June (22 page)

Lindie woke before the sun and crept downstairs, half expecting to find all the dishware smashed to smithereens. But no trace of unpleasantness lingered from the night before, not even shards in the trash can. The moon had already set. In the safe shadow of the kitchen, she wolfed down a bowl of rice with milk and sugar and chugged a cup of Maxwell House. She left her dirty dishes in the sink, fearing washing them would wake her father.

On her Schwinn, Center Square and Main Street sailed by. She’d been told she’d find the set easily beyond the northern outskirts of town, along the canal, but the world was still dark, and, as buildings gave way to country, an anxious knot formed at her center. Clyde would likely be on set. Lindie didn’t know how to be around him today, which was a strange thing, since she’d always known before. Nor did she know if she could trust him, or if it was fair anymore to blame June’s engagement on Cheryl Ann alone. She pedaled harder as an unfamiliar glumness overtook her. The set was nowhere in sight.

She saw them eventually—trucks, ladders, trailers pulling into place—at the edge of a cornfield divided by the canal. The sun had started to rise; in the cool light she could make out a few men mowing the edges of the water. The rest of the crew was gathered around Crafty, sipping coffee from their army green thermoses. Lindie nodded a hello to Ricky, and noticed Thomas dressed in a suit, leaning against the front of Clyde’s Oldsmobile, smoking. Lindie waved a perfunctory hello; Thomas tipped his hat and offered an equally careful smile. She supposed he’d been hired to drive Diane to set every day. She thought of Jack folding into Diane on his front walk, and felt a wave of hot shame, first on June’s behalf, then on her own, for having had the audacity to think a movie star might treat June with the tenderness she deserved. She resolved to punish him by ignoring him completely, although she was sure he wouldn’t notice.

But a bit before lunch, when the temperature had rocketed and Lindie had been holding a shade umbrella over the script girl for so long that she couldn’t feel her sunburnt arms anymore, Jack walked by and obviously tried to catch her eye. Lindie lifted her nose into the air until she felt his gaze fall away.

At lunch, Clyde found Lindie at Crafty, which was set up down the canal a few yards, out of sight of the film set. The P.A.’s were supposed to eat last, which translated to grabbing the scraps the rest of the crew didn’t want, but Clyde handed her a picnic basket packed with a ham and cheese sandwich, an apple, a bag of potato chips, and a cold Coca-Cola. Underneath the lunch, wrapped in a linen napkin, was a whole coffee cake. They both knew it was Eben’s favorite.

“I asked Casey if it was okay,” he said, pitching his thumb toward her boss, who offered them a truculent nod. Clyde elbowed her and chuckled. “He doesn’t look too thrilled, does he? Eat up, kiddo. You’ve been working hard.”

Lindie’s stomach growled. She’d been surviving mostly on pieces of Wonder bread. She settled down on the edge of the canal, feet dangling. After a few bites, Clyde said, “Take that cake home to your pops. I had my girl make it.”

Lindie looked up at his familiar face. His mouth didn’t quite know how to say what it needed to.

“I’ll tell him you’re sorry,” she offered.

He took his hat off and hit his knee with it, smiling. “You do just that, kid. You do just that.” And off he strode, and Lindie warmed with relief.

Jack became persistent as the day blazed on. If he wasn’t on camera, he was lurking nearby, just at the edge of whatever task Lindie had at hand. It was a strange thing, to have the most wanted man in town so desperate for her audience. But Lindie wasn’t going to be stupid; it hadn’t escaped her notice that Diane was on set too. Dressed in a brown calico costume, with a drab braid weaving her platinum hair—to lend her the illusion of having just barely survived the Civil War—Diane was keeping tabs on Jack. Lindie’s loyalty lay with June; of course it did. But there was something beguiling about Diane’s devotion to the movie star. Her glance flitted to him again and again, like a butterfly to a colorful bloom. Could Lindie blame her for wanting to have him to herself?

“Lindie.”

It was long past noon. After a few more hours on set, Lindie was back at Crafty, where Ricky and a few others from the costume department had set up a makeshift area for quick patches and hems. She was perfecting her whipstitch on a petticoat when she heard her name and turned in to the sharp afternoon sun to find Thomas standing there. He was tall up close, and thin. His eyes darted around the whole world.

“He says it’s important.” Thomas leaned his weight back on his rear foot; he wanted less to do with this business than she did. Over his shoulder, Lindie made out Jack leaning against an old shade tree even farther down the canal. She checked to make sure Diane was occupied; she was twenty yards in the other direction, quoting the same overwrought speech she’d said six times already. Given how clumsily it tumbled from her tongue, she was likely to be saying it many more times before they broke for the day. Lindie put down her mending.

Jack removed his old-fashioned hat and placed it over his heart, as if Lindie was a lady. “Please forgive my rude behavior. I don’t like how that shindig ended.”

The gentle way he formed his words, the careful dance of his unusual eyes, and his use of the word
shindig
almost made Lindie smile. But she wasn’t letting him off that easy. “So Diane’s your girl?” She liked calling Diane a “girl,” although she’d never have had the guts to say that to Diane’s face.

Jack’s breath sawed out. “It’s complicated.”

Lindie pulled a cherry lollipop out of her pocket, one she’d been saving for a special occasion. She licked it, then held it to the sky, reveling in its blood red transparency. “Enlighten me.” It was rare she felt any power over anyone, let alone a man, let alone a famous one.

He glanced around set, eyes squinting into two straight lines. The sun was still strong, the clouds a pale fairy floss blowing across that big, midwestern sky. “It’s the studio.” His voice was a growl as he lit a Lucky Strike. “They’ve sunk too much money into this movie”—he waved toward set—“and it’s going to be a goddamn flop.” Lindie opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. “They whored me and Diane out to each other to try to save their investment.” If he minded saying that word in front of her, he didn’t show it. His voice had grown passionate; gone was the sparkling Hollywood charm. “They do this when they’re worried. They sell the glossies on a fairy tale. If the public smells romance, that just might fill the theaters, no matter how terrible the film is.”

He took a drag and, distracted, offered a cigarette to Lindie, who took the opportunity to swipe two. He raised an eyebrow, pocketed the pack, and went on, furrowing his brow. “Diane’s new to this whole thing. In case you haven’t noticed, she isn’t very good.”

Lindie stifled a giggle. It was hard not to notice how many times it took Diane to say even a basic line correctly. The woman missed her cues and marks, even after spending a whole month on set in Los Angeles.

“Poor thing has started to believe the fairy tale,” Jack said, his shoulders softening as he took another drag. “I guess she thinks making an honest man out of me would be a better job than Hollywood star.” He shook his head. “Well, good luck.” Then he sucked on the cigarette hard. “She’s stubborn, I’ll give her that much. She refuses to believe that pretending I love her is just another acting job.”

Lindie felt hope for June, then pity for Diane. And pity for Jack too, for that matter. But then she forced herself to think sensibly; he wanted her to feel sorry for him? He had more money than anyone she knew, his name adorned movie posters, and he was being forced to date the most beautiful woman Lindie’d ever seen. She stuck her lollipop into her cheek and crossed her arms. “A gentleman never speaks ill of a lady.”

“She’s not a lady, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He threw the cigarette to the ground and stomped it out. “She’s mean. She’s manipulative. I had to ignore you girls the other night or she would have made your lives miserable.”

Lindie sniffed and looked beyond him, as she imagined a wounded lover might. “Doesn’t sound like an apology to me.”

Jack nodded, ducking his head like a kid. “It’s nothing to do with you or June, and I’m sorry. I had no idea Diane was coming early. Please let me make it up to you.”

Lindie kicked at a tree root sticking out of the ground. Her saliva pooled around the bright, red taste. She weighed her options. The land was flat as if it had been rolled out by Apatha’s wooden rolling pin, the sky an endless arc of blue.

“I’d like to see her again.” Jack’s voice trembled. Lindie had to look at him to make sure it was real.

“But how can I know you won’t do that to her again?” She was really asking; all at once, he seemed old and wise, like a father should be, and she wanted him to have a simple answer, the kind Eben had when she needed to feel safe.

“June is a real good person, Rabbit Legs,” Jack answered. “That day I met her? She was defending you to some horrible girl who said the meanest things. And June wasn’t mean back, she was just, you know, herself.” Lindie did know. She thought no one else ever saw that about June. “I don’t meet many good people.”

And like that, a plan formed in her mind. Rough around the edges, thin in places, but a plan nonetheless. Once she’d thought it, she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t.

“I’ll tell Thomas where to take you,” she said, at last. “Tomorrow night.”

Jack smiled to himself, a different smile from the one he used with the world. Lindie was already smoothing over the plan’s jagged spots, imagining how she’d offer it to June, how she’d cajole her, how it would feel to answer June’s will with her own, and bring June to Jack’s side.

But it was nearly midnight, Wednesday the eighth, before June’s breath warmed Lindie’s ear again, and her hands gripped Lindie’s belly. Together they rode through the cool, chirruping night, which smelled of cut grass and hummed with nocturnal possibility as the waning gibbous moon, still nearly full, glowed above them.

June was reticent, demure, so much so that it had taken two days to convince her. Lindie could understand the tug within June; she wanted to meet Jack, but it would be difficult to trust him. So Lindie had done her best to woo June with tall tales of Jack’s regrets and apology, until June shushed her with a beleaguered sigh and agreed to come along.

Now here they were, past the western town line on the two-lane highway that belonged to them. Lights and buildings were a memory out under the open canopy of stars. Lindie pulled over to the side of the road, gulped from her canteen, and checked behind them to make sure no one had trailed their escape from the alleyway behind the garage.

“Want a smoke?” she asked, offering June one of the Lucky Strikes she’d bummed off Jack.

“Where are we meeting?” June asked. She didn’t like Lindie smoking except when she wanted one herself. Lindie tucked the cigarette back into the front pocket of her overalls and ignored the question. She knew if she answered before they got there, June would forbid it; Miss Goody Two-Shoes hated trespassing.

Lindie had first heard about Idlewyld as a little girl. Lemon Gray Neely had acquired it in his heyday; legend held that it stood on the first parcel of land he’d sucked dry of oil in the great Auglaize County boom of the 1880s, before the black gold dried up and Uncle Lem and his fellow wildcatters found more reliable, lucrative territories in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. As a young man, Lem would supposedly sit on the Idlewyld porch with a cigar and watch his rigs drink on the far rim of the lake. But, by 1955, few remembered precisely where the old camp was. Sometimes the football team would drive out, searching for it as a place to party, but there were plenty of fishing and hunting shacks down the access roads, and certainly nothing as grand as the retreat that existed in their fathers’ stories. In Lindie’s imagining, Idlewyld had a porch twice as long as the one on Two Oaks, and stood three or four stories tall, with broad windows lighting up the night. This imagined lodge had danced upon the wall as her father breathed it to life at bedtime, his voice a ringing promise. Even the name: Idlewyld.

Naturally, Lindie had been beside herself when June had finally offered to take her to Idlewyld the August before. June knew exactly where the place was—apparently Cheryl Ann had found an old map and taken June out there for a Sunday picnic, only to declare it a hazard and forbid June from ever going again. Lindie had begged June to take her for weeks, until the older girl finally caved. The night they’d planned on turned out to be hidden behind layers of rain-heavy clouds; thunder threatened to the west. At the window, eyes darting up to test the sky, June suggested they put off the scheduled trip. But school was starting up again. Artie had been courting June, and Lindie could smell what was coming on the air. She knew they’d never go if June didn’t take her right then.

Ten months later, on the night Lindie took June to meet Jack five miles out of town, on the long, flat road that could take them all the way west to Indianapolis if they’d let it, they turned to their left onto a gravel road marked only by a broken white post. They dismounted just a few feet onto the gravel, as soon as the sudden oaks above them cut out the ambient light. The access road down to the lake was straight. The bass chorus of bullfrogs from the swampy waterfront affirmed they were heading in the right direction. June hemmed and hawed as Lindie knew she would, and Lindie, predictably, won her over.

On the night June had brought Lindie to Idlewyld the first time, they’d found the house by wading into the overgrown weeds, their hands the only navigation in the night. They’d cursed and laughed and bumped their shins and almost given up hope until June found a lip of porch and, satisfied they were finally far enough from civilization that no one would see them, dared to switch on the flashlight Lindie hadn’t known June was carrying.

On the night they were to meet Jack, Lindie was prepared with her own flashlight. She’d bought it with her emergency fund, which she kept hidden in the coffee can in her father’s garage. She felt ennobled by spending her meager savings on June’s adventure with Jack. June would never know how selfless she’d been; Lindie liked how this secret sacrifice made her feel.

They neared the end of the gravel road. June was a step ahead. Lindie could almost feel the warmth radiating off June’s back, detect the sultry sweat curling in the forbidden forest at the back of her neck. Lindie licked her lips. It occurred to her then, like a shock of static electricity, that what they were actually doing was meeting a strange man in a dark place, without having told a soul. Fear locked itself around her. Perhaps Jack would be unkind, brutal. Maybe June would need someone to defend her—and suddenly that thought produced a second wave, of something else, something powerful, and arousing, that choked the fear.

Then June gasped. Lindie shrieked. She grabbed for June, but instead tripped over June’s body as she crumpled to the ground. Lindie landed on top of her, but not in a graceful or gentle way, not as a lover might hope to fall. June yelped and pummeled her fists up against Lindie, telling her to get off and let her breathe.

Lindie fumbled for her flashlight, but, before she could turn it on, he was there. His flashlight cast the world into neat yellow. He bent over them. He untangled their limbs. June whimpered when she put weight on her right ankle. Jack slung her arm over his shoulder and helped her to the porch.

Jack had a kerosene lamp waiting. It flickered in the breeze off the lake, revealing a picnic blanket spread along the front of the porch, with pillows surrounding it and a basket of food. The smell of the kerosene-laden dirt in the smudge pots filled the air and fought off the swarm of mosquitoes hungry for new blood. He’d brought a thermos of hot chocolate and a tin of oatmeal cookies, made by Crafty exactly to his specifications.

They tended to June. Lindie tried to switch her flashlight on, but it wouldn’t cooperate, and, anyway, Jack was already at June’s knee, palpating to learn the extent of her injuries—a scrape along the ridge of her shin, a slight twist of the ankle. Relieved June was all right, Lindie backed off. June had certainly suffered much worse climbing down from her window, and Lindie’d never heard her complain. But Jack remained bent over June, dabbing at the scrape with a damp handkerchief. He handed June the flashlight, and she shone it out beyond them, the beam losing itself into the vast, watery darkness, as insects rushed into its glow, until she flicked it off and the night fell into a natural play of shadow and fire.

In the dim flicker of the kerosene flame, Jack’s fingers gently cupped June’s knee. He was dressed in shirtsleeves and slacks, handsome, simple. Lindie listened to their gentle conversation—his words tender, hers grateful. She expected June to brush him off—that’s what June would have done with her—but her voice carried sorrow and appreciation, a kind of cooing softness that she never offered Lindie.

“Did you go inside?” Lindie asked Jack abruptly. June had taken her right into Idlewyld that first night, snaking her hand up through a broken pane to turn the handle to the locked front door.

“If you’re asking if I broke into someone else’s house,” Jack answered warmly, “the answer is no.” He sounded playful again, self-assured, not at all how he’d sounded when he begged for another chance with June.

June laughed. The joy carried off into the darkness, where Lindie could no longer catch it. Why had Idlewyld been the place she’d decided they should meet? Why hadn’t she considered what bringing him here, for June, would take from herself?

“Did anyone see you leave town?” Lindie asked, eager to find fault.

“I told you, Rabbit Legs,” he said, letting go of June’s leg but still looking down at it, “I’ve got plenty of experience slipping out of sticky situations.”

“I’ll bet you do,” she muttered.

June cut her eyes at Lindie. Lindie fiddled with the switch of her flashlight again, greedy to blind June, but the dang thing was a lemon. And anyway, all Jack had to say was “I’m a master of disguise,” in that voice that was amused and assured at once, and June forgot all about Lindie as she laughed all over again.

Lindie stepped up onto the porch. She stood over them. Neither of them looked the slightest bit interested in a tour. “Let’s show him around,” she said loudly.

She’d been surprised to learn that Idlewyld was nothing but a shack, nothing like the place in Eben’s stories. Once, long before, it might have been called a cabin or a cottage, but Uncle Lem’s camp out on Lake St. Jude was as abandoned as the old man’s mind. Over time, it had grown true to its name, becoming a half-feral place, growing back to the earth. Weeds poked through the floorboards. A tree had come in through the back window, and the wind gasped through the broken panes that lined the front of the humble building. On the night June had brought Lindie there, they’d found the place in shambles, and had made a little spot for themselves in the center of the shack’s only room, dragging a waterlogged mattress out of the way to make their own sitting area on a mildewed wicker couch.

They found it just as they had left it. Lindie noticed the spot where June had dented the sofa cushion after the rain started and they had taken cover. She placed her hand in that empty pool and cursed herself. Idlewyld would no longer be theirs. Already, from the way June took Jack’s hand as he led her over a broken board, already, from the way he said, “What an enchantment,” she could see that someday, in the not too distant future, they would look back on this very night, and neither would recall that Lindie had been along too.