by Sasha Troyan
“No,” she says, “I’ve never been there, but I should think it’s awful. They’ve got dreadful weather. It’s always foggy. Non-stop fog. I expect it’s worse than London—do you know that I’d almost forgotten but today’s the day—”
“The day?” I echo, wondering whether the small bag I saw the gardener drop in to the river one evening was filled with kittens.
“Go look at the calendar,” she says. “It’s over my bed.”
I stare at the calendar tacked over her bed, a picture of Queen Elizabeth waving from her carriage. Al and I used the calendar to mark off the days until vacation. Now Juliet’s going to cross off the days until we return to Paris. She says she was hoping to go somewhere more exotic, like South Africa or Sardinia.
“June 20th,” I say.
“Yes,” she says. “But look at the day of the week.”
“Oh yes,” I say. Saturday’s the day Juliet does her weekly weighing. She doesn’t do it more often because otherwise she gets too discouraged. She lets me watch on condition I don’t look at the number on the scale.
Juliet steps onto the scale very carefully as if it might break. She peers down at the arrow.
“Can you see?” I say. “Do you want me to look for you?”
“No, no, run and get my glasses.”
Even with her glasses on she has trouble reading, or perhaps she doesn’t like what she sees. She leans more on her right foot to make herself weigh less. I look down, and she quickly slides her foot over the numbers, but it’s too late. “One hundred and sixty pounds,” I shout. “One hundred and sixty pounds.”
“You naughty girl,” she shouts and runs after me. We run out of the bathroom and into her room. We chase one another, stumbling into books and clothes. We run until she gets out of breath and sits down on her red poof. Her shoulders droop as she says, “I don’t understand. I’ve been on this diet for three weeks. All I’ve eaten are tangerines and I’ve managed to put on weight.”
I don’t understand either how Juliet can eat only tangerines and put on weight. Once I heard Ethel say to Mummy, “We both know why Juliet doesn’t lose weight. You really should have a word with her.”
Leaning over her red poof, Juliet reaches for a small plastic bag lying on the floor. She plays with the puzzle pieces inside. She took the puzzle out of its box because it took up too much room in her suitcase, but now she can’t remember what the puzzle is. Al thinks it’s of boats and I think it’s of trees.
“Oh well,” Juliet says, slowly getting up. She walks back into the bathroom and I follow her. She stands in front of the mirror and draws herself to her full height: five feet and two inches. Her bosoms look as if they’re about to burst out of their brassiere. She turns sideways and smooths down her stomach.
“Juliet,” I ask. “When did you get breasts?”
“At fourteen,” she says. “Rather late, but then they just grew and grew.”
She passes her hands over her breasts. She’s proud of their size: forty-four, cup D. We both stare at her reflection in the mirror. Her nose sticks out like a parrot’s beak. Her eyes are small and brown like tiny pebbles. She’s very stocky, but she says she bruises very easily.
“Well,” Juliet says, “I must say. I don’t think I look all that bad for a forty-seven-year-old lady, even if I haven’t lost weight. In a few days, perhaps a week, I’ll be able to buy a bikini.”
“Oh yes, Juliet,” I say. I like to imagine what her bikini will be like. Sometimes, I imagine it a pale pink with gold sequins, sometimes orange with silver beads, and sometimes bright red with black polka dots.
“I almost forgot,” Juliet says. “Your room is in a terrible mess. You’re to clean it up at once.”
“But your room’s messy too,” I say.
“Don’t argue,” Juliet says. “Anyway, there’s a difference. I know exactly where everything is. Now hurry and then you’re to come downstairs for breakfast.”
The smell of bacon and toast fills the living room. Sun streams through the glass panes, but the air is still cool and drifts through the open windows, rippling the blue curtain hems, blowing away the thin layer of dust covering the dark mahogany furniture and stirring the petals of roses standing in vases. The copper jug on the chest of drawers gleams beneath the painting of the ship, and the gray waves surrounding the ship’s bow are tinged with gold. Tiger lies curled up in the sun on the window ledge with her paws covering her eyes. Only a few cobwebs remain in the corners of the room and in the tops of lampshades. Even the painting of the little girl hanging over the mantelpiece is light. I see that her eyes are green.
The kitchen is even brighter than the living room. Yellow counters gleam and copper pans glint, glasses on the white sink glisten and sparkle. Black-eyed Susans peer at us from behind the window, some have slipped through the opening between the ledge. The sun picks up the red squares of Juliet’s rag cloth and the gold specks in my sister’s hair. “There you are,” Juliet says, “just in time.” I dance by her through the kitchen and out into the garden, “Tralalala tralala.”
“Where are you going?” Juliet shouts. “I’ve got a treat for you. Come back. Have you ever tried bread toasted in bacon fat?”
“No,” I say and sit down. It sounds terrible, but when I try a piece it’s delicious and Juliet makes me a second one.
Al’s already had two, now she’s having a third. She’s got egg all around her mouth. Her eyes are still sleepy.
Juliet says I don’t have to worry about my weight. I’m skinny, and I’m still growing.
“I’m going to be a dancer when I’m older,” I say.
“I think it would be very nice to be a dancer,” Juliet says. “I wanted to be a dancer when I was a little girl.” I can’t imagine Juliet as a little girl flitting across the stage in a white tutu. I can’t even believe she was ever a child.
“I know,” I say. “And that’s why you’ve got bunions on your feet. From dancing on points at too early an age.” Juliet’s the one who told us about her bunions.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” Al asks.
“Because,” I say.
“Because why?”
“Because Granny and I had things to discuss,” I say.
“But you promised I could come,” she says.
“Besides you have your speech therapy,” I say.
“Not that early,” she says.
Every morning Al and Mummy do speech therapy. They say the same words over and over again. But sometimes they draw pictures. In Paris, Al has a speech therapist. I think it must be nice to be deaf because then everything you say is interesting.
I jump up from my chair and run outside screaming at the top of my lungs, “Follow me.” Al screams too, but then Juliet yells for us to be quiet. She points to my mother’s bedroom. I think I see Mummy peering through the window.
We creep up to Granny and Ethel. They’re already sitting in the blue foldout chairs on the stone patio. They’re knitting. The brims of their hats waver as they slip their needles in and out. They look as if they’re talking to one another, but they’re not. They whisper, “One plain, one purl, one plain, one purl,” and sometimes they shout, “Oh dear, I’ve dropped one,” and you would think they had dropped a real pearl if you did not know about knitting.
“One, two, three,” I mouth to Alex and then we shout, “Boo,” and Ethel almost falls off her chair.
“You’ll give me a heart attack you will, you’re impossible. I shall have to talk to Juliet,” Ethel says. She looks down and retrieves two or three dropped stitches. “Never mind me. You’ll give your grandmother a heart attack. Are you alright, Will?” she shouts.
“I’m fine,” Granny says. “I’m getting so deaf I barely heard them. No one can give me a fright anymore. Gabriel, why don’t you get a chair and I’ll show you how to knit?”
“No thank you,” I say. “Maybe later. I’ve got a lot of work to do on my treehouse.”
“You be careful,” Ethel says. “Don’t climb t
oo high, Al.”
We run across the small wooden bridge through tall grass across another bridge and along the bank lined with silver willows and snowballs and red roses. We stop by our trees. I send Al to get logs to make a bunkbed for my tree. I wish my tree were taller than the house so that I could see the white road leading to the gravel courtyard. I hope Daddy comes soon. We always go to the market on Saturdays and the morning is the best time to go. By evening all the good fruit and vegetables are gone. My father knows everybody and before buying anything he tastes it. The vegetable man doesn’t mind because my father buys so much. He even lets me try the tomatoes and apricots.
Across the river, I can see Granny and Ethel knitting. Sometimes, Granny’s mauve hat blows off. It rolls over and over through the grass and Ethel runs after it, one arm outstretched, one hand holding down her own pink hat. “Stop, stop,” she calls.
Later, Juliet sits between them. She does not wear a hat. She leans over one side of her chair and then the other, back and forth between Granny and Ethel. I see her point at Mummy’s room.
I think I hear Daddy’s car, but each time I’m wrong. At twelve I hear the bakery car honking as it goes over the hill. Juliet leaps up from her chair. We expect her to call us for lunch, but she does not come. We play and play in our trees. We dress our dolls. The small dolls are the good, pretty ones, orphans left in charge of the big nasty dolls. The big nasty dolls punish the small dolls by putting them on a diet of crumbs and a thimble of water. The big dolls whip the small dolls with small swatches of willow. The big dolls put lemon on their wounds.
Then Al grabs the “Gone with the Wind” doll from me.
“That’s mine,” I say. “Daddy gave it to me for my birthday last year.”
“No he didn’t,” she says. “He gave you the one with the blue dress and the pink sash.”
She turns away from me so that she doesn’t have to hear what I say, and I try to twist her head around so that she’ll have to see my lips, but she closes her eyes and Juliet arrives and asks me why I’m torturing my poor little sister. It’s not fair. Juliet is always on her side.
I decide not to eat a thing so that they will be sorry, but I’m so hungry that I eat half a baguette with boursin, Granny’s favorite cheese. Mummy does not come downstairs, and in the afternoon while we are napping, the sound of her piano drifts up to our room. Daddy does not like Mummy to play. He always says, “Why do you have to play as soon as I come home?” and later, if she continues to play, he says, “Boy, do you attack those keys aggressively.” Sometimes, I think she has finished playing and he has come, but after a minute or two, she starts up again.
At four, Juliet says we may get up, and I tiptoe to Granny’s room to wake her from her nap to go up to the vegetable garden. I won’t let Al come. “Go away,” I say. “Don’t follow me everywhere.” Mummy and Granny’s voices drift down into the living room. They’re arguing. I can’t make out the words because they’re talking in whispers and the door to Mummy’s room is closed. As I tiptoe up the stairs, Mummy’s voice becomes louder, but then Granny starts talking at the same time as her. Granny says, “I do hope—”
“Please,” Mummy says. “I know—”
“Get angry.—”
“Please, please, please, can we not talk about it?”
I knock lightly on the door. “Just a minute,” Mummy says.
Mummy is sitting in front of her dressing mirror and Granny is standing behind her, slowly brushing Mummy’s hair. Her hair is electric and sticks to Granny’s arm. I count the strokes, and then I stand beside Mummy. She’s twisting round and round the silver top of an empty crystal jar.
“Granny and I are going into Malsherbes,” Mummy says.
“Aren’t we going to go up to the vegetable garden?” I say, turning to Granny.
“Not this evening, dear,” Granny says. “Maybe we’ll get you a surprise.”
I stroke Max’s ears as Mummy and Granny leave the room and Max moans as if he were sad that he too cannot go to Malsherbes.
Then I stand looking out Mummy’s window, waiting for Mummy and Granny to come out the front door, letting the white curtain wrap itself around me, wondering whether I look like a ghost. I watch them cross the gravel, Granny stop to lift some flowers which have fallen. I wonder what the surprise will be. I hope they’re planning to buy me a canoe to go down the river. I watch them get into the car. They both sit in the back. The car glides up the hill, then disappears over the top.
Everything in Mummy’s room has been put away. Even the vase with the red roses. The wind blows, lifting the curtains and swinging one of the closet doors open, revealing hangers without clothes. I listen to the hangers jingle until the wind stops and they hang still. I open the other cupboard door. My father’s suits have gone; his ties, the long row of shiny shoes have disappeared. All that’s left is a black shoelace stuck to the plastic covering Mummy’s favorite cream dress. His sweaters have been replaced with a stack of Mummy’s music, and there’s no sign of the tiny leather horse my father kept wrapped in a scarf because it was coming apart, the yellow stuffing spilling out at the seams.
I check the other cupboards. They too are bare, but beneath their bed, I find a dark blue suitcase, overflowing with clothes. The suitcase used to stand upstairs in the attic; once, when we were playing hide-and-seek, I hid inside it. I drag the suitcase from beneath the bed and flip it open. A photograph of my parents at their wedding lies on top of my father’s clothes. My mother holds white lilies, while my father wears a gray top hat. Monogrammed handkerchiefs, suits, socks, cufflinks, shoes, ties, even the leather horse, have been thrown in; only his brown felt hat is missing. Perhaps I did not imagine it floating down the river this morning.
I hear Juliet calling me and push the suitcase beneath the bed, then run across the soft carpet, but suddenly I feel something enter my foot. Hopping on one foot, I dash to the bathroom. I place my foot in the beam of light slipping between the blinds, twist it from side to side until at last the sun catches a tiny shard of glass.
“I don’t have all evening,” Juliet says. “Luis is coming at seven thirty and I still have to get ready.” She bends over and carefully places two bowls of soup beside another bowl on the round white kitchen table. The light in the kitchen is softer now. Max is snoring by my feet. Sometimes, he shudders or moans as if he’s having bad dreams.
“Remember your manners, girls,” Juliet says. “You may begin. Don’t blow on your soup.”
“But it’s too hot,” I say.
“It’s too hot,” Al repeats.
“Then you must wait until it isn’t.” She wipes the corners of her lips with the tip of her white napkin. “Gabriel, how many times do I have to tell you to position your spoon correctly? Like this.” She grabs my spoon and twists it so that it is parallel to my mouth and not perpendicular. “Don’t make that noise. Watch me.” She brings the spoon carefully to her mouth and sips her soup. Her purple tongue appears. “See?” she says.
I take a few more sips, making a lot of noise each time. Al sees me slurping and grins at me from across the table.
“You’re doing it on purpose,” Juliet says.
“No, I’m not,” I say.
“Don’t argue with me, Gabriel, or you’ll be sent to bed without any dinner. Sit up straight. Your manners are terrible, and they seem to become worse and worse. Your hands. Keep them off the table.”
“The French think it’s rude to keep your hands off the table,” I say.
“Perhaps,” she says, “But that’s the French. Your mother hired an English governess.”
“Daddy said the French have that rule because they’re afraid people will be holding hands under the table,” I say.
“Really?” Juliet says. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. But your father is American.”
“Max farted,” I say, and Alex and I giggle.
“How many times have I told you to use the words ‘pass wind’ if you must refer to such things?”
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“Max has passed wind,” I say. “And I think I’ve passed wind too and Alex has too.”
Alex giggles very hard.
Juliet hits me behind the head, and my spoon flies through the air, but I don’t cry because I don’t want Juliet to think I’m a weakling like she says the French were during the Second World War. She says the English were the brave ones. They took hundreds of boats across the channel to save the French.
“I think I got you too late,” Juliet says as she replaces our soup bowls with clean plates. “I really have to get children when they’re babies, before they can even walk. I suppose I’m not strict enough with you. But really, I think that Americans don’t know how to bring up their children. They’re too lenient. The English know how to prepare their children for life. Even our English royalty is brought up strictly. Prince Charles used to have to take icy cold showers at boarding school. You really can’t expect to make a boy into a man if you molly-coddle him and let him do what he wants and of course, going to the army is essential.”
“Daddy never went to the army,” I say.
“No, he didn’t,” she says.
“He says he’s going to send us to military school,” Al says.
“Well, that might not be a bad idea,” Juliet says.
“I’m the horriblest naughtiest little girl in the whole wide world,” I say.
“I didn’t say that, Gabriel,” Juliet says. “You’re always exaggerating. You just need to make an effort. You can be little angels when you put your mind to it. Look, I’m going to trust you girls and let you finish your dinner on your own. I’ve left some apple crumble on the counter.”
Juliet used to call us angels in the morning but she hasn’t in a long time.
“Where’s Brussels?” I ask Juliet who is standing in front of the full-length mirror in our bedroom. She doesn’t answer, but leans closer into the mirror, forehead almost touching. She says the mirror in our bedroom is more flattering than the one in the bathroom. Al and I are sitting on the bottom bunk bed. We always watch Juliet getting ready for her evening off.
