Page 49 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
But the brief moment of levity vanishes as I remember why I called this emergency family meeting. “Okay, so the reason I wanted to talk was, you know how I thought Sebastien looked just like the characters I’d written for so many years? Um…things just got weirder.”
“Things just got weirder!” Trevor exclaims as he rips off another chicken nugget dinosaur head and tries to connect a different dinosaur’s tail onto its neck, so that now it essentially has two butts. He laughs maniacally, which to be honest is kind of how I feel at the moment, too.
Katy glances indulgently at Trevor, then quickly turns back to me. “How can it possibly get any more bizarre than it is?”
I’m about to recount my morning, everything from me spilling the beans to Sebastien about my vignettes, to his pass code being the date of the Capulets’ ball, to the hidden art gallery of uncannily familiar paintings.
But I stop myself before I say anything. Because I realize how it will sound: Thirty-year-old woman ends marriage abruptly, runs away to Alaska, and suddenly takes up believing in past lives, reincarnation, and a centuries-old curse.
Mom will definitely call the National Guard to rescue me from whatever cult she’ll think I’ve joined. And Katy will send in the FBI to lock up Sebastien as the lead con man. Merrick was the king of gaslighting, and Katy hated that any time I had even a microscopic concern, Merrick would rewrite history and convince me that his version of reality was right, and mine was wrong. Katy wouldn’t want me plunging into another potentially messed-up relationship.
And yet, I don’t think Sebastien and Merrick are in the same category at all.
Regardless, I can’t tell Mom and Katy about Romeo and Juliet and the curse. I’m not even sure ifIbelieve Sebastien, and I’ve seen the paintings. I know how they match up with my own stories.
“Hel?” Katy asks. “You were telling us things got even weirder?”
My skin itches at the strangeness of keeping a secret from them; I’m so used to telling them everything. But this is for the best, at least for now, so I shake my head and smile. “Never mind. I just, um…I think I might have figured out the thread that connects all the vignettes I’ve written.”
Mom claps her hands. “That’s wonderful, sweetheart! What is it?”
“Wait, don’t tell me,” Katy says with a smirk. “You wrote Sebastien into existence.” She starts laughing, and Mom joins in.
I pretend to laugh, too, although her guess is a little too close to home. When I was looking for a through line for my vignettes, I was expecting something fictional. Not a real, live man with a real, live past.
Trevor bangs on the tray of his high chair, demanding to be released from his meal to watchSesame Street.Katy swipes hishands with wet wipes, then lets him go. He runs off, and a few seconds later, Elmo’s voice echoes from their living room.
“Okay,” Katy says, turning back to the screen. “Tell us for real, what’s the answer to how your stories come together?”
“Nope,” I say, aiming for lighthearted as I attempt to steer this conversation away from a topic I no longer want to discuss. “You made fun of me, so now I’m not going to tell you.”
“Aww, Hel, come on.”
I waggle my eyebrows at her.
“In all seriousness, though, I think I actually want to keep this idea to myself for a little bit. It’s so new, and I’m kind of afraid that if I share it, I’ll stunt its growth or something.”
Mom nods. “It’s like when I write a song,” she says, picking up one of the many guitars that are always lying around her store. “A new melody is just a baby idea. I have to keep it safe from the outside world for a while, nurture it on my own. You should follow your instincts, Helene. Keep your story thread to yourself until you’re ready.”
I nod and take a long sip of my Irish coffee. “Oh, but Mom, I had a question for you…Do you remember the costumes you made for me for myRomeo and Julietplay in middle school?”
“Of course.”
“I was wondering…Where did you get the designs for them? Did you see them online somewhere?” My hands are shaking as I ask, and coffee splashes on my phone.Shit shit shit. I grab a napkin and sop up the mess before it can seep into the phone’s innards.
“You don’t remember?” Mom says. “You gave me the details for the costumes.”
“Me?” I freeze, and the coffee-soaked napkin drips over the phone.
“Yes. Colors, fabrics, everything. You said they came to you in a dream. You really don’t recall?”
“Oh, right,” I say, lying, but my mind is racing, throwing open the file cabinets of my memory and dumping out all the contents in a desperate attempt to remember. There’s only a faint familiarity, like seeing the hazy outline of a tree through thick fog.
“Speaking of costumes,” Katy says, “have I told you two about the debacle of the preschool talent show?”
I’m grateful for her change of subject. Katy goes on to regale us with her misadventures in trying to organize Trevor and his friends’ skit, which involves dinosaurs (obviously) and three different costume changes as the kids morph from brontosauruses to velociraptors to dragon-like pterodactyls.
Then Mom updates us on the fundraising concert she’s organizing with a network of other folk music stores, and the normalcy of the conversation lowers my pulse enough that I can function like a human being and, for example, make sure my phone hasn’t been ruined by Irish coffee. It seems, thankfully, to be fine, if a bit sticky and boozy.
