Juliet. Anne Fortier

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СКАЧАТЬ looked at them both with disgust as they came towards me. ‘How generous of him. He obviously has a passion for trash.’

      Janice shot me an icy glare, but quickly checked herself. She knew very well that I couldn’t care less about her good opinion, and that her anger just amused me.

      I was born four minutes before her. No matter what she did, or said, I would always be four minutes older. Even if, Janice’s own mind, she was the hypersonic hare and I the plodding turtle, we both knew she could run cocky circles around me all she liked, but that she would never actually catch up and close that tiny gap between us.

      ‘Well,’ said Archie, eyeing the open door, ‘I’m gonna take off. Nice to meet you, Julie – it’s Julie, isn’t it? Janice told me all about you.’ He laughed nervously. ‘Keep up the good work! Make peace not love, as they say.’

      Janice waved sweetly as Archie walked out, letting the screen door slam behind him. But as soon as he was out of hearing range, her angelic face turned demonic. ‘Don’t you dare look at me like that!’ she sneered. ‘I’m trying to make us some money. It’s not as if you’re making any, is it now?’

      ‘But then I don’t have your kind of…expenses.’ I nodded at her latest upgrades, eminently visible under the clingy dress. ‘Tell me, Janice, how do they get all that stuff in there? Through the navel?’

      ‘Tell me, Julie,’ mimicked Janice, ‘how does it feel to get nothing stuffed in there? Ever!’

      ‘Excuse me, ladies,’ said Umberto, stepping politely between us the way he had done so many times before, ‘but may I suggest we move this riveting exchange to the library?’

      Once we caught up with Janice, she had already draped herself over Aunt Rose’s favourite armchair, a gin and tonic nestling on the foxhuntmotif cushion I had cross-stitched as a senior in high school while my sister had been out on the prowl for upright prey.

      ‘What?’ She looked at us with ill-concealed loathing. ‘You don’t think she left half the booze for me?’

      It was vintage Janice to be angling for a fight over someone’s dead body, and I turned my back to her and walked over to the French doors. On the terrace outside, Aunt Rose’s beloved terra-cotta pots sat like a row of mourners, flower heads hanging beyond consolation. It was an unusual sight. Umberto always kept the garden in perfect order, but perhaps he found no pleasure in his work now that his employer was no longer around to appreciate it.

      ‘I am surprised,’ said Janice, swirling her drink, ‘that you are still here, Birdie. If I were you I would have been in Vegas by now. With the silver.’

      Umberto did not reply. He had stopped talking directly to Janice years ago. Instead, he looked at me. ‘The funeral is tomorrow.’

      ‘I can’t believe,’ said Janice, one leg dangling from the armrest, ‘you planned all that without asking us.’

      ‘It was what she wanted.’

      ‘Anything else we should know?’ Janice freed herself from the embrace of the chair and straightened out her dress. ‘I assume we’re all getting our share? She didn’t fall in love with some weird pet foundation or something, did she?’

      ‘Do you mind?’ I croaked, and for a second or two, Janice actually looked chastened. Then she shrugged it off as she always did, and reached once more for the gin bottle.

      I didn’t even bother to look at her as she feigned clumsiness, raising her perfectly groomed eyebrows in astonishment to let us know that she certainly had not intended to pour quite so much. As the sun slowly melted into the horizon, so would Janice soon melt into a chaise longue, leaving the great questions of life for others to answer as long as they kept the alcohol coming.

      She had been like that for as long as I remembered: insatiable. When we were children, Aunt Rose used to laugh delightedly and exclaim, ‘That girl, she could eat her way out of a gingerbread prison,’ as if Janice’s greediness was something to be proud of. But then, Aunt Rose was at the top of the food chain and had, unlike me, nothing to fear. For as long as I could remember, Janice had been able to sniff out my secret candy no matter where I hid it, and Easter mornings in our family were nasty, brutish, and short. They would inevitably climax with Umberto chastising her for stealing my share of the Easter eggs, and Janice – teeth dripping with chocolate – hissing from underneath her bed that he wasn’t her daddy and couldn’t tell her what to do.

      The frustrating thing was that she didn’t look her part. Her skin stubbornly refused to give away its secrets; it was as smooth as the satin icing on a wedding cake, her features as delicately crafted as the little marzipan fruits and flowers in the hands of a master confectioner. Neither gin nor coffee nor shame nor remorse had been able to crack that glazed façade; it was as if she had a perennial spring of life inside her, as if she rose every morning rejuvenated from the well of eternity, not a day older, not an ounce heavier, and still ravenously hungry for the world.

      Unfortunately, we were not identical twins. Once, in the schoolyard, I had overheard someone referring to me as Bambi-on-stilts, and although Umberto laughed and said it was a compliment, it didn’t feel that way. Even when I was past my most clumsy age, I knew I still looked lanky and anemic next to Janice; no matter where we went or what we did, she was as dark and effusive as I was pale and reserved.

      Whenever we entered a room together, all the spotlights would immediately turn to her, and although I was standing there right beside her, I became just another head in the audience. As time went on, however, I grew comfortable with my role. I never had to worry about finishing my sentences, for Janice would inevitably do that for me. And on the rare occasions when someone asked about my hopes and dreams – usually over a polite cup of tea with one of Aunt Rose’s neighbours – Janice would pull me away to the piano, where she would attempt to play while I turned the sheets for her. Even now, at twenty-five, I would still squirm and grind to a halt in conversations with strangers, hoping desperately to be interrupted before I had to commit my verb to an object.

      

      We buried Aunt Rose in the pouring rain. As I stood there by her grave, heavy drops of water fell from my hair to blend with the tears running down my cheeks; the paper tissues I had brought from home had long since turned to mush in my pockets.

      Although I had been crying all night, I was hardly prepared for the sense of sad finality I felt as the coffin was lowered crookedly into the earth. Such a big coffin for Aunt Rose’s spindly frame…now I suddenly regretted not having asked to see the body, even if it would have made no difference to her. Or maybe it would? Perhaps she was watching us from somewhere far away, wishing she could let us know that she had arrived safely. It was a consoling idea, a welcome distraction from reality, and I wished I could believe it.

      The only one who did not look like a drowned rodent by the end of the funeral was Janice, who wore plastic boots with five-inch heels and a black hat that signalled anything but mourning. In contrast, I was wearing what Umberto had once labelled my Attila-the-Nun outfit; if Janice’s boots and neckline said come hither, my clunky shoes and buttoned-up dress most certainly said get lost.

      A handful of people showed up at the grave, but only Mr Gallagher, our family lawyer, stayed to talk. Neither Janice nor I had ever met him before, but Aunt Rose had mentioned him so often and so fondly that the man himself could only be a disappointment.

      ‘I understand you are a pacifist?’ he said to me, as we walked away from the cemetery together.

      ‘Jules СКАЧАТЬ