January 17, 1974

Chapter 3: All You Need is Love

January 17, 1974

She opens the door to reveal her curly dirty blonde bush of hair. Her expression was at first a smile and now it is a look of concern, like it was a day ago. I try to send her a reassuring smile, but she just pulls the door open wider in order to let me in. There are no words spoken yet and she looks me up and down, trying to figure out what to say next.

“He wouldn’t tell you, huh?” Sadie says knowingly as she sits on the couch. I don’t sit, I just nod. She shakes her head. “I knew he wouldn’t say anything. Always trying to put on a brave face, that one,” she continues.

“I thought maybe you’d tell me why. He just seems so…depressed. And so alone. He won’t tell me anything. He stopped painting.” I say. Her eyebrows raise when I said that he’d stopped painting. She is in a pensive state and I search for any sign that she may speak. “What can I do?” I finally ask. Now, she looks at me.

“Nothing, honey. You can’t do a thing,” Sadie clarifies. This isn’t the answer I want to hear. I want to hear what I can do to make Jude feel better. To relieve him of all this stress that is hurting him.

“Just tell me why, then,” I say.

“Alright, if you insist. Take a seat, this is a very…long story.” Sadie advises.

She motions towards the chair across from her and stands up, making her way towards the kitchen. A few minutes later she emerges with two cups of coffee in her hands and hands one to me. I thank her and wait for the coffee to cool and for her to begin talking. She sips from her mug and looks around the room for a moment and I am unsure if she will tell me or not. But soon enough the tale begins.

“Jude met Max at Princeton,” she began and I already had a question.

“Who’s Max?”

“Shh. You’ll see, be patient,” Sadie says with an aggravated tone. I take a sip of the coffee and silently wait for her.

“Jude met Max at Princeton,” she repeats. “They were immediately friends and did everything together. So Max invited Jude for Thanksgiving with his family. Max had a sister, you see. Her name was Lucy,” She smiles as she remembers the girl by the name of Lucy. “Jude and her got along quickly. It was wonderful. They moved to New York, Lucy came along later. And then Max was drafted, the war had become a huge part of all of their lives. Mine as well. Let me tell you, honey, it was not pretty. Jojo and I were fighting, we didn’t know if Max was alive, and all of a sudden everyone was so…distant.” She seems to be in another place now as she stares off. Her eyes focused on a piece of furniture in the next room. “Jude really loved her. Lucy, I mean. And she loved him, too. So they had fought over some radical stuff and Jude was sent back to England for trying to save Lucy from the cops at the protest. You see, Lucy had been in one of the protests and they were taking all of them away. But anyway, Jude was deported and Lucy stayed. Max was off at war. But Jude came back, he did. And Max came back from the war, injured, but he was alive. And I remember clearly that day. The day we gave the rooftop concert. It was amazing. We sang to all of the New Yorkers. We gave them a little something called hope,” Sadie puts emphasis on her last word and she continues with the rest, “Jude was missing after the police brought us down and suddenly we heard his voice and raced back up. He was singing. By that time the police were going crazy. Jude kept singing and Lucy appeared in the building next to ours.” Sadie pauses for a moment and I see a tear glistening in her eye. Her voice begins to quiver but she continues. “And then they started to shoot. The police. They shot at us. They got her, right in the head.” Her hand is now cushioning her face and wiping away the tears. “It was horrible. Lucy fell from the building, dead. Gone. You know, a part of Jude died that day, too. He hasn’t been the same since. He was shot in the arm but he could recover from the physical pain but not the emotional stuff. He had really loved that girl, still does,” Sadie says. I take it that she has ended but I have a question eager to be heard.

“But why did he storm off at the concert?” I inquire.

“The song Jude sang on the rooftop was All You Need Is Love. That was the last thing he had ever really said to her. And that was the song I sang at the concert. I didn’t want to. I swear I didn’t. But they made me and I feel terrible for it.” She sobs. “I didn’t want to sing it.” She says again and I believe her.

--

Later that evening…

I burst through the door, surprised that it wasn’t locked but relieved nonetheless. I see him sitting at the kitchen table playing with a key chain. He looks up, startled, noticing my presence. I hesitate. And now I move closer to him, wrapping my arms around his neck and holding him tightly.

My face is buried into his white short sleeve shirt. I breathe in his scent and squeeze him tighter. My curly hair must be covering his face, but I don’t care enough to leave him. Jude doesn’t say anything. I have no intentions of letting go.

“I should’ve told you,” He whispers in my ear and by the sound of his voice I can tell he is about to cry.

Maybe I shouldn’t have come. Maybe coming and reminding him was worse than not coming at all. I don’t know what to do anymore. I feel weak yet strong when I’m with him. I’m happy yet filled with remorse when I look into those eyes of his. And I still stay, afraid that he will leave.

“Jude, I’m sorry. Truly sorry,” I say, tears in my eyes. I move away in order to see any emotion his face is expressing. All I see is hurt and strangely, gratitude. I thought it unfathomable to see a smile at such an occasion but there it was engrained in his face as if no harm could mar its vibrancy and happiness. “Why are you smiling?”

“Because of you. Because I know I’ll always have you,” He says and laughs By his voice, you could never tell that he was still crying. “Even when I don’t want you there.” He adds.

We are both now standing; I notice my hands are still wrapped around him. He doesn’t seem to be bothered by the proximity of our bodies. I pull him into another embrace. And after a few minuntes of silence in which he just held me in his hands he said something that made me pull away instantly: “Lucy”. All it took was her name to loosen my hold and back away from the man I cared for so deeply.

“I shouldn’t be here,” I say. He looks at me with confusion. “I have to go.”

“Anna, wait. No! I need you, Anna,” He calls after me. I can’t believe his words. That’s what I had wanted him to say for so long; that he needed me. But I don’t trust that. The meaning of his words aren’t that. So I continue to run, and he doesn’t come after me.