The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney Page B

a waitress. She was no longer surprised that so many ­people did.
    Julianna took Mrs. Bender’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
    â€œYou have the most beautiful eyes, Mrs. Bender.”
    â€œYou’re one to talk, sister.” Mrs. Bender managed a faint, sly smile. “But yes. I was quite the beauty in my day.”
    â€œHearts were broken?”
    â€œNot enough, if you take my meaning.” She gave Julianna a wink. “That’s my advice to you.”
    Julianna smiled. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
    â€œMy son, you know, is newly single. Available, in other words.” She watched for Julianna’s reaction, with that faint, sly smile.
    â€œI know, I know, you’re much too lovely for him,” Mrs. Bender said. “I can say that because he’s my son and I love him. Because why should I lie? Life is short.”
    â€œI’m sure he’ll be right back,” Julianna said.
    Mrs. Bender nodded. She closed her eyes as a wave of nausea washed over her.
    â€œMake hay while the sun shines,” she murmured. “Make hay while the sun shines. Make hay while the sun shines.”
    Julianna stepped out of the room and pulled the curtain shut. Donna, magenta scrubs, sneakers squeaking, bustled around the corner looking for her.
    â€œYou’re off in ten, aren’t you?” Beneath Donna’s perfume was the tang of nicotine.
    â€œI am,” Julianna said.
    â€œWe’re getting drinks. Gonna get our hooch on. What do you say?”
    â€œAs enticing as that sounds.”
    â€œYou’re no fun.”
    â€œI’m really not.”
    Donna spanked her on the ass with a clipboard and moved past, sneakers squeaking.
    YOU SHO ULD HAVE seen my big sister, Mrs. Bender.
    After twenty-­six years, that was still Julianna’s first reaction whenever someone told her she was pretty. Whenever someone, every now and then, told her she looked hot or fine or beautiful, in a bar, on a beach, in the crew cab of a Dodge Ram, let’s get those panties off you, babe.
    You should have seen my big sister, you want to talk about beautiful.
    Awkward. When your first boyfriend is stroking your cheek and leaning in for a kiss and you burst into tears.
    Genevieve would have been mortified. She would have disowned Julianna on the spot. Genevieve would have said, Juli, you dork, you make me feel like bursting into tears.
    You want to talk about beautiful? One time Genevieve had slipped off her sunglasses, just that, nothing more, and a guy passing by on a motorcycle had swerved and almost wiped out.
    It was Genevieve. It was the way she slipped off her sunglasses. The way she did everything.
    Genevieve said it blew her mind, how Julianna could be such a major dork.
    â€œDoes this make me a dork?” Julianna would ask. She’d do her version of Kevin Bacon’s big dance in Footloose, and Genevieve would have to bury her face in a couch pillow, laughing.
    Julianna’s first boyfriend, junior year of high school, didn’t have a clue why she’d burst into tears. All he’d done was stroke her cheek and lean in for a kiss, tell her she was the prettiest girl he’d ever known.
    Julianna’s ponytail always gave her a headache by the end of shift, so she snapped off the rubber band and shook out her hair as she walked to the parking garage. She drove the long way home, down Western instead of the Broadway Extension, and stopped to pick up dinner at Whole Foods. It was on Western, not far from where the old railroad bridge used to stand, the one that high-­school kids covered with graffiti every football season. The city had torn the bridge down years ago to extend Classen Boulevard. Julianna couldn’t remember what, if anything, had been torn down to make room for Whole Foods, even though the store was barely six months old. An apartment complex, maybe?
    The landscape of memory was like that. Sometimes the near seemed far, far away