by Rico, Lauren
Jeremy’s photo is staring back at me from the animated bubble that frames his text message. I run my thumb over the image, as if to touch him.
Come out front.
I feel my breath catch in my throat and my eyes jump to Matthew, who’s too busy playing to notice what I’m doing. Should I go? Does he want to apologize? Maybe he’s regretting the way he acted, what he said. Well, I won’t know unless I meet him. I move quickly and quietly up the carpeted aisle of the hall and out through the lobby, eerily still and abandoned.
I push through one of the heavy glass doors and stumble out onto the sidewalk, just catching myself before I eat the pavement. I straighten myself up, and look around, hoping he hasn’t witnessed my clumsiness. But Jeremy is nowhere to be found.
Huh.
I look down at the phone again, thinking maybe I have misread the location. Nope. This is the only spot that could be considered out front. My heart sinks. He’s just messing with me, obviously. I turn around to go back inside, but just as my hand touches the door handle, I feel a tap on my shoulder. Oh, thank God. When I spin back, there is a small, tentative smile on my lips. A hopeful smile. But, it’s not Jeremy who’s the recipient of my expression.
“Hello, Julia,” my mother says.
I’m speechless as the smile fades from my face.
“What… what are you doing here?” I ask, stunned to see her.
“I wanted to see you. I tried to see you at the hospital, but they wouldn’t let me. I– I was so worried when I went to find you backstage and they told me you’d collapsed. Are you all right? You look so pale…”
It’s amazing what a little anger can do to shock your system right back into a normal rhythm.
“I’m sorry, but do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?” I say, taking a step closer to her. “You were ‘so worried’ about me? What the hell were you doing when daddy was breaking my ribs and throwing scalding coffee on me? Or for the ten years after that when I was in an orphanage? But you’re worried about me now,” I say incredulously.
If she’s fazed by the outburst, she doesn’t show it.
“I know there’s a lot of ground for us to cover. And we will. I just want to know that you’re okay now. My God, Julia, you play the cello like… like an angel! I have never heard anything so beautiful in my life! I’ll be forever grateful to that young man for bringing you back into my life,” she says with a sniff. She’s blinking back tears now.
I can only stare at her in wide-eyed astonishment. It takes a full ten seconds for me to find the words.
“You’re unbelievable,” I mutter. “As I recall it, I didn’t leave your life, you left mine. And who, exactly, do I have to thank for reintroducing us?”
“Don’t you know? I thought for sure he’d have told you. Your boyfriend, Jeremy. He tracked me down after our… meeting… in Montauk. He sent me the ticket for your recital. He told if I came to the city, he’d tell me where to find you. So, I came and I called. He said you’d be here.”
Of course. Jeremy was never here. He was just texting to get me to come out and meet her. Or, more likely, he’s here, somewhere, taking some perverse pleasure in watching our family reunion out here on the street. I look around me, expecting to see him dart around the corner or into a doorway.
“Julia?” she says, looking at me with my own eyes, though, hers are filled with concern and mine are filled with rage.
“Go.”
“What?” she asks, surprised.
“Leave,” I say firmly. But she doesn’t budge.
“Now Julia, I know you’re upset…”
I think I’m going to scream at her, maybe even hit her. But when I open my mouth, the only thing that comes out is a sob. And another and another. It is all there then, welling up in me, clawing at me, drowning me. Jeremy. The baby. The Kreisler’s. The love. The abuse. The fear. Kelly makes a move to embrace me, but I step back quickly, shaking my head and still sobbing.
“No!” I cry. “No, don’t touch me!”
“Julia? Julia!” Matthew’s voice is behind me. “What’s going on out here?” he asks, looking from me to her and back to me again. He’s never met this woman, but there is no mistaking who she is. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demands.
She isn’t as calm and self-assured with Matthew as she was with me.
“I’m sorry, who are you? And what business is this of yours?”
“I’m the only family she has on the face of this earth, lady, and there’s no way I’m going to let you hurt her again. I suggest you get yourself back to Penn Station and onto a train, before I escort you all the way home myself.”
“I don’t think you have any right to…”
“Stop it!” I sob, cutting her off. “God, just go! Please, go!”
Matthew glares at her, daring her to say something. With a thoughtful nod, she slings her purse over her shoulder and starts to walk away. But then, she stops.
“This isn’t over, Julia,” she says resolutely. “I’m not giving up on us.” She turns and walks down the street and into a crowd on the corner.
Matthew pulls me into his arms and I bury my face in his chest and cry until there are no more tears. He strokes my hair and murmurs soothing words into my ear.
“What the hell happened?” he asks when I’ve finally quieted.
“I got a text from Jeremy to come outside,” I sniff, “and there she was, waiting for me.”
“Jeremy texted you? Just now?”
I nod, and something seems to occur to him.
“Julia, did you text him first, or let him know you’d be here this afternoon? You can tell me, I won’t be angry…”
I shake my head adamantly.
“Then how did he know you’d be here? Who could have told him?”
Suddenly, I’m sitting in the diner with Cal, talking about My Orbit. Learning about how I’d been unknowingly telling the world my whereabouts and recalling that I never did get around to asking him to delete the app from my phone. I’m nearly knocked off my feet by the revelation.
“You did,” I whisper.
“I did what?” he asks, confused.
“You told him where I was. You’ve been telling him where I am for months.”
“Julia, are you insane? How could you think I’d…” and then it hits him, too. He slaps a hand over his own mouth and closes his eyes.
“Damn it! It never occurred to me that anyone other than me would be keeping an eye on you with that stupid app. Jesus. Julia, I’m so sorry. I led that son of a bitch right to you.”
I pull him to me again and squeeze him hard. I don’t say anything, because I know this man well enough to know there is nothing I can say. He won’t be forgiving himself anytime soon.
49
Matthew thinks that I’m going to fight him, that there is no way I’ll get out of my bed, get my act together and attend the Kreisler medal ceremony tonight. But he’s wrong about that, as he sees for himself when he comes into my room to wake me from my long afternoon of napping and crying.
“Julia?” I can just hear him in my room from where I stand under the shower.
He raps on the door softly and then his voice is closer.
“Julia? You okay in there?”
“Matthew? Come in...” I call out over the running water.
“How are you doing?” he asks.
I stick my sopping red head out from behind the shower and find him leaning against the vanity.
“A little better,” I say as soapy water drips from my hair down my face. “The iron infusion helped a lot. I didn’t realize how awful I was feeling until I started to feel better.”
He nods and looks as if there’s something he wants to say but isn’t quite sure how to say it. At this point, it could be any number of the ridiculous occurrences of the last several days. The baby, my mother…
“Can we talk about what happened with Jeremy?” he asks.
And he chooses what’s behind door number three: Th
e abusive love of my life.
I pop my head back into the shower and turn the faucets off, then thrust one of my arms out from behind the curtain, hand outstretched.
“Towel, please.”
He hands it to me and, after a minute, I step out, sopping and swathed in Egyptian cotton. He follows me as I pad out of the bathroom, through the closet and into my bedroom. When I flip on the light, he can see that I have already selected a dress and that it is hanging on the back of my door. I pick up a smaller towel from the dresser and use it to wrap my hair up into a turban. Matthew sits on the edge of my bed, waiting patiently as I rifle through my dresser drawers for panties, bra and tights. I hold onto the tights a little too long, having a brief, wistful flashback. I shake my head as if to dispel it and sit besides Matthew on the bed.
“I loved him. I– I still love him. And now I’m having his baby.”
He senses, correctly, that I’m not looking for any commentary here, and he waits in silence for me to finish my thought.
“He... says he never loved me. Never could love someone like me.”
I look down at my hands in my lap, unable to look at him when I tell him the disgusting lengths that Jeremy went to in order to hurt me; to destroy me.
“He told me that my father committed suicide. I don’t know if it’s true or not. And my mother, I think he found her and orchestrated that whole catastrophe out in Montauk.”
“And…” he says tentatively, obviously not sure how far to go, “he hurt you?”
I clear my throat. It won’t help anyone if he gets upset, so I need to downplay this as much as possible.
“He got a little rough with me, but I was asking for it, really.”
“Julia! Do you hear yourself?”
“No– listen to me Matthew,” I say, holding up a hand in protest. “It was me. I tried to slap him at Christmas, and he grabbed my wrist to stop me. He was protecting himself.”
“Oh, please!” he snorts indignantly. “Protecting himself from all five feet of you? You cannot be serious. Besides, that’s not all he did, is it?”
“No,” I say quietly.
He waits for the rest of it.
“He was very angry on New Year’s Eve and I made it worse. I should have just stayed out of his way and kept my mouth shut.”
Matthew is shaking his head vehemently now.
“What did he do?” he asks slowly, deliberately, belying the rage that I know is consuming him at this moment.
“He hit me. It was just… I only had a bloody nose and mouth.”
“Just? Is that all? Well, thank goodness for that. I thought he did something serious,” he says in a sardonic tone.
I’m silent.
“And Brett? Did he know any of this was going on?”
I nod slowly.
“He was there,” I murmur.
“What?” he asks, incredulously. “Are you telling me that he was there and he didn’t do anything? He didn’t help you?”
I can’t even meet his eyes as I shake my head. I’m mortified by my own naivety. Oh, hell, let’s just call it what it is: my own stupidity. Gullibility. How could I have let myself believe that a man like that could ever… My thoughts are interrupted when I feel Matthew’s arms around me, pulling me into him. I rest my head on his chest and start to cry.
“Julia?” he asks over her head.
“Yes?” my answer is muffled in his shirt.
“Did he... Did he force himself on you?”
I sit up suddenly, sniffling and wiping the tears from my face.
“No, Matthew. Never. It wasn’t like that. We were… I’m sorry, I know you don’t want to hear this, but we were really good together like that. Those were some of the best moments. I felt like I was really seeing who he was then. The tender side…”
He holds up a hand and I stop. I’m right, he doesn’t want to hear this.
“I’m having his child,” I say.
“I know.”
“Are you going to tell him?” he asks me finally.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know how I feel about him right now. I’m so angry and hurt. But it’s not like you can just snap your fingers and fall out of love with someone. You know what I mean?”
The moment I utter the words I wish I could stuff them right back in my mouth. I can’t believe I have just said that to him, of all people. Of course he knows. He’s only been telling me for years.
“Anyway,” I start again, “if what he said to me is true, if he was really just using me, then how can I possibly tell him? I’m afraid…” I let the sentence trail off.
But I know he understands what I’m saying. The horrifying truth is that I don’t have the luxury of feeling sorry for myself, because I no longer have the luxury of closing my eyes to the realities of Jeremy Corrigan. There is no telling what he would do if he found out I was carrying his baby. Or what he would do to me.
No. The time for fairytales and happily-ever-afters has passed.
50
“Just the finalists, Miss,” the backstage security guy is saying to me in a thick Brooklyn accent.
“I’m not leaving her,” Matthew replies stubbornly.
“Then she’s not going back there,” he responds.
We are at an impasse. There is no way I’m going back stage to face Jeremy Corrigan on my own. I put a hand on Matthew’s arm and lean close to his ear.
“Give him money,” I whisper.
“What?”
“Give him cash,” I insist. “That’s what Jeremy does with these guys and it works every time.”
He pulls back and looks at me skeptically.
“Would twenty do it?” he asks the large man guarding the entrance.
He looks upward toward the ceiling when he replies.
“Forty’d be better,” he says almost to himself.
“Fine,” Matthew says with exasperation as he pulls two twenties from his wallet and slaps them down on the counter in front of him.
“Good luck,” the man says to me as he waves us through.
We walk together down the long, dim, chilly hall, the click-clack of my heels the only sound between us. I’m not quite sure how I’m even standing right now. The competition, Jeremy, the baby, my mother; I should be a basket case. Maybe I’m in shock. Maybe I’m in denial. Probably both.
When we get back stage, the other finalists are there. All of them.
“Come on, let’s sit over here,” Matthew says, gesturing to some chairs all the way in the back of the wings.
“No. I have to see him,” I say firmly.
“Julia….”
I give him a look that makes him stop mid-sentence.
“Fine, then I’m going with you,” he says with equal firmness. I don’t argue.
When Jeremy turns around, he looks down at me first and then up at Matthew.
“Well, well. Didn’t take long for you to scoop up my sloppy seconds, did it, Matthew?” he asks with a smirk.
I can actually feel Matthew next to me, holding his breath and balling his fists.
“Jeremy,” I start tentatively, “I… is it true? Did you mean everything you said that night, or were you just trying to upset me?”
He gives me a pitying smile.
“Oh, poor little gullible Jules. Both. I meant every word and I said all that to upset you. Though, apparently, I misjudged your resiliency.”
I can only nod up at him sadly. I needed to hear this, but it hurts like hell.
“Well, I wasn’t lying when I said I love you,” I say.
“I know,” he says simply.
“Jeremy…” I start again and then pause. I want to tell him about the baby. Maybe that will jolt him out of whatever mood this is that he’s in. Maybe it will soften his heart and make him realize that he really does love me. Maybe…
He cocks an eyebrow and makes a circling gesture with his hand, signaling that I should get on with it and get out of his way.
“Good luck, Jeremy,” I say at las
t.
“I’ve told you before, Jules, nothing to do with luck.”
With that he gives me a patronizing pat on the shoulder and sets his sights on someone behind us.
“Hey, Mila! Wait up…” he says, flagging down a very surprised Mila Strassman as she walks past us.
When I turn to face Matthew again, I’m blinking back un-spilled tears.
“Well, that’s that then,” I say softly.
“That’s that,” he agrees.
Mila keeps looking past Jeremy to me. I can’t hear what he’s saying to her, but I’m sure it’s something charming.
“Let’s go sit,” Matthew says, taking the hand that isn’t in a cast.
We sit in chairs across from one another. I notice a newspaper on the table between us and I pick it up. Cal Burridge’s face is staring back at me from the front page of the Courier Journal. The headline reads ‘The Day the Music Died.’ I can’t help myself, I pick up the article and start to read. It’s everything we know up until this point. Cal’s meteoric rise and sudden, tragic death. The reports that he had a severe, life-threatening nut allergy and speculation as to how someone who was so careful could come into contact with a fatal dose. Well, the Medical Examiner’s report is due to be released tomorrow so we should have more information then. As I read further, there is a smaller sub-article inset at the bottom of the page. Jeremy is pictured there. He’s described as a close, personal friend of Cal’s who is devastated by the loss and honored to carry on in his memory. They call it ‘a beacon of hope in a sea of despair.’
I flip the paper over and set it facedown on the table so Matthew won’t notice the cover. It would likely send him into a rage.
“All right, everyone!” the stage manager calls out. “We’ll be starting in just a few minutes. Mr. Morgan will be here in just a moment. After he makes a brief presentation, he’s going to introduce each of the winners. Please walk out on stage when your name is called. There are to be no comments from anyone after the medal order has been announced,” she says, with a pointed look toward the violinist, Mikhail.
