June

by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

  “So what exactly are you upset about?” At first, Nick’s question sounded accusatory, judgmental, but she looked at his placid face, and realized he was really just asking.

  She sighed. “Part of me wants to find out she had this great love with Jack Montgomery. Or even just a hot night, you know? Passion. Something fun. But it also scares me, because if I didn’t know this huge important thing about her, which was maybe the most important thing there was to know…”

  He waited for her to finish, and when she didn’t he said, “Then you think you didn’t ever really know her?”

  The few tears that had ambled down her cheeks had been precursors to the sobs that now wracked her body. “And then we had this huge fight last summer, and apparently she was sick, but she never told me, I didn’t find out about her tumor until after she was already in the hospital. I got on the first plane I could, but…”

  “Lunchtime!” The sound of Hank’s voice, accompanied by a clanging bell, ricocheted off the back porch. Cassie wiped her cheeks with her shirt at once and hopped up, accidentally kicking over Nick’s tea as he, too, scrambled to his feet. They looked guilty. Meanwhile, the bell clanged maniacally in Hank’s hand. “I love this thing!” she called. “I found it in the pantry!”

  “What’s for lunch?” Nick asked.

  “Margaret’s cauliflower bisque.”

  Cassie’s stomach rumbled with reluctant enthusiasm as Hank disappeared into the dining room.

  Nick looked back at her once Hank was out of sight. “Maybe she kept it a secret to protect you,” he said. “Maybe she didn’t want you to ever feel this terrible, and she thought that keeping silent was the best way to make that happen.”

  But Cassie needed this conversation to be over now; she’d dug too deeply, too quickly. She forced a smile. She made her voice light. “Everyone loves Margaret, huh?”

  Nick looked briefly panic-stricken. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said crisply. He turned away from her and charged toward the house. As she crossed the lawn behind him, Cassie watched that tight spot between his shoulders and wondered how it was possible to ache to feel someone’s lips one minute and be just as certain that you wanted to punch him in the gut the next.

  “My darlings!” Elda took up most of the entrance of Uncle Lem’s, arms outstretched, swathed in scarves, reeking of patchouli. She was larger than life: her voice a little louder than it needed to be, hands flung wider, smile just a bit too broad. She pulled Hank and Nick and, yes, even Tate, into a firm hug that looked uncomfortable. “My sweet, sweet darlings.” She stuck out her bottom lip. “Less than a week ago we said good-bye to that wretched, wonderful man…” Tate pulled away, narrowing her eyes as she watched Elda smear Hank’s and Nick’s cheeks with greasy kisses. Just when Cassie thought Elda’s grief might go nuclear, Elda caught sight of her and dropped the others like dirty rags.

  “Is this her? Can this beautiful creature possibly be her?” Elda charged Cassie with an ample smile. Just before impact, Elda stood back, assessing with a cocked head. “Well, goddamn it, she looks just like him. Same red aura.”

  Tate shot a sharp look at Nick.

  Cassie stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Would you like to get settled?” Nick asked, stepping forward for Elda’s bags.

  But it was futile. Elda smacked Cassie’s fingers aside and plunged her into a gut buster, from which she released Cassie only after the girl gasped.

  “This house is epic,” Elda said then, her voice booming as she turned in the foyer to take it all in. “You’re sitting on a treasure.” She stopped and caught Cassie’s eye. “Haunted, right?” She winked. “I can smell it. You must have the most tremendous, orgasmic, Neanderthal nightmares in this place.”

  Nick interrupted with the suggestion that they discuss sleeping arrangements.

  They were going to have to play musical beds because there were only four big bedrooms. Cassie volunteered to sleep on the couch, but everyone balked. Tate claimed to be thrilled with giving up the master bedroom, but they all knew that wasn’t happening. Hank ohmygoshsuperlovedherroom but was totally into giving it to Elda, except that Hank’s bedroom was right beside Tate’s, and everyone but Elda knew that Tate wanted Elda as far away as possible. That left Nick’s room, the one isolated at the end of the hall, and, since he was the gentleman in the group, he insisted on moving Elda in there, which meant his only options were the couch, or a mattress on the floor in either the maid’s tiny room right above the kitchen or the third-floor ballroom, where the bats would be roaming free, at least until the man came to relocate them.

  —

  “Are you sure you’ll be okay in here?” Cassie asked an hour later, as she helped Nick clear the floor of the maid’s room, restacking her boxes along its edge. Hank would return from Walmart soon with an inflatable mattress to fill the whole space. This room was much bigger than the one Cassie had rented in New York, but it felt positively minuscule in a house this size.

  “I can sleep anywhere.” Nick grimaced as he gripped a particularly heavy box. “What’s in here?”

  “My photography stuff,” she said, surveying the only belongings she’d brought with her, back when she’d been full of dreams of turning this big house into some kind of art studio. She couldn’t forget the doubting way Jim had shaken his head at her, or ignore how right he’d been.

  “You should unpack it. You should use it.”

  She’d been flirting with the idea herself, of seeing if she could turn the pantry into a darkroom, ever since she’d picked up her camera again. She shrugged noncommittally though.

  “Why’d you move here?” he asked. “Sounds like you had a good thing going in New York. That Times review was something.”

  She had the whole thing memorized: Cassandra Danvers’s remarkable installation is just the right mix of acidic and angry, to re-create, in its viewer, the acute sensations of the emotionally bereft. She flinched at the memory. Most days she wanted to forget the whole thing: all those hours of work, the sudden attention, Jim turning green with envy, the phone calls from the collectors, and, yes, even an inquiry from the Whitney Biennial, and then, right when she thought she had everything she wanted, her grandmother’s ashen face in the middle of the gallery, the way she’d looked like she might faint on the spot, her quick retreat to the sidewalk, her shocked expression when she said those words to Cassie out on the corner while she tried to hail a cab—“What have you done, Cassandra? That was for us”—and the ensuing weeks of silence, until the call Cassie got from the hospital. After nursing June through her last days into the dark night of her death, Cassie had returned to New York, tried to make it what it had been to her so recently, a place of hope and opportunity. But that had proved impossible, and on a cold December day, she’d put most of her worldly possessions on the curb, tossed her iPhone into the East River, and taken the Greyhound back to Ohio.

  But she didn’t want to talk about June.

  “My boyfriend asked me to marry him,” she said instead, because that was also the truth. Poor Jim, who didn’t even believe in marriage, desperate enough to keep her in New York that he believed putting a ring on her finger would solve their problems.

  Did Nick look hurt? If he did, the glance was fleeting. And why should he care that someone had once wanted to marry her?

  “I guess your answer was no.”

  She held out her hands to refer to the house, and was about to reply with something momentous and heart-pounding and cinematic—“I married this instead” or “What, you haven’t seen my husband around here?” (accompanied by a sad smile), or simply, “The answer, my friend, was no”—but before she could muster it, they heard a clattering on the floorboards above them. They both looked up as it intensified. It was coming from the ballroom.

  “Animal?” he asked.

  She blew the hair off her face and shouldered her box to the side of the room. “Probably one of those bats.”

  “Shouldn’t a
bat be asleep?” There it was again, panicked, scuttling. A raccoon? But how would it have gotten up there?

  Nick leaned forward with an excited smile. “Let’s investigate,” he said, and, before she could protest, he left her.

  Cassie followed him across the upstairs hall. The door to Tate’s bedroom was closed. They could hear murmurs coming from behind it, a good sign, Cassie thought, since it meant Tate and Elda were catching up. Maybe they’d already found something helpful about their father and June; the possibility heartened Cassie as she climbed to the third floor at Nick’s heels.

  She’d forgotten how warm it got up there during the day. How it smelled of old wax mixed with something like straw or hay. How the heat combined with the scent of mown grass coming through the cracked windows made her want to curl up and sleep. They crouched in the doorway, listening. At first they heard nothing, and she made a crack about getting back to work, but just then the sound came again, a thwack against the window, followed by a panicked flutter. Nick put his hand up to his lips and stepped into the ballroom.

  The sound was coming from the wing to their left, which stood above the foyer and, above that, Cassie’s bedroom. They rounded the corner with their hands raised; Cassie wished they’d thought to bring tennis rackets, or at least a broom.

  They saw the robin at once. It was still, on the floor, and Cassie felt a sick quaver in her gut; she didn’t think she could handle a dying animal just now. But, at the sight of them, the robin startled, flying over their heads and battering itself against the line of windows at the back of the house; the bird was perfectly fine.

  “It’s trapped,” she observed.

  Nick nodded. “Wonder how it got up here.”

  “We should call someone.” She didn’t quite know who, but Hank would, and she started toward the stairs, keeping her eye on the bird the whole time, now hunkered down on the other end of the vast room. But Nick was going to the closet, the one she’d been avoiding, and opening it before she could tell him not to.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered as she heard him rustling around in there. She angled herself out of the sight of the closet; she didn’t think she was ready to see what it looked like inside.

  He emerged with bits of plaster on his head, empty-handed. “There’s a hole in your roof,” he said calmly, and then he started to unbutton his shirt.

  She stared at him, in wonder and confusion—was this really how he was going to seduce her? With a dive-bombing bird in their midst? After confirming her worst home ownership fears? She laughed.

  “What? I’m going to help it.”

  “How?” She tried not to peek at his nakedness as he pulled his arms from the sleeves. His biceps were muscled, his chest smooth, and the smallest trail of hair traced from his navel down into his waistband.

  “I was looking for a sheet or something,” he said, as if that explained it. He opened the shirt before him and crouched down, then crept toward the far end of the ballroom and the bird.

  Cassie thought, for sure, that the robin would fly again, but Nick’s movements were calm and deliberate. He was halfway to it when, in a low voice, he said, “Once I’ve caught it, I’m going to need you to come open a window.”

  Her pulse was pounding in her ears, her eyes darting back and forth between Nick and the bird as he neared it. The tension was akin to what she felt watching a scary movie; she put her hand to her chest and nearly gasped with each step Nick took. She wanted to take a picture—she knew it would be beautiful—but she was grateful she’d left her camera downstairs. She’d rather just be there, in the strange moment when time seemed to stand still and only a bird seemed to matter. Putting a camera to her eye would have taken her away.

  The robin twitched and fluttered its wings, but it did not fly. Nick froze. He waited until the animal stilled. Then he began his slow progression toward it once again.

  The bird flapped its wings when Nick was only a few feet away. Cassie would have ducked, but Nick took his chance and flung his shirt wide, hooking it over the robin like a net. The small body thrashed under the fabric, but the shirt did its job. In seconds, Nick had scooped up the whole bundle while Cassie ran to the window just beyond him, flinging it open.

  Nick lifted the shirt out into the open air. The robin flew free.

  Cassie turned to Nick. He was slick with a dewy layer of sweat. He was smiling. She wanted to kiss him. So she did.

  He kissed her back, a slow, long kiss that made her knees go soft. He smelled of that deodorant from the days when lust first stirred in her, but more deeply, he smelled of himself. She realized she had grown to treasure the way he smelled. It was incredible to be kissing him.

  He tucked a feather of hair behind her ear, pulled back, and beamed. “I’m glad you said no,” he whispered, and she knew he meant Jim, and she was glad too, even though at the time it had been heartbreaking.

  Nick leaned in for another kiss. He drew her up against him, and she felt the skins of their arms touch, felt the whole front of her body lean against the bare front of his, and that pressing against each other was right and risky.

  He pulled away again and said, “Get your roof fixed.” She nodded and silenced him with a soft, long kiss.

  “Don’t let her hand you her sweaty towels anymore,” she said when she came up for air, since it seemed they were swapping advice. She was about to go in for another one, relishing the firm press of his hands as they moved down across her back, when they heard something downstairs, just below them. Not an animal, but just as feral; the desperate tones of a sudden, piercing squabble.

  “Shit.”

  Nick was already halfway across the ballroom, hitching his arms through his sleeves. Cassie was a half step behind him. They dashed down the stairs and discovered the famous sisters on the floor below, on either side of the doorframe to the master bedroom, faces inches apart. It was hard to untangle their voices; each was high-pitched and venomous.

  Tate: “You shut up right now, you keep your mouth shut, you will leave this house before I’ll hear you talk that way again.”

  Elda: “Oh, I’m sorry to burst your bubble, little princess, I’m sorry the world isn’t all lollipops and blow jobs, but he was a dick, Sis, a D. I. C. K. dick. Does the fact that he gave everything to a stranger not clue you in to that fact?”

  It was clear they would have happily gone on like that for hours had Nick not managed to push Tate into the bedroom and shut the door with both of them inside. Cassie was left in the hallway with Elda, whose nostrils flared.

  Elda pointed her finger toward her sister’s closed door again and again, as if pressing an elevator button. “She is ludicrously stubborn.” Inside, Cassie could hear the low rumbling of Nick and Tate’s exchange, but she couldn’t make out the words. Elda went on. “Why she gives two shits whether he was a good man is beyond me. He was a Hollywood star! Are we surprised he was diddling farm girls? No, we are not!”

  On the other side of the thick oak door, Tate raised her voice in response, but Nick shushed her again. Cassie decided not to go after the farm girl comment. “He was her father,” she said.

  Elda’s knowing laugh shook the hall. “He was my father too, and that’s precisely why”—she raised her voice again—“I see who he truly was.” To Cassie, she said, “She thinks her parents had some kind of great romance.” Her voice turned to poisoned sugar. “Jack Montgomery and Diane DeSoto and their adorable daughter, Tate.” She buried her finger into her chest. “But I was there. I was witness. I was the one who saw him belittle Diane. Who saw how she berated and threatened and, yes, spat at him. Who saw her snort and drink everything in sight.” Her voice lobbed again toward the door. “The truth is, they hated each other. It’s no surprise she killed herself.”

  The door swung open as Tate flung herself into the hallway. Her face was now crimson, her hands murderous. Cassie took a step back as Tate closed in on Elda. “Don’t. You. Dare.” Tate’s voice was no longer shrill; it was icy and filled with powe
r.

  Even Elda seemed a touch concerned. She backed toward the stairwell, holding her hands up in supplication. Behind Tate, Nick scratched at his brow. He approached Tate and placed his hand gently on her back just as she reached toward her sister’s neck.

  “Tate,” Nick said, moving his hand to Tate’s shoulder.

  She shook him off.

  “Tate, take a step back.”

  “Get off me.”

  Nick flinched, but he wasn’t moving; Cassie felt proud of him for holding his ground, and burned at Tate’s nasty expression as the woman went at her sister once again.

  “You can’t do this,” Nick said, this time closing his hand around Tate’s arm.

  She wheeled on him. “What are you, deaf? I told you: Get. Off. Me. Or do you need me to remind you where your checks are coming from?”

  Elda cackled. “You going to fire him too? Just like poor Margaret? I guess that’s something else Daddy taught you—how to treat people.”

  “Shut up shut up shut up,” Tate cried, putting her hands over her ears. “Your voice is—”

  “Enough.” Cassie heard herself bellow the word before she knew she had something to say. “This is my house. You are guests in my house and you will stop this now.” They all looked appropriately chagrined. She went on. “You.” She pointed at Elda. “You have such a good memory? I need to know everything about the summer your father spent in St. Jude.”

  “I was four,” Elda replied, crossing her arms.

  “Well, I’m guessing Tate didn’t fly you out here on her plane just so you could go at each other.”

  Tate nodded smugly in agreement, as though her hands were clean. But Cassie jabbed her finger at her. “You want to get out of Ohio as soon as possible?”