Here She Lies

through that memory.
    “I guess you’re right,” she said. “It was blind chance that he caught up with her in front of my house. Five minutes later, it would have been someone else’s house.” Her attempt at a stoic smile failed to distill the unease from her dark brown eyes. I looked back with my own set of those same eyes and drank in her remorse, sharing it.
    “What I keep thinking, Jules, if you want to know the truth, is that if only I hadn’t left Bobby this morning, he never would have been the one to find her. He could have lived his life without that image burned into his mind.”
    “That poor woman,” Julie said. “I can’t stop seeing her.”
    I rested my weight against her shoulder and we sank into a few minutes of quiet. Then she reached over togently touch Lexy’s forehead and whispered, “She’s sleeping.”
    “Let’s put her to bed.”
    Julie lifted the sweater off Lexy and put it on herself. Carefully and quietly we crossed the room.
    The house had two staircases. Julie took me up the closer one, right off the living room. It led directly into a loft with a low double mattress covered by a Mexican blanket, a small desk with a computer and a bare window. It was the kind of space a teenager would be happy living in, the kind of space an adult could tolerate for maybe one night. From the loft, a short hallway took us into a pretty bedroom, fawn and white with dashes of pale blue and matching furniture that looked like it had been bought as a set out of a Pottery Barn catalog. I had always wanted to do that, call the tollfree number and order “everything on page four,” but I’d never had that kind of money. As Julie led me through this section of her big new house I felt a vicarious satisfaction in her independence. My sister, who was single, had accomplished all this.
    “This is the guest bedroom.” She saw me looking for the crib. “Annie, you’re not a guest. You have your own room. Come.”
    As we passed into another hall, Julie pointed out some of the doors. “Bathroom, linen closet, storage, another guest room.”
    The second guest room door was partly open, so I paused to peek inside. Even in the relative darkness I could see it was a smallish room, painted pale green, with twin brass beds covered in quilts. Two windows were framed by darker green curtains hanging off rodswith wrought-iron leaf finials. Between the windows was a gold-framed poster of a giant pinecone, between the beds was an oval hooked rug, and across from them was a single tall dresser in dark wood. I was struck by how symmetrical the room was, and then it hit me that it looked like a room for twins, but twin boys.
    “Your room’s at the end,” she said. “I assumed you’d rather share with Lexy.”
    The Yellow Room. It was lovely! A double bed with a heavy white jacquard bedspread was pressed into the far corner of the room and there were five windows, two on the east wall and three on the south wall. In each window hung a gossamer curtain of the palest yellow behind which pull-cord tassels dangled off the ends of heavy shades that were all half raised. Yellow wallpaper was covered in a tangle of tiny red rosebuds. The buffed honey-wood floor was bare except for a chenille rug at the side of the bed. The headboard, end table, reading lamp, dresser and even the straight-backed chair against the wall were all of a set (page seven, please). All yellows, off-whites, brasses and bronzes. Even the white crib and changing table matched each other. Free-floating in the middle of the room, the crib was positioned so you could reach it from any direction, while the changing table was in the corner, almost behind the door. Julie had stocked it with the perfect brand and size of diapers, wipes, lotions, powders — all the right accessories. I decided against changing Lexy’s diaper to avoid the chance of waking her.
    The side of the crib was already lowered and the blanket was pulled down. I laid her gently on thesheets, soft pink with scribbles of creamy prancing sheep. The side slid up easily and clicked into place. I picked up a stuffed animal, a cute yellow bunny Julie had set in the corner of the crib, and leaned it against the crook of Lexy’s chubby elbow. She rolled over onto it and sighed.
    I turned to give my sister a hug. “It’s a beautiful room. Thank you.”
    “You can change things to the way you want them.”
    “No. It’s perfect.”
    “What’s in this pocket?”
    She pulled away