Thursday, August 14

It is the night before I take the 2 pm bus to Cassis and my mother is still trying to convince me not to go. She has just left my bedroom in an angry mood and slammed the door. I have locked the door so that no one can slam it again. Slamming doors is very damaging to their hinges.

Before I came to my room, I helped Luke Phoenix and Martin Phoenix with the dishes. Martin Phoenix still has the ring rash all over his body. Pityriasis Versicolor. The French doctor was completely right and it is not diaper rash. My mother will have to think of something else to do with the cornstarch.

"'Do not go gentle into that good night,'" Luke Phoenix is singing from the hall. I think this is a line from a poem he has been studying.

"Is that William Shakespeare, 1609?" I ask.

"Nope, Dylan Thomas, 1951," he says, coming into my room and flopping down on the couch by the bookshelf.

" 'Do not go gentle into that good night/Old age should burn and rage at close of day … Rage, rage against the dying of the light.' Or something like that."

"What does it mean?" I ask.

"Don't give up without a fight," says Luke Phoenix.

"Are you talking about me taking the bus to Cassis?" I ask.

"I'm talking about life," he says. Then he stands up and heads over to the window. I look at his wispy red hair from the back and wish that he were my brother. But not until the summer is over and I have finished my job with Martin Phoenix.

"Are you waiting for someone?" I ask.

"You could say that," he answers, without turning around. "Or maybe I'm just trying not to fall off."

"Fall off what?"

"The world," he says, and laughs. I don't know what is funny until I remember that last year I told him that same thing when I was having a meltdown. You can get kind of dizzy when you're confused about something.

"I understand," I say.

"Well, join the club," he says, and laughs again but he doesn't sound happy.

"What kind of club?" I ask.

"It's just a saying," he says, and sighs. "Join the club—it means we are both sharing the same feeling."

"Okay," I say, and then when he doesn't answer, I say, "I get it. I get …" I stop and then I remember something I have heard before. "I get the picture."

"No," he says. "No one gets it. No one really gets the picture, and that's the problem."

I know he is not talking about pictures. I go over and stand beside him.

"What are you talking about?" I ask.

"No one gets me," he says.

There are a lot of bright stars and this window seems to hold the whole sky. Down below, the yard light shines a pale yellow circle on the driveway. Suddenly I hear deep chesty barking coming from the end of the lane. Next comes the short, sharp, high-pitched yipping. Then there is the growling and snapping—the big black dog on its chain. Finally there are many barking sounds at once from the five dogs at the last house. When these five dogs bark, the first ones at the other end of the lane start up again, but in one minute and fifteen seconds all the barking stops. Then someone walks into the circle of light down below.

"Oh!" says Luke Phoenix. "Julian!"

"Who is that?" I ask, but he is already in the hallway heading for the stairs.

"Just a friend I met at the doctor's when we took Martin," Luke Phoenix calls, and then I see him outside, beside this Julian person, and then they are gone. I don't know where they went, but when I look outside all I see are the little bats, swooping between the cherry trees.

Later, when my mother comes back into my room, I am in bed pretending to be asleep. It is difficult to lie down with my eyes shut, but I force myself into stillness because the alternative is more fighting against each other.

"Tomorrow afternoon, we could visit a fortified village," says my mother. "It's close by and it's a shame to let all this history go to waste. And it would be a fun thing to do together. We could have ice cream afterward."

I do not answer. It is ridiculous to think of going to a fortified village when I might already be going on the 2 pm bus to Cassis and not be back until 9 or 10 pm. I do not know if my mother really wants to go to a fortified village with me, or if she is trying to find something to distract me from the idea of going to Cassis. It is exhausting to try and figure out what people mean with words that could represent any number of thoughts.

"Or you could take a cooking class," my mother goes on. "If you're bored, they're giving a cooking class at one of the local hotels. It's important to take advantage of things that are close by, Taylor, so that we make the most of our trip."

It's strange that my mother thinks of this as our trip, when it's really my trip. I found the trip first, and she basically invited herself along. Now she's trying to make the trip go all her way.

"I don't want to take a cooking class," I say, my eyes still squeezed shut. "Grandma kept telling me that I should study commercial cooking, but now she's dead and I don't expect to keep hearing about it from you. If you think a cooking class is so interesting, you should take one."