by Sasha Troyan
When I return, Juliet is pulling on her pantyhose, threading her way between bottles and books and papers. Slowly, she lifts one leg, then the other. She goes round the bedroom, passing open windows. She seems to be dancing to an imaginary tune, but this time it’s a slow sad melody. It’s late afternoon and the sun casts a pink shadow across one wall and streaks the green cloth gold.
At last she stops and pulls on her dress, a new dress that has gold buttons that are so heavy they droop.
“Are they wasps or bumble bees?” I ask.
“What?”
“The buttons,” I say.
“I think they’re birds,” she says, and I imagine them flying off one by one. She stands sideways in front of our mirror and pulls in her stomach. She tightens the black belt by one notch.
I remember Al saying, “Are you going on a secret-rendezvous?” at the beginning of the summer.
Juliet applies her lipstick and puts some above her lips so they look gigantic.
“Here’re the tissues,” I say.
She presses her brow with them, then slips them into her bodice.
“Now, you need to get into something else,” she says.
“Oh no,” we say.
“How can we celebrate if we are not dressed for a celebration?” She asks.
“We don’t want to have a celebration.”
Al and I don’t change into our dresses, but when we come into the kitchen, Juliet doesn’t say anything. The smell of meat and potatoes fills the room. The windows are covered with mist. The ceiling with its wood beams seems very low. The kitchen feels smaller than at the beginning of the summer.
“We’ll have dinner here,” Juliet says. “It’s so much cheerier.”
“All right,” we say.
“You can lay the table, Al. Gabriel, why don’t you mix the dressing for the salad? I’m heating up the hashi parmentier.”
She uncorks a bottle of red wine and fills her glass to the brim.
“We’re going to have a celebration,” she says, again.
But it doesn’t feel like a celebration. We’re just having the leftovers from yesterday.
Max keeps passing wind under the white table.
“I thought we would start with a little of that potato and leek soup your mother made the other day,” she says, ladling it out.
We sit down to eat at the round white table. We have to be careful not to lean on it because it wobbles. I don’t slurp my soup, but I deliberately place my spoon so that it’s not parallel to my mouth, but perpendicular. I wait for Juliet to notice. She stares at me, but says nothing.
“Tell us about the Second World War,” I say as I always do.
“Well, you know, I used to work as a nurse during the war,” she says, putting her glass of wine down on the table.
“Was it better than being a nanny?” I ask.
“In some respects, but one of the advantages of being a nanny is that you get to live in different places.” Juliet lived in Lebanon, where it rains sometimes on one side of the street and on the other it’s sunny. She had the best of times in Lebanon because there were so many nannies there. They used to meet for afternoon tea. Al and I lipsing “But one of the advantages …” We know it all by heart.
“Being a nurse is very hard work and there were things that weren’t so pleasant, like changing bed pans.” She cuts herself a piece of brie and balances it delicately on a chunk of bread. She whispers, “I even had to wash men’s private parts.”
We stop eating and stare at Juliet. We can’t believe it. She’s never told us that before. She’s never used the words “private parts” in front of us. She drinks more wine, sticking her tongue out as she does. Her tongue has creases. Two creases down the middle. I lipsing to Al, “Does my tongue have creases?” I stick out my tongue and she says, “no.” She wants to know if she has creases.
“What are you two doing sticking your tongues out?” Juliet asks. “You look like dogs.”
“We’re hot,” I say sticking out my tongue again, making a panting noise.
Juliet sticks hers out again. We’re all three sticking our tongues out and making panting noises. Al and I look at each other. We can’t believe that Juliet is being so silly. We’ve never seen her like this before.
She changes the soup bowls for plates with hashi parmentier and spinach. The hashi parmentier is almost all meat. She puts a bit of it on her fork, then some spinach. She always says it’s good to mix everything, but I like to keep everything separate. I slowly put my hands on the table and Al imitates me, but Juliet still doesn’t say anything. Then I say, “Max has passed wind.”
Juliet carefully places her fork and knife together on her plate and I expect her arm to whip out, but she just laughs and says, “Max has passed wind.”
“I’ve passed wind too,” Al says.
“Me too,” I say.
“It must be the meat in the hashi parmentier,” Juliet says.
“I farted,” I say.
“I did too,” Al says.
“Now, you know you’re not supposed to say that,” Juliet says. “That word is just too vulgar.” She takes another sip from her wine, sticking her pinky out.
Al and I imitate her and I think for sure she’ll get mad, but she laughs. Her laugh is very deep and sounds just like a man’s. But I don’t feel like laughing.
Juliet says we don’t have to do the cleaning. We can do it tomorrow. She’s never said that before either. “Let’s have dessert in the living room,” she says. She tells me to carry the sponge cake, while Al takes the champagne. We place them carefully on the coffee table. Juliet kicks off her shoes and tiptoes round the room with her hands on her hips. She sings, “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.” We stand and watch Juliet dance, and she tells us to come. I tell Al to stay with me, but Al puts her hands on Juliet’s hips. “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain,” they sing. They dance round and round the living room while I sit on the couch and cut lines across the top of the sponge cake.
Juliet stops and says, “How about a game of cards?”
“I don’t feel like it,” I say.
“Oh come on.”
“No,” I say.
Juliet unrolls the carpet and sits down cross-legged. Her dress slips up her knees and I can see her underwear. Al sits opposite her. They play gin rummy and Juliet keeps winning. “What luck,” she cries. “Lucky in cards, unlucky with men, that’s me.” She finishes the bottle of red wine and starts on the champagne. She says she’s very thirsty. We ask her if we can have a sip and she says, “but just a sip.” I think it’s awful. It’s so bitter.
It’s still light outside, but the air is cooler and the sky turning from pink to mauve.
“Are you sleepy?” I ask Al.
“No,” she says, but her eyes keep closing.
“Don’t we have to go to bed?” I ask.
“Oh no,” Juliet says. “It’s still much too early. I tell you what. Why don’t I do a belly dance?”
“Okay,” we say, but I don’t really feel like it.
She pulls off her dress, stands in her black underwear and bra, stretches her arms out, and curls her fingers. She moves only the bottom part of her body. She keeps the top completely still. She moves her hips from side to side. Her face remains serious and she stares ahead. I stare at her belly button and wish she would stop. I wish Mummy were here.
Juliet lets herself drop onto the floor. She pours more champagne in her glass and it overflows onto the carpet.
Then, I don’t know why, I say, “Juliet, you’re drunk.”
“No, I’m not,” Juliet says. “Don’t you dare say that.” Her arm swings out and she hits my head from behind.
“Don’t you hit me.”
“I’ll do whatever damn well pleases me,” she says.
“It’s not fair,” I say. I jump up and run out the living room door into the garden. I run and run and run across the wood bridges, along the bank of silver willows. I hear footsteps be
hind me. It’s Al. We climb up into my treehouse and sit side by side on the bunk bed of logs. Now and then, one of the pots hanging from a branch clanks. We’ve got a carpet at our feet, and above us, hanging from a branch, the painting of the girl with the grownup face.
“She hit me too,” Al says. “But I didn’t say anything.”
“Pig.”
“Fart face.”
“Bunion lady.”
“Onion lady.”
The sky is mauve like Granny’s hat and the trees are black. The grass looks blue. I hear a lark, then the plash of a muskrat. We watch the sky gradually darken, but it’s still light. The sky is purple. We’re all alone. Just the two of us.
We’ll never go back.
Then we hear Max barking. We see Juliet come out of the house. She wanders along the opposite bank calling, “Gabriel, Al,” but we don’t answer. She lies down in the grass and I think I can hear her crying, but we continue to hide.
“Are you crying?” Al asks.
I shake my head. She places her arm around me. I can feel her sticky fingers on my neck.
“Cheer up,” she says, in her pretend-grownup voice. “Things will get better.”
“No, they won’t,” I say, staring at the river. I think I can see our faces beneath the water, peering up at us. But then they vanish and I stare at the reflection of the trees which stretch all the way to the other bank. Gradually, the sky darkens. The birds are quiet, the garden hushed and still. I can no longer make out Juliet lying on the grass. I imagine her sitting asleep in her bed with her head pressed against the wall.
“Let’s go back,” Al says and I agree, but then Al says she wants her blanket, the white one with the blue flowers we buried. We search and search but we can’t find the cross we planted among the ivy leaves. Al cries and cries. Something brushes my ankle and I cry out, imagining it’s a muskrat. “Let’s go,” I tell Al and we run all the way to the house.
Max comes bounding out. He barks loudly, stands on his back paws, and rests his front paws on my chest. His nails dig into me, but I don’t mind.
The lattice door closes behind us with a bang and the glass tinkles, but then it’s quiet. All I can hear is the river running beneath the house. I listen so hard I think I can hear Granny and Daddy and Mummy’s voices in the sound of rushing water. I picture the water running beneath the house. I wonder what it would be like to be sucked under. Al’s hearing aid squeaks. She takes my hand. Our footsteps echo as we tiptoe into the living room. It’s completely dark except for the moonlight filtering through the windows. At first, all I can make out is the outline of the furniture: the top of the couch, the mantelpiece, the lamp overturned on the carpet. Then I notice the flies eating the sponge cake left on the coffee table. They buzz around the half-empty champagne glass. Juliet’s shoes look strange lying in one corner.
“Juliet,” I shout.
“Juliet,” Al shouts, but there’s only silence. We walk up the stairs, holding onto the red velvet cord. We stand on the dark landing for a moment before pushing open her door. I expect to see her sitting in bed, but she’s not there. I check underneath her bed to see if she’s taken the box with the photographs of the children she looked after. It’s still there, in one corner, with her bikini. We stand at her window and stare at the weeping willow lit by the moon.
We don’t put on the lights. I want to pretend that it’s just as it was before, at the beginning of the summer. There are no boxes. Light streams through the windows. Vases are filled with flowers. Granny’s four pink suitcases stand in one corner of her room. I think I can hear Granny and Ethel whispering, “one pearl, one plain.” I picture Granny sitting on the sofa holding her hat by the brim, stroking it absentmindedly as if it were a cat. Juliet dancing round the room. Mum and Dad sitting on yellow and white striped chairs, the skirt of my mother’s white dress blowing up in the wind, her high pitched laugh drifting across the lawn as she tries to hold it down. “Let it go. Let it fly,” I hear my father say.
We wander back down the stairs, through the living room and into Granny’s room with Max following us. I can hear the click, click, of his nails upon the floor. It’s the only noise apart from the sound of the river.
We kneel on the water lily couch. We press our foreheads to the glass pane. We try to see the river, but it’s so dark all I can see are slivers of silver. Ivy has grown across the window so that we can’t open it anymore. In the moon, I think I can see Granny’s face reflected, but a cloud passes in front of the moon and she disappears and we’re alone again. The sky seems too big, the stars like the tiny beads Granny and Ethel used to knit.
Now and then the lights of cars beam through the living room, through the French doors into Granny’s room. I watch the lights as they pass along the white wall and the book shelf. I know not to wait for the sound of tires crunching gravel. I know Daddy won’t come back. Mummy is far away. Juliet is drunk and Granny lies beneath the earth.
I’m the only one who can look after Al.
“Don’t worry, Al,” I say. “Mummy says I’m very mature for my age.”
“What’s mature?” she asks.
“Grown up,” I say.
“I’m a grownup too,” she says, and I don’t say anything though I know it’s not true.
We sit for a moment longer, watching the garden turn from silver to black to silver when light falls upon our canoe. “Come,” I say. “Let’s go down the river.”
“Okay,” she says.
We tiptoe out the back door.
We walk along the white fence. The scent of the roses is very strong. We pluck the heads of the roses and fill the skirts of our dresses, letting the petals drop into the canoe.
We have to coax Max into the canoe by giving him a piece of baguette. The canoe tips from side to side as he gets in. It almost flips over. I check for our precious things: Daddy’s broken binoculars, Granny’s bandage, Mummy’s doll, our Polaroid cameras, the box that used to hold the dried fruit, the wax paper still sprinkled with sugar. We lie on either side of Max. I like the smell of his hair and breath. I wonder if he misses his tail, the part that was chopped off, or if he has forgotten it.
We float down the silvery river. The fir trees are like dark shadows. One birch stands out, white, mysterious, alone. A water lily appears, then disappears. The moonlight spots the river. I think I hear Mummy’s piano but then it’s quiet. All I can hear is the water lapping the sides of our boat. The house grows smaller and smaller and it seems to me that the house is floating across the grass and not us floating down the river. The house seems to lift off and slowly glide toward us. Around a bend, it disappears. But we continue to drift down the river and beyond, towards a place we have yet to discover.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my mother for being an inspiration in both senses of the word, my father for his support and belief in me, my sister Cybele for reading so many drafts and providing insightful comments. I would also like to thank Deirdre Day-Macleod, Julie Abbruscato and Andrew Zeller for their astute suggestions, Nicole Bokat for suggesting I send my novel to The Permanent Press. A special thanks to Robert Kempe who has helped in more ways than I can enumerate here. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Kevin, for always being there for me.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2003 by Sasha Troyan
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2870-7
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