The Truth About Julia: A Chillingly Timely Psychological Novel

by Schaffner Anna

  I still followed Julia like a shadow at the beginning of that year, and tried to help with all her initiatives. At the homeless shelter, for example, Julia chatted away to the shelter’s visitors while they had their meals in the dining room, and in the meantime I’d collect their empty plates and put them in the dishwasher, clean up the kitchen and serve seconds, and things like that. Unlike Julia, I’m hopeless at small talk. But Julia was really interested in the stories of the homeless – she wanted to know everything about them: where they came from, what they’d done in the past, how they had ended up on the street, how they were spending their days, what they thought of government policies on tackling homelessness, and so on. The shelter crowd adored Julia – they called her ‘angel’ and felt incredibly flattered by her interest in them. They had a glow in their eyes when they spoke to her, and some even cried when she touched them – she often took their hands in hers, rubbed their backs, and removed leaves from their hair.

  During the weekly school debates, I’d usually sit right by my sister’s side, and fetch things like water, crackers and pens when needed, and otherwise just listened to her rhetorical artistry, completely spellbound like the rest of the audience. Julia set specific topics for each session, such as ‘Should Rapists be Castrated?’; ‘The Psycho-Politics of Charity: Altruism or Narcissism?’; and ‘Redistribution: Ethical Obligation or Economic Suicide?’ Usually two or three kids agreed to debate with her each week, which was pretty brave considering that Julia always won any argument, no matter whether she really believed in the side she had adopted for the purposes of the discussion. No one ever even got close to posing a semi-serious intellectual challenge to her. I think she saw these debates as practice, like a boxer who lets laughably unworthy opponents into the ring just to keep himself fit for a real fight in the future. In any case, the rest of us just enjoyed the show. But after a few months Julia got bored with the society, appointed a new president and debate leader and moved on. The society withered away soon after her departure.

  Her waning interest in the debating society was also directly related to her growing interest in someone she’d recently met at the Oxfam shop. He was twenty-three years old, tall, and had floppy blond hair that kept tumbling into his face. He used to flip it back with a jerk of his head that made him look like a camp horse attempting to get rid of a bothersome fly. He always wore green corduroys, white shirts with cuffs, cravats and a tweed jacket – a bit Brideshead Revisited, you know? That ridiculously arch lord-of-the-manor style? Five Saturdays in a row, he lingered for hours in the shop during Julia’s shifts, pretending to study the record and book collection. Behind his back we giggled because he was just so totally obvious – we couldn’t believe the amount of time and energy he invested in keeping up this farce. It was clear what he was really interested in. Julia would always politely ask him whether she could help him with anything, and he’d blush, shake his head, tug at his ridiculous cravat and pull out a random book, which he’d then stare at for half an hour.

  Eventually – I think it took him about six or seven weeks – he mustered up the courage to ask Julia out for a coffee. He was called Jeremy and was studying for an MA in Politics at King’s. Obviously I trailed along to their first date. We went to some boho café in town after Julia’s shift, where the two of them hotly debated until closing time whether or not communism was compatible with human nature, or whether the accumulation of private property and personal privileges was a necessary driving force for economic and creative productivity. I got bored with their discussion, and I can’t remember what they agreed on in the end. I was also disturbed by some changes I perceived in Julia that day. All evening, she didn’t make any effort to include me in the discussion, not even once. Usually, she’d do that, and make sure that her friends spoke to me, too, so that I wouldn’t feel left out. But that evening, she didn’t even look at me – her gaze remained fixed on Jeremy. They agreed to meet again the next day.

  On our way home Julia was silent. I was kind of hoping she’d mock Jeremy’s absurdly posh accent, or his vain hair-tossing, or that she’d dismiss his preposterous political positions, but she didn’t. I asked whether I could sleep in her bed that night, but she said she was tired and needed to rest. The next day – it was a bright autumn afternoon that contrasted starkly with my darkening mood – we all went to the zoo together. Julia and Jeremy were outraged by the perversity of taking animals out of their natural habitat and imprisoning them in cages so that they could satisfy the voyeuristic desires of bored bourgeois families. They hatched plans to liberate a black panther that had attracted their sympathy because of his sad eyes and psychotic pacing in his little cage. They made all kinds of other ridiculous plans like that. Again, they didn’t pay any attention to me at all. I fell behind at some point, and from a distance I saw that Jeremy took Julia’s hand and that she didn’t pull it away. It really turned my stomach, that moment.

  After the zoo, Jeremy took us to a vegetarian restaurant for supper. They talked non-stop, really intensely, again until closing time. I hadn’t eaten my meal because I had kind of lost my appetite, but nobody noticed and nobody asked whether I wanted anything else. When Julia and Jeremy shared a dessert they didn’t offer me any of it. It really was as though I had ceased to exist, all of a sudden. At some point later in the evening I went to the loo because I just couldn’t repress any longer the sobs that were threatening to break out. I didn’t want to cry in front of Jeremy – I’d started to massively dislike the guy. I stayed there for at least twenty minutes, and expected Julia to come and look for me, but she never did. When I finally returned to the table, I saw that Jeremy’s hand was on her arm. I stood behind them for a while, just looking, and trying to control my agitation. They hadn’t noticed that I’d come back.

  ‘Can I see you again tomorrow?’ Jeremy asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Julia said. ‘We could go and see a film together – actually, Amy and I really wanted to see Psycho again. I think it’s showing tomorrow afternoon at the Curzon.’

  ‘Look, Julia, what I meant was can I see you, not you and your sister. I find it a little creepy, the way she follows you around. No offence, but it just doesn’t seem quite right at her age – doesn’t she have any friends of her own? And what about you – don’t you ever get tired of having to drag her along?’

  And then he looked at her, from below, in that slimy, puppy-dog kind of way, you know? My heart started pounding like mad when I heard that. Surely Julia would throw her drink into Jeremy’s face, get up and never see him again. Surely she wouldn’t let that go unpunished. She’d smashed someone on the head with a bottle once for having kissed me, after all. What would she do to Jeremy? Spit in his face? Stick her fork into his arm? I held my breath. But Julia did nothing of the kind. Instead, she laughed. Then she pressed his hand and said:

  ‘OK, I suppose Amy can go and watch Psycho on her own tomorrow.’

  I slipped away and then returned to the table a few minutes later, white and shaking. Not that anyone noticed. The next day, Julia went off after school to meet Jeremy without me. For the first time ever, I had to take the bus home on my own. The house felt cold and empty – our parents always used to come home late. I did my homework in the kitchen. When I had finished I just didn’t know what to do with myself. I went up to my room and sat on the bed all evening, waiting for Julia to return. I refused to come down to eat with my parents. I was kind of hoping that Julia’s date was going horribly wrong, that she’d burst into my room outraged and tell me what an atrocious kisser Jeremy was, that he had mackerel breath, and that he was a clownish toff. That she was sorry for having neglected me so horribly the other day. Then we would both cry and embrace and she’d let me sleep in her bed that night and confess everything that had happened between her and Jeremy. We’d laugh about it and all would be as before. But that wasn’t what happened. Julia didn’t come home before two in the morning. When she checked in on me, I pretended to be asleep. I had cried so much that night I�
�d run out of tears.

  From that day, the rift between her and me grew wider and wider. She spent all her days and most of her evenings with Jeremy, and when I saw her in the mornings and sometimes on the school bus – the only occasions when we still spent time together – she seemed totally preoccupied. She didn’t share her thoughts with me anymore. She never said a single negative word about Jeremy and only ever told me how fantastic and beautiful and intelligent he was, you know? Most of our conversations revolved around what Jeremy thought about this and what Jeremy thought about that. It was tedious, and I began to really hate the guy, more than I’d ever hated anyone in my life. He had taken the only thing I ever really cared for away from me. He had changed my sister beyond recognition.

  I think it must have been around that time that my health began to deteriorate. I mean, I obviously didn’t plan this or anything, I just felt really down and lost my appetite and grew more and more listless. I spent a lot of time lying on my bed. I just didn’t know what to do with my life without Julia in it. Mum tried to speak to me about Julia a couple of times, but in a fairly half-hearted way. She must have noticed that she couldn’t really rely on Julia to care for my wellbeing anymore, and considered it her duty to at least pretend to care. One evening, when I had again refused to leave my bedroom and have supper with my parents, she came upstairs and sat with me on my bed. She took my hand and talked about first experiences of love, and explained they can be intense and all-consuming and all that. She said she was sure that Julia loved me just as much as before but that I had to give her some space for a while and allow her to explore her feelings. She said that Julia had been the most selfless and caring sister imaginable, and that I had to accept that there were parts of her life now in which I could no longer participate. She reminded me that I wasn’t a child anymore, and that Julia had grown into a young woman. She suggested I get out more, find some friends, play sports, and so on. What any half-decent mother would say. I’m sure you can imagine it.

  I lost a lot of weight in the first few weeks after Jeremy had destroyed the only close bond I ever had. I missed school a couple of times because I just felt too ill to face the outside world. On a Sunday afternoon, about two months after Jeremy had first asked her out, Julia returned home earlier than usual. She said she wanted to spend some time with me. She said she was worried about me and that she felt we’d lost touch. Those were exactly the words I’d been dying to hear for weeks, but when I finally did hear them I just couldn’t believe that she really meant what she was saying. It had taken her too long, you know? Far too long. I kept thinking that our mother must have asked Julia to talk to me, that she’d much rather be with Jeremy and that I’d become nothing but a nuisance and a chore, a limp, sick albatross around her neck. But she still managed to coax me into getting dressed, and to go out and have coffee with her.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Amy?’ she asked when we were seated at a small table in the very same café where she and Jeremy had met for their first date, which I thought was a rather unfortunate choice, to be honest. ‘Why have you stopped eating? Why do you spend all your time locked up in your room? I so wish you could be happy for me – I’m in love, you know? It’s wonderful, and it’ll happen to you soon, too, I’m sure. This should be a special time for me, but I feel like you’re punishing me for something. I haven’t abandoned you, you know? You’re still my lovely little sister, and I care so much for you. Can’t you see that? But I have to start living my own life, and you need to start living yours.’

  I began to cry. I couldn’t speak. This wasn’t at all what I’d expected. A part of me had still been hoping that I’d become her confidante once again, like in the old days, that she’d finally admit that Jeremy wasn’t that great after all, that he was terrible in bed and really boring company. But Julia wasn’t impressed with my tears. Instead of hugging me, she sighed, rolled her eyes and ordered cake. It was pretty cold, I thought, to be honest.

  ‘You really need to start eating again, Amy. Mum and Dad are terribly worried about you, and so am I. But I also feel that your little hunger strike is a bit passive-aggressive, as though you’re trying to make me feel guilty. Don’t do that to me, OK? Come on, let’s be friends again. These cakes look delicious, don’t they?’

  It was a totally unfair accusation, and really infantilizing, too, and I didn’t like it one bit. Then she started to talk about how wonderfully clever Jeremy and his friends were, what an exciting time she was having, how the two of them went to all kinds of political gatherings, and that their entire group of friends would travel to Cuba over the winter holidays for two weeks. She had long finished her cake – a large slice of Black Forest gateau – and I could tell that she was watching me and expecting me to eat mine, too, but I just couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t. I pushed bits of cake around my plate to give the impression I was engaging with my food, but every time I lifted my fork I felt like my throat was constricting and my mouth was going dry.

  The next morning, Mum came up to my room and sat down on my bed again. She took my hand and suggested I see a therapist because she and Dad were extremely concerned about my weight loss – it was totally obvious to me that Julia had instructed her to do so. She was clearly trying to pass on responsibility to someone else once again, so that she could stop worrying about me. Someone who’d get paid for it, like a nanny or something. It was humiliating. But once a week for three years to come – until I, too, left home for university – I visited the consultancy of a woman called Molly Unsworth-Todd, who tried to help me to come to terms with what she called my ‘issues with nurture’. But our sessions didn’t help at all, as you can probably tell. I didn’t like that woman, and I don’t think she liked me much, either. Often, we sat in silence for almost the entire fifty minutes. It was pretty uncomfortable, actually. Most of the time, I just didn’t feel like sharing anything with her. She wore this weirdly shaped small golden medallion on a chain around her neck, and I kept thinking that she’d somehow convince me to join some strange cult if I opened up to her. I also didn’t like the way she folded her plump white little hands in her lap, like she was secretly praying to some obscure divinity. She was getting paid to listen to me, that was her job, and I just never believed her for a second when she said she cared, you know? I mean, obviously she didn’t. She just did it for the money.

  Julia did travel to Cuba, and apparently had an amazing time there, and she stayed together with Jeremy for another two months. But shortly before she finished school, she broke up with him – she’d decided quite suddenly that he was a total hypocrite, all words and no action. She seemed to get over the end of her relationship very quickly, in spite of what Mum had told me about the ‘intensity’ and ‘all-consuming nature’ of first love. She delivered a highly politicized speech at our school’s end-of-year ceremony, which enraged some of the parents so much that they hissed and heckled. It was pretty amazing, really. Virtually all the school kids, in contrast, supported her, and we broke into loud ‘Julia’ chants that completely drowned out the parental sounds of discontent. Lots of parents got up and left the hall in protest. When she’d finished, Julia raised her right fist and smiled triumphantly – she looked stunning at that moment. Her long hair shone in the limelight, she had put on mauve lipstick that emphasized her pale, delicate skin, and she wore a simple black shift dress with old Doc Marten boots. Everyone who was still in the hall stood up and cheered. It was a totally memorable event, and even the local newspaper ran an article about the ‘beautiful communist graduate’ who had ‘transformed a traditionally dull and peaceful ceremony into a generational battlefield’.

  Just a couple of weeks later, Julia packed the super-light green backpack that my parents had given her together with a plane ticket as a reward for her amazing A-level results, and left for India. Before she departed for her gap year, we made a deal: Julia promised to email me as often as possible, and in return, I had to promise her to eat. In the few weeks between her breakup with Jeremy and h
er departure for India, we had grown a bit closer again. For the very last time, I felt like I was an important part of her life. She told me some pretty hilarious stories about Jeremy and his phony champagne-socialist friends – I think they all ended up really annoying her in the end. But otherwise, she focused all her energies on planning her trip. We’d sit cross-legged on the floor in her room, looking at maps together, deciding on routes and marking up her Lonely Planet guidebook. Her plan was to travel the country for three months and then join a volunteer organization based in Punjab that fought for fairer trade rules and economic justice for the agricultural labourers of the region. We ended up deciding that she’d spend three weeks in Mumbai, then travel south to Goa, where she was planning to visit some alternative communities and two yogis whom some friends had recommended to her. After about two months, she’d travel north, along the coast by bus and train, passing through Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan until she reached her volunteer post in a small village on the border with Pakistan.

  I accompanied her on numerous shopping trips to buy her travel equipment: together, we chose heavy watertight walking boots and a pair of strong sandals; two sets of khaki-coloured cargo pants and white linen shirts; one fleece pullover; a good-quality rain-jacket; a pocket knife; pepper spray; a sleeping bag and a sleeping mat; a lightweight one-person tent and a tiny gas cooker. We’d often lie on her bed and she would read aloud to me the texts she was studying in preparation: histories of India and various books about economics, globalization and the fair-trade movement. She also started to read Salman Rushdie, but gave up on him almost immediately. She never really liked fiction.

  My parents and Julia clashed over something a few weeks before she left. I heard their raised voices in the kitchen one night, long after supper, and I think I also heard Julia crying, but I never found out what it was all about. The door was firmly shut and I couldn’t hear the details, no matter how hard I tried. She seemed strange and distant after that for a few days, wandering around dazed, like a sleepwalker, but then she gradually switched back to her normal lovely self.