Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songsiridej

Author:Alyssa Songsiridej
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

CHAPTER TEN

Though I’d known Annie more or less forever, the depths of her family money continued to surprise me. Many things I knew, of course: the Cape house, right on the ocean, her father’s job as a surgeon. But new things sometimes appeared. For example, her sweet but logistically challenged mother still pulled spare houses out of her back pocket, evidence of an expansive, intergenerational inheritance.

“I loved the France house so much,” Annie’s mother said at Thanksgiving dinner. “We had the most splendid pool. These special blue tiles that we got in Portugal. Do you remember them, Annie?”

“No,” Annie said, spearing a green bean. “I was a kid. Why would I remember tiles?”

“Annie loved swimming in that pool,” her mother continued. “But we sold it, eventually. Annie hated France.”

“It was always more Dad’s thing,” said Annie.

“That sounds amazing,” I said. I’d never been to France. My parents were weird about travel, about money, despite both being university professors. (“A public university!” my mother would scream.)

Annie’s father stood up, his phone buzzing. “I have to take this,” he said. “Woman’s on the table. Be back soon.” He stepped out of the room. Annie’s mom got up to start clearing the dishes.

“We should wait until Dad gets back,” Annie said, “so he can help.”

“Who knows how long he’ll take?” her mother said. “Really, it’s fine.”

Before Annie could say anything else, I stood up and started stacking plates. “I’ll help,” I said, grabbing what I could and following her mother into the kitchen.

Annie’s mother, it turned out, was a fan of the choreographer’s. “We saw a performance the last time we were in New York,” she said, rinsing off the dishes in the deep farmhouse sink. “Marvelous. It’s just—you know, it’s work you just feel in your body.”

“I’ll tell him that,” I said, slotting the dishes into the machine. “He’ll be pleased.”

“Maybe you should invite him out here sometime.”

“That’s just what we need,” Annie said, carrying in the leftover turkey. She went back out to grab more abandoned food.

“Don’t mind her,” Annie’s mother said. “You know how she gets about you.”

After cleaning up, I slipped into the guest bedroom to call the choreographer. The windows looked out onto the sea, the glass French doors leading to a private balcony.

“Did you enjoy your tofu?” I said.

“I did.” He was visiting friends on Long Island.

I pinched the fraying threads around a hole in my sock. “Annie’s mother loves your work,” I said. “She said she feels it in her body.”

“That’s lovely,” he said. “Thank her for me.”

I heard a child screaming in the background, high-pitched and sustained. “Are there kids there?”

“Yes,” he said. “My friends have kids.”

I couldn’t see him in a room with children. “I guess I should let you get back.”

“I have a minute,” he said. “We went to the beach. It was cold, but lovely.”

“I’m at the ocean, too,” I said. Strange to think of all that water, somehow part of the same form.

“Maybe we could take a trip this summer, to somewhere on the coast.

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