“You can’t wear that.” Lindie’s disapproving tone masked the itchiness of her palms, the shallow lump of her heart as it fluttered far too fast. She wanted to cover June with a blanket. “The movie’s set right after the Civil War.”
In the mirror, June’s face grew solemn. This was the same face she’d made two summers before, the day she’d had to break the news that the robins had flown from their nest and she’d found one of the downy hatchlings with a broken neck just below it. But her voice stayed cheery. “Do me up?” Her dress was open in the back, showing the sweet press of her shoulder blades through her slip. Lindie could just make out the delicate outline of her white brassiere, and ached to lay her palms against those small winged plates, but she sat on her hands. If she didn’t fasten the dress, June wouldn’t be able to step outside; someone had to save her from flouncing around town looking like some Columbus doctor’s wife.
June turned, head tipped to the side, like Lindie was a disobedient child to be indulged. She came to Lindie, sat on the bed, and sighed. “I got a letter. From Artie. He comes back this morning.”
“But the mail hasn’t come yet.”
June held her breath, then let it out. “I got it yesterday.”
Lindie flung herself from the bed. They’d wasted a whole day. “You knew he was coming back and you didn’t tell me?” That was why June had been so evasive the night before.
Lindie swiped her dirty overalls up from the floor and stepped into them as if donning armor for battle. “We have to do something, June.” She hadn’t ever truly believed Artie Danvers would be back in time. He’d been gone for months, first in Louisiana, then Texas, then Mississippi—anywhere his brother, Clyde, had a business interest, anywhere but St. Jude. Sure, he’d been sending June postcards, but they were bland and unromantic—“Tried a chicken-fried steak,” “Went to a tractor pull”—and June couldn’t be serious that she was going to hitch herself to that wagon, not based on a couple of quiet strolls around Center Square before he’d abandoned her for more than half a year.
“You’ll have to slip out the window,” June said as Lindie untangled herself from the nightdress she’d borrowed. “Mother’s up.”
The gall, thought Lindie, the gall. Once she’d been welcomed through the Two Oaks front door, but now she had to climb out the window like some common thief, and only because of Cheryl Ann. Cheryl Ann, who had all but banished Eben and Lindie from the house. They weren’t even invited to Sunday dinner anymore! It ached Lindie’s center to remember what Two Oaks had once offered; she grasped the memory of listening to Queen for a Day and The Romance of Helen Trent on the parlor floor, poking her small fingers into the honeycombed holes of the radio console’s speaker. Well, fat chance she’d ever get to do that again.
It was obvious (to Lindie at least) that Cheryl Ann blamed Eben for her husband Marvin’s death. As though just because Marvin and Eben had served together in the war, Eben could be held responsible for Marvin’s reenlisting for Korea! Or for getting killed there! Or for secretly losing all his money to gambling! Cheryl Ann certainly didn’t blame Clyde Danvers, who’d also served with Eben and Marvin; in fact, she was marrying her daughter off to Clyde’s brother. It was no coincidence that the Danverses were the second-richest family in town. Cheryl Ann was a social-climbing snob, but Lindie tried to keep her opinions of June’s mother to herself.
She freed her head from the nightgown. She clipped the overalls over her shoulders with a huff, then spat in her hands and rubbed them across her hair, noticing, with deep satisfaction, how hard June tried not to shudder at the sight.
“You’re ruining your life, June,” she said sharply.
June’s face turned red, but, as usual, she didn’t take the bait. “The only thing I’m ruining,” she said evenly, lifting the empty plate that had held Apatha’s cookies, “is breakfast, if I miss it.”
Lindie stuck out her tongue. “Fine.”
June reached for the doorknob. “Fine.” She pulled open the door and headed out into the upstairs hall, where she was reduced to the sharp ticking of her heels down the wide oak stairway. Her sweet scent wafted back through the narrow gap as the door began to close.
Lindie was filled with regret. She suddenly remembered the strawberry dress, the plan for breakfast, the promise of Apatha’s biscuits. She rushed to the door brimming with apology. She caught only the briefest glimpse of the nut brown hallway, streaming with the buttery glow the stained-glass windows cast onto the main landing. But then the door fell shut. Lindie thought of June’s shoulder blades against the taut slip and kicked the bedpost until the pain in her toe matched what filled the rest of her.
Eben had once told Lindie that June’s father, Marvin, lugged a box of watercolors all over the Pacific islands, taking five minutes here and there to sketch a new leaf or the battered canteen from which he swigged his water. That is, until their C.O. found him painting during mealtime. The man in charge had smashed the paints with the toe of his boot, grinding them into the earth until they were useless. “Real goddamn bastard,” Eben had said then, shaking his head. Lindie could count on one hand the number of times she’d heard her soft-spoken father swear.
June’s easel was by the window. When June wanted to, she could go on and on about natural light like she was Vermeer, but Lindie didn’t mind, because June’s whole being got dreamy whenever she felt close to what her father had passed along. Lindie bent to the painting: a still life of Cheryl Ann’s favorite blue vase, some kind of red fruit, and six red beads scattered atop a stack of Uncle Lem’s leather tomes. Lindie leaned in and made out the script of the only visible binding. The title was sketched out in delicate yellow paint: A Compendium of Greek Tales.
Lindie realized with delight that she’d inspired a piece of art. The funny red fruit was meant to be a pomegranate, of course, and the little beads were supposed to be the seeds that grew inside it. A few weeks earlier they’d been talking about Persephone’s tale, which June had read for the first time, on Lindie’s recommendation. June had remarked how foolish she found the girl in the story; why hadn’t she had the self-control to resist eating the food from the underworld? It didn’t seem that hard. Lindie, for her part, had confessed that she’d have gobbled up all the seeds, an admission that had set June into knowing giggles.
Lindie didn’t know enough about art to tell whether June’s painting was any good. She liked it, but she suspected that was mostly because she liked the feeling of knowing she’d helped bring it about. It was clear that June was never really happy with any of the paintings she made up here in her bedroom overlooking the wide Two Oaks lawn. June would nestle each finished piece against the side of her wardrobe as soon as it was dry; not one of them ever saw the light of day again.
But at least it was something. At least it was hers. Which was another reason Lindie was so opposed to this marriage; because she knew how easily June would give her paintings up. Lindie could’ve bet fifty bucks—if she’d had it—that the day June became Artie’s wife, she’d set down her paintbrushes and never pick them up again. She’d move into the stark home Artie owned on Center Square and set about sprucing it up. She’d sew curtains. Tuesday would be tuna casserole night. And Lindie would be the sucker skulking around June’s back porch, waiting to be given a job—pinning up the laundry, say, or entertaining the baby that was sure to come—while June darned the man’s socks and tutted over a stain in those stupid curtains.
Then came the scrape of chairs across the dining room floor. Lindie’s cue.
Lindie squinted out at the now-bright morning, checking her own front porch to make sure Eben wasn’t there. Although he likely knew where she was, they had a tacit agreement that he’d never witness her sneaky entrances and exits; what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him when it came to Cheryl Ann. But no, good, her father was nowhere in sight. Best Lindie could do was pray he wasn’t looking out the kitchen window, because the glare made it impossible to tell.
She ran her hand acro
ss the windowsill and imagined she could feel Two Oaks sighing under her touch, like a beloved pet leaning into a scritch behind the ears. She didn’t suppose she’d be coming here much once June was Mrs. Artie Danvers. Lindie took one last look around the bedroom, breathing it in, then lowered first one bare foot, then the other, over the windowsill. She dropped down to a crouch on the shingled roof and scurried to the overhang, all the while remembering Uncle Lem’s voice from the days before he’d lost it, explaining the entablature at the top of the house above her—“three layers, Linda Sue: architrave, frieze, and cornice”; the neoclassical design he loved so well—“Corinthian columns support both the porches and the classical pediment with the gabled roof above,” and saying of the brass lion head in the plate around the front door handle, “Well, I suppose I had a great deal of pride in those days.”
Lindie loved the flow of the words porte cochere almost as much as she hated the indignity of having to climb down the columns that held it up. Her feet found the far side of the smooth column, and her torso and hands followed the downward pull of gravity. She landed atop the three feet of rough stone upon which the column rested, and checked the street for passersby. She was hidden from the dining room, which lay beyond her, where June and her mother and Uncle Lem were already chewing their omelets and potatoes and sausages, pouring milk from crystal pitchers and serving themselves from silver trays, as Apatha listened from the pantry for the buzzer under Cheryl Ann’s right toe.
Lindie let her body fall the final drop to the driveway. As she landed, she remembered her movie magazines still strewn across June’s bedroom. She’d get them next time, which meant, she realized with delight, that there had to be a next time.
Uncle Lem’s yellow brick monument to his fortune lay at the center of the entire city block—the front door sitting on South Street, which would take one right into town. The acres of lush, mown grass were edged with azaleas and rhododendrons. Daffodils and crocuses lined the sidewalks in spring; decorative cabbages did the same in winter; and, for now, the roses were in bloom, sweet in scent and dangerous to the touch. Lindie crouched in the loamy earth, at the foot of the fluorescent pink azaleas that boxed the building. She scrambled toward the front of the house, coming even with the wide, white porch, toes tickled by grass. Then she sprinted out onto the front lawn, alive with bees and butterflies. A robin flushed into the air.
Nearly to the sidewalk, she heard the triumphant sweep of a broom. She froze. She was already caught. Apatha—she knew without even looking. And yes, there the old woman was, standing in the middle of the front walkway, only a few feet away. Apatha took her time scanning the sorry sight—dirty feet, stained overalls, messy hair—finally shaking her head in a fashion that filled even Lindie with disappointment. Above them, a tangle of sparrows battled through the oak, sending down a scattering of new leaves.
It was a sacrilege to trample the Two Oaks lawn. Lindie knew this, and she played toward it, hoping she could divert the old woman’s attention from the real transgression of climbing down the side of the house in broad daylight. Lindie hung her head and ambled onto the path, wincing at the slate’s heat under her bare soles. Apatha’s stare bored into her. Then she lifted her chin toward the center of town.
“You know,” Apatha said carefully, her voice thin but as strong as steel, “I’ll bet if you waltzed up to that movie set, and told them your father served in the war with that producer, Mr. Shields, you could get yourself a job.”
Lindie had gathered bits about Mr. Shields on her own, through the vent in her bedroom floor. There’d been many local men who’d served together—including Eben, Clyde, and Marvin—although it was beyond her how anyone had failed to mention that they’d also fought with a famous Hollywood producer. Apparently, the movie Mr. Alan Shields was making with MGM had just lost its location in northern New York, something about a flood or a drought; in all the excitement, Lindie had lost the details. What mattered was the movie was called Erie Canal. What mattered was that MGM needed a canal, and pronto. The studio already had money invested, two movie stars who’d filmed all the interiors and whose calendars had been cleared until the end of June, and a Hollywood film crew sitting around twiddling their thumbs. What mattered was that St. Jude had a canal running right through Center Square.
“Mr. Shields owes your father his life,” Apatha said gravely.
“From the war?” Lindie asked, hoping for a gory detail or two. Her father rarely talked about that time.
“And as far as I can tell,” Apatha went on, ignoring Lindie’s eagerness, “now that your father found him his location, Mr. Shields owes your daddy two favors.”
Lindie knew Eben didn’t see it that way. He was not a man to count good deeds; she’d heard him say as much through the vent when a few of his buddies—over for the evening, free to talk and drink and smoke away from their wives—praised him for bringing all that Hollywood money to town. He protested that all he’d ever done was sit around a campfire in the Laruma Valley and tell Alan about the stink of the canal on hot August days. It was Alan who’d remembered that conversation all these years later, and, desperate for a location, had flown in with his location scout.
Apatha wore a calico apron over her ironed dress, and smelled of the kitchen, of yeast and cinnamon and butter. Lindie was seized with the desire to fling her arms around the old woman, to lay a kiss upon the dry, sour cheek. But then, Apatha was also the one who’d allowed Cheryl Ann to turn her away; Lindie couldn’t soon forget that. She crossed her arms defensively. “What if I don’t want a job?”
Apatha’s eyes shot up to the corner of the house from which Lindie had just emerged. “Seems to me you’ve got free time on your hands.” She nodded over Lindie’s shoulder, where Eben had come out to the rocking chair on his front porch. Lindie ducked her head, thinking of the talking-to she was sure to get from him as well.
Apatha reached her long hand into her right apron pocket. She pulled out a piece of linen. Inside was what Lindie had hoped for since she’d awakened: two hot biscuits. Her mouth watered. She lifted her eyes from the food to Apatha’s face, landing on a soft pillow of pity.
“Let her go now,” Apatha said softly. “Before it’s hard, Linda Sue, just let her go.” She pressed the biscuits into Lindie’s hands with her cool, knotted fingers. Then cut her eyes away, and walked slowly back toward the mansion’s far side, using the broom as a cane. Lindie watched her disappear behind the side of the porch, knowing she’d turn back in through the kitchen door—the only one Cheryl Ann let her use anymore.
Eben grinned up from his favorite rocking chair, wedged in between the front door and the wall that separated his tiny porch from the sidewalk. A book about Chicago lay open in his hand. “You got caught again,” he said with glee as, on the other side of the street, Thelma Weadock and Donnagene Lutz scurried toward Center Square.
“It’s Chicago now?” Lindie asked coldly. The biscuits had only taken the edge off her spite.
Her father looked down at the book’s spine and frowned as if he was only just seeing the city’s name. “Who’s to say? There’s a whole world out there.” He shrugged. “I could hang a shingle.” He said it brightly, as if the idea of leaving St. Jude was the best one he’d ever had. As if Lindie didn’t have her own life here.
“You’re going to abandon Lemon?” Lindie was already tired from the day’s many fights. Her hand curled into a fist behind her back.
Eben waved his hand dismissively and frowned. “Not until he’s gone, Lindie, you know that.”
“And what about Apatha?”
Bobby Prange and Walter Eberle rode past, their dirty Keds spinning the pedals of their Schwinns. Sunlight sparkled across the neat edges of their flattop haircuts, the kind Lindie longed to sport herself and, in lieu of that, dreamed of running beneath her palms like newly shorn lawns. “Lindie! Lindie!” they called, without slowing. “They’re here! They’re making the movie for real!” There was no chance to learn more—already, the boys
were gone, zipping toward town and Main Street and the canal in Center Square. These were the boys with whom Lindie had stapled together a grid of Dixie cups across Reverend Crane’s front and back porches early one Sunday morning, filling them with water so they were impossible to empty without spilling everywhere; the poor man had had to climb out his window to get to church on time. With June married off, Lindie could already see it would be a summer full of bullfrog catching and hot dog eating contests, of daring each other to steal Chiclets or Beemans Black Jack from Schillinger’s Drug. They’d ride out to the Prange alfalfa farm and shoot at tin cans and practice blowing smoke circles, and the boys’ mothers would try to tame her with snacks of buttered saltines and Mott’s apple juice. But she knew it would be a long time before she slept in a nightgown again, or ran a bristled brush through her hair.
The sound of a motor pulled Eben from his rocking chair and turned Lindie’s attention toward the road. It was Clyde Danvers in the duo-tone Chevrolet Bel Air he’d driven home just after Christmas. He was headed to Center Square too. Lindie hadn’t gotten used to the sight of Clyde in his new car, which she knew her father didn’t think he needed, since Clyde also had a perfectly good four-door Oldsmobile, which did nothing much these days beyond protect his drive from rain.
Clyde pulled up in front of the house. He whistled to her father in their usual way.
“Hello, old man.” Eben laughed, saluting from the porch.
“Hey, Uncle Clyde.” It was what she’d called him forever, even though he was no relation.
Eben was quick to disparage anyone looking to buy happiness, but Lindie couldn’t fault Uncle Clyde for enjoying the finer things in life. She had a soft spot for the man who’d always flipped her the spare change from his pockets and had gotten her her first pellet gun. Sure, he was also funding June’s wedding, and helping Cheryl Ann marry June off—to his strange beanpole of a brother, no less—but Lindie knew how single-minded Cheryl Ann could be, so she didn’t fault Clyde for that disaster, not by a mile. She just supposed Cheryl Ann had steamrolled him into it, as was her wont.
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