The Juliet Stories (21 page)

He watched his wife change and grow, he rubbed her swollen feet and pretended not to mind the extra fat she carried under her jaw, though he’d married her for her lines. By the third pregnancy he knew with confidence that the lines would return and he would have her back again.

She was the one who rose at night to feed each baby, by breast. He slept soundly. She consulted other women: remedies for teething pain and diaper rash and fussy palates. She ground table food to a pulp and trained them to use the toilet and dealt with knotted hair and scraped elbows and tears. She wiped almost all of the tears, on her wrists, her palms, on her shirtsleeves, her belly.

That is what baffles him most. She sees an end, with the children, with him. He cannot see it. The children will be with them forever, alive or dead. The children will be with them until they themselves are dead, and then they will be with the children, and with the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren, even if forgotten — a chin might turn up, the lines of her jaw, that flaming red hair their daughter pulled from him, who pulled it from some unknown ancestor — and forever and ever and ever they will belong to each other. There is no escaping the fate of their connection.

He means the children but he means her too. There is no escaping the fate of his connection to her, and hers to him, even if it is only through their offspring.

Ah, she says, you understand me better than you think. How could I be afraid to go when we will always be together?

Don’t do this. Please.

She says, They will adjust to the change. They will adjust better than you.

He says, A narcissist will say anything to prove she is right.

No, he does not say it. Can someone who rises at three o’clock in the morning, night after night after night, to lift a sweating, squalling infant to her breast, to feed and comfort and soothe, be considered a narcissist? He is not a doctor of psychology. He is a doctor (pending) of twentieth-century American history, with a specialty in the covert influence of the American government in the larger Americas, during but not confined to the Cold War period.

He is thinking of growing back his beard. The stubble comes in grey. He is standing in the bathroom cupping his chin and right cheek in his hand when he hears her crying in their bedroom. The bathroom has two doors: one opens to the main room and the other to their bedroom. He slips through this one, and he holds her, and she lets him.

He does not touch his cheek to hers: the stubble would scratch her skin.

He is tall and she is small, contracted, a bird against his chest, crying: It’s been a year already, it’s already been a year.

This is not a supper like other suppers. This one is special. His mother says it is special the way a birthday supper is special, “because it marks an occasion,” except no one is having a birthday. “It marks an occasion,” she says, and her voice is hard, not soft. “He gets no more birthdays, so we’ll remember this day instead. For him.”

The day that his brother died. One year ago.

Nobody ate anything, one year ago. He remembers choking on a piece of toast, his grandma whacking him on the back. He remembers the house filling up with people and the platters of ham and lasagnes, and even though nobody was eating anything, it was almost jolly. All that food. All those people. He remembers trying to trick himself into thinking it was a party.

But not today. Today no tricks could work. They are alone, just the family. Just his mother, his father, his big sister, the dog. And one chair for his brother, set with an empty plate and spoon and fork and knife and napkin and a glass filled with homemade grape juice. Who poured the juice? What does it mean? Does it mean someone thinks his dead brother might come back to drink it tonight?

That is the kind of thought he tries very hard not to think, blinking fast to push it away; and the fear. The chair is directly across from him and he can’t help looking at it. He is relieved when no one puts food on the empty plate, a relief that is almost too big, that spreads his arms wide and knocks over his own glass of juice.

But no one yells. They leave the juice to soak into the red tablecloth, and his mother pours him more from a glass jar, in silence.

He is not hungry. He remembers what it feels like to be hungry, and he tries, because his brother isn’t here to be hungry, to eat.

There are canned green beans, his favourite, and pork chops topped with stewed apricots, which he scrapes off and dumps onto the placemat, and a salad made of yellow rice with olives and green peppers and a salty cheese, none of which he swallows. He takes one bite because his mother tells him he must. And spits it into his hand and the dog eats it.

He wonders, Would the dog like stewed apricots? The dog would.

For dessert she has made pie, two kinds, his brother’s favourites. There was an argument this morning: his mother thinks pumpkin was his brother’s favourite, and his father, who does not usually have an opinion on the subject of food, is certain it was apple. There was never such a fight. The screaming. She cleared a cupboard of a whole stack of dishes and did not sweep up.

His father swept up the smashed gold rims and white shards. He did not like seeing his father cry. He went to his sister’s room and she sighed, but let him sit on her bed and listen to the music she was playing on her boom box. But when he hummed along, she said to him: Go away. You are making fun of something that means something to me. And he said: Uh-uh. And she said: Then stop humming. So he stopped.

So they eat two kinds of pie. He finds his appetite. Two pies are better than one. There is ice cream for the apple and whipped cream for the pumpkin.

They are each supposed to say something “for the occasion.” It is supposed to be something about the brother, who died one year ago in the back room, in their parents’ bed, and who has not come back tonight to drink his glass of grape juice. Not yet. Not ever. Maybe. He blinks and blinks.

It is his turn. He looks at his plate. He says, I don’t remember. He is telling a lie. How could he forget?

He remembers that he did not want to sit in the bathtub after his brother had taken a bath because he was afraid; it was not even
What if I get sick too?
He was afraid in a way he didn’t understand. Afraid to get close. Afraid to see the thing that was happening to his brother, the way he was hollowing out. He did not want to touch his brother, or touch anything touched by his brother, careful to watch which cup his mother used to serve his brother a drink, and memorizing it so he would not drink from the same cup by accident.

He looks at his mother. She says, It’s okay. You were so little.

They will always tell him this, always. He will accept it without correcting them or revealing that he was bigger than they knew, and smaller.

His mother offers him another piece of pie, and he says yes. She says, Which kind?

And that is it. That is where the story stops and he begins to cry.

Juliet wears black.

She accessorizes with a draped orange silk scarf and orange feathered earrings, but her choice, purchased at a thrift store, is no accident. She does not think she is being angry or rebellious. But her mother thinks so. Her mother says, Ah, wedding as funeral. I see. Kissing Juliet twice over, on each cheek, as if she’s become European rather than merely relocated to the West Coast.

Hello, Juliet, picture of elegance, says her newly minted stepfather, Jesse, drawing her into an embrace as if he has not heard Gloria’s words; and perhaps he has not. It is some relief to Juliet that her stepfather does not remind her, in any way, of her father. Her mother might have gone down a checklist, so perfectly opposite are the two men. Jesse is small, compact, a marathoner who smokes weed and uses words like
chill
and
babe
without irony. Does Juliet like him? The question is impertinent and irrelevant, and the answer is she doesn’t not like him. It is just that he is a stranger; his customs and habits are strange to her.

She can, however, say with certainty that she does not like his children. She is satisfied that the feeling is mutual. The girl is her own age, nineteen, and the boy is two years older, and they were raised mostly by their mother, who is also here.

Why let a little divorce get in the way of a big friendship?

The mother, who does remind Juliet of her own, at least in physical type — slender, dark-haired, fine-boned, though with unnaturally large breasts — used that line in her toast at last night’s rehearsal dinner, an informal event in the open-air restaurant at the top of the beach, towards which Juliet and Emmanuel are walking now, away from the short receiving line in the sand. Juliet and Emmanuel pass the photographer, who squats on her heels, the better to frame the newlyweds as the tide swells romantically towards her mother’s bare feet, and her stepfather’s. His toes are hairless. Juliet wishes she did not know that.

It has been an “intimate” ceremony.

Why rehearse at all, when we’re all basically in the wedding? Juliet asked Emmanuel. But at age ten he rolls with any expectation; he does not question. Last night they shared a beach hut with the stepsister and stepbrother — Gloria’s arrangement. Gloria had imagined for them a night of riotous card games and fraternal bonding: this is what Juliet assumes. Instead they waited to take turns in the bathroom, and the stepsister complained that the shower was outside and exposed, and the stepbrother asked, curiously and perhaps with some pity, So you used to live here? Emmanuel said, I was just a baby. And Juliet said, Yeah, we used to live
here
, with sarcastic emphasis, as if the stepbrother had meant this very hut on this very beach. There are three bedrooms in the hut, and Juliet volunteered to share with Emmanuel. She was glad to, even though her brother got up twice before midnight to go to the bathroom, looking for chances to use his new flashlight.

It goes without saying — or it does to anyone who knows the situation — that their father is not here. It goes without saying — does it? — that he has had nothing to say on the subject. Nothing at all. He arranged for their visas. He arranged for the legal papers necessary for a minor to travel to another country without a legal guardian present. He drove them to the airport. He said, Have fun.

Yeah, right, Juliet replied. She said this on his behalf, for him. She did not think he particularly wanted her to, but he was being left behind. She had to give him something.

Actually, she thought she would: have fun. She was prepared to appear symbolically morose and resentful and to wear black, but she meant to have fun.

The ceremony is brief.

Her contribution is a poem, not composed by her, and chosen by her mother, the sentiment and phrasing not to Juliet’s taste at all. She attempts to read with sincerity, but who can hear her in the gathering wind? She pronounces the last line with a hesitant upswing in tone that reveals — if anyone can catch it — an emotion she would rather keep private: the question mark of loneliness, the question mark of home. She looks to her mother, whose smile is strained and false, like that of someone who has only been pretending to listen and who is thinking of something else, and her mother nods, as if to say, You did your best, now back to your seat, dear.

Emmanuel and the stepbrother light a torch together to symbolize unity; a candle would not survive the breeze.

The stepsister performs a dance. Costumed in a white bodysuit, she manipulates a broad white scarf that whips in the rising wind off the ocean, to stunning effect. Juliet can see that the dance is beautiful, and genuine. She can admit it. She can compare it to her own offering and shrink just a little on the inside, but she knows she could not have offered more. It isn’t in her.

She is not in a generous mood over this marriage.

She limps with Emmanuel to the lit-up restaurant, where tables have been arranged in the room in which they gathered yesterday evening. She taps her heeled shoes on a wooden post to clean them of sand before entering the restaurant, an unnecessary formality. She has chosen shoes that she will never wear again, vicious spikes that dig holes in the beach, straps that threaten to cripple her, pressure that makes her head ache. Worst of all — and she thinks she knew this would be the case — the shoes are utterly out of place. The restaurant is naturally casual and of the beach, and many guests, following the example of the bridal pair, have removed their footwear. On principle Juliet refuses, though she cannot actually locate a defensible principle.

Because I don’t want to. Because I don’t have to.

Two guitarists dressed like gauchos strum folk songs in the corner. Juliet hobbles to the bar. Her brother climbs onto a stool. One Coke with ice, one Coke with rum.

The stepbrother greets them, hesitates, chooses the stool next to Emmanuel. Juliet notes the hesitation, thinks, He didn’t want to do that, he is just being polite.

The stepbrother waves to the bartender, who is also the owner, a fit Belgian whose wife has soft white hair and works all day in a turquoise bathing suit that does not disguise her accumulation around the middle, her blue-veined legs. For this occasion she hurries around the room lighting short candles in glass vases, a sarong tied around her hips.

Nice wedding, the stepbrother says.

You don’t have to sit with us, she says.

The stepbrother’s stillness is too sudden, too silent, his chin tucked; he swallows. A chill spreads in Juliet’s stomach, then lower, to her pelvis. The stepbrother meets her gaze, nods politely and excuses himself.

I’m a terrible person, says Juliet, but Emmanuel says, No, you’re not.

He asks the bartender for a deck of cards. Go Fish?

You can’t play Go Fish with two people, says Juliet.

Ask them. Emmanuel points to the stepbrother, who stands with the stepsister.

They’re busy, says Juliet.

The stepbrother and stepsister are talking to an older relative or family friend — their relative or friend, not Juliet’s — and they are saying things like Thank you, yes, it was a lovely ceremony wasn’t it, we’re so glad Dad’s happy. The relative looks at Juliet and smiles as if to say, I know who you are, and returns to the conversation. Now, thinks Juliet, she’s saying, Oh, but how is it for the other children, are they happy too? They don’t look it, do they? All alone. And Gloria’s family, were they not able to come? The stepsister is rolling her eyes. Gloria
never
talks about her family, it’s kind of weird
.
But the stepbrother is defending them. Her sister is here, she flew in from Georgia. No one else had a passport, and it was short notice, and . . .

Juliet is sorry. She telegraphs
sorry
with her eyes, but in matters psychic her talent is reception, not transmission.

Emmanuel has laid out a game of solitaire. Juliet finishes the first rum and Coke and orders another; her feet throb a little less, resting on the bars of the stool, soothed by the early gentle massage of alcohol. Juliet points to a move that Emmanuel has missed, red queen on black king. She thinks, I’m going to drink until I’m gone; but she modifies the thought. No. I’m going to drink until I’m having fun, for real.

She sees Aunt Caroline coming for them. And how’s your dad doing? is the first thing Aunt Caroline thinks to say, busy and bursting with sympathy.

He’s not here, so I don’t know, says Juliet.

I’ve tried to get in touch over the years; I’ve written letters; I’ve tried to tell him, You’re still a part of our family . . . Aunt Caroline continues in this vein: her hopefulness, her forgiveness, her wish to be reunited, and Juliet nods and swills the second rum and Coke. Juliet knows better than to try to say something of substance in return, something obvious and true like He doesn’t want to be your friend, and he’s not part of your family. She is amazed at how adults insist on telling you things you don’t want to know. No, it’s worse than that: adults insist on unburdening themselves on you, as if your young, healthy shoulders could carry more, as if you could bear their troubled thoughts and desires across closed borders and turn their selfish whimsies into offerings and make peace.

I am not an ambassador, Juliet thinks. She envies Emmanuel his oblivion, but then she thinks, No, that is not fair
;
he’s lost more than I have. His childhood gnawed by departures.

Uh-huh, uh-huh, she says, clinking the ice in the bottom of her glass. No longer listening to Aunt Caroline’s individual words, Juliet is smiling, inclining her head, murmuring false sympathy, and nearly misses the change in tone, the leap from one subject to another that requires her attention and reply.

Is that your real hair? Aunt Caroline asks.

Real hair? thinks Juliet.

The colour, the curl, says Aunt Caroline. It’s just so beautiful, I thought it couldn’t possibly be your real hair.

Oh, it’s very unreal hair, says Juliet.

Tsk, tsk, says Aunt Caroline. Juliet is certain those are her precise words.

It’s my hair, Juliet sighs, turning to the bartender, but he is busy with another guest at the far side of the counter. It’s all my own, she says, returning to Aunt Caroline. Nothing else, no chemicals, no nothing. I don’t even brush it, she says. It’s basically hair gone wild, feral hair, hair returning to its natural state.

She is like this: get her talking, drag her out of her silent regard, and she won’t stop until she’s said ever so slightly too much. She can see it in her aunt’s eyes — pity — Poor Juliet, just like her mother.

Not like my mother, thinks Juliet, not so, not true. Example (a), the shoes. Example (b); but she shakes her head. Example (b)? Example (b): everything else about me.

Her mother has chosen not to sing during the ceremony. She said, I would be too nervous. I can’t perform at my own wedding. It’s not all about me.

Parse the words: are any of them truthful, or would each sentence make better sense read in a mirror? Gloria is not a nervous woman, she has an icy reserve, a chill that permits her freedom to pursue, to leave, to choose at will, with control. She thrives on performance: it’s the blood that feeds her. Oh, and finally, if a wedding is not about the bride, who is it about? The groom? Sure, he’s here, he’s shown up, he’s dressed in the light embroidered
guayabera
the bride has chosen for him, and he’s happy to repeat some sincerely maudlin words invoking eternal bliss; but it’s not about him. He knows it. Nor is it about the friends or the larger family; least of all is it about the children.

It is all about Gloria.

I get another chance to be a bride! was how she told Juliet.

Spare me.
Juliet did not say it out loud.

It is curious to observe, when parsing Gloria, that her chill, the premeditation of her actions, does not prevent her from saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. She has a gift for making people uncomfortable. She has a gift for tracking to the edge, holding someone by the hand and pulling him or her over with her. People like it — some people. People who don’t mind being led on an adventure on someone else’s terms. People who don’t mind taking the blame.

It is safe to say that Gloria was not always so precise, so definitive. When Juliet was a child, her mother was someone not softer, not more soothing, but messier, prone to anger broken by spells of drifting distance. She would wipe her child’s face after a meal with a wet washcloth as if she were wiping an inanimate and slightly disgusting object, performing a duty with impatience, without passion or sympathy. And then without warning she would want to hug her child, the child’s bones creaking under her fearsome insistence. Age has sharpened her lines. She is no longer muddy around the edges, but crisp, crackling with energy. Witness her onstage.

Tonight everyone will get to.

Gloria did not perform during the ceremony but she has written a song for her new husband, to be debuted during the appetizers.

I’m hungry, Emmanuel says.

I have to pee, says Juliet. Watch my drink?

To get to the bathrooms, Juliet must stagger in her daggered heels out behind the restaurant, away from the beach, where two rooms, one for men and one for women, are contained within one flat-roofed concrete structure. The path is poorly lit by light spilling from the kitchen door, propped open and flaring with the clatter of pots and knives and a voice singing out of tune in Spanish.

She thinks she hears the sound of a chicken protesting — that it’s being killed for their suppers?

In the mirror, beneath unflattering fluorescent tubes, her scarf is askew, her mouth relaxed. A good sign? She is not sure. She eases a foot out of one shoe and places it, quivering, on the cool, gritty floor. Mistake, she thinks. Dammit. Only a disciplined masochist could force the suffering foot back into the shoe. She pauses for a moment, one hip tilted higher than the other, considering, taking this thought in.

She makes a decision. She believes herself to be a person of discipline, though she has done little to prove it in her nineteen years on this earth; but she is not a masochist. Therefore the other shoe comes off. She bends and picks both up by their heels. Her chest sighs out,
ahhhh
, involuntarily, and she smiles.