A Long Thaw (2 page)

Juliet brings her lunch in a brown-paper bag. She eats under the large oak tree around the corner from her office. Some days she eats alone. When Jesse can get time away, he meets her.

Jesse had followed Juliet to Boston at the end of August when she got a job in the student-life office of a university there. His cousin lets him crash on his couch while he pretends to look for an apartment. He gets a job as a messenger and is on his feet all day in weather that has only begun to hint at the sort of ferocity it’s capable of. Juliet has bought him a grey-and-white striped scarf that hangs loosely around his neck, so far just for show.

As Juliet walks to their meeting spot one afternoon in September, she sees Jesse talking with two students. She’s about to join them when she sees a quick exchange. Jesse is stuffing the bills into his coat pocket. Juliet turns and begins to walk away but he has seen her and is quick to catch up.

‘Hey, babe.’ He slides his arm across her shoulders.

Juliet shrugs him away. ‘You told me you weren’t doing that any more.’

‘It’s just a little pot. No one’s getting hurt.’

‘I work here. I could lose my job.’

‘Juliet, relax. No one is going to care. Hell, these rich kids pay their tuition and the administrators are more than willing to look the other way to keep them happy.’

‘I don’t believe that.’

‘Well, that’s just ’cause you’re naïve.’ Jesse squeezes Juliet’s waist. She squirms away.

‘Come on,’ Jesse says, rolling his eyes. They look at each other in silence. ‘Fine, have a nice lunch.’ He spins around, his coat flapping, and starts walking away.

‘Jesse, wait,’ Juliet calls out.

Jesse stops and faces her. ‘What?’

‘Don’t go.’ Juliet goes to him and grabs his arm. He’s not much taller than her but she feels like a child.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t want you to go. Let’s just have lunch like we planned.’

He looks down at her sceptically.

She tugs at his arm. ‘Please.’

He sighs. ‘Fine,’ he says, and they sit beneath the shade of the tree.

Jesse is his own climate. When he wraps his arms around Juliet, it takes her a moment to adjust to the change in temperature. In his presence, she often allows her hair to fall in front of her face, to keep his eyes from taking too much of her inside them.

Jesse kisses her throat and presses her against the tree trunk. Juliet keeps an eye out for her co-workers.

When Juliet had made a mental list of what she was looking for in a man, she thought of a man who didn’t leave. She’d never really got any further than that.

Her father had left when she was thirteen, three weeks after paying for her to get braces. Then he was gone and with him went the money for follow-up appointments. For the next six years, through high school and college orientation, her mouth was a constant reminder of the father she didn’t have. Her crooked teeth were bolted down and their crookedness was emphasized by silver wires and brackets. She stopped smiling. She never raised her hand in class.

Juliet had gone to college at a struggling private school in Massachusetts, the kind where rich people sent their delinquent children when they couldn’t get into Yale. She received a full scholarship based mostly on need since her grades were only slightly above average. College, she quickly discovered, was a great way to delay growing up by four whole years.

She had applied exclusively to schools on the opposite coast, believing that distance might be her best chance of graduating. When she looked around at the women in her town, they all had babies on their hips and cigarettes pinched in their mouths. The men wore dirty jeans and drove motorcycles and showed up sporadically at their baby’s third birthday party, having missed the previous two and rarely making the next two or twenty.

She left her largely absent, born-again mother in California with her two little sisters, the littlest of whom had called Juliet ‘Momma’ ever since she could speak. She was only five when Juliet had left for the east coast, and Juliet had carried her cries on the entire cross-country flight along with the knowledge that her freedom had come at a price. She unpacked onto the shelves of her tiny closet with earthquakes in mind: anything heavy or breakable went on the low ones.

When she was nineteen, Juliet dated a wealthy boy from Cohasset. He told her that her eyes were the colour of sea glass. She wasn’t sure what that meant – she had grown up on both coasts and knew that sea glass could come in any colour at all. She told him he was sweet, though, that it was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to her. It might have been the truth, too. It was at least as nice as when Donny Clark told her that she had legs for days, and much nicer than when her mother had had too much to drink and told her she looked just like her damned father. She didn’t think she looked like him at all, actually, but all she had to go on was her parents’ wedding photograph and her own memory – both of which had faded over the years.

So she had told the boy from Cohasset that he was sweet, since that seemed to be what he expected her to say, and she let him have her body, and, after three months of dating, he paid to have her braces removed. She thanked him that night, with a blow-job, and for several months after that. She might have stayed with him forever out of gratitude. As it was, she stayed with him until he got tired of her, the way most rich boys eventually do.

She still never smiled widely enough to show teeth. She’d got out of the habit.

Juliet and Jesse have been together, off and on, for two years. Theirs is a love affair filled with public arguments and make-up sex. Jesse has been known to rip buttons from her shirts, knock pictures off the walls, and leave her lips chapped and sore from the impact of his rough kisses. He’s an insomniac. Juliet often wakes in the middle of the night to find him sitting in the corner, smoking a joint and watching her sleep. She was never afraid of the dark before she met him.

The only thing that makes Juliet’s living situation tolerable is that her roommate is never there.

Room and board had been part of the deal when she’d taken a job at a university. It meant she wouldn’t have to buy furniture or figure out how to afford rent in the city or face whether she and Jesse were ready to move in together. And what it meant if they were not. It simplified everything.

Unfortunately, there was a housing shortage on campus and Juliet has been given a roommate, a freshman named Sadie. Her boss assures her that it will be settled after the first few weeks as a percentage of students drop out at the beginning of every year. Until then, Juliet is just grateful that Sadie has a busy schedule. And an offcampus boyfriend.

Juliet calls home every Friday at midnight Eastern, nine p.m. Pacific time. This way, she will not have to talk to her mother, who leaves Lilly and Hannah alone on these evenings so that she can ‘socialize’. Juliet has barely spoken to her mother in the five years since she left, but she still sends a cheque every month, whatever she can spare. She seals it in a long white envelope, without including a note or an explanation. In two other envelopes, she sends cash to Lilly and Hannah. She writes them long letters full of details about her life, about snow, about how much she misses them.

This month she sits at the generic dorm desk, a twin to Sadie’s on the other side of the room, and counts out exactly twelve dollars for Lilly’s envelope. On Friday, Hannah had told Juliet about the school field trip to the art museum that their mother had told Lilly to forget about. Juliet told Lilly not to worry, that she would have the money by Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest. The girls knew to check the mail before their mother, who had been known to hand over their envelopes after they’d been opened and emptied of cash.

Hannah has just started high school. She’s fourteen. Lilly is ten and has long since stopped calling Juliet ‘Momma’. In fact, she doesn’t use that name for anyone. All three girls refer to their mother by her first name, Deirdre.

Juliet’s jacket has lost all its buttons and she pulls it tighter around herself as the fall wind stings her face. The leaves on the sidewalk crunch beneath her feet as she walks toward the blue post-office box on the corner. She pulls the slot open with a creak and tosses the three envelopes inside.

Abby hasn’t seen Juliet in ten years. That summer, they were both thirteen and had that special kind of girl-love that precedes the insecurity and competition of adolescence. They could spend an entire afternoon balancing precariously on rocks at the edge of the ocean, looking for starfish and empty crab shells and other beach treasures. They wore bathing suits that were stretched and faded with overuse. They pulled snails from the rocks, slowly so as not to harm them, and sat with them on their hands waiting for them to suction to their palms. They took turns burying each other in sand, then washed themselves off in the bone-chilling Atlantic, squealing as they bent their knees, the water rising to their belly buttons, armpits and, finally, their throats.

They’d had no way of knowing it would be the last summer. If Juliet was aware that her parents were bound for divorce, she hadn’t let on. By fall, Juliet would be starting school somewhere in California. The exact address was never given. There would be no postcards between cousins, no more family outings to the beach.

Their parents sat low in beach chairs, talking and giving out snacks periodically. Juliet’s mother was still breastfeeding Lilly. Hannah sat at her feet, the architect of a primitive mud castle. She was four then, too young to want to follow her older sister around.

‘Stay where we can see you,’ Abby’s mother would remind the girls, whenever they were in earshot.

‘They’re fine,’ Juliet’s father assured her. ‘Juliet’s a good swimmer, aren’t you, Jules?’

Juliet beamed and puffed out her chest.

‘They’re both good swimmers, Allen.’ Rachel was squinting up at her brother with her hand against her brow like a visor. ‘This is the ocean.’

‘Just be careful, girls.’ Abby’s father sat under an umbrella, reading a book about the Civil War.

Abby nodded, and Juliet took her hand, pulling her back to the frothy water’s edge.

It’s Abby’s mother who tells her that Juliet’s living in Boston. ‘She’s working at one of the universities,’ she says. ‘Nana talked to her. Wanted me to give you her number.’

Abby’s standing in the kitchen, leaning against the counter as she holds the phone to her ear. She finds a pen in a drawer and writes Juliet’s number in the address book she keeps by the phone, with no real intention of calling her.

‘Ryan’s moving out,’ Abby says.

‘Moving out?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Things seemed fine between the two of you last month.’

‘They were fine. Things are always just fine.’

‘Who decided this?’

‘Me, I guess. Although I think he’s relieved.’

‘When is he leaving?’

‘I don’t know. He’s looking for a place.’ Abby sighs.

‘Maybe you two just need some time apart.’

‘Maybe.’ There’s a knock at the door. ‘Someone’s here. I’ll call you later.’

Abby walks to the door, pressing the hang-up button on the cordless phone. She peers out of the peephole and undoes the locks, swinging the door open with a smile.

‘What a surprise!’ Jasmine and Eric stand in the hallway. ‘Come in. You didn’t tell me you were coming.’ Abby hugs Jasmine while Eric stands back a bit, shifting his weight. When she lets go, she realizes Jasmine has a pained expression on her face. ‘What’s wrong?’

Jasmine runs her hand through her hair – it’s blue, these days. ‘Ryan invited us.’

‘Oh,’ Abby says, and then she nods, trying to act as if it doesn’t catch her off guard at all, as if it happens all the time that her old college roommate and her boyfriend would stop by
not
to see her. ‘He didn’t tell me.’ She shrugs, and since it sounds sad somehow, she adds, ‘I was out all morning and he’s been busy back there.’ She waves towards the bedroom. ‘It’s fine. I’ll go get him.’

Jasmine catches her arm and keeps her from leaving, as much by her physical hold as by her stare. ‘Eric, why don’t you go tell him we’re here? Abby and I can catch up.’

Eric seems grateful to have permission to leave.

Jasmine pulls Abby to the couch. ‘Is this uncomfortable?’

‘I guess it will just be weird for a while, us having nearly all the same friends.’

Jasmine nods, wriggling out of a red velvet coat that lost its luxuriousness several owners ago. In its first incarnation, it was probably quite formal and she would never have worn it.

‘It isn’t like we’re on bad terms or anything,’ Abby says.

‘Well, that’s good.’

‘Eric hardly spoke to me. Does he hate me now?’

‘Oh, no, not at all. He’s just terrible with conflict. Child of divorce.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘He’s so sensitive. It can be really annoying.’

‘The first woman to complain that her boyfriend is too sensitive.’

Jasmine laughs drily. ‘It leaves me to be the tough one. I have to be the guy.’

Abby makes a face. ‘That
does
sound terrible.’

Jasmine smiles. ‘How are you doing?’

‘I’m okay. I’m sad. It’s all very strange.’

‘I’m sad about it too,’ Jasmine admits. Her real name is Sally. She changed it when she went away to college. Her mother used to call their room and ask for Sally. Abby hasn’t ever told anyone, isn’t even sure Eric knows.

‘I’m sure things will be less tense soon.’ Abby hears herself reassuring Jasmine and it makes her feel suddenly restless. ‘Want a drink?’ She stands up and walks to the kitchen. Jasmine follows, saying she’ll have water.

‘Did you drive in?’ Abby asks, pouring two glasses from the Brita. She remembers growing up in New Hampshire, drinking from the tap.

Jasmine hoists herself up to sit on the counter. ‘Oh, no, we parked in Lowell. Took the train in.’

‘How’s work?’ Abby passes one glass to Jasmine and gulps her own.

‘Challenging,’ Jasmine muses.

Abby had always thought Jasmine would have to find a more natural hair colour once she entered the workplace, but she had found a job in a residential facility for troubled girls. She has stopped wearing her nose rings, though, since they could be dangerous in a restraint situation. She has three empty holes in her left nostril. Abby wonders if they might remain there for the rest of her life. It’s nearly impossible to picture Jasmine as an old woman, as someone who might some day return to using her given name.