Juliet (2 page)

“Well,” said Archie, eyeing the open door, “I’m gonna take off. Nice to meet you, Julie—it’s Julie, isn’t it? Janice told me all about you—” He laughed nervously. “Keep up the good work! Make peace not love, as they say.”

Janice waved sweetly as Archie walked out, letting the screen door slam behind him. But as soon as he was out of hearing range, her angelic face turned demonic, like a Halloween hologram. “Don’t you dare look at me like that!” she sneered. “I’m trying to make us some money. It’s not as if you’re making any, is it now?”

“But then I don’t have your kind of … expenses.” I nodded at her latest upgrades, eminently visible under the clingy dress. “Tell me, Janice, how
do
they get all that stuff in there? Through the navel?”

“Tell me, Julie,” mimicked Janice. “How does it feel to get nothing stuffed in there? Ever!”

“Excuse me, ladies,” said Umberto, stepping politely between us the way he had done so many times before, “but may I suggest we move this riveting exchange to the library?”

Once we caught up with Janice, she had already draped herself over Aunt Rose’s favorite armchair, a gin and tonic nestling on the foxhuntmotif cushion I had cross-stitched as a senior in high school while my sister had been out on the prowl for upright prey.

“What?” She looked at us with ill-concealed loathing. “You don’t think she left half the booze for me?”

It was vintage Janice to be angling for a fight over someone’s dead body, and I turned my back to her and walked over to the French doors. On the terrace outside, Aunt Rose’s beloved terra-cotta pots sat like a row of mourners, flower heads hanging beyond consolation. It was an unusual sight. Umberto always kept the garden in perfect order, but perhaps he found no pleasure in his work now that his employer and grateful audience was no more.

“I am surprised,” said Janice, swirling her drink, “that you are still here, Birdie. If I were you I would have been in Vegas by now. With the silver.”

Umberto did not reply. He had stopped talking directly to Janice years ago. Instead, he looked at me. “The funeral is tomorrow.”

“I can’t believe,” said Janice, one leg dangling from the armrest, “you planned all that without asking us.”

“It was what she wanted.”

“Anything else we should know?” Janice freed herself from the embrace of the chair and straightened out her dress. “I assume we’re all getting our share? She didn’t fall in love with some weird pet foundation or something, did she?”

“Do you mind?” I croaked, and for a second or two, Janice actually looked chastened. Then she shrugged it off as she always did, and reached once more for the gin bottle.

I did not even bother to look at her as she feigned clumsiness, raising her perfectly groomed eyebrows in astonishment to let us know that she certainly had not intended to pour quite so much. As the sun slowly melted into the horizon, so would Janice soon melt into a chaise longue, leaving the great questions of life for others to answer as long as they kept the liquor coming.

She had been like that for as long as I remembered: insatiable. When we were children, Aunt Rose used to laugh delightedly and exclaim, “That girl, she could eat her way out of a gingerbread prison,” as if Janice’s greediness was something to be proud of. But then, Aunt Rose was at the top of the food chain and had—unlike me—nothing to fear. For as long as I could remember, Janice had been able to sniff out my secret candy no matter where I hid it, and Easter mornings in our family were nasty, brutish, and short. They would inevitably climax with Umberto chastising her for stealing my share of the Easter eggs, and Janice—teeth dripping with chocolate—hissing from underneath her bed that he wasn’t her daddy and couldn’t tell her what to do.

The frustrating thing was that she didn’t look her part. Her skin stubbornly refused to give away its secrets; it was as smooth as the satin icing on a wedding cake, her features as delicately crafted as the little marzipan fruits and flowers in the hands of a master confectioner. Neither gin nor coffee nor shame nor remorse had been able to crack that glazed façade; it was as if she had a perennial spring of life inside her, as if she rose every
morning rejuvenated from the well of eternity, not a day older, not an ounce heavier, and still ravenously hungry for the world.

Unfortunately, we were not identical twins. Once, in the schoolyard, I had overheard someone referring to me as Bambi-on-stilts, and although Umberto laughed and said it was a compliment, it didn’t feel that way. Even when I was past my most clumsy age, I knew I still looked lanky and anemic next to Janice; no matter where we went or what we did, she was as dark and effusive as I was pale and reserved.

Whenever we entered a room together, all spotlights would immediately turn to my sister, and although I was standing there right beside her, I became just another head in the audience. As time went on, however, I grew comfortable with my role. I never had to worry about finishing my sentences, for Janice would inevitably finish them for me. And on the rare occasions when someone asked about my hopes and dreams—usually over a polite cup of tea with one of Aunt Rose’s neighbors—Janice would pull me away to the piano, where she would attempt to play while I turned the sheets for her. Even now, at twenty-five, I would still squirm and grind to a halt in conversations with strangers, hoping desperately to be interrupted before I had to commit my verb to an object.

WE BURIED AUNT ROSE
in the pouring rain. As I stood there by her grave, heavy drops of water fell from my hair to blend with the tears running down my cheeks; the paper tissues I had brought from home had long since turned to mush in my pockets.

Although I had been crying all night, I was hardly prepared for the sense of sad finality I felt as the coffin was lowered crookedly into the earth. Such a big coffin for Aunt Rose’s spindly frame … now I suddenly regretted not having asked to see the body, even if it would have made no difference to her. Or maybe it would? Perhaps she was watching us from somewhere far away, wishing she could let us know that she had arrived safely. It was a consoling idea, a welcome distraction from reality, and I wished I could believe it.

The only one who did not look like a drowned rodent by the end of the funeral was Janice, who wore plastic boots with five-inch heels and a black hat that signaled anything but mourning. In contrast, I was wearing what Umberto had once labeled my Attila-the-Nun outfit; if Janice’s
boots and neckline said
come hither
, my clunky shoes and buttoned-up dress most certainly said
get lost
.

Half a handful of people showed up at the grave, but only Mr. Gallagher, our family lawyer, stayed to talk. Neither Janice nor I had ever met him, but Aunt Rose had talked about him so often and so fondly that the man himself could only be a disappointment.

“I understand you are a pacifist?” he said to me, as we walked away from the cemetery together.

“Jules loves to fight,” observed Janice, walking happily in the middle, oblivious to the fact that the brim of her hat was funneling water on both of us, “and throw stuff at people. Did you hear what she did to the Little Mermaid—?”

“That’s enough,” I said, trying to find a dry spot on my sleeve to wipe my eyes one last time.

“Oh, don’t be so modest! You were on the front page!”

“And I hear your business is going very well?” Mr. Gallagher looked at Janice, attempting a smile. “It must be a challenge to make everyone happy?”

“Happy? Eek!” Janice narrowly avoided stepping in a puddle. “Happiness is the worst threat to my business. Dreams are what it’s all about. Frustrations. Fantasies that never come true. Men that don’t exist. Women you can never have. That’s where the money is, date after date after date—”

Janice kept talking, but I stopped listening. It was one of the world’s great ironies that my sister was into professional matchmaking, for she was probably the least romantic person I had ever known. Notwithstanding her urge to flirt with every one of them, she saw men as little more than noisy power tools that you plugged in when you needed them and unplugged as soon as the job was done.

Oddly enough, when we were children, Janice had had an obsession with arranging everything in pairs, two teddy bears, two cushions, two hairbrushes … even on days when we had been fighting, she would put both our dolls next to each other on the shelf overnight, sometimes even with their arms around each other. In that respect it was perhaps not strange that she would choose to make a career out of matchmaking, seeing that she was a genuine Noah at putting people in pairs. The only problem was that, unlike the old patriarch, she had long since forgotten why she did it.

It was hard to say when things had changed. At some point in high school she had made it her mission to burst every dream I might ever have had about love. Running through boyfriends like economy pantyhose, Janice had taken a peculiar pleasure in grossing me out by describing everybody and everything in a dismissive slang that made me wonder why women consorted with men at all.

“So,” she had said, rolling pink curlers into my hair on the night before our prom, “this is your last chance.”

I had looked at her in the mirror, puzzled by her ultimatum but prevented from responding by one of her mint-green mud masks that had dried to a crust on my face.

“You know”—she had grimaced impatiently—“your last chance to pop the cherry. That’s what prom’s all about. Why do you think the guys dress up? Because they like to dance? Puh
-leez!”
She had glanced at me in the mirror, checking her progress. “If you don’t do it at prom, you know what they say. You’re a prude. Nobody likes a prude.”

The next morning, I had complained about a stomachache, and as the prom came closer, my pains grew worse. In the end, Aunt Rose had to call the neighbors and tell them that their son had better find himself another date for the evening; meanwhile, Janice was picked up by an athlete called Troy and disappeared in a smoke of squealing tires.

After listening to my moans all afternoon, Aunt Rose began insisting we go to the emergency room in case it was appendicitis, but Umberto had calmed her down and said that I did not have a fever, and that he was certain it was nothing serious. As he stood there next to my bed later in the evening, looking at me peeking out from underneath my blanket, I could see that he knew exactly what was going on, and that, in some strange way, he was pleased with my scam. We both knew there was nothing wrong with the neighbors’ son as such, it was just that he did not fit the description of the man I had envisioned as my lover. And if I could not get what I wanted, I would rather miss the prom.

“Dick,” Janice now said, stroking Mr. Gallagher with a satin smile, “why don’t we just cut to the chase. How much?”

I did not even try to intervene. After all, as soon as Janice got her money, she would be off to the eternal hunting grounds of the bushytailed wannabe, and I would never have to set eyes on her again.

“Well,” said Mr. Gallagher, stopping awkwardly in the parking lot,
right next to Umberto and the Lincoln, “I’m afraid the fortune is almost entirely tied up in the estate.”

“Look,” said Janice, “we all know it’s fifty-fifty down to the last nickel, okay, so let’s cut the crap. She wants us to draw a white line down the middle of the house? Fair enough, we can do that. Or”—she shrugged as if it was all the same to her—“we simply sell the place and split the money. How much?”

“The reality is that in the end”—Mr. Gallagher looked at me with some regret—“Mrs. Jacobs changed her mind and decided to leave everything to Miss Janice.”

“What?”
I looked from Janice to Mr. Gallagher to Umberto, but found no support at all.

“Holy shit!” Janice flared up in a broad smile. “The old lady had a sense of humor after all!”

“Of course,” Mr. Gallagher went on, more sternly, “there is a sum put aside for Mister—for Umberto, and there is a mention of certain framed photographs that your great-aunt wanted Miss Julie to have.”

“Hey,” said Janice, opening her arms, “I’m feeling generous.”

“Wait a minute—” I took a step back, struggling to process the news. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

For as long as I could remember, Aunt Rose had gone through hell and high water to treat us equally; for heaven’s sake, I had even caught her counting the number of pecans in our morning muesli to make sure one of us didn’t get more than the other. And she had always talked about the house as something that we—at some point in the future—would own together. “You girls,” she used to say, “really need to learn how to get along. I won’t live forever, you know. And when I am gone, you are going to share this house.”

“I understand your disappointment—” said Mr. Gallagher.

“Disappointment?” I felt like grabbing him by the collar, but stuck my hands in my pockets instead, as deep as they could go. “Don’t think I’m buying this. I want to see the will.” Looking him straight in the eye I saw him squirming under my gaze. “There’s something going on here behind my back—”

“You were always a sore loser,” Janice broke in, savoring my fury with a catty smile, “that’s what’s going on.”

“Here—” Mr. Gallagher clicked open his briefcase with shaky hands
and handed me a document. “This is your copy of the will. I’m afraid there’s not much room for dispute.”

UMBERTO FOUND ME
in the garden, crouched under the arbor he had once built for us when Aunt Rose was in bed with pneumonia. Sitting down next to me on the wet bench, he did not comment on my childish disappearing act, just handed me an immaculately ironed handkerchief and observed me as I blew my nose.

“It’s not the money,” I said, defensively. “Did you see her smirk? Did you hear what she said? She doesn’t care about Aunt Rose. She never did. It’s not fair!”

“Who told you life was fair?” Umberto looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Not me.”

“I know! I just don’t understand—but it’s my own fault. I always thought she was serious about treating us equally. I borrowed money—” I clutched my face to avoid his stare. “Don’t say it!”

“Are you finished?”