Julie and Romeo

by Jeanne Ray

  chapter three

  AS SOON AS I SAW THE SILVERY LEXUS PARKED IN THE driveway, I knew I was in serious trouble. I was late. I had forgotten that it was Sandy’s night for school and I was supposed to be watching the kids. She must have waited and waited and finally called her sister as a last possible resort for child care. I sat down on the low brick wall around my little front yard and took a breath, wanting to put off for a moment what I knew was coming. I loved Nora, but she was a force to be reckoned with. She did not tolerate forgetfulness nor suffer inconvenience gladly. I wanted just a minute to think about my happy evening, the good food, the long walk home. Romeo, thankfully, had veered off toward his own home and live-in relatives five blocks ago, trusting that I was enough of an adult to find my way back in safety. I would not have wanted him to see me like this, hiding from my daughter in my yard. Who could have thought a person could walk all the way from downtown Boston? I had lived here my whole life and the thought had never even crossed my mind.

  I fished out my keys from the bottom of my purse, touched my fingers to my lips to make sure I wasn’t wearing any bread crumbs, and then I went inside. Nora had every light in the house blazing. My grandchildren Tony and Sarah, eight and four respectively, were both up. They were both crying.

  “My God!” Nora said, coming toward me like a train. “I was just telling the children I was going to have to call the police. Mother, where have you been? I was absolutely sure you were d-e-a-d.”

  “You were dead!” Sarah wailed, and shimmied up into my arms. My back is not the back it once was. Tony banded himself around my waist and began to squeeze.

  I tried to steady myself beneath the weight. “I’m not dead. Shush, stop crying. Look at me.” I pulled her chin back. Such a wealth of tears! “Look at me. See, do I look dead to you?”

  She thought for a second and then shook her head, but the crying had taken on a life of its own and could not be stopped. She was making a gasping, choking sob that sounded something like naagha, naagha. I rubbed small circles on her back. “Tony,” I said, looking down on the crown of his head. “Are you all right?”

  Tony, never much of a talker, nodded into my waist, moving around an extra ten pounds I should lose. The whole thing broke my heart. Really, these kids killed me. There was so much passion in their fear. I looked at Nora, who spread her hands open as if to say, Look at all the suffering you’ve caused.

  “I just forgot,” I said. “I forgot it was Sandy’s school night or I would have come straight home.”

  “So where were you?” Nora said.

  I felt very bad, yes, very guilty. I was quite literally stained with the tears of these children, but I was not too crazed with the whole thing that I could not see the irony of my situation. As far as I know, Sandy tried to get married once in high school, and other than that she was up in her room watching television. Nora, on the other hand, put us through hell, staying out until four in the morning, saying she was running down the street for a Coke and coming back six hours later on the back of some boy’s motorcycle. I found her film canister of pot in her sock drawer and her diaphragm case taped to the bottom of the clothes hamper. This well-dressed real-estate broker with the lizard shoes and the diamond stud earrings who folded her arms across her chest had been grounded more times than I could count. Grounded by me, her mother. “I went to the seminar. I ran into a friend. We had dinner and walked home.”

  “Walked home! From the Sheraton! I’m sitting here with these children thinking you’re dead—”

  At the word dead, Sarah began to wail again.

  “—and you’re walking to Somerville!”

  “If I had remembered, I wouldn’t have walked home.” Enough was enough. I put Sarah down and peeled Tony off of me. They tottered toward the sofa, drunk with their grief. “Nora, I’m sorry you had to come over here and I thank you for your help with the children.” I tried to put the mother-note of authority back into my voice, not that it had ever meant a thing to her, anyway.

  Then Nora’s husband, Alex, appeared in the front hall holding a sandwich in a paper towel. I appreciated his impulse toward neatness. “Hey, hey,” he said, “look what the cat dragged in.” Either he did not believe I was dead or he didn’t care.

  “I forgot, Alex. I’m sorry.”

  “She walked home from the Sheraton,” Nora said.

  He nodded, gave me a thumbs-up, and went back toward the television. “They say it’s even better for you than running if you go far enough.”

  “Why did you bring Alex?” I asked Nora. I was much more comfortable inconveniencing my daughter than I was her husband, which probably represented some narrow, sexist impulse in my thinking.

  “We were on our way out the door to dinner when Sandy called. She said you were only going to be a few minutes late. She didn’t tell me she hadn’t even heard from you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We had reservations at Biba.”

  I didn’t know what that was, but I apologized again, hopefully for the last time.

  Alex finished his sandwich and the children returned to their normal breathing patterns and fell into an exhausted stupor on the floor. Nora put on her coat, which was cut like a trench coat but was made from a pale yellow silk that looked simply lovely on her. I never could get over the way Nora had turned out, so successful, so striking, so, frankly, rich. In my wildest dreams I wouldn’t have guessed it, not when she had been such an utter hellion. Never write off a kid who gives you bunches of trouble—I suppose that’s the moral of the story. “You look so nice,” I said.

  “Well, we were going out.” Nora shrugged and lifted her dark hair over the collar of her coat. Then she smiled at me, maybe to indicate that she was over it. “It’s okay. I forget things, too.”

  Slightly patronizing but I’d take it.

  “Who did you run into, anyway?”

  I laughed at the thought of it, the whole happy absurdity. “You’d never guess. Never in a million years would you believe who I had dinner with.”

  Nora returned my happy look, picking up her purse. It was a little game. “Who?”

  “Romeo Cacciamani. Can you believe that?”

  I should have thought this over and lied. Just because I had run into the enemy of all Rosemans and found nothing in my heart but peace did not mean that such peace would be shared by all members of my tribe.

  Nora dropped her purse. Maybe she was being overly dramatic or maybe she was freeing up her hands to strangle me. “You what? You did what?”

  Tony and Sarah, even in their diminished states, heard the shift in tone and raised their sleepy heads up from the carpet. Alex came over with a look of real alarm on his face.

  “What?” he said, and the word was mimicked by the children.

  “Nora,” I said quietly. “Go home. We can talk about this some other time.”

  “Tell me!” Nora said. Nora actually roared. She was capable of that.

  I kept my voice very soft, but there was no undoing this. “I ran into Romeo Cacciamani at the conference. We got to talking, we had dinner.”

  “Cacciamani? You ate dinner with a Cacciamani?”

  It was amazing. She sounded exactly like her grandfather when she said the word. I half expected her to spit.

  I was trying to think what I would have said if Nora had run into a Cacciamani and not me. Would I still be willing to raise the torch in anger? “I asked myself, What was this huge feud all about, anyway? I don’t even know.”

  “You don’t know? Why don’t you ask Sandy? Sandy knows.”

  Now the children had heard their mother’s name and all the crying started up again. “I mean before that. For God’s sake, Nora, let it drop. He’s a perfectly decent person.”

  “I’m not hearing this,” Nora said. Then a thought of utter horror occurred to her. “Did you walk home with him?”

  “No,” I said. “Of course not. It was a heavy dinner and I felt like walking.”

  “He let you wa
lk all the way from downtown alone?”

  “Stop this. Stop. You two go home. I’m going to put the children to bed.”

  “You swear to me, Mother. Swear that you will never see that man again.”

  “He lives in Somerville. I’ll see him at the grocery store.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Good night, Nora.”

  “Swear it. I am absolutely not leaving until you swear it.”

  For a second, a picture of that reality crossed my mind. Sandy and Tony and Sarah had already moved home; now I would have Alex and Nora as well. Everyone waiting in a line for the bathroom in the morning. Me in my bathrobe, ladling up six little bowls of oatmeal. “Sure,” I said. “I swear it. Now go.”

  Alex was ready to go; this wasn’t his fight. He leaned over and opened the door so that I wouldn’t have to. For a tax attorney, Alex was a fairly regular guy. But then, he would have to be a steady sort to make it work with Nora. “Night, Mom,” he said.

  “Good night,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Nora blew out like a storm. Not a word to me or the children. So I swore; what did it even mean? I wasn’t going to see Romeo, anyway. I hadn’t seen him in fifteen years and it would probably be another fifteen years before I saw him again. So what?

  I put the children to bed, the last vestiges of any happiness from my evening stomped out like a bug beneath my heel. I was sixty and back to buttoning up flannel jammies. But on that front I won’t complain. They were sweet children, and even though I wished that Sandy’s marriage had worked out and that they all lived in another house where they knew all sorts of happiness and stability, most days I didn’t mind having them there.

  “You’re not going anywhere, are you?” Tony said, his voice all trembly. He was such a little boy for eight.

  “Down the hall and straight to bed is the only place I’m going.” I leaned over and kissed him hard on the forehead until he giggled and squirmed.

  Sarah slept all the way through the putting on of the nightgown and the hoisting into bed. The crying had finished her off.

  I kept my word to Tony and went straight to sleep. But I did have a dream that bears mention. Romeo Cacciamani was throwing pebbles at my window, something I’ve seen in the movies but have never heard of anyone doing in real life. I got up from my bed in the dark and pulled up the shade and opened the window to stick my head outside. In the dream my window opened easily, and there was no screen to contend with. In the dream I was wearing a very pretty white nightgown that was cotton and had been ironed.

  “What do you want, Romeo Cacciamani?” I said.

  He was standing in the middle of the street in his khaki pants and windbreaker, looking up at my window. I could see everything because the moon was so bright. He looked so handsome in the moonlight. How had I always missed that? I wanted to put my hand on his cheek. “What do you want?” I asked again because he wasn’t saying anything. He was just staring.

  “I had to see you,” he said finally. “I couldn’t sleep. I knew I was never going to go to sleep again if I didn’t get to see you.” He stared for a while longer, and when it seemed he was content, he smiled at me and waved. “Good night, Julie.”

  “Good night, Romeo.”

  And then I woke up. Here’s the worrisome part: I was standing at the window. I’ve never been a sleepwalker and I wondered if this was something dangerous, if I could have fallen out. Then I remembered that the windows were all stuck and I never could have opened one without a hammer. I figured by the time I got the hammer I would have woken up, anyway. I looked out onto the dark night street. There was no one there. There was no one there and I was a nut. The dream made me feel embarrassed and a little bit sad to think that my subconscious could want such a thing. I went back to bed but never did go back to sleep.

  In the morning Sandy came into my room without so much as a tap on the door. “You went out on a date with Romeo Cacciamani?”

  “Absolutely not,” I said. I had been lying in bed staring at the ceiling thinking about ordering carnations. “We ran into each other at this conference and had dinner. End of story.”

  Sandy closed the door behind her. It was six A.M. and the children weren’t awake yet. Sandy was wearing sweatpants and a Celtics T-shirt with Larry Bird on the front. She had her glasses on, and the springs of her hair had yet to be brushed down. Her lip began to quiver. “Why would you do that to me?”

  I sat up in bed, alarmed. “No, honey, not to you. This had nothing to do with you.”

  “Why else would you have dinner with him?”

  “Sandy, I don’t know. It was such a small thing. We ran into each other, we started talking, we got hungry, we ate. That was it. I promise you.”

  “You hate the Cacciamanis.” She was wiping beneath her eyes with the back of her hand. She was so sensitive, poor Sandy. She didn’t get over things very well.

  “I did hate them, you’re right. But when I saw Romeo yesterday I just didn’t hate him anymore. A lot of time has passed, don’t you think?”

  “He’s Romeo now?”

  “That’s his name.”

  She came over and slumped down on the corner of my bed. “Some things that happened never go away,” Sandy said. She was too thin. Ever since her divorce, I could see her shoulder blades sticking out behind her like wings. “If he was around, if I had to hear his name, I really don’t think I could stand it.”

  “He isn’t around. He isn’t here.”

  “So you won’t see him anymore?”

  “Do you have any idea why you hate him so much? I’m just curious. Why do we hate those people so much?”

  Sandy looked like I’d slapped her. “You don’t even remember?”

  “Of course I remember. I meant before that.”

  “What more reason do you need? I’m trying to get my life back together. I thought I was going to feel at home here.”

  “You are home.”

  “But you’re going to keep seeing Mr. Cacciamani?”

  “I’m not seeing Mr. Cacciamani. I just ran into him. One time in fifteen years.”

  Her face brightened a little. She wiped again beneath her glasses. “So you aren’t going to see him again?”

  “I have no intention of doing so.”

  “So you won’t?”

  These girls, they did not give me an inch. What difference did it make? It was an easy thing to promise. I wouldn’t see him. “I won’t.”

  Sandy got on her hands and knees and crawled up to me on the bed. She was thirty-two years old, but sometimes she reminded me of Sarah, who was very mature for four. She put her arms around my neck and lay down beside me. “I really love you, Mom.”

  I told her the truth without explaining how extremely complicated that truth felt to me at the moment. I told her I loved her, too.

  chapter four

  WHEN MY GIRLS WERE GROWING UP I BELIEVED THEM to be the beating heart of the world, the very center of the universe. Unfortunately, they knew I believed this and so they came to believe it themselves. As far as they were concerned I was their mother, pure and simple. I thought it would be different after they were grown, but even when Sandy had children and Nora took on her huge career, they still never thought of me as the same sort of living organism that they were. They were in their thirties now, competent women in every way, but if we were all in the kitchen together, they would read the newspaper while I chopped the tomatoes for their salads. They painted their nails while I set the table. I knew I was to blame for this, something I had done had made them this way, but as far as I could tell, the horse was gone and shutting the barn door was nothing more than a gesture.

  So they had made me promise and swear and do everything short of stick a needle in my eye to keep me from seeing Romeo again. They could not imagine that I wouldn’t do what they wanted me to do, as that was the nature of our relationship. And maybe they were right. We were talking about Cacciamanis, after all. In life we are defined by what we hate as much as w
e are by what we love, and maybe it would be bad to give up all that definition. Maybe without the Cacciamanis to hate, the Rosemans would simply be unable to carry on. Maybe the hate was our skeletal system, the very thing that allowed us to walk upright, and without it we would be nothing more than a lump of skin and muscle on the floor. I could hate him again, I was sure of it, even though I had been thinking of him all morning in distinctly unhateful ways. Sixty years of hate versus one plate of decent spaghetti and a long walk? No contest.

  Sandy had dropped out of college in the beginning of her junior year. She was bored with the work and happily in love with a fellow whose name was also Sandy. They married and became Sandy and Sandy Anderson, believing the novelty of a shared name would be enough to sustain their relationship. They were wrong. Now Sandy the husband lived in Maui, where he taught surfing, got stoned, and forgot to pay his child support, and Sandy the wife went to school three nights a week in hopes of becoming a licensed practical nurse. During the day she helped me out at the flower shop and I paid her a salary I could not afford in hopes of giving her a sense of independence. I was in all ways a flexible employer, and when she came in she was a good worker. She was charming to the customers and had a nice way with flowers. Her arrangements were pretty and cheerful, just like the kind my mother used to put together. (Mort’s flowers, on the other hand, had aspired to look as much like the FTD promos as possible. They appeared to be two-dimensional even as they were sitting in front of you.) Sandy was also very good about deliveries. She never dawdled in the heat and she had a brilliant sense of direction, which she certainly did not inherit from me. The day after my dinner with Romeo, Sandy and I went in early to get the morning’s deliveries ready and then packed them into my car, which had a more reliable engine than hers.