by Melissa Bank
My mother giggled. Around her mother, she became my age.
My father said, "Hair is the roof of the soul."
—•—
Before dinner, my grandmother read the newspaper, tsk-ing and complaining to no one in particular that the world was going to hell. Everything was wrong; nothing was the way it used to be.
"What do you think was so good about the good old days?" I asked, in exasperation. But I heard how harsh my voice was and didn't like it. I said, "What do you miss, I mean?"
While she thought, I waited to make my point: that everything was much better now than it used to be; I'd cite the civil rights and women's movements.
"The boy who lit the street lamps in the evening," she said, finally. "He carried a stool with him."
I understood then—it was like missing Nantucket—and I put my hand on top of hers. It occurred to me that everything was more complicated than I thought.
—•—
We were finishing dessert when Henry and Julia showed up.
Right away, my mother acted like we were all in on a big surprise for my grandmother—Look! Here's Henry! He didn't even seem to notice. He let my mother introduce Julia, who was trying to smile and not quite pulling it off.
Maybe my grandmother could see Julia was older, or she might've disapproved of any girlfriend Henry brought home; she gave him a big hug—like he was still a boy and still belonged to us—and gave Julia an Ice Queen, "How do you do?"
Henry sat in the farthest seat from Julia's. He didn't look at her, and a few minutes later he went to his room.
I waited a while for him to come out, and when he didn't I went in after him. "What are you doing?" I asked.
He didn't answer. He was holding his guitar, but just moving his fingers around to make chords he didn't play.
"Julia is out there alone," I said. "With Grandmom."
"She can take care of herself," he said.
I said, "She shouldn't have to take care of herself," and went back to the kitchen.
My grandmother had started doing the dishes. I told her I'd do them, but she just moved over. I rinsed the plates and handed them to her to put in the dishwasher.
She kept handing plates back to me to rerinse. "You're not washing them thoroughly," she said.
"I'm just rinsing them," I said. "The dishwasher is supposed to wash them. That's why it's called a dishwasher."
My father gave me a stern look.
I was ready to abandon my post at the sink, but I stayed where I was for Julia's sake. I was her shield.
I imagined that we were in wartime Paris, and my job was to distract the Nazi hausfrau from Julia, the Jewish woman we were hiding until she could escape; I was her only chance.
It was my parents who escaped, to their room, though it wasn't even ten o'clock.
Julia was just waiting to go into Henry's room to talk. But I knew my grandmother would stay up as long as we did. When I suggested a walk to Julia, my grandmother protested, but we left anyway.
In the driveway, Julia said, "I could use a drink."
I told her I knew somewhere we could go.
"Just a guess," she said, "but I don't think your parents would want me to take you to a bar."
"That's true," I said. "It's not just a bar, though."
I ran back inside and asked Henry for the keys to his convertible. I said, "Julia and I are going out drinking and to meet men."
He just pointed to the keys on his bureau.
It had stopped raining, and Julia put the top down, which made me feel like we were embarking on Julia and Janes Great Adventure, but I looked over at her and saw the grim line her mouth made. She pulled a chiffony scarf out of the glove compartment and wrapped it over her hair and twice around her neck, movie-star style. I wondered how she did it, and I decided I'd ask her to show me sometime when she wasn't upset.
When we got to the restaurant, I took out my pack of cigarettes, and she asked if she could have one. But she looked guilty, like it was her fault that I was smoking in the first place.
After she ordered her glass of wine and was sipping it, I asked her what had happened.
"I wish I knew," she said. "It was a huge party," she said. Everyone was there, her whole family and all of their lifelong friends. "Hank didn't seem to like anyone, though," she said.
She said that maybe it was hard for him to meet her family. "My family isn't like yours," she said; everyone had been divorced at least once, and there were half brothers and half sisters and step-everythings. She said that her parents had gotten divorced and then married each other again, which reminded me of Henry transferring back and forth to Brown.
She said, "They're always on the verge of splitting up or getting back together."
"Was it always like that?"
"The first time my mother left I was younger than you are," she said. "We'd just moved to Connecticut, into this nice house. It had a pool that was painted black, and the lights had been hung in such a way that the trees reflected on the water. When my parents gave parties, I'd watch from my bedroom window. It looked as though the guests were swimming through an underwater forest."
"It sounds beautiful," I said.
"Magic." She looked at my cigarettes, asking if I minded if she took another, and I nodded, Go ahead.
"It was September when Mom left. At night Dad used to go down to the pool and swim laps, even once it got cold. The pool was covered with leaves, but he swam right through them. I'd stand at the edge trying to talk him out of the water. By the time he did get out, there was a cleared path in the middle of the pool, and I could see the reflection of the bare branches on the water."
Then she was quiet. She wasn't crying, but she kept on covering her eyes with her hand like she might.
I thought she was upset about her parents all over again, plus Henry. So, I told her all of the nice things my brother had said about her, every compliment I could remember, and every comment that could be interpreted as a compliment. Then I listed all of her positive traits, and all the things I'd seen her do well.
"It doesn't work like that," she said, and I was hoping she would tell me how it did work.
Maybe she could see that, because she went on. "Sometimes you're loved because of your weaknesses," she said. "What you can't do is sometimes more compelling than what you can."
For a second, I felt hope for myself. But loving for weaknesses seemed like a weakness itself. "I think Henry does love you," I said, and then realized that I didn't know. "How could he not?"
She looked tired.
I told her the truth, that he was different with her than with other girlfriends he'd brought home. With them, he'd acted like they just happened to be there. As I said it, though, I remembered him not sitting with her at dessert. That was how he'd been with girlfriends before.
She looked right at me. "He doesn't say he loves me."
She seemed to be asking if Henry had told me he loved her—which made me feel even worse for her. "Did you ever tell him?" I said, and wondered at my advicey tone. I was acting like I knew something when I didn't—maybe like I knew Henry well enough to tell her what to do about him.
But her face smoothed out and looked new again, and she was nodding, like maybe I had a point.
I tried to go backward and talk about what I did know. I told her about one girl he'd brought home from Cornell; I'd asked if she was his girlfriend, and he'd said, "When you define something, you limit it."
Julia smiled, as though she could feel sorry for this other girl.
Everything I said now seemed to assure her that her problems with Henry were minor, and I worried that they weren't. Finally, I said, "If it doesn't work out with Henry, there's always Cinders."
She laughed and said that Cinders had been dead for years.
"Well," I said, "there are plenty of other horses."
—•—
When we got back to the house, only the hall light was on, and Julia said, "I'm going to talk to Henry for
a little while."
"Good luck," I said, and just as I did, my grandmother came into the hall, so Julia was forced to stay in the manless land of bunk beds with us.
I woke up late. My grandmother had already left. "She didn't want to wake you," my mother said. "She had a party to go to in Philadelphia."
"She's a party animal," I said.
My mother smiled. "I wish you'd seen how pretty she looked."
It made me remember my grandmother saying that I might be pretty if I tried. I hadn't told my mother, but I still felt betrayed by her spirit of forgiveness. I said, "Isn't beauty an accident, Mom?"
"She puts herself together so well, though," my mother said, and went on to describe the knife-pleat skirt, high heels, and white gloves her mother had worn.
I let her finish. Then I asked where Henry and Julia were. They'd just left to play tennis, my mother said. "Why don't you get your racket and join them?"
I was surprised that they were playing tennis instead of talking about their problems. But maybe they had already talked. Maybe everything was fine now.
In case it was, I put my racket in my bike basket and rode over to the courts.
They were still warming up and didn't see me. Julia was wearing a tennis dress and looked clean and tanned. Henry had on cutoffs and high-tops, which you weren't supposed to wear on the courts.
"Let's play," my brother said.
Julia spun her racket. I heard her say, "Rough or smooth?"
He said, "Rough," like it was a joke.
Then they saw me, and Henry said, "You want to play?"
I said that I wanted to watch.
It was Julia's serve. She had beautiful form—I could see years of lessons in every stroke. Henry had taught himself how to play and was just batting the ball back however he could—backhand, forehand, or in-between hand if he had to, he didn't care. His shots were either impossible to return or way out—one ball went over the fence and all the way into the lagoon.
He lost that first game, and she went up to the net.
He said, "What?"
She said, "We switch sides."
"Okay," he said.
As they passed each other, he tapped her butt with his racket, just softly, but it didn't seem affectionate.
He'd never learned to hold two balls at once, and he put one behind him, at his feet. He had a hilarious serve—he bent his knees and swung his racket back at the same time. But the serve was strong, and Julia had trouble returning it.
He won that game and walked up to the net, without collecting the balls for her.
"We don't switch sides," she said.
"I thought you just said we did."
"On odd games," she said.
The rules weren't new to Henry, and I stared at him. I didn't know what he was doing, but I didn't want to watch.
I said, "You guys look good out there."
Julia asked if I wanted to take her place, but I thanked her anyway, and got on my bike.
At home, my father was reading a book she had given him.
"Is that good?" I asked.
He said, "Very good."
He asked how tennis was, and I told him that Julia was a beautiful player.
"How'd Henry do?"
I imitated Henry's serve, and my dad laughed.
Then, I said, "Something's wrong between them."
"That happens," he said. He wasn't dismissing me; he was saying that their problems didn't belong to us.
I looked across the lagoon at the new house. It was almost finished. It had gone up incredibly fast—with spit and Scotch tape, my father said—and it was huge and reminded me of a Walt Disney cartoon of a rich person's house, with columns and an elaborate roof that swooped like a water slide. I called it the Splash Palace.
It made me sad to look at it, and I said to my father, "Do you think we'll ever go back to Nantucket as a family?"
"I don't know, love," he said.
Then he asked what I missed about Nantucket. It was different from how he usually talked to me; if I had a problem, he would try to help me solve it. But I remembered our last Nantucket debate, and I wasn't sure it was safe to say how I really felt.
Even so, I tried to tell him. I felt things I couldn't say—they had to do with the sunlight filtering through the big old leafy trees and the mist on the cobblestones at night—and named the things I could: the band concerts we'd go to on Straight Wharf, the silent movies at the church, the whaling museum on rainy days. As I spoke, though, I realized that we hadn't done those things the last summer we'd been there. I worried that maybe what I missed most I'd never have again, on Nantucket or anywhere.
"What else?" he said, and his voice was so nice I felt like crying, and then I was. He handed me his handkerchief, which smelled of the pipe tobacco he kept in a pouch in his back pocket. "What else?" he said again.
I told him I missed looking at the stars from the Maria Mitchell Observatory and fishing at Hummock Pond.
When I said, "Swimming lessons at Children's Beach," he laughed because I'd complained about them so bitterly. To acknowledge my fortitude, he'd taken me out to dinner at the end of each summer, just the two of us. He asked if I remembered our first dinner, at Vincent's, and I nodded. He said that I'd brought the card certifying me as an advanced beginner and shown it to the waiter.
I gave his handkerchief back to him.
Then he said, "Want to go out to lunch with me now?" And we went.
—•—
So, I didn't get to say good-bye to Julia. On the mail table, I found a package she'd sent to my mother. The card was a watercolor of a sailboat. Although the note began "Dear Louise," I read it to to see if there was anything about Henry. Or me. But she'd just written about sailing and the beach, and how much she'd enjoyed getting to know us—until the P.S.: "The enclosed is for Jane." It was wrapped like a present—way too small for the sweater I'd hoped for—but I was thrilled. She'd given me a copy of The Great Gatsby and written a single line on the flyleaf: "This seems inappropriate for your age."
—•—
I knew that Julia and Henry had broken up, but I thought maybe they'd get back together, like her parents. I was hoping she'd come to the shore with Henry as a surprise. Just in case, I brought my best drawing to show her.
But Henry arrived alone. He'd shaved. You could see the slightest bit of paleness where his beard had been. Otherwise, his face was the same as always. Still, I had trouble getting used to it.
No one mentioned Julia.
I went back into my bedroom and looked at the drawing again, critically, as though her not showing up proved it wasn't good. It was like all my others—just people standing around. I'd never be able to illustrate a children's book, I decided, unless there was one about loitering.
—•—
It was warm on the beach. Indian summer. Henry told me that he'd started to write a novel.
"Maybe Julia could help," I said. "She edits children's books."
I could see how hurt he was, and I apologized. But I told him that I liked Julia, and I wanted to know why they'd broken up.
He didn't answer right away. Then he told me about the gala in Southampton. The house was enormous, he said, and right on the beach. There were at least a hundred guests—maybe two hundred—and a band had been hired for the party.
He said that Julia had probably told him to wear a dark suit, but he'd forgotten or thought it wasn't important. They'd had to borrow one for him. He imitated her father saying, "All Blaire has to do is get on the horn." Henry seemed to dislike her father especially.
Henry described the borrowed suit in detail—the sleeves were too short, and it was baggy—but everyone told him how wonderful he looked. Other men were wearing tuxedos.
Everyone was drinking a lot, he said, and he drank, too. Julia kept introducing him to people, but Henry said he couldn't remember their names, and they didn't seem to want to talk to him anyway. He'd made jokes—about why he'd transferred to so many colleges, f
or example—but nobody laughed. When Julia asked him to dance with her, he said that you weren't supposed to dance to jazz. But he just didn't know how.
There were a lot of people Julia hadn't seen in a long time. They all wanted to talk to her. And dance. So, off she went.
He went to the bar and stood there a while. But he was in the way of people getting their drinks. He moved to the edge of the crowd and just watched. Suddenly it seemed, he was drunk, in a suit that didn't fit, at a party where he didn't know anyone, and he was standing alone.
I knew how I felt at parties. The worst thing was to get caught standing alone; it seemed to prove that you weren't worth talking to. I realized that it must have been even harder for him, because Julia had seen.
Still, he seemed to blame it all on her. Not in words—there was nothing I could point to or ask him about it.
I could see how hard it was for him to tell me, and I tried to be gentle when I said, "But that was just a bad party."
He didn't answer. I started to say, Didn't you love her? but I remembered Julia saying, He doesn't say he loves me. Instead, I said, "I thought you really liked her."
"I did," he said. "Julia's great."
"I loved her," I said.
He nodded. Then he said, "There was too much of an age difference."
It sounded to me like "better course selection," and I gave him a look to say so, but he pretended not to see.
—•—
At dinner, he ate his corn typewriter-style and told us funny stories about New York. He'd gone out with a dancer from the Midwest. He said that when she'd first arrived in New York, the dope dealers around Washington Square had said, "Loose joints, loose joints," and she'd said, "Thank you."
After dinner, he stayed out on the porch and talked to my father about the courses he was taking and which credits would transfer from the other colleges. He said that he was going to graduate from Columbia, and my father said, "Good."
My mother and I were clearing the dishes, and she smiled when she heard that. She was caught up in our being together. It was a celebration. And when she said to me, "What's wrong?" it was in part a reprimand.