This Lullaby

by Sarah Dessen

She loved to plunge into projects, tackle them for about ten minutes, and then lose interest. All around our house were little piles of things that had once held her attention: aromatherapy kits, family tree software, stacks of Japanese cookbooks, an aquarium with four sides covered in algae and one sole survivor, a fat white fish who had eaten all the others.

And that was all it took to feel it. That slow, simmering burn in my stomach that I always felt when I let myself see how far the scale had tipped in her favor. It was either resentment or what was left of my ulcer, or maybe both.

we lived in a series of nasty apartment complexes, all with names like Ridgewood Pines and Lakeview Forest, which had no lakes or pines or forests anywhere to be seen.

and I closed my eyes and listened. It was like music I’d heard all my life, even more than “This Lullaby.” All those keystrokes, all those letters, so many words. I brushed my fingers over the beads and watched as her image rippled, like it was on water, breaking

“This is just the in-between time,” I said. “It goes faster than you think.”

He reached forward, touching my arm, but for once, finally, I was able to do what I wanted and yank it back as if he’d burned me.

The words I knew by heart. They did mean something to me. Nobody had to know. But they did.

This lullaby is only a few words A simple run of chords Quiet here in this spare room But you can hear it, hear it Wherever you may go I will let you down But this lullaby plays on. . . .

This was the way the old me worked, living just for the next second, hour, wanting only to have a boy want me for a night, no more. I’d changed. I’d quit that,

And watching him head home, for a second it was like he was the only one awake or even alive in all the world right then, except for me.

“Because dammit, Remy, you make it really hard to love you sometimes. You know that? You really do.”

turned my head and caught a glimpse of her in the mirror behind the bar. Her hair was flat, her face a little sweaty. She looked drunk, but I would have known her anywhere. It was everybody else who always liked to think she was gone for good. I wiped off my face, ran my fingers through my hair, trying to give it some life. She stared back at me as I did this, knowing as well as I that these were just smoke and mirrors, little tricks.

Truth be told, I used to be worse. Much worse. I hardly ever drank much anymore. Or smoked pot. Or went off with guys I didn’t know that well into dark corners, or dark cars, or dark rooms. Weird how it never worked in the daylight, when you could actually see the topography of someone’s face, the lines and bumps, the scars. In the dark everyone felt the same: the edges blurred. When I think of myself then, what I was like two years ago, I feel like a wound in a bad place, prone to be bumped on corners or edges. Never able to heal.

I’d always prided myself on having the upper hand. I had my patented moves, the push offs and casual squirm, easily utilized to slow things down. But this time, they weren’t working. Every time I moved one of his hands another seemed to be on me, and it seemed like all my strength had seeped down to my toes.

The rest comes in bursts when I do reach that far back, always these crazy sharp details: how fast it was all happening, the way I kept coming in and out of it, one second vivid, the next lost.

When I lifted my head up and looked in the mirror, it was her face I saw then. Drunk. Pale. Easy. And scared, unsteady, still gasping as she looked back at me, wondering what she had done.

I was standing there, rubbing my arm, hating myself. I knew if I turned around I’d see that girl again, so weak and screwed up. She’d go to the parking lot, no problem.

I didn’t trot my pain out to show around. I kept it better hidden than anyone. I did.

shook my head. How did I know this would be any different? The story could have been the same, easily: me drunk, in a deserted place. Someone there, reaching out for me. It had happened before. Who could blame me for my cold, hard heart? And that did it. I was crying, so angry at myself, but I couldn’t stop.

He wasn’t touching me, but his voice was very close, and very soft. “It’s okay. Don’t cry.”

Later, it would take me a minute to remember how exactly it happened. If I turned around and moved forward first, or he did. I just knew we didn’t meet halfway. It was just a short distance really, not worth squabbling over. And maybe it didn’t matter so much whether he took the step or I did. All I knew was that he was there.

Whenever you made a choice, especially one you’d been resisting, it always affected everything else, some in big ways, like a tremor beneath your feet, others in so tiny a shift you hardly noticed a change at all. But it was happening.

Even in the dark, I could see he was surprised. He dropped his hands from the guitar and looked at me, and I hoped he couldn’t see my face either. Because it was all fun and games, so far. Just a few moments when I worried it might go deep enough to drown me. Like now. And I could pull back, would pull back, before it went that far.

But it was even worse when you knew at that very moment that there was still time to save yourself, and yet you couldn’t even budge.

“Swans,” I said finally. She chucked the nail file down on the desk and stretched her arms over her head. “You know,” she said, tucking a stray hair behind her ear, “they’re dreadful creatures, really. Beautiful to look at but mean. The Romans used them instead of guard dogs.”

“I think,” he said, “that you are actually, secretly attracted to all the parts of my personality that you claim to abhor.”

“Love is an excuse to put up with shit that you shouldn’t,”

“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.”

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.

“Maybe, you just misplaced it, you know? It’s been there. But you just haven’t been looking in the right spot. Because lost means forever, it’s gone. But misplaced . . . that means it’s still around, somewhere. Just not where you thought.” As she said this, I saw a blur in my mind of the faces of all

“Did you really believe, that first day, that we were meant to be together?” I asked him. He looked at me and then said, “You’re here, aren’t you?” There was only so much space between us, not even a real distance if measured in miles or feet or even inches, all the things that told you how far you’d come or had left to go. But this was a big space, if only for me. And as I moved forward to him, covering it, he waited there on the other side. It was only the last little bit I had to go, but in the end, I knew it would be all I would truly remember.