Juliet in August by Dianne Warren Read Free Book Online

crowbar, and they had a brotherly quarrel. Willard argued that the cactus was a monument to Antoinette and a bit of a local curiosity, a landmark that would be missed if Ed destroyed it, but he knew this was a fight he wasn’t going to win, so he went to town for the mail. When Willard came home and saw the sign still up, he knew something was wrong. As he drove alongside the sign, he saw Ed facedown in the ditch. He’d had a heart attack while trying to pry the sign out of the still-frozen mud under the spring runoff.
    After Ed was buried, people wondered, like Willard, what Marian would do. She kept to herself as she always had, but sometimes in the summer that followed Ed’s death she sold tickets or drinks at the drive-in. Because Willard was liked, people who knew him hoped that a love affair would develop between him and Marian, but it never had. Willard kept the cactus sign and changed the words to read DESERT DRIVE-IN: SEE THE MOVIES THE WAY GOD MEANT YOU TO .
    One Christmas he’d gotten the idea to decorate the cactus with Christmas lights. He did an elaborate job, stringing the green lights so they followed exactly the contour of the cactus, and using white lights to represent the cactus needles, and he even created a pink cactus flower. Most people in the district began to look forward to the night when Willard hung the lights and illuminated the cactus. It marked the onset of the Christmas season more so than did the decorating of the Christmas tree in the small foyer of the United church. It gave Willard pleasure that people, especially the kids, liked his cactus. After he decorated it, he’d lie in bed at night and imagine a whole ditch full of cacti, but he’d never gotten around to building and decorating more than the one, just like he’d never gotten around to buying more than one camel. And apparently Marian liked the decorated cactus even though it was the immediate cause of her husband’s death. She told Willard once, “I do like your Christmas cactus. Much easier to bring into bloom than a real one.”
    Those had been a lot of words for Marian. One of the things Willard appreciated about Marian right from the start was her apparent lack of any need to chatter, and her ability to communicate without talking. Her gestures, her expressions, even the attitude in her walk, all made sense to Willard. Within days of her moving into the house, they exchanged their first glance at Ed’s expense, which they continued to do over the years for their own pleasure, without Ed having the slightest clue. Ed was their common denominator, and Willard’s and Marian’s glances implied both tolerance and affection for a man who could summon passion when not much was at stake, but who wouldn’t know how to give a compliment to save his life. They both understood Ed, although to this day, they haven’t really talked about him.
    Willard hears a creak outside his door and realizes that Marian is still there. He sits up and checks the clock: 3:20. She’s never before stood there for twenty minutes. But perhaps he’s mistaken. Perhaps she slipped back to her bedroom just as the dog barked and he missed the padded footsteps. He decides she isn’t there after all, and is about to lie down again when he hears another creak and Marian pushes the door and it swings slowly open. In the moonlight Willard can see her in the doorway. She’s like a ghost in her long nightgown. He swallows and prepares himself for what she’s sure to say:
I’m sorry, Willard, the time has come . . .
But then she pulls the door closed again without speaking, and Willard hears the footsteps padding back down the hallway.
    So she’s put it off for one more night. He doesn’t know whether to hope she’ll keep putting it off, or to wish she would just get it over with. The latter, he concludes. Always best to get things over with. He’ll try to bring it up