A Long Thaw (18 page)

Startled, Juliet looks over at them. Jesse stands up and snatches the phone out of her hand. He punches the hang-up button and throws it to the floor, its batteries coming loose and rolling in different directions.

‘What the hell?’ Juliet aims her confusion at Jesse, then Abby.

‘I think Jesse knows what happened to your cheque,’ Abby says, standing up.

‘Abby, stop it,’ Juliet looks at Abby with fury. But then she turns to Jesse and sees it written all over his face. ‘Jesse?’

‘You don’t understand.’ He reaches for her.

She backs away from him, shaking her head.

‘I got in a little trouble.’

‘So you stole from me? From my sisters? I could report you to the police.’ The way she says it makes it clear that this is something she would never actually do.

‘I can’t talk to you with
her
here,’ Jesse says, pointing at Abby, sneering.

‘I live here, asshole.’ Abby folds her arms across her chest.

Juliet turns to her. ‘Abby, please. Give us a minute.’

As she walks down the hall, Abby hears Juliet talking: ‘What did you do with the cards that I wrote to my sisters? Did you just throw them away? Did you use their money to buy our bagels that morning? Oh, my God. Of course you did.’

Abby shuts her bedroom door and starts looking around. She can hear their voices, but not their words. It’s mostly Juliet yelling. Abby pulls a bunch of fake flowers out of a ceramic vase and lets them scatter on the floor. She stands by the door, gripping her new weapon and listening for sounds of a struggle. She starts to worry when it gets quiet, is about to go out when she hears the front door open and shut.

When she runs out to the living room, she’s relieved to see Juliet standing in the middle of the room, alone. Abby sets the vase down and goes to her.

‘I’m coming over.’

‘No, no, Ryan. It’s okay now. He’s gone. We’ve locked up for the night. Juliet has finally gone to bed.’

‘What’s to stop her from letting him back in after a little sweet talk? Abby, I’m coming over. I can be there in ten minutes.’

‘No, really. I’m okay. I feel better just having talked to you.’

‘I know I have no right to ask for your forgiveness. Yet that’s all I can do.’

Juliet lets the card fall open on the coffee table as she sits on the couch. After all these years, this is the grand gesture. He has signed it: ‘Love, Dad.’ On the back he has written his address and phone number. As if that has been the trouble all along.

‘Would you want him to show up at your door?’ Ethan asks her later, over the phone.

‘No.’

‘Were you hoping to go your whole life without hearing from him?’

‘Maybe. I used to have this fantasy that I’d go to him on his deathbed and he’d beg for my forgiveness, wanting to meet his maker with a clear conscience.’

‘And?’

‘And I’d spit in his face and walk away.’

‘Wow. That’s dark.’

It isn’t the whole truth, though. For years Juliet dreamed that her father would show up one day. He would have some elaborate explanation, the equivalent of having been locked away in a tower and slaying dragons on his way to her. He’d whisk Juliet and her sisters away to the life they deserved. He was Juliet’s knight in shining armour.

But he never came, and as the years went by, it became harder to imagine what could be keeping him. Somewhere along the line, Juliet had stopped believing in fairy tales.

Don’t fuck with my sisters
, Juliet thinks, as she walks the streets of the city, little white puffs escaping from her mouth. She imagines the cards she wrote to them, crumpled uselessly in a trash can.
Probably that one
, she decides, passing the mailbox and trash barrel closest to her building. She can’t stop thinking about the bagels: a sweet gesture that had cost him absolutely nothing.

The stupid thing is that, if he had just asked, she would have done anything she could to help him. That’s the part that makes both of them stupid. Back when Juliet was in college, Jesse had done a stint at Concord Corrections. She’d gone to see him once a week for a while, during the two-hour window that corresponded with his last initial. He’s still on probation and Juliet wonders how fast he’d be back in jail if she turned him in. Cheque fraud is surely on the list of no-nos. In her darker moments, Juliet thinks she could be capable of this.

She’s been full of rage since he left that night. She screamed at him so much – as he kept his head down, taking it – she thinks she should have got it all out but it keeps bubbling. She’s still finding more layers to her anger, more things she wishes she had said.

But Juliet hasn’t had the chance to say them. She hasn’t heard from Jesse in weeks and she’s slightly surprised when she hears his voice calling her name from the other side of the door. He sounds desperate and Juliet takes pleasure in this. She lets him pound a bit longer than she needs to, her hand paused at the lock on the door.

However, all of her amusement deserts her when she pulls the door open and he collapses against her. He’s holding his gut; his zippered sweatshirt falls open and reveals his grey shirt turning black under his hand. Juliet helps him to the couch and he falls onto it. She sits on the coffee table in front of him, eyes wide.

‘What happened to you?’

Jesse leans back and struggles to lift his legs onto the couch. Juliet helps. She watches the darkness spread into the fabric. ‘Have you been—’ She’s unable to finish the sentence. The idea is so far outside the sphere of what is possible.

‘Shot,’ he confirms, closing his eyes.

‘Oh, my God. We have to go to the hospital.’

Jesse shakes his head. ‘We can’t.’

Juliet swallows. ‘Has anyone else been hurt?’

He looks at her hard. ‘No.’

‘Okay.’ Juliet nods. ‘Is there anyone we can call? Your cousin?’

Jesse shakes his head again.

‘You’re bleeding so much.’

‘It’s just a flesh wound. It’s fine.’

The certainty in his voice is reassuring. Juliet puts all of her trust in that. ‘What should I do?’ Juliet lets herself slip into a place where nothing exists besides this moment. Fear presses at the edge of her vision, focusing it to a fine point. She pulls his T-shirt away from his abdomen, considers the blood staining the couch, and hears a key turning in the lock.

Coming through the door, Abby knows immediately that something is wrong. She knows before she sees the blood, before she notices the paleness of Jesse’s face. She knows the moment she sees Juliet’s head whip around. She’s startled to see Abby, but there’s something more. She’s terrified.

Abby takes several steps forward, her mind racing to find the source of Juliet’s terror. She feels sure that she’ll find it and smother it or chase it away. She’ll fix it. Juliet won’t need to be afraid any more.

She finds it in the wound to Jesse’s stomach, to the left of his belly button. She stops walking. ‘What happened to him?’

Juliet stands, but she’s shaking so much that she has to sit down again. ‘He’s been shot.’

Abby takes a long, slow breath as she lets this sink in. ‘Have you called an ambulance?’

Juliet shakes her head.

Abby looks at the wound. ‘You need to.’

Jesse’s hair is matted against his damp forehead. ‘No doctors,’ he says.

At first, Abby’s confused. She lives in a world where you call the police when someone hurts you, where you go to the hospital. This is not Jesse’s world. She’s enraged by the realization that he’s dragging them into his world. ‘What the hell has he done?’ she shouts.

Juliet’s trembling intensifies. ‘It’s a flesh wound,’ she stammers.

‘A flesh wound? What does that even mean?’ The harder Juliet shakes, the calmer Abby feels. ‘If he’s been shot, someone is going to have to remove the bullet, right? Look at all this blood. He needs a doctor.’ Abby is yelling at Juliet without acknowledging Jesse as a conscious presence.

Jesse reaches out and grabs Abby by the arm. His grip is stronger than she would have expected. ‘No doctors,’ he says again, louder this time. He holds Abby’s gaze as firmly as he holds her arm.

‘Okay, fine,’ Abby says eventually. ‘At least let me get some towels for the bleeding.’

He releases his grip on her arm. Juliet nods her thanks.

Abby walks to the bathroom, sliding the cordless phone off the table as she passes, slipping it into the pocket of her cargo pants. She locks the bathroom door behind her, turns on the faucet and dials 911. She sits on the toilet seat, waiting for the sirens.

Juliet bangs on the door. Abby opens it with the towels in her arms. ‘Here you go.’

‘Should we get rubbing alcohol? For infection?’

‘I don’t know, Juliet. I’ve never done this before.’

Juliet walks into the bathroom and opens the medicine cabinet. Then she sees the phone sitting on the edge of the sink. She looks at Abby. ‘What have you done?’

They stare at each other in silence.

‘Juliet!’ Jesse calls, from the other room.

Juliet grabs the towels and shoves Abby out of the way as she walks past her. Abby watches from the doorway as Juliet presses a towel against Jesse’s abdomen. She speaks to him in a low voice and Abby can’t hear what she’s saying. Suddenly Jesse swings his legs off the couch.

Juliet bends as he puts his arm across her shoulders and she helps him stand.

‘Where are you going?’ Abby steps towards them.

Juliet pauses and looks over her shoulder at Abby. ‘Well, we can’t stay here now, can we?’

‘Juliet.’

‘Can we?’ Juliet yells.

‘He needs to see a doctor,’ Abby insists.

‘He can’t. They’ll send him to jail, Abby!’

‘Maybe that’s where he belongs.’ The two of them are hobbling towards the door, but they move slowly enough for Abby to get there first. ‘Juliet, what the hell are you doing?’

‘He needs me.’

‘No. He doesn’t.’ Abby’s stalling, silently praying for sirens. ‘You can’t help him any more.’

Juliet looks at him. He doesn’t seem to be following the conversation, so focused on breathing and staying upright. ‘Jesse, let’s sit down for a minute,’ she suggests.

‘No.’ His grip tightens on her slender biceps. His fingers dig into her flesh.

‘Let her go,’ Abby hisses, stepping closer. She reaches for Juliet and pulls her out from under Jesse’s weight. He falls against the front door, holding himself upright by catching hold of the doorknob.

‘Abby!’ Juliet tries to shake free, but Abby holds her arms and pushes her back.

‘Fucking bitch,’ Jesse mumbles, holding the towel against the side of his body.

‘Just let me help him to the couch.’ Juliet sounds annoyed.

‘No.’ Abby turns towards Jesse and holds her arms out from her sides, keeping Juliet behind her. She steps from side to side as Juliet tries to get around her. ‘You can leave by yourself or you can sit your ass down and wait for the ambulance right there.’

The towel drops to the floor and Jesse pulls a gun out of the pocket of his sweatshirt.

Juliet gasps. She stops trying to push past Abby.

‘Come on, Juliet. We need to go
now
!’ Somehow Jesse manages to stagger in place, one hand on the doorknob, the other waving the gun.

Abby can’t make herself feel like this is really happening. She strains to hear what might be sirens. Far, far away. ‘She’s not going with you,’ she says.

Jesse lunges towards them in a burst of energy that catches Abby completely off guard. She pushes against him and, in the scuffle, lands the first punch of her life, grazing her knuckles on his chin. Jesse reels backwards against the door.

The gun fires. The shot is loud and confusing.

Abby collapses to the floor.

Juliet screams.

Finally, Abby hears sirens on the street below. Juliet holds her, screaming. Her hands are red. Abby looks to the door and finds Jesse gone. She feels relieved. She tries to speak, but nothing comes. Juliet’s panicked eyes are the last thing she sees as she closes her own.

Rachel had never wanted children. She was married for seven years before Abby came along. She weathered the questions of strangers until they all gave up. Her mother told her stories about women who remained childless – cautionary tales of madness and misery. Her first-born son remained unmarried at thirty; Rachel was the only reasonable hope for a Catholic mother.

Rachel was married on a beach in Mexico. She was barefoot and a little bit high. Henry still had his thick brown beard and long hair, and after their first married kiss, they ran into the waves together.

Her mother was horrified that they’d eloped, that they hadn’t been married in the church. It almost didn’t count. Almost. To appease her, they had a family reception at the house. Rachel wore shoes and Henry tied his hair back in a neat ponytail. Allen attended in his Navy uniform, a silent statement against the draft-dodger Rachel was bringing into the family.

Henry wasn’t really a draft-dodger. He had a Canadian father and an American mother and had let his dual-citizenship go when he turned eighteen. When he married Rachel, he became an American. It was 1975 and Vietnam was over.

Henry said the decision to have children was entirely up to Rachel. When he’d asked her to marry him, he’d told her she was the only thing he needed. If she wanted children, he’d love them because they were hers; if she didn’t, that was fine with him. He could imagine his life with or without children, but he couldn’t imagine it without Rachel.

When Rachel was twenty-eight, she walked past a maternity store in the mall and ran to her car in tears. It was a year before she confessed to Henry, afraid it was unfair to change the rules that many years in. Henry told her he was relieved, and whether or not he meant it, it was the perfect thing to say.

When her father was dying, Rachel came home from school and sat with him in the hospital bed they’d moved into the den. They spoke more in those months than they had during the rest of her life. She nestled into him as he told her how much he loved trains, the motion under his feet, the power and speed. She was glad that he’d liked his life’s work; all she’d ever known was the way he came home at the end of the day, tired and longing for the boilermaker her mother would fix him before dinner.