Stranger Things Happen (10 page)

Rose Read removed her mouth. "There," she said.

"I want to kiss her too," said a querulous voice. "It's my turn,
Rosy."

There were two other women standing on the green. The one who
had spoken was tall and gaunt and brittle as sticks, her dark,
staring eyes fixing June like two straight pins.

"June, you remember Di, don't you, Humphrey's other aunt?" Rose
said.

"She was different," June said, remembering the giantess in the
bakery, whose voice had reflected off the walls like light.

"Want a kiss," Humphrey's aunt Di said again.

"Don't mind her," Rose Read said. "It's that time of the month.
Humphrey's minding the bakery: it helps her to be outside. Let her
kiss your cheek, she won't hurt you."

June closed her eyes, lightly brushed her cheek against the old
woman's lips. It was like being kissed by a faint and hungry ghost.
Humphrey's aunt stepped back sighing.

"That's a good girl," Rose said. "And this is another aunt,
Minnie. Minnie Mousy. You don't have to kiss her, she's not much
for the things of the flesh, is Mousy Minnie."

"Hello, June," the woman said, inclining her head. She looked
like the headmistress of June's comprehensive—so old that Lily had
once been her student—who had called June into her office two years
ago, when June's O-level results had come back.

It's a pity
, the headmistress had
said, 
because you seem to have a brain in your head. But
if you are determined to make yourself into nothing at all, then I
can't stop you. Your mother was the same sort, smart enough but
willful—oh yes, I remember her quite well. It was a pity. It's
always a pity
.

"I'm dreaming," June said.

"It would be a mistake to believe that," said Rose Read. "An
utter failure of the imagination. In any case, while you're here,
you might as well solve a little argument for us. As you can see,
here are two golf balls sitting nice and pretty on the green at
your feet. And here is the third"—she pointed at the cup—"only we
can't agree which of us it was that put it there."

The moon went behind a wisp of cloud, but the two golf balls
still shone like two white stones. Light spilled out of the cup and
beaded on the short blades of grayish grass. "How do I know whose
ball that is?" June said. "I didn't see anything, I wasn't here
until now—I mean—"

Rose Read cut her off. "It doesn't really matter whose ball it
is, little thief, just whose ball you 
say 
it
is."

"But I don't know!" June protested.

"You people are always so greedy," Rose Read said. "Very well:
say it belongs to Minnie, she can pull a few strings, get you into
the university of your choice; Di, well, you saw how much she likes
you. Tell me what you want, June."

June took a deep breath. Suddenly she was afraid that she would
wake up before she had a chance to answer. "I want Humphrey," she
said.

"My game, ladies," Rose Read said, and the moon came out
again.

June woke up. The moon was bright and small in the dormer window
above her, and she could hear the pigeons' feet chiming against the
leaded glass.

14. The view from the window.

Before Humphrey came to see June, the woman in Room Five had
paid for her third week in advance, and June found the perfume she
had given her mother in the rubbish bin. She took it up to her
room, put a dab on her wrist.

He was sitting on the front steps when she swept the dust out of
the door. "I lost your address," he said.

"Oh?" she said coolly, folding her arms the way Lily did.

"I did," he said. "But I found it again yesterday."

His eyebrows didn't repulse her as much as she had hoped they
would. His sweater was blue like his eyes. "You're lying," she
said.

"Yes," he said. "I didn't come to see you because I thought
maybe Aunt Rose tricked you into liking me. I thought maybe you
wouldn't like me anymore. Do you?"

She looked at him. "Maybe," she said. "How was your flying
lesson?"

"I've been up in the plane twice. It's a Piper Cub, just one
engine and you can feel the whole sky rushing around you when
you're up there. The last time we went up, Tiny—he's the
instructor—let me take the controls. It was like nothing I've ever
done before—that is," he said warily, "it was quite nice. You look
lovely, June. Have you missed me too?"

"I suppose," she said.

"Aunt Di gave me the night off. Will you come for a walk with
me?" he said.

They went for a walk. They went to the movies. He bought her
popcorn. They came home again when the sky above the streetlights
was plush and yellow as the fur of a tiger. "Would you like to come
in?" she asked him.

"Yes, please." But they didn't go inside yet. They stood on the
steps, smiling at each other. June heard a sound, a fluttering and
cooing. She looked up and saw a flock of pigeons, crowding on the
window ledge two stories above them. Two hands, white and pressed
flat with the weight of many rings, lay nestled like doves among
the pigeons. Humphrey cried out, crouching and raising his own
hands to cover his head.

June pulled him into the cover of the door. She fumbled the key
into the lock, and they stumbled inside. "It was just the woman in
Room Five," she said. "She's a little strange about birds. She puts
crumbs on the sill for them. She says they're her babies." She
rubbed Humphrey's back. The sweater felt good beneath her hands,
furry and warm like a live animal.

"I'm okay now," he said. "I think the lessons are helping." He
laughed, shuddering in a great breath. "I think you're
helping."

They kissed and then she took him up the stairs to her room. As
they passed the door of Room Five, they could hear the woman
crooning and the pigeons answering back.

15. Rose Read on motherhood.

I never had a mother. I remember being born, the salt of that
old god's dying upon my lips, the water bearing me up as I took my
first steps. Minnie never had a mother either. Lacking example, we
did the best we could with Humphrey. I like to think he grew up a
credit to us both.

Prune runs Bonne Hause half the year, and we used to send
Humphrey to her in the autumn. It wasn't the best place for a
lively boy. He tried to be good, but he always ended up shattering
the nerves of Prune's wispy convalescents, driving her alcoholics
back to the drink, stealing the sweets her spa patients hoard.
Raising the dead, in fact, and driving poor, anemic Prune into pale
hysterics.

Di's never had much use for men, but she's fond of him in her
own way.

We read to him a lot. Di's bakery came out of his favorite book,
the one he read to pieces when he was little. All about the boy in
the night kitchen, and the airplane … it was to be expected
that he'd want to learn to fly. They always do. We moved around to
keep him safe and far away from Vera, but you can't keep him away
from the sky. If he comes to a bad end, then we kept his feet
safely planted on the ground as long as we could.

We tried to teach him to take precautions. Minnie knitted him a
beautiful blue sweater and he needn't be afraid of birds nor
goddesses while he keeps that on. We did the best we could.

16. The Skater.

In the morning, it was raining. Humphrey helped June with her
chores. Lily said nothing when she met him, only nodded and gave
him a mop.

Walter said, "So you're the boy she's been pining after," and
laughed when June made a face. They tidied the first four rooms on
the second floor, and when June came out of the washroom with the
wastebasket, she saw Humphrey standing in front of Room Five, his
hand on the doorknob. Watery light from the window at the end of
the hall fell sharply on his neck, his head bent towards the
door.

"Stop," June hissed. He turned to her, his face white and
strained. "She doesn't like us to come into her room, she does
everything herself."

"I thought I could hear someone in there," Humphrey said. "They
were saying something."

June shook her head violently. "She's gone. She goes to
Charlotte Square every day, and sits and feeds the pigeons."

"But it's raining," Humphrey said.

She grabbed his hand. "Come on, let's go somewhere."

They went to the National Gallery on the Royal Mile. Inside
everything was red and gold and marble, kings and queens on the
walls frowning down from ornate frames at Humphrey and June, like
people peering through windows. Their varied expressions were so
lively, so ferocious and joyful and serene by turn, that June felt
all the more wet and bedraggled. She felt like a thief sneaking
into an abandoned house, only to discover the owners at home,
awake, drinking and talking and dancing and laughing.

Humphrey tugged at her hand. They sat down on a bench in front
of Raeburn's 
The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on
Duddiston Loch
. "This is my favorite painting," he said.

June looked at the Reverend Walker, all in black like a crow,
floating above the gray ice, his cheeks rosy with the cold. "I know
why you like it," she said. "He looks like he's flying."

"He looks like he's happy," Humphrey said. "Do you remember your
father?"

"No," June said. "I suppose when I look in the mirror. I never
knew him. But my mother says—how about you?"

Humphrey said, "I used to make up stories about him. Because of
my name—I thought he was American, maybe even a gangster. I used to
pretend that he was part of the Mafia, like Capone. Aunt Minnie
says I'm not too far off."

"I know," June said. "Let's pick out fathers here. Can I have
the Reverend Robert Walker? He looks like Walter. Who do you
want?"

They walked through the gallery, June making suggestions,
Humphrey vetoing prospective parents. "Definitely not. I do not
want Sir Walter Scott," he said as June paused in front of a
portrait. "An aunt who writes historical romances is enough.
Besides, we look nothing alike."

June peered into the next room. "Well," she said. "You'll have
to go without, then. All this gallery is old gloomy stuff. There's
not one decent dad in the lot of them."

She turned around. Humphrey stood in front of an enormous
painting of a woman and a swan. The swan arched, his wings spread
over the supine woman, as large as the boy who stood in front of
him.

"Oh," she said tentatively. "Do birds bother you in paintings
too?"

He said "No," his eyes still fixed on the painting. "It's all
rubbish, anyway. Let's go."

17. Bonne Hause.

The summer wore on and the nights were longer and darker.
Humphrey came on the train from Leuchars every weekend, and at the
beginning of August, they climbed to the top of Arthur's Seat for a
picnic supper. Edinburgh was crouched far below them, heaped up
like a giant's bones, the green cloak of grass his bed, the castle
his crown.

Ravens stalked the hill, pecking at the grass, but Humphrey
ignored them. "Next weekend Tiny says I can make my solo flight,"
he said. "If the weather's good."

"I wish I could see you," June said. "but Lily will kill me if
I'm not here to help. Things get loopy right before the Festival."
Already, the bed and breakfast was full. Lily had even put a couple
from Strasbourg into June's attic room. June was sleeping on a cot
in the kitchen.

"S'all right," Humphrey said. "I'd probably be even more nervous
with you there. I'll come on the eight o'clock train and meet you
in Waverly Station. We'll celebrate. Go out and see something."

June nodded and shivered, leaning against him. He said, "Are you
cold? Take my sweater. I've got something else for you, too." He
pulled a flat oblong package from his pack and gave it to her along
with the sweater.

"It's a book," June said. "Is it something by your aunt?" She
tore off the paper, the wind snatching it from her hands. It was a
children's book, with a picture on the cover of a man with flaming
hair, a golden sun behind him. "
D'Aulaire's Greek
Mythology
?"

He didn't look at her. "Read it and tell me what you think."

June flipped through it. "Well, at least it's got pictures," she
said. It was getting too dark to look at the book properly. The
city, the path leading back down the hill, were purpley-dark; the
hill they sat on seemed to be about to float away on a black sea.
The ravens were moveable blots of inky stain, and the wind lifted
and beat with murmurous breath at blades of grass and pinion
feathers. She pulled the blue sweater tight around her
shoulders.

"What will we do at the end of the summer?" Humphrey asked. He
picked up one of her hands, and looked into it, as if he might see
the future in the cup of her palm. "Normally I go to Aunt Prune's
for a few weeks. She runs a clinic outside of London called Bonne
Hause. For alcoholics and depressed rich people. I help the
groundskeepers."

"Oh," June said.

"I don't want to go," Humphrey said. "That's the thing. I want
to be with you, maybe go to Greece. My father lives there,
sometimes. I want to see him, just once I'd like to see him. Would
you go with me?"

"Is that why you gave me this?" she said, frowning and holding
up the book of mythology. "It's not exactly a guide book."

"More like family history," he said. The ravens muttered and
cackled. "Have you ever dreamed you could fly, I mean with wings?"
"I've never even been in a plane," June said.

He told her something wonderful.

18. Why I write
.

You may very well ask what the goddess of love is doing in St.
Andrews, writing trashy romances. Adapting. Some of us have managed
better than others, of course. Prune with her clinic and her
patented Pomegranate Weight Loss System, good for the health and
the spirits. Di has her bakery. Minnie is more or less a
recluse—she makes up crossword puzzles and designs knitting
patterns, and feuds with prominent Classics scholars via the mail.
No one has seen Paul in ages. He can't stand modern music, he says.
He's living somewhere in Kensington with a nice deaf man.