The Lost Family

by Jenna Blum

  “Oh no,” said June.

  “What?” said Gregg.

  “Elsbeth,” June said. What about Elsbeth? Elsbeth, who couldn’t stand to have her stuffed animals out of alignment, who couldn’t bear when her night-light went out or her bedroom door was left open an inch too wide. She was not a child who would take kindly to transplantation. And Elsbeth and Peter . . . if there was a vault in Peter that was shut to everyone but himself, his heart was open, to the degree it was, to his daughter.

  “If you think I’m not old enough to help take care of her,” said Gregg, “don’t worry about that. I’ve wanted to be a dad since I can remember.”

  “Then you’re a much better parent than I am,” said June, “because I never wanted to be a mom,” and she started to cry. She couldn’t believe she had said this; she hadn’t told anyone since Elsbeth’s doctor scolded her. June waited for Gregg to comfort her, but he didn’t, and when she was done, she opened her eyes to find a pile of napkins on the table in front of her and the waitress giving them the fisheye.

  “I bet you’re a wonderful mom,” said Gregg.

  “I’m not,” said June. “My daughter hates me. She’s always hated me.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Gregg. “Kids don’t hate their parents. They might say they do, and maybe they even mean it, but it’s temporary, like after a punishment or something.”

  “You don’t understand,” said June. “Elsbeth’s a daddy’s girl through and through. How can I even think of taking her from him?”

  “Listen,” said Gregg, “there’s such a thing as joint custody, right? She could spend holidays with him, and summers—all summer, every summer. That’s more time than I’ve ever spent with my old man in my life.” He handed June a napkin and she blew her nose. “Besides,” Gregg added, “nobody who cries over her kid like that could be a bad mom. Look how much you care! My ma barely says two words to me. She never once stepped in when my old man was beating on us. But I still love her.”

  “Do you?”

  “Always,” said Gregg firmly. “Anyway, we don’t have to decide all of this right now. Let me meet her first, and then we’ll see what happens. Okay?”

  “There’s one more thing,” June said. “I want to go back to work.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Home decor,” said June. “Interior design.”

  “Neat,” said Gregg. “Then you can be my sugar mama while I go back to school.”

  “I’m serious,” said June.

  “So am I,” said Gregg. “I dig it. You think I was really at that encounter group to get laid? I’m all about women having jobs.”

  “Oh,” said June, “would you cut it out? Stop saying all those perfect things. You’re making everything so much harder.”

  “Good,” said Gregg. His grin broke out, white and radiant. “I look forward to complicating your life for a long time.”

  He got up and crouched next to June’s side of the booth, patting his crumpled shirtfront. June slid over and put her face against his chest; beneath it, she could hear the lollop of his big heart. She didn’t have to marry him; she didn’t have to go through with any of this if she didn’t want to. They could, as Gregg had suggested, just take it a step at a time. Gregg cradled her head as gently as if June herself were a child. He kissed the top of it. “It’s going to be okay, June,” he said. “Everything’s going to be all right. You’ll see.”

  * * *

  “June Ann, are you all right?”

  “What’s that, Mom?” June said. It was Wednesday, the day before she and Elsbeth were to fly back to New Jersey, and June and Ida were having another cup of coffee in the breakfast nook while Elsbeth played outside with June’s old paper dolls. June had been watching her through the window but thinking about Peter, and packing, and the logistics of the return trip—and Gregg. She was helpless, it seemed, to stop thinking about their last hours together, which replayed in her mind like a broken record. How when they had left Bridgeman’s, they had gone back to the hotel, where they had made love quickly, quietly, missionary, no fancy tricks or acrobatics, as if to seal with their bodies an agreement their mouths had made. How they then took a shower together, for once not playing with the soap, and got out and somberly packed their separate bags. How Gregg had called the front desk and said they were running a little behind, could they possibly have an extra half hour to check out, please? And how he had taken June’s hand and led her to the bed, making her sit on the side while he undressed again, and pushed her back, and made her watch as he entered her, said, Look, June, look at us. I want you to remember, and she said, I will, and he said, Promise, and she said, I promise, and he said, Ah, God, June, I love you, and she said, Gregg . . . and he said, Say it, and she said, I love you too, and then they were saying it together, I love you, I love you, like a canticle, and then it was over.

  June had tried her best to stop thinking about this, because it would do her no good while she was here at her mother’s and it certainly wouldn’t help in New Jersey, where she would have to try to clear her head and make some difficult decisions. But something of it must have shown on her face, because Ida repeated, “I asked if you were all right. This whole visit you haven’t been yourself.”

  “Sorry, Mom,” said June. “I guess I’m a little preoccupied.”

  She was playing with a pin under the tablecloth, a button Gregg had pressed into her palm in front of the Radisson before June got into Ida’s Buick and Gregg caught a cab to the airport. It was a small navy circle embossed with a cheerful cartoon character proclaiming “I Ate a Whole LaLaPaLooza!” June had gotten used to fiddling with it, idly poking her thumb on the pin; now she stuck it into her pocket and smiled at her mother.

  Ida got up to refill their coffee. “Are you having troubles at home?”

  Both women glanced toward the window, but Elsbeth was making one of the paper dolls sing, her voice just audible through the glass: “Pickering, why can’t a woman be more like a man?”

  “Everything’s fine, Mom,” said June, but then she said, “Yes, a little trouble.”

  “Oh no,” said Ida. Her chin wobbled, and her hand rose to fiddle with her glasses chain. “Is Peter stepping out?”

  “No, Mom.”

  “Is it drinking? Gambling? Oh, I just can’t believe that of Peter.”

  “It’s not those either,” June said. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “You don’t have to,” said Ida and put her hand on June’s. “But if you want to, try.”

  June looked at their hands, small and long-fingered, Ida’s knuckles knobby. Her wedding ring, unlike June’s thick gold band, hung loosely, silver and thin as a dime from a quarter-century’s ceaseless wear.

  “He doesn’t want me to work, for one thing,” June said.

  “Well, why should you have to?”

  “I want to.”

  “That’s just silly,” said Ida. “Why would you want to do that when you could stay home and take care of Elsbeth?”

  Because it’s boring, June wanted to say; because I want to do other things with my life. But that would have been an incendiary and worthless argument. If everyone had at least one alternate life she wanted to be living, Ida’s was that Oscar had never been killed; that he had come home from the war, maybe missing a limb or prone to odd tempers or drinking too much, like some of the other veteran husbands, but returned nonetheless, to eat breakfast with his family every morning, toast and eggs and bacon, juice in the Fiestaware glasses they had received as wedding gifts, then put on his hat and coat and go downtown to his job as an accountant. Ida would have stayed home with baby June; she would have washed and dried and put away the dishes, then vacuumed; on Tuesday she would have laundered the sheets, on Wednesday ironed, Thursday baked. In the afternoons she might put June in her carriage and fasten her own hat and walk downtown, or she might have met some of the other mothers to play bridge. In the evening her husband would come home. On weekends they would go for a Sunday drive,
and Oscar would wash and wax the car, and maybe June would have had brothers and sisters. Instead, Ida had gone to work and June had stayed home alone, and they had had suppers from cans or aluminum TV trays, and Ida had never again dated, not gone to so much as a church supper or ice cream social, and June would never forget growing up in the deep underwater silence of a house where the population was a female two.

  “Peter . . . ,” said June. She sipped her coffee, which was cold. “He’s a lovely man. But he’s difficult. He keeps things to himself.”

  Ida’s chin trembled. “Like what?”

  June debated whether to try and explain about Peter’s lost family, about which Ida knew nothing but the simplified version June had given her after the elopement: Peter’s first wife and daughters died in the war. But June feared Ida would not understand; Ida, too, was in love with a ghost. June also could have told her mother about when Peter hadn’t confided in June about Masha’s going out of business, so June had had to read that for herself in the New York Times entertainment section. Or when she’d found out from Ruth, not Peter, that Sol had helped Peter buy the Claremont, that Sol was Peter’s partner again. Or when Peter had said the move to New Jersey was for Elsbeth’s good—a toddler needed green space to run about in—when really, June suspected, it was to start afresh after losing Masha’s. But she didn’t tell Ida those things because Ida would worry about June’s financial position, and that wasn’t really the problem. Peter’s secrecy was, his closed door, and June being permanently on the other side.

  “I’m not just sure it was a good match,” June said finally.

  Ida squeezed June’s hand, then let go. “Oh, June Ann,” she said sadly.

  “What?”

  “What do you think a marriage is?”

  “Two people joining their lives together.”

  “A marriage is a vow,” said Ida. “A vow you took, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” June said. The denial came out more sulkily than she would have liked. She stopped herself from saying, What would you know about it? Ida had lived with her husband only a few weeks before he shipped out; the next time she had seen Oscar, he had been in a coffin. Instead June said, “Things have changed since you got married, Mom. Women don’t have to be beaten or be married to drunks or gamblers to get divorced. We have other options now—it’s the equal rights movement, women’s lib. We can find other ways to be fulfilled.”

  Ida folded her arms and looked at June. Oh Lord, thought June, not the Look. This stern, level gaze of Ida’s was the one thing in the world guaranteed to make June rise out of her chair, like a zombie, and do whatever Ida wanted.

  “June Ann,” she said, “do you know what your first word was?”

  “Mom?” June guessed.

  “More,” Ida said.

  June laughed. Ida nodded.

  “It’s true,” she said. “Ever since you were born, this is how you’ve been. More juice. More cookie. More than anyone else had, more than this place could give you. I always loved you for it, honey. Even when it took you away from me, all the way to New York, I never tried to stop you. Maybe I even spoiled you a little.”

  “Probably you did,” said June, “for which I thank you.”

  She was smiling, but Ida looked grave.

  “It was fine when it was just you,” she said, “or even when it was you and Peter. But you’ve got Elsbeth to think about now, June Ann. It’s time you settled down. Life doesn’t always work out the way you want. You made your bed.”

  She reached out and cupped June’s face with a hand that shook only a little.

  “It’s time to grow up, honey,” she said.

  * * *

  After this disturbing conversation, June took Elsbeth for one last swim. Elsbeth was ecstatic; she loved the New Heidelberg town pool, where, as in Larchmont, she didn’t have to wear a bathing cap. She scampered alongside June, chattering as they walked, her apron dragging over the cracked sidewalks. The sun was like a hammer.

  At the pool, June paid the fifty-cent entrance fee and walked Elsbeth behind the chain-link fence, where Elsbeth first ran up to the life-size ceramic lion spitting water from its mouth and stuck her head in, then charged toward the pool. “No running,” called the lifeguard, in exactly the same tone of bored authority June had used when she’d sat on that throne, wearing a faded red suit and squeezing lemon juice in her hair. Elsbeth leaped in among her shrieking New Heidelberg counterparts, and June watched until she was involved in a game of Marco Polo. Then June left the pool area, got a Tab from the pop machine, and took it to the parking-lot pay phone. The pool was on a slight rise, all the better from which to survey the playing fields, the baseball diamond, and the tennis courts, whose nets sagged on this windless day.

  June inserted a dime and dialed. “Good afternoon, Claremont,” said the hostess, Shawna. “Oh, hi, June, he’s in the kitchen. I’ll put you through.” But nobody answered, and after listening to the line ring fourteen, fifteen times, June hung up. She fished her dime out of the slot and dialed again.

  “Glenwood Bath and Tennis Club,” said a girl’s voice.

  “Pro shack, please,” said June.

  “This is pro shack,” said the girl, who sounded about fifteen and also as though she were chewing gum.

  “May I speak with Gregg Santorelli?”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Mrs. Robinson,” said June.

  “Sure thing, Mrs. Robinson,” said the girl. “Hold on, I’ll see if he’s available.”

  She must have set the phone on the desk, because from Minnesota June heard the ambient noises of the country club in New Jersey: the pock! pong! of tennis balls being hit; a woman talking about restringing her racquet; a man’s deep voice and laughter—Gregg?

  “Hello?” June said. “Hello?”

  But the girl must never have found Gregg or forgotten June was on the line, for after a while there was a scuffling noise and then somebody hung up, leaving June with the wah wah wah of a broken connection.

  10

  The Fun House

  One morning in early August somebody rang June’s doorbell. She wasn’t expecting anyone, so she thought it must be an ambitious Girl Scout or Jehovah’s Witness. She was annoyed; she had been watering her plants, which didn’t make much sense if she were only going to leave them after Labor Day anyway—she hadn’t yet made up her mind about that matter. But it would have been cruel to let them die of thirst in the meantime, so she had been moving among them with her bronze can, pinching off unhealthy babies and dead leaves.

  The doorbell ringer turned out to be Gregg, in tennis whites and carrying a shopping bag. “Hi,” he said. “Can I interest you in a set of encyclopedias?”

  “What are you doing here?” June hissed. She craned around his bulk, and sure enough, his orange Pinto was parked at the curb. “Get in here,” she said, pulling him in by the shirt. She wasn’t sure what to do about the car; on the one hand, everyone in Glenwood could see it, but on the other, maybe it was better Gregg hadn’t driven it around to the back door, which would have been an admission of guilt impossible to explain.

  “Wow,” he said, walking into June’s living room. “This is your house? It’s so nice.” He turned, taking in the window seat piled with mirrored Indian pillows, the ferns and flokati rugs and hardwood floors. “I can see why you want to be a decorator. You’ve got great taste. I especially dig this,” and he sat in the bishop’s chair June had rescued from the curb in front of a burned church and painted bright red.

  “Thanks,” said June. “What are you doing here?”

  Gregg nudged the shopping bag with a sneaker. “I came to see Elsbeth.”

  “She’s not here. She had a birthday party. They went to Turtleback Zoo.”

  “Oh,” said Gregg. He sounded genuinely disappointed. He had met Elsbeth a couple of times: first at the club, where he’d lobbed balls to her on the paddle court that she’d swung at with her short-handled racquet; then
, last week, at Applegate Farm. Gregg had arrived before them; he was sitting on a bench in front of the red barn, but when he saw June and Elsbeth he jumped up, grinned, and waved.

  Elsbeth hung back. “What?” she said, meaning, What is he doing here?

  “You know Gregg, sweet pea,” said June, “from the club. He’s going to have ice cream with us; isn’t that nice?”

  “No,” said Elsbeth.

  But she allowed herself to be led over, and Gregg had crouched down to her eye level. “Hi, kiddo,” he said. “Gimme some skin.” He held up his palm and Elsbeth slapped at it. “Now go low,” he said, and she did it again. “There you go. You wanna see what I’ve got for you?”

  Elsbeth nodded. Gregg produced a set of alphabet letter magnets. “Somebody went to Toys ‘R’ Us on Route 46,” murmured June.

  “You bet,” said Gregg. He opened the plastic packaging and set the magnets on the curb. “What’s the matter, kiddo?”

  Elsbeth had backed away from the letters. “Those are wrong,” she said.

  “Elsbeth,” said June, “that’s not polite. What do we say when someone gives us a gift?”

  “The A is green,” Elsbeth cried. “That’s not right. A is blue. And the T is not ’opposed to be yellow!”

  “Wow,” said Gregg. “You know your own mind, huh, kiddo? That’s cool. Hey, I’m awfully hungry for ice cream. You wouldn’t know anyone else who wants some, would you?”

  He stood and rubbed his big belly. Elsbeth looked up—and up and up. She glanced back at June, then let Gregg take her to the counter for a watermelon cone.

  Now Gregg said, “That’s too bad. I was looking forward to seeing her. I brought her this,” and he pulled a carton out of the shopping bag. It was a toy called a Lite-Brite, an electric box with a perforated pegboard and black sheets of paper to be taped over it, along with hundreds of different-colored pegs to make designs.

  “See,” said Gregg, “when you turn it on, the pegs glow! I thought because she digs colors so much . . . Don’t worry,” he added, “I checked the box. It’s for over age five.”