June (23 page)

The girls met Jack out at Idlewyld nearly every night of the next week. It was a foregone conclusion that Lindie would always come along—June needed a chaperone, and a ride who could get her home before first light—but each of the three of them understood, without discussing it, that those nights continued for the sole reason that Jack and June had begun to believe that nothing was as real, as important, as those few hours they possessed in each other’s company, in the hush of that decrepit, dark cabin, learning everything they could about the other’s world. From Lindie’s spot on the mattress in the corner, where she’d pretend to read or nap as they mooned, she realized they reminded her of babies, the way babies only ever wanted their mothers, and treated the rest of the world as a disappointment, nothing in comparison to the promise of being once again in the company of the apples of their eyes.

June slept in daily, nibbling from the tray Apatha was made to leave outside her door at Cheryl Ann’s insistence; the poor girl was obviously heartbroken that her beloved Artie was yet to return, so completely heartbroken she simply couldn’t get out of bed, and Cheryl Ann, though not a woman who considered herself indulgent of moodiness, couldn’t help but encourage June’s eagerness to become Artie’s wife.

June would have lingered in bed all day had Cheryl Ann let her. All she wanted, during the daylight hours, was to recall the rosy curve of Jack’s bottom lip in the lamplight, and the way he’d laughed at her story about getting her baby teeth knocked out in the skating accident, and the gasping way it felt to look at him sometimes, as if he were made of fire and might accidentally burn her up. She wanted this forever—the promise of him, the memory of him, without having to ever make a choice, and she relished poring over their hours together, believing her possibilities were infinite, as infinite as he made her feel. But eventually Cheryl Ann would open the bedroom door and insist June join the day, and so June would sigh and cast her smile into a sniffle, and agree to spend a few hours on the place cards, and nod her head and accept assurances that Artie would be back soon—Clyde had promised!

It wasn’t that, now that June was meeting Jack, she didn’t imagine herself being married to Artie anymore; she genuinely enjoyed her scheduled dress fittings and sighed admiringly over the silver being shined for her wedding reception. But it wasn’t as if she did imagine it either. Over the course of those ten days, she simply allowed herself not to think beyond the next trip out to Idlewyld. She became a girl who ran her hand over her best dresses, deciding which one to wear that particular evening, who enjoyed the pleasure of drawing the chosen garment over her flesh, and of running a brush through her glossy hair, who endured the crawl of the minutes until midnight, when she would at last be able to step out her window and into the world again, free and ready to enjoy it.

In that same weeklong period, Lindie didn’t sleep much. There were late night rides out to Idlewyld and early morning calls for
Erie Canal
. Not to mention that she was working harder than ever before, darting all over town at Casey’s behest, and with a smile on her face, which didn’t come naturally. In contrast, the nights in Jack and June’s company, while electric at first for their novelty, soon ran into each other, not as they did for June—into a swooning fog of delicious possibility—but because nothing, as far as Lindie could tell, was actually happening. To her eyes, what Jack and June did on those nights amounted to a whole lot of polite chitchat. They sat in their assigned spots—June on the wicker couch, Jack on a creaky old kitchen chair—and combed through the minutiae of each other’s lives, oohing and aahing over the dumbest details. Every night, June made Lindie swear an oath of secrecy, as if anyone would care about the name of Jack’s first puppy, or the cost of the violet gown June had worn to the winter formal.

Into this strange week slipped Diane DeSoto. Lindie didn’t suppose she was keeping Diane a secret from June, not exactly, but neither did she recount the surprising development of Diane adopting her as what Ricky called a “set pet.” If Jack noticed, he didn’t mention it, and Lindie grumpily supposed he simply didn’t notice, because he didn’t notice anything but June.

It was Thursday the ninth that it began, the morning after the girls first met Jack out at Idlewyld. Lindie was helping Ricky buff black leather boots in that field beside the canal when Casey called her name. She stammered a “yessir,” wondering what she’d done wrong, when he pitched his thumb over his shoulder. Turned out Diane had requested a P.A. to stand just off camera to hold her carafe of lemon water, a concoction she swore by to keep her voice in check, and she liked the idea of the P.A. being a girl. Within the day she asked whether Lindie thought her hair should be reset. Even more bizarre, she started taking Lindie’s advice, a turn that did not win Lindie any favors in Hair and Makeup until she learned to say she wouldn’t change a thing.

Inside Diane’s trailer, pink and pillowed, Diane drew bright red Elizabeth Arden lipstick onto Lindie with her cool, sharp fingers, and Lindie found she didn’t much mind. It was nice to brush Diane’s golden tresses, even though Hair had asked numerous times to leave that to them. Diane missed her poodle, Bernadette, and told Lindie of the dog’s adventures in the Hollywood scene; she even had a funny voice for the dog that never failed to make Lindie giggle.

In between scenes, Diane asked Lindie to run lines. Lindie would sit in the makeup chair with Diane’s name embroidered on the back, and Diane would drape herself across the pink velvet couch Ricky claimed she’d had brought in all the way from Chicago. It was hard for her to remember her lines; they’d run the scenes twenty times or more, and still she’d be fumbling over sentences that Lindie could recite as if she’d written them herself. “Why can’t I seem to remember?” Diane asked once, voice shaking. Lindie assured her she’d get it, even though it seemed like a lie. She came to understand that Diane DeSoto was like cotton candy: light as air, but, if you gripped her tight, she hardened. Lindie wondered how the woman had gotten that way.

Despite their closeness, it made Lindie’s stomach churn to see the way Diane looked at Jack. Toward the end of that second week of shooting, Diane and Jack took thirteen takes of a scene in the rotunda erected just for the occasion in the middle of Center Square. In the scene, Diane’s beautiful, determined Mary wept and pounded Jack Montgomery’s chest, cursing him for leaving her alone in order to take a canal boat up to Albany. In every take, Diane would turn to leave, but then he’d grab her arm and pull her back to him, take her chin into his other hand, and bring her in for a rough kiss. Again and again, thirteen times Lindie watched Jack kiss Diane. In between takes, he unhanded her, but Diane clung close, giddily eyeing him as the makeup girls touched her up or the director gave them notes. That night, as Lindie watched June climb down to meet her, she wanted to tell her friend how Jack had spent his day; it would certainly make the evening more lively. But she knew she wouldn’t. She wanted those twenty minutes of June’s breath against her cheek. She knew June would shoot the messenger.

That wasn’t the only secret Lindie was keeping from June; she still had Artie’s letter. She wanted to be rid of it, but even burning it wouldn’t erase the twang of guilt she felt every time she thought about it. She’d read it a hundred times, witnessed his honor and his honesty, and wondered all over again if she’d been wrong about him, and if he would make June a good match after all. But then she’d remember she’d as good as heard from Clyde’s own mouth that the only reason he wanted his brother to marry June was that he believed Uncle Lem was leaving her everything. And then Lindie’s insides would twist up again—June into Jack into Diane into Artie into Clyde—and she’d see Casey tap his watch, and she’d let out a little groan and get on with her day.

As for Clyde, he’d apparently left town on business; somewhere south, Lindie’d heard. He’d left behind his Olds for Thomas to chauffeur Diane and Jack during the day (and, apparently, Jack out to Idlewyld at night, although Lindie had decided the less she knew about the details of that arrangement, the better). Eben didn’t touch Clyde’s coffee cake, so Lindie took it out to Idlewyld and Jack and June washed it down with mouthfuls of warm coffee from his thermos.

After the weekend, Eben announced he was going on a trip himself, down to Columbus. He’d be gone a few days. Of course Lindie thought of the lawyer he’d mentioned to Clyde. Lindie hoped her father knew what he was doing; she doubted Clyde would be pleased to hear of him digging into all that business. But she was just a child, so she watched Eben drive off without a word, then latched the windows and locked the doors until the small wooden house was tight as a bread box.

It was stormy that third week of June. Thunder and lightning sent the crew running for cover on more than one occasion and had Electric grumbling about safety issues. By Wednesday the fifteenth, they’d only gotten a day of shooting in for the week, and the crew was in a mood to match the weather; especially concerning was whether they’d be able to keep to their production schedule, which had the film slated to wrap on the thirtieth. Promises had been made to the crew back in early May that everyone would be home to their families the Saturday before Independence Day.

While the crew took cover in their slickers and rain boots, Ricky and Sam and the makeup girls debated whether the shoot was cursed, and listed the myriad setbacks that had dogged
Erie Canal
from the beginning: the food poisoning from a batch of bad shrimp while they were on the studio lot; losing the original location in upstate New York and waiting for a week in Los Angeles to get word on the new one; and an epic argument on the studio set between Diane and Jack that involved her beaning him with a prop head of cabbage. Lindie could tell the crew had plenty more to say about Diane, but Ricky made it clear he wouldn’t bad-mouth a star to her set pet, so Lindie made an offering with an exaggerated rendition of Diane’s line flubs, which had them all in stitches, and haunted Lindie the next day in the trailer, when Diane’s face lit up at the sight of her and Diane told her she was her favorite person in the whole state of Ohio.

Before Lindie knew it, it was Thursday the sixteenth. Eben was back from Columbus and had headed down to the Red Door Tavern for a night of cards. The rain had stopped but the clouds were still gathered over town like grazing sheep, making the midnight bike ride soggy and buggy. At Idlewyld, the bullfrogs and crickets were quiet compared to the whining thicket of mosquitoes. Lindie curled under a blanket on the damp mattress in the corner, struggling to keep her eyes open as Jack’s and June’s familiar voices lulled her to sleep. Their conversation had turned speculative; Lindie had hoped that, once they’d run out of facts to share, they’d get to the romance, but apparently she was wrong. Jack asked what June wanted more than anything in the world.

“To have a place and time to paint. I suppose I have that in my room, but not really. My mother’s always there, ready to point out what I’ve done wrong. I know that sounds silly, since I’ll never paint more than those stupid still lifes. And, anyway, I know I won’t be painting much when, well, you know.” Lindie was surprised to hear June refer to Artie, however obliquely; he’d never been mentioned inside these four walls. June’s voice turned practical. “Soon I won’t have time to paint. I’ll have a family and a household.”

“June.” Jack’s tone was sharp. “Tell me you aren’t going to marry that man.” But there was tenderness there, the kind men used with women when discussing love.

“You don’t know him,” June replied softly, after a minute.

“I know he isn’t here.”

“His work takes him—”

“I know he’s a damn fool to leave you behind.” Jack’s voice tightened.

“He’s…” Her voice trailed off.

Lindie inched up the mattress so she could watch them from a better angle. Now this, this was what she’d been hoping for: something unbridled. Jack was kneeling before June on the hard wooden floor. He had her hands in his. Their eyes were locked; there was nothing else in the world.