorry.”

  “It’s just a setup,” I said quickly. “Lola did it.”

  “You don’t have to explain,” he said, winding the film, click-click-click. “You know that.”

  And then it happened. One of those too-long-to-just-be-a-regular-pause-in-conversation pauses, and I said, “Okay. Well.”

  “Oh, man, awkward. Double awkward,” he said. Then shrugged his shoulders briskly, as if shaking this off, and said, “It’s okay. It’s a challenge, after all, right? It’s not supposed to be easy.”

  I looked down at my purse, realizing my keys, which I’d been digging for this whole time, were in fact in my back pocket. I pulled them out, glad to have some kind of task, however stupid, to focus on.

  “So,” he said casually, pointing the camera over my head and taking a picture of Joie’s storefront, “who’s the guy?”

  “Dexter. Really.”

  “No. I mean, this is what friends discuss, right? It’s just a question. Like asking about the weather.”

  I considered this. We had known what we were getting into: eating ten bananas wasn’t easy either. “The son of a client here. I just met him twenty minutes ago.”

  “Ah,” he said, rocking back on his heels. “Black Honda?”

  I nodded.

  “Right. Saw him.” He wound the film again. “Looked like a nice, upstanding guy.”

  Upstanding, I thought to myself. As if he were running for student council president, or volunteering to help your grandmother across the street. “It’s just dinner,” I said as he snapped another picture, this one, inexplicably, of my feet. “What’s with the camera?”

  “Defective shipment,” he explained. “Somebody at the main office left the box out in the sun, so they’re all warped. Management said we could have them, if we wanted them. Kind of like the tangerines, you know. Can’t turn down free stuff.”

  “But will the pictures even come out?” I asked, noticing now, as I looked closer, that the camera itself was bent, warped, like the VCR tape I’d accidentally left on my dash the summer before. It didn’t look like you could even get the film out, much less develop it.

  “Don’t know,” he said, taking another picture. “They might. Or they might not.”

  “They won’t,” I said. “The film’s probably ruined from the heat.”

  “Or maybe,” he said, holding the camera out at arm’s length and smiling big as he snapped a picture of himself, “it isn’t. Maybe it’s just fine. We won’t know until we develop it.”

  “But it’s probably a total waste,” I told him. “Why bother?”

  He put down the camera and looked at me, really looked at me, not through the lens, or from the side, just me and him. “That’s the big question, isn’t it?” he said. “That’s the whole problem here. I think they just might come out. Maybe they won’t be perfect—I mean, they could be blurred, or cut off in the middle—but I’m thinking it’s worth a shot. That’s just me, though.”

  I just stood there, blinking, as he lifted the camera up and took one more shot of me. I stared straight at him as it clicked, letting him know I got his little metaphor. “I have to go,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said, and smiled at me. “See you later.”

  As he walked away, he tucked the camera into his back pocket, darting between cars as he headed back to Flash Camera. Maybe he would print out the pictures and find them perfect: my face, my feet, Joie rising up behind me. Or maybe it would just be black, void of light, not even an outline of a face or figure visible. That was the problem, after all. I wouldn’t waste the time on such odds, while he jumped to them. People like Dexter followed risks the way dogs followed smells, thinking only of what could lie ahead and never logically of what probably did. It was good we were friends, and only that. If even that. We never would have lasted. Not a chance.

  It had been two days since the scene with Don in the front yard, and so far I’d managed to avoid him, timing my trips to our common area, the kitchen, when I knew he was either out or in the shower. My mother was easier: she was completely immersed in her novel, pushing through the last hundred pages at breakneck speed, and hardly would have noticed a bomb going off in the living room if it meant pulling herself away from Melanie and Brock Dobbin and their impossible love.

  Which was why I was surprised to find her sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee beside her, when I came home to get ready for my date with setup Paul. She had her head balanced on one hand and was staring up at Don’s naked lady painting, so lost in thought that she jumped when I touched her shoulder.

  “Oh, Remy,” she said, pressing a finger to her temple and smiling. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry.” I pulled out a chair and sat down across from her, dropping my keys on the table. “What are you doing?”

  “Waiting for Don,” she said, fluffing her hair with her fingers. “We’re meeting some Toyota VIPs for dinner, and he’s a nervous wreck. He thinks if we don’t impress them they’ll cut back on his dealer perk allotment.”

  “His what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, sighing. “It’s dealership talk. This whole night will be dealership talk, and meanwhile I’ve got Melanie and Brock at a sidewalk café in Brussels with her estranged husband fast
approaching and the last thing in the world I want to think about is sales figures and cut-rate financing techniques.” She cast a longing look into her study at her typewriter, as if being pulled there by some tidelike force. “Oh, God, don’t you sometimes wish you could live two lives?”

  Inexplicably, or maybe not, Dexter suddenly popped into my head, watching me through a bent disposable camera. Click. “Sometimes, yeah,” I said, shaking this off. “I guess I do.”

  “Barbara!” Don bellowed, opening the door to the New Wing. I couldn’t see him, but his voice had no trouble carrying. “Have you seen my red tie?”

  “Your what, darling?” she called back.

  “My red tie, the one I wore to the sales dinner? Have you seen it?”

  “Oh, honey, I don’t know,” she said, turning in her chair. “Maybe if you—”

  “Never mind, I’ll just wear the green one,” he said, and the door shut again.

  My mother smiled at me, as if he was just really something, then reached over and patted my hand. “Enough about me. What’s happening with you?”

  “Well,” I said, “Lola set me up with a blind date for tonight.”

  “A blind date?” She looked at me warily.

  “I already met him, at the salon,” I told her. “He seems really nice. And it’s just dinner.”

  “Ah,” she said, nodding. “Just dinner. As if nothing could happen within three courses and a bottle of wine.” Then she sat there, blinking. “That’s good,” she said suddenly. “Oh, my. I should write that down.”

  I watched as she picked up an envelope, an old power bill, and a pen. Three courses—just dinner—nothing could happen she scrawled on the side of it, capping it off with a big exclamation point, then slid the envelope under the sugar bowl, where it would probably remain, forgotten, until one day when she was totally blocked and found it. She left these scribblings all around the house, folded into corners, on the backs of shelves, acting as markers in books. I’d once found one about seals, which later turned out to be a major plot point in Memories of Truro, sticking out of a box of tampons under my sink. I guess you just never knew when inspiration would strike.

  “Well, we’re going to La Brea,” I told her, “so it’ll probably just be the one course. Even less chance of it working out.”

  She smiled at me. “You never know, Remy. Love is so unpredictable. Sometimes you’ll know a man for years and then one day, boom! Suddenly you see him in a different way. And other times, it’s that first date, that first moment. That’s what makes it so great.”

  “I’m not falling in love with him. It’s just a date,” I said.

  “Barbara!” Don yelled. “What did you do with my cuff links?”

  “Darling,” she said, turning around again. “I haven’t touched your cuff links.” She sat there, waiting, and when he didn’t say anything else she just shrugged, turning back to me.

  “God,” I said, lowering my voice, “I don’t see how you put up with him.”

  She smiled, reaching over to brush my hair out of my face. “He’s not so bad.”

  “He’s a big baby,” I said. “And the Ensure thing would make me nuts.”

  “Maybe it would,” she agreed. “But I love Don. He’s a good man, he’s kind to me. And no relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater. Yes, Don has habits that try my patience. And I’m sure I have plenty that do the same for him.”

  “At least you act like an adult,” I said, although I knew myself this wasn’t always true. “He can’t even dress himself.”

  “But,” she went on, ignoring this, “the love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that’s the key. It’s like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot, Remy.”

  “Love is a sham,” I said, sliding the saltshaker in a circle.

  “Oh, honey, no!” She reached over and took my hand, squeezing my fingers. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  I shrugged. “I have yet to be convinced otherwise.”

  “Oh, Remy.” She picked up my hand, folding her fingers around mine. Hers were smaller, cooler, the nails bright pink. “How can you say that?”

  I just looked at her. One, two, three seconds. And then she was with me.

  “Oh, now,” she said, letting my hand go, “just because a few marriages didn’t last doesn’t make it a total wash. I had many good years with your father, Remy, and the best part was that I got Chris and you out of it. The four years I was with Harold were wonderful, until the very end. And even with Martin and Win, I was happy for most of the time.”

  “But they did end, all of them,” I said. “They failed.”

  “Maybe some people would say so.” She folded her hands in her lap and thought for a second. “But I think, personally, that it would be worse to have been alone all that time. Sure, maybe I would have protected my heart from some things, but would that really have been better? To hold myself apart because I was too scared that something might not be forever?”

  “Maybe,” I said, picking at the edge of the table. “Because at least then you’re safe. The fate of your heart is your choice, and no one else gets a vote.”

  She considered this, really thinking about it, then said, “Well, it’s true that I have been hurt in my life. Quite a bit. But it’s also true that I have loved, and been loved. And that carries a weight of its own. A greater weight, in my opinion. It’s like that pie chart we talked about earlier. In the end, I’ll look back on my life and see that the greatest piece of it was love. The problems, the divorces, the sadness . . . those will be there too, but just smaller slivers, tiny pieces.”

  “I just think that you have to protect yourself,” I said. “You can’t just give yourself away.”

  “No,” she said solemnly. “You can’t. But holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn’t make you strong. If anything, it makes you weaker. Because you’re doing it out of fear.”

  “Fear of what?” I said.

  “Of taking that chance,” she said simply. “Of letting go and giving into it, and that’s what makes us what we are. Risks. That’s living, Remy. Being too scared to even try it—that’s just a waste. I can say I made a lot of mistakes, but I don’t regret things. Because at least I didn’t spend a life standing outside, wondering what living would be like.”

  I sat there, not even sure what to say next. I realized I’d felt sorry for my mother for nothing. All these years I’d pitied her all her marriages, saw the very fact that she kept trying as her greatest weakness, not understanding that to her, it was the complete opposite. In her mind, me sending Dexter away made me weaker than him, not stronger.

  “Barbara, we’ve got to be there in ten minutes so let’s—” Don appeared in the kitchen doorway, tie crooked, his jacket folded over one arm. He stopped when he saw me. “Oh. Remy. Hello.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Oh, look at your tie,” my mother said, standing up. She walked over to him, smoothing her hands down the front of his shirt, and straightened it, tightening the knot. “There. All fixed.”

  “We should go.” Don kissed her on the forehead and she stepped back from him. “Gianni hates having to wait.”

  “Oh, well, then let’s get going,” my mother said. “Remy, honey, have a wonderful time. Okay? And think about what I said.”

  “I will,” I told her. “Have fun.”

  Don headed out to the car, keys in hand—which I noticed, of course—but my mother came over to me as I stood up, putting her hands on my shoulders. “Don’t let your mother’s history make you a cynic, Remy,” she said softly. “Okay?”

  Too late, I thought as she kissed me. Then I watched as she walked out to the car, where Don was waiting. He put a hand against the small of her back, guiding her into her seat, and in that one moment I began to think I just might under
stand what she was talking about. Maybe a marriage, like a life, isn’t only about the Big Moments, whether they be bad or good. Maybe it’s all the small things—like being guided slowly forward, surely, day after day—that stretch out to strengthen even the most tenuous bond.

  My luck was continuing. Paul was actually not a bad setup.

  I’d been a little wary when he’d picked me up, but was surprised when, actually, we’d immediately fallen into talking about college. Apparently one of his best friends from high school was at Stanford, and he’d been there over Christmas to visit.

  “Great campus,” he was saying as the mariachi band, a La Brea staple, started up yet another rendition of “Happy Birthday” across the restaurant. “Plus the ratio in the classes of professors to students is really good. You’re not just dealing with a TA, you know?”

  I nodded. “I hear it’s pretty rigorous academically.”

  He smiled. “Oh, come on. I know how smart you have to be to get in there. I doubt you’ll have a problem. You probably, like, aced the SATs, right?”

  “Wrong,” I said, shaking my head.

  “I, however,” he said grandly, taking a sip of his water, “scored in the moron category. Which is why I’ll still be at my fine state school pulling the gentleman’s C, while you head off to lead the free world. You can send me a postcard. Or, better yet, come see me at my postgraduate job, where I’ll be happy to Supersize your order because, you know, we’re friends and all.”

  I smiled. Paul was a charmer, and a rich boy, but I liked him. He was the kind of guy where talking comes easily because he has something in common with everyone. Already, other than Stanford we’d discussed waterskiing (he was terrible, but addicted), the fact that he was bilingual (Spanish—his grandmother was Venezuelan), and the fact that once summer was over, he’d head back to school, where he was a brother at Sigma Nu, majored in psychology, and managed what he described as the “all heart, no skills” men’s basketball team. He wasn’t goofy or uproariously hilarious, but then again, he wasn’t clumsy either, and both his shoes were tied. Before I knew it, our food had come, we’d eaten, and we were still sitting there talking, even as they cleared every plate from around us in a subtle hint that we were lingering too long.