Losing Julia (28 page)

“DANIEL?”

“Patrick, it’s me Martin. It’s Martin, Patrick.”

Martin? Ah yes, Martin. Great Oaks. Infirmity. Senility. I slowly raised my head and stared at my hands, which lay limp on my lap looking splotchy and mottled. I had fallen asleep in the corner chair of our room, my chin pressing against my chest with my head swung to one side at a cadaverous angle.

“Hello, Martin,” I said, rubbing my neck. He smiled at me and patted me on the shoulder.

I’ve grown to like Martin immensely in the months since he moved in. (I know, I promised I wouldn’t.) He is one of those gentle souls who are always at pains not to be in anyone’s way. His growing dependency on others embarrasses him immensely.

Nobody visits him. Not his daughter the bitch—thank God—not his older sister Abby, who lives in Baltimore and is too sick to travel, and not his grandchildren, because the bitch never brings them.

His wife Doreen died nine years ago of lung cancer. Martin had recently retired from his job as a floor manager in a printing factory where he worked for forty-three years, earning a little medallion etched with an old printing press and his name. (He keeps it on his side of the long dresser we share, along with a silver brush and comb set he got in childhood, a white clay mold of his grandson’s two-year-old hand and a picture of Doreen standing in the surf on the Jersey Shore and laughing with her head tilted sideways as she holds her yellow dress up around her knees.) Martin and Doreen had planned to travel on cruise ships and play golf and dote on their grandchildren; when she died they were booked to sail to the Bahamas. A year later, Martin lost most of his savings on a real estate deal pushed by a young broker whose father also worked at the plant. Then his health went.

I took him along to Sean’s for dinner last weekend, where he played checkers for two hours with Kenneth and entertained Michael with sleight-of-hand tricks. Every time Katy approached him he made those funny clicking sounds accompanied by strange grimaces that old men like to make around small children. She loved it.

A few weeks after he moved in, Martin and I were sitting on the front patio, drinking little paper cups of lemonade sold to us for a dime each by some enterprising grandchildren.

“Cute, aren’t they?” he said, taking a sip. The lemonade began spilling over the sides as he brought the cup to his lips, which were extended.

“Hard to believe how ugly they are going to get in about seventy years.”

Martin ribbed me with his elbow. “Christopher will be five next month. I asked Trudy to send me photos of the birthday party. Nothing like a child’s birthday.”

“Nothing like a child.”

“Seems like yesterday, doesn’t it?”

“Sometimes it seems like today.”

We sat for a while and then he said, “I retired ten years ago today.”

“Really? Congratulations.”

A large smile spread across his face. Anniversaries were important to him.

“Did you really like working in that print shop all those years?”

“I enjoyed having a place to go.” His head bobbed up and down as though mounted on a spring. He also stammered frequently, which made him seem even more shy than he was. “I enjoyed the camaraderie, the guys I worked with over the years. The routine.”

“Not the work?”

“Not the work.”

“What about Doreen?”

“Well, she was home raising Trudy, and then she got a job in a fabric store. Gave her a chance to get out, talk to people. She loved chit-chatting.”

“How long were you two together?”

“Forty years.”

“Was she your high school sweetheart?”

“Not exactly.” He paused, staring into his now empty cup, then said, “We had to get married. She was pregnant.”

“Ah.”

“Fact is, I was in love with another woman at the time, but she was in Maine for the summer.”

Martin looked straight ahead and I noticed that his shaking had increased.

“Doreen was also in love with someone else.”

“What happened to him? No, let me guess. He was in love with someone else, too.”

“Right. Broke Doreen’s heart.”

“So how—”

“We met one night at a party, both feeling sorry for ourselves. I don’t think we ever intended to see each other again after that evening.”

Car doors slammed in succession and a stream of children dashed across the grass toward the entrance, their mother calling after them. She carried a large shopping bag brimming with party favors.

“What about the woman you loved?”

He smiled. “Her name was Lara. Lara Tennant. She was Scottish. Loved bagpipes. We both did.” He shook his head. “I could draw her picture like she was sitting here today. Short brown hair, hazel eyes. The sweetest smile. We’d only dated a couple of times, but I knew for sure she was for me. Too good really, couldn’t believe she’d have me. I used to dream about our wedding: lots of bagpipes and dancing.”

“Did she love you?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t. When she got back from Maine and heard the gossip, that was it. She wouldn’t even see me.”

“That’s hard.”

Martin turned to me. “It’s my tragedy. Everybody has theirs, don’t they?”

I KEPT GLANCING
over at Julia as I drove, wondering how it would feel to have her only in my memory. How long until I lost that face and those eyes and that smile? Months? A few years at most? Would I remember the sound of her laughter?

We headed northwest from Verdun through the Meuse- Argonne region, skirting the old Hindenburg line as it cut through woods and open fields and around small villages.

Julia sat quietly looking out the window with her hands folded in her lap. I couldn’t decide if she was deep in thought or just losing herself in the passing scenery, but I was starting to think that she was a bit like I was: constantly teeming with more thoughts and images and memories than she knew what to do with.

She was difficult to read. One minute she struck me as the strongest, most independent woman I’d ever met and the next she seemed extremely fragile, like a person with injuries that won’t heal. Sometimes, watching her, I noticed that she would physically prop herself up, almost imperceptibly straightening her back, lifting her head and shoulders and summoning a smile, as if determined to make the best of things. What amazed me was how genuine the smile always looked. I’d always thought that sadness and happiness took turns running the show; in Julia they seemed to coexist.

When we parked at the edge of a woods beside a deep ravine, I thought we might be near the
Kriemhilde Stellung—
the German name for one of the sectors of the Hindenburg line—but said nothing. Instead I concentrated on the graceful sway of Julia’s hips as she walked down the narrow path in front of me and hoped that we wouldn’t stumble upon any more memorials.

“I’m not walking too fast, am I?” she asked. “My mother always said that I walked too fast for a woman.”

“No, you’re not walking too fast.” I imagined her as a young girl racing ahead of her mother, pigtails flying.

“You’re an only child, aren’t you?” I asked.

“My father died just after I was born. I think my mother always thought she’d have six or seven children.”

“That must have been awful.”

“You can’t miss what you never had, right?”

I disagreed but didn’t say anything. “Is your mother… ”

“She died six years ago.”

Another loss, which still registered in the wounded expression on her face. “I’m sorry. You two must have been close.”

She seemed lost in thought for a moment, then said, “I felt very protective of her when I was growing up, which is a difficult thing for a child to feel. She was very loving but not very strong. I think my father’s death just crushed her.” Julia jumped up on a thin log that lay across our path and tiptoed along it, hands high in the air, before jumping off. “But she never lost her ability to laugh. She had such a wonderful sense of humor!” She smiled at the recollection. “We used to laugh so hard that we’d both get the hiccups.”

“I hate the hiccups.”

“Not as much as I do. They nearly ruined my childhood. I had them constantly.” She laughed again, this time from deep in her chest. “Especially in places you’re not supposed to laugh. Oh God, that always did it for me.” She rolled her eyes, still laughing, then tried to stop but couldn’t. “It got so that my mother was embarrassed to take me to church.” The memory made her laugh harder, so that she had to stop walking and lean against a tree. I thought she looked absolutely adorable.

“I even got them in the Christmas play. Can you imagine? I was supposed to be one of the presents under the tree, a little doll… ” Tears were running down her cheeks now and her face was red. “My mother spent weeks on my costume… ” Her laughter made it hard for her to talk. “And the only thing I was supposed to do was to stay perfectly still for one entire act.”

“Let me guess.”

Julia nodded, bending over at the waist and holding her stomach as she laughed. “And then all the other presents started giggling. I couldn’t stop. The whole Christmas tree was shaking. They had to drop the curtain.” Then she hiccuped. “Oh damn,” she said, pounding her fist against her chest.

“I think they’re cute.”

She shook her fist at me. “Don’t say a thing,” she said, pushing me playfully on the chest, then turning away and hiccuping again.

“Maybe I should try scaring you.”

“That never works,” she said, hiccuping midsentence. “I’ve tried
everything.”

She began walking again. I followed close behind, watching the rhythmic convulsion of her shoulders, which only ceased after half an hour.

When we came upon a concrete bunker I stopped, examined the entrance, then carefully walked down a short flight of crumbling stairs and peered into the darkness. The damp smell was familiar, but without the urine and sweat. I could just make out the shadow of a chair and table against one wall and some boxes on the floor. Other shapes in the corner on the floor were unrecognizable. Had anybody entered it since the war? Or was everything exactly as it was hurriedly left, ten years ago?

“You’re not going any farther are you?” asked Julia, standing behind me.

“Not enough light,” I said, slowly turning and walking back up the stairs, wishing I’d had a candle.

We continued walking, careful to sidestep coils of rusted barbed wire. Julia was quiet. Was she sad again or not thinking at all? I couldn’t
not
think but I envied those who could. I looked over at her, trying to see past her face. Her expression was placid, but her eyes were full of expectation.

I thought again of her mother, and how hard that must have been when she too died. What do you learn when everyone you love leaves you?

“What was your mother like?” I asked.

“She was shy, except around close friends. She loved music, especially singing. The choir at church just transported her.”

“Was she happy?”

“She was when she laughed. She thought that things were either hysterically funny or extremely tragic. There wasn’t a lot in between, or at least not that she noticed.”

“She may have been on to something.”

Julia eyed me thoughtfully. Behind her the sun streaked yellow through a tall stand of trees.

“A friend of mine married a man she met on vacation in Nantucket. Once they moved in together she realized she’d made a horrible mistake. She told me never to fall in love with a man I met on vacation until I saw him in his natural habitat.”

Why would she tell me that? Was she saying she could fall for me? And was that little grin she gave meaningful or was I reading too much into everything?

I listened to the sound of the red and yellow and orange leaves crunching under my feet.

“Do you ever think about settling down somewhere?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Sometimes, but after a few months I get bored.”

As I looked at her I thought that maybe she was restless because she feared she’d never be happy anywhere, and knowing that, her only hope was to keep moving.

“All that moving around must take a toll,” I said.

The smile vanished from her face. “I do miss having roots. A home. And I get tired of being poor. I’ve quit more jobs than most people hold in a lifetime.”