“Well, I’d better get going.”
He nodded, his face red.
“If you do see Gregory this afternoon, you might mention that I stopped by, looking for him.”
“I’ll do that,” Paul promised.
“Do I owe you anything for…” She gestured toward the table.
“On the house,” he said.
She smiled. “Thanks.”
He looked at her, and once again she felt uncomfortable. “You’re welcome.”
Adam and Teo confronted her that afternoon.
She picked them up from their respective schools, and they were both unusually silent on the ride back. The temperature was stuck somewhere in the mid-fifties and, though the heater was on in the van, neither of them bothered to take off their heavy jackets.
It was Teo, sitting in the back, who brought it up.
“Dad was married before, wasn’t he?”
She’d known this day would come sometime, but it still threw her for a loop. She managed to remain on an even keel, to show no surprise, and she nodded. She and Gregory had decided years ago that they would handle this matter-of-factly, and so she said, “Yes, he was.”
In her peripheral vision, she saw Adam turn in his seat and look back at his sister, giving her a meaningful glance that Julia could not see to interpret.
She stuck to the party line, the tack they’d decided to take. “Your father was very young, and he made a mistake. He realized that early, and he got a divorce, and we met after that.”
“Her name was Andrea, wasn’t it?” Adam’s voice was hostile.
“Yes, it was. But, like I said, he realized his mistake early. Which just goes to show you why you should not rush into things and why people should not get married too young.”
“How old was he?” Teo asked.
“About twenty.”
“How old were you when you and dad got married?”
She took a deep breath. “About twenty-three.”
“That’s not much difference,” Adam said.
“You and Teo are three years apart. You don’t think there’s any difference in maturity there?”
“No!” Teo announced from the back.
“I guess so,” Adam admitted grudgingly.
They were all silent. Julia knew there were more questions they wanted to ask, but she did not want to volunteer any information. She waited to see what they would come up with.
The next question, from Adam, was a surprise.
“When did Sasha find out?”
She looked back at him. “I’m not sure she knows. She’s never asked about it.”
That brought him back into her corner. The hostility was gone. He was shocked and disturbed to find out that his father had already been married and divorced before starting their family, but the fact that he knew something his older sister did not almost made up for it.
“Does Dad like you better than that other woman?” Teo asked.
That other woman. Julia liked that. She smiled. “Yes, because he divorced her and married me and we had you children and we’ve been together now for almost twenty years.”
“Did you have another husband before Dad?”
“No,” she said. “Your father is my only husband.”
That seemed to satisfy them. There were no other questions immediately forthcoming.
She pulled into the drive. “We’ll talk about it some more with your father when he gets home.”
“Do we have to?” Adam asked.
“Well, he can explain better—”
“I don’t want to!” Teo announced.
“He was the one—”
“Can’t we just pretend like we don’t know?” Teo whined.
“Yeah.” Adam looked at her. “I’m sorry I found out. I didn’t mean to.”
They were both upset, upset and a little frightened, and she thought of Gregory’s recent behavior. She pulled to a stop, turned off the van’s engine. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “You don’t have to discuss it with your father if you don’t want to.”
They needed time to adjust, she decided. They needed to think about it a little more before they felt up to talking.
She would bring it up with Gregory herself tonight, when they were alone in bed, and tell him not to let on that he knew they knew.
Adam fixed her with a look so adult and sincere that it almost broke her heart. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Yeah,” Teo echoed, “thanks, Mom.”
The phone began ringing the instant she walked through the door, and she tossed her purse and keys on the coffee table in the living room as she ran to answer it.
Adam and Teo raced each other to the kitchen to find some snacks.
She kept her eyes on the phone across the room, wondering who was calling. She was suddenly aware of how rare an occurrence this had become. Back in California, the phone had rung constantly—calls for Sasha, mostly, but also quite a few for herself. Here in McGuane, however, very few people called. The telephone was seldom used, and what had been an ordinary part of everyday life had become almost an event. It brought home to her how much her social circle had shrunk and how much she missed her old life.
She answered the phone on the third ring. “Hello?”
It was Debbie, and Julia’s heart lifted as she heard her old friend’s voice. “Greetings from sunny California. How goes it, stranger?”
Debbie had called for no specific reason, just because she was bored and wanted to shoot the breeze (and she wanted to annoy her miserly husband by calling in the daytime instead of during the cheaper evening hours), and that touched Julia more than anything else. Adam and Teo emerged from the kitchen with Cokes and cookies in their hands, and she waved them away, motioning for them to stay out of the living room so she could talk in private.
Debbie always liked to work from the generic to the specific, so they started out talking about movies, making Julia realize how long it had been since she’d had a serious movie discussion with anyone.
“I watched Singin’ in the Rain last night,” Debbie told her. “It was on AMC.”
Julia smiled. “A classic.”
“Yeah, but don’t you always wonder about the movie they’re supposed to be making? The Lockwood and Lamont costume epic that’s turned into a musical? I mean, what kind of movie could include ‘Broadway Melody’ and ‘The Dancing Cavalier’? And ‘The Dancing Cavalier’ is supposed to be part of a dream sequence, while the rest of the story is contemporary, but ‘The Dancing Cavalier’ ends the movie! Does that mean the movie ends with a dream?”
Julia laughed. “God, I miss you.”
Debbie’s voice, which had been righteously serious, softened. “I miss you too, Jules. That’s why I called. How are things going there?”
She shrugged, but the shrug could not be heard over the phone. “Okay, I guess.”
Debbie had always been able to read between the lines.
“That bad, huh? What is it? Mother-in-law troubles?”
“Not exactly.”
“Local hillbillies?”
She laughed. “No. It’s just that… it’s taking us a little longer to adjust than we thought.”
“Gregory, huh?”
“How do you do that?” Julia asked.
“Do what?”
“See through whatever I’m telling you and guess the truth.”
“It’s an acquired skill,” Debbie said. “So spell it out for me.”
This time, Julia kept nothing back. She even talked about the box of dishes and her feelings about the house and her trip to Russiantown.
“You want my advice?” Debbie said when she was finished.
“What?”
“Get the hell out of Dodge. Pack your things and go. Stick your little tails between your legs and come running back here to the real world.”
“You really believe me about our haunted house?”
“I believe that you believe, and that’s enough for me. Whether it’s ghosts and creeps or simple dysfunction, things aren’t working out the way they should, and it sounds to me like it’s time for you to bail.”
Julia smiled, already feeling better. “This is your totally objective opinion?”
“The fact that I’d like my friend back here in California in no way compromises my impartiality.”
“Well, I’m stuck here for a while. For this school year at least.”
“But you’re thinking about coming back?”
“Every damn day.”
They both laughed.
There was a long pause, and it was Debbie who spoke first. “You’re really spooked, though, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Julia admitted.
“I didn’t think you were the type to believe in ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night.”
“I didn’t either.”
“I’ve always kept an open mind, myself. I don’t believe or disbelieve. But the fact that you think you saw something scares the shit out of me. I trust you more than I trust my own eyes.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“Jules?” Debbie’s voice was serious.
“Yes?”
“Be careful.”
A shiver passed through her, but Julia managed not to let it reach her voice. “I will,” she said.
“I mean it. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“I know.”
The conversation ended on an up note, with a return to movies.
Debbie was the one to finally say good-bye, and she hung up promising to call soon. Julia put the receiver back in its cradle and stood there next to the phone until her vision started to get blurry. She wiped her eyes before the tears overflowed onto her cheeks.
Teo emerged from the hallway, walked over to her.
“What are we having for dinner?” she asked.
Julia looked at her daughter, felt her strength return.
“I don’t know,” she said. She smiled. “But let’s go into the kitchen and see what we can figure out.”