A Day in June

by Marisa Labozzetta

  He tore away from her, started the car, and drove, with all the anticipation he had experienced on the first Christmas morning he could remember, to Mount Misery, a popular lovers’ lane in a secluded wooded area off of Mount Misery Road. There they continued their make-out session with the windows so steamed up no one could ever have known who was inside. He put his hands on her breasts—she let him. Then under her sweater and over her bra—she let him. Around the hard nipples and down to the snap on her jeans—she let him. He tugged at her zipper—she helped him. Then he slid to home. He was inside her panties, fumbling around a wet bird’s nest of hair—sweet—slipping his middle finger into a moist pothole and tasting the spoils of victory, when he exploded within the confines of his jockstrap and uniform.

  “It’s okay, I love you,” Danni said, putting her hand on his, guiding it and giving him permission to continue to touch her, but it was over for him, and luckily so, because embarrassment had jolted him from his testosterone-fueled insanity back to reality. He pulled away from her and hugged the steering wheel instead.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered to the dashboard.

  “It’s okay,” she repeated, acknowledging his premature ejaculation. “Next time will be better.”

  “No. I’m sorry, Danni. Really I am. I shouldn’t have brought you here. I’m sorry.”

  She cried all the way back to her house, and at the prom he attended without a date, even though two other girls had asked him to escort them. He hadn’t wanted to hurt Danni’s feelings any further by going with someone else; besides, he no longer trusted himself with casual dates—monster that he was. And she cried in the ladies’ room at Baby’s for the next four years, whenever he came home from college.

  From his car, Eric can see Michael sitting at the dining room table in the first-floor condo of the yellow clapboard two-family. Michael takes sips from a large mug, while studying a stack of papers in front of him. His black silhouette against the white walls mirrors Eric’s photographs hanging on those same walls. The kitchen window frames Becca, statuesque and slender, with flaxen hair tied back into a ponytail, scrubbing a frying pan she holds up to inspect every few seconds while sweeping her long blond bangs out of her eyes. Michael and Becca never pull the shades or close the blinds. People who move to small towns from big cities think they’ve found Utopia—kind of like the college Eric went to where everyone was on the honor system and where people cheated just the same.

  Eric’s glad he hadn’t taken his pickup, or maybe that was intentional: He likes it that his mother’s Subaru doesn’t idle as loudly and give away this Peeping Tom. In a few minutes, he’ll shut off the engine and go to the door, and Becca will offer him something to drink or eat, and Michael will put his work aside; but for now he’s happy just to observe and take them in, like a giant-sized happy comfort pill he wants to swallow whole.

  Michael is calm and methodical as he works, perhaps on teacher evaluations or next year’s class scheduling or résumés for the remedial-reading teacher position, whose funding was narrowly passed by the school committee. Disgruntled teachers at the high school, whining board members, and parents don’t bother Michael. Eric, who was the community representative on the high school principal search, detected this trait about Michael the minute he met him, and he knew he not only wanted to hire him—he wanted to be his friend. You could be attracted to other males that way. You could love them. He loves Michael. And he loves Becca, who is hard and soft at the same time, a caring yet straight-to-the point bundle of energy that gets tempered by Michael’s serene but no less engaging and ambitious personality. They have what Eric wants: They can pull out all the stops without fear of losing each other because, while their styles may differ, they’re grounded by the same foundation of devotion they bring to everything they touch.

  Eric is assistant baseball coach at the high school, and Michael, a former all-American épée fencer—tall and lean, with the classic lefthanded advantage—would like to start a fencing team or at least a club, but it’s not wise for a principal to be a coach, he says, especially a newcomer to the area, especially an African American newcomer. Parents might claim he’s being partial—playing favorites with his kids—in academic and disciplinary matters. Although Eric knows Michael wouldn’t, still it’s better not to give people ammunition.

  Even Eric thinks it’s a little weird to watch his friends’ lives unfold in his home among many of his belongings. On the other hand, it’s as though their lives have melded. Michael desperately needed a place to live, and Eric’s mom needed him.

  Rebecca loved Eric’s renovated duplex—everything white, like the backdrop paper Eric uses when he shoots ads or portraits, with sparse modern furnishing so different from his mother’s cluttered taste of Vermont knickknacks and heirlooms. Eric likes clean straight lines. He likes order; it allows him to think better, or not have to think at all. It was only logical that he would rent his condo to Michael and Becca until they found something more permanent and that he would move back in with his mother in the farmhouse on the outskirts of town. That was two years ago. He could return to his place now; his mother’s cancer is in remission. But why upset Becca and Michael? The extra income isn’t bad at all, since work has been slow. Besides, Eric wants to make life as easy as possible for Michael, because he wants Michael to stay in Brackton. Yet it isn’t always easy for Michael here. Then again, it would never be easy for him anywhere he went, and Eric hates that reality.

  Eric’s cell phone rings; he reaches under his parka, fishes it out of his pocket, and laughs at the caller’s ID.

  “Wassup?” he asks.

  “Hey, dumbass, you gonna sit out in the cold all night like some pervert?” Michael says.

  Chapter 4

  Sunday, January 19

  The Holy Prostitute

  Her face was red from the cold. Her head, with its tight-fitting woolen cap, looked miniature, out of proportion to the rest of her body, because of the oversized jacket she wore.

  “I’m Daisy,” she said, extending her hand. “You sounded a lot older over the phone—you know, gray-haired, running a rooming house.”

  Suzanne opened the door a little wider and gave a shiver as cold air filled the long bare hall. She held a thirteen-month-old on a hip while three-year-old Alyssa clutched at her thigh. She was embarrassed; it was January and Billy still hadn’t taken down the Christmas lights that lined the rambling Victorian porch. He said they hid some of the chipped paint and broken spindles.

  Billy had been dead set against renting out the extra bedroom. When she told him she had listed it with the Chamber of Commerce, he blew up and said he didn’t like the idea of having a stranger in the house. Suppose one day an insane man walked in. Would she want to be alone with him? She promised to rent to a woman. No meals, just the room, just a few days here and there. It was a way for her to make money and still be home with the girls. She had to persuade him about everything; she never bought an article of clothing without his approval. When Daisy called, she was thrilled.

  “Come in,” Suzanne said.

  Suzanne led her upstairs and pointed out the spare bedroom and private bath. Daisy unzipped her jacket but kept it and the cap on.

  “This is great! I’ll be staying until May.”

  “But I told you only three nights. How about until Sunday? Is that all right?” She included an extra day almost apologetically, hoping she hadn’t discouraged her first customer.

  RYAN LOOKS UP from her laptop and out her bedroom window at the last falling flakes. The block resembles a chalk model of houses and trees and cars waiting to be painted. The Greek man, who lives across the street with his wife in the white two-story with bright blue trim and who owned the dry cleaners on the corner, has already begun to shovel the foot of snow on his walkway. He is like Ryan’s father, who never waits to attack a chore while her mother finds any excuse, from finishing a book she’s just begun to searching for an item she lost years ago, before tackling dinner dishes.


  It used to drive Ryan’s father crazy when Ryan was little, but he seemed to have come to terms with it by the time Ryan was in her teens, loading the dishwasher or wiping down counters himself, or when he didn’t have time, walking past a sink smelling of steak grease with his breath held and his eyes closed. Not unlike his clean-freak mother, who had made him pass a carpet sweeper under the kitchen table after every meal when he was growing up, Joe Toscano was so well trained he never left as much as a dirty sock on the floor, returned wet towels to their proper racks, and in nice weather even hung the wash out on a collapsible spiderlike metal clothesline in the backyard.

  There had been that one time when Ryan was a very little girl and her mother attempted to put their living conditions in greater order. They had just moved into the neglected high ranch of a development on Long Island when, against her husband’s better judgment (or what he thought was better), Lauren Toscano rented out a room in the hopes of earning a little extra money to spruce up the place. How, Joe had asked, did she intend to clean up after boarders when she couldn’t manage to dig her way out of the mess one three-year-old made? Lauren insisted that Joe just didn’t want to bring strangers into the house: His family was secretive and weird that way, she said.

  Ryan didn’t remember much about Lauren’s first and last boarder (the lady had seemed nice enough to Ryan, but apparently she’d been psychotic). Yet somehow, over the years, Ryan had come to take her father’s side whenever the incident came up, ridiculing her mother’s naïveté rather than supporting the woman for a gutsy effort.

  Ryan saves the beginning of her new story and closes the cover to her laptop. She puts on her parka, hat, scarf, and mittens and heads down the stairs to the first floor hallway, where the landlord keeps a shovel next to the basement door.

  “I don’t understand why you’re doing that,” Tiffany calls down the stairwell. He’s supposed to take care of it.”

  “Yeah, well, he doesn’t.” Like Ryan’s mother, the landlord is a procrastinator where manual labor is concerned.

  “He does, but not on your timetable. Our super always cleans our sidewalk.”

  “That’s the Upper West Side for you.”

  “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  “Sure you will.”

  Ryan knows Tiff has every intention of joining her. She’ll just let a number of things delay her, as though her privileged upbringing were holding her captive until the unpleasant deed is done. Ryan believes that Tiff can’t help herself, just like Ryan’s mother can’t. Just like the landlord can’t.

  When Ryan was growing up on Long Island, young boys went around looking for driveways and walks to shovel to make a few dollars. Nobody comes around here, probably because their parents think it isn’t safe to be out alone, pounding on strangers’ apartment doors. Actually, she doesn’t mind shoveling by herself. She doesn’t even mind that Tiff and the two female med students on the first floor and the hippie-looking couple with the baby on the second floor don’t pitch in: After all, it really isn’t their responsibility. She likes the exercise and being alone. She also likes the stillness of the usually busy street that’s been muffled by snow. Besides, the cold air will help clear her mind, which has begun to suffocate in the steam heat of the radiators and the thought of the email she received a week ago from Brackton.

  She sinks the wide curved shovel into the drift and it goes nearly all the way to the sidewalk, the snow is so light and dry. Some weight applied, a big push, and she scrapes the pavement in front of her like a human plow, leaving the thinnest coat of white as though it’s been dusted with confectioners’ sugar. But even a foot of light snow proves too heavy to remove with just pushing. She’ll need to chip away at it.

  She’s halfway down the sidewalk when she notices a man plodding up the deserted street. His pumpkin-colored down jacket is deflated and worn, with a few feathers straggling out of holes in both sleeves. The black hood of a sweatshirt is pulled down over his eyes; he has no gloves or cap. As he gets closer, she can see black hair on the backs of his hands. His acne-scarred face is dehydrated, his lips chapped. He slows down as he approaches her.

  “Can I give you a hand?”

  “I’m almost finished, thanks.” She does not make eye contact with him. Her heart flutters with a rush of adrenaline.

  She can hear that the Greek man across the street has stopped his meticulous removal of snow from his stoop. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him leaning against his shovel, facing in her direction, taking in the situation.

  “This your car?” the stranger asks, indicating the mound in front of the building.

  “Yes.” It’s the car she needs dug out by tomorrow so she can get to the nursing home in Newton Highlands.

  He begins cleaning off the snow from her windshield with big swooping movements of his arms.

  “I have a brush for that,” she says.

  “But it’s in your car, and you can’t open the doors until you’ve cleared the snow off.” The way he pronounces some vowels tells her he’s a local, probably from Revere or Dorchester.

  “You don’t need to get all wet. Really, I can do it.”

  The Greek man resumes his work, alternating his shoveling with casting vigilant glances across the street at the stranger and Ryan.

  “I like to shovel snow,” he says. “I like being out in the cold air.”

  “Me too,” she answers too quickly. She doesn’t want to encourage him.

  “Do you know anyone on the block who needs shovelin’? I’m in between jobs, a little down on my luck. I like to work. I just want to make a few bucks ’til I’m back on my feet. I was in construction but I got laid off a few years back. Still not much work in buildin’ these days. Been in and outta work. I’m stayin’ at the cot shelter at the church around the corner. But just for a few weeks. I’m hopin’ to work with a buddy down in Jersey. Let me give you a hand with that.”

  She gives him the shovel and he rhythmically works his way down the walk in no time, then starts on her car.

  “I’ll run up and get you something,” she says when he’s finished.

  “Don’t bother. It was my pleasure. Piece a cake.”

  “How about a cup of coffee? It’s made.” She’ll bring it down, of course.

  “That’s nice of you. But I’m gonna keep goin’ and see if I can pick up a few jobs. I don’t care what they pay me. I just like to work. God bless.” He smiles and continues down the street.

  She feels bad for having pegged him as some sort of derelict. He’s just another unemployed statistic in this struggling economy and proof that your luck can turn on you on a dime. Didn’t hers? She should have insisted on getting him that coffee. Jason would have gotten it to him, and he wouldn’t have speculated on the man’s vices or worried about his own safety, particularly in the middle of the street in broad daylight. Okay. She was a woman and that accounted for some apprehension. Jason had been at the helm of social service organizations for several causes at the university: tutoring students in South Boston, collecting clothes for natural disaster victims, volunteering to build hospitals and schools in remote Peruvian hill towns. Tiffany might have been joking when she called him Christ, but Jason’s nickname at school had actually been Jesus, and was genuinely bestowed upon him.

  Maybe Ryan can make a flyer for the man and leaflet the neighborhood, or post it in supermarkets and cafés and have the church’s number in little tear-offs on the bottom. But who to ask for? She doesn’t even know his name. She should have been kinder to him. She should at least have asked his name, shaken his hand. He’s disappeared from sight now. Maybe if she goes over to the cot shelter, she’ll find him and advertise for him. She envisions him owning his own pickup, with a plow attached to the front and cleaning big boxparking lots; in summer he’d be a landscaper.

  Chapter 5

  Monday, January 20

  BY MORNING, SHE’S all but forgotten about the stranger. He did say he might have work with a friend in Jersey.
In her high laced-up black suede boots and black tights, short black skirt and black fedora, she’s overdressed for an office where the lawyers prefer to dress down, making business casual more like barbecue casual, with jeans and T-shirts the typical attire. She tried to start a dress-up day, but was voted down five to one. They were a nonprofit in a dingy office above a pho restaurant in Downtown Crossing and didn’t see the need to formalize their wardrobes when they weren’t litigating. It’s crossed Ryan’s mind that the absence of a dress code rather than any moral or social obligation was why they had chosen to work for this organization.

  She makes an effort not to think about Jason and the contest she won and the hole in her heart, but no matter where she turns, something or someone reminds her of him. Almost a year and a half, and she still can’t shake him. This morning, it’s the damn sign in front of the old stone church across from the T station: Taizé Prayer Today at 7 p.m. When had they started that practice? A ridiculous event, she concludes: people deep in meditation, lighting candles, singing verses. Might as well be a Pentecostal service with followers jumping up and down and speaking in tongues like lunatics.

  That wasn’t how she had felt at the Taizé Prayer she attended at Driscoll University. She had gone to the basement of Loyola Chapel on a mission: to emblazon her memory in the heart of Jason McDermott. The chapel was unilluminated, and she could barely see in front of her. She had taken the first empty pew she came upon, and as luck have it, when her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw that she was sitting two pews behind and a little to the right of Jason, affording her a perfect view of him. He was alone, kneeling, eyes closed, head bowed and cradled in the palms of his hands. With his fingers spread apart, she could see the intensity of expression that signaled he was deep in meditation, far away. What was he praying for? A date with her? She knew even then the answer to that, and she questioned getting involved with a boy so drawn to religion.