The Juliet Stories (27 page)

The things that fail.

Juliet strokes the wallpaper beside the doorframe. A shape in the unseen but remembered pattern is raised velvet. She reads its outline with her fingertips: horse and rider; she remembers it is of a ferny green. She gives in to the urge to place her cheek against the velvet, a century of softness impervious to change. She is not a woman carved on a prow, pushing through the stormy waters; she is a woman lashed to a prow, seasick, exploring the wilds against her will.

She says out loud: “What am I doing here?”

“I brought gasoline,” says Juliet.

“You didn’t,” says Mike.

“Okay, I didn’t,” she says. “But I saw a gas can in the basement, and there’s the gas station down the road. It would be easy.”

“Arson?” says Mike. “I don’t think
easy
is the choice word to describe arson.”

“It’s ours. We can do what we want to it.”

“It’s not yours. It’s been sold. It belongs to someone else now. It’s waiting for a new family. You don’t know who they are. You don’t know what they hope for from this place.”

“Fuck them,” says Juliet. “Just . . . fuck them, whoever they are.”

“Wow,” says Emmanuel. “Whoa. I mean.”

“What purpose would it serve?” Mike touches her, hands on both shoulders, and she spins away from him.

“Fuck you too.”

“What good would it do?”

“We have nothing,” she says. “Me and Emmanuel. He left us nothing. Less than nothing. He didn’t even let us bury him.”

“What’s in the box? You have that,” says Mike. “You can take it. No one even knows it was ever here.”

“Oh, brilliant, thank you, that’s awesome. Permission granted by the morality police. Well, I don’t want it. What’s in the box? Toys. I don’t need toys. Do you need toys, Emmanuel?”

“Yo, I’m like, whatever, it’s not.”

“Emmanuel needed toys when he was a kid. He doesn’t need toys now.”

“Well. Maybe we’ll need them, someday,” says Mike.

And Juliet looks at him dry-eyed, as if she suspects he has a fever. She says, “You can’t change my mind by dragging our completely imaginary unborn children into the mix, so don’t even try. Here you go, kids, here’s a box of rotten old broken-down crap to play with, here’s some past I’m going to force you to care about; go ahead, enjoy your imaginary mother’s sad little collection of burdens which she should have fucking burned years ago.”

“So burn the box,” says Mike.

“I saw that coming,” says Juliet; but she didn’t.

“I don’t need it,” says Emmanuel. He has stepped away from her, backed away out of the light thrown by the bonfire. “I don’t need anything in it.”

Juliet thinks: He’s afraid
 —
 
of me
.

She never wanted that. She never wanted any of this. She’s making a lot of mistakes, swinging away in the dark here, crashing away in the darkness of her mind’s eye.

What she sees, what she wants, is the farmhouse absorbed by a wash of flame, the twisting of beams and clapping of heat, the devouring urgency of fire. She hears the noise of it, as loud as a freight train, shaking the earth. And she knows, she craves, the insignificance of its absence afterwards, where fire has been and taken everything away.

What remains? The smoking of its insides, the emptied-out cellar into which Juliet would drop the cardboard box to rot in a steady falling of grey midday rain, exposed to the sky, placed at the centre of an impromptu grave. She wouldn’t cover it over. She’d let it waste away to nothing under the careering seasons: fall bashing into winter crashing into spring blasting through summer exploding against fall, around and around in a whirl, and the grass and weeds sprawl and choke out the foundation and the swamp creeps nearer and a wild orchard of pear trees erupts and the surrounding fields fall fallow, and it is still and quiet and no one will ever come here, not on purpose. Only a curious child might explore, a child they no longer make these days, an obsolete child: children are never allowed out alone the way she was, and Keith too. It will have to be them, then, Juliet and Keith, cutting across marshy fields and stepping into a mess of fallen pears, bees everywhere — 
don’t move, they won’t sting if you don’t move!
 — and seeing red sumac huddled in a patch around some unknown emptiness. They would have to look in. They would creep to the cellar’s edge and look down. Mud and branches and weeds. They would see the mouldering cardboard box and the faded thin wood of a painted toy truck. Both would want to climb down. They would jump without guessing at their fate, without regret. The walls so steep they’d never climb out again. There they’d stay, at play. Who would find them? Who would rescue them?

No one. She wouldn’t let anyone rescue them.

“Juliet?” Mike is calling to her, holding her by the hand. She’s turned to stone. No, she won’t always be like this. The farm is sold, the house is empty, there are babies to grow and stories — good ones — that will carry her through and away, and she will not always be like this.
Oscuridad
, all around her, inside and without,
oscuridad
.

“Juliet? Juliet? What do you want to do?”

It was in all the newspapers, the kind of story people are drawn to. Sensational. This was before your father was born. The newspapers printed a photograph of the children standing in three rows in the yard — the photograph had just recently been taken, which seemed so very fortunate. It was probably the only photo ever taken of the boy. They’ve circled his head. Here he is, the littlest, the child who went missing. When I look at it now, I see that it isn’t a very good photograph. We’re all squinting in the sun, and he looks the same as the others. Not so fortunate after all.

There I am, in the back row, towards the middle. I wore my hair in a bun in those days. I could be one of the children, don’t you think? And possibly a boy. I never photographed well.

Mr. John Dietweiller took the picture. He wasn’t to blame, but he bore the brunt of it. It was an awful time. I wrote a letter of resignation, but Mr. John Dietweiller, bless him, replied by offering me a better position. He helped cover my secret when it was of no consequence to him. He was a kind man. He died of a blood clot to the heart, I heard, not so many years later.

This was in West Germany, in the village of Bad Dürkheim, in the French zone. The war was over and the Germans were starving. Our agency kept forty children in the house. These were not orphans. They came from overcrowded families in the surrounding villages and towns. We deloused them and gave them new clothes and fattened them up, batch by batch. I was a young woman, younger than you, not yet twenty. I did the jobs that the others didn’t want to do.

I was the one who replied to the letter from a Mr. Warren Smythe. We received many letters from strangers, writing to express interest in German affairs generally and in our mission specifically. We replied to all with an invitation to visit, and more than you might think came. The agency relied on donations, and most visitors were moved to give.

I don’t remember writing that particular letter of invitation. It was like any other, though I tormented myself afterwards with the belief that I was directly to blame. It was my way of thinking around the other evidence — the real evidence — of my guilt.

I do remember that the morning of May 4, 1950, was unseasonably warm. The cook complained of the heat and I wondered whether she would last the summer; but it wasn’t the heat, really. She was coming down with a fever and she was terribly contagious, though none of us knew it.

Late afternoon, just in time for supper, the doorbell rang. I answered it. A man was standing on the doorstep of Weinestrasse S. 30. He was clean-shaven and wore a striped suit and a hat. Under the hat his hair was bright red, the colour of a new copper penny. He had a wife, too. And he had my letter of invitation.

“Mr. and Mrs. Warren Smythe,” he said, as if we’d been expecting them.

Of course I invited them in.

Mr. John Dietweiller gave Mr. and Mrs. Smythe the tour. Two classrooms, dining room, and kitchen on the first floor; dormitory rooms on the second floor, plus the small room that Anna and I shared. The guest room was on the third floor.

Mrs. Smythe thought we were an orphanage. But that was a mistake many people made. Mrs. Smythe . . . what did she look like? Her face is long gone but I remember what she wore: matching brown dress and veiled hat. She looked very smart, and I did not. I remember that bothered me that evening. I felt shabby in my sensible shoes and my apron. Our aprons went up to our chins in those days. It saved us washing our dresses so often. I did not like the way Mrs. Smythe made me feel. I was not used to it.

But that was nothing compared to the way Mr. Smythe made me feel.

Oh, Juliet. I have never told anyone this story. Are you sure you want to hear it?

In the morning, Mr. Smythe took me aside. His wife was delicate and bothered by noise and could he trouble me to carry meals up to her room? I said yes. I always said yes in those days.

The cook — she was from the village — went home after lunch, sick.

I made supper with help from the older girls; extra work, but I enjoyed it. I liked working with the girls. Most were bossy and sturdy, despite their hard situations, and I liked them for it.

We sat down, forty at the table. There were so many children and they came and went every three months; over the years I have tried and tried to recall especially the littlest, but I can’t. Instead I’ve made him up in my mind, I think.

Mr. Smythe sat beside me. He held my hand during grace.

I was younger than my age; I had never been held by the hand in quite that way. I knew instantly that it was something different, new. In every girl I’ve ever counselled, I’ve seen myself: a girl holding a strange man’s hand under the table. Girls. There is something so fragile about them, beneath the surface. They want to be loved. They want something to love them back. They get lost inside their want. They could drown. Seated beside Mr. Smythe, his warm hand around mine, I wasn’t thinking of the children, the individual precious children in our care, not at all. I was thinking of myself.

I remember that after the cook took sick, so did several children, and then several more. Anna and I were too busy to bother with Mrs. Smythe, so we sent up one of the older girls, who told us that Mrs. Smythe spoke German better than her husband. She was very friendly. Lots of questions.

Juliet, I am telling you all of this for a reason. The reason is Mr. Smythe. He was a man who was easy to like. Anna liked him too. He was easy to like if you were a girl, but Mr. John Dietweiller did not like him, not at all. I believe he tried to warn me: not with words, but I saw him watching me in a way that I resented. Mr. Smythe sought me out, you see. His questions were minor, but he was interested in my answers: how many children were in our care, where had they come from, were the families eager to send them to us, had I always spoken such fine German. Flattery. Mr. Dietweiller recognized what I could not.

Mr. Smythe caught me on my own.

The house was quiet and he startled me on the stairs. He wished to talk, privately. I had known him less than three days, but time was compressed and accelerated because of the fever spreading through the house. I was so busy, so full of purpose and certain of my usefulness. We walked together to the bottom of the stairs and into Anna’s classroom. It was dark. I pulled the door shut behind us so our voices wouldn’t wake the children. More were sick, and they slept restlessly.

Mr. Smythe wanted to stay on longer. I said it wasn’t up to me. But I was secretly pleased that he might think so. He was holding my hand. I did not stop him. Who was Mr. Smythe? I never thought to question his story. He was an American minister. He was between churches. He was looking to serve and had not settled on how or where.

None of this may have been true. The only certainty is that I will never know.

Nothing concerned me, not in that moment. Who was holding me by the hand in Anna’s classroom? I would have answered, in awe,
a man, a stranger: Mr. Smythe
. I let him touch me — he was gentle — my arms, my face. The house was very warm. Kisses. I could hardly breathe. I was not thinking of Mrs. Smythe. Perhaps I wasn’t even thinking of Mr. Smythe, only of myself. I didn’t turn my face away. I wanted to see what would happen next. So many girls do. They are lonely; they long for adventure — exploring the limits of their own bodies, what greater adventure? I never judged a girl, never; not even myself. My body knew what to do, and in some way I believe that I was brave enough to follow it. That it is a kind of courage. Foolish courage, of course, reckless and dangerous, but in its own way, yes, brave.

Everything was over almost before it began. He waited for me to stand up and sort out my dress. He gave me his handkerchief.

And I told no one. I have never told anyone.

I just went to my bed. Anna tossed and turned, and by morning she was too sick to rise. Half the house was sick. At breakfast, Mr. Smythe said that Mrs. Smythe was also taken ill. He behaved as though I’d dreamed our meeting. I did not know that this was common behaviour for men. I was grateful to him.

He offered to stay and help. Mr. John Dietweiller agreed, but begrudgingly.

Mr. Smythe swept out the classrooms. I sent him to the market.

I took down my hair. I forgot that I was homely; I forgot myself. I was happy, I think.

It was warm, and getting warmer. I took Anna’s brush and brushed through the tangles. There were no mirrors in the house but I wanted to see myself, because I knew that I was changed, somehow. I looked at my reflection in the side of a pot in the kitchen, but I was distorted. I picked up a spoon, but I was upside down.

Mr. Smythe found me. The potatoes were at a rolling boil. He was watching from the doorway and he did not look, after all, like what had happened in Anna’s classroom had been a dream.

He came to me. “You’re warm,” he said. “Flushed.”

Well, I was. I was already sick.

One of the older girls entered the kitchen before we could jump apart. That snapped me back to sanity. I went to dump the pot of potatoes. The girl fetched a pitcher of water.

As soon as she was gone, I said, “You will have to leave. You cannot stay.”

“Don’t think I will hold anything against you,” he said. “Don’t think I will tell anyone anything. Don’t think that of me.”

“Who would believe you?” I said. I hardly believed it myself.

“But you’re lovely,” he said. “I think so.”

That is how easily a girl can imagine she is in love.

And that was their last evening in the house and the last I saw of Mr. Warren Smythe.

I didn’t come to supper. I was taken with the fever.

In the morning it seemed he had done as I’d said. They were gone, Mr. and Mrs. Smythe. Can you guess? They had taken our littlest.

———

Mr. and Mrs. Warren Smythe were never found. The child was never found. He was never found alive, but then he was never found dead, either. Briefly it became an international news item — one of my sisters clipped this photograph from the local paper, back home in Ontario — but that didn’t mean much effort went into solving the crime. I can see the boy’s German parents — not their faces — heads bowed. The boy was one of nine, and not the youngest. I like to think that he grew up somewhere safe, loved by people whom he believed were his parents; I like to think that he was wanted and chosen by Mr. and Mrs. Smythe, who perhaps could have no children of their own; that he never found out where he’d come from. He might still be living today.

It was wrong of me, but in the months and years after his disappearance, I rarely thought of that little boy, of his actual breathing, living self. I was caught up in a different story altogether. In the back of my mind it seemed that someday I would find out what had happened to the child. But no. I don’t think so. The answers are gone, impossible to track down. And now I think of him often — not Mr. Smythe, I mean, but the littlest. He is like my own child, my son, who never found out where he came from either.

One vanished, and the other arrived.

Juliet, he never asked: I swear that this is true. Your father never questioned, never doubted what I told him, because, I hope, he knew that he was loved and wanted. I believed, and lived out the belief, that that is all a child needs to know in order to grow and to thrive. I may have been wrong. It is too late to know, now.

If a person is going to keep a secret, a person should have a very good reason for keeping it. I can’t think of a very good reason anymore.

Juliet, will you please nod yes? Please, if you understand what I am telling you. I don’t know what should be done with this. Maybe nothing. Maybe it is enough that you know too. You’ll know where to put it. You’ll know what to do.

Look at you. Granddaughter. I’m proud.