Julia's Daughters

by Colleen Faulkner

  I look over my shoulder, past you-know-who to look at Mom. I told you Nana would want to hug me with her drink in her hand, I say inside my head, hoping the message will reach her telepathically. I know that sounds stupid, but there are a lot of people who think telepathy is real; I saw a whole show about it.

  I can’t hear what my mom is thinking, but I’m pretty sure she’s telling me to suck it up and hug Nana. My only other choice is to say no and then Uncle Jeremy and Uncle Bruce and Dad will all gang up on me. They’ll probably pin me to the wall so Nana can force-hug me.

  I feel She Who Shall Not Be Named poking me in the back.

  “This is Maxton Airlines, flight double-zero. Please remain in your seats and do not block the aisle,” she says.

  If Caitlin had said it, I probably would have laughed. I turn back to Nana and walk all stiff, like I’m going to the electric chair. I keep my arms at my sides. She hugs me and gives me a big kiss on the cheek. I can smell the gin on her breath. It smells mediciney and gross. “How are you doing, Bug?” she whispers.

  Bug. I don’t know why she calls me that. Like I’m some kind of insect. Something she wants to crush under her orange patent-leather flip-flop. She’s asking how I am, but I know she doesn’t really care. She doesn’t care about anyone but her boys. I wonder if I’d been a boy if she would have cared about me. I guess the Maxton boys don’t have any male sperms though. Just the kind that make girls. Uncle Bruce, he’s the oldest, he has four girls, two with wife number one, two with the second wife. Then comes Dad with the three girls minus one, and Uncle Jeremy, who just got divorced again, with two girls.

  “How you holding up?” Nana asks me, breathing her gin breath on me.

  “Fine.” I duck under her arm to get away.

  She Who Shall Not Be Named holds up her hands, palms toward Nana. “Don’t even try it, Linda,” she says. She’s wearing fingerless black gloves and fresh black nail polish on her stubby fingernails. Her eyes are extra black. It’s like she turns up the Goth-girl thing when she comes here.

  Nana stiffens when her gaze moves to my mom. Like, you can actually see it. She takes a sip from her glass. “I’m so glad you came, Julia,” she says, not sounding like she’s all that glad. Nana doesn’t like Mom. I don’t think she ever did. She sees Mom as the competition. She sees all of us Maxton girls that way. Like every second of Dad’s life that he gives to us, takes away a second from Nana. I think she was actually pissed at Caitlin when she got killed. Because Caitlin sucked up all that attention.

  “Happy Birthday, Linda,” Mom says. She leans in to kiss her even though you can tell she doesn’t want to. But she doesn’t say anything mean. My mom’s classy like that.

  “Hey, kiddo!” Uncle Bruce pulls me into a bear hug all rough and kisses me. His red beard that’s the same color as my hair is scratchy on my cheek.

  “Hey, Uncle Bruce,” I say. He always embarrasses me, hugging me like this. Dad’s not all huggy like Uncle Bruce and Uncle Jeremy. I mean he does hug me, kind of that side-arm thing. And I know he loves me, but we’re not huggy in our house. Not like here. Maybe because we get enough hugs here.

  Uncle Bruce spins me around and almost throws me to Uncle Jeremy. “Kiddo,” Uncle Jeremy says, kissing me on top of my head. “You remember Tabitha?”

  She’s Uncle Jeremy’s new girlfriend. She’ll probably be wife number three. He started dating her before he moved out of Aunt Pat’s bed. That’s what I heard Aunt Maria whisper to my mom when we were introduced at the funeral. Aunt Maria is Uncle Bruce’s second wife. I wonder if Tabitha realizes that eventually Uncle Jeremy will cheat on her too when she’s his next wife.

  “Casey here?” I ask Uncle Jeremy. Casey’s a year older than me, but we get along really well. She’s always been nice to me. Even before my sister died. She never thinks I’m weird, even when I talk about something cool I learned on the History Channel or in a book. Or if she does she doesn’t tell me I’m weird to my face.

  Uncle Jeremy frowns. “Sorry. Her mom’s weekend.”

  “But Alice and Maddie are here,” Uncle Bruce tells me. “In the den.”

  “Okay.” I walk over to say hi to Aunt Maria, who’s taking rolls out of a bakery bag to put in a bread basket. Uncle Jeremy’s new girlfriend is standing there with a glass of wine in her hand. She has a lot of makeup on for a family dinner at somebody’s house. Especially for dinner with a family who’s still in mourning. I’ve been reading a lot about mourning rituals. According to the Victorians, we’re still in deep mourning. Technically, Mom and Dad have to wait nine months before they can go into half-mourning. “Hi, Aunt Maria,” I say.

  She smiles kind of sad. “Hey, Izzy.” I’ve always liked Aunt Maria, but I like her even better since Caitlin bit the dust. She doesn’t try to cheer me up and she doesn’t constantly ask me how I’m doing. It’s like she knows how bad it is to be me right now.

  I turn to Tabitha, who is younger than Aunt Pat, who was younger than Casey’s mom. She’s prettier than either of them, though. “Hi.”

  She says something, but I’m already walking away. I’m not sure I can invest myself in another one of Uncle Jeremy’s wives. I really liked Aunt Pat; she was funny and she used to talk to me like I was a friend instead of just a stupid kid.

  I guess I’ll go find Alice. She’s the same age as me. Fifth grade. I like her fine, but she paints her fingernails with sparkly pink nail polish and she watches Nickelodeon so we don’t have a lot in common.

  I hear Mom’s voice and I stop and turn around to observe the crazy phenomenon called family. It’s not like I’m in a big hurry to catch a rerun of Sam & Cat.

  The kitchen is big, the kind you see in TV shows that want to depict a big-happy-family kind of kitchen. The floor is Spanish tile; there are big granite countertops and a place to sit at to watch Nana whip up smoked salmon pâté and fruit on toothpicks. And of course there’s a wet bar. Mom says that Nana had it put in after Dad’s dad died. That was when I was a baby, so I never knew him, and I never knew Nana when she didn’t have a gin and tonic in her hand or wasn’t talking about the next one. I guess, technically, she might be an alcoholic, even though she never seems drunk. Not the way Uncle Jeremy gets sometimes where he laughs a lot and throws beer bottles at Dad and Uncle Bruce and says funny things about people.

  I check out everyone in the room, kind of making a picture in my head so I can analyze everything later. She Who Shall Not Be Named is in Nana’s refrigerator digging around, looking for a Coke, probably. Everyone is ignoring her; she’s ignoring them. Nana is freshening up her drink at the wet bar. Mom’s talking to Aunt Maria, but they’re being so quiet I can’t hear what they’re saying. Tabitha is kind of standing there, looking like she doesn’t belong here. Which she doesn’t. Dad and his brothers all have beers in their hands and they’re talking together. Dad looks happy, which makes me sad because he never looks happy at our house. I mean, I know he’s sad about Caitlin, but he was sad before that.

  “Oh, Julia,” I hear Aunt Maria say, and I wonder what she and my mom are talking about. Well, that’s not true. I know what they’re talking about. The same thing everyone is always talking about. Either Caitlin or She Who Shall Not Be Named. My guess is the live one.

  The kitchen smells good. Nana’s a good cook. We used to come here almost every Sunday for dinner. Even Mom. Before Caitlin made her smashing exit.

  I smile to myself. That’s a good one. Smashing exit.

  Then I accidentally meet She Who Shall Not Be Named’s gaze and for a second, I can’t look away. She’s standing in front of the refrigerator that’s covered with photos, mostly of the Maxton boys, but there are a few pictures of us granddaughters. There’s a big one of Caitlin laughing. It was the one they put on the cover of the memorial-service-paper thingy. When I look at Caitlin’s face and then the other one’s face, I see how much they look alike. It’s just that Caitlin seems like she’s surrounded by light. Maybe it’s her beautiful blond hair, or the backlight or some kin
d of magic that happens when you go to the angels. She Who Shall Not Be Named looks like she’s in darkness: black hair, black eye-pencil eyes and eyebrows. But there’s a cloud around her, too. A cloud that scares me and makes me feel bad for her at the same time.

  Since the accident, I’ve pretended not to see her, but she’s caught me. She knows I see her and I suddenly feel shaky and my eyes get watery. The crazy thing is, her eyes look wet, too. The eyeliner probably. She just keeps looking at me. It’s like she wants something from me. But I don’t know what it is. And I don’t know if I could give it to her, even if I wanted to.

  I turn around and walk into the hall. I hear the TV. Nickelodeon. I wipe at my eyes so I don’t look stupid and I call Alice’s name.

  Chapter 11

  Julia

  49 days

  I stare at the powder room door. I’ve been in here at least ten minutes. I’m surprised no one has come looking for me.

  Not really.

  Who would come looking for me? Izzy? Possibly. Certainly not Haley. She hates me. Not my husband. Ben’s thoughts are a thousand miles away from me right now; he’s in the bosom of his family.

  I groan to myself. How is it that after all these years, I still haven’t outgrown, outsmarted, out-somethinged these petty jealousies?

  I have no right to be covetous. I know that.

  I knew what I was getting myself into when I married Ben almost twenty years ago. I was an adult woman, making adult choices. I knew what his family was like. How they could be overwhelming and all encompassing. And it’s not like we didn’t talk about it. Ben warned me when we started discussing the possibility of marriage, our senior year at Cal. He flat out told me that he was a mama’s boy. He told me his brothers were his best friends.

  But I wasn’t really listening. Looking back, I see that now. Ben was so much fun and I was so in love. I was too busy thinking about a house with a finely manicured lawn, thanks to Maxton and Sons, and a baby in my arms. I didn’t read between the lines. The truth is, I was young and dumb. And I didn’t want to listen to my mother. I didn’t want her to be right. About me or Ben. About anything.

  But she was right. She’d been wrong about a lot of things, but this one thing, she’d been right about. What Ben had been trying to tell me was that I would never be the most important woman in his life. That I would never be his best friend.

  That was exactly what my mother told me. Damn her.

  So I have no right to ask to change the rules now. Not after all of these years. Not after having three children. Certainly not after burying one.

  And then here I am again, back to Caitlin. It’s like that silly movie Caitlin loved, Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. He keeps living the same day, over and over again.

  I lean back on the toilet. The lid’s down; it’s actually not an uncomfortable seat. And it smells good in here. Linda always has Yankee candles burning all over her house. The one burning on the sink smells like vanilla. It’s nice. I used to burn candles in our house too. Before we draped the mirrors with black crepe and piled ashes on the furniture.

  I came into the bathroom to pee . . . going on fourteen minutes ago, I see from my cell sitting on the edge of the sink. But then I realized I needed a minute. A minute to what, I’m not sure. Not necessarily to cry. Although this is probably the longest I’ve gone without crying in forty-nine days.

  I think I just needed to catch my breath.

  Tonight’s been hard. Harder even than I thought it would be. So hard that more than once I seriously considered getting up and walking out.

  But I didn’t leave. I just hid in the bathroom. That’s progress, isn’t it?

  I close my eyes.

  I should cut myself a break. This is my first real foray into some sort of normal outing. A birthday dinner at my mother-in-law’s. A protected environment where someone who doesn’t know won’t ask how Caitlin is doing in her cheering competitions. Which is what happened to me last time I tried to go to the market. I ended up leaving my half-filled cart near the dairy case. Frozen fries and all.

  So, tonight. Relatively safe, but still hard. It hasn’t been easy to listen to the conversations at the table. Even without anyone expecting me to say anything. It hasn’t been easy to sit there watching other people’s lives go on.

  I gave up pretty quickly trying to follow any of the multiple conversations running at the same time at the big dining room table. Ben’s family’s always been like this; they’re loud and they’ll talk over you if you don’t fight to get in a few words. Tonight I didn’t even mind because I didn’t have anything to say. I don’t care what kind of grass seed Jeremy thinks they should try to combat the summer drought issue. I don’t care how outraged Tabitha is about the price of permanent makeup. I’m not even sure I know what permanent makeup is, although, checking out Tabitha across the table, I wondered if that’s what’s wrong with her face. And here I thought it was an overdose of Botox.

  I doubt anyone at the table noticed I wasn’t talking. That I was just sitting there sipping my wine, pushing my food around my plate.

  Haley was doing the same thing: making no attempt to join in, moving her food around with her fork so it sort of looked like she was eating. But she wasn’t eating.

  That thought suddenly worries me. When was the last time I saw her eat anything? Is that why she looks so pale? She has to be eating, doesn’t she? I haven’t been present for a family meal since Caitlin died. There haven’t been any family meals since Caitlin died.

  I need to talk to Haley. I can’t put it off any longer. I know that. I fully intended to do it this afternoon. I was just trying to come up with a plan of attack. Instead, I took a nap.

  I lower my head to my hand. I need to pull myself together. I just—

  A knock on the bathroom door startles me. I instinctively come up off the lid.

  “Julia! It’s Linda.”

  “Just a minute,” I call, reaching back to flush so she won’t know I’m just hiding in here.

  The door opens and in she comes. Of course she does.

  I want to take a step back and get her out of my personal space, but there’s not really anywhere for me to go. I can’t believe I forgot to lock the door.

  “You okay?” Linda asks, closing the door behind her.

  Now she’s really in my space, which I find profoundly intrusive. Far more intrusive than I would have a few months ago. A few months ago, I might have thought oh, this is just Linda being Linda. She gets in people’s space all the time. But now she’s not just intruding into my personal space, she’s intruding on my grief. The deepest part of me.

  “Um.” I sidestep to get to the sink and I turn on the faucet. “I’m okay.”

  “I want to talk to you about Haley.”

  I glance at myself in the mirror. I look like a hag. A hag with gray roots.

  “Ben told me about her getting expelled. About the drugs.”

  I pump soap into my hand; it smells like a shower gel Caitlin used to use. I savor the scent for a moment, then glance at Linda in the reflection in the mirror. “Did Ben tell you where she said she got the Percocet?”

  “That she stole them from me? He did. Which means she’s a drug addict and a thief?”

  I take my time rinsing the soap off my hands. I rarely argue with Linda. I certainly never confront her. I’ve always told myself I don’t disagree with her openly in order to keep the peace in Ben’s family. But my family is shattered and honestly, tonight, I just don’t give a crap about Linda’s. “Why do you have that much Percocet lying around? It’s a controlled substance.”

  She folds her arms over her chest. She’s a petite woman. Pretty, but the drinking and the pills are beginning to show on her face. She looks pinched and there are bags under her eyes. Not bags as big as mine, but she’s definitely looking rough.

  “I have a prescription, if it’s any of your business,” she says, getting snotty with me the way she does when anyone challenges her. “My back. Remember, I had
that car accident. But that’s neither here nor there. You’re not going to redirect this conversation, Julia. I’m very concerned about Haley. We all are.”

  I turn around and park my skinny butt on the edge of the sink. I can smell Linda’s perfume. It’s an Estée Lauder scent. I pull the white hand towel with an embroidered sailboat on it off the rack and dry my hands. “Ben says you think we should send her away to boarding school.”

  She still has her arms crossed. Between the candle and her perfume, I can barely smell the gin on her breath. Just barely. But she doesn’t seem drunk. Of course, she never does. If I had as many gin and tonics as I saw her down tonight, I’d be unconscious under the dining room table.

  “I think it would be good for her.” Linda’s dark eyes bore into me. Ben’s eyes. “I’m willing to pay for it. There are some good schools in Oregon. Schools that would—”

  I cut her off. “It’s not about the money, Linda. I’m not sending my daughter away.” I sound stronger than I feel. “How do you think I could send her away after what happened—” My voice cracks. I can’t say to Caitlin.

  “Just for a semester.” Linda softens her tone. “Two. It would give her some time to think, somewhere where she’ll be safe. We can send her somewhere where she’ll be closely monitored day and night. No drugs. No negative influences. Just academics and structure. And having her out of the house will give you and Ben some time,” she goes on. “To work on your marriage.”

  “My marriage?”

  “Well, let’s be honest, it could use it right now, couldn’t it?”

  I lift my gaze. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Come on, Julia, this is me you’re talking to. I’m Ben’s mother. You think I don’t know how unhappy he’s been? You think I didn’t know your marriage was a mess before we lost Caitlin?”

  I glance at the door, considering just walking out, but she’s pretty much blocking my way. I’d have to knock her down to escape. Possibly knock her out.