June (28 page)

Lindie crouched in the azalea below Two Oaks’s front parlor window and watched June smile at Artie like a china doll. Slim and sallow, he sat beside June on the buttercup yellow couch, his long, limp hand resting between them like an ailing greyhound. Clyde and Cheryl Ann toasted the happy couple with goblets full of something brown and sticky, even though it was barely breakfast time. Cheryl Ann remarked how glad she was that they’d kept the church booked and gone ahead with planning the reception. Cheryl Ann and Artie had never felt like they belonged to Lindie, but Clyde and June certainly had, and the sight, first of Clyde laying a thick stack of bills into Cheryl Ann’s hand, and then of June pretending amusement at a quiet remark made by Artie, her laughter a thin, sad line carrying out through the screen, sent Lindie sprinting toward set, chest heaving with desperate sobs.

“He’s back,” she whispered to Jack later that day, in front of the Congregational church. They’d both been too busy to discuss June any earlier; with the looming deadline of the wrap just on the horizon, there were no more idle moments. But for now, the camera operator was setting up a tricky shot, and Diane was taking her beauty rest. “Artie,” Lindie clarified. “June’s fiancé.”

Jack squinted off toward the throng gathered in Center Square.

“She’s going to marry him.” Was he dumb?

“That’s her decision,” Jack finally said. Lindie fought the urge to pick up the stone at her foot and pitch it at his head as he sauntered off.

So it was up to Lindie, then. She needed to talk sense to June; it was simple as that. They’d been unkind, but they’d mend their fences. She pushed away the memory of June’s fingers counting off her deficits; after all, she’d also been cruel, keeping Artie’s letter from June. And perhaps June was right, perhaps the letter was the perfect example of what June had been saying: Lindie thinking she knew best when really it was June’s life. Lindie took the letter from the cigar box under her bed, where she’d kept it hidden alongside a note her mother had once left on the kitchen table asking Eben to buy a loaf of bread, and the blue meany marble she’d won off Bobby Prange, and the buffalo nickels and silver dollars she’d collected over the years. Perhaps the time had come to lay the letter humbly at June’s feet, to show June she’d learned, and was changing.

Eben made a rare, proper dinner that night—pork chops and crosspatch potatoes. Lindie washed the dishes and dried and put them away, all the while keeping her eye on June’s darkened window. But then Eben took up with his earmarked Chicago book in the squealing rocking chair on the front porch. Lindie was exhausted, but instead of letting her limbs sink into the humid sheets, she lay awake, mind tumbling. She waited Eben out and tasted victory when, past midnight, she finally heard him mount the stairs. When his snore began, she crept out her window and scrambled down to their meager lawn, then across the road and onto the Two Oaks property.

Lindie had done this dozens of times: across the side lawn, up the column, onto the roof of the porte cochere, and into June’s window. She could do it with her eyes closed, without cracking a branch. Her ascent started out the same as all the others. But one instant, she had a foot perched on the rough-edged stone upon which the column rested, and the next, she found herself unexpectedly bathed in blinding light.

“Linda Sue.” It was Cheryl Ann’s voice, just beyond the source of that light.

Lindie put her hands up like a fugitive, shielding her eyes.

“June is tired,” Cheryl Ann said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Tired of you disturbing her beauty sleep.”

June had turned Lindie in! The realization stung. June was probably at her window, watching Lindie right then, with gleeful revenge in her heart. Lindie remembered June’s cruelty, the way she’d spat out the word
sir,
and felt nauseated by sorrow. “Yes, ma’am.” She turned toward home.

“If you come back again like this, Linda Sue, I’ll see to it you’re properly punished. Your father may not be concerned about your nighttime excursions, but the police arrest prowlers.”

Lindie hung her head in surrender and loped back across the lawn. Cheryl Ann kept the light on Lindie’s back until Lindie set foot on her own porch. Lindie gingerly turned the doorknob and tiptoed inside, but she was a fool if she believed Eben wouldn’t be hearing about this tomorrow.

On set the next morning, Lindie spotted Thomas. She’d had little time to gather herself, but she knew one thing: she wasn’t going to give up on June. She’d seen the way June wrestled with herself when she told Jack things were over. June could be as mad as she wanted, but Lindie was going to fight for her happiness, even if June wasn’t.

Thomas was the one who’d been driving Jack out to meet them at Idlewyld, and Lindie felt sure he must have some bit of useful information. She watched him climb out of the Olds, then stride across Center Square toward the cast trailers. She called his name, but he didn’t stop. She sprinted to catch up, a stack of fake election signs weighing down her arms.

She noticed the envelope immediately, with the initials “J.M.” written across the front, in what she could have sworn was June’s hand. A bit of luck. “What’s that?”

Thomas kept walking. “Mind your own business, Linda Sue.”

“Who’s it for?”

Thomas shared Apatha’s unnerving talent of rarely betraying what he was feeling. It was a quality Lindie found inconvenient in old women and downright dangerous in any kind of man, especially one who was privy to the secrets she was also keeping. “Oh, come on, be a pal.”

“Run and play.” His eyes darted around. Lindie felt a flash of victory; he was afraid of trouble, and the quick flit of his eyes gave that away.

She decided to let him go; at least she’d gotten something. Maybe she could use it; all she had to do was find out the trouble he was avoiding, and why. “If you don’t tell me where you’re taking it, I’ll just watch you,” she called after him.

“Watch me, then.” He strode off without looking back, knocking on Jack’s trailer door and disappearing inside without a backward glance.

If Thomas saw her hiding in the bay laurel beside Jack’s car at the end of the day, he didn’t let on. He smoked his pipe atop the hood until Jack arrived, then popped down to open the door for him. Lindie took her chance, jumping up and rapping the other rear window. Jack didn’t look all that surprised to see her, nor, for that matter, did Thomas, who slipped into the driver’s seat and started up the engine. Lindie made a frantic gesture for Jack to unroll the window. He obliged with a tolerant smile.

“Was that a letter from June?” she asked. She knew she seemed desperate to these men, but they were running out of time; the wedding was less than two weeks away.

“Last I heard, what a man reads in a letter addressed to him is his affair.”

“But this is an emergency!” She howled. “Don’t you understand? She is going to marry that horrible tree trunk of a man!”

“Should I go?” Thomas asked Jack, flashing Lindie a dirty look in the rearview mirror.

Lindie grabbed the top of the window with both hands; they’d have to drive off with her. “You don’t know her like I do, Jack. She will marry him. Sure, you’ll be done filming next week. You’ll go back to your fancy house and your steak dinners and kissing Diane DeSoto, but we will still be here. June will still be here. And there will be no one left to stop her from making the biggest mistake of her life.”

Jack’s eyes flashed for a split second; she knew she’d hooked him. But what he said was heavy with resignation: “I can’t change what she wants, and neither can you, Rabbit Legs.”

That nickname was getting on her nerves. She shook her head, even as she wondered if she’d lost her mind. Why did June’s destiny, her heart, seem more important than Lindie’s own? It might be love, but it was something else too, wasn’t it? Something June had put her finger on. Something more selfish than that.

But Lindie didn’t let that revelation stop her. “What did her letter say?” she begged.

Jack watched her a moment, then sighed. Pulled it from inside his jacket. Held it out:

Dear Jack—

I can’t see you anymore. Please understand it’s nothing to do with you. I’m certain your heart will heal more quickly than mine. It’s no use trying to change my fate. Thank you for the paints. Thank you for giving me back a little hope. You’ll never know how much it means to me.

Yours,

J.

“ ‘Yours,’ ” Jack said, tapping at the simple word and shaking his head as the car idled.

“She can still be yours,” Lindie said softly. “You just have to try harder. You’re a champ at getting out of sticky situations, right? You said it yourself. So get her out of this. Please.”

Lindie let go of the car. Jack rolled up his window. Thomas drove off, a filmy dust rising from behind the tires to leave the girl, coughing, in its cloud.

That night, in bed, Lindie heard it again: the screen door opening, followed by the sound of Eben’s “Hello.” She was dead asleep, but the possibility of a visitor jolted her into full, alert consciousness. The night sky spilled with a smattering of stars, like salt across a tabletop.

“I get you anything?” she heard her father ask. She hoped he wasn’t speaking to Clyde.

But it wasn’t a man’s voice that replied. Lindie had a hard time grabbing hold of who the voice belonged to; its alto pitch was soft, but not girlish. She crept down to the bottom of her bed to be closer to the vent.

“Make yourself at home,” Eben replied. Then his footsteps disappeared under Lindie and into the kitchen, where he took out a pot and set it on the stove. She couldn’t imagine anyone coming over in the middle of the night to ask for soup, but that was all her mind’s eye could see: her father’s hands prying open a can of Campbell’s tomato while some strange lady sat in their rocking chair.

While he was in the kitchen, the woman said nothing. Lindie churned with possibilities: it was Diane DeSoto, come to hire Lindie to work on every film set with her; it was a secret liaison; it was Cheryl Ann, demanding punishment for Lindie’s trespassing. But Diane would have driven up in a car and Lindie had heard no motor; and no man—not even Eben—would leave a woman he loved unattended (and who could imagine her father in love with anyone?); and Cheryl Ann would have had no qualms about marching over in the middle of the day. The puzzle of the visitor’s identity teased at her, the suspense excruciating, and she nearly traipsed down the stairs, feigning thirst, just so she could get a glimpse.

But then Eben came back into the dining room and said, “Ready,” and Lindie heard the shuffle of someone else’s feet as this unknown woman came to meet him at the table.

“Mmmmmm,” the woman said, after a moment. She had tasted it. Lindie wished for superhuman smelling powers.

“More vanilla?” he asked. “Honey?” and, in a flash, Lindie knew exactly who it was. Those years when Two Oaks had been hers, Apatha had made her cups of steamed milk with vanilla and honey if she couldn’t sleep, or burned with a fever, or had skinned her knee. Lindie could still feel the weight of Apatha’s dry hands atop hers on the kitchen table.

“Cheryl Ann caught Lindie last night,” Apatha said.

“You don’t think I heard?”

“How she supposes I’ll be able to keep that feral child in line is beyond me.”

Eben chuckled. “I’m sorry for your trouble. I could nail her window shut, but then that girl would just saw a hole in my damn roof.” Apatha laughed too. Lindie’s pride purpled as she blushed in the dark.

“At least she’s scared now. She walked by today and she”—Lindie imagined Apatha freezing in a mocking pose, moving her eyes back and forth as though Lindie had actually looked anything like that. Really, she’d just moved on, because Apatha was sweeping the porch, and the way she’d lifted the broom at the sight of Lindie didn’t exactly say warm reception. But Eben guffawed as if he didn’t know Apatha was exaggerating.

“I appreciate your coming,” he said, as their cheer faded.

“Anything for you, Eben. You know that.” So there was a reason he’d invited her; Lindie was ready for them to move on.

Eben cleared his throat, ready to talk business. “I’m hoping you can shed some light on something I’ve been…well, not investigating, that’s not the right word…”

Apatha was patient as he searched for the one he wanted. She was always happy to let someone finish his own sentence.

“I’ve discovered an inconsistency,” Eben declared at last. Did he sound a little nervous? “You know that development Clyde has up over on the other side of town? He’s calling it Three Oaks.”

Apatha’s laugh was dry.

“The estate’s name isn’t the only thing he stole,” Eben said. “He took Mr. Neely’s land, Apatha. A good portion of the land he built on isn’t his. I can’t believe I didn’t catch it. I guess I thought no man—not even Clyde—could be that proud. Course, he claims it was an innocent mistake. But you know as well as I do that he knew it all along.”

If Apatha was shocked, she didn’t let on.

“Naturally,” he continued, “I want to protect Mr. Neely’s interests, especially because Clyde just about came right out and said he doesn’t care it’s Neely’s land. He says once June marries his brother, Artie, it’ll as good as belong to him.” He whistled. “So’s I get to thinking—Clyde doesn’t know for sure who Neely’s giving all his money and land to once he dies. I don’t know either, and I’m Mr. Neely’s accountant! So last week, I go down to Mr. Neely’s lawyer in Columbus. I decide I’m going to find out if Clyde’s scheme will turn out as planned after all.”

“And?” Apatha asked.

“And—the lawyer says he can’t help me, because Neely doesn’t own any of it by himself. The lawyer says there’s another person who shares every cent with him. Says that person’s the only one besides him and Neely who knows this, and, if that person survives him, she’ll be inheriting every cent.” He took a breath so deep that Lindie could hear it through the floorboards. “And, Apatha, he says that person’s you.”

The silence that followed this last statement was not uncomfortable or cold. It was firm, like Apatha. Temperate. It carried up through the vent and over Lindie, as she tried to understand what her father and the lawyer and Apatha and Mr. Neely all knew. Apatha said nothing, as though she was waiting to see if Eben would drop the matter. But Eben Shaw was damn fine at cards, and he’d be glad to sit there all night.

“After Lem lost Mae,” Apatha finally said, in her careful drawl, “you know, he saw how people get around death and money. He didn’t want any of that nonsense mucking up his life. He loved Mae. But he felt it was private, that love. He must have told me a thousand times that the biggest mistake of his life was building that big old house just to fill it with his children. Called it his ‘monument to hubris.’ He felt he cursed Mae with that house. Cursed their love. Swore he wouldn’t put his heart on show ever again.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Eben asked in an astonished voice. Wait—what was she saying? Lindie was behind.

“October tenth, 1939,” Apatha said. “That’s the day I became Mrs. Lemon Gray Neely.”

Eben gasped. Lindie had never heard him make that sound before.

“We met in Baton Rouge in the twenties, when Lemon was living down there, overseeing his oil fields. You can imagine what it’s like down in Louisiana, a black woman, a white man. Not so different from up here in plenty of ways you don’t see, Eben. But even if I’d been white, Lemon would have wanted it to be just the two of us. I didn’t mind either way; all I wanted was him. And I got him.” Her voice warmed. “I still have him.” She answered the questions bubbling up inside Lindie before Eben could ask. “We came up to Columbus to be married. You were here that first Christmas, remember?”

Sure he did; Lindie had heard the story a dozen times. Eben had brought red-haired Lorraine up from Columbus for the winter break. It was a cold winter, and Eben’s parents, Loftus and Ellen, old and gnarled in the way of those who’d spent their lives in service, had been caring for Two Oaks in Lemon’s absence, ever since he’d fled south—to Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas—escaping the great home in which his young wife, Mae, had died of influenza. Two Oaks was lit up like one of Ellen’s porcelain houses set atop the upright piano. Inside Two Oaks, the fireplaces and overheads flickered with Lemon’s preferred natural gas. A twelve-foot Christmas tree stood in the parlor window, and a wreath the size of a Great Dane hung on the front door. There was new furniture, too: a davenport of lemon-colored velvet stretched across an oak frame; a great floral chair set before the roaring fire in the front parlor. A maid named Apatha offered a tray of nog and cookies, and Lemon himself stood in a red vest in the middle of the grand foyer, sealing Lindie’s father’s fate with a handshake: Eben would come home once he’d graduated to be Lemon’s personal accountant, wouldn’t he? Lemon had decided to move back to St. Jude for good.

But now that bit of family lore was proving itself to be not quite so true.

“I suppose Lemon believed we’d show up married and people would leave us alone. He thought St. Jude would be more accepting. But, you know, we moved in and everyone just assumed I was his maid. Your family too, Eben. Your mother was so happy to have another woman to teach how to keep up the place. And we realized it would be nearly impossible to explain to all you people all the ways that I wasn’t the maid. Not to mention it would make us stick out everywhere we went—even more than Lemon already did because of his money.”

She stopped then, and the ticking of the clock on Lindie’s bedside table was a loud metronome before Apatha spoke again. “We just wanted to be alone. To enjoy each other. We’d started out together so late in life. We didn’t have time to dawdle. Anyway, we didn’t mind what anyone else thought, because we knew what we felt, and that was all that mattered.”

It was more words strung together than Lindie had heard Apatha say in a whole year. Lindie lay there dumbstruck as she realized anew that Apatha and Lemon were secretly married.

“Does Cheryl Ann know?” Eben asked.

Apatha laughed then, truly, as though she’d never heard anything so funny in her life. “Poor thing! Doesn’t have the imagination for it!”

Eben joined her, guffawing at Cheryl Ann’s blindness.

“But how can you stand it?” he interjected. “She treats you terribly.”

“She’s just sad, Eben. Whenever my blood boils, I just think about what the poor woman’s been through. How alone she was made to feel. I know Marvin was your friend, but he took her whole life away. And, I think, Lemon would want me to help her feel a little less alone.”

“By washing up after her? Cooking for her? Apatha, you should have someone else doing all that.”

“It’s my house. If I didn’t do things my way, she’d do them hers. And you know I couldn’t abide that.”

Eben sighed. Apatha was not to be convinced of anything. “Oh, poor June,” he muttered then, and Lindie realized what June’s marriage really meant. Clyde was wrong—June would inherit nothing when Lemon died, because Apatha would. For the first time, Lindie had incontrovertible proof that June was being married off in vain.

“But you know, Eben,” Apatha said, “it’s up to June whether she marries Arthur. I’ve told her more than once that Lemon will make sure to take care of her if she says no.” Lindie wondered why June had never mentioned this offer to her.

Eben was quiet for a bit, mulling it all over.

“But why take them in, Apatha? These are your last years with Lemon. You certainly don’t owe Cheryl Ann a thing.”

“They’re family.”

“Not by blood. Mae was Marvin’s aunt. And neither Mae nor Marvin is on this earth anymore.”

“Mae was Lemon’s love, so I love her too.” Apatha’s voice was just this side of impatient. “Cheryl Ann can’t help what her husband did. She needed family, and I’ll be that for her, even if she doesn’t know that’s what I’m being.”

“So be it,” Eben said, although Lindie could hear his aggravation; the secret lady of the house had been willingly taking Cheryl Ann’s abuse out of the kindness of her heart. Lindie could tick off hundreds of times she’d heard Cheryl Ann speak sharply to Apatha, ordering her to bring the lemonade immediately, chastising her for overcooking the roast. Lindie’s face grew hot as she realized she’d been an accomplice. They all had.

“This was delicious,” Apatha said. Lindie heard the gentle tap of the mug upon the tabletop. She thought Apatha would say her good night, but instead she said, “All this business with Clyde—none of it has to do with Lorraine?”

Lindie didn’t expect to hear her mother’s name in the air, and strained to hear Eben’s soft response. “Of course not, Apatha.”

“He was wrong to pursue her, Eben, you and I both know that. But we also know she’d have left you anyway. No, I’m sorry, but it must be said. She was miserable, Eben, and it’s no one’s fault, but it’s not Clyde’s either.”

“It’s not about that,” Eben said sharply. Lindie marveled at this revelation. Had Clyde loved her mother? Had her mother loved him back?

“Good,” Apatha said. “Because I’m not interested in revenge plots.” Her voice carried an indulgence that warmed Lindie’s heart. She heard the old woman’s chair squeak across the floor as she pushed herself back from the table. “And I’m not one to pick a fight”—her voice turned steely—“but I don’t like what Clyde’s done any more than you do, and I agree, he should be stopped. I suppose if he thinks he can steal our land from right under our noses, he’s capable of worse. Do what you think is necessary. Whatever money you need. But…”