by Jenna Blum
“Thank you,” said June, although all she could think of was how hard those little pegs would be to vacuum out of the deep-pile rug in Elsbeth’s room, not to mention how they would feel when June inevitably stepped on them barefoot. “I’ll give it to her when she gets home. But you can’t be here. Why aren’t you at the club?”
“I was, but I told them I had a medical emergency,” he said. He stood. “Which was true. I’m having June withdrawal.”
“Gregg, honestly.”
He kissed her. “And I’ve got good news. I officially gave notice this morning. One more week. Plus my buddy Steve found us a place. It’s just a studio, but it’ll do until we can get settled.”
“Gregg—”
“I wired the deposit last night,” he added. He stepped back. “So are you going to give me the house tour?”
“I’d love to,” said June, “but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Fine,” he said, “I’ll sightsee on my own.” June stayed where she was and listened to Gregg prowling through the foyer, looking into the kitchen. “Your pad’s great,” he called, “but it doesn’t look like you’ve packed much.”
“Of course not,” said June. “I don’t want to give the game away.”
Gregg returned. His head bumped the living room chandelier, and it swung back and forth, white globes trembling.
“You aren’t going to tell him?”
“I’m still trying to decide that. It might be easier if—”
“You mean you’re still trying to decide if you’re coming.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you mean, though, isn’t it? Otherwise you would have told him already.”
“That’s not true,” said June. “It’s more complicated than that. You don’t know Peter, you don’t know—”
“I know that I’m hearing a lot of hesitation, June. I don’t like that. It makes me nervous.”
“Oh,” June cried, “why don’t you just back off! You have no idea what this is like for me. I’m not some twenty-seven-year-old vet who’s footloose and fancy-free. I’ve got a family, a whole household to pull apart. There’s nothing harder.”
Gregg looked contrite. He came back to June and took her in his arms. “You’re right. I’m sorry. How can I help? Tell me.”
He soothed her, stroking her hair; he kissed her sweetly, then more deeply. He slid his hand under the panel of June’s overalls, found her nipple beneath her shirt, thumbed it.
“I like these,” he murmured, unhooking the straps. “Your grubs.”
June wouldn’t take him upstairs, but to avoid carpet burn she did lead Gregg to the den, which was where people were supposed to sit to listen to the piano nobody played. Instead the Rashkins used the room mostly to watch television. June and Gregg put the couch, a midcentury green leather castoff from Sol’s office, to good use, and afterward, when Gregg fell asleep, June lay awkwardly wedged in next to him—half beneath him, really, with his heavy arm curled around her waist. She felt his breath on her neck and watched, through the window over his shoulder, the flickering leaves of the oak that sheltered Elsbeth’s sandbox. The big old trees were one of the reasons June had agreed to this property, although she had been reluctant to leave the city. If she stayed now, she would wither and turn brittle like the plants she had been tending earlier. But how could she go? What was she going to do?
Gregg twitched in his sleep, a whole-body jerk that almost bumped June off the couch. She glanced at him with annoyance. A minute later it happened again, then again. June tried to extricate herself, but he was too heavy. “Gregg,” she said, nudging him with her elbow. “Gregg, you’re dreaming. Wake up.”
“Huh!” he said, but he was still asleep, the whites of his eyes showing between the lids. He started clicking his jaw, biting rapidly, making a sound like castanets. His mouth fell open and omitted a high whine that made the fine hair on June’s neck and arms stand up.
“Gregg,” she said again, but then she paused: she’d heard if you woke a person during a nightmare, he could go crazy. And Gregg was surely having a nightmare; he was crying now, tears streaming down his cheeks from his half-open eyes, the thin scream still emerging from his throat. He shuddered and jumped, muscles writhing all over his body. June couldn’t stand it. It was as though he were on a planet where only bad things happened and he was being tortured there.
She pushed with all her might against his chest and broke free, sliding to the floor beside the couch. Gregg’s eyes popped open.
“It’s me,” said June. “You were having a bad dream. Are you okay?”
He stared at her with absolutely no recognition. Then his arm shot out and he punched her in the face.
June howled—at least, she thought she did. She couldn’t tell. The pain was instant and world-swallowing, a supernova blotting out everything but itself. The only thing she had to compare it to was when she’d been in labor with Elsbeth, before the cesarean: “You’re doing great, sugar,” a nurse had kept saying, “real good, sugar, keep it up,” until finally June had screamed, “Don’t call me fucking sugar just give me something to make it stop!” She had not known until then that pain could turn her into an animal, that she would do anything—kick, bite, scream, kill—if only it would go away.
“Oh my God,” she heard Gregg saying. “June! June, can you breathe?”
She must have thrown her hands over her face, for she felt Gregg trying to pry them away. This was an improvement, the consciousness that she had limbs, a face, and body, instead of just being obliterated by pain.
“Oh my God,” Gregg said again. “Oh, June. Your face. Your beautiful face. I’m so, so sorry.”
June tried to force her eyes open to look at him. The whole right side of her head throbbed.
“Can you breathe?” he asked. “Are you hearing me?”
“Yes,” said June. She snuffled and tasted blood. She would have spat, but she was coming back to herself enough to know it would ruin the rug. She swallowed instead and instantly felt nauseous.
“Can you hang on?” said Gregg. “While I get a cloth and some ice? I’ll be right back.”
June heard him run toward the kitchen, his heavy footsteps shaking her furniture. She leaned against the couch, snuffling and swallowing, trying not to throw up. She could open her right eye now, just a slit, although the vision in it was red. Her cheek pulsed in and out like a cartoon character who’d been pounded with a mallet.
Gregg returned with a dishtowel and an ice tray. June heard him cracking its metal spine and the cubes hitting something—a bowl? Then she felt the wet towel on her face. She hissed.
“I’m sorry,” said Gregg. “I know it hurts. But I need to see if anything’s broken. Can you count to ten for me? In your head?”
June did, focusing on the numbers in the red sea of pain. The dishtowel brushed lightly over her face.
“Okay . . .” Gregg muttered. “I don’t think anything’s broken. That’s the good news. Your cheekbone’s intact, and your nose and teeth and jaw. The bad news is, I must have really clobbered you one in the eye.”
“No kidding,” said June. She hadn’t considered her teeth. She used her tongue to check them, but Gregg had been right; nothing wobbled.
“I should take you to the hospital,” said Gregg, “just to be sure.”
“No way,” said June.
“Yes way.”
“No,” she said and swallowed—the blood taste was diminishing, but it was still sickening. “What would I tell them, that I walked into a door?”
“You could tell them they should see the other guy,” said Gregg. He tried to smile.
“It’s not funny.”
“No,” he agreed. “It’s not. Sorry. Oh God, June, I’m so sorry. I would do anything to take this back. I’d rather set myself on fire than hurt you—you know that, right?”
“Yes,” June said, and she did. But she couldn’t help adding, “When you’re awake, anyway.”
Gregg said nothing, and June opened her right eye farther and peered at him: he was blurry but no longer red, which was a good thing. As she blinked, the blur began to clear as well. Gregg was making an ice bag of the dishcloth and cubes; he started to apply it to June’s cheek, but she stopped him.
“Let me,” she said. “It hurts less that way.”
Gregg sat on the floor with her, a hand resting on June’s bare knee—she realized she was still in the pink T-shirt she’d been wearing under her overalls and nothing else. Her face throbbed. For the first time she was grateful she was too old to model, because she would have been hysterical with panic. Her most valuable property, ruined! Now she just felt scared and very tired.
“Can you bring me a mirror, please?” she asked. “I want to check the damage.”
“I don’t know if you should . . .”
“My handbag’s hanging on the knob of the kitchen door.”
Gregg left and returned with June’s purse. He sat on the floor with her, knee to knee, as if they were playing Connect Four. June took out her compact.
“Oh my God,” she said. The left side of her face looked relatively normal, just wet and pink. The right side was swollen beyond recognition.
“I look like Boom Boom Mancini,” she said. “What am I going to tell Elsbeth? Or . . .” She stopped, but she knew both she and Gregg were thinking: Peter.
“You could say you got mugged,” Gregg suggested.
“That might work,” June agreed. She started assembling the story—she’d been leaving Willowbrook Mall with her wallet open, putting change into it; stupid, she knew, but it had been partly her fault . . .
Gregg said, “The swelling’s going down some already. It’s not as bad as it could be, thank God—although we should put a steak on it. That’s what my ma and Nonna always do.” Suddenly his face changed, draining of expression as if somebody had pulled a plug.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “I’m just like Pop.”
“What?”
“I hit a woman. The one thing I swore on my life I’d never ever do.”
“You were sleeping. You were having a nightmare—”
“That’s no excuse,” Gregg said, and he started to cry. He turned to hide it, but his shoulders heaved.
“Gregg,” she said. “It’s not the same.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s ’Nam. It’s fucking destroyed me.”
“What are you talking about? This doesn’t have anything to do with—”
“It does, though,” he said grimly. “That’s what I was dreaming about.” He wiped his face on his forearm—at some point he had pulled on his briefs. “They told me when I was discharged that this might happen. That I might have shell shock. Bad dreams.” Gregg scoffed and ground the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Bad dreams. Jesus!”
June sat holding her dishtowel ice bag, water trickling down her arm, as Gregg got himself under control. She felt resentful, tricked: not by Gregg but by war. It was such a wily opponent. It had punched such big holes in June’s life—a father-sized one, smaller ones belonging to a woman and two children June had never met. It had left June’s mother widowed, June half orphaned and with half a husband. She had thought, with Gregg, that he had miraculously escaped damage. Now she knew his scars were all on the inside.
She watched him now, his big head in his hands, and asked the one thing she’d never dared to ask Peter, the question that could never be answered by Walter Cronkite, by newspapers or Time and Life. She asked, “What was it like?”
Gregg didn’t lift his head. He said, “What was what like?”
“The war,” said June.
Gregg didn’t respond, and June thought maybe he hadn’t heard her. She was about to ask again—if anyone could tell her, he could; he was young, he was a different, open generation—when he said “What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know,” said June, “that’s why I’m asking. Did you . . . kill anyone?”
Now Gregg did look up; he glared at June in disbelief from wet red eyes.
“Did I kill anyone?” he repeated. “Did I kill anyone? Fuck, June, what do you think my job over there was, to play Monopoly with Charlie?”
“Sorry,” June said.
“Yeah, I’m sorry too. Sorry I wasted four years of my life in some stinking shithole fighting a war it turns out nobody believed in anyway. Sorry it messed me up so bad I can’t sleep without turning on. Sorry it turned me into such an animal I did this to you,” and Gregg reached toward June’s face. She flinched back.
“Look what I’ve done,” he said, “you won’t even let me touch you,” and his eyes filled again with tears. “I wasn’t like this before. I was pretty normal, I think. But ’Nam did things to me. It got into my head. You want to know what it was like, June? You really want to know?”
“I’m not sure,” said June.
“It was like the fun house,” Gregg said. “The one my pop took us to when I was a little kid, down at Asbury. You know those places? The kind where the floors move up and down and the walls are mirrored and people jump out at you, dressed like mummies and ghosts. And it was a maze, so you couldn’t find your way out. It scared me so badly I just gave up and sat in a corner. Until the park attendants came to find me. I’d wet myself, and my pop belted me good for that. Yeah.”
He flexed his big hands, frowning at them as if he weren’t sure they belonged to him. Those big hands that had cupped June’s head, her breasts, her buttocks; had held her child’s hand, had been inside her. What else had they done?
“That’s what ’Nam was like,” said Gregg. “Except with a thousand more bodies and shit and fire and bugs and rot and death. And you never get out.”
He looked up at June, his eyes drooping at the corners.
“I’d understand if you kick me out right now,” he said. “If you tell me you never want to see me again. I’m sure you don’t want to come to California with me now.”
“Don’t be silly,” said June.
She said it reflexively, as if she were reassuring Elsbeth after a fall: You’ll be all right. Gregg looked stunned.
“Really?” he said. “Really, June?”
“I think you should see a doctor,” she said quickly, “and get some help. . . .”
“Oh, I will,” he said. He got up on his knees. “I will. I definitely will. I’ll do anything you say—as long as you’re still coming. I can do anything if you’re with me.”
He touched her face with one finger, as gently as if he were removing an eyelash.
“I love you, June,” he said, and June thought: Oh God, help him. Help us both. How was she going to get out of this? She let Gregg apply her ice pack and closed her eyes.
* * *
It took a week for June’s face to heal enough for her to go out in public, except to visit the family physician, who told her she was lucky she hadn’t detached a retina. Peter had been horrified, demanding they call the police, but June said, “For what? I didn’t see the guy who mugged me, and I’m sure he’s long gone by now.” After an evening and morning of solicitude and aspirin, Peter had returned to the Claremont—and June had seen nobody but Elsbeth and Helen Lawatsch, who mercifully came to take Elsbeth to the club for afternoon swim. “I won’t tell anyone the real story,” Helen had said; “was it just eyes?” and June realized Helen thought June had had work done. She had smiled enigmatically behind her big sunglasses; better that Helen believed this and spread this rumor than guess what had really happened.
By the time her mandatory convalescence was over, June was jumpy from isolation—and she had formulated a plan. She waited until late afternoon, then dressed Elsbeth in her lavender Ida frock—Elsbeth had relinquished her princess apron, but now she refused to wear anything that wasn’t purple—put her in the back of the car, and drove up the mountain. At the turnoff to the club June glanced over, but she kept going. She hadn’t seen Gregg since the incident; he had agreed with her on the phone that it was better if they
cooled it while June’s face healed. She wondered what he was doing at that very moment: giving a private lesson, coaching men’s doubles, belly-flopping into the adult pool after finishing for the day? He might even be at his parents’ house, continuing to pack. June missed him so terribly it felt like vertigo.
At the bottom of the mountain she turned left and drove along Route 23 past the Woodcrest Golf Club, with its neoclassical clubhouse and sweeping greens; the next turnoff was the Claremont. The restaurant’s proximity to the Woodcrest was both a boon for business, since people often came to the restaurant for fine dining after playing eighteen holes, and a hazard because rogue balls flew over the fence to dent the cars of Peter’s patrons. He had been negotiating with the Woodcrest about installing a net. June parked and let Elsbeth run into the restaurant ahead of her, crying, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”—it was only five, so the lot was empty. June followed at a more sedate pace, pausing to light a cigarette.
The Claremont’s air conditioning was a welcome shock after the August humidity and glare; sometimes it seemed this month would never end, with its orange sun and smell of fires. June took off her sunglasses to let her eyes adjust. The hostess, Shawna, came from the back in a long burgundy gown, her black hair winging away from her face in feathers. They exchanged air kisses, careful not to touch each other’s skin.
“Nice to see you, hon,” said Shawna. “How’s the shiner?”
“Much better.”
Shawna came closer for inspection. “Looks good,” she said finally; “you can hardly tell.” Shawna was engaged to a police officer who was enthusiastic with his fists; she knew about black eyes. “Did you put a steak on it?”
“No, ice,” said June. “And frozen peas.”
“Peas! I’ll have to remember that. I told Bobby about the jigs who jumped you. He said they’ll put an extra detail on at the mall.”
“Thanks,” said June, “but I don’t think he was black. And there was only one.”
“Of course he was black,” said Shawna. “They’re all coming up from Newark these days, haven’t you heard? And the riots? You’ve got to be more careful.”