of humor that made no sense to anyone but Louise. She spoke Louise. And Louise spoke Lucinda.
I was not jealous. I loved to hear them laugh together, Louise’s effervescent hee-heeing answered by my mother’s conspiratorial snicker. I’d known since I was a young child that my mother was unhappy, and I wanted the burden lifted from us both. I wished my parents were happy together, but they weren’t, and so new friendships had to be resorted to.
Occasionally the two women drank too much. Though it’s hard for me to square my mother now with the woman I once caught laughing uproariously in the backyard the summer I was ten.
Louissse, I heard my mother say, stretching out the word. There are love stories and there are love stories. Most love stories are horseshit.
You bet!
I leaned my cheek against the window screen, eavesdropping. Behind their low talking, tree frogs.
But some love stories are pretty realistic, my mother said.
I hear you. Yes, Lucinda. I know.
You ever heard the story of Narcissus and Echo?
Tell me, Lucinda. Oh, God. I can’t wait to hear this one. Hee-hee!
Well, Narcissus loved his own reflection. He didn’t want to talk to anybody, just stare at himself. And Echo kept trying to talk to him, but she couldn’t come up with her own words. She could only repeat what others said. But they were bound to stay together forever. At cross-purposes. Now that’s a realistic love story, my mother said.
Louise did not laugh.
Within the year, my parents divorced.
Suddenly Juliet was making a racket.
Luffing sails sound so animal. Like a giant trapped bird.
Gaw, I said aloud, borrowing a Louise-ism.
It’s true—the wind did swing around. I looked up at the mast and saw that everything Michael said was right. The masthead light swung in a dizzy circle and was hard to look at. I turned my head to feel the wind and to hear it in my ears. Sail to the sails, he said. I turned her downwind. The sails refreshed. I took a deep breath; she quieted.
Gaw. That’s what Louise used to say, all the time.
Gaw, Juliet, she said to me one day that summer. I’ve got such a nice new beau.
She blew a cyclonic cloud of cigarette smoke into the kitchen.
Let me tell you, Juliet, honey, Louise said. He’s such a gentleman.
(Gentleman. The word sets off alarm bells in my head now.)
Move your plentiful bottom, Louise, my mother said. We have to get ready for the party.
A party. My parents were having a party. What else was my mother going to do with that glorious head of hair? It was entirely going to waste on Morry Road in Schenectady. Her corona of sunset-red hair made her look famous. She was just a clerk.
I stopped hard at the memory. I didn’t really want to go further. But it does, the sea draws the inner life out. Behind us, our wake was a road that unraveled as soon as it was lain. Watching it emptied me. So much time went by looking astern that I soon realized I’d forgotten my one simple task—to check the horizon.
But there was nothing and more nothing at the seam of sky and sea. For the first time, I felt proprietary. She was my boat too. My Juliet. I was the kind of person who didn’t want to lay claim. Mine, mine, mine, the children said. Mine, mine, Michael said. Fine, I said. Yours, yours, yours.
I conceded everything, as if it were a favor, rather than a conscious strategy to avoid loss.
And what’s your name?
Juliet. What’s your name?
I’m Gil. I’m Louise’s new friend.
Why are you under the table, Gil? Under the table is for kids.
I just needed a break. So much talking. You think I’m strange.
No.
Is it strange to want to take a break from grown-up troubles?
No, sir.
Who’s that?
Caffeine.