by Jenna Blum
“I will,” said June, following Shawna to the Rashkins’ habitual corner banquette.
“Mr. R will be out in a sec,” said Shawna. “You want a drink?”
“Martini?”
“You got it,” said Shawna. She tipped a long red nail at June and sashayed off.
June lit another cigarette and looked around. The dining room was nearly empty; only one early-bird pair sat by the window, or maybe they were lingering after a very late lunch. From the banquet room came the sound of vacuuming. A waitress brought June’s drink, and she sipped it meditatively. The Claremont had changed so much since the first time Peter had brought June here, in 1972; it had previously been a Greek diner, its owner mysteriously disappeared, and Peter had gotten it at auction. “A fire-sale price,” he had told June, who’d said, “I can see why.” She had paced the dining room, with its tired vinyl flooring, pink plastic tablecloths, the smudged display case that was meant to showcase cakes and pies but now rotated empty; she had shaken her head at the mirrored walls and sun-faded mural of Mount Olympus and said, “This is why you moved us to the suburbs?” Peter had smiled. “This is why I need your help,” he said.
The Claremont was the first space June had decorated beyond the apartment on East Ninety-Sixth Street and their Glenwood home; Peter had given her a strict budget but carte blanche with style. It had been June who had chosen the gold carpet and starburst chandeliers; June who had come up with the idea to sponge-paint the mirrored walls in gold leaf to antique them and hang red velvet curtains to make them look like windows. “Better than paying to remove them,” she’d told Peter, “and think of all the years of bad luck you’ve avoided.” She remembered the excitement of hurrying across the parking lot on opening day, clutching a takeout coffee, and assuming her position behind the hostess stand—this was before Peter had hired a regular girl. Welcome to the Claremont, how are you this evening? She and Peter had made the Claremont together; after Elsbeth, it was their best collaborative effort.
Peter came through the kitchen door now, holding Elsbeth’s hand; he was in a light gray summer-weight suit. He smiled at June as he helped Elsbeth into the banquette, and she smiled back; no matter whatever else had happened between them, June never tired of seeing Peter in his element, cutting across a restaurant floor.
“May I join you?” he asked.
“Of course.” June slid over, and Elsbeth did too, so Peter could sit on her other side.
“A vodka tonic, please,” he said to the waitress who materialized, and—“June, another? Yes? Beefeater martini, very dry; Shirley Temple, three cherries; and one hamburger, plain, no bun. Otherwise known as . . . what, Ellie?”
“Hamburger Walter,” Elsbeth said, scribbling on the back of a place mat with the crayons June had passed her.
“Very good. And how is that cooked, for grown-ups?”
“With pepper and brandy,” she said. “Au poivre.”
“Excellent. That deserves a strawberry ice cream—after dinner.”
The waitress lit the candle on their table and departed. Peter scanned the dining room, making sure it was ready for dinner service. “How is your eye?” he asked.
“Better, thank you.”
“Let me see,” he said, and June turned obligingly toward him. “Ah, yes. You can barely tell.”
“Thank God for Cover Girl,” June said.
“Thank God that bastard didn’t hurt you any worse than he did,” said Peter grimly.
“Daaadddddy,” said Elsbeth. She was drawing herself, in a purple princess dress with an apron and jeweled crown. “You said a bad word.”
“So I did.” Peter shifted to get at his pocket and pushed a nickel across the table. “One for the swear bank,” he said, and Elsbeth tucked the coin in her purple purse.
“And who is that you are drawing?” said Peter, tipping his head to look at Elsbeth’s paper. “That big person?”
“That’s Gregg,” said Elsbeth.
She was coloring in a monolithic rectangle with legs and glasses. June shook her head and shrugged in response to Peter’s questioning glance: I don’t have any idea. “Maybe somebody from the club,” she said.
The waitress returned with their drinks and Elsbeth’s burger, along with a silver dish of her favorite pickles. “Cheers,” said Peter, and the three Rashkins clinked glasses. Elsbeth ate a cherry and returned to scribbling; June and Peter sipped and sat watching the dining room fill. Shawna swanned among the tables in her wine-colored gown, leading patrons to their seats, waiters and waitresses then appearing to take drink and appetizer orders in well-rehearsed choreography.
“To what do I owe the pleasure—” Peter said, as June started, “This is a nice—” They looked at each other and smiled.
“Go ahead,” said June.
Peter inclined his head. “After you.”
“I was just going to say this is a nice change of pace,” said June, “after being in the house all week. It was too hot to cook.”
“Indeed,” said Peter. “It is beastly. Even with the air conditioning, the air is like soup in the kitchen.” He consulted his watch. “I should go back in.”
June lit a cigarette. “Actually, I was hoping to get a word with you—”
“Can it wait until after I get home?”
June’s hand shook as she lifted her drink; she set it down before it could spill.
“Honestly, Peter,” she said, “I don’t think it can.”
Peter had been signaling something to a waiter across the room, restaurateur’s semaphore, but something in June’s tone or her use of his full name stopped him.
“What is it?” he asked.
June stared at her martini and took a deep breath through her nose.
“June? Is something wrong?”
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she said, and then her voice caught and she looked away, across the dining room.
Peter said nothing, but in June’s peripheral vision she saw his handkerchief appear. She nodded her thanks and picked it up, touching it beneath her left eye and then, very carefully, her right.
Peter knocked his knuckles against the table. Presently he said, “Is this about what we’ve been discussing, you going back to work?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said June.
“Or is it Sol’s comments? I have been regretting letting him get away with that,” said Peter. “Sol can be a bully, but you know his opinion has no bearing on our personal life.”
June made herself look over at him. Peter was smiling at her with his head lowered and his brows raised, an expression she knew meant, Forgive me?
“Peter,” she said, “I have to tell you something.”
She watched as his face changed. When Elsbeth was little, Peter had played a game with her that consisted of making a comical smile, then drawing his hand over it and frowning, then repeating the gesture and grinning again. Now it looked as though somebody had swiped his face with comprehension. He sat back.
“I see,” he said. “Very well. But I suggest we talk tonight at home. I will try to leave at a decent hour. I don’t think we should discuss it in front of—”
And he tipped his head toward Elsbeth. But Elsbeth wasn’t there. There was only her drawing, her napkin, and her empty plate.
“Where did she go?” Peter stood up.
June did too. “I don’t know.”
“She must have wriggled out under the table. But where is she?”
“I can’t see her anywhere,” June said.
Both parents surveyed the room. It was busy now, most tables filled; waiters and waitresses swerved among them, balancing heavy trays of drink and hot food. June thought of the kitchen, where Elsbeth was expressly forbidden to go without a grown-up; of knives, stovetops, boiling pots. The parking lot with its incoming traffic. Route 23, where the speed limit was fifty-five miles an hour. Peter had summoned Shawna and was speaking quickly to her; Shawna hurried into the kitchen.
“Pete,” said June, �
�you don’t think—”
Then she glanced at Elsbeth’s drawing, which was all done in purple, and Elsbeth’s purple satin purse, and she knew where Elsbeth was; when she looked back at Peter, she could see he did too. They bolted from the table. “Excuse me,” said June as she moved through the dining room, “pardon me.” She headed toward the ladies’ lounge, which, like everything else at the Claremont, June had decorated herself. She had used the most au courant color in 1972, which, like everything Elsbeth wore, drew, and surrounded herself with these days, was purple. Everything in the ladies’ room was some shade of that color, from the tiles to the stalls to the African violet prints. Even the toilets were lavender, and it was there that June, banging open the first stall with Peter behind her, found Elsbeth: hugging the porcelain bowl. “Mommy,” announced Elsbeth, “look, my purple princess throne! I love it.” And as both parents said, “No no no no no no!” she lowered her face to kiss the seat.
* * *
That night June was in the guest room when Peter came home. She had moved from the master bedroom after the incident with her face, claiming it was easier for her to sleep sitting up—which, as far as it went, was true. But June had been doing precious little sleeping the past week, and it hadn’t been due to the residual ache in her cheek.
She looked at the clock on the bedside table: ten past midnight. This was what Peter called a decent hour? But it was, really, for him; most nights he didn’t leave the restaurant until two or three. June lit a cigarette and sat alert with it, listening. She heard Peter’s footsteps cross the kitchen floor. The refrigerator opened and closed—no doubt he had brought home leftovers from the Claremont’s nightly special, as he always did. The creak of the cupboard in which the glasses were kept; the faucet running. The clank of a glass being set in the sink. Then he was coming upstairs. June watched the door.
There was a knock. “June? Are you still awake?”
June set aside the paperback she had been holding and extinguished her cigarette. “Come in.”
Peter walked into the little room, then stood looking around. “I’d forgotten what a pleasant space this is,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve been in here more than once or twice since it was Ellie’s nursery.”
“I redid the wallpaper.”
“Ah, is that it? I thought there was something different. It looks nice,” he said, either not seeing or pretending not to notice the way the flowered cloth sagged and bowed away from the walls.
June waved at the rocker in the corner. “Have a seat.”
“Thank you,” Peter said. He crossed to the chair and sat, set his palms on his knees, and smiled at her. He had gray bags under his eyes, and the breeze from the fan as it moved its wire face from side to side loosened his hair from its gelled waves. Time had carved lines across Peter’s forehead and from his nose to his chin; June thought, as she sometimes had before, that if youth was being unmarked, age was a sullying, and she wished there were some special sponge she could use to wipe her husband’s years away.
“Well, June,” Peter said. He had taken off his suit jacket, maybe downstairs, and was in his shirtsleeves. The shirt looked rumpled. “Here we are.”
“Yes,” she agreed. Outside a car passed on Park Street; a dog barked down the block.
“So,” said Peter, “there is somebody else?”
June looked at her lap, her legs crossed beneath her nylon nightgown.
“Yes,” she said.
“That is what you wanted to tell me. At the restaurant.”
“Yes.”
“I see,” he said. “How long?”
“Not very. A couple of months.”
“A couple of—! Who is it?”
“That’s not important.”
“Like hell it isn’t,” said Peter. “Like hell!”
He got up from the chair so abruptly that it hit the wall, then rebounded. He strode back and forth. “Goddamn it, June!” he shouted. “Who is it? This photographer you were supposedly working with in Minneapolis? Someone from the club? Tell me!”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I think it’s over—”
“You think! You think. Ah, that’s terrific. You think it’s over.”
“What do you want me to say?” she shouted back. “That it’s not over? That I’m leaving you? Is that what you want?”
Peter stopped pacing. “Are you?”
June looked back down at her lap. She shook her head and pinched her eyes shut. A couple of tears fell on her thighs.
“And now you’re sad about it,” said Peter. “Ah, that’s wonderful. I’m so sorry you’re not running off with your lover.”
“Don’t tempt me!”
Peter threw himself back into the chair, which cracked but continued to hold him. A lock of hair, loosened from his pacing, waved wildly in the breeze from the fan.
“Why?” he said. “If you won’t tell me who, at least tell me that. I’ve been a good husband to you. I’ve provided for you, I’ve been faithful—”
“—you’ve been a good father to Elsbeth,” June finished for him. “Yes.”
“Then why, goddamn it?”
“You really have to ask me that?” said June softly.
He stared at her. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“Enlighten me.”
“You really want me to? You really want me to tell you what it’s like for me while you’re working twenty hours a day, seven days a week—”
“To keep the business going. I’ve always been dedicated to what I do, you’ve always known that—”
“We both know you don’t have to work as hard as you do.”
“Lots of men work hard.”
“Come on, Pete. Why are you making me say it? You know what the problem is. You know why you work so hard. It’s the only place you feel good, in your kitchen. Right? It’s where you shut everything out, pretend nothing bad ever happened. The war never happened. You never lost her. You never lost them.”
“That . . . is . . . enough!”
“No, I’m not finished. I think about them too, did you know that? I do. Those poor babies. And Masha. I wish I’d been able to meet her. I admire her. She must have been so brave. . . . But the fact is, she’s gone. And you are too. There’s a part of you that’s not there at all. It’s shut down, or maybe it doesn’t even exist anymore. All I know is, you’re only half there.” June’s throat hurt. She put her hand on it. “And it’s really lonely.”
Peter looked at her as though he’d never seen her before.
“June,” he said, “you knew all this when you married me. You knew what had happened.”
“Yes, of course. But I didn’t know it would last. I guess I was naive, but I thought, well, you’re always strangers to each other at the beginning, right? People grow together. I thought you would thaw.” She shook her head. “You didn’t.”
Peter looked down at his feet, his scuffed black chef’s shoes on the carpet.
“Sometimes I think you never should have gotten married again,” said June. “You might have been happier if I hadn’t come along.”
“That’s not true. You made me happy.”
“Let me ask you something. If I hadn’t been pregnant, would you have proposed?”
Peter paused long enough to let June know he was considering his answer. “I wanted to marry you.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Peter ran his hands over his hair. “June,” he said finally, “this is all ancient history. What do you want me to do?”
“Remember before we were married, when I asked you to see an analyst?”
“Yes.”
“Did you?”
“Ah, June, who knows? It was so long ago—”
“You didn’t,” she said. “Don’t bother fibbing. I know.”
“And how would you know that?”
“I followed you,” she said. “When you left your apartment. You said yo
u were going to the appointment, but you went to Masha’s as usual.”
“You followed me,” Peter repeated. He closed his eyes. “Of course you did.”
“I want you to go now,” June said. “With me. I don’t know if it’ll fix anything, but something has to change. Something. And maybe it’ll give us a chance. Will you?”
Peter seemed to be considering the carpet. At long last, he sighed.
“June,” he said. “I am sorry, but I cannot. I am too old a dog for that trick. I told you a long time ago that there were some things I wouldn’t talk about. And I still can’t.”
“Won’t, you mean.”
“Won’t or can’t, it is just not something I am going to do.” He looked at her without lifting his head. “Perhaps I should not have married you. I thought at the time it might not be fair to you. You are, you have always been, so vital, so open to life’s possibilities. And I have been missing something all along. I thought it might come back. Or that we could do without it. But in the end, this is who I am, and this is the best I can do.”
He lifted his hands and let them fall. “I am sorry, June. I’m sorry I am not who you want me to be.”
June waited. “Is that it?” she asked finally.
“For now,” said Peter. “Except I do love you, June, as best I can. And that is as true as anything we have said here tonight.”
He stood, then winced and pressed his side.
“What is it?” said June.
“Nothing. A stitch. I must have lifted something the wrong way at the stove.” Peter forced himself upright. “I know this isn’t the end of the discussion,” he said. “We will talk more. But please excuse me for now. I have gone as far as I can tonight.” He opened the door and nodded politely at June. “Good night,” he said, and went out.
* * *
The next morning, June awoke very early, and she knew what she must do.
She got up, made the guest bed, washed her face, brushed her teeth, and combed her hair. She dressed in the clothes on the back of the bathroom door, bell-bottom jeans and a T-shirt. She went quietly downstairs. The door to the master bedroom was closed; either Peter had also arisen early and gone to the restaurant, or he was still asleep. The house was filling with the gray light of dawn.