My Juliet by John Ed Bradley Page B

which makes them most themselves, too often having to correct a bent nose, a chin rolling with flesh, teeth all gone to ruin. Yours is a great responsibility. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
    â€œI won’t let it happen again,” Sonny says.
    â€œAm I worth it?” Roberts repeats, nearly shouting. “Am I worth it?”
    Things quiet down and Sonny returns to work. Tired of portraits, he doesn’t bother to try to recruit another tourist to paint. Instead he turns to his sketchbook and traces pastel sticks over a blank sheet of paper, and as if by magic an image appears. It’s the Beauvais, a picture he’s made so many times before that he doesn’t need reference photos. Sonny shows the columns and the rows of green-shuttered windows and the upper and lower galleries crowded with wicker furniture. He shows the iron fence with the gate open, and above it the legend BEAUVAIS in a rusty crescent barely visible past clumps of morning glory.
    Sweat trickles down his face and dampens his shirt and he feels the rush that comes with being lost in the work and unfettered to the world around him. “Keep her out of it,” he says to himself. “She doesn’t have to be there. Just the house, for once. Come on, goddammit . . .”
    It wasn’t until May 1971, months into his love affair with Juliet, that Sonny saw the house for the first time as the artist he dreamed of becoming. Parked by the curb in his father’s pickup, he studied the mansion past the fence and crape myrtles and wondered at the fortune of one born to a destiny that included a home such as the Beauvais. A thin sliver of moon hung up past the slate rooftop, and he saw it as a yellow blip against the heavy impasto of a cobalt sky. The stars burned like Van Gogh’s, each a pinwheel. He saw the wind in the movement of the chimes dangling from the eaves of the rear carriage house and the leaves skittering in waves across the lawn. “The birdbath in the lilacs,” Sonny said out loud, providing details to the image as he would reproduce it. “Plantation chairs as pale as ghosts. Shutters shut on every window but yours.”
    Short of living there himself, Sonny would paint the mansion and that way make it his own.
    Juliet appeared finally on the upper gallery and began her descent using drainpipes and a trellis bound with bougainvillea. She moved fluidly and quickly, and despite the height seemed sure of herself.
    In the light from the street Sonny could see the white of her buttocks, the dark fist between her legs. Her summer dress hung up on the vines, fifteen feet up.
    â€œThe garden path,” he said out loud, providing even more details for his painting. “The magnolias and the privet pink against the lanterns by the door.”
    She made a last short jump to the lawn and ran to meet him. He heard the gate creak open then clank closed and that would do it, watch if Miss Marcelle didn’t come out now.
    As she crossed in front of the pickup Sonny pulled the knob for the headlamps, throwing light. This was his favorite part, Juliet did it every time: yanked her skirt up and flashed him. But tonight she failed to include the gesture. Eyes cast down, she entered the truck without a word.
    â€œJulie? Julie, what’s wrong, baby? Are you okay?”
    They brought their mouths together and he felt the dampness on her face and the back of her neck. “Oh, Sonny,” she said, then lunged at him and forced her body close to his.
    Only now did Sonny register the swelling around her eyes and her mouth cracked and raw.
    â€œWhat’s wrong? Darling, what’s wrong?”
    â€œNothing. Can we just go?”
    â€œSit by me,” he said. “Come sit by me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
    She shook her head and began to cry and he asked her again to talk to him. “I can’t take their fighting anymore,” she said. “I can’t. She calls him names.