Losing Julia Read online

  On my way back to my room I notice that MacKenzie’s bed is empty.

  MACKENZIE’S FUNERAL is held in the small chapel on the hill behind Great Oaks. I sit alone near the back, cane between my knees. His family arrives: three daughters and two sons dressed in blacks and dark blues murmuring to spouses and towing neatly combed boys and girls adorned with bows and ribbons. Music begins as the family floats silently down the aisle; a mournful flute crackling from small white speakers mounted on the walls. I hear but two stifled sobs during the moment of silence.

  Why do we suppress tears at funerals, fighting the sorrow until our throats ache? I want screaming Baptists who fall to the ground, writhing in agony. I want anguish in full orchestra and wails of protest and a pounding of chests. How dare you steal MacKenzie away from us! Damnation!

  Too bad I can’t attend my own funeral. What better way to see who really gave a shit? First, the cold shock of the phone call or the telegram. Then a few days for everybody to rake their memories before they are dressed in black and lined up shoulder to shoulder in creaking pews for a mixture of heart-wrenching poetry and music until their throats are constricted with grief. Louder and louder the music grows amid stifled sobs and rocking shoulders when suddenly I appear at the back of the church, striding forward triumphantly with hanky in hand. Take comfort, my friends, it’s not too late to appreciate me! To apologize! For Patrick lives!

  I leave the service before the final prayer. Good-bye, MacKenzie.

  The escort marches slowly to solemn music; the column having arrived opposite the grave, line is formed facing it.

  The coffin is then carried along the front of the escort to the grave; arms are presented, the music plays an appropriate air; the coffin having been placed over the grave, the music ceases and arms are brought to the order.

  The commander next commands: 1. Parade, 2. REST. The escort executes parade rest, officers and men inclining the head.

  When the funeral services are completed and the coffin lowered into the grave, the commander causes the escort to resume attention and fire three rounds of blank cartridges, the muzzles of the pieces being elevated. When the escort is greater than a battalion, one battalion is designated to fire the volleys.

  A musician then sounds taps.

  —Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army.

  War Department, 1911.

  A WEEK HAS gone by and I’ve nothing to show for it but a nagging feeling of having misplaced something. So all afternoon I’ve been going through my things, trying to figure out what I might have misplaced.

  How absurd.

  “I’VE BOUGHT SOME flowers,” said Julia, when I saw her in the lobby the next morning, holding a small bouquet in one hand. “I thought they might brighten my room.” Her hair was pulled back and she was wearing a simple olive green dress, open at the neck and short enough to see her legs, which swiftly captivated me. Then I glanced at the curve of her hips and imagined her naked—or tried to. I thought of the women in the advertisements from the fashion magazines I used to peruse at the library as a teenager, stealthily cutting out photos of those I found especially appealing. Only Julia was so much more natural looking, with a warmth I never got from my magazine girlfriends, who died a fiery death one afternoon when my mother found them in my desk and decided they were interfering with my development.

  “They’re beautiful,” I said finally, realizing that I’d been staring.

  “I’ll just be a moment.” She turned and headed for the stairs.

  “I’ll get our picnic and meet you here in the lobby,” I said.

  When she came back downstairs she was carrying a small folded easel, a rectangular framed canvas and her dark brown knapsack, which was slung over one shoulder. “Ready!” she said happily, with a full smile that showed her teeth.

  I drove and she sat next to me with a map open on her lap and a cigarette in one hand. “Look at those graves there,” she said, pointing out the window to a small cemetery surrounded by a low stone wall. “The crosses are all black.”

  “German,” I said.

  “It’s an awful color for a cross,” she said.

  “Germans seem rather fond of black,” I said. “Even their bread is black.”

  “But I don’t think tombstones should ever be black,” she said.

  We parked at the edge of a thin gravel road that ended at an old wooden gate. Nearby beneath a tree sat the rusted chassis of a truck and next to it a pile of seventy-five-millimeter shell casings. I carried her easel and let her walk ahead. After forty minutes she stopped suddenly and turned back toward me.

  “Right here, this is lovely,” she said, putting down her knapsack. We were stopped by the edge of a cedar grove with a stream running beside it. There were several large rocks to sit on and toward the east, across a wide golden meadow, a granite-colored church spire still partly damaged rose from a gray stone village. I put down the picnic basket and looked around, trying to decide what it was that she intended to paint.

  “Why did you enlist?” she asked, as she pulled a battered, flat wooden box from her knapsack, opened it and began selecting small silver tubes of paint.

  “Because I was young and stupid.”

  “Any other reasons?”

  “Young and stupid about covers it.”

  She eyed me sideways, smiling. “I’m not getting too far here, am I?”

  “Sorry… ”

  “You don’t have to keep apologizing.”

  “Then I won’t.”

  She selected a brush and then ran her fingers through the bristles. “Do you have any heroes?”

  “They’re dead.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes, all of them.”

  She put the brush down and selected another. “People are funny about heroes. I read in the papers that two women in Los Angeles killed themselves after Valentino died.”

  “And what acts of heroism did he perform?” I felt the anger in my voice.

  “That’s just it. He didn’t have to. He just had to offer a dream.”

  “Which was?”

  “That a man like Valentino could save you, if only you could get close enough to him.”

  “Which you never can.”

  “No, we never get saved, do we? That’s why the women killed themselves.” She looked over at me and began to say something, then hesitated. Finally she said, “It’s the same with our romantic relationships, don’t you think?”

  “What’s the same?”

  “We expect them to save us and they can’t.”

  I didn’t respond. Did she know what I felt? Was she telling me she couldn’t help me? That nobody could?

  She placed her easel facing toward the meadow and scrutinized the blank canvas, her hands resting on her waist. I studied her silhouette, the way her breasts pressed against her dress and how her forehead creased when she was concentrating and how her nose curled up just slightly at the end.

  “So if Valentino isn’t a hero, then who is?” she asked, turning back toward me.

  I shrugged. “Someone whose life is somehow more meaningful than our own.”

  “So just being around them gives our own lives more meaning?”

  “I suppose.” I thought of Daniel.

  She turned back to her canvas and began to paint.

  “I think I’ll just take a look around,” I said. She nodded without looking up.

  I jumped across two rocks in the river and entered the cedar grove, which grew increasingly dense toward the middle, fragmenting the light. Since we were northeast of town, I estimated that this ground probably changed hands several times in 1914, then remained just behind German lines until the summer of 1918, when it changed hands again several times before being secured by U.S. and French troops. I turned back and looked at Julia, whose distant silhouette, her back toward me, was framed between two slender trees. I stood there for several minutes, staring at her and listening to the birds just above me. Then I walked farther on until
the trees closed her off completely. I stood perfectly still for a moment, then laid down on my back on the dry leaves, looking up toward the light. As I stared straight up the trees all seemed to lean slightly toward me as they arched skyward and I remembered the same feeling from when I was a child resting in the woods and wondering if the whole forest was going to fall in on me.

  I thought of Sean and missed him intensely; his little laugh and the way he tugged on my pants leg when he wanted to play and the sweet expression on his face when he was sleeping. Then I thought of Charlotte and felt a guilty ambivalence. I pictured myself with her, then with Julia, then with Charlotte again. How could I have such different, incompatible sides to myself? Maybe other people are like mirrors that we see ourselves in; versions of ourselves that vary dramatically depending on the particular cut of glass. Do we marry promising images of ourselves, only to watch those images become hopelessly distorted? And what do I see now?

  The thought of returning to Paris in three days made my stomach tighten. Was I so unhappily married? I didn’t think so. Not at all. Maybe we weren’t as passionate as some couples but we loved each other. We’d settled into a comfortable routine. We’d made a home together. A child.

  So why did Julia change everything?

  I knew why and it terrified me. She changed everything because she seemed to offer so much more; more than I’d ever felt before. But what exactly? I pressed my palms against my forehead, trying to concentrate. It was the chance—just the chance—to come fully alive; to love someone else so completely that you would never again feel alone. That was it, wasn’t it? The promise of being engulfed by love and passion and intimacy; to connect in a way that gently sutured together the souls.

  A butterfly fluttered past, then came to rest on a nearby leaf. I watched its wings slowly open and close.

  So maybe Julia was wrong. Maybe our relationships—love—can save us, at least enough so that our lives are finally worthwhile, even with all the rotten misery and dying. All the slaughter.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on the sound of the wind through the leaves and the birds above me.

  Three more days. Then what would I do? Just say goodbye and walk away from a woman who made me feel better than I’d ever felt in my life, just by her presence? And what about Julia? What would she do? She seemed more resilient than me, more daring. Like Daniel. And yet so vulnerable too.

  I sat up, kneeling and leaning back on my ankles, my hands on my thighs. Of course she would marry someday, wouldn’t she? Or would she and her daughter just travel around like gypsies; the refuse of a long-forgotten war?

  And what did she still hope for in life? Real happiness? Or did she think the best parts were already behind her, so that her only remaining source of joy was her daughter? There seemed to be something deep inside her that was broken, as though severed, and yet she was still so full of life and laughter.

  When I stood I noticed a curved lip of metal protruding from the dirt just to the left of a small sapling. I pushed it back and forth a few times to loosen it, then pulled hard. It was a German helmet, dented in the front but with the horsehair padding still intact. I banged it against a tree several times, knocking off the dirt. Then I carried it over to the river, downstream from where Julia stood, and rinsed it in the water.

  “I found something for you,” I said, holding it out as I crossed the river and walked toward her. “It’s German. They changed helmet designs in 1915. The spiked Pickelhaube was a bit too impractical even for old Willy.”

  I handed it to her. She stared at it, turning it over and over in her hands. I watched her fingertips search the worn gray steel.

  “We collected a lot of souvenirs during the war,” I said. “Helmets, knives, medals, canteens, everything. They were very popular. You could get sixty dollars for a decent Luger.”

  She remained silent. Was she somehow offended?

  “There is something very sad, very poignant about it,” she said finally.

  “Every artifact has its story. That’s the attraction, I suppose.”

  “And all one can do is wonder what the story is. Was this helmet discarded in flight, or was a man killed wearing it? And this dent, where did this dent come from? A bullet? A shell? A shovel? Or was it dented after it fell off?”

  She offered it back to me. “I don’t think I want it,” she said. “Perhaps you’d rather give it to your son.” I took it from her, feeling suddenly foolish as I stood holding it. (I later tucked it into the picnic basket and brought it to my room.)

  “I’m hungry,” she said. “Let’s eat.”

  We sat on the grass and from the corner of my eye I watched as she bent her legs together on one side and sat almost on her ankles, leaning back on one arm. I opened the basket and handed her the bread and a knife. Then I opened a bottle of white wine and poured two glasses. As I sat back and took a drink I was struck by the impropriety of a married man sitting in a meadow picnicking with a beautiful single woman. But how good it felt.

  “Do you read much poetry?” she asked, resting her glass on the ground next to me.

  “Just a bit.”

  “Daniel loved poetry. He used to say that the best poems were like little vessels that carry messages that can’t be transported in any other way; miniature worlds like tiny paintings or Fabergé eggs.”

  “Do you write poetry?”

  “Sometimes. Most of them are awful. But I like the feeling I get. Daniel said that what mattered was to look at things differently once in a while or you’d stop seeing them for what they are.” She leaned back on her elbows and looked up at the sky. “Sometimes I think we only live a small part of our lives.”

  “The way you talk reminds me of Daniel,” I said.

  I saw an almost imperceptible look of pleasure cross her face, which made me think of how much we can tell from even the most minute changes in a person’s face or voice or gestures, especially a loved one.

  Then I noticed a tear on her cheek.

  “I’ve upset you,” I said.

  She dabbed her eyes. “I’m sorry, it’s just that I don’t get much of a chance to talk about Daniel, except with Robin. I don’t even know anybody else who’s ever met him. Can you imagine that? After he died it was like he never existed. The only trace I can find is in his letters.” She paused, and I watched her chest rise and fall slowly. “And in Robin’s face.”

  I reached toward her, putting my hand on her shoulder. “I wish there was something I could say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything. I’m just glad that you’re here.”

  She pulled a piece of bread from a baguette and handed it to me. “I worry about smothering Robin with too much love. I just have no one else.”

  “There are worse fates for children.”

  She pulled out a piece of cheese and began unwrapping it. “There are so many times I wish I could ask Daniel what to do. I even try to imagine what he would tell me, how he would handle a situation.”

  I put my wineglass down. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  She looked at me expectantly.

  “Daniel was writing you a marriage proposal.”

  Her expression froze.

  “It was in the form of a long poem. He spent weeks working on it. It was dozens of pages long when he died. I promised to find you and tell you but I didn’t know your last name. All your letters disappeared with him. Everything.”

  She sat perfectly still for a moment, looking down. I watched her hands, which trembled slightly. After a few minutes I asked, “How did you know he had died?”

  She tried to smile through her tears. “We had this very simple system that allowed me to keep track on a map of where he was. I’d simply put together the second letter in every third line of his letters and they would spell out where he was and whether things were going well or not. So I knew he was at the front, and when the letters stopped coming, I knew he was dead.”

  She folded a cloth napkin and wiped her face, t
hen took a deep breath and sat up straight. “I’m really not sure what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. Sometimes I feel like I’m already old, like all the best things in my life are memories, except for Robin.”

  “You can’t think that way.”

  She shrugged, then handed me a piece of cheese. “My friends tell me it’s time to put Daniel behind me and find another man and get married. They’re afraid I’m going to end up an old spinster.”

  “I don’t imagine that happening to you.”

  “But I don’t want to get married. Why should I? Besides, I’m not what most men are looking for in a wife.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “It’s true. I hate to cook and I hate to clean and I’m disorganized and messy and I don’t like wearing makeup. I also snore.”

  “You snore?”

  She blushed slightly. “Only when I’m really tired.”

  “I don’t believe you snore.”

  “It’s not like I rattle the windows.”

  “Daniel snored.”

  “I remember.”

  “I think he kept the Germans up a few nights. I used to worry that they’d try to silence him with a couple of well- placed mortar rounds.”

  “I used to kick him.”

  “So did I. Only with my boots on.”

  She laughed, then asked, “Do you like being married?”

  “Do I like it? Sure I do. Why do—”

  “I don’t mean to pry. It’s just that I see so many unhappy couples. I’d much rather be single all my life than marry the wrong person.”

  “Nobody plans to marry the wrong person.”

  “Of course not.” She took another sip of her wine, then lit a cigarette. “It’s always amazed me that so many people do find someone to marry. It seems like such a long shot, to stumble across the right person at the right time. Most of the men I meet are so utterly self-absorbed, prattling on about themselves for hours.” She paused, then looked up at me with a laugh. “But you’re not like that.”