Glimmering

Keeley laughed. “Oh darling, I’m so glad you came!” Of all Jack’s friends, Jule had won her heart thirty years before, when he had shoveled her new forest green Mustang out from under two feet of snow during the 1969 blizzard. From the beginning they had been an odd sight, the unruly giant from the Italian neighborhood in Tuckahoe and the aging Irish beauty who doted on him as she never had on her own boys. After James Finnegan’s death, it was the teenage Jule who fixed things at Lazyland, replacing washers and fuses and lightbulbs, calling the men who mowed the lawn, arranging for the house to be painted when its shingles began to peel and crack. Keeley would feed him roast beef and popovers and apple pie, then send him back to the bus stop with a Wanamaker shopping bag full of Snickerdoodles. Later, during summers off from rooming together at Georgetown, he and Jack took over Lazyland’s top floor. Keeley would decorously ignore the occasional waft of marijuana smoke that made its way downstairs, the sound of footsteps at 4 A.M. as some furtive guest made his or her way outside.

“… really, we were just talking about you! Jule, do you remember…”

On the couch Jule held his big hands carefully in his lap, cupping his highball glass like a votive candle. Now and then he leaned over to touch Emma’s hair, or pat her knee, or to adjust Keeley’s shawl. “No,” he boomed, “but my ears must’ve been burning. Go on, go on—”

Jack smiled at his friend’s genteel déshabillé. Buttons missing from the stained cashmere overcoat, expensive Italian shoes scuffed and cracked, the lapels of his Donna Karan jacket frayed: all part of Jule’s slow-motion decline since his daughter’s death. Emma had lost herself in her work; Jule merely got lost. He was a big man, six-foot-three, burly and elegant as a gangland lawyer, with curly black hair shot with white and the woeful brown eyes of a cartoon hound.

“That sonofabitch! I wondered what happened to him!” Jule roared with laughter, some joke that Jack had missed. At his side Emma shook her fuzzy blond curls as she cast a wary glance at Jule’s glass, and then at Jack.

“Mmm, he was kind of a head case,” she began, but her glance had drawn Jule’s: he downed his whiskey and poured another. Emma said nothing, only stared at Jack, her blue eyes beseeching.

Jack turned to his friend with a huge fake grin. “Uh hey, Jule—you wanna help me with something?” He motioned at the door behind them. “I got to fill the coal bin, you could do it in about three—”

Jule opened his mouth to boom some reply, then stopped, whiskey poised in midair as he stared into the entry room. Emma raised her eyebrows, Doctor Duck meeting a new patient.

“Umm—hello?” she suggested. “More company?”

Jack turned to see Marz standing in the doorway. Struwwelpeter hair combed for once, wearing a pink Shetland sweater and shapeless plaid uniform skirt. White bony bare legs, bare feet. She really did look like a refugee.

“Ah—who’s that?” said Jule sotto voce. “Kate Moss’s cadaver double?”

Jack frowned. “That is our houseguest. Marzana.”

“Marzana? What kind of name—”

“Jule,” warned Emma.

“Mary Anne,” said Keeley with a sweet smile.

“Hi,” said Marz. “I’m going to take a nap. Okay?” She turned to go upstairs.

“Let me help her,” cried Mrs. Iverson, and followed. Jule stared after them. When they were out of sight, he raised an eyebrow at Jack. “So tell me—did Fagin kick her out for not meeting her quota? Or what?”

“She’s a runaway.”

“Jack found her,” explained Keeley, “in the garden.”

“What, under a cabbage leaf?” Jule ignored a sharp poke from Emma. “Jackie?”

Jack sighed. “She was in the garden. She was crying—I mean, Christ, Jule, she’s just a kid—”

“How long?”

Jack hesitated. “Two months, I guess. Maybe three.”

“Three months?” exploded Jule. “Jackie, you—”

“She’s pregnant,” said Keeley. “I’m so glad you came, Emma—she hasn’t seen a doctor—”

“Pregnant?” Emma tilted her head. “Oh! Wow. Well. This is quite a lot for you all to be handling, Keeley. Jack. And for three months… I didn’t think it was that long since we talked.” She shot Jack an accusing look. “But you’ve spoken to Julie, Jack. About the magazine—why didn’t you tell us?”

“It wasn’t something I could just bring up. When it was—well, the phones,” said Jack defensively. “I wanted to call, I mean I tried to call—you know what it’s like.”

“But you’re sure she’s pregnant? She’s been tested? She’s been tested for everything?”

“Of course not! She hasn’t been tested for anything! I don’t even know who she is—”

“She sounds foreign,” brooded Jule.

Keeley set her teacup on the side table. “She’s Polish. Marzana is Polish for Mary Anne.”

Jule and Emma exchanged another look.

Keeley sighed. The Queen was weary of bickering courtiers. “I’m tired. Emma, could you help me upstairs?”

“I’m sorry, Keeley, of course, of course—” Emma helped Keeley to her feet and guided her from the room.

“You can stay for dinner?” Keeley’s voice was plaintive.