Still With Me

Yes, the baby had finished his bottle and dozed off, content.

When Jeremy didn’t respond, Victoria appeared at the door to the living room. “You can give him to me now. I’ll put him to bed.”

After giving the baby a few pecks on the forehead, she tucked him into his basket.

“I’m going back to the kitchen. Will you come help me?” Jeremy followed after her, curious.

“Drink your coffee, then you can help me peel the vegetables. I’m only going to fix an entree. I ordered the rest from the caterer.”

“Yes, of course,” Jeremy answered.

The casual ease of the situation unnerved him. But he started to feel a certain sense of satisfaction, carried along by everyday activities where he had a role to play and a wife and a child to care for. Despite his confusion, he was overjoyed to be standing in this kitchen with this level of intimacy with Victoria and surrounded by the odors of coffee and cooking.

He looked at the vegetables on the table, his steaming mug, the half-eaten loaf of bread, and the unwrapped stick of butter. And suddenly he was very hungry. An intense feeling of emptiness, nausea, and restlessness filled his stomach and ran through his body in waves of heat and minute tremors. He remembered this feeling from childhood. A feeling of imbalance, loss of control, merging with pleasure when he knew the uneasiness would yield to the voluptuousness of total nourishment, warm and sweet.

He took the bread, cut it, spread it thickly with butter, and bit into it eagerly. Then he gulped down a mouthful of sweet, scalding hot coffee, appreciating the smooth sensation of these substances streaming down his throat.

Victoria laughed. “You’re that hungry? It’s like you haven’t eaten in…”

Two years? Jeremy wanted to say it, but he held his tongue and took another bite of bread.

Hunger appeased, he turned to the task of gathering information. “Who’s coming at noon?”

“You forgot already?”

That worried Jeremy. Is she talking about my condition? Do I forget often?

“Well, it’s Pierre and Clotilde for lunch. Then for coffee, of course, your boss, who’ll be coming straight from the golf course because you know the boss likes to play golf. You were dead set on inviting him and it was your birthday, so…What about tonight for a romantic little dinner?”

“Yes…of course…good idea,” Jeremy stammered.

“It would be nice to go out to a restaurant, but I’m not ready to leave Thomas with a stranger yet. There’ll be other chances to celebrate. So let’s behave like responsible parents for now,” she said in a lighthearted tone.

Jeremy seized the opportunity to ask the question that had been nagging at him. “And my parents—they’re not invited?”

Victoria froze and looked at him in amazement. “Are you joking?”

Her reaction terrified him. Was it that surprising to have his parents over on his birthday? He’d thought of them earlier and was eager to see them. He brought the coffee mug to his lips to give himself time to think. The first idea that came to mind was that maybe Victoria didn’t get along with them. The second idea paralyzed him. Were they…?

Victoria was still staring at him, waiting for an answer.

“And why wouldn’t I invite them?” he replied,

afraid of what Victoria might say.

“Why?” she repeated, incredulous. “You don’t speak to them for three years and today, suddenly, you’re surprised they’re not invited?”

Jeremy breathed a sigh of relief. They weren’t dead. But this comfort only lasted a split second because Victoria’s words sparked another painful thought. Are they still mad? After three years? It’s impossible. We never fought.

Their family had always been peaceful. No drama, never any arguments. A family united as much by love as tragedy.

His parents had bought a bar two months after Jeremy was born. It was a little neighborhood place that occupied all their time. His mother worked up to the minute Jeremy got out of school. His father was away longer. The bar consumed him. And when he came home at night, exhausted, he collapsed in front of the television so he could forget the next day would be the same as the one that just ended and all the days to come. As a child, Jeremy had longed to sit on his lap, talk to him, but his father never encouraged the behavior. They rarely chatted at the house; his father preferred the simplicity of eye contact and shared smiles. In the middle of all that silence, Jeremy sometimes thought he could hear his little sister’s whimper. She was never far off, woven into the shadows of their lives.

Her name was Anna, and she was a year younger than Jeremy. Anna had been four months old when their mother found her motionless in bed, Jeremy standing next to her with tears streaming down his face. She’d left them alone for a few minutes to run an errand.

“Sudden infant death syndrome,” the doctors called it, putting a name to the mystery without explaining it. Jeremy only spoke to his mother about his sister’s death once. He was eight years old. His teacher, worried about Jeremy’s behavior—too silent, too calm—had advised Mrs. Delègue to take him to see a therapist. It was during this visit that Jeremy’s mother described the scene, eyes bathed in tears.

“I remember, Mommy,” he’d whispered. Aghast, his mother asked him to go on in detail, but he didn’t know what to say. He just knew. That’s all.