“I see.”
“Nothing to see here.” Tim gazes at the cherry tree. “Just that same old imaginary pirate.”
“You alone?”
“Do you want to know what I’m wearing?”
Tim runs his thumb and pointer finger over the long, silky bottleneck.
“Are you drinking?”
“I told you. I’m looking for a place to dump it out.”
“Anywhere! Just do it. That’s venom you’re holding.”
“I’m not pouring venom on my flowers—”
“Then pour it in the toilet, Tim. Tim?”
“Can you quit saying my name with a question mark, Mark?”
“Tim?”
“I said stop it!”
Abruptly, June’s singing halts. The song plays on in Tim’s head. “Baby won’t you please come home, I need money. Baby won’t you please come home.” But even that ends.
“Hey, I didn’t mean you!” Tim calls up to where June’s standing now, almost all visible through the ivy lace. Backlit like that, June’s ears look pink, translucent. Her orange hair, like a tropical plant. “I really like your singing.”
“Who are you talking to?” Mark growls. “Are those friends still there?”
Frowning, June unbuttons her shirt.
“Stop that!” Tim says, not looking away.
“Easy does it,” Mark warns.
A glimpse of June’s large, white, buoyant tits is eclipsed by the egg, also white, falling from the window, falling, glowing.
“What are you doing?”
June’s laughing. She just failed Health. But apparently it’s the funniest thing ever.
“What are you doing?” Mark asks. “Tim? Are you humming?”
The bagpipes have started up again in Tim’s head. “Going Home,” the funeral song, replacing the one June was singing. To banish it, he imagines hanging around the Glassman kitchen, casual-like, one of the family. But “Going Home” just drones on. Tim squeezes the Heineken and tells himself, Flowers will help. He stares hard at a stalk of purple columbine brushing against his bathroom window.
“Tim? Tim?” Mark keeps on.
“Tim? Tim?” says a woman’s voice too. Peg! She’s coming around the side of the house and then, once she sees Tim, running to grab the bottle. She dumps it out on his head.
Hanging up on Mark, Tim bows to her higher power.
“Let’s get this over with,” Peg says, ignoring Tim’s beer-soaked hair, the beer-soaked phone, her late arrival. She paces the yard, blond ponytail swishing. Washed, her hair looks two shades lighter and polished by Malibu light. Under one arm, instead of her own battered shorty board, she’s hauling the pink foamie that Tim recently gave Bridget for her eighth birthday.
“Now?”
“Unless you’re too busy.” Peg looks up at June’s darkened window, exposing her long, brown, incredible neck. A big waterproof flashlight hangs on a cord around it. So she’s been spying awhile. Tim’s not sure if he’s more embarrassed or flattered.
“But everyone left hours ago,” he reports. “There’s that darts thing. Memorial.”
“So?” With her free hand, she unzips his raincoat. She’s only a couple inches shorter than him so they match up just right. “Take this off.”
“Are you going to explain where you’ve been?”
“No.”
Tim strokes her full bottom lip with his thumb. “Move in with me.”
Peg’s surfboard slips; she catches it, turns away, and dashes toward the beach. She’s so quick, she’s already at the foot of the hedge when Tim grabs her and spins her toward him. Her round face is shiny with tears.
“Just get your wetsuit,” she whispers.
“Answer first.”
“What if Chowder comes back?”
Tim takes a deep breath, then presses his hands in what looks like prayer but that, moved up and down, is actually the lifeguard signal for “shark.” When the water got too crowded, he and Sloane liked to use the gesture to clear people out. In an hour, they’d let them back in up to their ankles, if they dared. In two hours, they could go back in entirely. But by then the beach would be pretty well emptied. “Chowder’s gone,” Tim says finally.
Peg nods and touches the damaged place on Tim’s face.
It’s hard to stay still. “I’ll get a new couch. Without mushrooms.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“Yeah, yeah. But tell me you don’t want a beach house. Everyone wants a beach house. The kids—”
“I do,” Peg admits. “Yeah. I do. Of course, but…the hurricane.”
“What?”
“The hurricane. It’s inevitable.”
Tim brings his mouth up close to Peg’s ear and assures her that together they will “be really, really, really prepared.”
* * *
All June wants to do is imagine she’s the blonde in Tim’s arms below her ivy-veiled bedroom window. The hedge at her back. His scarred face in her cleavage. The neoprene wetsuit can barely hold in her heartbeat. She’s—
“Junie!” Sage interrupts from the other side of the room. Shit. Sage would choose this moment to wake up. After sleeping through all that singing.
It’s a big corner space. Twin beds flank a nonworking fireplace. Three windows, two of which are side by side facing the beach and the third, the most important, overlooking Tim. Only after she’s through clearing this one of ivy will she start on the others.
“Go back to sleep,” June tells her sister, eager to return to her vicarious pleasures. But how will she ever reinhabit that blonde’s body with Sage yammering?
“Those are my scissors.”
“Yes, but this plant needs a haircut. So we can see out.”
“See what?”
The blonde’s surfboard is on the ground now and she’s on top of it. Tim on top of her.
“Can Ed go in your bed…Junie?”
“What?”
“Can Ed sleep with you?”
“He’s scared?”
“No. Annoying.”
Sage has her own room down the hall. But, on June’s insistence, they’ve been “temporarily” sharing this one since they moved in. “Fine. Send Ed over.”
“I hear Blacky.”
Down below, the dog has come home to discover his owner needs protecting. But as soon as the blonde reaches out to pet him, the barking stops. They’re buddies. Tim leaps up and runs to his porch to retrieve his own surfboard, heaped with roses. One more kiss. Then they’re on their way down to the beach. June snips frantically, uselessly, at the ivy, trying to keep them in the frame.
“Is it midnight?” Sage wonders.
“After.”
“Do toys have bones?”
“Oh, c’mon!” The happy pair plus mutt glide totally out of view. “These preschool scissors are worthless.”
“Can I cut plants too?”
“No!” June flops back onto her bed.
“Watch out!” Sage shrieks. “Ed!”
With a sigh, June rolls over to make room for the pirate. “Did he have a bad dream or what?”
“What.” Sage throws her ketchup bottle and catches it, throws and catches. After a while, she asks, “Why do you got no shirt on, Junie?”
“I’m hot.”
“Can I not wear that?” Sage points at the dress someone’s left hanging on the mantel for the party tomorrow. Pink. Fluffy.
“It’s cute,” June lies. “Try it.” As if in response, the dress seems to coo. June can’t even blame morning glory because Sage also heard it.
“What’s it talking, Junie?”
June laughs. “Did you just ask me what the dress said?” Being four is like tripping all the time.
“No,” Sage says. “The wall, silly!”
Of course. The dress is innocent. The cooing, like all the other sounds, are coming from somewhere inside or around the fireplace wall. So much for Kenny “de-haunting” their house. It occurs to June that “maybe it’s God in the wall.
I’ve seen weirder.” First to come to mind is the Upper West Side to which she and Jake fled on 9/11. There, it looked like nothing had happened. People eating in cafés. Children on playgrounds.
“Is God a ghost?” Sage asks.
“I guess.”
“Then God’s dead?”
“Oh! No! I didn’t mean…no one knows, is the thing. It’s a mystery.”
Unbelievably, this lame answer satisfies Sage. She curls up, conks out. Why should she sweat about creepy God cooing in their walls? Or anything. You think you understand your too-familiar sister and she you, but that’s just another way to fool yourself that you’re safe. At Sage’s age, June was already fearful of everything. An oft-told family story has her “utterly inconsolable” after hearing the sun would burn out in a few billion years.
Wide awake now too, June stares at nothing. In the movie, Ed would choose this moment to materialize, lying beside June, keeping her company. They would harmonize on “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home” the way she and her mom used to do when she (always) had trouble sleeping. Nice touch. Then, just as June has soothed herself at last, her eyes land on it. The discovery shot. A sinister sprig of ivy has crawled its way up through the heating vent.
Three
Swell
Sunday, June 16, 2002
MOM’S EVEN BIGGER now that she’s a Jew. It’s not rational, maybe, but it’s true. As the designated surprise-party lookout, June is the first to see her approach. And it’s a shock, that massive belly, turning the corner onto the block. It strains the buttons of Dad’s big and tall man’s cardigan and even doubles as a bookshelf for a load of ominous new hardcovers. Could be June’s still high on morning glory (she did wake up laughing with shells in her bed) or it could be some trick of the smudgy hall window. But the baby bulge seems to have tripled in size since it left to get converted this morning. And still it’s growing and what with the imminent—Surprise!—Mom will most likely just pop, a human space launcher left bleeding on the blacktop while the creature births herself up through the ozone into limbo.
Of course, the pope outlawed limbo years ago. And with the fetus now a Hebe, its afterlife options are vague to none. Best-case scenario: The newborn shoots straight up into live satellite orbit to be accessed at some convenient time slot. The Discovery Channel, say, Sunday, seven to seven fifteen?
So June must still be tripping. Realistically, the only thing that could save her from a summer of diaper changing is death (hers or someone else’s). June’s already practically raising her sister. Even now, Sage is whining for June to pick her up so she can see Mommy, pick her up so she can see Mommy, pick her up.
For distraction, June sounds the alert—Sage’s empty ketchup bottle, which squeaks when squeezed.
Mayhem! The guests whirl in all directions.
Grandpa directs the flow from his command center on the frayed gold living-room couch. “Behind there, Bob, not there, there. Fran, you too, vamoose. Take cover!” A stampede rushes past June and Sage and on up the stairs. Another faction flows down the hall to the kitchen, where Dad’s already (always) hiding. Tim wedges himself and a bottle of Fresca under the piano. Mole and Kacy, Kenny’s divorced parents, disappear into the bathroom together! Even mom’s mom, Grandma Louise, who keeps insisting that this is a baby shower, manages to blend her androgynous torso (shirt and tie!) into the drapes.
Adults love a surprise, that’s why. Adults love any excuse to be passive-aggressive. If it’s ritualistic, better still. All these adults are just rooting for a boy child so they can slice off his penis tip and celebrate with cold cuts. Even Mom’s cousin Pastor Dale (who’d prefer an icy baptismal dunk) would happily cheer on a bris-in-progress. Adults love a good jolt, while preschoolers crave the same-old.
“Pick me up.” Sage won’t stop. “I wanna see. Pick me up!” It’s that itchy pink dress Dad paid her five dollars to wear. It makes her squirmy. “Pick me up! I wanna see.” As if there’s anything worth viewing. The row of chalk-drawn princesses Dad also commissioned from Sage, for party decor. (Earrings for hair and legs growing out of their necks.) Some Mole-Kacy boys dragging their miserable cat on a leash. Yet another car-service driver who screwed up and needs to make a U-turn on the dead-end street. The belly dragging Mom incrementally home.
Back in Tribeca, their Franklin Street window was, for a time, its own activity. The constant parade of hairdos and accessories, the shapes of dogs. These helped June think. A marimba used to roll past every Tuesday at four. She saw a blind boy being led by a miniature seeing-eye horse and other thrilling turn-of-the-century sights as the neighborhood gentrified. She does love looking out at the ocean too. But instead of thoughts, this vista gives June feelings, the feeling of being lost but calm about it, content to be insignificant. June assumes that’s how it is for all of them: Dad watching it from the bedroom. Sage and Ed, looking up from their treasure pile. Grandpa, en suite, through his widower tears. Tim, checking the waves. These days, even unpredictable Mom is mostly found in the dining room with her eyes on the blurry horizon.
June should crack open the window and warn Mom to run, run, the relatives have come! But did Mom warn June about her new address, religion, school, sibling? She should rush out and help Mom carry those books. But when’s the last time Mom helped June? She should forgive Mom (or at least blame Dad too). But will Mom forgive June when she finds out she flung the egg out her window last night? Why?
“Up!” Sage continues to beat on June’s thighs. “Pick me up! Please!”
June blows the frizz out of her eyes and pulls her sister onto the sill. Not to be nice. Not to reward Sage for remembering the magic word. Not even to shut the pest up. But for something besides a ketchup bottle to hold while June watches Mom’s approach and wonders aloud, “What’s with that ugly brown scarf she’s wearing?”
“A kepela? ” Grandpa rejoices, twisting to see out the window from his seat.
“A kepela? ”
“You know, a tichel, to hide your skull from God.” Sy pulls the little cover off the couch arm and plops it on his head. “A schmatta like my mother, may she rest in peace, used to wear out to haggle with the butcher on Avenue M.”
Somehow June’s the only one embarrassed by this outburst, by her grandpa entirely. The way he rakes his hands through a bowl of nuts—vile. Nut skins fleck his face and his leather vest. But everyone else seems charmed. Laughter streams from all the hiding spots.
Even Tim, under the piano, is entertained. “I get it,” he calls out. “Like a bandanna?” No doubt envisioning Blacky, who frequently sports a similar look. “She’s got to wear that all the time now?”
“No. No way.” June refuses to be the new Jew in town with a mom who wears a rag on her head. “Suzanne Ainsley Gibson Glassman, the Jew? It’s too sick.”
“Oh, she went to the liberry!” Sage says, noticing the books Mom’s hauling. June can’t see their titles yet but—
“Don’t expect Curious George and the Puppies.” Those are hard hardcovers, about to slam down on them. From on high. Between Grandma Estelle, Jake Leibowitz, and a well-earned A minus in Honors World Religion, June knows the whole scoop, from Auschwitz to zayde. What those real titles are hardly matters. It’s what they signify that June questions.
No more Christmas trees?
No more BLTs?
No more forgiveness?
The bell! “For He’s a Jolly Good”—
Grandpa springs up. Nuts fly. “Why doesn’t she have a key?”
The wind is ripping the door from June’s hand. There stands Rose in a red-and-white-checkered dress, a knife in her fist! Within seconds, the dandruff-y driver has unloaded the old woman and her big pocketbook onto June. Maybe he’s heard the haunted-house rumors, because he literally gallops back down the stoop to his idling Lincoln. Behind him, June glimpses Mom’s brown scarf. Rebel! Mom’s hurrying past the house toward the beach.
“Hey!” Sage shrieks, seeing her too. “Hey, it’s Mommy,” inciting the bom
b—“Surprise!”
The loud eruption literally knocks Rose off her feet and forward onto June. She catches her biceps, sliding down to…a forearm. The knife drops. Then the woman’s on top of her—bizarre, for sure, but no biggie. She’s soft in her largeness. June’s egg is already smashed. There’s a rug. They lie there on the foyer floor, motionless. June wonders if it’s the drugs still in her system that cause Rose to look this much like a shar-pei—pleated face, huge eyes pulled down by purply pouches. With the checkered dress thrown in, Rose looks like a puppy tangled up in a tablecloth.
“Mommy, Mommy,” Sage continues at the door while somewhere behind the mass of shins and shoes, Grandpa’s uselessly shouting, “False alarm. Go back! Hide! Go!”
June wishes for Tim’s flip-flops to appear. But it’s a pair of tasseled loafers that stop at her face.
“Everyone in one piece?” says a Queens accent attached to Bob Baum. June can feel Rose’s body tense against her. When Bob leans down to help Rose up, she reaches for the blade.
“Uh, Rosie! Don’t!”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. It’s my best knife, Bob. I finally found it out there in a planter. You think I’d dull it stabbing someone like you?” With difficulty, she wedges the knife most of the way into her pocketbook.
To June, Bob is the bow-tied geezer who biannually pulls pennies from her nose and is husband to Fran of the dowdy homemade sweaters. That Bob is also part of Rose’s world is slow to compute. “Come, now, let me help you up. We’re old friends, Rosie.”
“Friends?” Rose pinches Bob’s arm, hard. “You stole my house!”
“That’s ridiculous!” Nonetheless, Bob leaves the rescue to…Kenny? June didn’t even know he was here. Sand spills from his pockets as he bends over them wearing last night’s clothing.
“God in heaven!” Rose mutters as Kenny hauls her upright. “God in heaven.” She crosses herself, glaring at the ceiling.
“Isn’t that redundant?” Kenny asks. “I mean, where else would God be?”
June can tell he’s still a little drugged too. One look at his big, glittery pupils makes her want to run to a mirror. Instead, June retrieves Rose’s purse from the floor. Not only is that knife kind of sticking out, it’s “heav-y!”
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