June

by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

  Then Ripvogle stormed right past Clyde, and right past Lindie, down across the wide front lawn, Clyde nipping at his heels the whole way.

  Lindie trembled behind the rhododendron bush. She laid her hand against Two Oaks’s cool brick and tried to keep from crying. It seemed so obvious now: all along, Uncle Clyde had had nothing but money on his mind. Thank goodness Apatha was Lemon’s bride; Lindie told herself there’d be no way he could get at Two Oaks, because Apatha wouldn’t allow it.

  From the other side of the house came a great clattering of crystal against crystal, and the sound of the whole town hurrahing, then the orchestra striking up “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know You.”

  Lindie made her way around the front of the house, pulling leaves from her hair. Under the tent, Diane was wearing a broad, genuine smile in Jack’s arms; a smattering of applause dusted over them. Diane gazed up at Jack adoringly, but his face was a placid mask. Lindie wondered why Diane would want to hold so tightly to a man who didn’t seem to like her very much.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Lindie turned to find June standing right beside her.

  “I shouldn’t have butted in,” Lindie blurted, tears already springing to her eyes. She was flooded with forgiveness, and ready to forget June’s cruelty.

  But June shook her head. “Those were nasty things I said to you. I don’t know what’s come over me. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve become a monster, this wild, selfish beast who wants to eat everything in sight.” Her hands twisted against each other. Lindie laid her own hand on them to calm June down.

  “It’s as though there are two parts of me,” June explained, searching Lindie’s eyes for an answer. “The part that wants to do what I’m supposed to—the part that wants to be a mother and have a hope chest and live here forever. And then there’s this other, beastly part of me that I didn’t even know was there before. It doesn’t care what anyone thinks. It just wants to”—she paused, searching for a word—“eat Jack up.” She turned red, realizing what she’d said. “Not like that.”

  “Sometimes like that,” Lindie offered, then giggled, wondering if she’d gone too far.

  June was the color of a beet, but a smile slunk across her lips. Lindie felt a wave of relief.

  Cheryl Ann waved frantically from the side door, calling June’s name. June sighed and tipped her head toward the house. “I’ll find you?”

  “Sure.”

  June’s hand cupped Lindie’s elbow and squeezed, and then she walked to meet her mother.

  Lindie let the insults drift away, up into the purple night. The nearly quartered moon was finally in the right spot; the stars were scattered around it like thousands of its children. It was beautiful, this party, all the people she’d grown up with dressed as though they were part of a movie themselves, everyone laughing and dancing, Two Oaks spangled like a lady too. Torches twinkled. Lindie drifted into the backyard, then up the back porch and into the house, picking up bits of conversation and amusement, watching people flirt and compliment.

  —

  Nearly an hour later, belly full, head a bit fuzzy from some stolen gin, Lindie found herself back out on the side lawn. Children were being carried home, the middle-aged bidding their good-byes. The musicians were taking their final break, and she could hear the tinny sound of the record player playing Count Basie from the ballroom. She had just decided to fight her way back inside and up the humid staircase when her arm was suddenly clenched from behind, the rest of her held firmly in place by a hand that clamped her shoulder. Her body tensed as she strained to see who was holding her.

  “Where’s your fucking father?” Clyde’s whiskey-stained fury sprayed her ear.

  “Ouch,” she cried, prying herself away from the talons embedded in her arm. Clyde’s eyes were wild. Lindie cast around for help, but everyone was too drunk and distracted to notice his hands on her.

  “You scared?” he growled.

  “Uncle Clyde,” she said, trying to win him with reason, “what’s the matter?”

  “You should be scared. No one crosses me and gets away with it.” And with that last, spitting sentence, he let her go. Lindie ran across the lawn and into her house, mind blazing with his threat. Even in her fuzzy state, she understood that the conversation she’d overheard between Ripvogle and Clyde had something to do with her father’s “research” about Clyde’s claim to Lemon’s land. She had never seen Clyde like that, never felt frightened of him, or felt how her fright might fuel him.

  The house lay quiet. She could hear the muffled party through the walls. Her heart was a bass drum. Her eyes stung. She tore through the dark rooms, begging for her father, but he was nowhere to be found. Clyde was right—she was scared. She changed into dungarees quick as she could and tried to think of a good place to spend the night. Idlewyld was the first that came to mind.

  She was out in the garage, pushing the Schwinn toward the alleyway, when she heard the man’s voice. She ducked back into the darkness. The voice was coming from the window that led onto the alley, and she edged her way against it, grabbing a hammer from Eben’s tool bench as she went. She flattened herself against the inside wall.

  Whoever it was was standing just out there, where the garage met a tangle of thornbushes.

  “But don’t you see,” he was saying, “it’s all for you. All the booze and the music, every dance, every laugh, I put it here for you. I wanted you to see it could be like this. We could have one of these every single day.”

  “And if I don’t want this every single day?”

  “We can live in a shack by the ocean for all I care. All I want is you.”

  It was them, of course: Jack and June.

  June hesitated. “I do want to be with you.”

  “Oh, June.” His voice opened with desire.

  “But maybe it doesn’t matter what I want. What we want. It’s selfish to only do what one wants.”

  “So call us selfish then.”

  Lindie heard him kiss her. A small moan marinated in June’s throat. The sound of that quiet glory made Lindie warm and wet.

  “But I love them. Even, yes, Artie. Not anything like how I love you but—”

  “You love me?”

  June sighed. “And my mother. And even St. Jude, though I know you can’t imagine it. This is home. It’s too much to think of just walking away.”

  “If you love St. Jude so damn much, I’ll build you a replica on the Santa Monica Pier.” He was only kidding, but Lindie wondered if he was playing his part right. June’s concerns were not to be taken lightly. A breeze rustled in through a crack in the wall, and she crouched down to find the chink. It offered her a partial view, dim in the light thrown off the back porch. Jack was pressed against June, her back flat against the garage on the other side of the alleyway. Her dress was halfway up her leg.

  “But there’s a perfectly lovely St. Jude right here.” June had her hand against Jack’s chest to keep him from burying his face in her neck.

  “We can’t stay here.”

  “But this is my home.”

  “June, June.” He stepped back from her then, and took her face in his hands. “Do you want to bring them along? We’ll bring them along.” He kissed one of June’s cheeks. “Your mother.” He kissed the other one. “And that funny old man from the pharmacy.” He bent his face to her neck and kissed her there. “And the boys who set off firecrackers in the mailboxes—”

  “Don’t tease. They’re counting on me.”

  “We’ll find a way.” He rubbed her cheek. “Every promise is made to be broken.”

  She was silent then. Lindie thought June might weep, but instead she watched her look at Jack, really look at him. And then June’s arms found their way around his neck, and her lips drew up to his. Lindie sighed at the kiss, at the sound of it, at the length of it, at the way June’s breasts pressed up against Jack, and how he leaned into her with something like possession. He drew June’s arms up above her head, pinning her wrists onto the
wall. He kissed her deeply again, as if drinking from a well.

  Then he drew June’s skirt up and up and up. He gripped both her wrists together with one hand, passing his other one from her shoulder, down to her breast, then gently over her stomach and into the waistband of her underwear. June’s eyes popped open, but he kissed her again, and soon any alarm June might have experienced was replaced with a dazzle of ecstasy. Lindie felt it too, like a bolt of lightning crackling through the wall that separated them. She placed her hands against it to catch her breath, but her eyes never left the sight of June and Jack together.

  June writhed against Jack’s fingers, head tipped back. He let her arms go, supporting her weight as she collapsed into him. Every bit of her seemed to have focused and melted into that one small spot between her legs, where Jack was stroking her.

  June’s breath grew rapid. Her eyes fluttered. She moaned, and then, at once, cried out. Jack pressed his hand over her mouth; she licked and bit it until she had quieted.

  Afterward, she giggled. “On second thought, let’s not bring my mother.” Jack laughed too, then leaned forward to extinguish the laugh on her flushed cheek.

  —

  Later, much later, June found Lindie sitting on Lindie’s porch. Eben was nowhere in sight, so Lindie’d dared him home by lighting a cigarette. It was long past midnight. The party was over, but St. Jude was resisting sleep like a reluctant child.

  “You looked happy dancing with Artie,” Lindie said, because she couldn’t say, “You looked happy behind the garage with Jack.” The night had only complicated matters, when all she’d wanted was to have them smoothed out.

  But at least she’d made up with June. They sat together on the top step, and Lindie leaned her head on June’s shoulder. They watched the orchestra pack their instruments, and the waiters box the glasses and fold the linens. In the morning the trucks would come to drive everything back to Columbus. The girls’ hands looped around their knees. They were nearly invisible in the darkness.

  Sometime after that, Diane DeSoto came tearing out from behind the far side of Two Oaks. Her heels were hooked on her fingertips. The blond helmet of her hair attracted the moonlight. June grabbed Lindie’s wrist and pulled her onto the porch. They scrambled behind the safety of the porch’s wall, where they could peek out at the street but stay hidden.

  They were rewarded when Diane stopped only feet away, dropping her shoes onto the sidewalk and shuffling them on. She was sniffling, shivering, and a low hum was emanating from her that set Lindie’s teeth on edge. Then, somehow, he was there too, behind her. June shivered at the sight of him—Jack, grabbing Diane by the wrist and drawing her to him in the same forceful gesture Lindie had seen on set that day early in the shoot, when they kissed in front of the camera more than a dozen times.

  But the words out of Jack’s mouth were not loving. His other hand clenched the base of Diane’s throat. “Dare me,” he snarled. “Just dare me to destroy you.”

  A sob seized Diane. The girls watched her break free to hobble down the sidewalk. Jack watched her too. Then, as the wind sighed through the oaks, he shook his head and went after her, as though he regretted what he had no choice in doing.

  Home from Illy’s, Cassie was surprised to discover Tate and Elda seated side by side in the dining room, sifting through the three big boxes of Jack’s papers. The sisters’ pursed mouths were a matched set. Tate’s diamond flashed an occasional beam of sunlight. Cassie leaned her head against the doorframe and watched them passing documents and pictures back and forth, laughing and nodding and mmm-hmmming in the secret language of family. She clicked off a picture before they noticed her.

  “Well, hello, stranger,” Elda said, tipping her reading glasses off her nose.

  “We were worried,” Tate added.

  “We weren’t that worried. Not like Nick was worried.” Elda wriggled her eyebrows suggestively.

  “All right, all right.” Cassie’s hands shushed her as she stepped into the room. “You need help? I could be a third set of eyes.”

  “Well of course you could,” Elda said in an indulgent auntie voice, standing to clear the seat beside her of its papers.

  The Vitamix started up in the kitchen—they hadn’t been back five minutes and Hank was already prepping dinner. It seemed to Cassie that she and Hank had come to a détente; the milk shake had sealed it. Cassie was still unsure of whether they’d had a fight, and the orphan comment smarted a bit, but Cassie had a thick skin, and she felt for Hank, she really did. It was kind of gratifying to learn the girl was a wreck under that shiny façade.

  Tate explained that they’d gone through half of Jack’s personal papers and hadn’t turned up a single mention of June. She’d even called Jack’s biographer, author of Jack Montgomery: A Man of Experience, who’d interviewed Jack and Tate five years before. It was clear she adored the title, and the fact that her father had an authorized biographer, and the fact that she, herself, would someday have one too. Tate was kind of a nerd, an adorable side she never showed the public.

  The biographer didn’t have much to offer except that Erie Canal was a stepping-stone in Jack Montgomery’s storied career, and was personally significant because it had fueled Jack and Diane’s legendary romance. Diane had famously told the press, “If it weren’t for that charming little town, I’d never have fallen for Prince Charming.” Tate proudly read the quote back to them, enunciating every syllable.

  “Let’s not waste more time on chitchat.” Elda was clearly annoyed.

  “Nick’s upstairs going through the papers Hank dug up on her search through the house,” Tate added, “but he isn’t finding much, not even in that huge stack of letters from that girl named Lindie. It was mostly a lot of ‘How are things with you, how is married life, what exciting news about the baby?’ ” Tate said in a flat voice. Cassie could see she was pleased nothing was getting in the way of her parents’ mythical love story.

  “You sure you wouldn’t rather go work with Nick, Cassie?” Elda asked.

  “You don’t want me?”

  “Of course we want you. Not like Nick wants you, but…”

  Cassie had learned it was best to let Elda’s comments die. She picked a piece of paper off the top of the stack before her—it was a contract of some sort—and thumbed through it until Elda deemed her too boring to tease.

  As the afternoon passed, they settled into a rhythmic symbiosis, like working with another photographer in the darkroom. Tate would lift a pile of papers from the open box, place them at the center of the wide table, and each of them would draw and discard, as though they were children playing with a giant deck of cards. No one spoke, but the smells of Hank’s productivity in the next room buoyed them, as did the veggies and kombucha she brought in halfway through the afternoon. Cassie felt genuinely grateful, and Hank looked her right in the eye and smiled, which felt like something good.

  They stretched, they drank espresso, they left for the bathroom but came right back. The soft summer light drifted across the dining room. Cassie’s eyes limned the brown tapestried walls and their Arcadian scenes, their goatherds and Roman ruins, and she thought of June, of what June would want her to do. The truth was, they weren’t finding anything irregular at all; if her father was Jack’s son, June and Jack had both done a very good job of hiding it. The possibility of the easy answer the DNA test would provide—yes or no—was starting to sound appealing, but Cassie didn’t know if she could pull the plug on all this familying just yet. She liked it.

  Nick poked his head in and confirmed he’d found nothing of note in the Two Oaks papers. He smiled at her, and she felt a flood of pleasure. No matter what happened, she didn’t need to worry; what they shared wasn’t going to disappear.

  Dinner swept in precisely at seven, as though delivered by elves: amaranth and salmon and haricots verts. They slid the papers to one end of the table, and settled in at the other. There was a fantastic bottle of Barolo and then another and another. They lit tall pillars in
a massive silver candelabra that Cassie had never seen polished before. Nick sat beside Cassie. She could feel his hand inches from hers along the shared sides of their plates. The tap of his foot resonated across the floorboard and up through her heel. Elda and Tate were easy on each other, talking not of Hollywood or their father but of Elda’s four sons in Houston, where she spent most of the year, of their car dealerships and children and wives.

  “You’ll come for Thanksgiving,” Elda said to Tate. “It’s been too long since you came to Houston.” She paused. “You and Max.”

  Private grief flickered over Tate’s face before she hardened against it. “I loathe Thanksgiving.” In the precise way she pronounced loathe, Cassie could tell that she was drunk.

  “No one ‘loathes’ Thanksgiving,” Elda replied, air-quoting with her fork and knife.

  “I do.” Hank had eaten her dinner quietly at the fringes, and now the rest of them looked at her in surprise. She wrinkled her nose. “I guess it’s fun if your family isn’t full of alcoholics.”

  Nick chuckled. “I kind of hate it too.”

  Elda groaned in exaggerated exasperation.

  “I don’t know,” Nick said, “it was just my mom and me. We usually ended up ordering Chinese food.”

  Elda pointed her fork at Cassie. “And you?”

  Cassie started laughing, knowing how her honest response would be received. “I mean, my parents died when I was eight. I’m not in love with any holiday or, as I like to call them, ‘annual reminders of my orphanhood.’ ” She cracked a smile at Hank, who clearly appreciated her levity on the topic.

  Elda’s head dropped back as she cackled. “You are the saddest group of pathetic losers I have ever met!” Every one of them cracked up.

  “Well, that settles it,” she declared. “You’re all coming to Thanksgiving this year. We’ll get our hands on a copy of Erie Canal and watch it in the screening room. I don’t want to hear one protest. Every single one of you is coming, for the turkey and the stuffing, and the pleasure of fourteen brats running around your feet and football blaring and the goddamn pumpkin pie.”