“Merry Christmas, Julia.”
With a click, she hung up the phone. I put the phone away and stared at the bracelet. It was a little thing, the threads frayed and worn, the white threads permanently stained to gray. But it was part of her armor. I wondered if that meant she was going to let me through?
It was too small to fit my wrist, by far. But I bet we could enlarge it somehow. I walked toward the kitchen, calling, “Mom? I need your help with something.”
The next two minutes of my life will be engraved in my memory forever. As I walked toward the kitchen, someone knocked on the door. Thinking Tony was early, I veered off course, toward the front door, just as my mom came out of the kitchen. She was wearing Dad’s “World’s Greatest Mom” apron … which, of course, had once been hers. I opened the door and stepped back in shock.
My mother gasped and covered her mouth.
Two men, both of them in Army dress uniforms, stood on the porch. One had the stripes of a master sergeant; the other was a chaplain. A notification team? We weren’t at war yet, what could have happened? Was Dad okay? I started to panic.
“Oh, God, please no,” my mother moaned. I grabbed her, because she had started to collapse.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I need a favor (Julia)
I’ll never give up on you. Do you hear me? Never.
I hung up the phone and sat there, his words echoing in my head like a song.
I didn’t deserve that kind of devotion. I was terrified of what it meant. I couldn’t imagine how to live up to it: I was afraid I’d pull back, that I’d never give him what he needed.
But for the first time, I was starting to feel like I could try.
When I went downstairs after the phone call, I left my bangles and bracelets on the dresser. I felt naked without them. The only thing on my wrist was the delicate watch Barry gave me that Christmas in Belgium. But maybe I didn’t need to hide any more. I leaned up against the doorframe and looked in on my family.
It was chaos. The twins and Andrea were playing with dolls, sprawled out on the family room floor. Carrie had freaked when she opened her presents. My parents got her a new Mac PowerBook, and she was busy with that.
I’d received an odd mixed message from my parents for Christmas, two season tickets to the Boston Pops. Of course, they knew how much I loved music. But they also hated how much I loved music. It was odd, and I didn’t know quite how to take it. But I thanked them with a huge smile.
My mother had been warily watching me all morning, as if she didn’t know what to say to me.
Looking at the younger girls now, I thought maybe it wasn’t too late for them. Dad was retired, and his trip to Iraq had been pointless and brief. There wouldn’t be any more relocations or changes. Alexandra would go to one high school, and the twins and Andrea were so young they’d hardly remember all the travel, the living in different countries.
My dad met my eyes and smiled, but then his gaze drifted down to my abnormally bare right wrist, and his smile disappeared. She must have told him. I couldn’t help but wonder what he thought. My father and I had never been close. He wasn’t close to anyone. Always a distant, authoritarian figure in my life, he’d left the child rearing to his wife, my mother. When he looked back up to my face, I gave him a tentative smile.
Then my phone rang again. A frown passed across my mother’s face, but she smoothed it out almost immediately. That was interesting, and I guess it was a form of progress. But who was calling me? I took the phone out. It was Crank again.
That was really odd. I answered the phone.
“Hey,” I said.
“Julia! It’s Sean!” He was shouting, and his voice was distraught.
“Sean? What’s wrong?”
“Dad … he had a heart attack. They’ve flown him to Germany.”
I gasped and squeezed my eyes shut. “Oh, my God. Is he okay?”
“I don’t know. Mom is crying,” he said.
“Put her on the phone.”
“Will you come?”
I let out a sob. Then I said, “Yes. Yes, I will. Now put your mom on the phone, right now. And Sean? I’ll be there soon, and we’ll do what we can. Okay? Hang in there.”
A moment later, Margot answered the phone, her voice sounding raw and ragged.
“Margot, what’s going on? Sean said Jack had a heart attack.”
My father’s eyes widened, and he stood up and walked toward me.
She told me.
“Okay,” I said. “When do you leave for Germany?”
She burst into tears. It took a couple minutes before I got the answer out of her. They didn’t have the money to fly to Germany, and none of them had passports anyway.
I closed my eyes. And then I looked at my dad.
“Margot, I’ll call you back shortly. All right? Just … hang in there, okay? Your family loves you. That’s the most important thing. Jack loves you.”
She sobbed, and I said goodbye.
My dad stood uncomfortably in front of me, and I said, “Dad. I need a favor. I need a couple of favors, and they’re big ones. Really big.”
I told him what I wanted. His eyes got bigger as I spoke, and then he said, “Julia, you’re asking a lot.”
I swallowed and looked him in the eyes, trying to drive home how serious I was. “Dad—tell me this. If it was Mom, would you do it?”
He grimaced. “Of course.”
I looked him in the eye and said, “Then you understand exactly how I feel right now.”
He nodded his head. “All right. Let me make some calls.”
Four hours later, I was in my room, stuffing the last of my things in a bag. It was strange. This house would become home for Alexandra and the younger girls. But I didn’t have any memories here at all, except one or two holidays when we’d been back in the States. This was my bedroom, but it was sterile, much as the one in Bethesda had been. For the first time ever though? I was okay with that. I was going to make my own home.
As I zipped the bag closed, I heard someone in the doorway and turned around.
It was her.
Apprehensive, I stood and faced my mother. She swallowed, didn’t speak, and I realized she was just as nervous about talking to me as I was with her.
“I just …” she started. Then stopped. I waited. Was she going to say something horrible? Try to deny things? Was she going to tell me to not come back if I left? I didn’t know. My mother … she was a complete mystery to me. That might be the saddest part of all. I had no idea who she was.
Finally, she spoke again. “I came up here to say … I’ve heard you. And I’ve not been the best mother in the world. I wish I had been. I wish … I could have given you what you needed, Julia. And I hope someday you can forgive me.”
And then my mother did something I’d never seen her do before. She started to cry. It was a half-formed sound, weak and yet very painful.
I know the human thing would be to go to her and hug her, and tell her I forgave everything. I know I should have done that. I did reach out and take one of her hands. And I squeezed it gently, and I whispered, “You’re still my mother. I love you.”
She nodded and tried to sniff back her tears. And then she turned and went down the hall.
I turned back to my bag. And I finished stuffing my things in it, and zipped it up, and walked out. I left the bracelets and bangles on the dresser.
Dad met me on the ground floor, and we got in the van together. The streets were empty. It was still Christmas Day, and the roads might fill up later in the evening, but for now we had the road to ourselves as he headed toward the airport.
We were silent at first. After a little while, he said, “Your mother told me … what you said.”
I swallowed and looked out the window.
“For what it’s worth, Julia. You’re my daughter. And I’ve not said it enough … well, really, I’ve not said it at all. But I’m proud of you.”
I swallowed back tears. “Thank you,
Dad.”
“When you’re finished in Germany and finish school, I hope you’ll think about us. And come visit.”
I nodded. “Of course. Just … do me a favor?” I asked.
“Anything,” he said.
“Just … try to be there for my sisters, okay? I get it. I was the oldest, and you guys were going through a lot, and … I don’t know. But they need you.” I paused, breathed in a little. “They need you. Okay?”
In a low voice, full of sadness, he said, “I promise. I’ll try.”
We were silent for a long while. He finally turned on to the interstate, and a couple of minutes later, he said, “You should know … it’s not all your mother’s fault.”
I looked over at him, and he continued.
“I met your mom in Spain. It was 1971, and I was in my first posting. Not much older than you are now, and not nearly as smart or together as you are. Adelina’s mother owned a flower shop in Barcelona, and I met her at a coffee shop just down the street from the embassy. I was practicing my Spanish, and she wanted to practice her English, and … well, we fell in love. She was full of light in those days. Do you know, my father disinherited me when we got married?”
“What?” I said. “No.”
“He did. He changed his mind after you were born. But for a while there, several years, we thought we’d be living off what I made as a junior attaché. Which was enough. We had a nice little apartment, and we loved each other. That was all that mattered.”
I tried to picture my dad, living off a junior attaché’s salary, young, in love. It didn’t fit anything that made sense to me.
“What happened?”
He shrugged. “Life. Stress. Right after you were born, I was assigned to Libya, which was a hardship post, and your mother stayed here in San Francisco with you. That was three years. We grew distant over the years and fought a lot. More than I think you realize. Our life…it wasn’t what either one of us expected. And then we both had affairs. It made your mother … bitter. Very angry. It’s taken a long time for us to trust again.”
I stared at my dad in shock. He knew about her.
“You knew?”
He nodded. “Not long after you left for college, and it was looking like I’d never get another post, your mom and I went into therapy together. To try to work through some of it.”
He looked at me, and his eyes were sad. “I guess that was too late for you.”
I looked back at him, bewildered, and in an odd way, felt betrayed. Maybe if they’d done the therapy thing ten years earlier, I would have had a very different life.
We were nearing the airport. He took the turnoff for Lufthansa. “I don’t know if it’s too late for you to forgive us.”
“I don’t either, Dad. But I promise … I promise I’ll try.”
Two hours later, I was boarding my flight east.
A Song for Julia (Crank)
“Any news?” I whispered, when Mom came back. I whispered because Sean was stretched across the three seats next to me, snoring.
She shook her head. “He’s stable. But still in a coma.” She sat down.
“You look exhausted,” I said. “Maybe you should go back to the hotel and get some sleep, then come back.”
She took a deep breath. “Not yet,” she said.
I took her hand. “We’ll get through this.”
She squeezed my hand back. “We will. I’m a lot stronger than I used to be, you know.”
Sean stirred in his seat, then slowly sat up.
I leaned back and closed my eyes. The last twenty-four hours had gone by like a flash, and some of it was surreal. A man from the State Department had shown up, met with the notification team, and not long after that, took our pictures and left. At six P.M. on Christmas day, we left for the airport, where another man from the State Department met us with new passports. Julia had booked us on an overnight flight to Germany. On arrival, we’d been picked up by a guy from the American consulate, who whisked us from Frankfurt to Ramstein Air Base in just a little over an hour. The countryside here was covered in snow, and as we passed towns and villages, more snow was falling. I couldn’t help but think how incredible it was that Julia had done this for us.
We’d been here for hours, waiting. Dad had been out running in morning formation with his platoon when he collapsed. They rushed him to the medics, who managed to stabilize him, and then they’d flown him out by chopper to the nearest hospital facility, and finally, here. That’s why he didn’t call on Christmas Eve. He was already on a flight here.
The doctors told us when we arrived that it was a matter of time now. They couldn’t give a clear prognosis. They did a triple heart bypass, as major a surgery as you can get. Now he was stable, but there was no way to know when … or if … he would wake up.
I looked at my mom, and couldn’t help but think it would be such a tragedy for all of us, but especially her, to lose him now, just when our family was coming back together.
Sean, as abrupt as always, asked our mother, “If Dad dies, will you stay with me?”
Mom put her arm around him and said, “I’m not going anywhere, Sean. I promise.”
His eyes crawled around the room, everywhere but on us. I could tell he was struggling to put something into words. He looked at me, then at her, and said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t be better for you. I’m sorry I’m broken.”
Her eyes went red with sudden tears, and she said, “Sean, you’re not broken.”
He looked away. “Dad said you tried to kill yourself.”
She nodded, slowly, and said, “Sean … that’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault really. I just didn’t know how to cope with … with life.”
I was tense, afraid. Sean could be so unpredictable. Faced with something like this, he could just as easily curl up with a book, or have a meltdown that would bring hospital security running. I took a sharp breath, watching his expression for signs of anger.
He stood up and started pacing. Not a good sign. Then he turned around and faced her, and said, “Maybe we can help you. Me and Crank.”
I exhaled and closed my eyes.
“You can,” she said. “And maybe I can help you, too. Sean … I know I was gone a long time. I had to learn to live again. I’ve spent so long in therapy that I hardly remember what it was like before. We have to learn to be a family again. But I promise you—both of you—I’m not going anywhere. Ever again.”
Sean nodded his head. He was forcing himself to look her in the face, his eyes slowly turning toward her. Then he said, “I’m glad you came home.”
She sniffed, and said, “Would you be upset if I hugged you?”
He shook his head, and she stood, and they wrapped their arms around each other.
Then my eyes shifted from my mom to the hallway. Because walking down the hallway, hair a mess, wearing old dungarees and a t-shirt, was Julia.
My breath caught. She was checking doorways as she walked, looking for the waiting room, I guess. Looking for us. She looked exhausted, dark circles under her eyes.
I couldn’t believe it. She’d already done too much … getting her father to arrange passports, then flying us over here.
She’d left her family on Christmas.
To come here. To us. To me.
I swallowed and stood up. Then she saw me. And froze. Her eyes were wide, and when she looked at me, they teared up. Then she walked to me, slowly, and slipped her arms around me, her body melting into mine. And she whispered, “How is he?”
I sighed and shook my head. “Still out. He had bypass surgery, they don’t know when he’ll wake up.” A second later, I said, “They don’t know if he’ll wake up.”
She seemed like she was about to say something, and then squeezed her arms around me even tighter. I buried my face in her hair, oddly hating myself for loving this moment, loving holding her, even though my dad was a few rooms away fighting for his life.
But I knew what he would say. He’d tell me to screw wo
rrying, and get on with it. He’d tell me that if I loved her, then I should hold that precious moment as close as I could.
She had her face buried against my shoulder, and I could barely hear her, but I swear at that moment she said words I thought I’d never hear, words that I’d desperately wanted to hear from her.
She whispered, “I love you, Crank.”
My breathing changed, growing ragged, and I couldn’t let go or pull back or say anything, because I was afraid. Afraid that she hadn’t really said it, that she hadn’t really meant it, or that she meant, “I love you Crank, like I love my little sister.” But she pulled back, and she said, “There couldn’t possibly be a worse time in the world for this. But we need to talk.”
My heart fell in my chest. This was going to be it. I knew it. She was going to tell me there was no chance for us. We separated, and I turned to my mom, and Julia said, “Hey, Margot. Sean.”
My mom walked over, and she started to cry, and pulled Julia into a hug. Sobbing, she said, “Thank you so much. For doing this. For getting us here. For coming.”
Julia hugged her back, and said, “There’s nothing to thank me for, okay? Jack means a lot to me. You all do.”
Then she pulled back from my mom, keeping her hands on Mom’s shoulders, and said, “I need to borrow Crank for a little while. We’ve got … some things to talk about.”
My mother nodded, and Julia said, “We’ll be back.”
And then she pulled me away from the waiting room.
We slipped into the tiny nondenominational chapel three doors down.
It was dim in here, the only light from up near the altar. An electric piano sat near the front of the room, and a line of small, utilitarian pews were lined up in rows.
She sat down in the first pew. I sat down next to her and turned toward her, and she grabbed my left hand. And that’s when I realized there was something different about her. She wasn’t wearing any bracelets.
I reached in my pocket, my hand touching the friendship bracelet she’d given me. I held it in my right hand.
Tears immediately started rolling down her face, and she said, “I can’t promise … not to pull back. Not to run away. It’s too much a part of me now.”
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