Here She Lies

beginning to feel like rain, I looked for them — on the library lawn, on the sidewalks of town, through the shadow-glazed shop windows on Railroad Street.
    We parked at a meter and found the storefront jeweler. A small oval sign swinging on a bracket over the sidewalk read SIMONOFF ANTIQUE AND ESTATE JEWELRY. As soon as we crossed the sidewalk we saw that the shop was dark, and a handwritten note posted on the door told us that today’s opening time would be half an hour later. So we walked down the street to Martin’s restaurant, where the breakfast rush had lulled and no one minded if we sat over cappuccinos.
    Our table, in the window, overlooked the quiet sidewalk. I spoon-sipped some of the fluffy cinnamoned milk from the coffee but couldn’t drink much of it. I felt a little sick to my stomach from the mix of adrenaline and exhaustion that had been fueling me for a solid twenty-four hours now, ever since I saw the smile melt off the face of Emily Leary, director of human resources, at the hospital where I would very much not be working. The sharp memory of yesterday morning’s encounter with the police made me cringe. Staring into my cup, I stirred the frothed milk all the way in to what was now a tepid café au lait. Bobby wasn’t drinking his, either. What we needed, really, was a bitter cup o’ joe, pure caffeine with no apologies.
    There wasn’t much left to say and so we said nothing, just stirred our coffees and glanced at our watches and waited for the time to pass. I kept expecting to see Julie whiz past with Lexy in her stroller, its handlesfestooned with shopping bags, but I didn’t. Weekday mornings in this town were sleepy, with just a few people running errands, some stopping to chat in the street. A woman I didn’t recognize saw me in the window and waved — she must have thought I was Julie — and I waved back. As our silence endured, Bobby’s end of it began to agitate me. I knew he was holding back more layers of the onion-thoughts he had begun to unpeel back at the cybercafe in New York, that deep within him were stinging suspicions. The idea that Julie would try to seduce him was outrageous! I couldn’t even think about it; and yet... against my will the emotional details of Julie’s infertility floated to the surface of my mind.
    Julie, a dozen years ago, walking across a vast lawn at the northern New England college we attended together. It was winter and the lawn was covered with mangy patches of ice left over from a big snow. I had just come out of the library when I saw my sister walking with Ian, whom I had a crush on at the time. Ian was a big bear of a boy, nineteen, pale and funny. Julie knew all about my hankering after him and yet there she was, with him, which in and of itself was fine (I guessed), but then she slipped on some ice, and he clutched her elbow, and she grabbed his shoulder, and he laughed — and they kissed. I stood there, paralyzed, holding a big art history tome that suddenly weighed three hundred pounds. They kissed again and he actually licked her cheek and they laughed with such familiarity I knew their intimacy was not brand-new. So... I gave up on my plans to seduce Ian. And Julie and I had it out that very night: she admitted theyhad slept together (twice!) and tearfully apologized for hurting (betraying! deceiving!) me and promised she would drop Ian immediately. Which she did. But the damage was done. The worst damage, it turned out (because my heart healed quickly and moved on to Rich, who was much nicer and better-looking than Ian), was that Ian had passed on to Julie more than his affections. Weeks later she discovered she had chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease that can leave you infertile. Within a year Julie’s infertility was confirmed by our gynecologist and my bitter feelings about the Ian Incident were swallowed by a stronger feeling: sorrow over Julie’s inability to ever bear her own children. When you are an identical twin, your sibling’s fertility in a way is your own and so I felt her prospective losses acutely. By the time college was over and we no longer lived in the context of this misfortune, we put it behind us and it became a fact-of-life stepping-stone after which Julie created a successful adulthood. When Lexy was born we shared in the elation of our daughter’s birth; Julie was as overjoyed as Bobby and I. The earrings had been a gift to mark new motherhood: matching earrings, one pair for me, another for