A Long Thaw (20 page)

Juliet tries to laugh but it turns quickly to tears. She presses her fingers against her eyelids. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve hardly slept.’

‘I have. Gunshot wounds get the good drugs. You probably didn’t even get any Percocet for that lip.’

‘Nope.’ Juliet tries to blink the wetness from her eyes.

‘See? What a waste.’

‘You’re not letting me apologize.’ Juliet laughs and a tear slides down her face. She wipes it quickly away.

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘I brought him into your life. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.’

‘And me. Fighting with an armed man. What was I thinking?’

‘You were brave.’

Abby lets a puff of air escape through her lips.

‘You should really hate me. Your parents too. But they’ve been so nice.’

‘You’re not responsible for what he did.’

‘I’d understand if you wanted me to move out.’

Abby sighs. ‘I’m too tired to argue with you so can you just knock it off?’

Juliet agrees miserably.

‘I know,’ Abby says. ‘Just promise me you’ll pick a nice guy next time.’

Juliet smiles. ‘Cross my heart,’ she says, and traces an X across her left side, high, nearly to her shoulder.

Abby’s father carries her up the stairs to her apartment. She tells her parents she can climb them on her own, but they disagree and she doesn’t argue. They’re already unhappy that she’s insisted on returning to her place instead of going home with them where they can keep a closer eye on her.

Juliet opens the door when they arrive. Ryan and Jasmine stand under a banner to welcome her home.

‘Daddy, put me down.’ She feels embarrassed to be seen this way.

He moves towards the couch but Nana insists the back isn’t high enough and they settle on the corner chair.

From here, she can see where the blood by the door has been scrubbed clean, leaving the wood pale from bleach. She imagines Juliet scrubbing on her hands and knees. Or maybe it was her grandmother. Nana has a tendency to use house-cleaning as a distraction. Whenever Nana visited her daughter’s home, Abby wasn’t allowed to tell her where the dustpan was kept. She struggled to avoid direct lying by playing dumb, the only type of deception she has ever mastered.

Ryan kisses her clumsily and Jasmine hides her smile in her hand.

Jasmine bends down to give her a gentle hug. ‘Of all the people in the world to have a gunshot wound.’

‘You know not to make jokes about it in front of my nana.’

‘Why do you think I’m whispering?’

Abby’s mother and grandmother go into the kitchen to take stock. Her father sits on the couch with Ryan.

‘So, one near-death experience is all it takes to get you and Ryan back together?’ Jasmine mumbles, motioning over her shoulder.

‘I hope that isn’t it,’ Abby says, looking worried. ‘I like to think we were already on that path.’

Jasmine clucks her teeth. ‘I was kidding. You two were on that path from the moment you broke up.’

She’d never felt terror like that in her life. Not in all the months Bud had been sick, or the years when Rachel was gallivanting in third-world countries, or in the decades of her own children’s injuries and fevers. Those impossible words, the biggest, scariest words she’d ever heard: ‘Abby’s been shot.’

Rachel and Allen had torn out of the house, telling her to get a hold of Henry. They were gone before it dawned on her that they both had cellular phones and there was no reason she had to stay behind.

She did call Henry, repeating herself slowly. She still couldn’t quite believe that what Juliet had told them could be true. She wanted to ask Henry to pick her up on his way to the hospital, but she knew better. Nothing could be more important to him than getting to his child. She understood.

Mary had stopped driving into Boston at least ten years ago and the roads had only become more complicated since then. So she sat at the breakfast table, close to the phone, worrying over her rosary.

Late that night Juliet called from the train station close to Mary’s house, unable to go back to the apartment and not sure where else to turn.

‘You’re always welcome here,’ Mary told her, over the phone.

Mary wasn’t prepared for the girl she found on the sidewalk that night. From far away, anyone could see the blood that covered her clothes. People walked past her, giving her a lot of space, staring. Juliet didn’t seem to notice, even with her eyes wild and unblinking. She wasn’t wearing a coat and the night air was cold, but she wasn’t shivering.

Mary parked the station wagon at the kerb and rolled down the window. ‘Yoo-hoo,’ she said lightly, and Juliet startled, as if she were waking from a dream and didn’t remember where she was.

When she slid inside the car, Mary saw the stitches on her lip. ‘What happened to you?’ she asked, and she had to touch her own mouth before Juliet understood.

‘Oh, nothing. I fell. After. At the hospital. It was stupid.’

It wasn’t until Mary got her to the house, running a bath for her like she was a child, that Juliet let the whole story spill out. She sat in the water, hugging her knees, while Mary sat on the toilet seat and listened. When she ran out of words, she had cried, and when she ran out of tears, Mary had pulled the stopper out of the tub and set some towels on the sink. She picked up Juliet’s bloody clothes and pushed them deep into the kitchen trash.

Juliet put on one of Mary’s nightgowns and slept upstairs in Allen’s old bed. It happened to be the only one that was made up at the time. Mary sat on the edge and watched her breathing with her eyes closed. Her hair was too damp to sleep on, but there were bigger things to worry about. Mary had started to think Juliet was asleep when she started to speak.

‘I saw him,’ Juliet whispered.

‘Who did you see, dear?’

‘My father.’

Mary hadn’t known what to say about that, and before she could think of something, Juliet’s breathing became slower and her eyes began to twitch beneath her eyelids. Mary doubted she would have pleasant dreams.

So it’s old news when Allen sits at her table and tells her he saw Juliet.

Mary nods and waits for more. Allen rubs his stubbled chin, seeming to be lost in his own thoughts.

‘How did she look?’ Mary asks.

‘Taller.’ Allen smiles, gazing into his coffee mug. ‘I feel like I missed my chance that day. I couldn’t think what to say to her and it felt wrong even to try, with everything that was going on. Like I’d be taking advantage of a weak moment or stealing the focus from where it deserved to be. On Abby.’

‘There will be other moments,’ Mary assures him.

Outside, the wind howls and a branch from the rosebush bangs against the window.

‘I still can’t get over that it was her boyfriend,’ Allen says.

‘Ex-boyfriend.’

‘Either way. What does it say about her that she’d be with someone like that?’

Mary straightens in her chair. ‘Well, I’ve heard it said that girls who grow up without fathers don’t always choose the best men.’

Allen looks at her, wounded. ‘So, this is my fault too.’

‘Of course not. But it isn’t Juliet’s either.’

‘I wasn’t saying it was.’

‘Let’s just be grateful that Abby’s going to be okay. It’s a sign, I think.’

‘A sign?’

‘That life goes on, thank God. And there will be other chances.’ She reaches for Allen’s hand and squeezes it. ‘For all of us. To get it right.’

On Monday Mary drives to Bernie’s to pick her up. Once a week, they get dressed up and go to the Randolph Hotel. They are ladies who lunch. The clientele at the Randolph hasn’t changed in all these years: it’s white-haired and loyal. Mary and Bernadette make it in all but the worst weather.

They have done this every Monday since Rachel left for college. It was Bernie’s idea, a way to combat the glum period Mary descended into that fall. It was funny, really, how the two sisters found themselves paired up again the way they had been as children. It seemed to Mary that the previous twenty-five years had fallen away – husbands, children, all of it. More than thirty more years have passed and it’s Bernadette who has turned out to be the constant in Mary’s life. As it was in the beginning.

Mary parks her car alongside Bernie’s front walk. She hopes that she won’t have to get out and knock on the door. The snow has long since melted but it’s still quite cold; April showers have brought black ice. She eyes the slick walkway like a woman with one false hip. Bernie can see her car from the window, but Mary toots the horn for good measure. Three quick bursts.

Last year, Bernadette had returned from two weeks in Russia with a fur hat that looked just plain ridiculous on her and had cost a small fortune. She loves how people remark on it, but Mary doesn’t believe those comments are sincere. The hat is simply so outrageous that people have to say something and they camouflage their astonishment by turning it into a compliment. Cold days like this seem to give her permission to wear it. Mary hopes against it, but decides she won’t say a thing about it if she does.

Aggravated, she leaves the warmth of her car and picks her way carefully to the front door. She leaves the engine running and takes her purse with her. She knocks, then bends to retrieve the newspaper lying on the stoop. Sunday.

She knocks again, a fast
rat-tat-tat
, then searches her purse for the key to Bernadette’s apartment. It takes a minute and she’s aware that in that time her sister hasn’t come to let her in.

Mary pushes the door open. ‘Bernie,’ she calls, up the stairs, with her hand on the banister. She turns the corner and sees Bernadette lying on the floor in the living room. ‘Bernie!’

Mary falls to her knees beside Bernadette and pulls her ashen face onto her lap. There’s no reason to check for a pulse. Mary strokes her hair instead, the dramatic salt-and-pepper she has done specially at the salon, differentiating her from Mary’s swan-white. Bernadette is wearing her teal suit and beige tights. At first Mary assumes she was dressed for the Randolph but she remembers the Sunday paper and understands that she was getting ready for church.

She had always expected it to be the other way around – Bernadette coming to find her sitting in her favourite chair by the window, slumped a little unnaturally, but dignified. Mary had assumed that she would go first: like being entrusted with her grandfather’s quarter, it was her right as the eldest.

Hannah was born on Easter. Nana said that was lucky. Deirdre and Allen were at the hospital that day and Juliet had Easter brunch with Abby, her parents, Nana and Great-aunt Bernadette. That’s the clearest memory Juliet has of her great-aunt.

She and Juliet’s grandmother were like alternative endings in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure storybook. Bernadette was like another grandmother, but she wasn’t grandmotherly. Her house was filled with breakables from all over the world and she required children to sit on the stiff, eggshell-upholstered couch with ankles crossed, sipping grape juice with extreme care. Nana made them individual fancy plastic cups of red Jell-O crowned with whipped cream and let them lick fingers they’d traced through the bowl she mixed brownies in.

Usually the sisters bickered in restaurants, neither wanting a full portion. The decision whether to split the lamb or the fish could get snappy and downright unladylike. Nana would claim her rights as the oldest; Bernadette would insist it was her turn. Juliet was relieved when they decided to order separate meals. Bernadette ordered a Bloody Mary with her eggs Benedict. Nana asked for tomato juice, scrambled eggs, white toast and hash browns without onions.

Aunt Bernadette had insisted on the opulence of the yacht club. In the back seat of the car, Abby had pointed out that Aunt Bernadette didn’t have a yacht. The girls wondered what criteria a seventy-year-old woman used to gain membership at a yacht club without any sort of boat or particular fondness for sailing.

When their food came, Aunt Bernadette complained about her drink, looked at the waiter through narrowed eyes and told him to bring her a fresh one. Nana kept quiet about the onions on her plate.

Abby and Juliet had both ordered the blueberry pancakes and they stared with dread and longing at the extravagant stacks placed in front of them. They drowned them in maple syrup. It was the real stuff, of course, though Juliet actually preferred the store brand. She favoured Stove Top Stuffing and canned cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving, too. She drew the line at fake mashed potatoes, though. Her mother was forever trying to pass them off as the real thing. Juliet could tell the difference: the fake kind made her gag.

Her stomach refused to hold more than three and a quarter of the pancakes. She thought it was the excitement she felt about becoming a big sister, but Abby was having trouble as well. Juliet had been hoping for a sister. Girls were just more fun: you could dress them up, and when you were old enough to get your ears pierced, they’d be jealous.

Abby sighed into her plate. Juliet saw Uncle Henry ask with a rise of his eyebrows; Abby answered with a shrug and a nod. He slid one pancake off her plate and onto his. It mingled with the Hollandaise sauce, making Juliet look away, pressing her lips together.

Later, her father pointed Hannah out through the glass wall of the nursery. She was wrapped tightly in a pink blanket and all she could see was a small bald head and the little crescent moons of her closed eyes. Juliet’s father was so exuberant, the happiest she’d ever seen him. Juliet worried for the first time since her mother had announced her pregnancy that he might love the new baby more. Silly when she thinks that in four years Allen would have vanished from their lives. Sometimes it breaks Juliet’s heart that Hannah and Lilly can’t remember what it felt like to have a father. Sometimes she thinks they’re lucky.

Juliet attends Bernadette’s wake the day before the funeral – hoping she might not have to see her father. Certainly he will be at the church tomorrow, the cemetery and then back at the house afterwards. Juliet wants to be there for her grandmother, but there’s only so much she can put herself through.

The younger sisters, Dorothy and Patricia, drive in from Connecticut and New York with their stooped husbands. The men sit with their wives’ purses in their laps while the sisters stand together in another part of the room. Juliet imagines her grandfather sitting in a third chair beside them.