The Lovely Shadow (16 page)

“Anyway, in this dream, we end up on the
porch and then this boy, who is still holding my hand, reaches his
other hand out and lays his palm flat against the front door. When
he does that, everything fades to black again.”

“Then, we stand there in the dark, him still
holding my hand, and he whispers two words; ‘Squirt’, and ‘Johnny’.
And as soon as he whispers those two words, he disappears and I can
just make out in the darkness, the shape of a little boy who
appears to be floating on his back in the darkness. Just hovering;
there in the dark. I always try to shout the words the big kid gave
me, but I can never make a sound, then I wake up.”

“That’s how I found you, and how I knew your
name. And I think the big kid in the dream was…”

“Joe!” I shouted at her, cutting her off in
mid sentence.

June laughed and made a big production of
recoiling as if I’d scared her.

“That’s right, Johnny,” she laughed, “I’m
pretty sure it was Joe, though I wasn’t sure before, because I
haven’t seen him since his father’s funeral, and he was just a baby
then.”

“I don’t know where he was the night you were
born. Your mom might have left him at home alone, but he wasn’t at
the hospital. Anyway, Joe was able to show me the house, and give
me a name. I really wasn’t sure if the dreams meant anything or if
I was going crazy, but after five nights in a row, I finally
drummed up enough courage to come and see.”

“I’m glad you did.” I said. “But I heard you
looking all over the house, why didn’t you come straight to the
basement?”

“Well,” June said, “I didn’t know Joe had
showed me the room. I thought all he had showed me was darkness; I
didn’t realize he had been showing me the basement until I found
you down here.”

June looked a little sheepish and seemed to
struggle to continue, but she eventually found the courage and
said, “I also didn’t know if you were alive or dead. From the dream
I couldn’t tell if you were sleeping or dead and I was very, very
scared of finding a body instead of a boy. That’s why I looked in
cupboards and closets first.”

June got up off the mattress and stretched,
“Ok,” she said, “Now enough of my story, tell me your story. Why
are you down here? Where is your mother? What is that horrible
smell? And why are you running around naked like a little
aborigine?”

I recounted to her the details of how my
incarceration started, and up to the point where she found me as
best as I could. It turned out to be harder to talk about than I
thought it would be.

I went on to explain that I had no idea of my
mother’s location, that the smell was my pooping bucket and perhaps
my own lack of personal hygiene, and that I was naked because I had
forgotten that normal people wear clothes.

My story took a long time to recount, even
skipping over most of the mundane details, such as which books I’d
read, or what I’d eaten for lunch on any given day, and I finished
the telling of it with a big yawn.

“Oh, you poor Honey,” June said leaning down
to hug me with tears in her eyes. “That’s the most horrifying thing
I’ve ever heard in my life. I don’t know how you managed to stay
sane, Johnny.”

I’m pretty sure fire shone in my eyes as I
replied, “Because I will NOT be crazy like Mama! I won’t do
it!”

June smiled a sad, knowing smile and seemed
to understand that my strength was born of abhorrence to my
mother’s Sickness, and she quickly changed the subject.

“Well, my little super hero,” she said, “I
think it’s time to get you out of the basement, what do you
think?”

My heart nearly exploded out of my throat and
tears did explode out of my still tender eyes in my sudden
exultation. I jumped up off the mattress so fast that I nearly
plowed right into June, forcing her to step back a couple paces. I
grabbed up my dictionary and started traipsing towards the
stairs.

“Whoa, Silver!” June shouted through her
laughter, stopping me in my tracks. I turned around and saw her
smiling beautifully at me. “You can’t go wandering around in your
birthday suit. Where’d you put your clothes?”

Smiling and crying, I made my last trip over
to the washer and dryer in the basement of my mother’s house.

The trip out of the basement and into the
great big world beyond was a blur. I got dressed quickly, and made
sure I had my dictionary and ran up the stairs without my usual
modicum of caution, risking not only more broken fingers, but
likely a broken neck as well.

The bright light of the kitchen hurt my eyes,
but I stared around with wide eyes anyway. I had always thought the
kitchen was an ugly little room, with its dingy wallpaper—cream
colored with images of fruit all over it—but that night the kitchen
looked like the vestibule to Heaven.

Everything seemed to shimmer with an ethereal
glow; radiant warmth and glory and beauty shining forth from every
surface. I wondered briefly if the auras were due to my long
confinement in the dark and some kind of resultant light
sensitivity to my eyes, but I decided quickly that it was probably
just what freedom looked like.

Entering the kitchen had felt like wandering
into a vast, ancient temple crowded with artifacts. Each artifact
seemed to have vast importance and carried with it the potential to
change the entire course of human history and needed to be treated
with a certain reverence, awe, and wonder. That was the condition
June found me in when she topped the stairs.

Such were my feelings of awe and reverence in
the kitchen that I’m surprised I didn’t bow down before the toaster
to offer my most penitent confessions of guilt before turning to
the microwave to make requests for eternal life.

June came up the stairs much more cautiously
than I had and entered the kitchen several seconds behind me. She
found me standing in the kitchen, turning slow circles, looking at
everything with the wide eyed wonder of a person who suddenly finds
himself surrounded by unbelievable miracles that shatter all
preconceived notions about the universe.

She put her hand on my shoulder and stood
there for a few seconds, letting me absorb all the things I’d seen
a million times before, but was suddenly seeing for the first time.
When she spoke, she spoke gently, “What do you think about getting
out of here before your mom shows up with a broom?”

I broke my reverie with a giggle, imagining
my mother not carrying a broom as she entered, but rather flying
through the door on it. I looked up at June (who, in that light,
bore a striking similarity to both my mother and Kim Basinger) with
a wide smile and said, “Yes, let us forsake this penitentiary.”

Laughing, June led me out of the over-bright
house and out the front door into the pleasantly dark night, never
to return to that palace of horrors where my childhood had been
poisoned by my mother’s Sickness.

We hopped in June’s car and started up the
block, driving at a reasonable speed so as not to piss off the
little old men in coveralls that shouldn’t be out gardening at
eleven o’clock at night anyway.

I looked over at June as she was driving. Her
face was dimly lit by the faint glow of the dash lights, and even
cast in a green light I thought she was beautiful. I knew I loved
her. Not in a romantic way, I wasn’t in love with her, but I loved
her in a way that I had never loved my own mother.

June was the embodiment of everything my
mother should have been. Just looking at her had a calming effect;
reassuring me that everything would be ok. When she talked to me
she made me feel like I was the most important person in the entire
world, and that nothing—nothing at all—was more important in that
moment than I was.

When she laughed, the entire world inflated
with her infectious joy, and when she touched me, I could feel love
flowing out of her body and into mine like some sort of radioactive
beam.

As I was admiring June and coming to terms
with the fact that she was the mother of my dreams, a troubling
thought entered my mind; ‘What if I can’t stay with her? What if
someone makes me go back to my mother?’

June glanced down and must have seen my
troubled expression, because her own expression quickly changed
from one of peaceful contentment to one of intense concern.
Furrowing her eyebrows and placing a hand on my knee she asked,
“What’s wrong, Tiger? Why do you look so upset?”

I was surprised by her sudden awareness of my
change in mood. I was still struggling to believe that someone
actually cared about me at all, even less cared so much that they
could sense my uneasiness without me explaining it to them.

Tears began building on the rims of my lower
eyelids; part from my fears of having to leave June, and part
because I was overwhelmed by her concern for me. In that moment I
knew not only that I loved her, but also that I trusted her.

I could be certain that no matter what I told
her, she would not judge me. I could tell her my hopes, dreams, and
fears. I could tell her the deepest darkest secrets of my heart and
never have to fear that she would laugh at me, scorn me, or use
that information to hurt me.

I drew strength from the comfort of my trust
and told her my fear.

“Am I going to have to go back to my mother?
I don’t want to!” I cried, “I want to stay with you forever! Don’t
ever make me go back, June, please!”

We were just driving by the park when I began
to freak out on June about the prospect of going back to my mother,
and June quickly slammed on the brakes and cranked the steering
wheel, executing a controlled slide into the parking lot of the
park that any Hollywood stunt driver would have been envious
of.

The car slammed to a halt and was still
rocking back and forth from the sudden turn and stop, but June had
already managed to unclip her safety belt and was leaned over
towards me with both hands on my shoulders, turning my torso firmly
so I faced her directly She had her face bent down, inches from
mine.

“Sugar Pie,” she said desperately, “don’t you
worry about that! Don’t you worry one hair on that beautiful little
head of yours about that! I’m going to make sure that you never,
ever, have to go back to live with that psycho! Do you understand
me? Do you understand, Johnny? You’ll never have to go back to her,
NEVER!”

Fire burst forth in her eyes, or maybe just
reflections from the dash lights, but whatever it was, it was
striking. Her eyes sparkled with hate and anger and love all at the
same time. Two emotions were clearly reserved for my mother, and
only the last was reserved for me.

As she spoke, her breath washed over me. It
smelled faintly of cinnamon and acted like some sort of alchemical
concoction, washing away every trace of my fear, and empowering me
to accept the love and security that was being offered to me.

I was overwhelmed with emotion.

First of all, I had just been rescued from a
tortuous tenure in a bleak cell; secondly I had been rescued by a
person who loved me for no reason other than because I was alive
and needed to be loved. My own mother had not loved me so much, and
thirdly, this rescuer of mine looked me straight in the eye and
promised to protect me.

As dust clouds created by June’s exceptional
slide into the park continued to drift by the windows, I was so
overcome that I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t cry, and
could only barely breathe.

The only other person who had ever loved me
and protected me had been Joe, and he’d been gone for nearly seven
months. During those seven months I had stumbled through a myriad
of ways to convince myself that I would never be loved again, and
likely didn’t deserve to be.

But now, here I was sitting in the car with
some kind of racecar driver who was staring passionately into my
face, bathing me in love, and promising to protect me from all the
evils of the world.

I had been convinced during my imprisonment
that I was a figment of the imagination; that some creature in a
book had more place in reality that I did. But June was here, and
she had my complete and utter attention forcing me to recognize
that I was not only real, but that she wanted me to be real.

It had been a long time since anybody had
wanted me. I didn’t know how to react. Hell, I couldn’t react. The
whole scene was too surreal. Everything still bore an aura; a
shimmering around the edges, lending a slightly unrealistic quality
to a world that was most certainly real.

In the end, through June’s continued
prompting for me to acknowledge that I believed her when she said
I’d never have to go back to my mother, I did the only thing I
could do with my nearly paralyzed body; I nodded.

Relief washed over June’s face at my
acknowledgement of trust. The fire dulled in her eyes, and her
entire countenance softened. She let go of my shoulders and turned
back towards the steering wheel.

“Johnny,” She said quietly, “I know you’ve
had a rough go of it so far, Baby, but I’m going to try my damndest
to make sure you never suffer again, ok, Hon?”

I nodded again, still unable to speak, and
completely unconcerned with the fact that she wasn’t looking at me
and could not see my acknowledgment.

At my silent response, she turned her head
and looked at me sideways. I smiled a weak smile up at her, my
paralysis softening.

“It’s true Darlin’,” she assured me again.
“If you’d like, I can try to get the courts to grant me full
custody of you, and you’ll never even have to see your mom again if
you don’t want to. Will you come and live with me, Toots?”

The idea of living with June instead of with
my mother slammed through my head like a thousand clanging gongs.
The explosion of rapturous joy was so strong that even my vision
wavered, seeming to make everything I could see vibrate around the
fuzzy, glowing edges.