by Piper Lennox
“If it was an accident,” she whispers, “then it was my fault.”
“No.”
“She was exhausted, and if I’d just gone to the store—”
“Don’t do that, Juliet. You know it’s not your fault. You said yourself, she was always sending you on errands like that, making you watch the girls...you had every right to get mad at her. She turned you into a parent before she was even gone.”
Juliet shuts her mouth, swallowing. I press my thumb to the tear nestled against her nose and make it vanish.
“Don’t blame yourself,” I tell her.
“Then what’s the alternative?” Her voice rises. She tries to get up, but I hold her tighter, anchoring us to the kitchen floor. “Assume it was a suicide and blame her, instead?”
“Why does anyone have to be blamed at all?”
She quiets again. I brush my fingers over the sunburned freckles on her collarbone.
“Whatever happened that night,” I say, kissing the top of her head, “it just...happened. Whether she was tired and crashed, or whether she....” I pause. Shooting it straight is always best, but even I feel the need to make this more palatable.
“...did it on purpose,” I go on, the weight of the word I didn’t choose still hitting the ground like a brick, “it was because of her illness. Not you.”
Juliet untangles herself from me and sits on the chaise of the couch, palms wedged together between her knees. “She wasn’t depressed until I was born. After Abby, and then Viola...she just kept getting worse.”
I shuffle around the coffee table to join her. “That’s why you thought you didn’t want kids,” I say, a half-question. “I mean...besides the fact you already raised your sisters.”
“Maybe. I never really thought about that.” While she takes a breath, her stare lands on my feet, traveling slowly to my eyes. “I do know it’s why I don’t want to be a stay-at-home mom, though. The isolation of it, how—how lonely it must feel, all the time....”
Her shoulders jump when I place my hand on her back, rubbing in slow circles until I feel her lean into it, the slightest bit.
“I’m sorry I was a dick about the nanny thing. We can do this—we’ll figure it out.”
“Will you stop,” she laughs, the sound a shudder as she exhales, “saying ‘we’ like that?”
I pull my hand back. “It is ‘we,’ though. What’s with you tonight?”
“Nothing.” She rubs her face and stands, pacing to the partition and back. “I’m just realizing how insane this was. Thinking we could make this work.”
“It is working.” I get up, too. “Why do you say it isn’t? Look, you’re freaking out right now, and I get it. Hormones, meeting the families, the job shit, the car. But it’s all going to work out.”
“Things don’t just work out like magic, Cohen.” She pushes her hair back with both hands. “I mean, God, you didn’t even say, ‘I’ll work it out. I’ll change.’ You think everything will fix itself, so you skate through life, never taking responsibility. And anyone who doesn’t act that way is ‘freaking out’ or ‘uptight.’ Like me, or your brother.”
“You can’t just skate through life anymore and expect people to hand you whatever you want, Cohen.”
Until now, I think I’ve done a good job keeping my cool. But hearing Juliet echo Levi in any way sets me off. I know I’m going to say something I’ll regret in the morning.
“Excuse me for choosing to have fun and look at the positive side of everything. Give it a try, sometime. It’s a lot easier than the way you and Levi and half the damn world live.”
“Oh, you mean being adults?”
“Okay: how about the fact you seriously wondered if you should give your sister your baby, because you were so focused on the negative? The bad stuff that might have happened, the fact you might get depression like your mom?”
Her stare shifts between my eyes. “I didn’t—”
“Even for one split-second,” I add, “you thought about it. You know you did, Juliet.”
“Fine.” She shrugs, spreading her arms. “So I thought about it. So I worry. What’s wrong with doubting shit? At least I don’t blindly charge in, thinking we’re going to be the world’s best parents right away. I consider the negatives because that’s what you have to do.”
“Oh, God,” I laugh. “You don’t ‘consider’ them—you let them control your life.” I pace away, then pivot and point at her. “And that’s another thing: why did you think Viola and Marco would be better parents to our baby than we could be? We’re twenty-six. Not a couple kids who got pregnant on prom night. What was there to worry about?”
“Nothing, for you.” Her hand sweeps in my direction. “You’ve apparently never had anything bad happen to you, if you really think life just works itself out as you go.”
You’re wrong, I think. Bad things have happened to me. They happen to everyone, if you live long enough.
But the words don’t come. I’m not about to turn this into a pissing contest of tragedy, especially since she’d still win.
She is right about one thing: I do believe things work out. You just have to let them.
“You’ve been lucky,” she continues, and points to herself. “I know it doesn’t work like that. Shit happens. I’m not being negative, I’m being prepared.”
“How can you prepare for it, Juliet? Huh? When you spend your entire life waiting for bad shit to happen, that’s all you’re going to notice.” When she turns from me, I step back in front of her. “Yeah, it could all go wrong. You could end up depressed, like your mom; I could lose job after job and we could be totally broke, one of these days.”
She shuts her eyes, panic creasing her face.
“But,” I add, “the exact opposite could happen, too. It’s just as likely as anything else—more so, if you ask me.”
I pause. My heartbeat’s pounding through my sinuses. The vein on my wrist, the one running right through the swallow’s chest and that petal of color, pulses along.
“Things could be great.” I wet my lips and reach for her. “We could be amazing parents, and a real family—”
“Just stop,” she shouts, the noise so sudden and shattered, I let go of her hand the second we touch.
We’re silent. Through the partition, I see the glow of the television, feel the current crackling as the characters talk on and on without sound.
“What do you want, Juliet?” I feel her eyes on my shadow as I gather my stuff from the nightstand I forgot last night: headphones, Levi’s old iPod, a crumpled five, lighter. “Either you want to be with me and give this a try—a real one—or not. If you think I’m so immature and delusional...why are you even with me?”
While I move, I make as much noise as possible. My steps are heavy. I clatter the change in the drawer and pretend to look for something. At least it weakens the silence. It might make it easier for her to answer.
“I don’t know.”
I turn, fast. What response I thought she’d give, I’m not sure. But I damn sure didn’t think it’d be that.
“Maybe….” She gathers her hair at the base of her neck before letting go, drawing in a long breath. “Maybe it’s better that it’s happening now.”
An ache, ice-cold, unfolds in my chest. “That what’s happening now?” I ignore the tears on her face this time. I have to. I can’t stand to think what they might mean.
“Come on, Cohen—we knew this would....” Juliet picks at the skin on her lip and looks away. “It’s like you said: we were two single people at a wedding. That’s what single people do. They hook up. They say goodbye.”
“That’s not what I do.” I realize the cold spot in my chest isn’t cold at all. It’s so impossibly hot, my nerves can’t make sense of it. “And if I’d known that’s what you planned on doing…I wouldn’t have gone back to your room in the first place.”
“See?” She swallows. “That’s what I’m talking about. You just assumed everything would work out, that night.�
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“And the next morning, you just assumed nothing could.”
Juliet crosses her arms again, her inhale thin, tears catching the light.
Growing up, Mom always told us Levi got the Fairfield gene when it came to anger: the two of them showed their rage almost right away, whether they yelled or just spoke firmly. You knew what they felt as soon as they felt it.
Me? I simmered. I was slow to anger but once I did, you couldn’t talk me down. I like to think I grew out of it, as the years went by.
Too bad that, according to Juliet, I never grew up.
When I shut the door behind me, I don’t slam it. But the dent my fist leaves in the metal as I bang it goodbye probably has the same effect.
23
“What’s wrong?”
I sink into Abigail’s hug, not caring about the fact she’s sweaty or that I can hardly get my arms around her with the bumps in the way.
“Nothing. Just tired.” Great. I’m back to lying about how I’m doing, so as not to burden anyone with the fact I have my own life. After all, here I am, bright and early on my day off, to build furniture.
“The instructions say Side A fits into Side...C, via Tab 1B.” Viola, seated in the center of Stella’s flower rug when we enter the bedroom, turns her glare from the instructions in one hand to the pile of wood near the other. “Which one’s Side C? And what the hell is Tab 1B?” The paper flutters to the floor as she holds her palms up, dramatic as ever, to tell Abby, “And not to add to the problem, but we’re missing, like, twenty of those little screws.”
“Fuck it.” Abby kicks the pile with her swollen foot and collapses into the rocker while Viola and I hug hello. “This is Lionel’s problem, now. I give up.”
“Let’s try the bookshelf,” I offer. A new project is always helpful, when you have no idea what to do next. It’s probably the real reason I’m here today. If anything can disrupt the looping play-by-play of my fight with Cohen, it’s a good set of instructions.
“That was the bookshelf,” Viola groans. “Let’s do the toddler bed.”
The toddler bed is, apparently, from the same company that made the bookshelf; twenty minutes later, we’ve got three missing brackets, a broken slat, and no idea how to proceed.
“This shouldn’t be so complicated.”
“And yet,” Abby sighs, “it is. You think it’ll warp Stella if I keep her in the crib until she’s...I don’t know, seven?”
Viola stretches out in the only clear spot on the rug, yawning and pointing her toes in a shaft of sunlight from the window. She’s always reminded me of a kitten, when she’s sleepy: a cute crinkle in her nose, her yawn too big for her face. I think about every night I tucked her into bed, and wonder why it’s so hard to imagine doing that with my own child.
“At least you know to pass the buck to Cohen, when you guys put your nursery together,” she tells me. “But I’ve got to admit, I was hoping we’d totally rock this DIY thing. Marco gave me so much shit when I told him what we were doing today.”
“Lionel too. I really wanted to rub it in his face.”
The mere mention of Cohen makes my throat hurt, like my body’s prepping for another crying jag. I’ve had them daily this week. He hasn’t texted or stopped by. I didn’t realize how much I’d miss his knock on the door, every evening. I never noticed how huge my bed was, until that night I made sure he wouldn’t be in it.
He’d asked what my problem was during that fight. Why I kept picking at him, letting every worry set up shop again. At the time, even I didn’t know why.
Now—tempting as it was to blame hormones—I do know. It was the fireworks.
Fourth of July was the one night a year where I knew, without any doubt, my mother would shower, dress, and leave the house. Even Christmases and birthdays were wild cards; only that night, that one show, checked every box, every time. That show was our touchstone.
She hated crowds. They made her chest feel tight, she said, and her ears rang with all the chatter. So we climbed the concrete stairs and watched from there, draping our bodies across them instead of in the seats; the stone cooled our skin, and this high off the ground, hovering at what felt like the highest point in the city, we never got too hot.
When I was little, I sat on Mom’s lap. After the girls came along, she’d hold Viola while Abby and I flanked them. It didn’t matter how tall I got, or how much harder it became to squeeze us all onto the same step: she still lined us up beside her.
I’d lean my head against her shoulder as the show began. She smelled like powder and perfume, that ratty old bathrobe stuffed into the hamper back home. Her combed hair would lift in the wind and tickle my face.
The first years without her were the hardest. Sitting with the girls alone, I tried so hard to make us fill that step as easily as the four of us had.
One year, out of the blue, the girls asked me if we could sit in some real seats. My legs felt wobbly and numb as we staked out three empty chairs and sat.
Slowly, we started our own traditions: waving to Dad through the safety railing before the ninth inning; getting snow cones during the sponsor announcements, so they’d start to melt in time for the show; running down the halls in the stadium’s underbelly, our laughter echoing as we raced to meet our father.
The years passed and the traditions changed. Boyfriends came and went. Fiancés got added. Husbands. Now our only tradition is seeing the show at all.
So when I leaned into Cohen that night and told him the names of what we were seeing, I didn’t expect my emotions to spike the way they had. Mom’s absence was old news, after all. I was over it.
But all I could think about was the way I leaned into her all those years ago, pointing out the peonies and willows, the palms and patterns. My chest ached, I suddenly missed her so much.
Finding out about his job, getting the DUI history, and enduring his endless jokes didn’t help, I’m sure. But I think I could have broached the topics slowly, more calmly, if it hadn’t been for the fireworks, bringing all those memories back. Reminding me that things go wrong, all the time. You can believe with every beat of your heart they’ll work out on their own—but you’ll only set yourself up for heartache.
I should know: once upon a time, I’d believed that, too. That if my mother could make it to that one show every Fourth of July, every year…someday, she’d make it to every show. Every day. Every minute. I just had to wait for that magic fix.
“Uh-oh.” Abby pitches a teddy bear to Vi. “Juliet’s got that face.”
“What face?”
“The face,” Viola adds, as if this is helpful.
“You know, the face you make whenever something huge is bothering you, but you’re trying to keep calm so nobody makes you talk about it.”
I lower the phone in my hand, where I was checking my inbox for a message from Cohen. For all I know, he’s let his service run out again. “I have a face for that?”
Viola snorts. “Oh, yeah. It’s like you’re totally lost inside your own head. And you bite your lip.” She lifts her hand, pointing, and I lick my lips. Yep: there’s the sting.
Abby drops a handful of washers into her other palm one by one, like an hourglass. “I knew something was wrong when you walked in. Come on, girl, out with it.”
My phone times out. The blank screen reflects The Face back at me until I drop it into my purse.
“Cohen and I broke up. Fourth of July...right after the show.”
Viola gasps, hands templed in front of her mouth, while Abby sighs, “I knew he was too good to be true.”
I fill them in on the fight, start to finish. It reminds me why I love talking to my sisters, even if I initially resist: they look furious when I feel furious, and sad whenever I choke up. They nod in agreement; they pipe up when I don’t finish sentences, finding the words I can’t. They understand.
“On the other hand,” Abby says, after a stretch of silence, “in his defense—even though I know you don’t want to hear it—Cohe
n’s not as immature as you think.”
“He was late to my last doctor’s appointment because he ‘got caught up’ in some video game tournament online.”
“Okay,” Abby says, cracking up, “that’s pretty bad.”
Their laughter loosens the anger still in my chest. I guess it is kind of funny. Still immature—but maybe it can be both.
“What I mean is, Lionel had a lot of growing up to do, when we found out about Stella. And it took him a little while, but he did it.” She shrugs, smiling. “For the most part.”
“Marco still races the Jag at stoplights whenever some dude revs his engine. I’m like, ‘Are you in high school?’ He’s gotten four speeding tickets this year.”
“Almost as bad as Lionel staying out with his friends till two a.m. three nights a week. Oh, but when I’m out with my friends? I get ten million texts: ‘Where are you? When are you coming home? I miss you, what’s your ETA?’”
“Mm-hmm. And the way guys just completely shut down during an argument?”
“Yes! Oh, my God, it drives me insane....”
As they talk and laugh through their lists, I take a spot in the window seat against Stella’s stuffed animals. I think about how Cohen always drove at or slightly over the speed limit, his arm extending across my chest whenever he had to brake too suddenly. Ready to save me, without fail.
I think about all those evenings he was there on my couch, and later, in my bed. Not once did he complain about skipping plans, even when I saw his coworkers posting photos from bars and clubs at that very minute.
He texted me often enough, but never to check up on me or rush me away from whatever I was doing. Just to let me know he’d be there, right when I needed him most.
And he never shut down. Never shut me out.
But, I remind myself, he didn’t do a lot of things. Took almost everything too lightly, carried weed constantly, cursed a blue streak when a video game didn’t go the way he wanted.
He left dishes in the sink without running water in them. He blew every paycheck before the next one arrived.
He was a lot of talk, so much starry-eyed dreaming, and little to no action. Why bother, when he believed things would simply fall into place? For him, they always had.
