WISHBONE (17 page)

What if I had done more?

“I don’t know what to say. I am very sorry, Rachael. I…I do not remember this. There is no excuses.” 

Rachael leaned forward and softly kissed his lips. “I know you are.” She nodded. “It really is okay.”

Lighting streaked, illuminating the room briefly.

He pointed to the window, “Un, deux, trios…” Earsplitting thunder echoed through the house shaking the walls once again.

Rachael gave a quick glance outside. She wanted to get back to the point. “So, what I was saying is…you showed me your wish before it could come true.” She thought quickly and beat Julien to correction. “
If
it was going to come true,” she admitted.

Julien smiled knowing this was for his benefit.

She continued her hypothesis. “So, we read the wish and that would be grounds for…well, like if this were a scientific study, that would be like contamination or something.  Whatever you call it, we messed up and therefore we need to have a
do over
.” 

He lay there watching her talk. She was once again bright-eyed and alive. 

“Okay,” he agreed.

She sat staring at him, her mouth agape. “Okay? Just like that?”

Julien gestured ardently asking, “Do you want for me to say no?”

“No, no, no. I just didn’t…never mind.” She brushed at the air. “Okay then….do you have a wish? Do you know what you want to wish for?”

“No, I do not.” He crushed his cigarette butt in a small ashtray on the side table. “You see Rachael, unlike you; I like my life as it is.” He saw her eyes dim and he stopped. “Go get me coffee while I think of this wish.”

Rachael dropped the wishbone on the nightstand and ran off with a smile on her face.

Julien wanted to disprove Rachael’s outrageous theory and play the game for the last time, never to have this discussion again. He would have to put his heart into it and come up with a valid wish, so there could be no question.

Rachael returned with a steaming mug. Julien took a few sips of coffee and placed the mug on Rachael’s copy of
Watership Down
.

“Are you ready?” He moved close to her.

She grinned, amused and quite pleased by his willingness. “You’re ready?” 

“Merde. Casse-toi, Rachael, yes, I am ready. Are you ready?”

She nodded.

“Okay, you say when? He said, taking one end of the bone and promising himself silently that it would be the last time.

Rachael peeked through squinted eyes, surprised to find him cooperating. She shut her eyes tight and began to wish. A moment passed and she whispered, “Are you done?”

He nodded, eyes still shut tight. 

Rachael pulled at the bone

Tink!
 

The bone snapped leaving Julien holding the larger end once again. 

Rachael threw her minuscule half at him. “Urrrg!”  She growled and flopped backwards, over his legs. “I give up!” she declared to the heavens.

Julien laughed uncomfortably. He did not mean to keep winning the game and was as shocked by his luck as she was. 

The faint tone of his cell phone indicated he had a message. He looked around the room trying to remember where he had put it then realized it was still in the pocket of his jeans, which he had slept in. He reached beneath the blankets, pulling out the phone and dialed his voicemail.

Rachael sat up and tugged at him. “What is it?”

Julien put his hand over her mouth. “Shhh,” he said quietly. He listened carefully. 

Rachael took his hand away from her face and mouthed something he could not understand; Julien ignored her. 

He listened intently for a few moments before saving the message and hanging up.

Rachael sat before him; she could tell something was troubling him. Julien stared at the blankets covering his lap, deep in thought.

“Jules! What the Hell? Who was it?”

 “I got the Albany Parks Department ad campaign.”

“Julien, that’s amazing. That’s great news.” She dove forward to kiss him, but he pulled back.

“I did not bid on it,” he said calmly.

Rachael was confused. “What do you mean?”

“I saw they were looking a few weeks ago. They were taking bids on the job.”

She still did not get it. “Okay… so?”

“I did not think Albany would consider a one-man operation so I saved the bidding form but never sent it.”

Rachael eyed him closely. “What did you wish?” she spoke out of a dry mouth.

“I thought I could not talk to you of this, no?”

Rachael’s eyes fluttered. She searched for a way around the question. “Did your wish have anything to do with that job?”

Julien nodded.

“Like, did it really have to do with it? Like, do you feel like we can safely say your wish came true?” She was careful but adamant.

He nodded again. 

Julien’s wish had been simple. He had wanted to bid on the Albany account, but his insecurities had caused him to put off filling out the bidding form, allowing the deadline to pass.  He had been disappointed with himself for not taking the chance. His wish had been simple and concise.

I wish I had the Albany Parks ad campaign account.
 

Something he knew could not happen, having never placed his bid. 

Rachael jumped from the bed. She was both ecstatic and spooked by the realization. She pointed at him excitably and exclaimed, “I told you!”

Julien hardly noticed her, deep in his own thoughts, attempting to find a rational explanation for a coincidence of this magnitude;
there was none
. He hadn’t even filled in the bidding form, nevertheless sent it off; therefore, there was absolutely no chance of the Department even knowing who he was, yet the representative had called and awarded him the account.

He felt a chill run up his spine and he looked at Rachael grinning at him from the corner of the room. They both began to laugh.

It worked. The fucking wishbone really worked.

No! This is impossible.

It’s not impossible. It really worked.

Julien sat up at the edge of the bed. Rachael, still fluctuating between delight and shock, came around to kneel beside him.

“Are you alright?” she asked, studying him. “You’re white as a sheet. Say something.”

“Sarah…is she still here?”

“No…she left hours ago.”

“She comes back sometimes. Are you sure she is not here?”

Rachael shrugged. “I…I don’t know, Jules. I don’t think so.”

Julien got up, practically trampling over her. Rachael followed him downstairs to the front door.

“Julien, what are you doing? Where are you going?” She yelled over the deafening sound of rain pouring down upon the porch roof.

“I’ll be right back,” he stated. He opened the door and stepped out onto the porch wearing only a pair of jeans. Lightening struck the front yard less than thirty feet from the porch, followed by a loud rumble.

“Jules, don’t. Wait until the storm passes.” She held onto him.

He pulled away from her saying, “Just wait here.”

She knew he would not listen to reason. She ran through the kitchen watching him pass by the window behind the sink. She lost view of him and ran into the mudroom finding him again through the large bay window. She watched him jog over the bridge, soaking wet, and disappear inside the barn. 

It felt like an eternity as she waited, wondering what he was up to and positive that he would not find Sarah.

She whispered, “What are you doing?” Her eye caught movement in the coop. The chickens scattered, and then Julien popped briefly into view before disappearing once again.  From where she stood, she could see only a small portion of the coop and she wondered what was happening. She stood at the window for several minutes more with no sign of Julien. She began to pace the length of the mudroom nervously. It would be a long while, and only when she began to contemplate going out after him, did she spot him in the barn doorway again. 

He yanked the doors closed then turned back for the house. In his left hand, hanging upside down alongside his leg, he carried a chicken. She ran back through the kitchen and dining room, past the living room and back out onto the porch. She watched Julien stagger toward her in the torrential downpour, the dead bird swinging at his side, slapping against his leg. She ran back inside for a towel returning just in time for him to walk through the front door.

She rushed to him. “You’re soaked.” She tried to place the towel over his shoulders but he kept walking, heading straight for the kitchen. He dropped the bird carelessly down into the sink then stood there bracing himself on the counter, breathing heavily and dripping water onto the slate floor. Rachael came up behind him with the towel and did her best to dry him. She looked into the sink. The bird was not butchered neatly as with Sarah’s offerings. There were random blood-stained feathers protruding from its flesh. It appeared to be hacked with an improper tool, cut violently, small bits of entrails remaining. Julien ran the water and finished cleaning the bird to the best of his ability. He pumped at a dispenser lathering his hands with an overabundance of dish soap. 

Julien scrubbed his hands, wrists, forearms, obsessively. He did not care that the soap was running down over their next meal as he silently and repeatedly lathered and rinsed, scrubbing at his skin hysterically with his fingernails. His arms were bright red under the burning hot water. It did not matter how well he washed; it was his memory he needed rinsed clean. Haunted, he could see its tiny blinking eye as he had held the bird’s neck in his fists. Silently it had accepted its fate, but now the vision refused to vacate his mind…. the idea of the ease in which it forfeited its life… the simplicity and little strength that it took to end that life. 

What else will I learn to do?

What else am I capable of?

He was scaring her, silently mutilating himself over the sink, she shut the water and stood there watching his arms drip over the dead bird and gently rubbing the small of his back.

“Enough Jules…It’s gone...Your hands are clean,” she said.

He stepped back still glaring at the sink. “Cook it,” he ordered then walked away.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Julien rode alongside a cow pasture on route 23. He slowed down the vintage 1953
Indian Chief
Motorcycle purring between his knees long enough to watch some cows graze. He couldn’t help but think of his grandparent’s farm. He reached the end of the pasture fence and accelerated again, a rapid black streak of machinery flying over the hills surrounding Kings Hollow. 

It had been years since he felt this kind of freedom. So many years, he had forgotten it was even possible. He had not been on a bike since leaving France. The straight-laced, white-collar, uptown lifestyle, and years of denial had chased away
that side
of Julien. 

On the open road, he felt adrenaline pulsing through him as he thought about how well he had acclimated and conformed to the changes he had forced upon himself. He was born a country boy accustomed to dirty fingernails and calloused hands. He spent his teens an angry, rebellious daredevil, fighting in unofficial boxing matches held in neighboring barns. Fights, which were a popular pastime in the area and reason for the older men to gather solely for the entertainment of watching kids bloody one another. Though there were small winnings to take home to their families, the matches were mostly to escape boredom and release teenage angst. 

His grandmother had wanted more for him than the dairy farm could offer. She put up with the constant trouble he often brought home to her, but refused to allow him to give up on school, as most of his friends had. If Julien were out late into the night, she would wait for him, napping by the fire until he returned, and then she would sit patiently beside him, demanding he finish his schoolwork, though
she
could hardly read. She never stopped him from running off with the others but she held him accountable afterward. She was silently aware of the anger inside of him—an anger that could easily destroy her grandson’s future and was caused by the drunken ramblings of an alcoholic father;
her son
. Such ramblings, spewed at Julien from the time he was born until the day Jérome went away for the murder of his own father and brutal beating of Julien.

Julien’s had been a childhood of unwavering insults and constant blame for the death of his mother and Jérome’s state of misery. Upon arriving in the States, he was given a part-time job through the college in a mailroom on Madison Avenue. It was there he decided the man he needed to be, picking the best qualities of each executive who crossed his path, mimicking them; their bravado, their fine clothing, until he had created a character of quality. The one thing Julien could not bring himself to do was to lie, instead opting to leave his past a mystery and saying little when asked of his childhood in France. 

To the people from which Julien came, six-hundred-dollar shoes and camelhair coats were unheard of and useless, yet he had managed to come to the U.S. on an international student scholarship with hardly more than the knowledge of American curse words and a forced education insisted upon by his dedicated grandmother. He left the aging woman behind reluctantly and unaware that she would die a mere four months later, before he could see her again. 

The dairy was sold, arrangements made by a close family friend and money wired to an account set up in Julien’s name. The small amount of money enabled him to finish his education, and remain in New York City, truly embedding himself in the new life he created, free and clear of his past, all but the nightmares. These were vivid dreams, instant replays of moments from his youth,
horrific moments
, which still plagued him frequently, more than three decades later. 

By the time he met Rachael, there was no longer any sign of the rebel country boy, who had been completely replaced by a type A,
obsessive compulsive, successful (though somewhat troubled)  ad-executive, who was riding the merry-go-round and living a very anticlimactic and austere life. Now, less than one month since the wishbones entered their lives, he felt he was living the best of both worlds. He was enjoying the exhilaration and boldness of his youth, while having the maturity and awareness, which would keep them safe.