Falling for June: A Novel (9 page)

11

S
O, SHE WAS
married?”

I couldn’t help but interrupt him to ask.

“Yes and no,” he said. “Your generation really has no patience for stories, do they? It must be all those damn video games.”

“I don’t even play video games,” I said. Which was true if you didn’t count computer solitaire on slow days at the office.

We were sitting on the hay, and the sun had disappeared from the skylight and a soft rain was pattering on the roof. The horse looked to be asleep. I took my cell phone out of my pocket and checked the time—half past two already.

“Cell phones are the same thing as video games, if you ask me,” he said. “Little devices for your pocket that suck your brain out through your eyes.”

“Give me a break,” I said. “I’m checking the time. Besides, I might want to see if I have a message or two. It happens to be my birthday.”

“Your birthday! Well, I don’t know whether to be flattered that you’re still here or sad that you have nothing better to do than sit around all day listening to a nostalgic old man. Do you have family to get back to, Elliot?”

“No,” I said, tucking my phone away. “It’s just me. And I’m
not very fond of birthdays anyway. So, please go on with your story. You said something about following June off a cliff but you quit before you got there.”

“You mean I was interrupted before getting there,” he corrected me, grinning. “But the story will have to wait. Give me a hand here, will you, young man?”

He gripped his cane and struggled to get up. I stood and helped him. He dusted off his corduroys and looked around behind him in the hay, as if to make sure he hadn’t dropped anything. Then he led me from the stall.

It was raining harder now and we stood in the barn doorway, looking out at the house a hundred yards away.

“I could run up to the house and get us an umbrella if you have one,” I suggested.

The old man was standing just inside the door, gazing idly out at the sky. “It really is nice, isn’t it?” he asked, ignoring my suggestion to get an umbrella. Then he took up his cane, as if he no longer needed it, and walked out into the rain.

I stood there watching him go. He walked through the downpour as though he was enjoying it. When he was halfway to the house, I stripped off my coat and ran to catch up with him, holding it over his head. The only result of my belated gallantry, however, was to have us both soaked by the time we gained the porch. And as soon as we did, of course, the rain ceased and the sun came out from behind the clouds. I shook my coat out and put it back on.

“How old are you today, Elliot?”

“I’m thirty-three, sir. But I’d really rather not celebrate, if it’s—”

“Nonsense, young man,” he said, opening the door.

He kicked off his Clarks just inside the door. I don’t know why older people love those moccasins, but they do. Maybe because they don’t have laces, I thought, as I bent to untie my
own shoes. He led me back into the kitchen and made me sit at the table.

“Birthdays are a big deal,” he said, opening a cupboard. “And every one you’re alive to celebrate is a gift.”

I feared he might be planning to make a cake—after his lunch performance I could only imagine the mess—but he didn’t. Instead, he took down a box of MoonPies. Then he rifled around in a drawer until he came up with a package of cake candles.

“I don’t think thirty-three’ll fit,” he said. “We’ll just do three of them.”

He took down two plates and put a MoonPie on each, inserting three candles into one of them. Then he went on a quest for a lighter that had him searching nearly every kitchen drawer until he gave up and went into the living room and came back with a long-handled fire starter. When the MoonPie was finally in front of me with the candles lit, he stood back and smiled. I was very embarrassed for some reason.

“Wait,” he said. “Not yet. I need to get a picture.”

I began to protest but he turned too quickly and disappeared from the kitchen again. I heard a door open somewhere and what sounded like boxes being rifled through. I sat and watched the candles, trying to remember that birthday so long ago now, the one where my mother left and never came home. But I couldn’t.

By the time he returned with an old Polaroid camera, the candles had nearly burned to their bases and the MoonPie was coated in dripping wax. As he fiddled with the camera, I said, “I didn’t even know they still made Polaroid film.”

“They don’t,” he replied. “But I have a stash for important occasions.”

“You could probably make a fortune selling it on eBay.”

“Selling it where?” he asked.

I was about to explain eBay to him, but then I remembered his take on video games and cell phones and I began to doubt that he even had a computer. That, and the candles were really getting low now. My MoonPie was covered more in wax than it was in chocolate.

“Okay,” he finally said. “All set here. Now, you wait until I’m done singing and then I’ll take the shot just before you blow them out.”

He lifted the camera to his eye and began to sing. And as I was sitting there in that kitchen in front of that MoonPie and its three disappearing candles, with Mr. Hadley singing “Happy Birthday” to me from behind an ancient Polaroid camera, my throat got suddenly sore and my eyes welled up. It was so out of character for me that when he finished singing, I forgot to blow out the candles right away, and instead I just kind of smiled at him as he took the picture. The mechanical click and the whine of the photo sliding out the bottom was a sad but somehow happy sound. Nostalgic, maybe. I don’t know. But I’ll tell you straight up, I still have that photo and I look happier in it than any other, even though my eyes are wet.

By the time he sat down across from me, the candles had burned themselves out on their own and my MoonPie was now completely covered in blue wax. He set the photo on the table to develop, took away my plate, and brought me a new one. Then he sat down across from me.

“Shoot,” he said again, reaching for his cane. But this time it wasn’t garnish he’d forgotten; it was RC Cola. He went to the refrigerator and brought us each back a can.

“This was my father’s favorite treat,” he said, cracking the top on his can and taking a sip. “He grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Tennessee. We drove there together once, to settle his father’s estate, and we ate MoonPies and drank RC Colas the entire way. We were both sick for days.”

He bit into his MoonPie and crumbs fell all over his sweater. He fished a larger crumb from his bulging pocket and ate it. Then he closed his eyes, as if remembering. I tried mine. It tasted like a s’more to me, but the flavor brought no fond memories.

“You said it was just you,” he said, in between bites. “Does that mean your folks have passed on?”

“Yes. Well, I’m not sure about my mother. She left when I was three. On my birthday, actually. Thirty years ago to the day. My dad died when I was nineteen.”

“And you’ve never been married?” he asked.

My mouth was full of MoonPie, having just taken a bite, so I shook my head fiercely until I could speak. “No, sir. No way. And I don’t ever intend to be either.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“It’s fine for some people, maybe, but I’m not interested in having my heart ripped out through my wallet.”

“Is that how your father felt when your mother left?”

“Why would you assume that?”

He shrugged, leaning forward to look at my photo where it lay, developing on the table. “We usually inherit more than just good looks,” he said, smiling. “And you already told me you got his small ears.” Then he laughed. “But my guess is you just haven’t met the right woman yet. Or you have and you just don’t know it. Isn’t there someone special at least?”

“No, not really. Well, there is this one girl I kind of like. You reminded me of her because she said birthdays are a big deal too. She even found a candle for a cupcake, just like you.”

“She sounds like a smart woman,” he said.

“Yeah, she is. Estrella’s her name.”

“I love it,” he said. “Spanish name, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. It means ‘star.’ Although I think she’s part Scottish or something because her hair has a hint of red. But like I said, I
don’t have any interest in putting myself in a position to be hurt. And besides, I won’t be around here much longer.”

“That’s right,” he said. “I almost forgot about Miami. Well, you’ll meet the right girl and come around to settling down whether you want to or not. That’s how it was with June and me. Well, I knew it pretty early on, anyway—that we were meant to be together. But she didn’t. It took some serious convincing on my part, some of which led us to a jail cell in Spain.”

“Arrested in Spain? I’m still trying to figure out why she left men’s boots behind on that roof. And where her husband is. And what was going on at Echo Glen. Plus, you haven’t even told me yet about this cliff you followed her off.”

“I haven’t?” he asked. “Boy, I had better pick up my pace if we’re going to get it all in before the end of the day. You sure you don’t mind spending your birthday hearing all this?”

His question made me stop to think for a second. I didn’t say it exactly, but the truth was there was no other place I would have rather been. “Maybe if you let me have another MoonPie,” I joked. “Then I’ll stay.”

He started to rise, which I took to mean yes, so I beat him getting to my feet and brought the entire box over to the table.

“I’ve got a case of them in the pantry,” he said. “So, don’t be shy. Now, let me see, where was I? Oh, yes, the hippies, the ostrich, and now the bonfire. Then I promise I’ll get to me plunging off that moonlit cliff . . .”

12

I
F A FIRE
could mirror its maker, this bonfire was Sebastian: bigger than was practical, hotter than was necessary, and barely contained within the borders of the pit. The students sat circled up, riveted by Sebastian as he stood between them and the fire, just beyond the reach of the lapping flames, excitedly waving a cigarette and retelling the tale of how he had narrowly escaped death to tame the wild feathered beast, as if the students had not all stood by hours earlier and watched the events as they had actually unfolded. But they seemed to have forgotten, or they at least appeared willing to accept some embellishment for the sake of entertainment.

In the end, David too suspended his disbelief; Sebastian included him in this yarn by turning to point him out as a hero who had made a selfless contribution to the battle and who, according to his retelling—and he was really stretching now—had narrowly escaped a severed artery and sure and sudden death. “You risked your life to save mine, comrade,” he said as his speech reached a fever pitch, his cigarette waving as if it were a baton and he the conductor of his own flaming orchestra. “We are brothers in courage forever now.”

David was glad to be sitting just beyond the firelight so the students couldn’t see him blush.

The hippies had invited themselves to stay the night, hoping, as it turned out, to be able to take their ostrich with them the next morning, and they had pulled their bus over beside the barn and were now trickling out in ones and twos to join the others already at the fire.

“You want a hit, man?”

The one with the dreads that they called Clarence sat down next to David. David looked at the offered joint and shook his head. “That stuff makes me paranoid,” he said.

“No way, man,” Clarence replied. “It opens your mind and lets the moonlight in. And besides, it’s not paranoia if they’re really trying to get you. The government, man, they send out mind-control waves on the radio and put chemicals in our food. That’s why we live off the grid like we do. You should really join us, dude. There’s space on the bus . . .”

He wouldn’t let up until David at least agreed to think about joining them “off the grid,” and then he rambled on with various other counterculture contrivances and tired theories of conspiracy to the point where David almost took him up on the joint just to make listening more bearable. David was old enough to have lived through the real deal and this Clarence character was about twenty years too late.

He was grateful when June finally appeared at his other side. She had a bag on her shoulder and she was carrying a large wooden tub. She set the tub down in front of her and reached into the bag and handed David a box of old-fashioned sugar cones. “You pass me the cones and I’ll scoop,” she said.

As if June’s arrival had signaled a natural change in the order of things, Sebastian wrapped up his storytelling, the hippie ceased his pontificating, and all got quiet and scooted in closer to the fire, tightening the circle. June removed the tub’s lid and produced a pewter ice-cream scoop. When she was ready, David handed her a cone. They worked like this
for several minutes—David handing over cones, June topping them with huge scoops of homemade lemon ice cream and then passing them off to travel from hand to hand around the circle until everyone had one. David noticed a few of the hippies sporting two, but there seemed to be plenty to go around, and everyone was quietly visiting and enjoying their ice cream, so no one much cared.

“This is good,” David said, once he finally had a cone of his own. “It’s lemony, but I’m tasting something else too.”

“That’s the garlic,” June said.

“Garlic. That’s an odd thing to put in ice cream.”

“It helps keep the students from hooking up when the fire burns down,” she said. Then she chuckled and licked her ice cream. “Actually, it’s an old family recipe. I grew up in Gilroy, California, the Garlic Capital of the World.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” David said.

“Gilroy or garlic ice cream?” June asked.

“Neither, actually.”

“I’m not surprised,” June replied. “They’re both easy to miss unless you’re into garlic festivals. Most people just drive by on their way from the Bay Area to Monterey. Where did you grow up, David?”

“I’m not sure I have grown up,” he answered. “But I was raised just up north, in Bellingham.”

“Oh, I know it well,” she said. “We’ve got a reciprocal relationship with a few rescues next door in Ferndale. Nice place. Do you have family up there?”

“Not any longer.”

He didn’t bother telling her that his mother had just recently passed away. Between the fire and the ice cream, the night was just too nice to drag death into. Besides, David was just beginning to move beyond his grief.

“That’s too bad,” she said. “About your family.” After a lick
or two of her ice cream, she asked, “Do you ever get back? To Bellingham.”

“Not really,” David said. “Although the family house is still there, closed up since my mother got ill. Realtors keep calling me saying they have buyers. I guess one of these days I should go and deal with it.” Then, both because he wanted to change the subject and because he had just noticed June’s bare feet stretched out in front of her on the grass, he said, “Hey, how come you’re never wearing any shoes?”

June looked down at her feet silhouetted in the firelight. She wiggled her toes. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I don’t like having anything between me and the earth. My mother used to tell me that if I was going to run around barefoot all the time I should at least look like a lady and paint my toes. Sometimes I try, but I usually get distracted before I finish. But then I always did disappoint my mother.”

“Is your family still in Gilroy?”

June shook her head. “Everyone’s gone.” A few seconds later she said, “Well, that’s not entirely true. I have a sister somewhere on the East Coast, but we don’t really talk. Our childhood wasn’t exactly ideal.
Dysfunctional
would be an understatement. Although we did have a pair of first cousins who got along so well they got married. But seriously, about the only thing I have fond memories of is lemon ice cream.”

Clarence nudged David and passed him another joint. This time David took it, but he hesitated. He looked around the fire and noticed that most everyone had finished their ice cream and that several joints and a bottle were making the rounds. The night was just too magical already to want to change it with chemicals, so he decided against taking a toke and passed it on to June instead. June passed it on too.

“You don’t smoke?” David asked.

“Oh, I have,” she said. “I was growing it before these kids
were born. But as I said earlier, I just prefer to have nothing between me and the earth.”

The fire was finally burning down to a manageable level and the logs caved in on themselves, sending sparks circling up into the night. David could smell the burning cedar. He leaned back and rested on his elbow, looking at June. The firelight played on her face, and he could see twin miniature bonfires reflected in her eyes.

“Hey, can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask me two if you want.”

“Why did you wear men’s boots up to that roof?”

There was a long pause with just the sound of the fire crackling and the quiet murmur of other conversations. Then June said, “They were my husband’s.”

David was not entirely surprised. He’d been thinking about her husband ever since he caught sight of that ring. He sat for a moment, quietly wondering if she said
were
instead of
are
because the boots were gone or because the husband was. But he didn’t need to think long because June went on to explain herself without his asking.

“They were never his really,” she said. “I mean he never wore those particular boots. I get them at thrift stores. They just represent him to me. It’s a charm.”

She must have seen the question while it was still on David’s lips, because she explained.

“You know, a good-luck trinket. A superstition. Something jumpers do. Some wear necklaces made from parachute pins. Some chant mantras. I knew one guy who pulled out a handful of hair and let it go before he jumped just to check the wind. He jumped so much he tore himself bald and had to start reaching into his jumpsuit, if you catch my drift. Anyway, with me it’s boots. Size nine. Just like my husband wore.”

“So, your husband’s not around anymore?”

“No”—her gaze drifted off into the fire—“although sometimes it feels like he is. He’s the reason I got into skydiving to begin with.”

“Was he a skydiver? Is that how he died?”

“I said he wasn’t around,” she replied. “I never said he was dead.”

David straightened slightly.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”

June ripped out a tuft of grass and threw it at him.

“I’m only playing with you, darling. He’s passed on. And there’s no need to say you’re sorry either. Everyone says that. He died twenty-five years ago in a motorcycle accident.”

“Twenty-five years. And you still wear his ring?”

“Geez, I know I just said not to tell me you’re sorry,” she said, “but I didn’t mean for you to jump all over me about still wearing his ring.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean—”

She laughed. “See, now you’ve gone and said you were sorry again.” She held up her hand and looked at the ring on her finger, turning it to catch the fading firelight. “I guess I just never had any reason to take it off,” she said. “And it hasn’t seemed like twenty-five years, just like life going by one day at a time.”

“Fair enough,” David said. “Maybe that’s the difference between death and divorce, though, because I couldn’t wait to get mine off. I had gained some weight—I used to be heavier, if you can believe it—and it was stuck on. But the day those divorce papers came I spent four hours in the bathroom with a jar of Crisco and bottle of Dawn. I damn near lost my finger, but I got it off.”

“Was she that bad?” June asked.

“Worse. She left me for the husband of a friend of ours because she wanted a boy and he already had four with his current wife. They have some weird three-way relationship and
parenting thing going on. Anyway, I don’t want to know anything about any of it, really. Besides, it’s been ten years.”

“Wow,” she said, “seems pretty fresh for ten years ago.”

“Well, maybe it just felt like life going by one very long day at a time.”

“Touché, David Hadley,” she said, smiling. “Touché.”

After a few quiet minutes where they both sat and watched the fire, alone with their own thoughts, David said, “You said your husband died in a motorcycle accident . . .”

“Yes, we were riding together,” she said, without looking away from the fire. “When I noticed he wasn’t behind me any longer, I turned back and found him with a broken neck. They said he didn’t feel anything. Just missed a turn and wound up in a ditch. We’d been together for almost eight years, but we’d been married less than two weeks. One hell of a honeymoon, right?”

“It sounds awful. I’m so sorry.”

June turned to look at him, a smile in her eyes. “Now you’ve said you’re sorry three times.” Then her face turned serious. “But, yeah, it was pretty devastating. In fact, I found myself up on a roof just like you, except I was on top of Half Dome.”

“Half Dome, in Yosemite?”

She nodded. “We liked to hike there. That’s where we were heading on our rented bikes. His family always blamed me. ‘He never would have even been on a motorcycle if it weren’t for you,’ they said. Or, ‘You’re the daredevil, not my sweet Anthony. It should have been you.’ Nice uplifting stuff like that. So, there I was about to make my in-laws happy when I saw this pair of boots just sitting there on the edge of the cliff. All alone, like someone had fallen out of them or something. Or left them there for some reason maybe, I don’t know. Who can say? Sometimes when I’m in the city I’ll see a pair of shoes in the street or on the sidewalk. Sometimes just one. But I always
wonder what the story is behind them. There has to be a story, right? People don’t just go around abandoning shoes.

“Anyway, these boots were my husband’s size and they looked like some he might have worn. And then I swear he was standing there with me. He said what I told you. He said, ‘June, you can’t change your mind halfway down.’ He was always saying stuff like that. ‘You can’t peel the same clove of garlic twice,’ or, ‘You can’t be a little bit pregnant.’ ”

“So, you didn’t jump,” David said.

“Not that day. I tried to argue with him. Or with the boots, I guess. I told him I wanted to join him, wherever he was. But he said, ‘No.’ When I insisted, he said, ‘Then at least do it with a parachute, just in case you change your mind.’ So I bought a used parachute and read up on how to use it. BASE jumping was still pretty new and I couldn’t find much about it, but then I was planning to die anyway, so what did I care, right?”

“So, you just jumped without any training or anything?”

“I don’t advise it,” she said. “Especially since I became an instructor later. But yes. I went back up to Half Dome with a used parachute I wasn’t even sure had been packed correctly and had never used. And I brought those boots along too. They looked so lonely sitting there by themselves that I took my shoes off and put them beside the boots. Sometimes I wonder about the person who found them, my shoes and those boots. Must have looked like the rapture had happened.”

Here she paused. The fire had burned down quite a bit now and her face was cast in shadow, hiding her expression.

“Please don’t leave me hanging,” David pleaded. “What happened then?”

“Then I just jumped.”

“But what was it like? When did you change your mind about dying? I mean you obviously used the parachute because you’re here.”

“You really want to know what it was like?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, “I really do. I’ve been wondering since that day on the roof.”

“It’s a hard thing to explain to someone,” she said. “You really need to experience it for yourself. Once my feet left that ledge, I had no decisions to make but one: release the lead chute and live, or hold it and die. I felt so free. Free from responsibility. Free from my past. Free from my future, if that makes any sense. I even felt free from grief. And it felt so good I didn’t want the feeling to end, so I released the chute. Turns out landing a canopy is better learned from experts and not books, especially if you’re going to do it on rocks while not wearing any shoes. It took me all night to hike out with a badly sprained ankle and cut feet, but I couldn’t wait to do it again.”