Yours Until Morning

by Patricia Masar

  Upstairs she checked on Ben to see that he was still sleeping and then began to gather up the dirty laundry. The girls must be down in the living room with John, watching television or playing cards. She wanted Claire to get to bed early tonight so she would get a good night’s sleep and be rested for tomorrow. She was terrified that Claire would have a full-blown seizure while they were out on the boat, that she would be unable to hold her down and Claire would flop over the side like a thrashing fish.

  June sat down on the bed in the dark, holding onto one of John’s dirty socks. She took deep breaths to calm herself, andtried switching her thoughts to Richard and the way she felt when in his arms. It’ll be all right she said softly to herself. But then a pang struck her right in the middle of her breast bone. What would she do when Richard went back to New York at the end of the summer? He would go back to his townhouse and she’d be left alone here all winter, dying of loneliness, forced to look at Stone cottage, boarded up and empty, every time she looked out the window or left the house. Her body stiffened at the thought and she felt little prickles of pain run up and down her arms and legs. No. I won’t think about it now, she told herself fiercely. Something would happen. They had a whole month to be together. Richard would fall madly in love with her and after that he would never be able to leave her.

  She finished gathering up the dirty clothes and stuffed them into the hamper. There was still some cleaning to do, but it was getting late and she didn’t have the energy anymore. At the top of the stairs she started to call down to the girls, but stopped, afraid of waking Ben. She joined her husband and daughters in the living room. A variety program was on TV and they were laughing at the antics of a man and his pet monkey.

  “Girls. Time for bed. We’ve got to get an early start tomorrow if we’re all going out on the boat.”

  “But I want to see this,” Claire said. “It’s funny. I wish we could get a monkey.” She sighed noisily, but June ignored her.

  “It’s time for bed. Let’s go.”

  Evie stood up and stretched. But Claire still held her ground. “Daddy, please.”

  John shifted in his chair. “You heard your mother. Too much TV and you’ll get square eyes. Come on. I’ll come up in a minute and kiss you goodnight.”

  Claire rose from the floor where she’d been lying on her stomach. Evie yawned and stretched again, wiggling her bottom in a provocative way that made June suck in her breath. “I don’t mind. I have to get my beauty sleep anyway.” Evie giggled. “Mrs. Anson said the biggest beauty secret of Hollywood stars was eight hours of sleep. That and washing your face with milk.”

  “Is that so?” June said, storing that piece of information in her mind for later, willing to do anything she could to make herself more attractive in Richard’s eyes.

  John stood up and flicked off the television. “Maybe we should all turn in early. Big day tomorrow. You girls need to conserve your strength if you want to haul in the big ones.”

  They filed out obediently, with Claire grumbling something about having to miss the television program. That nothing was fair, that other kids got to stay up much later in the summer. June ignored her and followed the girls up the stairs, reminding them to brush their teeth and put their clothes away before going to bed. She went into her own bedroom and changed into a short nightgown. It was a warm night and she knew she’d have trouble sleeping. Without waiting for John, she climbed into bed and shut out the light, waiting for the tension to slip away from her body. The muscles in her shoulders felt tight and her arms were tired from carrying the sack of groceries. A blister had formed on her right heel and it throbbed softly in time with her beating heart. Something in her chest felt hard and tight, a great frozen mass that made it difficult to breathe. In the dark she felt the room growing smaller, the walls closing in on her and she struggled not to panic, to run from the house in her nightgown like a madwoman. June touched her shoulders and her ribcage and her hips, softly caressing her body the way a lover would, imagining it was Richard touching her, whispering in her ear. She heard John’s footsteps on the stairs and quickly rolled over on her side. She closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep.

  The morning dawned clear and warm, with just a bit of mist rising off the water. As John had predicted, there was no wind, and they were out on the boat by nine o’clock, motoring smoothly past the entrance of the harbor and towards the open sea.

  “I hope we see whales,” Claire said, leaning over the side of the boat.

  “Claire!” June’s voice was sharp. “Remember what we talked about. No leaning over the railing.”

  Claire slunk back and stood against the cabin. “I was just looking.”

  June’s nerves were in a frazzle already, and they were barely of the harbor. She was trying her best to relax, to convince herself that nothing bad was going to happen. It was a beautiful day and they were all together out on John’s boat, built lovingly by hand, his pride and joy. She had no interest in boats herself but even she could appreciate the Evening Star’s sleek lines and beautiful details, the brass rivets blinking in the sun, the varnished wood gleaming like poured syrup. She went into the pilot house and put her hand briefly on John’s arm, trying to make up for her behavior the night before. “Would you like some coffee?” She pointed to the picnic basket. “I brought a thermos along.”

  “Love some,” John said, giving her such a warm smile that June looked away, gnawed by guilt.

  “Isn’t it a gorgeous day? We should’ve done this earlier in the summer. Nothing I like better than being out on the water with my family. Makes me feel like the luckiest man on earth.”

  “Oh, John.” June laughed dryly. Her husband was so easy to please, his heart seemingly unburdened by the normal cares of the world. Simple things brought him such joy, a characteristic she envied. Except that John’s happy-go-lucky attitude meant that she had to carry the burden of Claire’s illness, along with all the other problems of family life, on her own shoulders. It would be nice to have someone to share the load with, instead of always being the one to face life head on, whatever it might throw her way. June opened the thermos and poured the coffee into a plastic cup. She started to pour a cup for herself, but then decided she was better off without it. Her nerves were bad enough as it was.

  After making sure that the children were all right, she settled into a deck chair in the stern and picked up a magazine. Claire and Evie were in the bow and Ben, awkward in his big orange life jacket, was contentedly playing with a stuffed toy. June had taken the added precaution of tying him to the cabin with a length of rope, so his range of movement wouldn’t be very large. He could barely reach the railing, but go no farther. As the minutes ticked away her breath started to come easier. John was right. There was nothing to worry about. It was a beautiful day, and it felt good to be away from the house and her endless list of chores. If she were at home, she’d be doing the laundry right now, lugging the heavy wet clothes from the breezeway to the clothesline.

  Evie joined her in one of the folding deck chairs, where she stretched out her legs and examined the depth of her tan.

  “I have some suntan lotion in my bag if you want,” June said.

  Evie accepted the sun cream from her mother and smeared it on her arms and legs.

  “You get a nice color,” June said. “You have the right skin for the sun. All I do is burn and freckle.”

  Evie lay back in the chair, her brown skin glistening with Coppertone. “I’m practicing to be a Hollywood movie star,” she said. “When they’re not working they all lie around by the pool. Even in winter. Daddy says it’s warm in California all year round. People have orange and lemon trees growing in their backyards.”

  “Aren’t they lucky.” California. June would like to go there some day. She’d seen pictures, of course, and the way it looked in the movies. Wouldn’t it be nice indeed to lie by a swimming pool in winter and drink fresh squeezed orange juice every day? She allowed her eyes to close, feeling drowsy in the
sun. Maybe she and Richard could go off to California. She had a cousin out West. Surely some plausible excuse could be created. Richard said he traveled sometimes for his work. She had never been on an airplane before. They could fly out to California and stay in a bungalow by the sea. Or take the train where they could make love in the privacy of their Pullman compartment as they rolled through sleepy towns on the prairie. June drifted in and out of sleep. Thinking of Richard made her feel flushed and warm, her lips and breasts felt fuller, her body suffused with heat and light.

  “Hey! Look!”

  June started awake. “Claire! Is Claire all right?” She lurched out of her chair, woozy from the sun. “Claire!” Panic gripped her and she stumbled toward the bow.

  “Look, dolphins.” Claire jumped up and clapped her hands. “A whole school of them, look, look.” She was delirious with joy, jumping and pointing.

  “Claire, calm down,” June said, weak with relief. “I can see the dolphins. If you don’t quiet down you’ll make yourself sick.”

  The dolphins leaped and spun in the waves, the sun glancing off their sleek bodies. They were beautiful to watch, a choreographed water ballet, criss-crossing in front of the boat, arching and leaping, twirling and diving. And then, just as suddenly, they were gone, disappearing below the waves until the sea was once again flat and empty, as if nothing had been there at all.

  Claire careened around the deck. “Oh, I wish I was a dolphin. I want to swim like the wind.”

  “Claire! That’s enough. I think you should rest now.” June looked at her watch. “It’s a bit early but we could think about having lunch.”

  “It’s only eleven,” John said, from his place at the wheel. “Too early for lunch. Let’s bait up some rods first and do a little fishing. What’d ya say, girls?”

  Evie scrunched up her nose. “You and Claire can fish. I don’t want fish slime on my shorts.”

  “You used to love fishing.” John pulled out the fishing rods and baited them up with dead sardines. He fixed the rods in their holders off the stern and when the lines had spun out to his satisfaction, he cut the motor so they could drift for a while in the gentle swell. With the motor turned off, the silence rose up around them and, without the distraction of the engine’s hum, Ben started to fuss. June tried to placate him with a piece of dry toast, but his face turned red and he sucked in his breath, preparing to scream. She picked him up and carried him back to the deck chair, whispering baby talk to soothe him. Evie picked up the paperback book she’d brought along and settled back in the chair. “I wish we’d brought the transistor radio along,” she said. “It would be good for times like this. It’s too quiet.”

  “That’s the point of being out here,” John said. “You know my rule. No radios on the boat. It’s peaceful out here on the water. Why spoil it with a lot of tinny racket.”

  “Oh, Daddy.” Evie rolled her eyes.

  The morning passed. John and Claire pulled in a few small tuna. Ben, after a brief bout of crying, was remarkably well-behaved. The rocking motion of the boat seemed to calm him. As June looked at her family assembled together, eating bologna sandwiches and carrot sticks in the warm summer sunlight, she tried to feel happy, to convince herself that this was all one could expect from life, a loving husband, growing children. They did not have much money, but they ate well, had a roof over their heads, the company of each other. Many people had less and were content. June wanted so much to believe that. She desperately wanted to stop the bumping and straining of her heart, the crying out for more, the need to reach out and grab onto life as it spun past her.

  At two o’clock they turned back toward shore. The wind had picked up and the breeze whipped June’s hair around her head. She stood in the bow and clung to the railing as the wind tugged her clothes and cooled her hot limbs. As they drew closer to land and the coastline became more distinct, June felt a mixture of comfort and dread as the town came into view. The steeple of the Presbyterian Church poked up above the trees, and the masts of the boats in the harbor swayed stiffly at their moorings. In her mind she pictured all the places she knew so well, Dot’s Coffee Shop, the public library, Murray’s hardware store, Florence’s Fabrics. Each street and intersection was etched like a well-worn map into her head. But the town had taken on a strange new gloss now that she had a lover. Everything seemed different now, the future full of possibility, where before she was able to see the unwavering course of her life all the way to the grave. In four days Richard would come. He’d be living right next door for an entire month. Plenty of time, June thought, for their lives to change forever.

  10

  In need of distraction, June spent the morning scrubbing the kitchen floor, dusting the living room, and sweeping out the bedrooms, hoping to exhaust her body with housework. But now she could only pace the worn linoleum, smoking one cigarette after the other, waiting for a sign that Richard had returned to Stone cottage. She’d left a note for him under the boulder at the beginning of the lane, as they’d agreed, asking him to meet her at the fishing hut at two o’clock. But it was already after one and there was still no sign that he’d returned to Lockport.

  She stared out the window and across the lane. Her fingers twitched so badly she could hardly hold onto her cigarette. His car wasn’t there, but maybe he’d decided to leave it in the city and come up on the train. The Cadillac was parked outside, shiny with wax, glinting in the sun, but that was Mrs. Hutchinson’s car, so that didn’t mean anything. June still thought of her as Mrs. Hutchinson. Especially now that she was making love to the woman’s husband. She had thought she would feel bad about moving in on another woman’s man, and even now tried to summon up a sliver of guilt, to no avail.

  She stubbed out her cigarette and decided she might as well just go upstairs and get ready. Both Claire and Evie were on the back porch, cutting pictures out of old magazines and pasting them into a scrapbook. Evie chose pictures of film stars and models in glamorous clothes, while Claire cut out animals and lady’s hats and put them together in silly combinations. June watched them for a few minutes from the doorway, thinking about how much they both had changed in the past year. At least whatever it was they were doing would keep them busy for a couple of hours. Ben was asleep. She had given him a dose of cough syrup, even though he wasn’t sick, just enough to make him drowsy. She tiptoed up the stairs and leaned over his crib, smoothing back his damp hair. She loved him best when he was sleeping, when he looked like a small cherub dropped from the sky. If she was lucky he’d sleep right through the afternoon and even if he woke up, she could count on Evie to take care of him until she returned to the house.

  Now she needed to focus all her energy on getting ready to meet Richard. Her rendezvous, her tryst, she thought recklessly, feeling like the bad woman in a film. She had already taken a long time in the bath that morning and rubbed her body with oil. Remembering what Evie had said about movie stars washing their face with milk she had done that too, just in case it worked. Now she slipped off her house dress and doused her neck and shoulders in lily-of-the-valley eau de cologne and dusted herself with talcum powder. She painted a fresh layer of pink polish on her toenails and put her hair up in rollers. She needed to do something about her face, June saw fretfully as she gazed into the mirror in the bathroom. In spite of all her precautions out on the boat the other day, her nose had burned in the sun. The skin was an alarming shade of pink and beginning to peel. She frowned at her appearance, wishing she tanned like other women, a deep rich tan that made her look like she’d just come back from the French Riviera.

  She rummaged in back of the medicine cabinet for an old container of pancake makeup, something she hardly ever wore, and used the applicator sponge to dab some on her nose. It looked too orange under the bright light so she held a hand mirror up to her face while standing near the window. Still too orange. She picked up a tissue and wiped it off, wishing she had a dressing table with a makeup mirror. Even Emma Sanders had one. Jimmy had bought it for her as a
Christmas present last year and Emma had been thrilled, showing June the different light settings that simulated daylight, office and evening. Maybe if she dropped a few hints, John would get her one for Christmas this year.

  She powdered her nose to tone down the redness, dabbed some blush on her cheeks and applied a careful layer of pink lipstick to her lips. Now for her clothes. She had nothing decent to wear of course,, but Richard had once mentioned he liked her in white, so she put on her dotted Swiss sun dress with the wide black belt. It was old but she’d just had it cleaned and it was still in pretty good condition.

  Downstairs she looked in on the girls once again. “I’m just going over to Mrs. Sanders’,” June said.

  Claire and Evie barely glanced up from their work. They were busy with the scissors and glue. Little scraps of glossy newsprint were scattered across the floor.

  “Try not to make too much of a mess out here,” June said, guilt making her feel the need to say something else, even if her voice did come out sounding high and tight from nerves. “And Evie, Ben’s down for his nap, but if wakes up could you give him some juice? I’ll change him when I get back. I won’t be more than an hour or so.”

  “Okay, bye,” the girls said in unison. June looked at them, both intent on their game. They were probably happy to have her out of the house anyway, she reasoned, as guilt swept over her again, knowing they were free to get up to whatever mischief they might dream up in her absence. She felt a small flicker of worry that they might call her over at Emma’s or come looking for her if something happened, but it was unlikely. Maybe she’d have to tell Emma about Richard so she could use her as a cover. She’d discuss it with Richard. He’d know better than she how to manage all this. He was so calm, hadn’t seemed guilty or flustered at all after their first encounter. A strong, capable man, he was used to dealing with important clients and company money. Probably nothing fazed him. Or maybe he’d done this before, June thought worriedly. Perhaps he was an old hand at managing an adulterous liaison. But no. Richard hadn’t mentioned another dalliance. She couldn’t imagine herself as being in a long line of other women. She was special. Richard was crazy about her, she was sure of it.