A Song for Julia Read online

  The rest of our practice was uneventful, though it went smoother than typical. But that’s the way things went: up and down. Our shows were consistently solid, but in rehearsals, the ebb and flow of emotions, arguments and just life tended to impact all of us.

  After practice, Serena ordered a pizza, then went off to grab a shower. I collapsed, exhausted, onto another throwaway couch in our living room upstairs above the studio. It had once been a conference room or something for the warehouse. Since we’d moved in, Serena had decorated it with brightly colored drapes and shawls she’d brought from India. Mark turned on the television and found The Osbournes. Seriously? I couldn’t believe that show had survived a single night, much less an entire season.

  Five minutes later, Serena stood in the door to the hallway and said, in an odd voice, “I found Julia.”

  “What?” Mark asked.

  I raised my eyebrows. What was she talking about?

  “Come on,” she said. “You guys gotta see this.” She didn’t even look at me as she said the words.

  Mark and Pathin followed her back down the hall. Whatever this was, I didn’t want any part of it. But then Mark shouted, “Holy shit!” and suddenly I was interested.

  I walked down the hall and looked into Serena’s room, where the three of them were crowded around her computer.

  What the hell?

  Splashed across the screen was a photo, a good one. Me and Julia, kissing in front of the White House.

  Serena was reading the words below the picture:

  “Young Ms. Thompson was found in passionate embrace of Crank Wilson on Saturday evening in front of the White House. Wilson is the lead singer-guitarist of a mildly successful alternative punk-rock band, which plays the local circuit in Boston and Providence. His rap-sheet is nearly as long as Ms. Thompson’s transcripts.”

  Mark laughed. “Dude, you banged that college girl from Saturday?”

  “What? No.”

  “Not what the article says.”

  “What the hell? Why in God’s name is that there, anyway?”

  Serena looked at me, her eyelids lowered. “It’s not you, Crank. This is a society gossip blogger. She’s not interested in trash from South Boston. She’s interested in this girl … Julia. Why didn’t you just tell us about her? Are you hung up on her?”

  I shrugged. “What the hell, guys? It’s just a girl.”

  “Was she good?” Mark asked. “She looked it. Wicked ass. She looked kinda like a librarian, though. Hmm …” He started to sing, off-key, “My sexy librarian!”

  “Shut the hell up, Mark. And I have no idea. I dropped her off at her parents’ condo and headed back to the hotel. And I don’t see how this is any of your business, anyway. Any of you.” As I said the last words, I leveled my gaze at Serena. She knew better. She knew better. I’d made it clear more than once we weren’t going there, ever.

  She stood up. “Anything that affects the band is my business.”

  “Serena, you’re being ridiculous. We didn’t even exchange frickin’ phone numbers. And it’s not like I’m not out screwing girls all the time. You ought to know that.”

  She flinched. I’d said the words to hurt, and she knew it. But she held her ground.

  “I don’t give a crap about that, Crank. But don’t tell me it doesn’t touch the band … you heard that song you wrote! Tell me you don’t feel something for that girl.”

  “So what if I do?”

  “If you do, that’s good. But be honest with us.”

  Mark and Pathin were watching, both of them quiet for a change. And it was no wonder. Serena stared at me with eyes that could kill.

  I walked up to her and nose-to-nose said, “I met the girl. We had fun for one night. We talked. We kissed. We said good night. The end. All right? Now can you leave me alone?”

  She gave a slight snort, her lips turned up in scorn, and very slightly shook her head. “Whatever, Crank.”

  Party-Girl (Julia)

  Okay. It could have been worse. For example, Maria Clawson could have posted that picture. The one someone took my freshman year in high school. The one that my former best friend emailed to the entire junior class the week before we left Beijing. The one that gave credence to the vicious rumors about me.

  No, I got lucky this time. She didn’t post it, though I’m sure it was buried somewhere on her website. She’d edited that picture, the old one, to block out my face and anything that could get her jailed. But, it was clear enough.

  Maria used to write for the Washington Post Society Page, before the Post ditched the Society page. Since then, she set up her own hideous little blog, which, while it doesn’t have the kind of traffic huge websites have, she did have subscribers who paid through the nose for her little tidbits of gossip and sleaze and slander. The subscribers were almost exclusively wealthy, powerful members of society themselves. No one else could afford the exorbitant prices Maria charged for full access to her website. And nothing delighted them more than to see one of their peers, or one of their peers’ children, involved in some sort of hideous scandal. Maria had covered it all: drunkenness, infidelity, secret abortions, divorce, suicide …

  On Sunday morning, she posted, front and center, a photo of me in Crank’s arms, kissing. In front of the White House. Which meant she’d followed us out of the restaurant, looking for dirt, and found it. And then made up a story to go along with it, a story which dredged just enough of my past into it to paint me as a complete slut.

  Are wedding bells in the air? Or rock guitars clashing? That may be the case for Julia Thompson, the eldest daughter of Ambassador Richard Thompson, who retired to San Francisco after a mere one year as Ambassador to Russia. Longtime readers of Maria’s Meanderings will remember that Ambassador Thompson’s appointment to Russia dragged on for more than two years when Senator Rainsley of Texas questioned his fitness for the post.

  Young Ms. Thompson was found in the passionate embrace of Crank Wilson on Saturday evening in front of the White House. Wilson is the lead singer-guitarist of a mildly successful alternative punk-rock band, which plays the local circuit in Boston and Providence. He has a rap-sheet nearly as long as Ms. Thompson’s transcripts. After tourists and observers objected that the young couple’s public display of affection was unseemly, they moved on to a quieter location. Could it have been Wilson’s room at the 1-star Hotel Riviera in Arlington? Readers will forgive me if they do not recognize the Riviera: home to prostitutes, drug addicts and apparently down and out rock stars. It isn’t exactly Society’s venue of choice for family functions.

  Of course, we don’t know how serious the relationship is or if it serious at all. After all, this is not the first time Julia, now a student at Harvard, has been involved with dubious characters. Her classmates at the International School of Beijing, where she attended her first three years of high school, described her as a “party-girl” and whispered rumors of sex-parties and a back room abortion when she was fourteen years old. It was these rumors that put a halt to Ambassador Thompson’s appointment, until after President Bush took office, according to a confidential informant on the staff of Senator Rainsley.

  The story was followed by a link that led to the subscription-only bowels of her website. I didn’t have access to that, but I knew what was there—years’ worth of stories smearing my family. None of those mentioned me by name, and most didn’t even say my father’s name; Clawson danced on the edge of legality and had somehow managed over the years to avoid being sued out of existence.

  When I read the story in my room Sunday evening, I felt my stomach clench, nausea flooding me. The rumors that Maria had published on her website in the past never included my name. I guess that’s because I was still a minor, so I was safe.

  Not any more.

  Party-girl. Yeah, right. It was one thing to make things up. It was another thing to write complete fiction and pass it off as truth. I was a lot of things in high school, but I was never a partier. Except when Harry pushed i
t too far. When he pushed me too far.

  No wonder, really, that my mother reacted the way she did. Our family had occupied first place on Maria’s website for quite a long time, and everybody knew it was my fault.

  But nobody knew what actually happened. That was too simple and sad and sordid a story to be of any real interest to anyone.

  After I read the blog entry, I sat, staring off into space for a long time.

  Finally, I got up and walked out of the room and wandered aimlessly around the campus for a while.

  It didn’t happen often, but sometimes I could hear his voice in my nightmares.

  You love me, don’t you? See? That wasn’t so bad.

  It had been years since I’d heard that voice in daylight hours, but here I was, and here it was, and I felt fourteen and vulnerable and scared and alone all over again. My stomach was turning; I wanted to vomit. It had been a long time since I’d felt that way. A very long time. See … the thing is, I had no one to go to. No one to ask for help. No shoulder to cry on, no one to tell me it was going to be all right. It’s not like my sisters were going to be of any help. After all, Carrie was only nine years old back then. And I could hardly go to my parents. When they did learn about it, it was only secondhand, and I still hadn’t lived down the consequences.

  I didn’t bring my daughter up to be a slut, she told me, contempt in her voice.

  When I thought of that little girl … me … barely speaking the language, lost and bleeding in the cold back streets of Beijing because she had no one to help her, it filled me with rage. It made me want to hurt someone, to break something. It made me want to scream, to stand in the center of the Quad and howl until my voice broke down.

  Instead, I went through my life, smiling at everyone, going to the college my parents expected, dressing like I was already thirty years old, working hard, having friends, almost as if I were a whole person.

  I came to a stop on the edge of Harvard Square. A guitarist stood near the corner, relaxed looking in corduroy pants and sitting on a milk crate. His greying hair and beard tumbled down his chest, and without the guitar, I would have guessed he was homeless. As it was, I stood there listening. He was playing an immaculate Guild acoustic 12-string with beautiful harmonics. I closed my eyes, swaying a little, taking in the music and letting it wash away the dark thoughts and emotions that tormented me. Music had always been my refuge, my passion.

  A few feet away, Mitch Roark was also listening. He nodded to me, a gentle smile on his face. Mitch and I dated a few times sophomore year, but I’d quickly backed off. He was a great guy from a very unconventional background, and we’d clicked from the start. His dad, Allen Roark, was one of the most successful alternative rock stars out there. Mitch had grown up on the road, home schooling, and finally attending an exclusive New England prep school for his last three years of high school. We had too much in common: not someone I could date.

  The song ended all too soon. The guitarist eyed me and then said, “Hope you liked it, Miss. I got another for ya.” Then he started to strum, and within two chords I recognized the music and smiled—“Ghost Riders in the Sky”. I’d always been partial to The Outlaws version, but this … hearing a raw edged song about cowboys and the Old West here in Harvard Square? It was sublime.

  I closed my eyes, swaying to the music, swinging around in circles. For just a fraction of a second, I could imagine the freedom the old cowboys felt, what it must have been like to see the horizon, to know and understand the boundaries of your life, to be able to get up in the morning and breathe clean air and not face a thousand stated and unstated expectations.

  When the music ended, I stopped and opened my eyes. And flushed furiously, because a small crowd of Harvard undergraduates was watching. And clapping. Including Willard, who stood there, very slowly clapping in a half-contemptuous manner. As always, he wore Dockers, a polo shirt and a nice pair of brown leather shoes.

  Mitch threw a couple dollars in the open guitar case, gave me a wave, and said, “See you around, Julia.”

  Whatever. I reached in my purse, took out two twenty-dollar bills and dropped them in the guitar case. As I leaned close to drop the money in, I whispered, “Thank you.”

  As I stood and turned around, Willard approached, and his eyes bugged out when he saw how much money I’d put in the guitar case. “Julia. That was some performance.” As he finished his sentence, the corner of his mouth lifted into a smirk.

  Willard never, ever hesitated to be condescending, to anyone. I felt myself tense, straining not to snap at him. “You know me, I love music.”

  He shrugged. He’d never been that interested in what I loved. “Didn’t see you around this weekend.”

  “I was out of town.”

  “Oh?”

  I didn’t volunteer any more information. The peaceful, beautiful mood the song had put me in was withering away. Willard never inspired much emotion of any kind, but at the moment he’d managed annoyance. Score for him.

  He tried to engage me again. “It’s been a while since we’ve hung out. Have you had dinner? Care to join me?”

  Not really, I thought. I hadn’t expected that. “Willard, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Hey … relax, Julia. We can be friends, you know. Just a friendly dinner, I’m not asking you out on a date.”

  Why did he have to be reasonable? If I said no now, then I was being a bitch. I set in place my mechanical smile and did what I always did … not what I wanted, but what was expected. “Well, all right. As friends.”

  Willard, as always, led the way to where he wanted to eat: in this case, across Mass Ave to a pizza place. The food here wasn’t so bad, so I guess I was okay with it. The place was about half full when we walked in, a low murmur of conversation layered over music from the jukebox, “Where is the Love?” The music in here tended to stay Top 40 most of the time. I didn’t hate it. Willard led me to a booth in the back, of course, and sat with his back to the wall, of course, which left me unable to see anything but him. This was all in character.

  “So … how have you been?” he asked.

  I kept my smile plastered across my face. “I’ve been good. Still trying to decide about grad school, but otherwise, things are going well.”

  “I still think you should consider Stanford,” he said. Willard was planning on attending there.

  “I don’t know. That’s a little too close to my parents for my comfort.”

  He shook his head. “Are they all that bad? They seemed nice enough to me when we met.”

  Of course they did. That’s because he was just like them.

  “They’re not that bad,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I want to live next door to them either.”

  “Seriously? It’s like an hour drive.”

  I blinked. Why was he pushing this so hard? “I’ll settle for a five day drive and stay on the East Coast, thanks. Why are you pushing so hard on this, anyway?”

  He looked away from me a moment, then back, meeting my eyes. “I was hoping maybe you’d forgiven me.”

  Forgiven him? There was nothing to forgive—I was the one who broke up with him. “You’ve done nothing wrong, Willard. There’s nothing to forgive you for.”

  “Except asking you to marry me.”

  I sighed. “That wasn’t wrong. It just … clarified things.”

  “Clarified what things? I still don’t understand. One day everything’s fine, we’re in love. The next, I ask you to marry me. And then … you break up with me.”

  Oh, God. He was going to make me do this to him.

  “I knew this was a bad idea,” I muttered.

  “Why? Because you’d have to tell me how you feel?”

  Yes. Exactly.

  I was going to have to cut to the chase. There was no easing him down, no making him feel better. I won’t lie … I felt awful about it. But at this point? Not much choice.

  “How I feel … is that I don’t love you. We were never in love, Willard.
Maybe you were in love with the idea of who you think I am … I don’t know. But there is no we. There never will be.”

  He froze. Actually, his eyes bulged out a little, and it immediately brought to mind some of those very unpleasant moments of sex with him. Which was never much fun for me. Honestly, it felt like a chore, which should have been my first clue that this was the wrong relationship. But what do I know about right relationship? Nothing. Nothing at all. I just knew this was an unfortunate reminder of him huffing and puffing on top of me, and me feeling … like a blow-up doll. Like I wasn’t really expected to participate, other than to just lie there. And that made me feel ill, just thinking about it. I looked away, because for a second I couldn’t stand to see his face. Last fall, he accused me of being frigid. I don’t know … maybe I am. Maybe Harry ruined that for me too, like he did everything else.

  “It wasn’t all that bad, was it?” he asked, his tone desperate.

  Come on, Jules. You know you want to. Harry’s voice.

  I shuddered at the voice in my mind and tried to stay in the present.

  “Of course not,” I said. “We had a lot of fun together, Will. Please … let this go. Let me go.”

  I’m not ready, I’d said to him.

  Of course you’re ready. You love me, don’t you?

  Yes.

  “I have to go,” I said, fighting to clear my head. I paused and looked at Willard. His face was downcast, eyes looking everywhere but at me. “Willard … you’ll find someone. You’re a good guy, and you’ll find someone a lot better for you than me.”

  I slid out of the booth, and he stopped me with his next words.

  “What if I don’t want anyone but you?”

  I took a breath and looked him in the eye. “Then I guess you’ll be alone.”

  And then I walked away.

  I don’t do relationships (Crank)

  All right, I’ll admit I was curious.

  Julia made it clear on the Saturday night we met that she wanted nothing to do with me. Maybe she was lonely, or needed … something. I don’t know. But it wasn’t me.