Juliet's Answer

by Glenn Dixon

  * * *

  I tried to be a good teacher. I followed the latest trends in educational research and I tried to make my classes engaging. I wanted the students to think for themselves, and I was beginning to think we’d buried ourselves in this reading of the play for too long. I needed to shake things up.

  “So . . .” I began, the next day, a Friday, when the students had shuffled in and taken their seats. Sadia wasn’t back yet and her empty desk was distressing. I tried to ignore it.

  “I’ve had an idea,” I said. “It’s going to be fun.”

  Devin squinted up at me suspiciously.

  “We’re going to put Romeo on trial for the murder of Tybalt. Close up your books.”

  The students looked from one to another, shuffling in their desks. A few closed their books, wondering what was going on.

  “I’m going to need four volunteers,” I said

  Predictable groans sounded around the classroom.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, holding up my hands. “I’ll sweeten the deal. If you volunteer, I will erase your worst mark from my mark book—you choose.”

  Devin’s hand shot up like a rocket.

  “You don’t even know what I’m going to say, Devin.”

  “Yeah, but I’ll do it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re on then. We’re going to have an actual court case. Devin, you can be the prosecutor—but you’re going to need a partner. And I’ll need two more volunteers to be the lawyers for the defense team. Allison, how about you?”

  Allison pursed her lips in distaste. But she didn’t say no. In fact, I’d deliberately asked her because she’d once expressed an interest in going to law school. She thought for a moment then tipped her head in agreement.

  “Great. So, Allison, who do you want for your partner?”

  Andy straightened a bit in his chair but she looked past him. “Can I have Nancy?” she said. Nancy was a quiet girl who sat nearer to the back. Her marks were high and even Andy knew that Allison had made the right choice.

  “Is that okay, Nancy?” I said.

  Allison gave her a smile of encouragement, and Nancy nodded her assent.

  “Okay, then. You two will be the defense team for Romeo. You’re the Montague lawyers.”

  I gazed around the room. “And who wants to work with Devin?” I said. “Come on. It should be easy. You all saw what happened. We acted it out.”

  “Jeez, Mr. Dixon,” said Devin, “I’m not sure about this.”

  “You already played Tybalt up here. You want to put his killer on trial?”

  “Objection,” said Allison, flinging her hand into the air.

  “Allison, we haven’t even started yet.”

  “I know,” she said, “but you can’t call him a killer before we’ve even started the trial. You’re biasing the jury.”

  Devin glared at Allison. “I have to go against her?”

  “That’s right.”

  He sighed. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  “And for your partner?”

  At the far back of the class sat Marc, the tough kid. Marc usually wore a dirty jean jacket like something from an ’80s teen movie. His hair was greasy. And I knew from his file that he’d been in trouble a lot. He was the kind of kid that was barely a step away from jail. He was staring at me with an expression I hadn’t seen before.

  “Marc,” I said, “how about you?”

  Devin turned in his desk and his eyes brightened at the choice. “Yeah,” he said. “Marc. How about it?”

  Devin and Marc, I thought. This was going to be interesting.

  * * *

  The evenings began to warm and lengthen, and Claire and I took long walks along the river pathway, the silver water gurgling down from the mountains with the snowmelt. I hadn’t told her about the letter just yet. I was waiting for the right moment. On one walk, almost home, Claire was quiet and pensive. “Do you ever regret not having kids?” she asked.

  “It’s not that I never wanted kids. It just never happened.”

  “But do you regret it now?”

  “I guess,” I said. “I’m a little afraid of growing old alone.”

  She stopped then. “But you’ll have me kicking around,” she said.

  I remember that clearly. I remember the look on her face—it’s just that I didn’t know what was behind it. I didn’t know what was coming and, really, it didn’t matter. That moment hung in the air like a rainbow in a lawn sprinkler. It was a lovely one.

  I wish I’d had the letter right then. I wish I could have shaken it out of my back pocket right then and there. But it wouldn’t have changed anything.

  There’d been some odd things going on. Her renovations were several months along with no end in sight, and Rick, the handyman, was there all the time. Once, and maybe it was nothing, I was driving home and happened to glance down a pathway into a green space between the houses. I could see Claire’s back deck through there and I saw, quite clearly, that Rick and Claire were sitting at her patio table. In that instant I remember thinking: Why isn’t he working? What is he doing out there with her?

  What a fool I am. I didn’t clue in at all.

  * * *

  I’d given my volunteer students the weekend to examine the evidence and prepare their cases. On Monday morning, I had the two teams stand up at the front of the classroom. I’d pulled my chair away from the teacher’s desk and sat in it, as the Prince, presiding over the courtroom.

  Allison unloaded a sheaf of papers and books onto the table at the front. Nancy sat beside her. Devin hadn’t brought anything up, nor had Marc. They eyed Allison’s papers and grimaced at each other.

  “Okay,” I said, “here’s the deal. Each team gets a short opening statement, and then you can call up witnesses.”

  “Can we call up Mercutio’s ghost?” Marc asked.

  “Interesting idea,” I said. “But no. Let’s keep this as real as possible.”

  Allison began her opening argument. “I submit to the court,” she began, “that the Prince had, in fact, decreed that the penalty for fighting in the streets is death.” She paused meaningfully. “Tybalt and Mercutio were fighting in the streets, so it follows that Mercutio got the death sentence from Tybalt, and Tybalt then, logically, received the death sentence from Romeo. It was just as the Prince wished.”

  “That’s a load of bull,” said Devin. “You can’t just take the law into your own hands. Any idiot knows that.”

  “Devin,” I said, “you’re making a good point, but you can’t speak like that in a court of law.”

  “But Mr. Dixon—”

  “Just make your argument,” I sighed.

  “Okay. It’s crap. Romeo isn’t, like, the police or something. He wasn’t following the Prince’s orders. He just screwed up. He murdered Tybalt and then he ran away.”

  “Objection,” said Allison. She reached down to the table and lifted a small leather-bound book.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “This,” she began in a solemn tone, “is the Criminal Code of Canada.”

  “Where did you get that?” Marc asked.

  “From Mrs. Ferguson in the library.” Allison cleared her throat and continued, “According to part 8, section 232, culpable homicide of the code, first-degree murder has to be planned.”

  “Okay,” Devin blustered, “so second-degree. All right? It’s second-degree murder.”

  “I wasn’t finished,” Allison said. She opened the book and read, tracing down the paragraphs with her fingertip. “Culpability may be reduced to manslaughter if the person who committed it did so in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation.” She looked up. “It was manslaughter, not even second-degree murder.”

  Devin whirled on the class. “Wait. You saw Minh kill me. You saw it. How can you say he didn’t kill me?” Devin was quite worked up, hopping from foot to foot.

  “I’m just saying,” Allison said, “that it’s not first-degree murder. It’s not even s
econd-degree murder.” She tapped again on the criminal code. “It’s a clear case of manslaughter.”

  “Can I say something?” Nancy still sat beside Allison, and her voice was tiny, but everyone stilled. “Mr. Dixon,” she said, “you keep telling us that this play is all about fate, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So then Romeo wasn’t really to blame for Tybalt’s death.” She paused, collecting her thoughts. “He was fortune’s fool, right?”

  “Oh, man,” said Devin. He sat down with a thump.

  “I think,” Nancy began, “that according to the play itself, Fate was responsible. Romeo had no control over it. It was written in the stars.”

  Devin and Marc shook their heads in resignation.

  “Case dismissed,” I said.

  * * *

  The guidance counselor phoned me the next morning, before classes. The school board had special funding that year to hire a social worker, she said, someone who would focus on kids from immigrant families. She’d arranged for this person to come in, as well as the cultural liaison worker, and she asked if I could pop down and meet with them.

  Kelly turned out to be a likeable ex-hippie from British Columbia and the liaison worker was Sayed, whom I’d worked with before during parent-teacher interviews. Sayed wore a stiff, slightly threadbare suit, but he carried himself with dignity. He was highly respected in his community. Kelly wore a loose, flowing dress and her hair, streaked with gray, was tied in a long ponytail that fell halfway down her back.

  We met in the staff room. When I came in, they were waiting for me. “I have spoken with the father,” Sayed started. “It is true. He has arranged a marriage for Sadia.”

  “But she’s sixteen,” I said.

  “Seventeen, actually. Almost eighteen,” said Kelly, thumbing through the file on the coffee table.

  “But she’s in grade ten,” I said.

  “Haven’t you looked at this?” Kelly asked, turning over another paper. “She was kept back a grade, early on, so that she could learn English.”

  “She speaks perfect English, sometimes with a Scottish accent.”

  “She’s had time to learn,” Kelly said.

  Sayed stepped in. “Her father knows she is a good daughter.”

  “Then, why the hell—” I began but stopped.

  Kelly raised her eyebrows.

  “The father allowed me to speak to Sadia,” said Sayed. “She is very unhappy with this arranged marriage.”

  I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said, “so what can we do?”

  “The father is a good man, this you must understand.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Perhaps if I speak with the imam at their mosque,” said Sayed. “I know him quite well. I could ask him to speak with the father.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

  “Another option is to rent Sadia an apartment,” said Kelly, closing the file. There are funds for this kind of situation. She’s almost eighteen. She can live on her own if she wants.”

  “She’s just a kid,” I said.

  Kelly eyed me. “She’s a very intelligent young woman. You said so yourself.”

  “Yes, I know. But that’s a lot for her to—”

  “I’m just telling you the options.”

  Sayed rubbed his chin. “Let me first speak with the imam.”

  * * *

  A couple of days after I’d seen Rick and Claire on her back deck, Claire came over to watch some television. Outside, on my own back patio, a purple twilight hung above the trees. Claire seemed in good spirits. She lounged on my black leather couch and draped her legs casually across mine. On my flat-screen, the strident cello opening to Game of Thrones had just begun. The wheels and cogs of that imaginary world flickered across my living room.

  “Glass of wine?” I offered.

  Claire held up her hand to stop my pour. “Two ounces only,” she insisted. I’d bought some Valpolicella from the fields outside of Verona, and I splashed it into her long-stemmed glass. She left it on the coffee table and leaned back. She loved Game of Thrones.

  I considered telling her about the letter, but the show had already started and she was engrossed. She stretched out across the couch. I sipped at my wine, but I noticed that she didn’t touch hers. Claire had to work the next day, and even before the end of the episode I could see her eyelids growing heavy.

  “Enough?” I asked.

  “Sure. Maybe we can leave the rest for later.”

  She untangled her legs and righted herself. She still hadn’t touched her wine.

  I walked with her to my front door and watched her slip on her shoes. She leaned in for a hug to say good night and that’s when I felt it. Her stomach was as hard as a fist and I knew.

  She was pregnant—Claire was pregnant—and I definitely wasn’t the father.

  I closed the door behind her, went back upstairs, and downed her glass of wine. I felt like I was plunging down in an elevator, that someone had just cut the cables, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  About an hour later, I texted her. My hands were shaking. “I may be going crazy,” I wrote, “but I have to ask: Are you pregnant?” I stopped for a moment, then added, “Is it Rick?” Rick, the renovations guy. I couldn’t think of anyone else who it might be. She spent most of her time with me.

  She texted back immediately and said, “No and NO.” She used capital letters. And for a moment, I breathed a great sigh of relief.

  She texted again. “Walk tomorrow?” she wrote.

  “Okay,” I tapped back. “How about in the morning?”

  Claire and I had walked together hundreds of times over the years, but there was never to be a walk like this one. She was pensive when she came over, and we’d barely made it to the river, just a few hundred yards, when she said, “Okay, here’s the thing. I am pregnant. I didn’t want to tell you by text.”

  I couldn’t breathe.

  “You knew I had to go for some tests. I told you that.”

  She had told me. She had some medical appointments for something else entirely. I waited. She didn’t make eye contact with me. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead. “I went in for the tests,” she said, “but I came out with an unexpected result.”

  I barely heard half of what she said after that. My world was forever changed. Just like that. We walked almost to downtown and back, probably three hours. At some point, I asked, “It’s Rick, right? The father?”

  “No!” Claire said. “The father is not in the picture.”

  “Then . . . who?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Of course it fucking matters.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Jesus, Claire. I’m right here,” I said. “I’ve always been right here beside you. For years.”

  She was near tears.

  “I love you,” I said. “Why didn’t you ever . . . ?”

  “I didn’t want to wreck it. I didn’t want to lose you. You said you didn’t want kids.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said it hadn’t happened for me.”

  We walked on in silence and she cried quietly. “I’m sorry if I hurt you,” she said after a while. She turned her wide green eyes on me. “Please,” she said. “You are my best friend. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Especially now.”

  She was plainly distraught, so I put my arm around her. Whatever I was going through, she was going through far worse. I knew that, even then. The simple fact is that she was going to have a baby.

  I could have stepped up at that moment. I could have said that it didn’t matter who the biological father was, that we were meant to be together. Now was the time to save her from her misfortune.

  Only, life is not that simple. I’m going to be as honest as possible here. Maybe I could have become a sort of surrogate dad, but I’m not that young anymore, and that baby she was carrying wasn’t mine. What’s more, she never asked me to step in—not that I expected her t
o, not that she would have felt she had a right to ask either. And there was that insistent problem: that she would probably never see me as her lover, as her partner. All of this made me hesitate, as usual, until it was too late.

  After dropping off Claire, I walked home, climbed upstairs, and saw the Italian grammar book in my office. I still had the damn letter from Juliet tucked away in it. Useless now, obviously. On the cover of the book was a harlequin plucking at a lute. In Italy this figure is known as Pulcinella—a cruel puppet wearing a beak-nosed Venetian mask and a black floppy hat. He creeped the hell out of me.

  And he was leering at me like Fate itself.

  * * *

  “O, break, my heart!” The fluorescent classroom lights hummed above me. “These are Juliet’s lines,” I said. “In act 3, scene three.”

  Thirty pairs of eyes stared up at me. “It was Shakespeare who said it first. He invented that phrase.”

  Andy frowned. “But people were in love before Shakespeare, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Juliet’s heart is broken?” Andy asked. He was thinking hard.

  “Yes. She’s—”

  “But Romeo still loves her, right?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “So he’s dumping her?”

  “No, no. He’s just murdered Juliet’s cousin. It’s kind of a problem.”

  There were nods around the classroom. They understood that much, at least.

  “I want to talk today,” I said, “about Juliet’s soliloquy.”

  “Soliloquy?” said Devin.

  “A soliloquy is when a character speaks his or her inner thoughts out loud to the audience. Usually, and especially in Shakespeare, it’s a time for an actor to shine.

  Like this. Listen:

  Come gentle night . . .

  Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die,