A Long Thaw Read Free

left her largely absent, born-again mother in California with her two little sisters, the littlest of whom had called Juliet ‘Momma’ ever since she could speak. She was only five when Juliet had left for the east coast, and Juliet had carried her cries on the entire cross-country flight along with the knowledge that her freedom had come at a price. She unpacked onto the shelves of her tiny closet with earthquakes in mind: anything heavy or breakable went on the low ones.
    When she was nineteen, Juliet dated a wealthy boy from Cohasset. He told her that her eyes were the colour of sea glass. She wasn’t sure what that meant – she had grown up on both coasts and knew that sea glass could come in any colour at all. She told him he was sweet, though, that it was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to her. It might have been the truth, too. It was at least as nice as when Donny Clark told her that she had legs for days, and much nicer than when her mother had had too much to drink and told her she looked just like her damned father. She didn’t think she looked like him at all, actually, but all she had to go on was her parents’ wedding photograph and her own memory – both of which had faded over the years.
    So she had told the boy from Cohasset that he was sweet, since that seemed to be what he expected her to say, and she let him have her body, and, after three months of dating, he paid to have her braces removed. She thanked him that night, with a blow-job, and for several months after that. She might have stayed with him forever out of gratitude. As it was, she stayed with him until he got tired of her, the way most rich boys eventually do.
    She still never smiled widely enough to show teeth. She’d got out of the habit.
    Juliet and Jesse have been together, off and on, for two years. Theirs is a love affair filled with public arguments and make-up sex. Jesse has been known to rip buttons from her shirts, knock pictures off the walls, and leave her lips chapped and sore from the impact of his rough kisses. He’s an insomniac. Juliet often wakes in the middle of the night to find him sitting in the corner, smoking a joint and watching her sleep. She was never afraid of the dark before she met him.
    The only thing that makes Juliet’s living situation tolerable is that her roommate is never there.
    Room and board had been part of the deal when she’d taken a job at a university. It meant she wouldn’t have to buy furniture or figure out how to afford rent in the city or face whether she and Jesse were ready to move in together. And what it meant if they were not. It simplified everything.
    Unfortunately, there was a housing shortage on campus and Juliet has been given a roommate, a freshman named Sadie. Her boss assures her that it will be settled after the first few weeks as a percentage of students drop out at the beginning of every year. Until then, Juliet is just grateful that Sadie has a busy schedule. And an offcampus boyfriend.
    Juliet calls home every Friday at midnight Eastern, nine p.m. Pacific time. This way, she will not have to talk to her mother, who leaves Lilly and Hannah alone on these evenings so that she can ‘socialize’. Juliet has barely spoken to her mother in the five years since she left, but she still sends a cheque every month, whatever she can spare. She seals it in a long white envelope, without including a note or an explanation. In two other envelopes, she sends cash to Lilly and Hannah. She writes them long letters full of details about her life, about snow, about how much she misses them.
    This month she sits at the generic dorm desk, a twin to Sadie’s on the other side of the room, and counts out exactly twelve dollars for Lilly’s envelope. On Friday, Hannah had told Juliet about the school field trip to the art museum that their mother had told Lilly to forget about. Juliet told Lilly not to worry, that she would have the money by Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest. The