by Nancy Adams
“You should have belted him back,” Juliette commented, a flash of anger igniting momentarily in her green eyes.
“I couldn’t really do much from off of the ground.”
“Well, he should feel ashamed of himself.”
“I think somewhere deep inside, somewhere hidden beneath all the contempt and the anger, Charlie feels a sense of shame. I just think that men like him keep it hidden from themselves and use it to fuel their anger, rather than change their ways.”
“He’s a big bully, Pa,” David said.
Jules turned to the boy and smiled. He reached forward and roughed David’s hair, making him giggle and flinch back.
“Hey!” he let out with a grin as he pulled away.
“He sure is, David,” Juliette agreed with the boy. “Men like him are cowards who only pick on people they can terrorize. He picks on his wife and children and sweet men like Papa. But you put him up against someone his own size and he’ll invite them in for a cup of coffee and be as sweet as pie to them.”
“I don’t know about that,” Jules remarked as he took another bite of his sandwich.
The rest of the picnic went merrily, and soon they were walking back to the car.
On the way, they stopped so that Jules could pick pinecones in the woods with David. Juliette sat off to the side while they picked them up and loaded them into a bag they’d brought specially. She loved to watch the boy trot around between the trees, such a happy smile on his face, picking up pinecones and then checking them with Jules to see if they were good ones. When they got home, Juliette and the boy would make art out of them. The trailer was covered in pictures and collages made with things they’d picked up from the woods or from the beach. That boy filled her with so much joy and she felt truly blessed by him. It was as though someone had given her a second chance, had given her that joy she’d felt for ten years when she had Danny. She thanked God every day for the privilege that David represented. He was a true joy to watch grow and she felt like the luckiest person alive to be given it.
Half an hour later, they were back at the car. On the way home, as David read in the back, Juliette looked over at Jules and smiled. Seeing her in the corner of his eye, Jules turned to his love and returned a smile of his own.
“We’re so lucky, Jules,” she said. “So very lucky. First we found each other. Then we had Danny, but lost him. Then we lost each other. But now we’ve found each other and have David. Not many people get second chances like that, Jules. We’re the luckiest people alive.”
Jules stretched his hand across the car and she took it in her own. He brought it up to his lips and kissed it delicately.
“To have you by my side, I’m the luckiest man alive, my love,” he said. “If that makes you lucky too, then so be it.”
One-and-a-half hours after leaving the sanctuary car park, they were pulling into Miller’s Trailer Park. While they drove through the park, they saw kids playing in the roads, people mowing their lawns and the usual Sunday activities going on. When they reached the row that their own home was on, however, they found it a little suspicious that it was so quiet. As they turned down their road, all the activity they’d witnessed thus far disappeared and not a soul appeared outside of their trailer.
It was then, as they approached their home, that Juliette gasped.
“Oh my!” she exclaimed.
Jules pierced his eyes to see, and when he did a wave of anger attacked him and he gripped the steering wheel tightly in his grasp.
Someone had smashed the windows of their trailer.
“Son-of-a—” he muttered under his breath.
As they pulled up to the trailer, their hearts sunk when they saw that every single window had been broken from the outside. The moment Jules was parked he swung the door open and leapt out.
Marching up to the front door of their trailer, he turned back to the car and called to Juliette, “Stay in the car with David. Don’t let him out.”
He let himself inside and gasped when he saw all the glass that covered every surface in there, the floor awash with it. Going through the kitchen, his feet crunching all the time, he went into the bedroom. The moment he walked in, he saw all the glass scattered over the bed, the windows smashed in there too. Looking out of the glassless window across at his neighbors, he saw Charlie Mathieson leering out of the window of his own trailer, watching Jules with a malicious smirk. Having watched Jules walking around inside his bedroom for a moment, the thug left his trailer and came walking around the front of Jules’s.
As Jules went back out to the car to see Juliette, Charlie was standing at the end of the driveway. Seeing him in the corner of his vision, Jules ignored Charlie and continued to the car.
He opened the door and said to Juliette, “You take David to the park for twenty minutes, I’ll clean up inside and begin placing plastic over the windows. Okay?”
Juliette looked over Jules’s shoulder and saw the ogling face of Charlie Mathieson as he stood there with a big sneer across his rotten face.
“Them fucking kids,” Charlie said as he wobbled from the day’s booze, “they got no respect for anyone these days. Just came on by on their BMXs and smashed all your fucking windows.”
With that, he burst into laughter.
“Fucking kids,” he repeated to himself in mirth.
Standing with his back to Charlie, Jules closed his eyes tight and screwed his fists up tighter.
“Just take the boy to the park,” Jules said in a hushed voice, doing his best to control his anger.
Juliette looked at Charlie and cried out at him, “Are you proud, Charlie Mathieson? Does this make a man like you proud? You’re not satisfied terrorizing your own family, you have to terrorize other people’s too?”
Charlie merely stood there wobbling, that big grin still plastered on his horrible mug.
“You want someone to wipe that grin off your ugly face?” she screamed at him.
“Juliette, please,” Jules pleaded with her. “Please, just take the boy to the park. He’ll leave in a minute, he just wants his five minutes. Don’t give them to him.”
But she didn’t listen; her raging green eyes were fixed on the horrid countenance of Charlie and a dragon of fury suddenly consumed her. She leapt out of the car and somehow got around Jules in a second as he attempted to stop her. Running up to Charlie, she swung her little fist at him and he jumped back, only just dodging her.
“Whoa!” Charlie let out as she swung for him again and he once again got out of its way. “You got more fight in ya than your old man.”
“Men like you reek of your weakness,” Juliette screamed at him.
“Juliette,” Jules shouted out to her. “You’re fighting in the street in front of our son.”
It was true—David was watching eagerly from the backseat of the car, his book no longer satisfying him. In his Momma, he was watching a real hero as she leapt at the monster, not just some made-up one.
Looking around, Jules observed that several people were watching out of their windows and he decided to grab ahold of Juliette. However, as he reached her, she swung one more punch at Charlie and caught him straight on the nose, cutting it with her wedding ring.
“You fucking bitch,” Charlie let out, grabbing his face.
Jules took ahold of Juliette and she struggled in his arms.
“Calm down,” he whispered into her ear.
“See,” she screamed out from within his arms, addressing the whole neighborhood, her fury spilling out of her, Juliette caught in a fever of anger. “See,” she went on out loud, “he bleeds. There’s no need to fear him. Don’t fear the monster.”
“You better get your bitch inside before you and her have got a matching face,” Charlie snarled at Jules.
With great effort, Jules managed to calm Juliette and half drag her back to the car. When she was sitting in the driver’s seat with her legs dangling out, she panted heavily, her chest throbbing in and out. Jules knelt down in front of her
and David came up behind her from the backseat and placed his little arms around her neck, a worried look on his sweet face.
“You can’t go doing stuff like that,” Jules said softly to her. “Guys like him are animals. What if he’d’ve punched you back?”
Turning her eyes sharply on Jules, she said in a somber voice, “I’d have killed him if he ever touched me.”
There was such fire shining at him from her green eyes. It was as though they were literally aflame, burning brightly in her skull.
A shudder ran through him to see such anger on her face, her mouth screwed up tight, her eyes bulging out and her brows pulled into a malicious frown. He had never seen such hate in his love before and it scared him to see it.
“It’s okay, momma,” David cooed into her ear.
But even that appeared to be unable to sway the tempestuous fire of hatred that threatened to explode inside of her.
As they sat there, unknown to them, Mrs. Jefferson was coming across the road, holding her little white-with-brown-patches dog, Alf, in her arms. Charlie Mathieson had gone inside now and the old woman took the opportunity to come over to the pair.
“Jules? Juliette?” she called out gently when she came to them at the car.
“Hey, Beau,” Jules said.
When she came around the car to them, the old woman said softly, “You and David can come over to mine until Jules has cleaned up if you want, Juliette.”
Looking up at the sweet old Mrs. Jefferson, Juliette replied, “That would be lovely, Beau.”
The old lady smiled.
“I’ll go back and put the kettle on for you then and expect you over in a minute.”
“Thanks, Beau,” Juliette returned, smiling up at her as she did.
“Can I play with Alf, Mrs. Jefferson?” David asked, his arms still delicately around Juliette’s neck.
“Of course you can,” the woman responded, beaming all over, before going back across the road.
Juliette looked Jules once more in the eyes and smiled at him.
“You’re right,” she said, “I shouldn’t have gotten so angry. I shouldn’t give brutes like him the satisfaction. David,” she added, turning to the boy, “Momma was wrong today. You shouldn’t solve things with your fists.”
“You were still brave though, Momma,” the boy said.
This made her instantly smile and she felt her earlier fury melt away.
“You go across to Beau’s with David and I’ll clean up here,” Jules said softly to her.
She beamed at him, got up and took David over to Mrs. Jefferson’s. Meanwhile, Jules took a broom and large dustpan from the back of his pickup, went inside the trailer and began cleaning up the glass, feeling slightly despondent as he did, his anger still eating away at him.
As Jules swept the glass up in the kitchen, Jackson popped his head in at the door.
“Hey, neighbor,” he said cheerily. “You look like you could do with a hand.” He then dangled a broom in his hand at the door and added, “I brought my own broom.”
“Then you’re invited,” Jules said with a smile.
Jackson came in and began sweeping glass up at the far end of the corridor. While they worked, two more faces came to the door, Clyde from the trailer on the other side and George from four doors down. They too had brought stuff to help clean up, and soon there were four of them working away inside the trailer. It made Jules feel a little happier knowing that at least some decency existed around him in the neighborhood, and his heart became a little lighter.
Only an hour or so later, they were taping sheeting over the last of the windows and the home was secure as well as tidy. The four of them had vacuumed the whole place out and gone through everything to make sure that not one splinter of glass still existed in the home.
After that, Jules went across the road and fetched Juliette and David. When she came across and saw that the three neighbors had helped, Juliette invited them and all their families over for dinner next Sunday, to which they accepted.
That night they went to sleep and Juliette noted the fact that her husband had been very sad since coming home.
“I’m sorry that I flipped today, Jules,” she said as they lay in the dark.
“It’s okay,” he replied. “You had every right. If I was half a man, I would’ve flown for him myself.”
“What are we gonna do about him?”
Jules let out a sigh and said, “I don’t know, my love. I really don’t know.”
CHAPTER TEN
It was five days since the exhibition and Claire’s head was in a mess. She was sat in her bathroom gazing at Sam’s note. This was something that she had been doing at least three times a day since she got it. Even at the hospital, she would spend part of her breaks locked in a cubical gazing down at it, her heart racing as her eyes traced over his handwriting.
Such was her dilemma that her week with her family had been tainted by the fact that her mind was so obviously elsewhere. Paul had asked her several times if she were alright and even broached the subject of Sam once or twice. It had taken all her strength to assure him that everything was okay. She told him that the experience had shaken her up, but she’d be fine in a day or two. Obviously she failed to mention going backstage.
Now, as she sat with her eyes fixed to the napkin he’d handed her, Claire couldn’t understand why she hadn’t thrown it in the bin the moment she’d walked out of that room. It would have been the sensible thing to do. She was with Paul now. Her life was back on course and had been for a long time now. Because of this, Claire was afforded a wonderful contentment in her life. If she were to go to Sam, she would be breaking that course and bringing everything crashing down around her. Wasn’t it enough that Sam had caused one schism in her life? Did she need to go to him to cause a second?
“Honey!?” came June’s voice through the bathroom door all of a sudden.
“Yes, Ma?” Claire answered snapping out of her reverie, instinctively tucking the piece of paper back into her handbag.
“Honey, you okay? You been in there for almost half an hour. Paul’s almost finished with the dinner.”
“I’ll be there soon.”
“Okay, honey. See you at the table.”
Claire got up from the toilet, checked her face in the mirror, swished a little water in her eyes, dried up and then left. When she reached the lounge, she found everyone around the table, a roast chicken in the middle along with various dishes of vegetables.
“It looks beautiful,” she said as she sat herself down next to Paul.
On the opposite side of the table sat June and Kyle. Tonight was the last night of their visit and they were having a home-cooked meal to wish them farewell.
“Would you like a little wine?” Paul asked Claire as he held the bottle above her glass.
“Yes, please,” she replied with a faint smile, unfolding her napkin and placing it on her lap.
The meal went by like mist on a windy day to Claire, everyone chatting and eating as she sat there attempting to join in, but feeling somehow outside of them all. She tried to smile and to joke with them, but everything seemed so far away and her thoughts cascaded through her, numbing her to everything that went on around her.
It was then, after dessert, that Claire received a shock. One which she wasn’t ready for.
Paul stood up and tapped his fork against his wine glass. The sound stunned everyone, including Claire, and she turned to her boyfriend with a confused expression.
“I’d like to say a few words,” he said.
“Okay,” everyone agreed with grins on their faces wondering what was going to happen next.
“I’ve known Claire for over seven years now and am lucky enough to have been her partner for most of those years. Not one second of those seven years would I change. And that got me thinking lately.”
“Uh oh!” Kyle exclaimed with mirth.
Paul smiled at his cheek and went on, “Anyway, I’m not great with words, so I’ll m
ake this quick.” Paul now got on his knee in front of Claire and her heart instantly froze as he gently grasped her hand, gazed up into her eyes, took something from his pocket and then held it up to her. It was a ring and its appearance was followed with the words, “Claire Prior will you make me the happiest man alive and agree to be my wife?”
Claire glanced across the table at her mother. The old woman wore a huge grin on her face, eyes full of gleeful anticipation, hands wrung together. Beside her, Kyle too wore an expression that awaited a ‘yes’ with hope.
Feeling terrible, Claire turned back to Paul as he knelt there holding her hand, a yearning look in his eyes, the ring held aloft in his other hand.
“I’m sorry, Paul,” she said.
Her mom let out a half-scream and placed her hands instantly over her mouth.
“Paul,” Claire went on, “we should talk about this.”
“What is there to talk about?”
“We need to talk about where this fits in with everything.”
“Where it fits in with everything!?” he exclaimed in a voice breaking with tears. “I love you, Claire. How does that fit in?”
“I love you too, Paul, but we need to think about things for the moment.”
“I don’t understand. Are you saying no?”
“That’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“Then what are you saying, Claire?” Kyle asked his sister from across the table, a bemused frown on his face.
Claire looked across at him and was about to say something, but June turned to her son and told him he should keep out of it. Claire turned back to Paul’s sad face, his expression completely forlorn now, the ring back in his pocket, still kneeling down, still holding her hand.
“I need time,” she said softly to him.
“We’ve been together for all these years. I would’ve proposed the day I met you, but I waited. I think this is long enough. I don’t see—”
“I can’t do this,” Claire let out as she stood up, pulling her hand out of his. “I’m sorry,” she continued as she took her handbag and shoes and left the apartment in her socks as everyone stood with perplexed faces at the dinner table. Paul followed her out to the hallway where she was getting her shoes on at the stairs.
