A Song for Julia

peckerhead. Are you so used to hearing what you want to hear that you can’t take it when someone says the truth to you?”
    “Come on,” I replied. “This is me you’re talking to. What do you think I am?”
    She shook her head. “I think you’re a mess. I think you’re a hollow man who grabs the nearest drink and the nearest woman the moment life starts to get you down. And I’m afraid that the moment things get hard, you’ll blow it with Julia. And despite all of your failings, I think you deserve someone like her.”
    Her words sunk in, and I grimaced. It felt as if someone had just pelted me with little pellets of truth, and they hurt. Hollow man. Why would she say that? And the thing was—her expression told me she was telling me the truth. Exactly what she thought.
    I responded with bravado … the only way I knew how. “Not someone like you?”
    She raised an eyebrow and curled her lip up slightly at the corner. “I’m way too good for you, Crank.”
    With that, she got up and walked away.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

    Almost time (Julia)
    It was a nice day with my family, despite the tension with my mother and the questioning looks from my father. We spent the day touring Boston, then returned to the Charles Hotel, where my father had rented a three-room suite on the top floor. At one point, Carrie and I chased Alexandra and the twins and Andrea into their room and tickled them. Alexandra got so overexcited she puked, but ten minutes later, she was changed into new pajamas and playing again.
    I still found it hard to believe how much she’d changed … how much they’d all changed. Especially Carrie, who had shot up nearly a foot sometime in the last year. She was gawky, unsure of herself, but fantastically beautiful in a willowy way that made me think of a runway model. The twins, only toddlers when I left home, had grown taller and very different in personality. Jessica was quiet, almost bookish, and tended to stick close to Mom. Sarah was flamboyant, talking and laughing, running nonstop.
    I enjoyed watching them, and I felt a certain satisfaction knowing that one day, Sarah was probably going to drive my mother completely insane.
    After Alexandra and the younger girls were in bed, Carrie and I sat together on the floor, leaning against the bed in the room she was sharing with Alexandra.
    “Something’s different about you,” she said.
    I quirked an eyebrow.
    “What’s that?”
    “I don’t know how to say this without being offensive,” she said.
    I gave her a questioning look. “What did I do?”
    “It’s not that. It’s that … you seem … well … happy. I don’t think I ever realized it before. But you don’t smile. Ever. But today, you’ve been smiling a lot. It’s nice.”
    My eyes pricked with tears.
    She leaned forward and said, “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to …”
    “No, it’s okay,” I said. “You’re right. I’ve never been a very happy person.”
    “Because of you and Mom?”
    “Why would you say that?” I asked, deflecting her question.
    She bit her lip, looking unsure of herself, and then seemed to make up her mind about something. “Come on, Julia. I may be younger than you, but I’m not an idiot. You never came out of your room your senior year in high school, except when you two were screaming at each other. I’ve never seen someone so—desperately unhappy. It’s like you had a cloud over you, all the time. But something seems different now … I saw Mom giving you those looks, but you were just blowing her off. What happened between you two?”
    I looked at my little sister then, for the first time. She was becoming a young woman—smart, self-possessed, and apparently far more aware of what went on around her than I realized. And maybe the bug of confession had gotten to me, or something, but I found that I wanted to talk with her. I wanted to have a sister I could trust, someone who could be a friend and confidante. And so I did something that really surprised me. I held out my hand, palm up. She took it, and I slid back my sleeve, and the bundle of bracelets I always wore.
    My friendship bracelet, made in middle school. My seventh grade year, Barry came back from leave in the States and brought me the kit to make them. I worked on them for what seemed like forever that winter and spring. I kept one, pink and white and very frayed now, because I never took it off. The watch he also gave me, the Christmas after eighth grade. I treasured them.