5. Juliet's father.

...You may have noticed that she avoids talking about her family in interviews. She just talks about the band and the music. There’s actually a reason behind this. Juliet won’t talk about her family with anyone.
But I was there when it happened.
Juliet was ten years old when her father left. It was a bad time all around.

Juliet’s mom is a volunteer. She’s involved with school activities, comes to our class to do crafts, organizes the bake sales and the recycling campaigns and the church food drive at Thanksgiving. She is truly a good woman, Juliet and I both agree, one of the few we know. She’s also the spitting image of Juliet, except for the eyes. Mrs. Sorensen’s eyes are bright green, while Juliet’s are liquid and dark. When I come over, she’s always either listening to a Guns’n’Roses CD and cooking something or holding a meeting.
Mr. Sorensen is a completely different story. I don’t remember him all that well- Juliet’s done her best to forget about her dad and I guess it’s rubbed off, plus they got rid of all the pictures. What I do know is that Juliet got her eyes from him, except for Juliet they’re her most beautiful feature. Mr. Sorensen’s eyes frightened me, dark and brooding as storm clouds.
He was always there when we were barely toddlers. He’d pick up Juliet and swing her around when she came home, and I saw them all the time playing games in the backyard. I used to think he was the perfect father, and I actually wished my own dad would be more like him. The thought makes me sick at the present, though.
Then something happened to make him totally hit the wall. I think he lost his job, but I was too young to really know what was going on.
This happened about a year after we started school. He no longer walked to pick us up and just stayed at home; watching television, Juliet told me. I stopped going over to their house.
After awhile, we grew used to even that. Mr. Sorensen got a new job, but he hated it, according to Juliet. He’d come home yelling and complaining. The pay was terrible. The people were stupid. He could do so much better. But even if we were accustomed to hearing him shout, I could tell by everyone’s worried faces that Mr. Sorensen was getting a lot worse.
Then, one day in fifth grade, Juliet came to school late. Everyone could tell she’d been crying, but she wouldn’t talk. Our teacher called me to the desk and said worriedly, “Could you talk to her please, Carter? You know her very well, and you don’t even have to tell me what’s wrong, as long as nobody’s hurt her.”
So we sat down in the reading corner, behind some bookshelves, and Juliet told me her father had quit his job. He was fed up, and he was insisting that her mother work instead. They’d had a huge fight.

Juliet and I knew, from listening to our parents, that Juliet’s family was having a difficult time with money at the moment.
After school that day, we walked home and, after packing her a duffel bag full of things, Mrs. Sorensen sent Juliet over to my house to stay for awhile.
My mom fussed over us, making spaghetti (Juliet’s favorite) and allowing the consumption of ice cream in the living room while we watched movies.
Juliet stayed at our house for a week.
That first night was the worst. We sprawled on the couch-bed and stared at Juliet’s musicals until three in the morning, getting up between movies to peek out the windows at her house. Every time we looked, the lights were still on in her parents’ bedrooms. My dad sat in his armchair, grading papers, glancing up at us now and again.
Once he looked at Juliet and said, “How did you ever grow to be so strong, Jules?”
She just looked at him, confused from sadness and exhaustion.
“You are not just any other girl,” he shook his head, “No, any other girl…” He trailed off, and continued working.
Juliet knew then that no matter how things turned out with her own dad, she always had mine, who was her dad, in a way. Even if he is an absentminded history professor at the university who says things nobody understands. No one except Juliet. They get along in a weird way; it must be their matching IQ. I don’t get a word he says, but she could talk with him for hours.
He’s also the only one allowed to call her Jules, because they both love Jules Verne. (Despite her insistence that she is not fond of her name, Juliet adamantly refuses to be called by anything other than Juliet- except by my dad.)
Eventually we fell asleep on the couch, my Dad still sitting with us like a sentinel. Dad does things by the book, in a very organized manner, and that was exactly what Juliet needed at the time. Order.
The rest of the week we spent indoors- except for school- and when we’d exhausted our supply of indoor activities, my Mom taught Juliet how to play the guitar.
“Want to play Monopoly?”
“Again?” Juliet groaned.
“Clue?”
“Not a chance.”
“Charades?”
“Nope.”
“Hide and seek?”
“Boring.”
“Soccer?”
“We’re not allowed to play soccer inside, you know that Carter.”
I blinked innocently. “Just a thought.”
So when my Mom thundered down the stairs to admonish us for kicking a soccer ball around her precious china cabinet (not that she actually keeps any china in there; it’s full of my old art projects) she sent me to my room and brought Juliet into the den.
If dad is Juliet’s intellectual equal, mom is her artistic counterpart. They both sing like angels, and love the same music. (Is anyone getting the irony of this? Juliet inherited my parents’ best traits and here they are not even related!)
For several days afterward Juliet stayed in that room, the sound of careful, slightly-out-of-tune strumming floating through the house. Once she could get through a chorus and verse of The Cure’s Melt With You (which requires only two chords), she allowed me the privilege of being her first audience.
By the time the week was over she had already begun to write her own songs, and Juliet’s father was gone.