A Long Thaw (4 page)

‘Oh, she’s great. Just talked to her the other night.’

‘She was here last week.’

Allen stops short and shifts his weight. ‘Oh?’

‘She didn’t mention it?’ Mary can’t help feeling disappointed.

‘Well, we only talked for a minute the other night.’ He coughs and she can see his breath in the October air. ‘So she was here?’

‘Yes. We had a lovely time. She has grown into the most beautiful young woman.’

‘Y-yes. She sure has.’ Allen continues walking to his car. He lifts the handle and starts to open the door, then looks right at his mother. ‘You let me know if there’s anything else I can do.’

‘All right, dear. Thanks again.’

He nods, stands for a moment, then nods again. He ducks into the car and closes the door.

‘You take care now,’ Mary calls to him, through his closed window. She waves as he backs out of the driveway and continues to wave until he has turned the corner at the end of the street. When she can no longer see him, she goes back inside.

Mary’s father came to America in 1903, at the age of twenty-one, to ‘make his fortune’. He went from coast to coast and up into British Columbia, finally settling in the Boston area. He loved his country, and Mary grew up with that love, with his stories so full of his own wonder at its beauty, its sheer size and endless opportunities. He never talked of returning to Ireland where life had been so bleak and his family so poor. He raised his children with the knowledge that in America there were no limits to what you could attain if you studied hard and prayed hard too.

Mary’s family was spared the suffering of their neighbours during the Depression. Her father was self-employed. He was a salesman, and although he didn’t fare as well as he had in the twenties, they had never needed assistance. Her mother made their clothes, resoled their shoes with rubber she bought for ten cents at Woolworth’s. One closet held all the clothes that belonged to Mary and her three younger sisters. They each had two school outfits, one jacket and a Sunday coat. On weekends, they would drive for an hour to visit their maternal grandparents. Her grandfather would give Mary a quarter as she was the oldest, and from that they would buy four ice-cream cones and a Hershey’s chocolate bar. They thought he was an awfully rich man.

She had met Bud in 1939 on a blind date that wasn’t exactly blind. Before she agreed to go, Mary found out where he’d be playing tennis one afternoon and went to the courts to watch him play. He was a few years older and quite good-looking – tall and lean, his white T-shirt pulling slightly through the shoulders. He grunted softly when he struck the ball, dancing back and forth across the court, tireless. His hair was trimmed close to his scalp and his eyebrows were thick and dark. Mary lied to her parents the night she met him at the dance.

After several beers, he would admit that his name was really Francis, but everyone called him Bud. It was what his older brother had called him and he took on the nickname as if it were God-given. No one called him anything else until the day he died.

When the Second World War was in full swing, Bud tried to enlist, but they wouldn’t take him because his job at the railroad was considered vital to the nation. After Pearl Harbor, Bud told them he would quit his railroad job if they didn’t let him enlist. By then all the able-bodied men were overseas and he had grown tired of the way people looked at him, trying to figure out what kept him from the service. The military relented, and for the next three years he was overseas. Mary spent those years in secretarial school, then working in an office, praying that he would return safely and they would have the life they had planned. The war had put their marriage plans on hold. Mary didn’t want to be a widow at twenty: she would wait for him.

In 1946 they were married. The morning of her wedding day, Mary’s mother sat on the edge of her twin bed and tried to prepare her for the duties she was undertaking.

‘Just lie back and let him have his way,’ she said to her daughter, winding her own wedding band around her finger.

Mary picks up each frame and rubs it with the cloth. A black-and-white photo of her husband, taken a year or so before he died, smiling only with his eyes. The rest of his face is serious and showing the first signs of age. The deeper grooves around his mouth and across his forehead.

A smaller frame holds a portrait, the kind they take in department stores. Three girls with varying shades of blonde hair. Lilly was just a baby then, her head supported in the crook of Juliet’s arm, Hannah looking off to the side where someone is undoubtedly telling her to smile, shaking a stuffed animal or some such.

She wishes she had a newer photo of the girls. Allen always dismisses her when she asks. Divorce complicates every little thing.

A third frame holds a current family portrait of Rachel, Henry and Abby. They had it taken especially for her and wrapped it in tissue paper that smelt like lilies of the valley. It had been her Mother’s Day gift, or for Grandmother’s Day. Abby stands behind her parents, who are sitting, with an arm draped over each of their shoulders. She’s such a blend of them – her mother’s dark eyes and colouring, her father’s angular nose and chin.

With Abby on her own now, Rachel and Henry are empty-nesters already. How time flies. Mary has not experienced this for herself. The closest thing was the first three years of her marriage, before the children, when she and her new husband were still getting used to each other. After such a late start, they had wanted to begin having a family right away, but had trouble conceiving. Mary had four miscarriages before being blessed with a healthy son. By then, Allen felt to her like a miracle and Rachel came just over a year later. All her prayers had been answered.

By the time her children left home, there was no man puttering around the house, growing restless and bothersome in retirement. She sometimes wonders how it would have been. She has become very used to the quiet of her own thoughts, her small meals, unilateral decision-making. Certainly she misses him. But it has been thirty years and it’s hard to imagine it other than it is.

That first night, Mary lay trembling under the covers. The fabric of her silk nightgown was cold and unfamiliar against her skin. She stayed very still in the bed as, just a quarter-inch from her body, the sheets were colder. She thought her body would eventually generate heat if she stayed in one spot. Wrapping her arms around herself, her teeth chattered. There was no getting warm.

He came in and undressed at the foot of the bed. She watched out of the corner of her eye as he slid in beside her, wearing only his underwear. He chuckled nervously as he took her hand and said, ‘You’re cold.’

She nodded and giggled. He pulled her against him and rubbed the sides of her arms and her back. He held her against his chest and kissed her hair.

‘Did you have fun today?’ he asked.

Mary thought about the day. All those people watching her. Her face was sore from smiling for them. ‘Oh, yes. It was wonderful.’ She wondered if he could feel her heart beating so fast against his body. ‘What about you?’

‘It was a good day,’ he said. ‘A little hectic, though.’

Mary settled her cheek against his hairy chest and smiled. When he moved his hands up her stomach, sliding across the silk that had warmed against him, he said, ‘Pretty.’ She wasn’t sure if he meant the nightgown or her body and she didn’t ask. When he touched her breasts through the fabric, she felt a thrill she hadn’t been told to expect.

Abby recognizes her cousin as soon as she comes through the door. Juliet has cut her hair to her shoulders, which only makes it curlier. It had been much longer when Abby saw her last. When wet, it hung all the way to her waist. Now her head is wrapped in a pink scarf, the blonde curls jutting out wildly at all angles.

Abby stands up and smiles as Juliet walks towards her. They hug each other awkwardly. Juliet pulls the wide strap of her bag over her head and sets it on the floor. She’s wearing a thin olive-green jacket, which she keeps on as she sits down.

‘Juliet, you look exactly the same.’

Juliet’s lips spread into a modest smile. ‘You too.’

‘God, I hope not.’ Abby laughs, tucking her hair behind her ears in a nervous gesture that only her closest friends (and her mother) recognize as such. When Juliet had last seen her, she’d been skinny and awkward and had worn glasses with round metal frames, much too big for her face. She still cringes at old photos. She had envied Juliet’s graceful ease and budding adolescent breasts. Since then, Abby has filled out in all the right places. She wears narrow rectangular frames and has learned how to tweeze her unruly eyebrows. She never had grown much taller, but feels much more comfortable in her skin than she ever did as a teenager. ‘What a small world, huh?’ she says, eager to change the subject.

‘Yeah, I know.’ Juliet’s eyes dart around the place, never quite settling on her cousin. Abby wonders if she’s nervous or just trying to get the attention of the waitress.

‘So how are you? How’s the job?’

‘The job is great.’ Juliet crosses and uncrosses her legs. ‘I’m setting up the community service programme and I have a lot of freedom. The people I work with are really nice.’ She leans forward, folding her arms on their little round table. ‘They’re all a bit older than me, but they’re nice.’

The waitress comes over. Abby orders a cappuccino. Juliet orders a soy latte.

‘And what about you?’ Juliet asks.

‘I’ve been in the city for a year now,’ Abby says. ‘I live just down the block, actually.’

‘Roommates?’ Juliet asks.

‘I’m sharing an apartment with—’ Suddenly Abby wishes she had rehearsed this part. ‘This guy.’ She gestures with her hand but isn’t sure herself what she means to imply.

‘This guy?’ Juliet looks amused by Abby’s discomfort.

Abby sighs. ‘Well, he used to be my boyfriend. Now we’re just roommates.’

Juliet cringes. ‘And I thought my living situation sucked.’

‘He’s moving out. Soon. I think.’

‘You hope.’ Juliet laughs.

Abby nods.

‘Nana was just bragging about you and your magazine job. She showed me a copy.’

‘Oh, yeah, she’s my biggest fan. I had a short story published in this tiny lit-mag a few years ago and she gave copies to all her friends at church.’

‘That’s awesome.’

‘A little embarrassing.’

Juliet thinks about this, but it’s outside her frame of reference. ‘I guess.’

‘So why does your living situation suck?’

‘Well, I’m living on campus. I’m actually sharing a dorm room with an undergrad.’

‘Weird.’

‘Yeah. It’s humbling. I keep having to remind myself that I did graduate from college already.’ A curl has come loose from her scarf and Juliet tucks it behind her ear with some degree of annoyance. ‘It’s supposed to be temporary,’ she continues. ‘I think.’

‘You hope.’

They both laugh.

The waitress sets their order in front of them. They each look down at the wrong drink. They slide their cups across the table.

Juliet sips her latte. ‘It’s not as bad as it could be. My roommate is hardly ever there and I’m pretty used to sharing my space – between having sisters and living in a dorm all through college. I haven’t had any privacy since Hannah was old enough to turn a doorknob.’

‘How old is Hannah?’

‘Fourteen.’

‘Wow.’ Abby does the math in her head. ‘So Lilly must be ten?’

Juliet nods.

‘That makes me feel so old.’ Abby blows on her cappuccino. ‘I was so jealous when Hannah was born. I remember thinking my parents owed me a little sister. Like it was a matter of fairness.’

Juliet laughs. ‘I guess they didn’t agree?’

Abby shakes her head, suddenly sombre. ‘Actually, it turns out my parents really struggled with infertility. They were lucky just to have me.’ Hearing how that sounds, Abby laughs at herself. ‘You know what I mean.’

Juliet covers her mouth, laughing so hard. ‘No, they were lucky to have you,’ she jokes. And then she tips her head, regaining her composure. ‘That’s too bad, though. You would have made an amazing big sister.’

Abby’s warmed by the compliment. ‘You think?’

‘Definitely.’

A couple enters the café and the bells above the door jingle.

Juliet is halfway through her latte. ‘Hey, let me know if you’re looking for a roommate once
this guy
moves out.’

‘I just might,’ Abby says. ‘I’ve been worried about that, actually. I do not have time to screen roommates right now. Work is so busy. It might be nice to live with family.’

‘How weird would that be?’ Juliet sips her latte.

Abby nods, swirling the tiny red stirrer through the dark liquid in her cup. It’s still too hot to drink.

Two weeks later, Juliet moves in. It’s one of the most spontaneous things Abby has ever done.

Abby sits on the couch, sipping a glass of wine. Juliet sits on the floor with two cardboard boxes. These, and two suitcases she has left in the bedroom, contain everything she owns. She sits with one leg out flat, the other tucked beneath her. She twirls the newspaper wrapping off a fluted glass vase and holds it up, looking for cracks.

‘Did you have those shipped from California?’ Abby asks her. It’s an innocent question, asked mainly to keep the conversation going.

Juliet bites her lip. ‘Um, I’ve actually been in Massachusetts for a while.’

‘A while?’

‘I came out here for college.’ Juliet places the vase on the floor beside her.

Abby looks puzzled. She leans forward, setting her wine glass on the coffee table. ‘I thought you went to one of those California State schools.’

Juliet shakes her head. ‘Nope. I went to school about an hour outside Boston.’

‘But Uncle Allen said he visited you there. He went to your graduation.’

‘He did
not
go to my graduation,’ Juliet says, tossing her hair over her shoulders and reaching into the box again. ‘Either of them.’

Abby’s having trouble following, and she can tell by the way Juliet’s cheeks are flushed that this is no benign misunderstanding. ‘Okay,’ she says. She’s agreeing to back away from what appears to be a sensitive subject, admitting that she clearly has no idea what she’s talking about.