Glimmering (33 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Hand

BOOK: Glimmering
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“. . . really, we were just talking about you! Jule, do you remember . . .”
On the couch Jule held his big hands carefully in his lap, cupping his highball glass like a votive candle. Now and then he leaned over to touch Emma’s hair, or pat her knee, or to adjust Keeley’s shawl. “No,” he boomed, “but my ears must’ve been burning. Go on, go on—”
Jack smiled at his friend’s genteel
déshabillé.
Buttons missing from the stained cashmere overcoat, expensive Italian shoes scuffed and cracked, the lapels of his Donna Karan jacket frayed: all part of Jule’s slow-motion decline since his daughter’s death. Emma had lost herself in her work; Jule merely got lost. He was a big man, six-foot-three, burly and elegant as a gangland lawyer, with curly black hair shot with white and the woeful brown eyes of a cartoon hound.
“That sonofabitch! I
wondered
what happened to him!” Jule roared with laughter, some joke that Jack had missed. At his side Emma shook her fuzzy blond curls as she cast a wary glance at Jule’s glass, and then at Jack.
“Mmm, he was kind of a head case,” she began, but her glance had drawn Jule’s: he downed his whiskey and poured another. Emma said nothing, only stared at Jack, her blue eyes beseeching.
Jack turned to his friend with a huge fake grin. “Uh hey, Jule—you wanna help me with something?” He motioned at the door behind them. “I got to fill the coal bin,
you
could do it in about three—”
Jule opened his mouth to boom some reply, then stopped, whiskey poised in midair as he stared into the entry room. Emma raised her eyebrows, Doctor Duck meeting a new patient.
“Umm—hello?” she suggested. “More company?”
Jack turned to see Marz standing in the doorway. Struwwelpeter hair combed for once, wearing a pink Shetland sweater and shapeless plaid uniform skirt. White bony bare legs, bare feet. She really did look like a refugee.
“Ah—who’s that
?”
said Jule sotto voce
.
“Kate Moss’s cadaver double?”
Jack frowned. “That is our houseguest. Marzana.”
“Marzana? What kind of name—”
“Jule,”
warned Emma.
“Mary Anne,” said Keeley with a sweet smile.
“Hi,” said Marz. “I’m going to take a nap. Okay?” She turned to go upstairs.
“Let me help her,” cried Mrs. Iverson, and followed. Jule stared after them. When they were out of sight, he raised an eyebrow at Jack. “So tell me—did Fagin kick her out for not meeting her quota? Or what?”
“She’s a runaway.”
“Jack found her,” explained Keeley, “in the garden.”
“What, under a cabbage leaf?” Jule ignored a sharp poke from Emma. “Jackie?”
Jack sighed. “She was in the garden. She was crying—I mean, Christ, Jule, she’s just a kid—”
“How long?
”
Jack hesitated. “Two months, I guess. Maybe three.”
“Three months?
”
exploded Jule. “Jackie, you—”
“She’s pregnant,” said Keeley. “I’m
so
glad you came, Emma—she hasn’t seen a doctor—”
“Pregnant?” Emma tilted her head. “Oh! Wow. Well. This is quite a lot for you all to be handling, Keeley. Jack. And for three months . . . I didn’t think it was that long since we talked.” She shot Jack an accusing look. “But you’ve spoken to Julie, Jack. About the magazine—why didn’t you tell us?”
“It wasn’t something I could just bring up. When it was—well, the phones,” said Jack defensively. “I wanted to call, I mean I tried to call—you know what it’s like.”
“But you’re sure she’s pregnant? She’s been tested? She’s been tested for everything?”
“Of course not! She hasn’t been tested for
anything
! I don’t even know who she is—”
“She sounds foreign,” brooded Jule.
Keeley set her teacup on the side table. “She’s Polish. Marzana is Polish for Mary Anne.”
Jule and Emma exchanged another look.
Keeley sighed. The Queen was weary of bickering courtiers. “I’m tired. Emma, could you help me upstairs?”
“I’m sorry, Keeley, of course, of course—” Emma helped Keeley to her feet and guided her from the room.
“You can stay for dinner?” Keeley’s voice was plaintive.
“Of course—we brought food, Jule will bring it in. You’re not to do a thing, Keeley, I forbid it. But if it’s all right, we thought we’d stay over tonight—”
“Oh, darling.” Keeley stopped, catching her breath, and looked up at Emma with full eyes. “We would love that.”
“Great!” Emma straightened. Her voice took on the brisk cheerfulness of the doctor on duty. “All right! Up we go.”
When they were gone Jule refilled his glass.
“Jackie, Jackie,” he rumbled, “you fucking idiot. Some cracked-out kid—”
Jack grabbed the bottle. He poured a shot into his teacup and gulped it. “I was going to call Emma. To ask what I should do with her.”
“What, like feed her?”
“No, you asshole. Like tell me whether I should call the Child Welfare League or whoever it is you call about things like this.”
“Have you tried the police?”
“No. I told you, I haven’t told anyone. The phones are too screwed up.” Jack hesitated, trying to remember exactly why he hadn’t called anyone. “I mean, Keeley just took her over. You think I should call the police?”
Jule shrugged and knocked back his drink. “Was she breaking into the house or anything like that?”
“No. She was
here,
though. I mean she was on our land, so she was technically trespassing, I guess.”
“Well, these days you’re not gonna get a big response to a call about some kid trespassing,” said Jule dryly. “My suggestion would be that you give her a nice meal—if you can get her to eat it, she looks like she’s pumping ice or some such shit—and send her packing before she causes trouble.”
“That’s what I thought,” Jack broke in, “but Keeley is doing the whole stray-cat thing—”
“Yeah? Well, then, maybe you should go the whole nine yards and do the whole stray-cat thing and like, dispose of her. Don’t give me that look. I just mean
take
her somewhere, drop her off, and let her go back to wherever she crawled from. Capische?”
“I know, I know.” Jack nodded unhappily. “But she’s pregnant—”
“And the sooner the better. I mean, weeping Christ on a stick, Jackie, what’re you thinking? A kid like that, alone here with you and all these old ladies? Sometimes I think you have no common sense.”
“But she’s pregnant.”
Jules looked aghast. “Jesus, Jackie—not by
you?
Okay, okay—I just thought, you know—it happens. That’d be right up there with the Immaculate Conception, huh, Jackie? Kinda skinny for my taste.”
Jack grinned ruefully. “She’s not a bad kid. She’s incredibly quiet.
”
“Does she help out? With Grandmother and Mrs. Iverson?”
“I guess. I don’t know what she does, really. I think maybe she sleeps a lot. I haven’t spent much time with her. Alone, I mean. But no, she’s no trouble. And Keeley and Larena, they just seem to love her. I guess because she’s a girl.” Jack gave a broken laugh. “I didn’t even know she was pregnant.”
Jule leaned back on the couch, balancing his glass on one knee. “A girl. Yeah, girls are different.”
His tone grew wistful, and Jack looked up, fearful of what he might see on his friend’s face. But Jule seemed peaceful. After a moment he asked, “But how are you
,
Jackie? You look pretty good—”
“Good, good, I feel—”
“—but you look skinny.” Jule’s red face folded into worry. “You getting enough to eat here? I mean, all of you soaking wet weigh five pounds—you getting enough to eat?”
“Of course we are. The grocery at Delmonico’s still delivers, every couple of weeks. We do okay. And—”
“Delmonico’s! God. They still have that caponata? You don’t get shit where we are. I mean, the movie people can get it flown in, sometimes, but the rest of us, stores and stuff—if you can even get there, they don’t got shit for food. But Emma grows everything, anyway . . .”
They talked for a long time. As evening came, the room a swirl of lavender and yellow, Emma brought them food—cumin-scented rice, tiny bitter eggplant, last year’s dried apples—then left. It had been a year, at least, since they’d had the luxury of time, a night together without the long treacherous drive back north for Jule, without Jack having to worry about whether his friend would make it home in one piece—Jule drank heavily since Rachel’s death, there was nothing else to be said about it—and no assurance that Jule would be able to call to let him know that he’d gotten there safely. And it had been much longer than a year since they’d really talked, unfettered by business or the need to break bad news, or to console—could it have been since Jack’s fortieth birthday?
“Yeah, you gotta watch those birthdays, Jackie,” said Jule. “Fuckin’ A, Jackie Finnegan turns forty, and the world comes to an end!” He roared, wiping his eyes; then abruptly was weeping.
“Oh Jule—” Jack reached for him. The first bottle of Jack Daniel’s was long empty, a second only half-full. “Don’t cry, Julie,” he stammered, not yet aware he was weeping himself. “Oh please don’t cry—”
Jule raised a hand, begging silence. His big ugly face crumpled in upon itself like a broken box. He grabbed his friend and pulled him close.
“Oh Jackie Jackie, why’s it all happening? Why? Why
—” that big arm shaking as it hugged Jackie close, the two of them huddled in the endless twilight, little Jackie and big Jule, together at the end of all things, as they had never thought to be.
 
 
Jack rose late the next day (he guessed it was late), went into the bathroom and threw up, poured water from an old pitcher to wash his face and clean the sink. He passed the blond girl’s bedroom and noted his grandmother in there with her, the two of them going through old clothes on the four-poster. When he got downstairs he sank into one of the Stickley chairs to catch his breath and stared up at the grandfather clock’s intricate face. Placid three-quarter moon peeking out from behind a beaming sun, dials showing high tide, low tide, the stars, the seasons, everything that could be calibrated by chime rods and winding drums, brass bobs, and golden slaves. Was there a dial there for Jackie Finnegan? For Jule? A clatter from down the hall drove him to the kitchen.
“Good morning, Jackie,” said Emma, smiling beside a window she had filled with mason jars full of dried beans, pasta, different-colored lentils. “You look like you spent the night with my husband.”
“I did,” whispered Jack, falling into another chair. “Remind me never to do it again.”
Emma laughed. Her eyes betrayed something else. Not anger or annoyance; a kind of habitual assessment as she gazed at Jack holding his head in his hands. He raised his eyes to her and saw there what she did: he looked sick. He wasn’t getting better. She was a doctor. She thought he was dying.
“Well.” Her lips pursed, and she returned his look, complicitous:
we understand each other.
“Jackie, I want to look at you later. Okay?”
He nodded, and Emma turned away, to place another jar upon the sill. Then Mrs. Iverson came in, shaking her head and frowning at Jack.
“Some people
never learn, ”
she announced. “At least Leonard isn’t here.”
She poured him coffee with real milk in it, more of Emma’s bounty, and Emma gave him some bread she’d baked, a little stale but rich with molasses and sunflower seeds.
“How come you can do this and we can’t?” Jack asked, misty-eyed with gratitude. “Grow all this stuff. Bake . . .”
Emma bustled around the room, swiping at countertops, checking cabinets, collecting spent jars and replacing them with what she’d brought: tea, flour, powdered milk, dried fruit.
“Because this is what women
do,”
she answered, mouth a little prim: Doctor Duck does not approve of strong drink. “Get food. Make sure everybody has enough to eat—”
“Perform brain surgery?”
“—perform brain surgery. Ugh, is this
oatmeal
?
”
She glanced accusingly at Jack, who only shrugged. “The world doesn’t come to an end just because the phones are dead.”
“Emma, we haven’t had power for ages. And before that—”
“Neither have we. It doesn’t matter.” She dumped the oatmeal into a bowl of things destined for compost, handed it to Mrs. Iverson. “Jule Gardino, taking the fucking luxury of killing himself with alcohol—”
He was shocked to see how angry she was, jars rattling as she shoved them in the cupboard. “—it doesn’t all come screeching to a goddamn fucking halt.”
“You mean the world doesn’t come to an end, just because the world is coming to an end.”
Jack turned to see Jule filling the doorway. He was unshaven, his hair mussed; otherwise, he seemed unaffected by the night’s bout. Emma took a long breath, turned to a window. “Oh, Julie. Please spare me.”

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