A Song in the Daylight. Paullina Simons

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      On Thursday Kai wasn’t at Stop&Shop. One o’clock, 1:30. She bought paper towels and cereal, wandered the aisles, paid, sat in the car until two.

      Friday he wasn’t there either. Larissa didn’t know what to make of it.

      One thing for sure, whatever she couldn’t make of it, she spent all weekend not making anything of it. Every conscious minute, she spent getting her mind away from it.

      The school report cards arrived in the mail. They weren’t good. Emily’s was okay, but Asher was doing dismally in English, and Michelangelo couldn’t spell. Larissa pretended to deal with it, and on Saturday night she and Jared went over to Maggie and Ezra’s for dinner and games, and the only person who noticed that things were not all square with her was Ezra, who said, to no one in particular, “Boy, is Lar ever in her own world. What are you thinking, Lar? Illuminate us.”

      “I’m fine, Ezra. What do you mean?”

      “Are you thinking of accepting the job? Because Leroy wants to stage Waiting for Godot for the spring play. I’m going to shoot myself.”

      “Waiting for Godot, good play. Good choice,” Larissa said.

      “A nihilist two-person play? For spring!” shouted an aggrieved Ezra.

      She came out of it a little. “Uh, no, it’s terrible. Impossible. Put your foot down, tell him he can’t.”

      “What’s wrong with you? Why would you say it’s a good idea?”

      “How was your doctor’s appointment?” asked Maggie. “I forgot to ask on Wednesday.”

      “What doctor’s appointment?”

      “Yeah, what doctor’s appointment?” asked Jared. He was shuffling cards, trying to teach them how to play blackjack since they were planning a trip to Atlantic City for Memorial Day weekend. But it wasn’t taking. They were readers, not mathematicians.

      “She went to the doctor on Tuesday,” Maggie said.

      “She did?” Jared glanced at Larissa. “You did?”

      “I’m fine,” she said. “Just the dermatologist.”

      “Ooooh!” said Maggie. “Dermatologist. Lar is getting Botox! No wonder she looks to be in the first flush of youth.”

      “Do I?” Larissa asked quietly.

      “No wonder you kept asking me how young you looked. Now I know your secret. How much does he charge?”

      “No Botox, Mags, sorry,” Larissa said, “just a routine checkup of moles and things.”

      They discussed this for an inordinately long time. Moles and cancers, what they were supposed to look like, what they morphed into, the signs of danger, where the moles appeared, the suddenness and yet the inevitability of bad news coming upon you (that was Ezra—of course!) and then what you did with that bad news. Now no one wanted to play cards anymore. Everybody knew someone who had melanoma on their back, basal cell on their face, squamous cell on their arms.

      The irony of this conversation did not go unremarked upon by Jared, who in the car on the way home said, “Larissa, you didn’t think that was odd, talking about moles at such excruciating length?”

      “No, why? Did you?”

      He coughed. “You and I both know you haven’t got a single blemish on that body of yours, not a single mark of any kind, not even a childhood scar!” Jared chuckled. “Waxing all poetic about non-existent moles. You’re hilarious. So why’d you blow Maggie off?”

      She chuckled too, sheepishly. He leaned over and kissed her at the red light. “You’re so funny. Why don’t you just tell her you don’t want to hang out all the time? Tell her you’re reading. It wouldn’t even be a lie. You are actually reading nowadays.”

      “Yes.” Larissa’s gaze focused on the road.

      Saturday passed and Sunday too, and then Monday came, and she drove her Jag to Stop&Shop.

      Kai wasn’t there. Not there on Monday, his day off from work, when he always showed up and they did their weekly shopping together.

      Larissa didn’t know what to think. She hung around thirty minutes on Monday, ten on Tuesday, and then Wednesday morning came and she looked at herself in the hall mirror, at her straight highlighted hair, her sensible brown eyes, her long arms, slender fingers, her body, trim from walking, from downward-dog yoga poses, everything still slim, still in proportion. She thought about a manicure with Fran, maybe a mommy-and-daughter day in the city with Emily, just the girls. She thought about organizing a fundraiser for the spring play, she thought ahead to planning the Hawaii trip in August and whether they should take an extra day for Memorial Day Atlantic City weekend.

      Larissa thought of writing to Che, telling her she’d been eating kinilaw for two months, and she ruminated on packing up all her winter sweaters and taking out her summer shirts. But what she really contemplated was never ever ever going to Stop&Shop again, and the knot inside her for a brief moment was untied and loose of anxiety, like dangling threads. Clear of everything.

      She would go back to King’s. Sure it was crowded and the aisles were narrow, and the parking lot was tiny, but her leg wasn’t broken anymore, and to celebrate, she got on the treadmill for thirty minutes and watched a talk show and then showered, and cleaned her bedroom, and got dressed, and made coffee and sat in the kitchen for five minutes, ten minutes, planning dinner and vacation, with Love’s Labors Lost opened to the page that said, The blood of youth burns not with such excess as gravity’s revolt to wantonness. And in her head, brutal words swirled about like blood-on-snow candy canes. What are you doing here? What do you want? Is it music? We can play music. But you want more. You want something and someone new. You want ecstasy.

      She bolted from the island, got into her car and drove to Stop&Shop.

      He wasn’t there.

      This time Larissa waited an hour, as if saying goodbye. She sat in the parking lot, overlooking the graveyard, eating sushi and listening to Chet Baker singing “These Foolish Things” that made his heart a dancer, and wondered about spring, and whether she needed new shoes, new sandals, perhaps. A girl always needed new sandals for spring. At two she drove to pick up Michelangelo, and sat quietly in the parking lot at her son’s school. So close to the end, to the beginning. So close to the middle, which implied just as much ahead as there had been behind. And yet close to absolutely nothing.

5

       The Navigation System

      On Thursday Larissa called the Jag dealership to schedule an appointment for service. “Have you СКАЧАТЬ