Losing Julia Read online

  A few weeks after he moved in, Martin and I were sitting on the front patio, drinking little paper cups of lemonade sold to us for a dime each by some enterprising grandchildren.

  “Cute, aren’t they?” he said, taking a sip. The lemonade began spilling over the sides as he brought the cup to his lips, which were extended.

  “Hard to believe how ugly they are going to get in about seventy years.”

  Martin ribbed me with his elbow. “Christopher will be five next month. I asked Trudy to send me photos of the birthday party. Nothing like a child’s birthday.”

  “Nothing like a child.”

  “Seems like yesterday, doesn’t it?”

  “Sometimes it seems like today.”

  We sat for a while and then he said, “I retired ten years ago today.”

  “Really? Congratulations.”

  A large smile spread across his face. Anniversaries were important to him.

  “Did you really like working in that print shop all those years?”

  “I enjoyed having a place to go.” His head bobbed up and down as though mounted on a spring. He also stammered frequently, which made him seem even more shy than he was. “I enjoyed the camaraderie, the guys I worked with over the years. The routine.”

  “Not the work?”

  “Not the work.”

  “What about Doreen?”

  “Well, she was home raising Trudy, and then she got a job in a fabric store. Gave her a chance to get out, talk to people. She loved chit-chatting.”

  “How long were you two together?”

  “Forty years.”

  “Was she your high school sweetheart?”

  “Not exactly.” He paused, staring into his now empty cup, then said, “We had to get married. She was pregnant.”

  “Ah.”

  “Fact is, I was in love with another woman at the time, but she was in Maine for the summer.”

  Martin looked straight ahead and I noticed that his shaking had increased.

  “Doreen was also in love with someone else.”

  “What happened to him? No, let me guess. He was in love with someone else, too.”

  “Right. Broke Doreen’s heart.”

  “So how—”

  “We met one night at a party, both feeling sorry for ourselves. I don’t think we ever intended to see each other again after that evening.”

  Car doors slammed in succession and a stream of children dashed across the grass toward the entrance, their mother calling after them. She carried a large shopping bag brimming with party favors.

  “What about the woman you loved?”

  He smiled. “Her name was Lara. Lara Tennant. She was Scottish. Loved bagpipes. We both did.” He shook his head. “I could draw her picture like she was sitting here today. Short brown hair, hazel eyes. The sweetest smile. We’d only dated a couple of times, but I knew for sure she was for me. Too good really, couldn’t believe she’d have me. I used to dream about our wedding: lots of bagpipes and dancing.”

  “Did she love you?”

  “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. When she got back from Maine and heard the gossip, that was it. She wouldn’t even see me.”

  “That’s hard.”

  Martin turned to me. “It’s my tragedy. Everybody has theirs, don’t they?”

  I KEPT GLANCING over at Julia as I drove, wondering how it would feel to have her only in my memory. How long until I lost that face and those eyes and that smile? Months? A few years at most? Would I remember the sound of her laughter?

  We headed northwest from Verdun through the Meuse- Argonne region, skirting the old Hindenburg line as it cut through woods and open fields and around small villages.

  Julia sat quietly looking out the window with her hands folded in her lap. I couldn’t decide if she was deep in thought or just losing herself in the passing scenery, but I was starting to think that she was a bit like I was: constantly teeming with more thoughts and images and memories than she knew what to do with.

  She was difficult to read. One minute she struck me as the strongest, most independent woman I’d ever met and the next she seemed extremely fragile, like a person with injuries that won’t heal. Sometimes, watching her, I noticed that she would physically prop herself up, almost imperceptibly straightening her back, lifting her head and shoulders and summoning a smile, as if determined to make the best of things. What amazed me was how genuine the smile always looked. I’d always thought that sadness and happiness took turns running the show; in Julia they seemed to coexist.

  When we parked at the edge of a woods beside a deep ravine, I thought we might be near the Kriemhilde Stellung—the German name for one of the sectors of the Hindenburg line—but said nothing. Instead I concentrated on the graceful sway of Julia’s hips as she walked down the narrow path in front of me and hoped that we wouldn’t stumble upon any more memorials.

  “I’m not walking too fast, am I?” she asked. “My mother always said that I walked too fast for a woman.”

  “No, you’re not walking too fast.” I imagined her as a young girl racing ahead of her mother, pigtails flying.

  “You’re an only child, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “My father died just after I was born. I think my mother always thought she’d have six or seven children.”

  “That must have been awful.”

  “You can’t miss what you never had, right?”

  I disagreed but didn’t say anything. “Is your mother… ”

  “She died six years ago.”

  Another loss, which still registered in the wounded expression on her face. “I’m sorry. You two must have been close.”

  She seemed lost in thought for a moment, then said, “I felt very protective of her when I was growing up, which is a difficult thing for a child to feel. She was very loving but not very strong. I think my father’s death just crushed her.” Julia jumped up on a thin log that lay across our path and tiptoed along it, hands high in the air, before jumping off. “But she never lost her ability to laugh. She had such a wonderful sense of humor!” She smiled at the recollection. “We used to laugh so hard that we’d both get the hiccups.”

  “I hate the hiccups.”

  “Not as much as I do. They nearly ruined my childhood. I had them constantly.” She laughed again, this time from deep in her chest. “Especially in places you’re not supposed to laugh. Oh God, that always did it for me.” She rolled her eyes, still laughing, then tried to stop but couldn’t. “It got so that my mother was embarrassed to take me to church.” The memory made her laugh harder, so that she had to stop walking and lean against a tree. I thought she looked absolutely adorable.

  “I even got them in the Christmas play. Can you imagine? I was supposed to be one of the presents under the tree, a little doll… ” Tears were running down her cheeks now and her face was red. “My mother spent weeks on my costume… ” Her laughter made it hard for her to talk. “And the only thing I was supposed to do was to stay perfectly still for one entire act.”

  “Let me guess.”

  Julia nodded, bending over at the waist and holding her stomach as she laughed. “And then all the other presents started giggling. I couldn’t stop. The whole Christmas tree was shaking. They had to drop the curtain.” Then she hiccuped. “Oh damn,” she said, pounding her fist against her chest.

  “I think they’re cute.”

  She shook her fist at me. “Don’t say a thing,” she said, pushing me playfully on the chest, then turning away and hiccuping again.

  “Maybe I should try scaring you.”

  “That never works,” she said, hiccuping midsentence. “I’ve tried everything.”

  She began walking again. I followed close behind, watching the rhythmic convulsion of her shoulders, which only ceased after half an hour.

  When we came upon a concrete bunker I stopped, examined the entrance, then carefully walked down a short flight of crumbling stairs and peered into the darkness. The damp smell was fami
liar, but without the urine and sweat. I could just make out the shadow of a chair and table against one wall and some boxes on the floor. Other shapes in the corner on the floor were unrecognizable. Had anybody entered it since the war? Or was everything exactly as it was hurriedly left, ten years ago?

  “You’re not going any farther are you?” asked Julia, standing behind me.

  “Not enough light,” I said, slowly turning and walking back up the stairs, wishing I’d had a candle.

  We continued walking, careful to sidestep coils of rusted barbed wire. Julia was quiet. Was she sad again or not thinking at all? I couldn’t not think but I envied those who could. I looked over at her, trying to see past her face. Her expression was placid, but her eyes were full of expectation.

  I thought again of her mother, and how hard that must have been when she too died. What do you learn when everyone you love leaves you?

  “What was your mother like?” I asked.

  “She was shy, except around close friends. She loved music, especially singing. The choir at church just transported her.”

  “Was she happy?”

  “She was when she laughed. She thought that things were either hysterically funny or extremely tragic. There wasn’t a lot in between, or at least not that she noticed.”

  “She may have been on to something.”

  Julia eyed me thoughtfully. Behind her the sun streaked yellow through a tall stand of trees.

  “A friend of mine married a man she met on vacation in Nantucket. Once they moved in together she realized she’d made a horrible mistake. She told me never to fall in love with a man I met on vacation until I saw him in his natural habitat.”

  Why would she tell me that? Was she saying she could fall for me? And was that little grin she gave meaningful or was I reading too much into everything?

  I listened to the sound of the red and yellow and orange leaves crunching under my feet.

  “Do you ever think about settling down somewhere?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Sometimes, but after a few months I get bored.”

  As I looked at her I thought that maybe she was restless because she feared she’d never be happy anywhere, and knowing that, her only hope was to keep moving.

  “All that moving around must take a toll,” I said.

  The smile vanished from her face. “I do miss having roots. A home. And I get tired of being poor. I’ve quit more jobs than most people hold in a lifetime.”

  “You just quit?”

  “Oh sometimes I make quite a scene before I storm out of the place. I’m not very good at taking orders.” I watched the way she gestured as she talked and it occurred to me that she lived more fully in her body than I did.

  “Who is?”

  We walked in silence for a while, and I began thinking of Charlotte and Sean and how far away they seemed. Was I a family man already? Amazing. Little ol’ Paddy married. A house. A career. How fast it all happened, and I barely remember making certain decisions.

  I glanced over at Julia. Maybe this would just seem dreamlike when I returned to Paris. Maybe from a distance it would even seem silly, a brief and selfish indulgence, though I didn’t think so. But it would be good to see Sean. I’d never been away from him for more than a few days. Does a three-year-old stop long enough to miss his daddy? Thinking of him brought a smile to my face.

  “Do you want to know who one of my heroes is?” asked Julia, stopping by a small stream.

  “Who?”

  “Michelangelo. I read that someone once asked him what he was doing with his chisel and do you know what he said?”

  I looked at her expectantly.

  “He said he was trying to free an angel.”

  As we made our way over rocks in the stream I reached out and took Julia’s hand. Neither of us let go as we headed up the gradual slope of the wooded hills and each time we passed a ruined bunker or trench or rusted bayonet or boot I felt the gentle squeeze of her hand in mine.

  IT’S RAINING AGAIN, huge cold drops that beat upon us as we walk. The French say the war has changed the weather. That’s something to think about. It reminds me of the African saying that when elephants fight, the grass suffers. We are some elephants.

  Mid-September. We’ve been marching all night. Everywhere we see the signs of a huge buildup: newly erected field hospitals, camouflaged supply dumps, endless columns of soldiers.

  We’re somewhere southeast of Saint-Mihiel, just a few miles behind the front and rushing into position. I haven’t slept in two days. At the next rest I should clean my feet but I’m afraid to take off my boots. Sometimes you can’t get them on again. Maybe tomorrow.

  A few hours ago we passed one of the naval guns, a fourteen-incher mounted on a railroad car. We also counted fourteen Renault tanks. We argued about which would be worse, being in a tank or a submarine. Most of us preferred the tank, but only slightly.

  I vomited yesterday. Daniel feared I had the flu but I think it was just the smells; smells of rotting flesh and chlorine and gas and monkey meat and urine and shit. When no one was looking I pulled out a small bottle of cologne I carry in my pack, opened it and held it just beneath my nose. Then I closed my eyes and fought the tears.

  All the trucks run with their lights out. Sometimes we have to stop and push them out of a ditch. Men get run over too, which helps keep you awake.

  “Fuck it’s dark!” said Giles, bumping into me.

  “Where the hell are the trenches?” asked Page.

  “Another mile, maybe,” said Daniel. “The jumping-off points are supposed to be marked with white tape.”

  “What?”

  “Look for the white tape.”

  “Yeah, don’t cross the white tape.”

  “Fuck no, I’m not crossing no white tape. Jesus it’s dark out.”

  Then our bombardment started, the largest yet that we had witnessed.

  “Would you look at that,” said Daniel.

  We stared upward at the huge firmament of white and orange and yellow streaks and flashes; a man-made aurora.

  “That’s more than a thousand guns, I’ll bet,” said Giles. I watched the light flicker off his face.

  “You can’t even count them,” said Page. “It’s like a drumroll.”

  We all stood still, watching and listening. The sounds of the explosions were layered on top of each other so that it was impossible to concentrate on any single one.

  “At least we’ll be able to see the white lines,” said Daniel.

  “Yeah, don’t cross no white lines,” said Lawton.

  We walked the rest of the way in silence.

  I STEPPED on an American soldier. I felt something give beneath my feet and heard the breaking of ribs. Or was it a neck? The wheat field was covered with the dead and wounded and I was running headlong in a stampede of men and I could not avoid the bodies of the wounded and dead I could not.

  I pray he was dead.

  DANIEL NEVER forgave Lawton for shooting the young German who raised his hands and yelled “Kamerad!” as we overran his machine-gun nest in a woods near Thiaucourt. The two other members of his Maxim team were dead beside him and he stood trembling with blood all over his face and his helmet at his feet. Daniel was walking up to him when Lawton raised his rifle and shot him twice in the chest.

  “You son of a bitch!” yelled Daniel, grabbing Lawton’s rifle and throwing it to the ground. Then he walked over to where the German lay and knelt beside him, checking his wounds. I stood beside Daniel and looked over his shoulder. The German couldn’t have been any older than fifteen, with a smooth, unshaven face and freckles across the bridge of his nose. I knew he was dead.

  “What’s the matter with you, MacGuire? He’s a fucking murdering bastard,” said Lawton, picking up his rifle. “You try raising your hands in the air next time you’re up against one of them. Just try it.”

  “He’s a boy,” said Daniel, gently moving the German’s head to one side and searching for a pulse on his neck.
“He’s just a boy.”

  “GOOD MORNING, Patrick.”

  “Hello, Dr. Tompkins.”

  “Feeling all right today?” He was peering down through bifocals at a clipboard in his hands.

  “Sure.” I sat on the edge of my bed, trying to get my feet into my shoes.

  “You’re taking your medicine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it helping?”

  “A bit.”

  “Still a lot of pain?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “The lab results are back.”

  “I see. And?”

  “Not good, I’m afraid. But we’ve made tremendous progress in pain management.” He began scribbling on his clipboard. “I’m going to try another medicine. Want you to take it three times a day. It may make you—”

  “About the lab results… ”

  He stopped writing, took off his glasses with one hand, folded them neatly, slid them into the top pocket of his white lab coat and looked at me. “It doesn’t look good.”

  “Well, of course not. I’m eighty-one. Nothing looks good.”

  He leaned forward and ran his hands along my neck, probing with his fingers. Then I lay back and he undid my shirt and pressed his hands along my abdomen. I winced.

  “There?”

  “Yes.”

  “And there?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about here. Does this hurt too?”

  “Yes.”

  After he left I went into the bathroom, stripped off my clothes and stood in the shower with my head under the nozzle. I turned the water temperature up until I could just barely stand it.

  It’s too much to bear, all this knowing; this acute self-consciousness. Who can stand it?

  I turned off the shower, grabbed a towel and began drying myself.

  If only I could sedate myself with amusing notions of self- importance. That’s the trick, isn’t it?