Chapter Thirteen Julie #4
As he ushered them out of the library/office, Bert stopped in front of a picture of Julie on a beach—a candid picture, not a studio cheesecake photograph. She was in her twenties, sun-kissed, radiant, joyful. Her eyes were full of love; her smile was full of life.
“You can see why I fell for her. And I still get to see this woman every day. I am a very lucky man.”
It was a foggy night, so navigating the hairpin turns of Mulholland was even more harrowing than usual. In the mist, every headlight blasted a miasma of blinding, refracted light.
Jane was thinking about Julie and Bert and the wonderful life that was slipping out of their grasp.
Bert seemed stoic, and yet so vulnerable.
Was love nothing more than an invitation to profound loss?
But the looming losses were mitigated by their gratefulness for the lives they had led, and most of all, for each other. It was beautiful. It was very romantic.
Anna had been so surprised that Jane considered herself a romantic—but when she saw a love like Julie and Bert’s, she recognized it, and she wanted it.
Even if it was as alien as it was aspirational.
She touched her face and realized she was crying.
It had been so long since she cried—she couldn’t recall a time since middle school—that it was like an out-of-body experience.
Jane pulled onto the shoulder, parked, then rolled down the window and took a deep breath of the bracingly chilly air. She touched her cheeks again, then looked at her wet fingertips with wonder. She was crying. And it felt good. Cleansing, cathartic.
She looked over at today’s precious cargo, perched next to her on the passenger seat: one of Julie’s albums from the sixties, Julie Is in Love!
It was autographed in florid cursive with a gold marker, Love Always, Julie .
On the cover, Julie gazed out wistfully, eyes twinkling, with a cryptic, alluring smile.
Bert had insisted that Jane and Lindsey each take a signed copy, telling them how much it would mean to him if they listened to it often.
That was a way Julie could be alive forever.
And then Jane started sobbing. She wasn’t going to try to staunch it.
The host ushered Jane to the table on the patio where Teddy waited for her, sipping a cocktail.
She leaned over and kissed him before sitting down. A heat lamp positioned right behind her bathed her with warmth. She took off her jacket and looked at him appreciatively, even gratefully.
“What?”
“Nothing, I’m just really glad to see you.”
“I’m glad to see you, too. You look beautiful.”
Jane blushed. Her crying jag had left her feeling spent, and if this dinner had not been planned well in advance, she might have stayed home and listened to Julie Robin’s album (Teddy’s turntable was still in their living room).
But she could not back out of this plan, and in fact, she did not want to back out.
Now that she was seated opposite Teddy, her whole being felt weighty, the tug of gravity palpable.
Maybe this is what it felt like to be present.
Maybe she was in her body, instead of watching herself from above.
“You look really nice, too, Teddy.”
“Thanks, just got a haircut.”
“I can’t tell—you have your beanie on.”
“Oh, duh.” He took it off and Jane appraised the cut: it was short and neat, and made him look even more boyish.
“It’s a great cut. I like it a little shorter like that.”
“Cleaning up my act, you know?” He started to put the beanie back on, but Jane stopped him.
“Don’t, Teddy, let me admire your super cute haircut!”
He laughed and stuffed the beanie in his coat pocket. Jane looked down at the menu. She was ravenous.
“You can do all the ordering, you pick the best stuff,” Teddy told her. It was a shared plates restaurant, so they usually split a few dishes.
“Is there anything you are craving?”
“Just you, Jay.”
Cheesy, but she loved it. She took his hand and moved his arm onto the table, displaying his new tattoo. To thine own self be true . It was written in a vaguely Shakespearean/Renaissance font.
“It’s healed nicely.”
“Yeah, I’m really happy with it.”
Jane gently traced the letters lightly with her finger. Teddy was ticklish, and he squirmed and giggled.
In order to avoid asking about St. Louis, Jane talked more than usual about her job. She told him about Bert and Julie Robin—Teddy was Teddy, so the NDA could be ignored—and how their love had been sustained over fifty years and was still going strong, in spite of Julie’s decline.
“That’s great. I want that,” Teddy said.
Jane could tell Teddy was genuinely moved by the story—he had an inherent sweetness that she loved. Yes, loved. It was scary to admit, but there it was.
“Teddy, I don’t want you to go.” Jane blurted this out, then looked at him apprehensively, trying to gauge his response.
“Yeah, a part of me really wants to stay.”
“So why don’t you?”
“I don’t know—if I was to stay, I was thinking maybe I’d get a full-time job in postproduction, but that’s such a ladder, and I’m in my thirties, can I deal with that? What do you think?”
Under the table, Jane nervously twisted the napkin on her lap. “I think you should do whatever you want to do, we’re still young, you should still try pursuing the stuff that interests you.”
“So you don’t think I should look for a full-time gig?”
“You should do what makes you happy.”
“Wow, Jane, who are you?” Teddy punctuated his incredulous look with a belly laugh.
“Just me. Same Jane as always.”
“Same Jane, only completely, totally different. Anyway, I feel like I’m spinning my wheels here and maybe it’s time to really, you know, get my shit together.”
“You could do that here, though. Maybe I could help?”
“That’s the thing, Jay, I don’t want you to help me get my shit together. I want to do it on my own. And I sometimes think maybe you’re more into this idea of who you want me to be, who you think I should be, than who I already am.”
“Teddy, I know—I know I can be hard on you, and I know it’s not good, but I’m really trying to change.”
“Ah, Jane, we’re both trying.”
“Teddy, I love you.”
“I love you, too, Jay.”
“I want to give us a real shot. I want you to move back in.” It was both terrifying and freeing to state this so plainly.
Teddy was silent, pensive. Whatever languor Jane had felt earlier had been supplanted by an aching, electric need.
“I love you, too, Jane, I really do. It’s great that you say this, it’s really nice to hear—I only wish you had said all that a lot sooner.”
Jane looked down at her plate. “So do I.”
“Maybe it’s too late, you know? It’s a new decade, time to reboot. If I leave, that’s not necessarily forever, either.”
Jane couldn’t think of anything more to say, so she reached over, grabbed his hand, and held it tight.
When she returned home, alone, Jane went to the detached garage.
Earlier, she had placed Julie Robin’s album on a shelf, displacing a stack of sweaters.
Julie’s tender gaze was haunting. Jane looked at all the artifacts in the room: the clothes, the accessories, the carefully curated objects.
Jane imagined what it would feel like to light a match and burn all of it to the ground.
She realized she was pacing in small circles, constrained by the footprint of the garage.
She didn’t need to burn it down—that was binary thinking, either/or.
She could enjoy this stuff without being subsumed by it.
In fact, weren’t some of them talismans that she could study to guide her going forward?
She could cull, perhaps more importantly, she could stop acquiring new stuff, but she could also keep the things she wanted to keep—and she could even let herself enjoy them.
She took Julie Robin’s album off the shelf.
Jane had seen Julie Robin sing in a few movies, but apart from that, had never really listened to her.
Now, she focused on Julie’s voice: it was warm and soft, the slight crackles from the stylus gliding along the vinyl making it almost tactile.
The arrangements were lush, with lots of violins and woodwinds, but nothing overshadowed her voice.
There was no auto-tuning, no layering, no production tricks.
Julie inhabited the lyrics in a way that made old standards that Jane had thought were cloying and corny suddenly seem profound.
For some reason, it was an up-tempo Gershwin song, “That Certain Feeling,” that pierced Jane to the core:
That certain feeling
The first time I met you
I hit the ceiling
I could not forget you
You were completely sweet
Oh, what could I do?
Julie’s vocal line glided above then intertwined with the gentle, swinging rhythm. She sounded flirty, taunting, wry, wistful.
It was corny yet it was perfect, and Jane realized even if she hadn’t gotten the response she’d hoped for, she was still glad that she had told Teddy she wanted him to stay.