So Much Love Page 11

  I just stared at him. The answer was, Why would I tell him anything? But I figured I couldn’t say that without starting a fight. “I didn’t know you were interested in poetry.”

  “Oh sure, oh sure, huge fan. So this is exciting, getting her very own book published. We ought to celebrate.”

  “Well, I’m glad you and Julianna had such a good talk.” He didn’t seem to be getting my tone, but that was an act. To get that tone out of me was the whole point of the conversation.

  Edwin kicked at the pile of boards. He still hadn’t told me what they were fucking for. “You two ever step out on the town? I know a place, a couple young sweethearts of my acquaintance introduced me. Dancing, good beers on tap, good-looking people, great place to raise a glass to Juli’s success.”

  I opened my mouth and he just about thrust a hand in. “Not a pickup joint—classy. You could take your lady for a night of celebration.”

  “Well—”

  “You oughta think about it. These girls that I’m taking out tonight, they’re all right, but they’ll go with whoever pays for drinks, y’know. Would be nice to have you and Juli there too, for real conversation.”

  I shook my head, nudged the narrow boards with my foot.

  “You just think about it. We won’t be waitin’ on you, like.” That wink again, my god, I ought to have punched his face in when he did that. “I’ll give you the address.”

  —

  At home, the place was just piles of dishes and books and crap, and Julianna on the floor like a child, with a bunch of papers out in front of her and that fucking cat in her lap.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Oh, hey. Just working on the order for my book.” She didn’t even get straight up when she saw me come in—had to carefully set the cat down and stack up her pages so they wouldn’t get kicked. Shows her priorities. Finally, she scrambled up to big-girl level. “How was your day?”

  “Bar none disaster. The owner is totally dicking us.”

  She patted my arm but didn’t really meet my eye. “That’s too bad, Sean. I’m sure Edwin will sort it out. I got some veal for dinner, if you want.”

  Of course she would bring up that bastard right away. I stared at her to see if she looked dirty, like a liar. When I met her, way back in Iria when we were both practically kids, she was a virgin, or that’s what she said. Actually she wrote a poem about it, how I was the only one, ever. I wasn’t sure. She was hot, Julianna—I knew that even though when you’ve fucked someone a lot of times, it’s hard to see their hotness. But with her I could always see it. I guess it got pointed out to me a lot by how other guys stared at her. They wouldn’t let me forget for a second.

  “It was on sale. Frozen stuff.” I guess she thought me going all grim was because she bought expensive fucking veal. Her giant blue cow eyes didn’t tell me anything—after all these years, I still didn’t even know if I trusted her not to lie. How fucking crazy is that?

  “What’s modern art?” I said it because I suddenly knew she’d know. She’d gone to university, though she dropped out when I got the job out here.

  The cat had gone into the kitchen and was yowling for its dinner. Julianna was walking after him as she answered. “What do you mean?”

  “You know, modern art. The expression, the thing people say.”

  “Like Clement Greenberg? Or like Ezra Pound?”

  “No, not like history. I mean Edwin’s always going, ‘It’s not modern art,’ when I want something I’m working on to be better and he doesn’t. Like he doesn’t want me to do too good a job.”

  “Oh, that’s an expression. Like, it’s not that important.”

  It was like a punch in the gut. It was good to know that’s what she thought of my work. Good to know she was so knowledgeable about Edwin’s expressions. Just fucking great. She went into the kitchen to feed that cat she loved so much, not even looking back to see how I felt. As soon as the door shut I slammed my fist into the wall beside the window. Plaster dust waterfalled onto the floor.

  Of course Julianna came running when she heard the crunch. I couldn’t even tell if she was pretending to care when she touched my busted-up, bleeding knuckles. Or was she cooing over me even though she was wet for fucking Edwin? I shoved her and she skittered back, tripped on goddamn Archie, and fell onto the couch. The cat sank his teeth into her calf like it was a mouse. She squawked, her ponytail disintegrating around her face.

  There was no choice. I had to see for myself. “C’mon, brush your hair; we’re going out.”

  —

  I watched her very, very carefully. When we first saw Edwin by the pool tables, she nodded and grinned and let him kiss her cheek. He insisted on buying the first round and when I tried to say no thanks went on about Julianna’s brilliant poetic book—that’s what he called it—and how he was going to say he knew her before she got famous. I was dying to ask what his favourite poem of hers was because I was betting he hadn’t read any nor even knew what they were about. But what if he had? What if he said one of my own favourites, the one about the ice cream, or the one about a tomato plant growing in a gravel yard? So I didn’t ask.

  We sat at the bar with these two awful females of the sort you’d expect in a place playing Shania Twain followed by Aerosmith. Super-young, not pretty but with thick dark eyeliner and boobs that seemed to be resting on shelves inside their bras. It was an awful night, because everybody had some sort of plan or agenda, in addition to the usual one of just getting pissed drunk. Julianna was trying to get me to not be mad but in that idiot way she had of pretending not to know why I was mad in the first place, so she wouldn’t have to stop what she was doing or apologize at all. She just rubbed up against me the whole night, all bug-eyed. Those sad girls Edwin brought just wanted to get their drinks bought and their bums patted every once in a while, so they could bicker with each other about who Edwin really liked. Edwin was happy to buy their rum and diet Cokes and pat whatever was available, but he was obviously after Julianna. He wasn’t subtle about reaching around her to flag the waitress, clapping his hand down on her thigh every time he laughed. She didn’t blink, and she even blushed when he talked about how she was creating true literature, as if those other sluts cared. He was so familiar with her, calling her Juli as if he’d known her forever, grabbing a sip of her drink when she looked away and then, when she caught him, just giving a little wink and licking his lips—it was obvious they’d slept together.

  The thing was, I felt like Edwin was mainly doing it to get at me; sure, she was hot, but the two chicks sitting on the other side of him weren’t that bad, didn’t have boyfriends they fucking lived with, and weren’t playing hard to get like she was. Not that hard, though—Julianna laughed when she saw him licking her beer foam off his lip, a wet chirp that sounded way too into it for me to believe all the surprised looks she gave to his wandering hands. I was a rock, though, just staring at the baseball game on the screen over the bar, minding my business, peeling labels off my empties, waiting out the night.

  Finally, finally, it was last fucking call and we could let the evening die. Edwin knew we’d taken the bus to the bar, so when he got outside he offered us a drive home in his lousy car, but then Julianna went, “No way, you’re plastered,” like she was his wife or something. And he just hands her the keys, super-sweet, like they were the couple and I was just some asshole getting a free ride home.

  She lit out across the parking lot—just like that, her long blond hair glowing a kind of silver in the streetlamps’ glare as it swung just a few inches above her round little rump. Edwin jogged up to her with the two girls trailing behind. They didn’t even glance back to see if I was following—I could’ve gone back in to call a cab or collapsed in the parking lot, for all they fucking cared. Eventually I went after them, just to see the nightmare through.

  Really, I knew it wasn’t Edwin’s fault, although he was a fucker. It was natural for a man to want a beautiful woman, and anyway, Edwin never promised me
he wouldn’t. It was Julianna who had made me promises, written me little bathroom-mirror poems on sticky notes about staying true forever, all that shit—and it was her I held responsible.

  When I got to the car, Julianna was already behind the wheel and the two girls—I never got their names—were fussing around getting into the back. Edwin goes, “Well, Sean, your woman has secured the front seat for you. Guess I’ll make myself at home on the hump.” He and the girls laughed like idiots. I guess they were drunker than I’d thought. He climbed in between them and slammed the door. When I went over and opened the passenger door, Julianna smiled up at me and without thinking I smiled back—a pure instinct smile. I felt stupid, but what could I say? I was just a loser who couldn’t even buy a car or keep his girlfriend off other guys’ dicks. Juli waited for me to buckle up before she pulled out.

  I was ignoring Julianna, and in the back seat Edwin had somehow sweet-talked both of the girls onto his lap. Juli was being all prissy, asking, “Is that really safe?” The girls just laughed like hyenas and started yammering on about who liked Edwin more. “No, me!” “No, me!” Barely even words, but they sure could go on. Then one of them shifted sideways over his knee so that I, glancing back from the front seat, could see right till Sunday in the headlight from oncoming cars as we pulled onto the highway back to town. I kinda got hypnotized.

  That’s why it took a moment for me to realize the car was heading onto the soft shoulder and jerkily slowing down. I looked over at Julianna and her face was wet. “Christ, what now?”

  She just kept on crying and braking and didn’t take her eyes off the road.

  “No, what’s this? I say something to you? I didn’t say no goddamn thing to you.”

  “A cat. There was—a cat!”

  We’d come to a stop by that point. Them in the back were wasted, but they still could recognize we weren’t moving. “What the fuck?” squawked one of the idiot twins.

  “Just calm down, Juli, honey.” Edwin actually leaned forward between his two blitzed beauties and put his hand on Juli’s shaking shoulder. She didn’t even notice, as if he’d done it a thousand times before.

  “No, no. I gotta get the cat.”

  If I’d been sober I would’ve worked out that she’d meant in the road there was a cat, but I wasn’t and now we were at the side of the highway in the goddamn dark and Julianna was both sobbing like a maniac and trying to get out of the fucking door with cars whipping by at a hundred miles per hour. So I grabbed her by her skinny arm and yanked her back in the car. “The cat is at home, you dumb bitch.”

  “The cat, I hit it. There’s a cat on the road that’s hit and I’ve got to help it.”

  Finally I got what she was saying through the beer fog. I brought my voice down so the others wouldn’t hear—not that they gave a fuck. Edwin had lost interest and was necking with the blonder one; the one more like Julianna. “Yeah, well, don’t add yourself to the graveyard.”

  “I can see it.” She pulled herself toward the door again, but I got my fingers dug into her arm. “Sean, I’ve got to help that cat.” She twisted and managed to get free of my hand, I don’t know how. That girl was an eel. She opened the door and was out before I realized I’d lost her.

  She was plastered to the driver’s side door when I got to her—a semi had just gone by and the car was wobbling. “Get in the car, Julianna. I fucking mean it.”

  “I couldn’t stop.” She was talking like her teeth were chattering. “Jessie and Jennifer don’t have seatbelts on and they would’ve gone through the windshield.”

  “Well, good you didn’t kill no one over a fucking rodent.”

  “Cats aren’t rodents!” she screamed, her mouth wide and spit flying. She started to lunge at some white streak a hundred metres back in the right-hand lane. Even I could see there were headlights coming. She must have had something more to drink when I hadn’t been paying attention.

  I grabbed her arm again and the other one too, flipped her round and slammed her against the car. “You can’t fucking run down the highway, Julianna. You need to take responsibility for murdering that cat and just get the fuck on with it.”

  She was crying so much she looked ugly. “I-I-I-I—”

  I smacked her a good one across the mouth and came away with a hand coated in snot and tears and spit. “Get it together. Now you gonna drive or am I? Maybe me driving wasted is better than you sober, what do you think?”

  “What the fuck?” Edwin had rolled down the back window, which Julianna was half leaning across. “What’s going on? Leave the girl alone.”

  “Fuck off, Edwin. Get back to your sluts. This is none of your business.”

  She was trying to drop down out of my hands now and curl up on the ground. Thank god she didn’t weigh very much.

  “Jesus, Sean, this is fucked up.” Edwin was trying to get the door open but Julianna was pressed against it and I put my hand on the top of the frame too. Fucking Edwin. He always had to get involved in every goddamn thing. The girls in the car were squawking but I couldn’t see their faces.

  The next passing semi flattened me against her. When it was gone I shoved my hand behind her back, opened the door, and crammed her in with the other two bitches.

  “Edwin, take shotgun. I’m driving now.”

  I got us home just fine, though I did see the back door of Edwin’s car was a bit dented where Juli had slammed against it. Served him right, specially since right after that he told me he didn’t think there’d be all that much carpentry work for me the rest of summer. Fucking liar. But I made him settle things like a man, and that was satisfying.

  When I got home from dealing with Edwin, Julianna showed me the bruises on her arms, her swollen lip. I told her what the fuck else was I supposed to do? She could’ve gotten herself killed. She didn’t have an answer to that. And she was mad about me losing the job—even a crazy whore needs someone to keep her in veal and notebooks. We had a fight, and she wound up having to stay home from work for a long time after that. But it was good—me and her, just the two of us hanging out all the time, no outside interference. I think we both felt lucky, being together like that.

  The Happy Ending

  Gretta and I were happily married for a long time, I think. Maybe one is only ever qualified to assess 50 per cent of a relationship, if we accept the idea that other people are never truly knowable. And I do accept that. Or at least, I accept it with Gretta. She has always been tense, reserved, self-possessed, but I think the insight you get about someone when you’re dating is a down payment. You only pay off that mortgage of intimacy twenty or thirty years later. It seemed fair—I didn’t expect her to offer me full access to her secret heart after only a couple of years. And I wanted to rescue her from the iciness of being an orphan in her twenties, of living far away from home, of not being able to talk in large groups of people, of being alone. The glimpses I’d had were enough for right then. When she accepted my proposal she looked radiant, her dark hair a copse shutting out the sunlight behind her as she leaned down toward me, on my knees as the cliché dictates. “Yes, Len. I’ll marry you. Yes.”

  For the first few years—seven, eight, nine years—I continued to feel that radiance regularly. Sometimes I still do, a glimmer, beaming over the squash casserole she learned to make from my mother’s recipe, in her sigh when I touch her breast, in the way she responds instantly when I reach for her hand. But there are limits: I can’t present the Gretta I know to others. My early attempts to bring her “out of her shell” failed awkwardly at party after party; in a bustling room of strangers and canapés, she would always be only herself, shell and all. But she loves me. Even if she were holding a crumpled tissue in the hand I wanted to hold, she would transfer it to the other hand, wipe her palm on her thigh, and offer me her fingers as quickly as she could, as if the offer might expire. Or if I needed it, she’d just give me the tissue.

  The summer my mother was dying, I thought I would bankrupt her tissue supply; her allergies w
ere no match for my grief. I’d come back from the hospital bathed in tears and sweat—it was a humid summer—but there was never a project, a phone call, a murder mystery with a bloody bathtub on the cover that Gretta wouldn’t put aside for me. Over and over, we found ourselves out on the balcony, drinking whatever was in the liquor cabinet, going over the ways I’d failed as a son, and the ways I’d succeeded, and the ways we’d remember my mom when she was gone.

  That summer, Gretta saved me from myself and my tendency toward poetic despair. And other times—the tenure struggle, the book I couldn’t write—it was always her hand on my shoulder, talking me through it, listening through everything. I felt like I could never return the favour. Even during the years we were trying for the baby—the doctors never figured out what the problem was and then all the clichés came out of everyone’s mouths (not in the cards, not in the stars)—it was still mostly my tears, my weakness that showed. I remember her standing by the window in the fertility clinic’s waiting room, her straight back draped in a brown sweater, murmuring that it would be okay, we would always be okay, somehow. Her hand stroking the nape of my neck late at night, promising that I would always be enough for her. How could I have ever thought that could possibly be true?

  I could never save her from anything, cushion her from any blow. And yet and yet…

  Her father died a few years before I met her and fifteen years later I still know only the barest outlines of what remains the darkest time in her life. It took me a long time to realize she doesn’t owe it to anyone—not even her husband—to fan out all that past pain like a hand of cards. It is hers to do with as she wishes.

  The most she’s ever said is, “When my dad was going, he was completely lucid. He wanted to see the phone bill, talk about things in Iraq, reminisce about my mother, but he could barely speak, throat all torn up from the intubation in the surgery. And it was so exhausting for him to write everything out. He felt so trapped in himself.”