Losing Julia

by Hull, Jonathan

  “Yes, I’d enjoy that.”

  Another day together. That was all right, wasn’t it? Then I thought of Charlotte and felt a tightness in my stomach. Simple guilt? No, something more complicated. Charlotte. My wife. Mrs. Delaney. Sean’s mommy. I pictured her familiar face and gestures. Certainly I loved her. She was a good wife and mother; kind and dependable. Very solid. More than most men deserve. So why did I feel so drawn to this other woman? I’d hardly been with her an hour and already I felt entranced like some besotted schoolboy. I flicked my cigarette butt into the gutter. Was it all those months fantasizing about her in the trenches, only to find that she was better in the flesh? I looked over at her as we walked side by side in the easy silence of old friends and imagined what it would feel like to kiss her.

  Again I felt a surge of guilt, followed quickly by desire.

  We walked six blocks before Julia realized she was lost, then another three to the right, two to the left, until finally we happened upon the restaurant she had in mind.

  “I knew it was here someplace,” she said, looking relieved.

  “I never had a doubt.”

  We sat at a small corner table, lit by long yellow candles in white ceramic candlesticks. The light played off the small windowpanes and made Julia’s face look warm and tan. I studied her lips and the shape of her delicate ears and how she crinkled her forehead when she smiled, giving her an appealing, innocent expression. She ate very little, with long pauses between bites, and I couldn’t tell if she was shy or preoccupied.

  “Where are you and Robin living now?” I asked.

  “Monterey, but I think we’ll move soon. Maybe Los Angeles.”

  “You move a lot.”

  “There’s a lot to see.” As she raised her wineglass to her lips I noticed her nails were bitten to the quick, which surprised me. A lifelong habit or did that start with the war? I couldn’t imagine her actually chewing on them, but it made her seem more human to me. More vulnerable.

  “I thought I’d travel more myself, but after the war I just got bogged down with work and family,” I said, trying to smile.

  “Do you feel bogged down?” she asked, smiling back at me.

  “Only sometimes. You’re lucky you have a skill you can take with you anywhere.”

  “Sometimes I only feel at home if I’m moving,” she said. “Then everything seems fresh and alive, the way it felt when I was a child.”

  “And what is it you’re looking for?”

  “What do you mean?” The question seemed to make her uncomfortable.

  “When you move. I thought you must be looking for something.”

  She was silent, looking down at the table.

  “I’m sorry, I thought perhaps… ”

  “I guess I’m looking for what I no longer have. That sense of being completely alive. I can’t really describe it. I just remember feeling it.”

  As I watched her eyes well up I sensed for the first time the depth of her pain. Another war casualty, only all her scars were on the inside. But some of those were the worst kind, weren’t they, cutting off the flow of life with all the force of a tourniquet.

  Completely alive. I thought about what she meant by that; about all the joy and wonder and passion that had slipped from her fingers. Then I thought of Daniel; of the power in his eyes and voice and his strong, handsome features and the way he listened to you so that you finally felt understood. Thinking of him made me feel tremendously inadequate again; plain-looking and ordinary and dull, with no business to be sitting across from this exquisite woman. Worst of all, I felt incapable of removing the sadness from her eyes.

  She placed her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands. “You said you were an accountant?” she asked.

  “Rather boring, I’m afraid. I’m not even good with numbers.” My choice of professions was a constant source of chagrin to me.

  “I’m sorry it bores you.”

  “The truth is, I just fell into it. The firm is my father’s pride and joy.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “His father was a coal miner in Pennsylvania. Died at Antietam at thirty-six, leaving six young children. My father was the oldest, so he went straight to the mines at fourteen, but he was too smart for that. So he taught himself to read and eventually won a scholarship offered by the mine owner.”

  “What happened to the rest of his family?” She was still leaning forward. Staring. I lit a cigarette, concentrating on the way the flame climbed up the wooden matchstick toward my fingertips.

  “The two youngest boys went into the mines and only one came out. My Uncle William died in a mining accident in 1902. My aunts went to work in the textile mills. Grandmother died in 1903.”

  “What about you? What did you want to be as a boy?”

  I wanted to be a man sitting across the table from you. The thought made me turn away from her. Then I said, “Well, I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I always wanted to be some sort of artist. I wanted to be the first Delaney whose life was not totally consumed by the struggle to get ahead.”

  “Why is that embarrassing?”

  “Because I’m no artist.”

  “Well, you don’t sound like an accountant.”

  “Thank God.”

  “You don’t even look like an accountant,” she said, smiling.

  “Are you trying to butter me up?”

  She laughed and cast her eyes downward.

  “So what do I look like?” I braced myself as she looked back up and scrutinized me for a moment.

  “An absentminded English professor.”

  I frowned.

  “What’s wrong with that?” she asked.

  “Frankly, I was hoping for something with a bit more cachet. Famous author, that sort of thing.”

  “A lot of women swoon over their English professors,” she said, smiling.

  I blushed as I signaled the waiter for the check. Was she attracted to me? It seemed inconceivable.

  When we stood together out in the street I asked her if she would join me in a nightcap. She nodded, standing close enough so that I could smell her breath, which was moist and inviting. I looked quickly at her lips and again felt a sudden burning sensation in my chest. The romantic heart does live in the chest, doesn’t it? Always that tight, burning feeling, like a warning or urgent demand.

  We stopped at a small bar on the corner and ordered two brandies. The men stared at Julia but she didn’t seem to notice. She didn’t act beautiful; on the contrary, she didn’t seem concerned with her looks at all. As I sipped my drink I thought of how wonderful it would be to stay up all night talking, then watch the sunrise.

  “Cheers,” she said, raising her glass to mine. After she took a drink she placed her glass down gently on a paper napkin, then ran her fingers along the rounded edge of the table. She had a habit of moving her hands a lot, not out of nervousness but as though curious about the texture and feel of things. Several times during the evening she placed her hand on my forearm or shoulder while making a point and I wondered if she knew how powerful that was. I liked people who spoke with their hands, so long as it looked natural. I looked down at my hands, which lay immobile on the table, and commanded them to join the conversation. Soon I was enjoying myself, telling funny stories just so that I could flail my arms in a certain way. When I knocked over my brandy glass, she burst out laughing.

  “I’m not sure brandy is your drink,” she said, as she dabbed the brandy off my shirt with her napkin.

  “It’s the Prohibition. I’m out of practice.”

  She went up to the bar to buy me another drink. I watched her squeeze in between a row of men and then laugh with the bartender. No wonder she loved to travel; she seemed at home anywhere. “On me,” she said, returning. I took the glass from her and thanked her.

  “Were you shipped home quickly?” she asked, sitting close to me. I glanced down at her forearms, which were lightly sprinkled with freckles.

  “Five months afte
r the Armistice. Five god-awful boring months.”

  “You must have been glad to be home.”

  I shrugged.

  “No?”

  “You’d think so, but it just didn’t feel the way I had hoped. We got our sixty-dollar bonus and a uniform, coat and shoes—they let us keep our gas masks and helmets for souvenirs if we’d been overseas—and that was it. After the parades and speeches it was like it never happened. There was no grieving, not like in other countries. Everybody just went back to work.”

  “It’s not something people want to dwell on,” she said.

  “Maybe they should dwell on it,” I said, feeling my anger return. I leaned back in my chair. “One minute you’re picking up after a shell has landed in a crowded trench, and the next you’re at a dinner party listening to people belittle someone for their taste in china. Hell of a transition, if you ask me.”

  She nodded very slowly, as if she truly understood.

  I took a long sip of my drink, enjoying the warmth of the brandy in my throat. “It felt like such a betrayal.”

  “Of those who died?”

  “And their loved ones and the wounded and everyone else whose lives were absolutely wrecked.” I squeezed my fists together, then let out a deep breath. “Anyway, I’m sorry… ”

  “Don’t be.” She leaned toward me and placed her hand on mine. I looked down at it, at the smooth white skin and thin fingers and the small creases at the knuckles. Beneath her hand my own looked exceptionally large and worn.

  I felt suddenly overwhelmed with the desire not only to touch and kiss her but also to tell her things I’d never told anyone since the war, things I’d seen and done and endured. Is that what Daniel meant, that you could say anything to her? And is that what the poets write about; about two souls who find each other and can live apart from the rest of the miserable, lonely world? Who wouldn’t give everything for such closeness?

  “I hated Daniel for enlisting,” she said, sitting back in her chair with both hands wrapped around her glass. “He was so damn stubborn about it.” Her eyes reddened. “He was just doing it for his parents, to make them proud and win them back.” Then she tried to smile and said, “He didn’t like guns. I couldn’t even get him to shoot the wooden ducks at a carnival.”

  I remembered my excitement the first time I shot an Enfield in training; the smooth feel of the stock and the tension of the trigger and the sudden crack of rifle fire.

  “I knew he wouldn’t come back,” she said, wiping her eyes. “After we said good-bye I couldn’t eat for days. It was only when I found out I was pregnant that I understood that I had to go on.”

  And how did Daniel feel when he said good-bye? Did he know too? I tried to imagine those last minutes together, then waving from a train.

  I took another sip of my brandy and lit a cigarette, feeling unexpectedly drunk.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, reaching out and touching my arm.

  “So am I. I mean I’m glad that you’re… ”

  “I know what you mean.” She playfully squeezed my arm before letting go.

  I sat up straight in my chair, trying to clear my thoughts. “Were you serious about wanting to take a hike in the countryside tomorrow?”

  “I’d love it. Really.”

  She smiled and raised her glass, though her eyes were still full of sadness. After we finished the brandies we walked back to the hotel, pausing to stare up at the sky, which hung over us like an immense sieve, sifting the light. In the lobby the concierge gave us our keys and we said good night at the bottom of the stairs. I waited a few minutes before starting up the narrow staircase. In bed that night I lay awake for hours thinking of her and wondering how I could ever explain to her how so many men became names carved in stone.

  JULIA.

  Julia Julia.

  What are you doing to me? And what is it about beauty that intimidates; causing us to kneel somewhere deep inside and pray and wonder just how close we might crawl before being banished from the sanctuary?

  “YOU EVER PUT your hand through a woman’s hair and it’s so soft that you have to look to make sure it’s there?” Daniel asked.

  I hadn’t of course, but I wasn’t going to confess that to Daniel. “Nothing like it,” I said, closing my eyes as if lost in reverie.

  Daniel MacGuire and I had been up all night laying barbed wire, and now sat in a communications trench smoking cigarettes, which we kept carefully cupped in our hands like captured butterflies.

  “I had one photograph of her, taken in Mendocino. But I lost it.”

  “So describe her.”

  He leaned back, smiling. “I’m not sure where to begin.”

  “I have some suggestions.”

  He elbowed me. “For starters, she’s got this great wild streak—

  did I tell you about the night we snuck into a small empty yacht tied up to the wharf? And she’s—“

  “Her appearance. You were going to tell me about her appearance.”

  “Oh yeah. Let’s see, she’s about five foot eight, slim but very strong, with these legs… well… what can I say about them?” I imagined silken legs stretching from San Francisco to Paris. “She’s got this playful, innocent expression on her face and a wonderful laugh. What else?” He flicked the ash from his cigarette. “She’s got thick brown hair cut just above her shoulders and parted on the side, full lips and an adorable nose. And her eyes… ” His smile grew. “She’s got these bright green eyes set in a kind of permanent smile, and when you look at them real closely, you feel as though you’re going to fall in.”

  Daniel fell first. I tumbled in shortly after.

  Daniel? I am so sorry.

  SHALL I TELL you about Daniel and Julia? I’m not sure that I can, that I have the strength. Certainly not today. Not until I feel better. But I’d like to.

  If there’s time.

  I DON’T SLEEP that well, which is a shame now that I can finally sleep in whenever I want. I usually have a glass of red wine with dinner, then two thumbs of brandy around nine p.m., which I drink in bed while reading some book or magazine. I read for an hour at most, sometimes the same pages from the previous night—though I’m never quite sure—then fall asleep without much fanfare, my last thoughts lingering on a select (and top secret) group of women with whom I’ve enjoyed a lifelong masturbatory relationship. The trouble starts around two a.m. when I tumble out of my dreams as though shoved from a speeding train. I am careful not to move as I try to shimmy back to wherever I was but soon I am alert to sounds in the hallways. I peek at the clock by my bed, which I hope will say five or five-thirty but usually reads two, the shock of which wakes me further. Then I consider whether to chance a trip to the bathroom, which promises tremendous relief but risks cranking up what metabolism I have left, making sleep impossible; or whether to stay put, rolling on my side to relieve the pressure on my bladder as I attempt to sneak back into sleep like a teenager returning home past curfew. I suppose, on any given night, that a good portion of humanity is agonizing over whether or not to piss. Is anyone satisfied with their decision?

  And does everyone feel so utterly inconsequential at two a.m.? So puny? Pathetic even, like the cowardly lion clutching his tail to his face and quivering all over, ready to bolt?

  Each night I marvel that I have blundered through another day without making a total ass of myself, then lie awake remembering all the times that I have made an ass of myself. A colossal, epochal ass. I still shudder at the thought of events that took place nearly a century ago, like the time in high school when I went the entire day oblivious to a bleeding pimple on my forehead until sweet, precious Cindy Wheeler, the prettiest girl in Latin class, took pity and offered me a handkerchief (with her initials on it), thus sending my self-esteem into a tailspin from which it never properly recovered. Or the time in college when I stood before my philosophy class to deliver a speech on Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit and stood and stood and stood until it was obvious that I c
ould not move my mouth and I was led back to my seat dripping and sputtering like the village idiot.

  Or the time I said good-bye to the woman I loved, not knowing I would never see her again.

  Maybe insomniacs have more guilt and fear than other people, or maybe they just have more time to feel scared and remorseful. Whatever the case, if you are an insomniac, not sleeping is what you do in life, one of your top two or three defining characteristics, like being fat or short or rich or shy or being a doctor or politician or a hemophiliac. Only worse, especially if you are already fat and short and shy.

  While some people count sheep, I tend to tally my short- comings, itemizing all the things that I don’t do well. By about four a.m., I usually start to wonder which is worse, the things that have happened to me or those that haven’t. I think it is the things that haven’t happened, but it’s a tough call, and one which I must make again night after night, weighing my missed opportunities against my egregious errors like some frontier assayer.

  I usually fall back to sleep at about four-thirty, plummeting into a psychedelic dreamland that alternately thrills and terrifies me. (As a child I thought my dreams were God’s way of telling me, in the strictest confidence, that I was absolutely unhinged.) We are all eccentrics in our dreams. Lunatics, even.

  If I have managed to fall back asleep at four-thirty or five, I usually wake again by six-thirty and begin a mental triage of my pain before attempting to move. On bad days I remain in bed most of the morning, sometimes rocking back and forth to shake the throbs and aches and prickles. If I feel that perhaps this is it, I grab the small metal box with the red call button that hangs next to my bed and hold it to my chest ready to press it the moment I detect a heart attack or hemorrhage or glimpse my parents beckoning me from the other end of some brightly lit tunnel that I’d rather not enter.

  I know they say that we come into this world alone and so must leave this world alone, but the leaving it alone is much much worse. On those mornings when my body feels at war with itself, I want somebody anybody to crawl in bed with me and hold me and tell me that the fever has broken and by tomorrow I’ll be well enough for school.