Things Unsaid: A Novel by Diana Y. Paul Page A

it so tightly that he was crushing it and coloring the soft pussy willow–gray carpet with the flowers’ pastel-pink petals.
    Jules had grabbed John’s arm to escape, but her mother caught her by the back of the neck, laughing, as she looked not at her but straight into John’s eyes. “You never know with Julia. If she is even wearing underwear.” Still laughing, she turned to Jules. “Don’t forget to tuck in those dress labels. Yours is sticking up in the back. What an impressionthat makes on a young man.” She patted the label and tucked it under. “You do look beautiful, though.”
    Jules thought she detected a glistening in her mother’s eyes.
    “And mind you, John, my daughter sings like an angel. And she can be a lot of fun.”

    “Are you listening to me, dear?” her mother asked, breaking into Jules’s thoughts. “We’ll move. Do you hear me? We’ll move … but we are too far in debt. We’ll end up on the street, homeless, if you and your brother and sister don’t help us. Dribbles and drabbles of money are not enough now. The collectors are after us. We’re in desperate circumstances! Forget about the little things now. Every family has some little commotion here and there.”
    But Jules couldn’t. Neither could Andrew and Joanne, apparently. She remembered how her younger sister would lock her bedroom door and refuse to speak to their mom when her boyfriends came to the door and she greeted them in a nightgown, just like she had with John. And there was another scenario entirely for her brother’s girlfriends. No girl was ever good enough for their mother’s one and only son. The Narcissistic Mother.
    What would happen to Zoë’s college tuition? To Mike and her? She couldn’t imagine how they would react. A betrayal? A renunciation of their love? Could her book raise income? She still had the literary agent’s business card somewhere. Ginger Pressman, an independent agent in Palo Alto. She and Mike had sat next to her at the parents’ reception last June when Zoë was invited to hear a Stanford University presentation for prospective future freshman. Who knows? Maybe Ginger would remember her. Never say never. She had to believe that.
    How many stamped postcards with a bland, general rejection note had she received? Boilerplate. Nothing personal. The manuscript didn’t fit the publisher’s profile.
The Narcissistic Mother
was now in its thirteenth year of research, notes, and spinning around in circles. Ever since Jules was denied tenure, she had kept on writing. But she was growing sick of it. She had a college-age daughter now who neededher attention. Her daughter’s dream choice was Stanford. Everyone deserved to have dreams. But in order to make her daughter’s dreams a reality, Jules needed to change. Now. And fast. And her parents had to change, too, or they all would be destroyed.

FOREST LODGE
    A ndrew had sung happy birthday to his mother to appease her, knowing so little did so much. There had been no time to see any of them for so many years. Why had she expected anything different this year? But his dad would understand. He always did.
    There was no way he was depleting his own family’s savings to help them. Enough was enough. He hoped he never had to actually be there in person for one of the family celebrations. Unless Jules came to her senses. That could happen, couldn’t it? But he hoped not. Would his parents actually end up in public housing without his sisters’ support? Destitute? How much more could Jules take?
    Time moved in reverse. Moving backwards always made him feel sick. He went back to years and years ago, when he left for Forest Lodge—the night of the car accident, right after the first heavy snowfall. Forest Lodge, an old-fashioned turn-of-the century converted log cabin, housed an outdoor skating rink and could fit snugly into a Norman Rockwell painting. Postwar suburban housing developments, where most of his friends lived, encircled the lodge.