A Song for Julia (29 page)

“I miss her,” Serena replied. Her eyes were dry, and she seemed to be fixed in place, her entire body completely still. “The first two years I was in Boston, she was my best friend. We watched out for each other, you know? But then when I joined the band and moved in with you guys, we started to grow apart. I tried to get her to move in with us, but she wouldn’t do it. Said she was happy down there.”

For a second, it looked almost like her eyes were going to water. Then she looked at me and said, “So there. That’s all you get. Talking about all that shit isn’t going to make it better.”

I shifted in my seat. I didn’t know the right thing to say. None of us in the old crew did. Ewa’s murder had left an open, gaping wound. It completely destroyed the notion we had that we could live day to day, making music, talking bullshit, getting drunk, and that nothing bad would happen as long as we stuck together.

“You know you can talk to me,” I said. “I may be an ass sometimes, but I’m still your friend.”

“You’re too self-centered to be a good friend, Crank.”

I shook my head. “Maybe,” I said. “But all of us learn as we go.” 

“Well, I’m going to give you a little unsolicited advice. Friend. Don’t screw Julia over. Don’t have one too many and forget. If we’re on the road and some groupie crawls into your lap, throw her off, and quick. Because if you want to have any kind of life with that one, you’re going to have to respect her.”

“This conversation is pissing me off,” I said. My reaction was automatic. But the truth was, Serena wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t thought already. I didn’t want to screw this up, but I didn’t exactly have the best track record when it came to women.

“Don’t like having the mirror pointed at you?” she asked.

“Are you drunk?” I asked.

“Of course not, peckerhead. Are you so used to hearing what you want to hear that you can’t take it when someone says the truth to you?”

“Come on,” I replied. “This is me you’re talking to. What do you think I am?”

She shook her head. “I think you’re a mess. I think you’re a hollow man who grabs the nearest drink and the nearest woman the moment life starts to get you down. And I’m afraid that the moment things get hard, you’ll blow it with Julia. And despite all of your failings, I think you deserve someone like her.”

Her words sunk in, and I grimaced. It felt as if someone had just pelted me with little pellets of truth, and they hurt. Hollow man. Why would she say that? And the thing was—her expression told me she was telling me the truth. Exactly what she thought.

I responded with bravado … the only way I knew how. “Not someone like you?”

She raised an eyebrow and curled her lip up slightly at the corner. “I’m way too good for you, Crank.”

With that, she got up and walked away.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Almost time (Julia)

It was a nice day with my family, despite the tension with my mother and the questioning looks from my father. We spent the day touring Boston, then returned to the Charles Hotel, where my father had rented a three-room suite on the top floor. At one point, Carrie and I chased Alexandra and the twins and Andrea into their room and tickled them. Alexandra got so overexcited she puked, but ten minutes later, she was changed into new pajamas and playing again.

I still found it hard to believe how much she’d changed … how much they’d all changed. Especially Carrie, who had shot up nearly a foot sometime in the last year. She was gawky, unsure of herself, but fantastically beautiful in a willowy way that made me think of a runway model. The twins, only toddlers when I left home, had grown taller and very different in personality. Jessica was quiet, almost bookish, and tended to stick close to Mom. Sarah was flamboyant, talking and laughing, running nonstop. 

I enjoyed watching them, and I felt a certain satisfaction knowing that one day, Sarah was probably going to drive my mother completely insane.

After Alexandra and the younger girls were in bed, Carrie and I sat together on the floor, leaning against the bed in the room she was sharing with Alexandra. 

“Something’s different about you,” she said.

I quirked an eyebrow.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know how to say this without being offensive,” she said.

I gave her a questioning look. “What did I do?”

“It’s not that. It’s that … you seem … well … happy. I don’t think I ever realized it before. But you don’t smile. Ever. But today, you’ve been smiling a lot. It’s nice.”

My eyes pricked with tears.

She leaned forward and said, “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to …”

“No, it’s okay,” I said. “You’re right. I’ve never been a very happy person.”

“Because of you and Mom?”

“Why would you say that?” I asked, deflecting her question.

She bit her lip, looking unsure of herself, and then seemed to make up her mind about something. “Come on, Julia. I may be younger than you, but I’m not an idiot. You never came out of your room your senior year in high school, except when you two were screaming at each other. I’ve never seen someone so—desperately unhappy. It’s like you had a cloud over you, all the time. But something seems different now … I saw Mom giving you those looks, but you were just blowing her off. What happened between you two?”

I looked at my little sister then, for the first time. She was becoming a young woman—smart, self-possessed, and apparently far more aware of what went on around her than I realized. And maybe the bug of confession had gotten to me, or something, but I found that I wanted to talk with her. I wanted to have a sister I could trust, someone who could be a friend and confidante. And so I did something that really surprised me. I held out my hand, palm up. She took it, and I slid back my sleeve, and the bundle of bracelets I always wore.

My friendship bracelet, made in middle school. My seventh grade year, Barry came back from leave in the States and brought me the kit to make them. I worked on them for what seemed like forever that winter and spring. I kept one, pink and white and very frayed now, because I never took it off. The watch he also gave me, the Christmas after eighth grade. I treasured them. But now, I slid them back, far enough up my wrist to show the scars.

She sucked in a breath when she saw them. People rarely notice them, mostly because of all the crap I wear on my wrist. 

“That was my senior year of high school,” I said.

Her eyes had grown wide, and she looked at me and said, “It was that bad?”

I nodded. “Yeah. It was.”

“What happened, Julia?”

And so, haltingly, in slow bursts of words, I told her the story. But first I looked over her shoulder to make sure Alexandra was completely asleep. It was one thing to discuss this with Carrie, who would be eighteen in a few more months. It was another thing entirely to discuss it with a twelve-year-old.

When I finished the story, she said, “I had no idea.”

“Of course not. I mean … what were you, nine years old? And my senior year, you were in middle school, and I was so … so isolated. After what Lana did to me, I didn’t think I could ever trust anyone again.”

She looked at me, seriously, and asked, “So why now?”

Crank had asked me the same question. Why now? The reason I’d given him seemed to still stand. I was sick of being alone.

“Well,” I said, “it’s going to sound weird. But I met a boy. He just turned seventeen a few weeks ago. He has Asperger’s. Do you know what that is?”

“Yeah, I know a couple Aspies at school.”

“Do they get bullied?”

Carrie grinned. “Used to. But we kind of have a … a posse. We don’t let anybody screw with them.”

I smiled back at her. “God, Carrie, I love you.”

“So what happened? Are you dating this boy? Isn’t seventeen a little young for you?”

I laughed. “No—not dating. I’m … well … I’m seeing his older brother. You’ll meet him tomorrow. But Sean—the Aspie I was telling you about—he’s going through a tough time, especially at school. And it’s a lot like what I went through in school. And somehow we got to talking. And I told him the whole story. This is going to sound crazy, but I feel—I don’t know. Free. Like I’ve never felt before.”

She put a hand on my shoulder. Carrie was so much taller than I was, she didn’t have to stretch at all to do it.

“Having people you can trust will do that,” she said. “So, Mom … she doesn’t know what happened, does she?”

“She thinks she knows. She knows about the abortion. But not the circumstances.” I sighed. “She never gave me a chance to explain, to talk about it. Just assumed the worst.”

Carrie grimaced. “Yeah, she can do that, can’t she?”

I snorted, and she asked me another question, one that shook me. “Do you ever wonder—about the baby?”

Oh God, did I? All the time. How could I not? I had to struggle to hold back tears as I said, “She’d be about the same age as the twins. And I’ll never know … what she would have been like.”

I started crying again, silently, and I said, “God, could I be more pathetic? I can’t stop crying! I did this with Crank last week, too.”

My sister pulled me tighter. “Maybe it’s overdue.”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

“Promise me one thing, Julia?”

“What?”

“Let’s make a deal. If our sisters ever need us … like you needed Mom … we’ll be there for them. No matter what. Okay? She means well, but … she isn’t very good at that. But I don’t ever want them to go through this. Deal?”

Carrie had no idea that she’d just said and done exactly the right thing. I grabbed her in a huge hug and whispered, “Deal. We’ll protect them.”

I went to bed feeling good. Really good. What Carrie said about protecting our sisters had reminded me that there were four little girls who needed me. I’d done everything I could for the last few years to avoid being needed by anyone. I’d done everything I could to avoid needing anyone. But something in the last few weeks made me realize I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to be isolated, armored, on the defensive all the time and unable to connect to other people. And knowing that in Carrie I had a friend and ally in that? It made a big difference.

Mom and Dad insisted on an early breakfast the next morning in the hotel dining room. They hadn’t been happy at all when I told them I was having lunch with Crank’s family, but I hadn’t given them much option. They’d been even less happy when I informed them I was bringing a guest to Thanksgiving dinner. But again, I’d given them no option. If they wanted me there, they’d have to accept Crank being there, too. So breakfast was a little tense. But that was okay. Afterward, I walked to my car and drove to Jack’s.

It was almost eleven A.M. when I pulled the rental car up behind the house and parked. It was cold outside, the sky a steel grey, a few snow flurries falling from the sky here and there, not enough to matter, especially given the mounds of snow piled up on the sides of the road by the plows from the weekend before.

I got out of the car, being careful not to drag the hem of my dress in the crusted, week old snow, then reached in the car for the dessert I’d had delivered to the hotel that morning, a gluten-free cranberry coffee cake. I could tell I’d gain weight just from looking at it. And I wanted to look, a lot. It was a challenge finding it—I’d ended up talking to a specialty bakery in Brookline to get it made. But I wasn’t going to bring anything into the house that Sean couldn’t eat, if I could avoid it.

I felt a twinge of anxiety as I reached the top step. I could hear shouting inside. It sounded like Sean and Jack.

I sighed and closed my eyes. If Sean was having a meltdown, I needed to mentally prepare myself. I cared a great deal about Sean. But he was emotionally volatile, and I’ve spent my adult life avoiding emotionally volatile people and situations.

It was hard not to second-guess myself. Was being involved with Crank, with this family, the right thing to do?

Of course, it was a little late to be asking that question now, wasn’t it? 

I rapped on the door with my knuckles and waited, slightly hopping up and down on the balls of my feet to stay warm. My mother had looked disapprovingly at my boots this morning. She wasn’t a believer in wearing boots with a dress. She wasn’t a believer in much that I did.

A very frazzled looking Crank, dressed in torn jeans and a ragged t-shirt, answered the door. His eyes brightened when he saw me. He ushered me in, a grin on his face. “I am so happy to see you. Don’t mind them,” he said, gesturing vaguely to the front of the house. I could hear Jack shouting something.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Crank sighed. “Sean got in trouble in school yesterday morning, pretty big trouble.”

I grimaced. “And they’re still fighting about it?” I asked.

“My dad said something that set him off.”

I sighed and followed Crank to the living room. “Can I put this in the fridge?” I asked.

“I’ll take it,” he said. “Getting by them might be challenging.”

I passed the cake to Crank and shrugged out of my coat, laying it on the back of a chair.  A moment later he was back in the living room, and his eyes widened.

“You look … lush. Almost edible.” His eyes swept up and down, like searchlights, and I suddenly felt incredibly self-conscious. I was wearing a grey sleeveless dress, tight fitting in the bodice, with an ankle-length skirt. He approached, putting his hands on my waist. “I’d really like to kiss you right now.”

“Um … I’d like that,” I said in a small voice.

He leaned his head close and nipped at my lower lip with a grin and then kissed me. My mouth opened, our tongues just touching.

The front door slammed open, rattling the doorstop.

“Mother of Christ, it’s cold out there!” shouted Tony as he entered. Crank and I separated, just slightly, and Tony shouted, “Don’t let me stop you two from smooching!”

I laughed a little, and Crank and I leaned our foreheads together for just a second. Then I stepped back. “Tony, are you always this obnoxious?”