A Long Thaw (7 page)

Ryan chuckles. ‘Look, I really do need to get going, but it was nice to see you.’

‘Yeah, it was.’

‘I’ve missed you.’ He swallows. ‘I mean, I’ve missed, you know, just talking to you.’

‘Yeah. Me too.’

‘So, maybe we can do it again.’

‘You mean, like, be
friends
?’

‘Yeah. I mean, I’d like that. If you would.’

‘Of course, Ryan. I mean, I’m sure it’ll be a little weird for a while but I would hope we could be friends. Absolutely.’

‘Great.’ Ryan picks up the cardboard boxes and peers over the top. ‘I’ll hold you to that.’

Abby opens the door for him. ‘Deal.’ She watches him turn the corner in the hallway, then closes the door.

‘He’s still in love with you, idiot.’ Jasmine is lying across Abby’s bed, thumbing through a magazine. The blue is fading from her hair.

‘I don’t think so. I’m not sure he ever was.’

‘Abby!’

‘Maybe we were just always supposed to be friends.’

Jasmine shakes her head. ‘Right. Maybe.’

‘What?’

Jasmine folds the magazine closed. ‘Are you really that clueless? I remember the way you two were all through college. If that wasn’t love, well, shit.’

‘Okay, so maybe it was.’

Jasmine grunts and opens the magazine again. ‘Why do people think love is only real if it lasts forever?’

Abby sits on the windowsill. ‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s like revisionist history – trying to argue it wasn’t true love because it didn’t work out.’

‘Well, isn’t true love
supposed
to last forever? Isn’t that the point of it?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

Jasmine sighs and rolls onto her back, letting the magazine fall to the floor. ‘No. Love
is
the point. That it existed at all.’

‘Are you in love with Eric?’

‘Absolutely.’ Jasmine’s head hangs over the edge of the bed, the tips of her hair touching the floor. ‘And I was in love with James. And Billy. And Nick.’ She sits up. ‘And the fact that it didn’t work out with them can’t change how I felt at the time. It was real. Every moment is real.’

‘Maybe.’

Jasmine grunts.

‘You were in love with Billy?’ Abby asks, scowling.

Jasmine turns onto her stomach. ‘Okay. Maybe not Billy. No, that was something else.’

Abby laughs.

‘Billy was one of my wild oats. He was for educational purposes.’ She squints at Abby, who is silhouetted in the white light of the window. ‘Who were your wild oats?’

Abby shrugs. ‘I never had any.’

‘Well, we should fix that. Oats are part of any balanced diet.’ Jasmine gets to her feet and shuffles over to Abby’s computer desk. ‘What’s your password?’

‘Why?’ Abby stands over Jasmine’s shoulder.

‘It’s time we fixed your oat problem.’

‘I don’t remember saying I had one,’ Abby says, but she leans down and types in her password to the Internet.

‘Don’t you trust me?’ Jasmine asks, with a devilish grin.

Abby thinks about this and decides she does.

Juliet drinks her morning coffee standing up in front of the kitchen sink. A sink is a sink is a sink.

Before her parents got divorced, Juliet had lived in the same house for as long as she could remember. Her height was measured on a wall in the kitchen, marked off in pencil, a groove beneath each silver mark. She climbed all the trees in the back yard, knew which were the best. There was a crawl space under the stairway that was a perfect hiding place. There was a leaky skylight in the bathroom next to her room. During rainstorms, she fell asleep to the ping of the drops falling into a metal pot. The windows cranked open and it was hard to get a breeze in the summer. She spent the most humid days in the cellar, which was always cool, three sides of it underground. She walked barefoot on the cement floor, tinkering with her father’s old train set. At night, she could hear him snoring across the hall.

In those days, she called Deirdre ‘Mom’. Juliet used to sit in a kitchen chair that was pulled into the bathroom while her mother trimmed her hair. When she was small and squirmy, she was allowed to fiddle with a ball of Play-Doh while Deirdre circled and re-circled her, bending down and tipping her face to account for the new angle of Juliet‘s bangs. ‘There once was a girl with a curl
right
in the middle of her forehead,’ she’d say in a singsong. She’d scowl and make another attempt, resulting in an inevitable too-short fringe of blonde across Juliet’s forehead. ‘When she was good, she was very, very good, And when she was bad, she was
horrid
!’ By the time it was over, the Play-Doh was covered with hair and had to be thrown out; a small price to pay to keep Juliet still.

When Hannah was born, Juliet had waited nearly ten years for a sister and felt like Hannah belonged to her. She pushed the stroller back and forth along the sidewalk in front of the house. She had to stay in sight of her mother from the kitchen window, which meant she was only allowed to go two houses in either direction. And although cars rarely passed by in the afternoons, she wasn’t allowed to cross the street. Still, she could spend hours like this, having nonsense conversations with Hannah or showing her off to neighbours who happened to be in their front yards.

When Lilly came, she shared Hannah’s room. Juliet was too old to share and her parents had been clear with her from the start that having a new baby around would not mean giving up her privacy. The truth was, she was jealous of the closeness this gave Hannah and Lilly. She’d move into their room in the middle of the night and sleep on the floor in front of Lilly’s crib. She’d switch off the baby monitor and soothe Lilly if she woke. Lilly got credit for sleeping through the night months before she really did. Lying on the floor while her sisters slept, Juliet felt a kind of peace and safety and
home
that she hasn’t felt since.

Losing the house felt like a death and Juliet promised never again to let herself get so attached to a building.

When she finishes her coffee, she rinses the mug and leaves it upside down in the dish rack to dry.

Every Friday, Jesse picks Juliet up from work. Mostly this means that he slouches at the gate that leads to the stone building where she works and they walk back to her apartment together. The walk was pleasant and leisurely at the beginning of the fall semester. As the city cools through November, they walk quicker and talk less. Juliet can feel her nose running. Often, they break up the trip by stopping to eat somewhere along the way.

Tonight, Juliet tugs at his sleeve as they approach the tiny Chinese place that does mostly take-out. There are three tables against the wall that are usually occupied by bored men with loosened ties waiting for brown, grease-spotted bags.

‘I have no cash,’ Jesse mumbles.

Juliet looks up at him. ‘A drug-dealer with no cash?’

‘Shut your fucking mouth,’ Jesse snaps at her. He pulls his hand away from hers as if it has been scalded.

Juliet flinches; she’s only slightly startled. She’s used to his flashes of rage. She fights the urge to apologize and instead chooses to push him a bit more. ‘Well, if it’s so embarrassing it can’t be spoken of . . .’ She shrugs, leaving the rest unsaid. She doesn’t know why she does this exactly, but sometimes it thrills her to walk along the edge of the cliff he has built, to dare him, call his bluff. It feels a little dangerous. And powerful.

Jesse only sneers.

Juliet begins to walk towards the restaurant’s entrance but Jesse pulls her back. She stops on the sidewalk and turns to him, rubbing her shoulder. ‘I have money,’ she explains.

‘Let’s just order a pizza.’ Jesse turns to go and Juliet pulls her coat tighter around her body and follows him.

When they get back to the apartment, Abby’s sitting in the living room with a man she introduces as Ryan. Juliet shoots her an amused look, but Abby’s avoiding her eyes.

Ryan shakes hands with Jesse, then Juliet. ‘The famous Juliet,’ he says, bowing his head.

‘Famous?’

‘Oh, yes. Abby’s been telling me all about you.’

Abby shrugs, admitting to it.

‘And there is quite the family resemblance,’ Ryan continues, ‘which makes me think Abby’s a little bit conceited.’ He lowers his voice, pretending to tell a secret. ‘She went on and on about how pretty you are.’

‘She did not.’ Juliet blushes.

‘She absolutely did.’

‘Juliet has always been beautiful,’ Abby says.

‘You should see her before she puts on her make-up.’ Jesse sits down and puts his heavy boots up on the coffee table.

‘I have,’ Abby says, folding her arms across her chest.

‘We were going to order a pizza,’ Juliet says, to change the subject. ‘Did you guys want to join in?’

Abby and Ryan look at each other and wordlessly come to agreement. The girls go into the kitchen to find the number.

‘Next week is Thanksgiving,’ Abby says, trying hard to sound casual as she rifles through papers in a drawer.

Juliet agrees that it is.

‘The family is going to be at Nana’s. You know they’d love you to come.’

‘He’ll be there?’ Juliet asks.

Abby nods.

‘Have fun.’

‘I could stay here,’ Abby offers, pulling out the list of take-out numbers and shutting the drawer with her hip.

Juliet shrugs. ‘Thanksgiving has never really been a big deal for me. Growing up, we used to go to my aunt Camille’s sometimes. Others we just stayed home. Just another day. Don’t worry.’

‘They’re going to ask about you,’ Abby says.

Juliet sighs. ‘Well, I’m not going to ask you to lie. It’s bad enough that I’ve been keeping his secrets. You shouldn’t have to.’

‘You sure?’

‘Maybe I’m a coward. I don’t want to see Nana’s face when she finds out. But it might be a relief to have it all out.’

Abby reaches out and squeezes her hand quickly. It feels like the pulse of a single heartbeat.

After the pizza has been ordered, the four of them sit in the living room. After a period of polite chit-chat, an awkward silence swells.

Abby claps her hands. ‘We should play Apples to Apples!’

‘What?’ Juliet asks.

Abby gets to her feet and walks to the coat closet.

Ryan rolls his eyes, smiling. ‘It’s a board game. Her favourite. You have to have four people to play so she’s always trying to rope other couples in.’ He flinches a little, obviously realizing his use of the term
other couples.

‘It’s the best game,’ Abby says, as she walks towards them with the box in her hands. ‘It’s like word association but there’s no strategy. It’s totally arbitrary.’

‘“Arbitrary”. That’s Abby’s favourite word.’

Abby sits down and sets the box on the table. ‘Is not.’

‘No? What is it, then? “Petulant”?’ Ryan leans back with a look of utter fascination.

Abby screws her lips into a knot at the side of her face and seems to consider this as if it’s an important question. ‘That
is
a good one,’ she says. ‘There are so many.’

‘“Dichotomy”. “Philanderer”. “Xylophone”.’

Abby scrunches her nose. ‘It would definitely be an adjective.’

‘Now this is an odd game.’ Juliet laughs.

‘What’s your favourite word, Juliet?’ Ryan asks.

Juliet looks up at the ceiling. ‘“Zucchini”,’ she decides.

‘That’s fun,’ Ryan says. ‘I like “bikini”, myself.’

Abby lifts the lid to the game’s box. ‘How about you, Jesse?’ she asks, with a sort of forced civility.

Jesse makes a face at them all and shakes his head. ‘Look, I don’t play word games, okay? And I don’t play board games either.’ He waves his hand at the table dismissively.

‘Oh.’ Abby sits up straighter. ‘Okay, then.’ She replaces the lid, but she doesn’t move the box. It sits in the middle of the table through the awkward pause in the conversation, through Juliet’s monologue about her workday and after the pizza arrives. Juliet notices that Abby doesn’t say a word to Jesse for the rest of the night, but she does seem to keep a pretty close eye on him. Juliet and Ryan do most of the talking. Jesse devours four pieces of pizza and Abby watches him chew.

Juliet sits in bed rubbing lotion into the elephant skin of her elbows. Jesse kicks the heel of his boots against the floor, hops and shakes them off, one at a time. He bends, reaching for the back hem of his sweater and undershirt. As he pulls them off, Juliet can count the ribs in his arched body. He leaves his clothes in a pile on the floor and stands there bare-chested, absentmindedly running his fingers through his hair. His chest is pale and hairless, scrawny as a little boy’s.

He yawns.

‘You’re cute,’ Juliet says, raising her eyebrows up and down in an exaggerated display of sexuality.

‘Oh, yeah?’ Jesse crawls towards her on the bed and bites her softly on the shoulder. She giggles.

‘Gimme that.’ Jesse holds out his hand and she passes him the bottle of lotion. He scrambles to the foot of the bed and puts her feet in his lap. He squeezes the bottle and then slaps the bottom impatiently. In the end, he squeezes out a bit too much.

‘Here.’ Juliet leans forward and scoops up some of the excess.

Jesse takes her foot between both of his hands. ‘The bottoms are like leather,’ he says.