A Song for Julia

silent grief, and she pulled away. He opened the front door for her, and she slipped out into the darkness, alone.
    Jack stood there, watching her go, one hand on the doorframe, and the other limp by his side, powerless to do anything to stop her from going. He looked defeated.
    I sniffed again and wiped my hand furiously across my watering eyes. Then I pictured myself, sitting alone on the red line on my way back to Cambridge, and I … I couldn’t do it. Right now I couldn’t face that ride alone. I didn’t want to be alone. I whispered to Crank, “I’ve changed my mind. If you’re still willing to take me all the way home, I’d be grateful.”
    He turned to me, giving me a look I couldn’t read. “No problem, Julia. Whatever you want.”

    Take. Me. Home. (Crank)
    “Why did your parents separate?” Julia asked me, a few minutes after we left my dad’s house. It had taken a few minutes to get ourselves together, bundled into coats and hats, and then I couldn’t find my car keys, but finally we made it out, and rode the first several minutes in complete silence. I was just about to turn on the stereo when she asked the question.
    Instead of turning it on, I dropped my hand back to the wheel.
    I thought about her question. There were no answers to it. There were a hundred answers to it. And I didn’t know all of them. All I had was guesses and suppositions and blame. And it was obvious what prompted the question. That scene at the door. My parents were nothing if not dramatic, and it was obvious to even the most hardheaded punk rocker that they loved each other, which left exactly two clear reasons for her to leave. Me and Sean.
    Finally I said, “I only know part of it. And it doesn’t reflect very well on me.”
    She leaned against the door, huddled in her coat, arms wrapped across her chest.
    “Why do you ask?” I said.
    “Because it’s obvious they love each other. That the separation is killing them.”
    I sighed. “I don’t really understand, either. I don’t see her very often. Holidays, sometimes.”
    “Are they always like that?”
    I nodded. I think I understood what she was getting at. Were they always so tragic? “Yeah. Always. And it drives Dad insane that Sean and I are so angry with her.”
    “My parents make appointments to see each other, I think,” she said. “Even though they live in the same house, and he’s retired now. I don’t know if they ever felt that way.”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know that kids ever know what’s really going on with their parents. I sure as hell didn’t. I mean, your parents touched each other often enough to have you and your sisters.”
    She grimaced. “I didn’t need that image in my head.”
    “Your parents must have been screwing like rabbits for years. I bet it was never quiet in your house.”
    She shook her head, her expression irritated. Okay, yeah, I was pushing it. It’s who I am. “Since I’m the oldest, by a lot of years, my sisters … they weren’t around much when I was little.” She paused a moment, then turned the subject back to my mother. “There was no warning? That she was leaving?”
    I shook my head. “I came home one day, and she was gone. No explanation.”
    What I didn’t say—the day I came home and my mother was gone? The upstairs bathroom door had been broken off its hinges, the wood frame shattered. The violence of the act was a shock; unheard of in a house my parents took painstakingly good care of. I’d been gone for three days at that point, drinking and screwing and getting in trouble, so I didn’t have a clue what had occurred in my absence, and Sean refused to say anything. In fact, he hardly said a word for the next three months. This, from the kid who could rattle on for an hour about the internal workings of an electric toothbrush.
    “It was partly my fault,” I said.
    She looked at me, confused. “How?” she asked, very frankly.
    “I think she left because she just couldn’t take us anymore. Sean was having massive freak-outs, he was always at the doctor, and I was getting in major trouble all the time. If my dad wasn’t a cop, I’d probably have gone to jail for a good long time. As it was, I got a couple misdemeanors that should have been felonies and got brought home more than once when I should have spent the night in jail. I was … trouble.”
    Julia listened carefully, as always, and didn’t come back with a knee-jerk response. Finally, she said, “That’s stupid.