A Song for Julia

echoing in my head like a song.
    I didn’t deserve that kind of devotion. I was terrified of what it meant. I couldn’t imagine how to live up to it: I was afraid I’d pull back, that I’d never give him what he needed.
    But for the first time, I was starting to feel like I could try.
    When I went downstairs after the phone call, I left my bangles and bracelets on the dresser. I felt naked without them. The only thing on my wrist was the delicate watch Barry gave me that Christmas in Belgium. But maybe I didn’t need to hide any more. I leaned up against the doorframe and looked in on my family.
    It was chaos. The twins and Andrea were playing with dolls, sprawled out on the family room floor. Carrie had freaked when she opened her presents. My parents got her a new Mac PowerBook, and she was busy with that.
    I’d received an odd mixed message from my parents for Christmas, two season tickets to the Boston Pops. Of course, they knew how much I loved music. But they also hated how much I loved music. It was odd, and I didn’t know quite how to take it. But I thanked them with a huge smile.
    My mother had been warily watching me all morning, as if she didn’t know what to say to me.
    Looking at the younger girls now, I thought maybe it wasn’t too late for them. Dad was retired, and his trip to Iraq had been pointless and brief. There wouldn’t be any more relocations or changes. Alexandra would go to one high school, and the twins and Andrea were so young they’d hardly remember all the travel, the living in different countries.
    My dad met my eyes and smiled, but then his gaze drifted down to my abnormally bare right wrist, and his smile disappeared. She must have told him. I couldn’t help but wonder what he thought. My father and I had never been close. He wasn’t close to anyone. Always a distant, authoritarian figure in my life, he’d left the child rearing to his wife, my mother. When he looked back up to my face, I gave him a tentative smile.
    Then my phone rang again. A frown passed across my mother’s face, but she smoothed it out almost immediately. That was interesting, and I guess it was a form of progress. But who was calling me? I took the phone out. It was Crank again.
    That was really odd. I answered the phone.
    “Hey,” I said.
    “Julia! It’s Sean!” He was shouting, and his voice was distraught.
    “Sean? What’s wrong?”
    “Dad … he had a heart attack. They’ve flown him to Germany.”
    I gasped and squeezed my eyes shut. “Oh, my God. Is he okay?”
    “I don’t know. Mom is crying,” he said.
    “Put her on the phone.”
    “Will you come?”
    I let out a sob. Then I said, “Yes. Yes, I will. Now put your mom on the phone, right now. And Sean? I’ll be there soon, and we’ll do what we can. Okay? Hang in there.”
    A moment later, Margot answered the phone, her voice sounding raw and ragged.
    “Margot, what’s going on? Sean said Jack had a heart attack.”
    My father’s eyes widened, and he stood up and walked toward me.
    She told me.
    “Okay,” I said. “When do you leave for Germany?”
    She burst into tears. It took a couple minutes before I got the answer out of her. They didn’t have the money to fly to Germany, and none of them had passports anyway.
    I closed my eyes. And then I looked at my dad.
    “Margot, I’ll call you back shortly. All right? Just … hang in there, okay? Your family loves you. That’s the most important thing. Jack loves you.”
    She sobbed, and I said goodbye.
    My dad stood uncomfortably in front of me, and I said, “Dad. I need a favor. I need a couple of favors, and they’re big ones. Really big.”
    I told him what I wanted. His eyes got bigger as I spoke, and then he said, “Julia, you’re asking a lot.”
    I swallowed and looked him in the eyes, trying to drive home how serious I was. “Dad—tell me this. If it was Mom, would you do it?”
    He grimaced. “Of course.”
    I looked him in the eye and said, “Then you understand exactly how I feel right now.”
    He nodded his head. “All right. Let me make some calls.”
    Four hours later, I was in my room, stuffing the last of my things in a bag. It was strange. This house would become home for Alexandra and the younger girls. But I didn’t have any memories here at all, except one or two holidays when we’d been back in the States. This was my bedroom, but it was sterile, much as the one in Bethesda had been. For the first time ever though? I was okay with that.