Juliet's Answer Read online

  “Dear Audrey,” I wrote back. “Love is as perennial as the grass.” I stole that from Desiderata. It sounded good and I thought it was mostly true. There’d be other boys for her. There was probably another one already.

  Done, I thought, reaching for another letter. “Dear Juliet,” the next girl wrote, “please send me my Romeo. Send him to San Antonio, Texas.”

  “It is beyond my power,” I wrote back, “to send someone to you, but if you truly want love, you need only be open to it and it will appear.”

  I sat back and reviewed my penmanship. I have messy boy-writing. The words were okay, but I wasn’t sure about the sentiment. It read a little bit like a fortune cookie, but it would have to do for now.

  A few letters later I came to a rare one from a boy: “My teacher is making me write this letter and I think it’s really stupid. But,” he began tentatively, “there is this girl . . .” Then he plunged into a full and detailed confession, writing for almost two full pages in sloppy looping letters. At the end, I imagined him pausing and taking a deep breath before adding the final sentence. “So, seriously,” he wrote. “Help me out here.”

  I knew what he meant.

  For me, it’s getting harder to dig down through time, to really remember what I was like when I was younger. It’s hard to even imagine that I am the same person now as I was when I was fourteen. But I am. The same feelings echo through the archeology of my soul.

  I suppose everyone has their proto–love story, an early love that sets the stage for all the rest. Tammy Brenner may not have been my first kiss, but hers was the first kiss I cared about. Tammy was cute and spunky, and I’d met her on the swim team when I was in grade eleven.

  When the long summer nights came and school was done for the year, a few of us would sneak out of our houses and meet in the school yard. On one of those rare nights when the temperature was as warm as the day, four or five of us met in the shadows and walked up a hill into a grove of poplar trees. A languorous moon hung fat in the sky. Below us the world was etched in silver. Somehow, Tammy and I wound up sitting together, apart from the others, off in the trees. I was sixteen. She was a little bit younger.

  Not much happened. Reality is often awkward and urgent, but memory smooths over the bumps and wrinkles. Tammy and I talked and laughed, and at some point, she kissed me. That moment remains with me, a star in the summer sky of my life. It never got better than that. Not only did it not get better, my love life got distinctly worse. There weren’t a lot of triumphs in those early years. And even into my adult life, things have not really gone well in the ways of love.

  Years and years later, out of the blue, my sister asked me, “Do you remember Tammy Brenner?”

  “I think I remember her,” I answered. Of course I did—she was pivotal in my early life.

  “I just heard she died.”

  “What?”

  “Breast cancer. She couldn’t have been more than forty or so.”

  “Thirty-eight,” I said, and I remembered the girl and that night long ago on a silver hill among a grove of poplar trees. My throat tightened and I turned away, pretending nothing was wrong.

  * * *

  I heard Giovanna’s busy heels tapping up the hallway, and then a rustle of papers at my door.

  “Hello?” I said.

  She eyed me from the doorway.

  “How was the birthday party?”

  She shook her head and raised two fingers to her temple. “Very noisy. The children are very noisy. Do you need anything in here? It is going well?”

  “Yes. But there are so many letters.” I held my hands to my head in mock frustration.

  She didn’t say a word.

  “And most of the senders,” I barged on. “They’re so young.”

  “Can I see?” Giovanna stepped into the room. I showed her my most recent answer, half-penned on the stationery in front of me. Yet another young girl asking for her Romeo. “You should go out,” I wrote, “and do things, join clubs, try some sports, learn a musical instrument—find the things that you enjoy doing and perhaps you will find someone there who enjoys doing the same things, and wouldn’t that be perfect?”

  Giovanna’s lips compressed.

  “Not good?” I asked.

  “No, no . . .” she said, handing the letter back to me. “It is a good idea, but . . . do you mind?” She sat down in the chair beside me. “You are not the psychiatrist,” she began. “Maybe she is not looking for solutions.”

  “I know, but I’m trying to help. I’m trying to give her something practical that she can—”

  “You are thinking she is a foolish young girl.”

  “She is a young girl.” I looked at her letter. “Rachel. She’s seventeen. From”—I turned the envelope over—“Birmingham.”

  “You are answering like a man.”

  That caught me off guard. “Pardon me?”

  “They only want to tell their stories, to get their feelings out. Do you understand?”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. “I think so,” I said.

  “Va bene,” she replied. And before I could ask her anything else, she stood, patted down her dress, and left.

  * * *

  My students bustled into class, chatting and full of hormones. We were barely into the new semester and some of them still got lost in the halls and arrived late and frazzled. Sadia arrived first. She found her seat at the front. She flipped her copy of Romeo and Juliet open, impatient for the rest of the class to settle in. Devin came in a minute or two late. “Sorry,” he said, and headed for his desk near the windows, midway back. Outside, the sky hinted at snow. I waited as the students filed in and took their seats.

  “All right,” I began. “Where were we?”

  “The prince came and stopped the fight,” said Devin.

  “Ah, right,” I said. “Now we meet Romeo.” I looked around the classroom, at the thirty teenagers rustling in their desks. “At the beginning of the play,” I said, “Romeo is madly in love with a girl. But it’s not Juliet.”

  A few of the students’ heads popped up from their books, confused. Sadia’s hand flew up.

  “Yes, Sadia?”

  “Who?” she demanded. “Who’s he in love with now?”

  “Well, I’m not sure I’d called this one ‘love.’ ”

  “But who?”

  “Her name is Rosaline. And the thing is, she’s not into him. At all.”

  Andy, near the back, was staring at me with particular attention. He was a big kid, stocky. I think he was on the rugby team.

  Sadia cleared her throat. “So Romeo likes her, but she doesn’t like him?”

  “Right,” I said. “And Romeo’s cousin, Benvolio, is trying to help him out. They’re best friends. So, what would you say to your best friend if he was in love with someone who didn’t love him back?”

  Andy’s face flushed.

  “Andy?”

  “A friend?” he asked, looking around.

  “Yes. A friend.”

  “I guess I’d tell him to try and . . . I don’t know . . . forget about her.”

  I read from my textbook. “O teach me how I should forget to think.”

  All heads bowed to their books. The clock ticked. It was so quiet, I could hear it. We had plenty of time to get through this first act. Maybe we would even make it to the balcony scene by the end of the week.

  “What if,” I said, “Romeo has absolutely no chance with this girl, this Rosaline? It says here that she has promised to live chaste. What do you think that means?”

  “No sex,” mouthed Devin, and titters rippled down the rows of desks.

  “Yes, but more. It means she doesn’t want to have a boyfriend, any boyfriend, right now.”

  “I think she’s just saying that,” Sadia said. “You know, to spare Romeo’s feelings.”

  I smiled at Sadia. “I think you’re right.”

  “She’s letting him down easy, sir.”

  Andy looked uncomfo
rtable at this revelation. He cast a sidelong glance at Allison, who sat over a couple of rows. Allison was studious and quiet, pretty, with long, almost jet-black hair. She was born in Hong Kong and had the slightest accent, but, like Sadia, she’d lived here most of her life.

  “So she lets him down gently,” I said, “but Romeo is pretty broken up about it. You can’t help who you fall in love with, you know.”

  A few of the kids nodded knowingly. Andy shifted in his desk.

  “Do you all really believe that?” I asked. “Is it true that we can’t help who we fall in love with?”

  Sadia considered her book again. “Maybe Romeo’s just in love with being in love.”

  Andy’s head shot up. He was looking at me almost helplessly.

  “I think you’re right again, Sadia. That’s the question here. Does he really love Rosaline?”

  “I guess not,” Andy said, and a few heads swiveled to him.

  “So what makes you say that, Andy?”

  “Well, maybe she’s just a pretty face. But that’s not love. That’s, like, attraction or something.”

  Everyone was turned around now. Andy stopped, well aware that he had become the focus of attention.

  “Actually,” I said, “Shakespeare has something to say about this too. Look at page 51.” I waited as the pages rustled. “Lines 68 and 69.”

  Young men’s love then lies

  Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.

  “Do you get it?” I asked. “It’s a play on words—about lies. Young men are attracted to the visual, but maybe that love isn’t real. It’s a lie, not from the heart.”

  “That’s so true,” Sadia began, a touch of self-righteousness in her voice. “Most guys care only about what a girl looks like.”

  Devin grimaced. I could see that he was about to say something but thought better of it.

  “Totally,” Andy said. “If you’re really in love, then that means you consider someone’s personality too. It shouldn’t matter what a person looks like.”

  Allison was looking at him now, and he stopped.

  “But it does matter,” said Devin. “A guy is not going to like some ugly girl.”

  “Devin!” barked Sadia.

  “Hold on,” I said. “We’re getting a bit offtrack here. We’re talking about Romeo and his supposed love for Rosaline, remember?”

  One by one, the teenage attention spans angled back toward me.

  “Romeo is head over heels in love,” I said, “but it’s unrequited love.”

  Andy nodded, and a few of the kids mouthed the word unrequited.

  For all its sadness, it is a beautiful word.

  “So what’s Romeo supposed to do?” I asked.

  Sadia squinted. “You said Benvolio helps him. Can he make Romeo forget about this girl?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “But how?” Andy pleaded. “How can you just forget? I mean, how can he forget about this girl?”

  Everyone was focused now. They were waiting for my answer. Students are good at that. “There’s only one way for him to forget,” I said. “He has to meet someone else.”

  “Juliet,” said Sadia. “He has to meet Juliet.”

  “Bingo.”

  * * *

  They say that men fall in love more quickly than women. A pretty face is enough to set us off. The slight hint of a curve beneath a sweater. It doesn’t take much. We’re really quite shallow.

  All of us, in fact—male or female, regardless of sexual orientation— are attracted to a wide range of subtle cues in others. We’re hardwired that way. A strong, square jawline in a man is seen as attractive precisely because it indicates a healthy level of testosterone. A softer, rounder jawline in a female face marks a high level of estrogen. It’s Mother Nature tricking us into choosing the one who is the most fertile.

  And for both sexes, facial symmetry is a key physical attractor. Studies show that the most respected politicians—John F. Kennedy, for example—often have highly symmetrical faces, the left half being an almost exact mirror of the right. Many movie stars too exhibit symmetry. Asymmetry can be so subtle that we’d be hard-pressed to identify it—but our brains seem to unmercifully register minute variations.

  The same goes for hair. A person’s hair is a week-by-week, month-by-month calendar of their health, and it’s on full display to everybody. The shiny, vibrant locks you see in shampoo commercials are signs to the viewer that this person is virile, that this is someone who will produce healthy babies.

  Or at least that’s the underpinning of evolutionary psychology.

  We are inclined to fall in love with certain types too. We become enamored with particular features, what one researcher called love maps. I think my map was set when I was twenty or so, young enough to still be slurried in hormones and dumb enough to think it was something mystical.

  After Tammy, I thought a girl named Mandy was the one. It helped that this Mandy was a willowy beauty. I’d been working as a lifeguard for a few months when she walked onto the pool deck for the first time. She had joined the diving team and, well, I think my heart stopped for a second. I was completely smitten. It was definitely love at first sight. She had cascading blond hair and the pool chlorine made it glisten like gold, like the halo on an angel. Or that’s how I saw it anyway. Really, it was just root damage.

  You know how sometimes you hear a new word and then all of a sudden you begin to hear it everywhere and you wonder how it was that you’d never come across it before? It was like that. The universe had somehow conspired for me to see this angel everywhere. At the pool, I asked around and I learned her name. Someone said they knew her cousin, and very shortly, someone was phoning the cousin and it was all arranged. Mandy would be brought to meet me at the pool for my next lifeguarding shift.

  She trailed in behind her cousin. They walked into the pool area in their one-piece swimsuits, stepping lightly on the wet tiles of the deck to stand under my lifeguard chair. I was pretty sure I looked cool. The cousin called up to me, but I froze. Suddenly, faced with the goddess in my presence, I went silent. I didn’t know what to do, so I jumped down and threw Mandy in the water. I’m serious. I just picked her up and tossed her in. She thought that was funny. What a ham. What a joker. But truthfully I did it because I was too astonished to say a damn thing to her.

  So it started with a laugh and a splash, but it never went anywhere. I don’t think I was ever comfortable talking to her and really, I was in love with a vision, anyway, not a person. My obsession with her lasted a year or two and plowed some very deep ruts into my topographical map of love. And that, I suppose, set me up for a whole string of relationship disasters.

  * * *

  I’d done my best with the answers, straining through another letter or two, when I heard Giovanna coming down the hall again. She’d been out front answering the phones with an efficient and abrupt, “Pronto?” But now she was bustling into Anna’s office. Something was happening. I heard a shuffling and a quick conversation in Italian. Then they both appeared at my doorway.

  “Toc, toc,” said Anna, knocking on my doorframe. “I am going home for lunch now, but after, I must collect the letters from the House of Juliet. Do you want to accompany me?”

  Behind Anna, Giovanna’s taut smile told me I should say yes.

  “Collect the letters?” I asked.

  “From the postbox at Juliet’s house,” said Anna. “It’s full again. We must empty it every three days.” Anna looked at her watch. “Let’s see each other there at four o’clock. Is it okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know where to go?”

  “Juliet’s house. The mailbox in the courtyard.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Four o’clock.”

  An hour or so later, I walked back across the bridge and into the Old City. I thought I could get something quick to eat and then go a bit early to the courtyard. I hadn’t seen the inside of Juliet’s house yet and had enough time for a q
uick visit.

  The courtyard was a throng of people snapping photographs in front of Juliet’s statue. I glanced up at the balcony. It is a beautiful old feature, carved with two rows of tiny ornamental archways. I knew it wasn’t a part of the original house, but it was still something ancient, and it cast a certain spell over the courtyard, just as it was intended to do.

  I edged around the crowd and in through a door into the gift shop on the main floor of Juliet’s house. A young woman sat behind a reception counter, but she hardly looked up from her book when I forked over my seven euros. She fluttered a hand in the direction I should go, up the stairs behind her. I clomped up a few of the wooden stairs and then stopped. Up just a few steps, on a tiny landing where the staircase turned ninety degrees, a full-size copy of the Juliet statue stared down at me. It was identical to the one outside, a bronze, life-size cast of Juliet. On this statue, though, the right breast was cracked like a broken eggshell, and the jagged triangular hole was big enough to put a hand through.

  “Questa è l’originale,” the attendant said, looking up from her book.

  “What?”

  “This Juliet is the first,” she continued in English. “The Juliet outside, she is only there since two months.”

  “That’s a replacement statue out there?”

  “Yes. You can understand why.” I examined what was left of Juliet’s right breast, scarred by a hundred thousand wishes for love.

  “The Juliet outside,” the young woman went on, “she is dark in color and we are worried she will never go gold, but she does.” In two short months, the new statue’s breast was already polished and shimmering from all the groping.

  The young woman smiled and turned back to her book, and I thumped up the rest of the wooden steps to the first floor. Everything was clean, almost Spartan. No one had lived in this house for over a hundred years. And except for another much older woman sitting on a chair in the corner, a meager attempt at security, I was alone. Outside in the courtyard, the crowds still bustled and pushed but inside, my breathing was the only sound. The house bore architectural elements rescued or plundered from medieval palaces around the city; it looked like a stage set. I moved to a little side room, where the balcony jutted out, an alcove with Venetian arches. Should I step out onto it? It didn’t seem right somehow to walk out there alone.