This Lullaby

  “No.”

  John Miller slapped the table. “What? It’s not even to my stomach yet, for godsakes!”

  Dexter thought for a second. “Okay. We’ll let Remy call this one.”

  “What?” I said. They were both looking at me.

  “You’re an unbiased view,” Dexter explained.

  “She’s your girlfriend,” John Miller complained. “That’s not unbiased!”

  “She is not my girlfriend.” Dexter looked at me, as if this might upset me, which was evidence that he didn’t know me at all. He said, “What I mean is, we may be seeing each other”—and here he paused, as if waiting for me to chime in with something, which I didn’t, so he went on—“but you are your own person with your opinions and convictions. Correct?”

  “I’m not his girlfriend,” I told John Miller.

  “She loves me,” Dexter said to him, as an aside, and I felt my face flame. “Anyway,” he said, moving on breezily, “Remy? What do you think? Does it count or not?”

  “Well,” I said, “I think it should count somehow. Perhaps as half.”

  “Half!” Dexter looked at me as if he was just so pleased, as if he had carved me out of clay himself. “Perfect. So, if you choose to accept this challenge, you must eat nine and a half bananas.”

  John Miller thought about this for a second. Later, I would learn that money was always scarce at the yellow house, and these challenges provided some balance of cash flow from one person to another. Twenty bucks was food and beer money for at least a couple of days. And it was really only nine bananas. And a half.

  “Okay,” John Miller said. And they shook on it.

  Before the challenge could happen, witnesses had to be gathered. Ted was brought in from the back deck, along with a girl he’d been seeing, introduced to me as Scary Mary (I chose not to ask), and, after a futile search for the keyboardist, Lucas, Dexter’s dog Monkey was agreed upon as a suitable replacement. We all gathered around the table, or on the long, ugly brown couch that was next to the refrigerator, while John Miller did some deep breathing and stretching, as if preparing for a fifty-yard dash.

  “Okay,” Ted, the only one with a working watch and therefore timekeeper, said, “Go!”

  If you’ve never seen someone take on a food challenge, as I had not at that point, you might expect it to actually be exciting. Except that the challenge was not to eat nine and a half bananas quickly: it was just to eat nine and a half bananas. So by banana four or so, boredom set in, and Ted and Scary Mary went to the Waffle House, leaving me, Dexter, and Monkey to wait out the next five and a half bananas. It turned out we didn’t have to: John Miller conceded defeat in the middle of banana six, then carefully got to his feet and went to the bathroom.

  “I hope you didn’t kill him,” I told Dexter as the door shut behind him, the lock clicking.

  “No way,” he said easily, stretching back in his chair. “You should have seen him last month, when he ate fifteen eggs in a row. Then we were worried. He turned bright red.”

  “You know,” I said, “funny how it’s never you having to eat vast quantities of things.”

  “Not true. I just moved on after completing the master of all challenges back in April.”

  I hated to even ask what would earn such a title, but curiosity got the better of me. “Which was?”

  “Thirty-two ounces of Miracle Whip,” he said. “In twenty minutes flat.”

  Just the thought of this made my stomach twist. I hated mayonnaise, and any derivation thereof: egg salad, tuna salad, even deviled eggs. “That’s disgusting.”

  “I know.” He said it proudly. “I could never top it, even if I tried.”

  I had to wonder what kind of person got such satisfaction from constant competitiveness. And Dexter would make challenges about anything, whether it was in his control or not. Some recent favorites included I Bet You a Quarter the Next Car That Passes Is Either Blue or Green, Five Bucks Says I Can Make Something Edible Out of the Canned Corn, French-Fried Potato Sticks, and Mustard in the Pantry, and, of course, How Many States Can You Name While That Woman Picks Up Her Dry Cleaning?

  I, personally, was up to twenty. Dexter was at nineteen and experiencing a bit of a brain cramp.

  “California,” he said finally, casting a nervous look at the front of the cleaners, where we could see the woman talking to someone behind the counter.

  “Already said it,” I told him.

  “Wisconsin.”

  “Montana.”

  “South Carolina.”

  The door opened: it was her. “Game over,” I said. “I win.”

  “You do not!”

  I held up my fingers, where I’d been keeping track. “I win by one,” I said. “Pay up.”

  He started to reach into his pockets, sighing, then instead pulled me closer, spreading his fingers around my waist, burying his face in my neck.

  “Nope,” I said, putting my hands on his chest, “won’t work.”

  “I’ll be your slave,” he said into my ear, and I felt a chill run up my back, then cast it off just as quickly, reminding myself again that I always had a boyfriend in summer, someone that caught my eye after school was finished and usually lasted right up until the beach trip my family took each August. The only difference this time was that I was going west instead of east. And I liked being able to think about it that way, in terms of a compass, something set in stone that would remain, unchanged, long after I was gone.

  Besides, I knew already we would never work long-term. He was so imperfect already, his cracks and fissures apparent. I could only imagine what structural damage lay beneath, deep in the foundation. But still, it was hard to keep my head clear as he kissed me there, in July, with another challenge behind me. After all, I was up now, and it still seemed like we had time.

  “The question is, has he been given The Speech yet?” Jess asked.

  “No,” Chloe told her. “The question is, have you slept with him yet?”They all looked at me. It wasn’t rude for them to ask, of course: usually this was common knowledge—once, common assumption. But now I hesitated, which was unnerving.

  “No,” I said finally. There was a quick intake of breath—shock!—from somebody, then silence.

  “Wow,” Lissa said finally. “You like him.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” I said, not refuting this exactly, which set off another round of silence and exchanged looks. Out at the Spot, with the sun going down, I felt the trampoline bounce lightly beneath me and leaned back, spreading my fingers over the cool metal of the springs.

  “No Speech, no sex,” Jess said, summing up. “This is dangerous.”

  “Maybe he’s different,” Lissa offered, stirring her drink with one finger.

  “Nobody’s different,” Chloe told her. “Remy knows that better than any of us.”

  It says something about my absolute adherence to a plan concerning relationships that my best friends had terms, like outline headings, detailing my actions. The Speech usually came right as the heady, romantic, fun-new-boyfriend phase was boiling to full steam. It was my way of hitting the brakes, slowly downshifting, and usually involved me pulling whatever Ken was in my life at that time aside to say something like: hey, I really like you and we’re having fun, but you know, I can’t get too serious because I’m going to the beach/really going to focus on school come fall/just getting over someone and not up to anything long-term. This was the summer speech: the winter/holiday one was pretty much the same, except you inserted I’m going skiing/really going to have to rally until graduation/dealing with a lot of family crap for the last part. And usually, guys took it one of two ways. If they really liked me, as in wear-my-class-ring-love-me-always, they bolted, which was just as well. If they liked me but were willing to slow down, to see boundaries, they nodded and saved face by saying they felt the same way. And then I was free to proceed to the next step, which—and I’m not proud—usually involved sleeping with them.

  But not right away.
Never right away, not anymore. I liked to have enough time invested to see a few cracks and get rid of anyone whose failings I knew I couldn’t deal with in the long term, i.e., more than the six weeks that usually encompassed the fun-new-boyfriend phase.

  Once, I was easy. Now, I was choosy. See? Big difference. And besides, something was different about Dexter. Whenever I tried to revert to my set outline, something stopped me. I could give him the talk, and he’d probably be fine with it. I could sleep with him, and he’d be fine—more than fine—with that too. But somewhere, deep in my conscious mind, something niggled me that maybe he wouldn’t, that maybe he’d think less of me, or something. I knew it was stupid.

  And besides, I’d just been busy. That was probably it, really.Chloe opened her bottled water, took a swig, then chased it with a sip from the tiny bottle of bourbon in her hand. “What are you doing?” she asked me, point blank.

  “I’m just having fun,” I replied, taking a swig of my Diet Zip. It seemed easy to say this, having just run through it in my head. “He’s leaving at the end of the summer too, you know.”

  “Then why haven’t you given him The Speech?” Jess asked.

  “I just,” I said, and then shook my cup, stalling. “I haven’t thought about it, to be honest.”

  They looked at one another, considering the implications of this. Lissa said, “I think he’s really nice, Remy. He’s sweet.”

  “He’s clumsy,” Jess grumbled. “He keeps stepping on my feet.”

  “Maybe,” Chloe said, as if it was just occurring to her, “you just have big feet.”

  “Maybe,” Jess replied, “you should shut up.”

  Lissa sighed, closing her eyes. “You guys. Please. We’re talking about Remy.”

  “We don’t have to talk about Remy,” I said. “We really don’t. Let’s talk about somebody else.”

  There was silence for a second: I sucked down some more of my drink, Lissa lit a cigarette. Finally Chloe said, “You know, the other night Dexter said he’d give me ten bucks if I could stand on my head for twenty minutes. What the hell does that mean?”

  They all looked at me. I said, “Just ignore him. Next?”

  “I think Adam’s seeing someone else,” Lissa said suddenly.

  “Okay,” I said. “Now, see, this is interesting.”

  Lissa ran her finger over the rim of her cup, her head down, one curl bouncing slightly with the movement. It had been about a month since Adam had dumped her, and she’d moved through her weepy stage to just kind of sad all the time, with occasional moments when I actually heard her laugh out loud, then stop, as if she’d forgotten she wasn’t supposed to be happy.

  “Who is she?” Chloe asked.

  “I don’t know. She drives a red Mazda.”

  Jess looked at me, shaking her head. I said, “Lissa, have you been driving by his house?”

  “No,” she said, and then looked up at us. We, of course, were all staring back at her, knowing she was lying. “No! But the other day there was construction on Willow and then I—”

  “Do you want him to think you’re weak?” Jess asked her. “Do you want to give him that satisfaction?”

  “How can he already be with somebody else?” Lissa asked her, and Jess just sighed, shaking her head. “I’m not even totally okay yet, and he’s with someone else? How can that be?”

  “Because he’s a jerk,” I told her.

  “Because he’s a guy,” Chloe added. “And guys don’t get attached, guys don’t ever give themselves over completely, and guys lie. That’s why they should be handled with great trepidation, not trusted, and held at arm’s length whenever possible. Right, Remy?”

  I looked at her, and there it was again: that shifting of her eyes that meant she’d seen something in me lately she didn’t recognize, and it worried her. Because if I wasn’t cold, hard Remy, then she couldn’t be the Chloe she was, either.

  “Right,” I said, and smiled at Lissa. I had to lead the way here, of course. She’d never make it out otherwise. “Absolutely.”

  The band wasn’t called the G Flats at all. That was just their wedding persona, the one they had been forced to take on because of an incident involving the van, some authorities in Pennsylvania, and Don’s brother Michael, who was an attorney there. Apparently playing at my mother’s wedding had been some kind of payback, but it had also seemed like the right time to relocate, as the band—whose real name was Truth Squad—did every summer.

  For the past two years, they’d worked their way across the country, always following the same process: find a town with a decent local music scene, rent a cheap apartment, and start playing the clubs. In the first week they all got day jobs, preferably at the same place, since they shared one mode of transportation. (So now, Dexter and Lucas worked at Flash Camera, while John Miller fixed lattes at Jump Java, and Ted bagged groceries at Mayor’s Market.) Although most of the guys had some college, or, in Ted’s case, a diploma, they always got easy jobs that didn’t require much overtime or thinking. Then they’d hit the local club scene, hoping to land a regular weekly gig, as they had at Bendo. Tuesday nights, which were the slowest there, were now all theirs.They’d only been in town for a couple of days when I’d first met Dexter at Don’s Motors: they were sleeping in the van then, in the city park, until they found the yellow house. Now it seemed they’d stick around until they were run out of town for owing money or small legal infractions (it had happened before) or just got bored. Everything was planned to be transitory: they boasted that they could pack up and be gone in an hour flat, already drawing a finger across the wrinkled map in the van’s glove box, seeking out a new destination.

  So maybe that was what kept me from giving The Speech, this idea that his life was just as impermanent at this moment as mine. I didn’t want to be like other girls that were probably in other towns, listening to Truth Squad bootlegs and pining for Dexter Jones, born in Washington, D.C., a Pisces, lead singer, thrower of challenges, permanent address unknown. His history was as murky as mine was clear, with his dog seeming to be the only family in which he had interest. I was soon to be Remy Starr, formerly of Lakeview, now of Stanford, undecided major, leaning toward economics. We were only converging for a few weeks, fleeting. No need to follow protocol.

  That night me, Chloe, Jess, and Lissa got to Bendo around nine. Truth Squad was already playing, and the crowd was thin but enthusiastic. I noted, then quickly made a point of not noting, that it was mostly made up of girls, a few of them crowded up close, next to the stage, holding their beers and swaying to the music.

  The music, in fact, was a mix of covers and originals. The covers were, as Dexter put it, “a necessary evil”—required at weddings, and useful at clubs, at least at the beginning of sets, to prevent being beaned with beer caps and cigarette butts. (This, apparently, had happened as well.) But Dexter and Ted, who had started the band during their junior year of high school, preferred their original compositions, the biggest and most ambitious of which were the potato songs.

  By the time we sat down, the band was finishing the last verse of “Gimme Three Steps” as the assembled girls clapped and whoo-whooed. Then there was a few seconds of practice chords, some conferring between Ted and Dexter, and then Dexter said, “We’re going to do an original song for you all now, an instant classic. Folks, this is ‘The Potato Song.’”

  More cheering from the girls, one of whom—a buxom redhead with broad shoulders I recognized from the perpetual lines for the ladies’ room—moved closer to the stage, so that she was practically at Dexter’s feet. He smiled down at her, politely.

  “I saw her in the produce section,” he began, “late last Saturday. It hadn’t been but seven days since she went away. . . .”

  Another loud whoop, from someone who was, apparently, already fond of “The Potato Song.” Good thing, I thought. There were dozens where that came from.

  “Once she’d loved my filet mignon, my carnivore inklings,” Dexter continued, “but now she was a
vegan princess, living off of beans. She’d given up the cheese and bacon, sworn off Burger King, and when I wouldn’t do the same she gave me back my ring. I stood there by the romaine lettuce, feeling my heart pine”—and here he put a hand over his chest, and looked mournful, to which the crowd cheered—“wishing that this meatless beauty still would be all mine. She turned around to go to checkout, fifteen items or less. And I knew this was the last go-round, so this is what I said. . . .”

  He stopped here, letting the music build, and John Miller drummed a bit faster, the beat picking up. I could see some people in the crowd already mouthing the words.

  “Don’t you ever give me no rotten tomato, ’cause all I ever wanted was your sweet potato,” Dexter sang. “Mashed, whipped, creamed, smothered, chunked, and diced, anyway you fix it baby sure tastes nice.”

  “This is a song?” Jess asked me, but Lissa was laughing now, clapping along.

  “This is many songs,” I told her. “It’s an opus.”

  “A what?” she said, but I didn’t even repeat it, because now the song was reaching its climax, which was basically a recitation of every possible kind of vegetable. The crowd was shouting things out, and Dexter was singing hard, winding up the song: when they finished, with a crashing of cymbals, the crowd burst into loud applause. Dexter leaned into the microphone, said they’d be back in a few minutes, and then got down off the stage, grabbing a plastic cup off a speaker as he did so. I watched as the redheaded girl walked up to him, zeroing in, effectively cutting off his path as he started across the floor.

  “Ooh, Remy,” Chloe said, noticing this too, “your man has a groupie.”

  “He’s not my man,” I said, taking a sip of my beer.

  “Remy’s with the band,” Chloe told Jess, who snorted. “So much for that no-musicians rule. Next thing you know she’ll be on the bus and selling T-shirts in the parking lot, showing off her boobs to get in the stage door.”

  “At least she has boobs to show,” Jess said.

  “I have boobs,” Chloe said, pointing to her chest. “Just because they’re not weighing me down doesn’t mean they’re not substantial.”