A Song for Julia (5 page)

I looked at my dad, a question on my face. He shrugged. “I know you had your big show in Washington yesterday, we told him. But … you know.”

Yeah, I knew. Sean didn’t deal well with change, and Saturday evening dinner was every week. I sighed. I didn’t often miss it, but when I did, it put Sean off-balance. I opened the fridge and searched around until I found a beer, then cracked it open, took a deep pull, and sat down next to Sean.

“Make yourself at home, Dougal,” my dad said, his voice sarcastic.

“Thanks, Dad. You know I go by Crank now.”

“Yeah, I know. But I’m not going to start calling you that. Your mother and I gave you a good Irish name.”

I sighed. “How’s it going, Sean?”

Sean spoke, in a landslide. “Can I tell you something? Did you know the arm has two complete separate compartments for muscles? It’s divided by the fascial layer, which merges with the humerus. But it’s the same nerve that controls both sets of muscles.” He began to recite the names of the muscles.

“No, man, I didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool.”

He started talking about how the muscles connected to the bone structures, and I looked up at my father. Dad had stopped whatever it was he was doing and was standing watching us, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes rested on Sean, and they looked sad.

Moments like this, my dad and I got along. We didn’t agree on anything else, at all. But both of us would do anything in the world to protect Sean. 

“Sean,” my dad said, “I’m gonna put dinner on the table. Can you put your book away now?”

Sean slipped the book off the table, carefully setting it under his seat.

“Let me help,” I said, starting to get up.

“Nothing to help with,” he said. “How did your show go?” He started setting plates on the table.  

I shrugged. “It was good. Crazy large crowd … hundred thousand at least. But it was mostly just the college kids who got the music.”

He grimaced. “Speaking of college …”

“I know, Dad. Can we have that conversation later? Much later?” I nodded my head toward Sean. Neither of us wanted to fight in front of him.

“Yeah. But don’t think it’s over. I know you have your band and all, but I want to see you do something with your life.”

Sean interrupted. “Your show wasn’t on the news. I watched CNN, and all they talked about was a sniper. Killing people. Did you know some rifles can shoot more than a mile? It’s because of the high velocity of the bullet.”

I shook my head, more than a little disturbed by the direction of the conversation. “I didn’t know that.”

“That’s all they’ve been talking about on the news for days,” Dad said. “Some crazy bastard going around shooting people in Washington.”

“The most popular sniper rifles use seven point six two ammunition,” Sean said. “But the longest range confirmed kill was Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock during the Vietnam War, using a M2 Browning fifty caliber machine gun instead of a sniper rifle.”

I sighed, staring at Sean. He’d always grabbed onto topics and learned … a lot of obscure facts. But this—it was disturbing.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Dad whispered, “but it’s unavoidable in the news right now.”

I shrugged. “This will pass.”

He grunted and sat down at the table. “Eat!” he shouted. “You’re too frickin’ thin, Dougal. And you drink like a fish. What woman is ever going to want to stay with you if you’re like this?”

Normally a comment like that, I’d have been pissed. But I just looked down, stabbed my fork into a potato and started eating. Sean’s plate had the same food as mine, but Dad had peeled the potatoes, as always, making sure there wasn’t a speck of brown left. Sean took a bite and started humming. It was one of my songs.

I took another bite and my dad said, “What?”

“Nothing, Dad.”

“Don’t ‘nothing’ me! As soon as I mentioned girls, you clammed up. Did you get one of those groupies pregnant?”

“Dad! No!”

“Well, something’s been eating you since you walked in the door.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Yeah, you never want to talk about nothin’, kid. There’s a big shock.”

Irritated, I shook my head. Sean started to hum a little louder.

“Dad, maybe I don’t want to get interrogated every time I come over. Maybe I don’t want to get yelled at every time I see you, okay? Can’t we just have dinner and enjoy it?”

My dad sighed, seeming to shrink in on himself a little. His face looked angry, and he started to shovel away his dinner. After a few bites, he looked up and met my eyes. “Look, I know we’ve not gotten along all that great. But you’re still my son. I still care about you.”

I winced. “Sorry, Dad …”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

I shook my head. “I met a girl this weekend, that’s all.”

My dad blinked and then asked at his usual shout, “So what’s new about that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It was different.” I didn’t want to get into it. It was different. But that was partly because I was different. Sometimes I just got tired of the same old crap. No one I could spend time with, laugh with—no one that mattered. Don’t get me wrong. It’s great being able to pick up girls. But maybe I needed something a little bit more.

“Huh,” he said, then didn’t make any further comment. Sean flipped through the pages of his medical book, pausing maybe fifteen seconds per page. Pause … read … flip. Pause … read … flip. He was a hell of a reader and sucked back information like crazy, but this was too fast even for him. 

“Anyway, there was something different about her.”

“You gonna bring her around?” My dad took a swig of his beer after he asked this.

I shook my head. “No … she doesn’t want to see me again.”

“Ah, crap. What’d you do, try to grope her?”

I sat back in my chair, rolling my eyes. “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

“Well?”

“No, that’s not it. She’s … Harvard girl. I’m outclassed.”

“Not hard for a Harvard girl to outclass a high school dropout. But you were always wicked smart, kiddo. Too much for your own good, sometimes.”

I shrugged. “Nothing I can do about it.”

“You can always go back to school.”

I closed my eyes. “Don’t start, okay? Not tonight.”

“All right, all right. I won’t. But I will say one thing … if you want to come back, ever, and live here and go to school … I’ve got plenty of room.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Thanks, Dad.”

He looked over at Sean. “Sean, you up for a game? Uno?”

Sean said yes, and Dad went to go find the cards. I collected the plates and took them to the sink and washed the dishes. The thing was, I knew my dad was right. I was committed to the band. But I didn’t have any illusions, either. We played tiny little shows in tiny little bars in New England, but we didn’t have a huge following, and our EP hadn’t even paid for itself. Not to mention, back when I’d been in school, I enjoyed it. But when the hell was I supposed to go to school? I worked full-time, played in the band, and when I wasn’t doing those, I was watching Sean. And despite what my dad said, moving home wasn’t a serious option. We’d be at war, fighting, just like the old days. And that was bad for Sean. He stressed out at the first sign of conflict. Imagine us living together again and the yelling going on all the time.

The whole conversation about Julia threw me off balance. I didn’t take relationships seriously, but maybe it was time I started. And where the hell did that thought come from?

Whatever. For now, I needed to focus on getting through this week.

I finished the last of the dishes and sat down at the table again. Dad dealt the cards, and we played Uno, then moved into the den to watch a show together. 

As we sat down, Dad asked, “Have you called your mother lately?”

I closed my eyes. “Dad, please don’t start.”

He muttered something under his breath, but didn’t say anything else. Lucky. He was always after me to call her, and that just wasn’t going to happen. But we both knew Sean wasn’t at his best tonight, and any fight between dad and me was going to turn into an explosion. Best to keep it all under the surface, simmering like always, but not let it boil over.

I said it to shut her up (Julia)

I was sitting in the cafe car of the train, writing a paper on the massive changes in the music industry over the last several years as a result of file sharing and piracy. I was an international business major, and even though they weren’t my plans, the plan was for me to go on to graduate school, either at Fletcher or Georgetown. But three months into my senior year at Harvard, I still hadn’t filled out any graduate school applications. When I thought of it, I just stopped. Paralyzed and angry.

Whatever. I banished the distracting thoughts and went back to my paper. That’s when my phone rang. 

The man across from me, late twenties, wearing a suit and tie and also working on a laptop, reached for his phone and then realized it wasn’t his. He grinned and shrugged, a little sheepish.

My concentration broken, I answered the phone as I watched the landscape race by outside the windows. “Hello?”

“Julia, hey. It’s Carrie.”

One of my sisters. Carrie was a senior at Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco. Tall, willowy and graceful, she could be a model if she wanted. Instead, she’d been accepted early admission to Columbia University, where she was planning on majoring in pre-med. 

“What’s up, Carrie? How are you?”

“Did Mom call you?”

“No …” Mom never called my cell phone. I don’t know why … she refused to use them, instead stuck with landlines. It was weird.

“She must be calling your room then.”

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t say anything else because I was afraid of what this was about.

“Um … Maria Clawson … she, um …”

“Spit it out, Carrie.”

“You’re the headliner on her blog.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yeah. It’s a nice picture, though. Steamy.”

I sat up straight in my seat, and my voice rising to an unflattering squeak, I said, “What?” She’d run the picture again? My heart started thumping in my chest, and I felt nauseous. That photo had ruined my life. The thought of it being dredged up, where people from school would see it, with my name attached? I felt pain at both my temples and leaned forward, rubbing my forehead.

“You and the punk rocker? It says his name is…Crank? Really?”

I gasped. “Yes, really. What about the picture?” I asked, frantic.

“Well … it looks like it was taken in front of the White House. And you guys are kind of lip locked.”

“Oh, God,” I said. I sank back into my seat. Okay. This was a problem, but not nearly the problem I thought I had.

“Yeah.”

“What did the blog say?”

“You don’t want to know.”

My patience was blown. “If I didn’t want to know, why did you call me?” I snapped.

Silence at the other end of the line. Finally, she said, “Way to shoot the messenger, sis. Talk to you later.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to calm myself and speak in a conciliatory tone. “Carrie … thank you for calling me about this. Please, tell me what the blog says?”

She sighed. “It’s typical Maria Clawson. Talks about you and this Crank guy, how you went back to some hotel with him. Did you really?”

“I didn’t even stay in a hotel.” Which didn’t answer the question.

“Oh. And … I’m sorry, Julia. But it … says something about when you were in high school. She says … there was a scandal in high school that broke and kept Dad from getting approved as Ambassador to Russia. That’s not true, is it?”

I grimaced and rubbed my forehead. “Not exactly.”

“She said you were pregnant in high school. I can’t believe she’d do that. That woman is horrible.”

“I don’t want to talk about this on the phone, Carrie. And it was a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

I rubbed my forehead again. I could feel a killer of a headache coming on. “How crazy is Mom?” I asked.

“She’s … gone off the deep end. She’s been crying all morning. And Dad’s locked himself in his office. I called thinking you might want some warning.”

“I’m so not going back to my room tonight.”

“She might break down and call your cell.”

“God, I hope not. I don’t need this.”

She was silent for a few moments. “So, what’s this guy Crank like? Are you serious about him?”

I sighed. “I barely know him. He’s … a nice guy. And I’m not seeing him again.”

“Why not?”

I couldn’t answer. For one thing, I had no way of getting in touch with him. And because he was so … much. Far better to date safe, boring guys—guys who didn’t make me feel lightheaded. Guy who didn’t kiss in a way that made me want to wrap myself around them. Guys who couldn’t tear me to pieces.

“Julia?”

“Carrie, I don’t really … I don’t know, all right?”

My phone beeped at me. Another call coming. Probably my mother, overcoming her irrational fear of cell phones. 

“I gotta go, Carrie, another call coming in. It’s probably Mom.”

“Call me, okay?”

“I will.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it. It was one of my suitemates, Jemi.

“Hello?”

“Hey there. So … your mother has been calling.” Jemi, a native of Sierra Leone, spoke in a clipped British accent.

I closed my eyes. “I had a feeling.”

“She really,
really
wants to talk to you.”

“How many times has she called?”

“I lost count after eight calls. I was hoping you might call her back … I was trying to take a nap. Which isn’t working out very well.”

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

Jemi laughed softly. “No worries. Just tell me all about it later. After I’m awake, okay?”

“I will.”

So, that left me with no option. My mom would keep calling until I talked with her. I could hardly blame her. It’s not like I hadn’t ruined everything, not only for my own life, but for my father as well. There was no getting around it, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant.

I remembered being close to my mom. Very close. All that changed by the time I was in middle school, though, and was broken permanently in China. I’ll be the first to admit it was my fault. My actions that year didn’t just put tension in our lives. It broke their trust in me. It broke my trust in myself. And then, after we came back to the United States, it almost wrecked my father’s career. And there was no way in hell they were ever going to let me forget it.