This Lullaby

by Sarah Dessen

  “Okay, B cup,” Jess said, taking a sip of her drink.

  “I have boobs!” Chloe said again, a bit too loudly—she’d already had a couple of minibottles at the Spot. “My boobs are great, goddammit. You know that? They’re fantastic! My boobs are amazing.”

  “Chloe,” I said, but of course then it was too late. Not only were two guys standing nearby now completely absorbed in checking out her chest, but Dexter was sliding in beside me, a bemused look on his face. Chloe flushed red—rare for her—while Lissa patted her sympathetically on the shoulder.

  “So it is true,” Dexter said finally. “Girls do talk about boobs when they’re in groups. I always thought so, but I never had proof.”

  “Chloe was just making a point,” Lissa explained to him.

  “Clearly,” Dexter said, and Chloe brushed a hand through her hair and turned her head, as if she was suddenly fascinated by the wall. “So anyway,” he said brightly, moving on, “‘The Potato Song’ really went over well, don’t you think?”

  “I do,” I said, moving in closer as he slid his arm around my waist. That was the thing about Dexter: he wasn’t totally touchy-feely, like Jonathan had been, but he had these signature moves that I liked. The hand around my waist, for one, but then there was this thing that made me crazy, the way he cupped his fingers around the back of my neck, putting them just so, so that his thumb touched a pulse point. It was so hard to explain, but it gave me a chill, every time, almost like he was touching my heart.

  I looked up and Chloe had her eye on me, vigilant as ever. I shook off these thoughts, quick, and finished my beer just as Ted came up.

  “Nice work on that second verse,” was the first thing he said, and not nicely, but in a sarcastic, snarky way. “You know, if you butcher the words you do the song a disservice.”

  “Butcher what words?” Dexter said.

  Ted sighed, loudly. “It’s not that she was a vegan princess, living off of beans. It’s she’s a vegan princess, living off beans.”

  Dexter just looked at him, completely nonplussed, as if he’d just given the weather report. Chloe said, “What’s the difference?”

  “The entire world is the difference!” Ted snapped. “Living off of beans is proper English, which brings with it the connotation of higher society, accepted standards, and the status quo. Living off beans, however, is reminiscent of a more slang culture, realistic, and a lower class, which is indicative of both the speaker in the song and the music that accompanies it.”

  “All this from one word?” Jess asked him.

  “One word,” Ted replied, dead serious, “can change the whole world.”

  There was a moment while we all considered this. Finally Lissa said to Chloe, loud enough for all of us to hear (she’d had a minibottle or two herself), “I bet he did really well on his SATs.”

  “Shhh,” Chloe said, just as loudly.

  “Ted,” Dexter said, “I hear what you’re saying. And I understand. Thanks for pointing out the distinction, and I won’t make the mistake again.”

  Ted just stood there, blinking. “Okay,” he said, somewhat uneasily. “Good. Well. Uh, I’m gonna go smoke.”

  “Sounds good,” Dexter said, and with that Ted walked away, cutting through the crowd toward the bar. A couple of girls standing by the door eyed him as he passed, nodding at each other. God, this band thing was sick. Some women had no shame.

  “Very impressive,” I said to Dexter.

  “I’ve had a lot of practice,” he explained. “You see, Ted is very passionate. And really, all he wants is to be heard. Hear him, nod, agree. Three steps. Easy cheesy.”

  “Easy cheesy,” I repeated, and then he slid his hand up to my neck, pressing his fingers just so, and I got that weird feeling again. This time, it wasn’t so easy to shake, and as Dexter moved closer to me, kissing my forehead, I closed my eyes and wondered how deep I’d let this get before ducking out. Maybe it wouldn’t be the whole summer. Maybe I needed to derail it sooner, to prevent a real crash in the end.

  “Paging Dexter,” a voice came from the front of the club. I looked up: it was John Miller, squinting in the house lights. “Paging Dexter. You are needed on aisle five for a price check.”

  The redheaded girl was back at the stage, right up close. She turned her head and followed John Miller’s gaze, right to us. To me. And I looked right back at her, feeling possessive suddenly of something that I wasn’t even sure I should want to claim as mine.

  “Gotta go,” Dexter said. Then he leaned into my ear and added, “Wait for me?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  He laughed, as if this was a joke, and disappeared into the crowd. A few seconds later I watched him climb onstage, so lanky and clumsy: he tagged a speaker with one foot, sending it toppling, as he headed to the mike. One of his shoelaces, of course, was undone.

  “Oh, man,” Chloe said. She was looking right at me, shaking her head, and I told myself she was wrong, so wrong, even as she spoke. “You’re a goner.”

  Chapter Nine

  “I thought this was a cookout. You know, dogs and burgers, Tater Tots, ambrosia salad.” Dexter picked up a box of Twinkies, tossing them into the cart. “And Twinkies.”

  “It is,” I said, consulting the list again before I picked a four-dollar glass jar of imported sun-dried tomatoes off the shelf. “Except that it’s a cookout thrown by my mother.”“And?”

  “And,” I said, “my mother doesn’t cook.”

  He looked at me, waiting.

  “At all. My mother doesn’t cook at all.”

  “She must cook sometimes.”

  “Nope.”

  “Everyone can make scrambled eggs, Remy. It’s programmed into you at birth, the default setting. Like being able to swim and knowing not to mix pickles with oatmeal. You just know.”

  “My mother,” I told him, pushing the cart farther up the aisle as he lagged along beside, taking long, loping steps, “doesn’t even like scrambled eggs. She only eats eggs Benedict.”

  “Which is?” he said, stopping as he was momentarily distracted by a large plastic water gun that was displayed, right at kid’s eye level, in the middle of the cereal section.

  “You don’t know what eggs Benedict is?”

  “Should I?” he asked, picking up the water gun and pulling the trigger, which made a click-click-click sound. He pointed it around the corner, like a sniper, taking shelter behind a display of canned corn.

  “It’s a way of making eggs that is really complicated and fancy and involves hollandaise sauce,” I told him. “And English muffins.”

  “Ugh.” He made a face, then shuddered. “I hate English muffins.”

  “What?”

  “English muffins,” he said, putting the water gun back as we started walking again. “I can’t eat them. I can’t even think about them. In fact, we should stop talking about them right now.”

  We paused in front of the spices: my mother wanted something called Asian Fish Sauce. I peered closely at all the bottles, already frustrated, while Dexter busied himself juggling some boxes of Sweet ’n Low. Shopping with him, as I’d discovered, was like having a toddler in tow. He was constantly distracted, grabbing at things, and we’d already taken on entirely too many impulse items, all of which I intended to rid the cart of at the checkout when he wasn’t looking.

  “Do you mean to tell me,” I said, reaching up as I spotted the fish sauce, “that you can eat an entire jar of mayonnaise in one sitting but find English muffins, which are basically just bread, to be disgusting?”

  “Ughhh.” He shuddered again, a full-body one this time, and put a hand on his stomach. “Icks-nay on the uffins-may. I’m serious.”

  It was taking us forever. My mother’s list only had about fifteen things on it, but they were all specialty items: imported goat cheese, focaccia bread, an incredibly specific brand of olives in the red bottle, not the green. Plus there was the new grill she’d bought just for the occasion—the nicest one at the specialty ha
rdware store, according to Chris, who didn’t keep her from overspending as I would have—plus the brand-new patio furniture (otherwise, where would we sit?), and my mother was spending a small fortune on what was supposed to be a simple Fourth of July barbecue.

  This had been all her idea. She’d been working away at her book ever since she and Don had returned from the honeymoon, but a few days earlier she’d emerged midday with an inspiration: a real, all-American Fourth of July cookout with the family. Chris and Jennifer Anne should come, and Don’s secretary, Patty, who was single, poor thing, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if she hit it off with my mother’s decorator, Jorge, who we just had to have over to thank for all his hard work on the addition? And wouldn’t it be such a great way for everyone to meet my new beau (insert me cringing here) and christen the new patio and our wonderful, amazing, beautiful lives together as a blended family?

  Oh, yes. It would. Of course.

  “What?” Dexter said to me now, stepping in front of the cart, which I’d been pushing, apparently, faster and faster as these stress thoughts filled my head. It knocked him in the gut, forcing him backward, and he put his hands on it, pushing it back to me. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said, trying to get the cart going again. No luck. He wasn’t budging. “Why?”

  “Because you just got this look on your face like your brain was caving in.”

  “Nice,” I said. “Thanks ever so much.”

  “And,” he continued, “you’re biting your lip. You only do that when you’re about to shift into superobsessive, what-if mode.”

  I just looked at him. As if I was that easy to figure out, a puzzle that could be cracked in, how long had it been, two weeks? It was insulting.

  “I’m fine,” I said coolly.

  “Ah! The ice queen voice. Which means, of course, that I’m right.” He came around the cart, holding the edge, and stood behind me, putting his hands over mine. He started pushing and walking in his goofy way, forcing me to fall into his rhythm, which felt as awkward as it looked, like walking with a shoeful of marbles. “What if I embarrass you?” he said, as if posing a theory, like, say, quantum physics. “What if I break some heirloom family china? Or talk about your underwear?”

  I glared at him, then pushed the cart harder, making him stumble. But he hung on, pulling me back against him, his fingers spreading across my stomach. Then he leaned down and whispered, right in my ear, “What if I throw down a challenge to Don, right there over dinner, daring him to eat that entire jar of sun-dried tomatoes and chase it with a stick of margarine? And what if ”—and here he gasped, dramatically—“oh my God, he does it?”

  I covered my face with my hand, shaking my head. I hated it when he made me laugh when I didn’t want to: it seemed some huge loss of control, so unlike me, like the most glaring of character flaws.

  “But you know,” he said, still in my ear, “that probably won’t happen.”

  “I hate you,” I told him, and he kissed my neck, finally letting go of the cart.

  “Not true,” he replied, and started down the aisle, already distracted by a huge display of Velveeta cheese in the dairy section. “Never true.”

  “So, Remy. I hear you’re going to Stanford!”

  I nodded and smiled, shifting my drink to my other hand, and felt with my tongue to see if I had spinach in my teeth. I didn’t. But Don’s secretary, Patty, who I hadn’t seen since her tearful bit at the wedding reception, was standing in front of me expectantly, with a nice big piece wedged around an incisor.“Well,” she said, dabbing at her forehead with a napkin, “it’s just a wonderful school. You must be really excited.”

  “I am,” I told her. Then I reached up, nonchalantly, and brushed at one of my teeth, hoping that somehow she would subconsciously pick up on this, like osmosis, and get the hint. But no. She was still smiling at me, fresh sweat beading her forehead as she gulped down the rest of her wine and glanced around, wondering what to say next.

  She was distracted suddenly, as was I, by a small commotion over by the brand-new grill, where Chris had been assigned to prepare the incredibly expensive steaks my mother had special ordered from the butcher. They were, I’d heard her tell someone, “Brazilian beef,” whatever that meant, as if cows from below the equator were of greater value than your average Holstein chewing cud in Michigan.

  Chris wasn’t doing well. First he’d burned off part of an eyebrow and a fair amount of arm hair lighting the grill. Then he’d had some trouble mastering the complicated spatula in the top-of-the-line accessories set the salesman had convinced my mother she absolutely had to have, resulting in one of the steaks being flung across the patio, where it landed with a slap on one of the imported loafers of our decorator, Jorge.

  Now the flames on the grill were leaping as Chris struggled with the gas valve. All of us assembled stood there, holding our drinks as the fire shot up, making the steaks scream and sizzle, then died out completely, the grill making a gurgling noise. My mother, deep in conversation with one of our neighbors, glanced over in a disinterested way, as if this methodic burning and destruction of the main course was someone else’s problem.

  “Don’t worry!” Chris called as the flames shot up again and he batted at them with the spatula, “it’s under control.” He sounded about as sure of this as he looked, which was to say, with half a right eyebrow and the smell of singed hair still lingering, not very.

  “Everyone, please!” my mother called out, covering gamely by gesturing at the table where we’d set up all the cheeses and appetizers. “Eat, eat! We’ve got so much food here!”

  Chris was waving smoke out of his face while Jennifer Anne stood off to his left, biting her lip. She’d brought several side dishes, all in plastic containers with matching, pastel-colored lids. On the bottom of each lid, in permanent marker, was written PROPERTY OF JENNIFER A. BAKER, PLEASE RETURN. As if the whole world was part of an international conspiracy to steal her Tupperware.

  “Barbara,” Patty called out, “this is just wonderful.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing!” my mother said, fanning her face with her hand. She was in black pants and a lime green tank top that showed off her honeymoon tan, her hair pulled back in a headband: she looked the picture of suburban entertaining, as if at any moment she might light a tiki torch and spray some Cheez Whiz onto crackers.

  It was always interesting to see how my mother’s relationships manifested themselves in her personality. With my dad she was a hippie—in all the pictures I’d seen she looked so young, wearing gauzy skirts or frayed jeans, her hair long and black and parted right down the middle. During the time she was married to Harold, the professor, she’d gone academic, sporting a lot of tweed and wearing her reading glasses all the time, even though she saw well enough without them. Once married to Win, the doctor, she’d gone country club, in little sweater sets and tennis skirts, though she couldn’t play to save her life. And with Martin, the golf pro—who she’d met, of course, at the country club—she went into a young phase, since he was six years her junior: short skirts, jeans, little flimsy dresses. Now, as Don’s wife, Barb, she’d gone subdivision on us: I could just see them, years from now, wearing matching jogging suits and riding around in a golf cart, en route to work on their back swing. I really did hope this was my mother’s last marriage: I wasn’t sure she, or I, could take another incarnation.

  Now I watched as Don, wearing a golf shirt and drinking a beer in the bottle, helped himself to another of the crostini, popping it into his mouth. I’d expected him to be the grill master, but he didn’t even seem to be that fond of food at all, in fact, judging by the vast quantities of Ensure that he consumed, those little cans of liquid diet that claim to have all the nutritional value of a good meal with the convenience of a pop-top. He bought them by the case at Sam’s Club. For some reason, this bothered me even more than my now breasty breakfasts, seeing Don walking through the house reading the newspaper, in his leather slippers, a can of Ensure seemingl
y affixed to his hand, the fffftttt sound of him popping the top now signaling his presence.

  “Remy, honey?” my mother called out. “Can you come here a second?”

  I made my excuses to Patty and walked across the patio, where my mother slid her hand around my wrist, pulled me gently close to her, and whispered, “I’m wondering if I should be worried about the steaks.”

  I glanced over at the grill, where Chris had positioned himself in such a way that it was difficult—but not impossible—to see that the prime Brazilian beef cuts had been reduced to small, black objects resembling lava rocks.

  “Yes and no,” I told her, and she absently brushed her fingers over my skin. My mother’s hands were always cool, even in the hottest of weather. I suddenly had a flash of her pressing a palm to my forehead when I was a child, checking for fever, and me thinking this then too. “I’ll deal with it,” I told her.

  “Oh, Remy,” she said, squeezing my hand. “What am I going to do without you?”

  Ever since she’d come home it had been like this, these sudden moments when her face changed and I knew she was thinking that I might actually go to Stanford after all, that it was really about to happen. She had her new husband, her new wing, her new book. She’d be fine without me, and we both knew it. This is what daughters did. They left, and came home later with lives of their own. It was a basic plot in any number of her books: girl strikes out, makes good, finds love, gets revenge. In that order. The making good and striking out part I liked. The rest would just be bonus.

  “Come on, Mom,” I told her. “You won’t even know I’m gone.”

  She sighed, shaking her head, and pulled me close, kissing my cheek. I could smell her perfume, mixed with hair spray, and I closed my eyes for a second, breathing it in. With all the changes, some things stayed the same.

  Which is exactly what I was thinking as I stood in the kitchen, pulling the hamburgers I’d bought out of the back of the refrigerator, where I’d camouflaged them behind a stack of Ensures. At the supermarket, when Dexter had asked why I was buying this stuff even though it wasn’t on the list, I’d just told him that I liked to be prepared for any eventuality, because you just never knew. Could be I was too cynical. Or maybe, unlike so many others who moved in my mother’s orbit, I had just learned from the past.