Juliet. Anne Fortier
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dragged me onstage to bombard me with gratitude, did I notice the familiar figure looming near the exit, contemplating me through the applause. Stern and statuesque in his dark suit and tie, Umberto stood out like a lone reed of civilization in a primordial swamp. He always had. For as long as I could remember, he had never worn a single piece of clothing that could be considered casual. Khaki shorts and golf shirts, to Umberto, were the garments of men who have no virtues left, not even shame.
Later, when the onslaught of grateful parents subsided and I could finally leave the stage, I was stopped briefly by the programme director, who took me by the shoulders and shook me heartily – he knew me too well to attempt a hug. ‘Good job with the youngsters, Julie!’ he gushed. ‘I can count on you again next summer, can’t I?’
‘Absolutely,’ I lied, walking on. ‘I’ll be around.’
Approaching Umberto at last, I looked in vain for that little spark of happiness in the corner of his eyes that was usually there when he saw me again after some time away. But there was no smile, not even a trace, and I now understood why he had come. Stepping silently into his embrace, I wished I had the power to flip reality upside down like an hourglass, and that life was not a finite affair, but rather a perpetually recurring passage through a little hole in time.
‘Don’t cry, principessa,’ he said into my hair, ‘she wouldn’t have liked it. We can’t all live forever. She was eighty-two.’
‘I know. But…’ I stood back and wiped my eyes. ‘Was Janice there?’
Umberto’s eyes narrowed as they always did when my twin sister was mentioned. ‘What do you think?’ Only then, up close, did I see that he looked bruised and bitter, as if he had spent the last few nights drinking himself to sleep. But perhaps it had been a natural thing to do. Without Aunt Rose what would become of Umberto? For as long as I could remember, the two of them had been yoked together in a necessary partnership of money and muscle – she had played the withering belle, he the patient butler – and despite their differences, clearly neither of them had ever been willing to attempt life without the other.
The Lincoln was parked discreetly over by the fire pit, and no one saw Umberto placing my old pack in the trunk before opening the back door for me with measured ceremony.
‘I want to sit in front. Please?’
He shook his head in disapproval and opened the passenger door instead. ‘I knew it would all come apart.’
But it had never been Aunt Rose who insisted on the formality. Although Umberto was her employee, she had always treated him like family. The gesture, however, was never returned. Whenever Aunt Rose would invite Umberto to join us at the dinner table, he would merely look at her with bemused forbearance, as if it was an ongoing wonder to him why she kept asking and just somehow didn’t get it. He ate all his meals in the kitchen, always had, always would, and not even the name of sweet Jesus – spoken in rising exasperation – could persuade him to come and sit down with us, even at Thanksgiving.
Aunt Rose used to dismiss Umberto’s peculiarity as a European thing and smoothly segue into a lecture about tyranny, liberty, and independence that would inevitably culminate in her pointing a fork at us and snorting, ‘and that is why we are not going to Europe on vacation. Especially Italy. End of story.’ Personally, I was fairly certain that Umberto preferred to eat alone simply because he considered his own company vastly superior to what we had to offer. There he was, serene in the kitchen, with his opera, his wine, and his perfectly ripened block of Parmesan, while we – Aunt Rose, me, and Janice – bickered and shivered in the drafty dining room. Given the option, I would have lived every minute of every day in the kitchen, too.
As we drove through the dark Shenandoah Valley that night, Umberto told me about Aunt Rose’s last hours. She had died peacefully, in her sleep, after an evening of listening to all her favourite Fred Astaire songs, one crackling record after another. Once the last chord of the last piece had died out, she had stood up and opened the French doors to the garden outside, perhaps wanting to breathe in the honeysuckle one more time. As she stood there, eyes closed, Umberto told me, the long lace curtains had fluttered round her spindly body without a sound, as if she was already a ghost.
‘Did I do the right thing?’ she had asked, quietly.
‘Of course you did,’ had been his diplomatic answer.
It was midnight by the time we rolled into Aunt Rose’s driveway. Umberto had already warned me that Janice had arrived from Florida that afternoon with a calculator and a bottle of champagne. That did not, however, explain the second vehicle parked right in front of the entrance.
‘I sincerely hope,’ I said, taking my pack out of the trunk before Umberto could get to it, ‘that is not the undertaker.’ No sooner had I said the words then I winced at my own flippancy. It was completely unlike me to talk like that, and it only ever happened when I came within earshot of my sister.
Casting a brief glance at the mystery car, Umberto adjusted his jacket as if it was a bulletproof vest. ‘I fear there are many kinds of undertaking.’
As soon as we stepped through the front door of the house, I saw what he meant. All the large portraits in the hallway had been taken down and were now standing with their backs to the wall like delinquents before a firing squad. And the Venetian vase that had always stood on the round table beneath the chandelier was already gone.
‘Hello?’ I yelled, with a surge of rage that I had not felt since my last visit. ‘Anyone still alive?’
My voice echoed through the quiet house, but as soon as it had faded I heard running feet in the corridor upstairs. Yet despite her guilty rush, Janice had to make her usual slow-motion appearance on the broad staircase, her flimsy summer dress emphasizing her sumptuous curves far better than if she had worn nothing at all. Pausing for the world press, she tossed back her long hair with languid self-satisfaction and sent me a supercilious smile before commencing her descent. ‘Lo and behold,’ she observed, her voice sweetly chilled, ‘the virgitarian has landed.’ Only then did I notice the male flavour-of-the-week trailing right behind her, looking as dishevelled and bloodshot as one does after time alone with my sister.
‘Sorry to disappoint,’ I said, dropping my backpack on the floor with a thud. ‘Can I help you strip the house of valuables, or do you prefer to work alone?’
Janice’s laughter was like a little wind chime on your neighbour’s porch, put there exclusively to annoy you. ‘This is Archie,’ she informed me, in her business-casual way. ‘He is going to give us twenty grand for all this junk.’
I 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,’