Cure for Insomnia

by Laina Villeneuve

  “Say that again without the food in your mouth,” my mother ordered.

  “I messed up and she said that she needs some time. She’s not sure she can date with how much her brother needs her.”

  “How did you mess up?” My mother stared at me, and I swear she was weighing whether I was worth it, and what I had done would be the determining factor. I wondered if my being her child tipped the scale in my favor. Her expression suggested not.

  “I missed a string of texts,” I said guiltily. I slid my phone across the table queued up to the messages that haunted me. I explained that I had been in a meeting when the texts came in.

  My mom read them and pushed the phone back to me. “After your meeting, did you call? Did you even read all her texts?”

  I looked down, too guilty to meet my mother’s gaze. “I did call, but only to tell her why I would not make dinner. I assumed she was just blowing off steam texting. It didn’t occur to me that someone as confident and capable as Remi would need me.”

  “Even the strongest people have moments that test their strength.”

  “I realize that now. I’m worried it’s too late.”

  “Why was her brother in the hospital?”

  “He had a grease burn.”

  “And why didn’t you drive to the emergency room to see how bad it was?”

  I stopped chewing. Why hadn’t I? “She said I was too late.”

  “When did you read her texts?”

  “After I was finished at work. It was going on nine.”

  “Maybe she did not want to ask again. Maybe she wanted you to demonstrate to her that you were sorry. Instead you did what? Sat on your couch and pouted and waited for her to miss you? Is that what you have been doing?”

  “She told me she needed time.”

  She clicked her tongue and pointed at the phone. “Was it only this?”

  I took another bite, gathering the energy to tell her about the movie theater.

  When I finished, she said, “Was there no one else at your work to handle the contamination?”

  So many times in the past, my mother had asked me about my cells being infected. That she did not take the opportunity to tease me about my work added another level of gravity to the situation. “Not when I am showing my boss that she can count on me to take on more responsibility.”

  My mother gave me a tired sigh. “What about delegating some of your responsibilities? Isn’t that part of being a leader? If looking good for your boss is what is most important, then maybe your Remi is right. I thought she was the one who would help you see that there is more to success than work.”

  “That’s not fair. I have a lot on my plate right now.”

  She looked pointedly at the food she had heaped on the plate in front of me. I would never be able to finish it, especially after all the beer I’d downed. “Why are you not eating?”

  “You’re the one who piled up my plate!”

  “What will you do? Eat it all, even if it makes you sick?”

  She and I both knew I would take home more leftovers. I would choose when to stop eating even though making my mother happy was a high priority in my life. “It’s one thing with the food that’s literally on my plate. But the metaphorically loaded plate isn’t that easy.”

  “Life is about balance. If you want to fit something else on your plate, something must give. The question is what it will be.”

  “What about her plate? Her brother takes up a lot of room on her plate.”

  “I never said it is only your plate that needs to change. I said life is about balance. But if you load work on your plate as a priority, why would it surprise you if your Remi does the same with her brother?”

  I chewed on all that my mother had said, and she left me to think as she puttered around the kitchen. “I want my plate to look different,” I said when I took my plate to the sink. “I want to make room for Remi. She’s…” I couldn’t find the words to express what I was feeling for Remi.

  “I know.” She patted my shoulder and finally smiled at me. “Now you need to find a way to show her.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Though I’d been tempted to call Remi as I walked home from dinner, I had some thinking to do. I used my evening meditation to write down everything I had on my metaphorical plate and think about what was most important to me. I’d lectured Maricela about making better choices about what food to put on her plate to keep her healthy, yet night after night, I found myself chasing sleep. What if the key to healthier sleep was tied to the amount of work I elected to put on my plate and not who was in my bed?

  The path that led me to my doctoral program logically pointed to a future either in research or industry. My priority was not the paycheck that came with industry jobs. I had been drawn to research because I thought I could help people. My research looked promising for diabetics, but at what cost to my own health? The demands of my job were beginning to make me unhappy. Remi made me happy. Her help with my sleep study had made me happier than I ever remembered, and that happiness went deeper than the physical connection and rest I experienced when I was with her.

  Remi and I engaged on so much more than a physical level. She’d awakened a lightheartedness with her silly “scientific” television shows, and our date challenges had given me some of my best memories. I wanted to share my days with Remi. I valued her insight when we talked about work. I loved the trust she had in me to talk honestly about the challenges Neil brought to her life, and I knew that developing a connection with him was important to Remi.

  And then I went and screwed that up trying to do everything at once. I pictured losing part of a meal by piling too much on my plate. As good as it looked, I wouldn’t eat it off the floor, no matter how many times my family yelled “Five second rule!” As if bacteria gives you five seconds before they contaminate the food. Had I contaminated things with Remi, or could I call five-second rule and make some adjustments to my plate?

  I was relieved when she began returning my texts again and stayed focused on making sure Neil was okay before I approached the topic I wanted to discuss. I thought it would be best posed at dinner and plotted my invitation carefully. I sensed that Remi was waiting for me to stop texting because of the snag we had hit, but I was in no way ready to give up. I said that I wanted to apologize to Neil and wanted him to join us for dinner.

  She pointed out that changing his routine had resulted in a trip to the hospital.

  I felt like she was blaming me for what had happened to Neil but wanted to keep talking about the future, not the past, so I countered that scientists didn’t give up when they didn’t get the results they wanted. Scientists persist. We plan a new experiment, tweak the method and hope for different results. I planned dinner at my house. I would be on time. I would have Lego.

  Finally, she accepted. Even though we did all of this through texts, I could tell that she’d begun to steel herself for the end of our relationship. I really hoped I could prove her wrong.

  When she arrived with her brother, Remi looked as fabulous as ever, not a hair out of place, and I wanted so badly to wrap my arms around her and lose myself in her scent. Instead, I gave her a loose hug and asked Neil how his burn was healing.

  “It was hard to sleep at night when I had to keep ice on it, but it doesn’t keep me from doing Lego.” With that, he walked into my house to begin a silent appraisal of its contents.

  I ushered Remi in, ready to convince her that I had learned from my mistakes in the last weeks. Thinking about his sensitivity to the sound of popcorn at the movies, I’d chosen soft flour tortillas instead of hard corn tortillas, no tortilla chips, and was feeling pretty confident that the night would go well. I could already check off being ready on time.

  I arranged the colorful bowls of sliced chicken, grated cheese, shredded lettuce, diced tomato and olives, sour cream and fresh guacamole. I pointed to the warm tortillas and told them to make as many as they would like. Remi took a plate and two tortill
as, adding ingredients in a line down the center of the tortilla, leaving plenty of room to fold it. Neil asked for two tortillas as well and loaded them with cheddar cheese.

  He turned toward the table, and Remi saw his plate. A look passed between brother and sister. Neil frowned and sprinkled a tiny bit of lettuce off to the side.

  Remi turned a pained expression toward me. I shrugged. How he ate his taco didn’t matter to me.

  “A little chicken as well,” Remi instructed.

  “I like cheese,” he said.

  Remi took a bite of her taco. “It’s delicious. The chicken is not at all spicy.”

  “Cheese.”

  I didn’t see the harm in his eating cheese, but I wasn’t going to contradict Remi. I loaded my tacos, aiming for something that would be as neat as Remi’s but overloading them to the point that I was going to lose stuff every time I took a bite.

  “At least put one scoop with your lettuce.”

  Neil frowned at his plate. Remi frowned at me as if to say See? This is too difficult. I wasn’t buying it. He was in my house, and he did as instructed and sat at a table with the two of us. Thinking about how upset Neil had been at the movies, I made sure to take small bites and chew as quietly as possible.

  Neil plucked cheese from the tortilla with his fingers and filled his mouth.

  “Use your tortilla, please. It is not civilized to eat with your fingers,” Remi said.

  “She is,” Neil said, pointing at me.

  As I’d predicted, I started losing tomato and olive the minute I bit into my taco and had pinched a few escapees into my mouth. “Should I get us forks?” I said around my food.

  Remi shut her eyes. Shit! Why hadn’t I fetched the forks without talking with my mouth full? I pushed back from the table and returned with three forks. Neil used his finger to push cheese onto the fork. I used the edge of my taco to pick up the overflow. Remi’s fork sat untouched as she ate her taco without a single thing falling out.

  Having emptied the tortillas of cheese, Neil stood.

  “Not before your chicken and lettuce. It would be nice if you tried it in the tortilla.”

  Neil frowned, scooped the chicken and lettuce up in his fist and shoved it all in his mouth. He looked from his sister to me, working hard to keep his mouth closed as he chewed the mass. I did my best not to crack a smile. Remi’s expression told me it was important that I did not encourage barbaric table manners.

  “Thanks again for fixing my Batman Dragster,” I said.

  “The cat didn’t break it?” he asked, his eyes directed toward the counter with all the food.

  “I put it in my office and shut the door, so Petri can’t get to it. My niece brought over some of her Lego that she doesn’t want her little sister to break. You can check it out after dinner if you want.”

  “Can I see it now?”

  “Are you finished with your dinner?” Remi asked.

  Neil nodded and started to stand.

  “Water, too,” Remi said.

  Neil gulped it down and looked to his sister once more. “If it’s okay with Karla.”

  “Sure,” I answered.

  “Clear your dishes.”

  Neil piled cup on plate and deposited them in the kitchen. I walked him to the office and left him inspecting the Lego-Friends collection Rosa had agreed to lend me for the night.

  “We are working on table manners,” Remi said when I returned.

  I was hoping the room would feel less tense once Neil turned his attention to the Lego. Unfortunately, Remi had not warmed at all. I tried to lighten the mood. “My mom’s still working on Luis.”

  Remi’s eyes did not dance in reply. Her read on the night was vastly different to mine, and I wished that it was as easy as offering some Lego to play with to get her to see things as I did. I reached for her hand but then realized I needed both to eat my tacos. She had nearly finished hers. We ate in silence for a few minutes before I found something to say. “Neil seemed to do okay with dinner.”

  “He didn’t like the tacos.”

  “But he ate the meat and cheese. My sister would call that a win.”

  Remi inclined her head, acquiescing.

  “How was your week?” I missed hearing the details of her workdays.

  “Long. I should be doing testing for a fourth grader who is struggling badly, but the campus is dragging its feet. She’s passing all her subjects, so they don’t see an issue. They don’t care that she’s working three times as hard as her classmates to barely get by. Working with a resource specialist would help her significantly…”

  Her thoughts drifted from the subject and she didn’t continue when she brought her focus back to me. It felt like when we’d spoken on the phone and she realized she was starting a conversation that would let me back in.

  “But that costs money.”

  “It’s always about money,” she said.

  Was that directed at me? Did she think my choice to stay at work and respond to Maricela’s mother’s accusation had to do with money? I didn’t know what to say and didn’t want to get us back on the subject of how I’d let her down.

  “It was nice of you to invite us,” Remi said when she finished her dinner.

  Her beer was nearly empty. The night was slipping away from me, and I hadn’t eased the tension between us. I set down my unfinished taco and took her hand. “Thank you for accepting. I really miss seeing you.”

  She brought the bottle to her lips and swallowed. Though her eyes were on the remainder, I could see gears in her head turning and wished that I had access to her thoughts.

  “I get that…” she began.

  Neil stuck his head out of the office. “Can I move the Lego?”

  “All you want,” I said.

  Remi got up and cleared our plates. She didn’t sit when she came back.

  “Can we talk?” I asked. “I’ve been thinking about the time I invest in my work.”

  “With Neil here…” Remi tried again.

  “Look! Karla has science Lego!” Neil returned to the table, setting down the chemistry lab set that I’d given Rosa for her birthday. “See the beakers? And the periodic table? It has rats and…”

  Remi’s eyes never left mine as he rattled off more features he liked about the pieces. Could she tell from my expression that I wanted all of it? That I wanted her with every one of her life’s complications? Neil happily continued despite the fact that neither of us responded to him. Remi sighed deeply, another cue he didn’t catch. I wanted to say it didn’t matter, but I knew it did.

  “That is very interesting,” Remi said. “Time to put it away, though.”

  “Five more minutes?”

  “Two,” Remi answered

  “Compromise, three.”

  “Three, okay.” Remi watched as he ducked into the office again and took out her phone to set a timer for three minutes.

  What could I say in three minutes that would bring back her smile? In three minutes, I would never be able to say enough, so I stepped closer to Remi and kissed her. Her lips were warm, but her kiss guarded. I added the tiniest bit of tongue, a little tease along her bottom lip. She sighed and stepped closer to me, resting her hands on my shoulders. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to mine, so intimately supple, I felt the contact down to the backs of my knees.

  “Your cat is a problem. It eats Lego. Why would it eat Lego?” Neil’s voice snapped me back to attention. He stood before us, holding Petri against his chest. My traitorous cat curled her tail like she was always game to be held.

  “Petri doesn’t like to be held,” I said, a little breathless from Remi’s kiss.

  Neil continued, “She likes to eat Lego. I told her it’s not food, and she ate it anyway. I had to open her mouth to get the piece out.” Holding my cat with one arm, something I would never have attempted in a million years, he extended a battered purple piece. “She’s sneaky. I didn’t even know she was there until I heard chewing.”

  “Maybe pu
t the cat down,” Remi interjected. “Karla says she doesn’t like to be held.”

  My cat purred. Neil looked down at her and they gazed at each other like they’d grown up best buds. “She likes me. Maybe I’m good at Lego and cats.”

  “You must be an animal whisperer,” I said. “My cat does not like people.”

  “She likes me,” he said.

  Remi’s timer went off. “That’s our signal to leave.” She reached out and tried to extract Petri from Neil’s arms. Petri hissed and jumped free.

  “She doesn’t like you,” Neil said.

  “Thanks for that,” Remi said wryly.

  Neil turned to me. “That’s sarcasm. She isn’t really thanking me.”

  Remi walked to the door and gathered her coat and purse. “Neil’s been working on social skills.”

  “So have I,” I admitted, walking them to the door. “My family is always saying that I have terrible people skills.”

  “You’re autistic?” Neil asked.

  “I’m a scientist. I spend so much time around cells that sometimes I forget how to be nice to people and show them that I care about them more than my experiments.”

  “I think you’re nice,” Neil said. “But I think you should keep your cat away from the Lego.”

  “I promise to keep the door shut.”

  “I can get you a new purple two-by-six brick.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” I said. Remi opened the door, and Neil walked out without another word. I wouldn’t have noticed except for the expression on Remi’s face. The softness was gone again and her guard up. I could hear her thinking that I could not provide new Lego sets to keep his interest indefinitely. Remi’s expression conveyed the years she had spent straddling her world and Neil’s. She had said that some could interpret her brother as competition. I had thought she meant people who wanted to date her, but now I could see that Remi herself interpreted Neil as competition. And probably saw my work as competition as well.