June

by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

  It was July. Hot and quiet, every door swollen in its frame. Even the dogs weren’t barking in the middle of the day. Cassie felt like a vampire. It was too much to put everything but the perishables away, too much even to shower, or to do anything but go to bed. She was alone. She longed for the dream people. Sleep in the maid’s room was dark and impermeable, nothing more than heavy-limbed slumber.

  —

  Summer pushed on. Some days, Cassie awoke crisp and rational. She’d be seized with the desire to sort the mail and answer the phone and do crunches and eat kale salads. Those days, she could see the whole pathetic tangle from a polite distance: Why are you depressed, Cassie? Is it because your grandmother died? Are you sad because you left Jim? Or because Nick left you? Was either of them really ever “with” you to begin with? You didn’t really want Tate to stay, did you? You know she’s a sociopath, right? Get up get up get up. Everyone loses their grandmother. Plenty of people lose their parents. You didn’t even know about Tate and Elda and Jack a month ago, and now they have you cowering in bed? You sad little freak. You’re going to die alone.

  Occasionally, original thoughts cleared the brambles. Such as: she was disappointed in her grandmother. Since finding out about Jack, Cassie’d had this hope that he and June had shared some great eternal love. But maybe Tate hadn’t been so off the mark when she’d called June a townie—maybe June had only been some slutty girl who’d done a movie star. And maybe Jack had only left everything to Cassie in order to screw over his daughters. Daughter—she kept forgetting it was singular now. She wondered if Jack had always known Tate wasn’t his. Maybe leaving everything to Cassie had been an elaborate way to make sure Tate found out her mother wasn’t as saintly as she’d believed.

  It was better in bed. Even without the dream people, who’d definitely abandoned her, it was better.

  But then, toward the end of July, she had a Saturday of clarity. The landline was ringing again and she answered it, like that, on a whim. It wasn’t the first time she’d done this—it was a fun game, like fishing for sport, because you could always hang up without saying a word. But this was the only time the person on the other end asked not for Cassandra, or Cassandra Danvers, but for Cassie.

  “Yes?” Cassie realized she hadn’t spoken in a couple of days. The word leapt out of her, as if it had been waiting for its chance.

  “Oh hello!” The woman on the other end of the line sounded pleased. “I’ve been trying you but haven’t had any luck.”

  “I’ve been sick,” Cassie lied. Or maybe it wasn’t a lie, but “heartsick” sounded ridiculous, and, anyway, she didn’t know if that’s what she was.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Who is this?”

  “I apologize! This is Betty, Betty Prange, from the library? I was hoping to have you over for that tuna casserole Bob and I promised.”

  From the darkest corners of Cassie’s mind, she pulled a memory of the lovely older librarian who’d said Cassie looked just like June. “Bob was up in Lima last week,” Betty explained, “at our storage unit. I asked him to see if he could turn up any of his father’s pictures—the ones I mentioned, of that party they had at Two Oaks—and, well, he has. I think you’ll want to see what he found.”

  So tuna casserole it was. And how about tonight? Cassie had no reason to refuse, though it did take her a couple of hours to make herself fit for human companionship. Turned out Bob and Betty lived only a few streets over. She walked toward town in the evening light, admiring the sunny haze that had settled over St. Jude, sticking her tongue out at the old woman spying from the little wooden house across the side lawn as Cassie passed by.

  Bob was Betty’s perfect match. He waved from the center of the front walk, a pink lump of white oxford shirt and shiny forehead and red, bulbous nose; Cassie guessed he liked his cocktails. She remembered what Betty had said about him being the first responder at the accident, and, as she neared him, she searched his face for any recognition she might feel. She remembered so many strange shards from that awful night, but not his face, even though, she could tell from the grandfatherly way he drank in the sight of her, that he and Betty really did think of her as “our miracle.” He made sure she smelled each and every one of Betty’s roses as they ambled to the front door: citrus, musk, honey.

  Dinner started at 5:30 on the dot. The sun was harsh through the dining room windows of the small, old house. The casserole was accompanied by boxed mashed potatoes topped with Kraft macaroni and cheese, and a side salad of raw broccoli swathed in thick, milky mayonnaise. The women drank Smirnoff Ice screwdrivers, and Bob drank a Bud Light.

  Cassie felt, at once, at home. June’s tastes had run a bit more bohemian—the art books, the Chopin—but Bob and Betty’s house bore many of the same relaxed, practical touches as the Columbus home in which she’d been raised: twinned tray tables, thick mauve curtains, and, on the kitchen counter, a large ceramic cookie jar. Why, then, did Cassie feel so nervous? Her gut churned uncomfortably, and she answered their questions with the sense that something big was about to burst out of her, even if she didn’t know quite what it was.

  They wondered how she was doing all alone in that big old house. What exactly did she do all day? Had the roofers finished yet? Looked like a big job. She guessed, from the fact that they didn’t ask about the movie stars, that they knew all about the Montgomery situation but had decided not to bring it up.

  Betty went to prepare dessert, and Cassie found herself alone at the table with Bob. It was easy, once she saw what her own question was—easy and terrible. “You were at my accident, weren’t you?” she asked, although that was not the hard question. She endured the sadness he showed and smiled as he praised her survival—“not a scratch on you,” he said, with tears in his eyes—then pushed on to the real question.

  “I remember parts of that night,” she said. “I’d been at my grandparents’ for the weekend, and my parents had come to pick me up.” Bob wanted to interject, Cassie could see it, but she held up her hand and he kept his silence. “I remember my grandmother begging my father not to drive, not in the state he was in. I didn’t know what that meant. I remember her standing on the Two Oaks porch wringing her hands as we drove away. And then, I remember being a way out of town, and watching my father swig from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He had one hand on the wheel and one hand on the bottle, and he passed the bottle to my mother and she drank too.” Bob was looking uncomfortable now, but, to his credit, he wasn’t stopping her. “But when I looked at the police report, there was no mention of a bottle of whiskey or of my father’s blood alcohol level.”

  “He was dead at the scene,” Bob said defensively. “No reason to test him.”

  “Okay,” Cassie said evenly. “But the bottle. What happened to the bottle?”

  Bob paled. The sounds from the kitchen had grown quiet; Cassie supposed Betty was listening.

  “It’s okay,” Cassie said. “I won’t be angry. I just want to know what happened.”

  Bob fiddled with his dessert spoon. “I was the first one there. Your dad was behind the wheel. Your mom had been flung through the windshield.” The spoon again, twisting through his fingers. “You sure you want to hear this?”

  She could have told him that the scene had obsessed her every waking moment for the two preceding years, leading up to her show last summer, as she painstakingly re-created every aspect of the accident that she could remember. She could have told him that nothing could faze her, not the hole where her mother had been, not the blood pouring from the back of her father’s head, not the horrible sound of the panicked adults on the outside of the car when they’d heard her call for help, adults, she now knew, who had included Bob.

  Instead, she put her hand on the spoon, on his hands, and stilled him.

  “I was the first one to get there. I knew it was your dad’s car right away. I called it in. I could see there’d be fatalities. I had no idea you were in there too—we didn’t know until the amb
ulance arrived.” She could tell it was costing him a lot to repeat this, and she squeezed his hand. “I saw it there, on the floor, the whiskey. You have to understand—I’d known your grandma a long time. She wasn’t what I would have called a friend, but this is a small town, and she was a real special lady. So was your grandpa Arthur. They helped everyone, buying groceries for the families who couldn’t afford it, tutoring kids who deserved a chance at college. I saw the whiskey, and I knew, if anyone else found it, it would have to go in the official report. That would have destroyed them both. So I reached in and got it, and I threw it into the cornfield, and I didn’t tell anyone about it until just this second.”

  “But she knew,” Cassie said, remembering June’s words to her at the art show—“That was our business.”

  “Maybe she did,” Bob said. “But what I mean is it would have been just awful to see her walk around this town with that gossip hanging around her. People already called Adelbert a party animal, said he was out of control—I’m sorry to tell you that, but it was the truth. And June and Artie were mild-mannered, good people. Better, I thought, for everyone to think it was a plain old tragedy than something worse.” He frowned. “It might not have been the right thing to do, but I’m glad I did it.”

  Cassie nodded, finally understanding June’s pain at the sight of that Jack Daniel’s bottle in Cassie’s installation. How that bottle must have confirmed her suspicions, and filled her with guilt and sorrow. Cassie wanted to climb into bed for a week, reliving that moment when she’d followed June outside, onto the Manhattan street, and June had turned back to her with a wild unknowing in her eye, as though Cassie was not to be recognized. That look was a black hole.

  Betty reemerged from the kitchen. Her eyes were wet, but she’d put on a smile, and she bore red Jell-O, which quaked in the shape of a Bundt pan and was topped with Cool Whip. She served it in silence, then plopped herself down and said, “We’ve got those pictures to show you,” urging the night along.

  After the Jell-O, Bob rose. He returned with a shoe box. Betty cleared a spot on the lace tablecloth, but instead of leaving the room for a round of dishes, the older woman stayed, elbows perched on the table as though she was an excited little girl.

  “My dad liked to take pictures,” Bob began, groaning as he sat down—his knees must hurt him. “He had one of those old-fashioned cameras. He’d snap anything that caught his eye. You know there was a party up there at Two Oaks when they were shooting Erie Canal? Well, he took some pictures that night.” He opened the box and took out a stack of brittle square photographs, white-framed and rippled along the edges in an old-fashioned way. Cassie felt a rush of pleasure just glimpsing them. How alive they were, how real, those captured moments—even though they’d taken place a full sixty years before. They brought to mind the picture of Elda she’d taken in profile out in the backyard, and familiar concerns surged through her: Would that shot be any good? Would she have to burn and dodge the grass in the lower right corner? She felt alive for a moment, truly alive; hungry to make, to see the world through her lens. Her hands ached for her camera, and, pleased and surprised, she smiled.

  Bob handed a picture to her, just then, in the wake of her smile.

  Cassie gasped. Not just because the image brought to life a Two Oaks Cassie had only imagined—a big white tent filling the side yard; a small band playing inside, brass instruments gleaming in the light from the stringed lanterns—but because she recognized the people in it. They were dressed to the nines, hair done, lipsticked and heeled, but their faces were unmistakable. She had seen them before.

  The dream people. That woman with the mole on her chin, and the teenage sisters whose features were too small for their faces, those three old men sitting in the round office, that couple dancing cheek to cheek. She couldn’t say anything about it, of course. She knew what sensible people like Bob and Betty would make of her dreams.

  Once the initial recognition faded and she picked out face after face, what Cassie felt was not so much shock as inexorability. She’d known all along that St. Judians were clogging up her home, hadn’t she? It was fitting to see them gathered around the mansion in these photographs, the mansion that had held their attention even after they were no longer physically in its shadow. She tapped their faces as though they were her classmates suspended in elementary school pictures—people she knew but whose particulars she couldn’t quite recall.

  Bob beamed at her enthusiasm. “I wish I remembered more. I was a kid, you know? Spent most of the night trying to steal a bottle of booze.” He chuckled. “And then Walter and I set off a firecracker in Mrs. Dowty’s mailbox.”

  “Bob!” Betty elbowed him.

  “Should have heard her scream.” He was laughing outright now. Betty met Cassie’s eye and pulled a “he’s hopeless” face, but his laughter was contagious and they all giggled until he wiped his eyes.

  “Show her,” Betty urged.

  “That’s what I’m doing.”

  “The picture,” Betty pressed. “The special one.”

  He didn’t look too pleased, but Cassie saw Betty would win this, and every, tug-of-war. Bob pawed down through the box, finding what he was looking for at its very bottom. He examined it inside the box, out of sight, as though he didn’t want Cassie to see it just yet. Cassie leaned forward. Betty told him to show her, Bob, show her, and then he lifted the picture into Cassie’s hands.

  Another snapshot, just like the rest. Only this one showed June Watters and Jack Montgomery, side by side. They were dressed up. He wore a dark suit with his hair slicked back; a cigarette was tucked into the corner of his mouth. His eyes twinkled with amusement; his broad chest filled his suit coat perfectly. June was just a whisper past a girl—womanly, but dewy—her hair twisted up and dress fastened just over the tops of her breasts.

  Jack and June were not touching. It did not even look as though they had been standing together. But when Cassie saw the picture, she saw what she had been looking for since the beginning. There it was, what she had wanted since the day Nick had shown up on her doorstep and told her Jack had left her everything.

  There was no word for what she saw, but it was tangible, the current between these two people who were now dead and buried. The proof was there in June’s hand, splayed up into the space between her body and Jack’s. It was there in Jack’s warm gaze, landing directly onto the side of June’s lovely, smooth face. They were gorgeously young. And, whether or not they had known it, it was obvious to Cassie’s eye that they were in love.

  “He’s my grandfather,” she said softly. Bob and Betty shared a look. Cassie couldn’t take her eyes off her grandmother’s calm, bright expression. Something unhitched inside her; she felt deliciously calm.

  “Do you know,” Bob said gently, “June and I shared a good friend. Linda Sue. People called her Lindie. She might be able to help you.”

  “I tried writing her.” Cassie laid the photograph down. “In Chicago. The letter came back return to sender. Do you have her address? A number?”

  Bob looked confused. “I thought you knew her. She says you’re friendly.”

  “Friendly?” Cassie searched for any memory of an old woman who’d call her “friendly” and she came up blank. Betty looked as confused as Cassie felt.

  “Mrs. Shaw,” Bob explained to Betty.

  It was Betty’s turn to gasp. She sat back in her chair, mouth agape and touched, on its edges, with a warm smile. “Why, Cassie,” she said in a delighted voice, “she lives across the street from you. In that funny old wooden house on the other side of your side lawn.”

  “It’s the house she grew up in,” Bob explained. “Came up for sale a few years ago, and she moved back from Chicago after she retired. It’s a good, strong house, Betty.”

  Which was how Cassie found Lindie at last.

  It’s an unusual thing, to be old and still clutching the secrets of your childhood. Moving back to St. Jude, living, once again, in the shadow of Two Oaks, Lindie found he
rself returning to a mind-set she’d all but abandoned sixty years before. She waited for the end of the day with bated breath, for the light to enter the master staircase, and when darkness came, for the shadow of someone in the window she still thought of as June’s. And also, yes, she found herself reliving that awful night—and all that had come because of it—more times than she could count.

  It was because of June that she’d moved back. Lindie had an official list of reasons for her colleagues at the university, and for the many friends she and Isabel had shared before Isabel lost the fight to breast cancer. “I love the quiet of a St. Jude evening,” she told them as they frowned at her across dinner tables, wondering why on earth this lauded activist and professor emeritus would move back to the small Ohio town where she’d been born. Or: “my family’s house came up for sale and I couldn’t resist.” But the real truth was that June, having finally raised Cassandra and seen her off to a life in New York, had asked Lindie to come back and help her. Whether moving back was an act of love, or a way to repay a lifelong debt didn’t much matter to Lindie, because she got to live near June again.

  Of course, June ended up not being around much in that small window they had before her brain cancer was diagnosed; only five years and change, and much of that time June was not in residence. After a lifetime of begging June to devise ways Lindie might pay her debt, Lindie very much appreciated the fact that her friend had finally come up with something concrete. It was a relief to know Lindie was giving up her beloved South Side house for June’s freedom—just as June had done for her so many years before.