The Lovely Shadow (15 page)

“Johnny,” she said gently, while still
caressing my back. “Johnny, are you ok?”

I was unable to speak because of my sobbing,
but I nodded my head vigorously inside the blanket.

“Johnny, I need a big favor from you. Can you
do me a big favor?”

‘Hey, Lady,’ I thought, ‘as long as you’re
real, and you keep touching me, I can fly to the moon and bring you
back a Martian if you’d like.’

I said nothing; I just nodded my head
again.

“I haven’t had a good hug in a long time; do
you think you could give me a hug?” I nodded my head for a third
time, and as she removed her hand from my back, I rolled over
towards her and sat up.

I tried to open my eyes and look at her, but
the combination of light coming down the stairs, and tear blurred
eyes, made it impossible to see her, so I left them closed as I
thrust my entire body into her open arms.

She hugged me deeply, squeezing so hard that
the air was nearly expelled from my lungs, but I didn’t care, I
would die happily in June’s arms. I squeezed her back just as
fiercely, and we stayed like that; locked together in a mutually
needy embrace, rocking gently back and forth, each of our faces
smashed into the shoulder of the other, and crying softly for about
five minutes.

When we ended our embrace, I was fairly
certain that we both had snot in our hair.

She initiated our disentanglement. I
personally would have been perfectly content to stay there until
Gabriel blew his horn and all the mountains tumbled into the sea.
She placed a hand on each shoulder and pushed me back to arms
length and said, “Let me get a good look at you, Johnny. I haven’t
seen you since you were born.”

That statement struck me as odd and I tried
to open my eyes and look at her again but my eyes were still too
sensitive to the bright light. All I could see in the brief second
that I opened my eyes was a blur of fair skin, red lips, and big,
reddish blonde hair.

“Who are you?” I croaked in a sob choked
voice. “How do you know who I am?”

“My name is June, and I’m your aunt. I’m your
mom’s sister. I was there when you were born, but your mom hasn’t
let me see you since then. She refused to have anything to do with
me. She wouldn’t even let me come to Joe’s funeral.”

“I didn’t know Mama had a sister,” I said.
“She never said anything about you. Did she disavow you?”

June pulled back in surprise and spoke in a
shocked voice. “Disavow? Wow, that’s a mighty big word for such a
small dude.”

I smiled proudly and said “I’ve been reading
the dictionary a lot. I know a plethora of big words.”

June laughed warmly and pulled me back to her
breast for a quick hug before releasing me.

“Well, Johnny, I can see that I’m gonna have
to brush up on my vocabulary if we’re gonna be friends.” She
laughed again, but ended the trill with a small sad sigh.

“But yes, your mom did, indeed, ‘disavow’ me.
When John, Joe’s dad, died, I made the mistake of trying to comfort
your mom by telling her that John had gone on to a better place.
Your mom freaked out on me. She slapped me right across the face
and screamed at me that there was no better place for John than by
her side.”

“She took his death extremely hard. In fact,
I don’t think she ever recovered from it did she?”

I shook my head.

“Yeah, I thought not,” June continued. “At
any rate, I had apparently committed some kind of mortal sin by
accidentally suggesting that perhaps John was happier in death than
he was in life, and your mom never forgave me for that. I certainly
didn’t mean to suggest that he’d been unhappy with her, I was only
trying to give her some comfort.”

I opened my eyes a fraction of an inch, just
enough to see June’s watery outline before me, and said
matter-of-factly,

“Momma’s crazy now.”

I could perceive June’s head nodding in
agreement. “I had suspected as much,” she said. “I tried to call, I
tried to write; I even tried to come by the house a few times over
the years, but she hung up when I called, returned my letters
unopened, and threatened me with bodily harm when I showed up on
her porch.”

June laughed sadly as she finished her last
sentence.

“The only reason I was able to show up when
you were born was because your mom had a friend for awhile, Katelyn
was her name.”

“I know who that is, but I never met her,” I
said, interrupting her.

“I’m not surprised that you didn’t meet her,”
June continued. “Your mom grew to hate her, just like she hated me,
and like she hated everybody else in the world that wasn’t John, or
Joe.”

“But, at any rate, on my last attempt to
visit your mom, Katelyn was just leaving the house as I was pulling
up and we crossed each other on the sidewalk. We introduced
ourselves to one another, and chatted for a moment before your mom
glanced out the window and saw us.”

“Uh-oh,” I interrupted again. “I bet that
didn’t go well for you or Katelyn.”

June laughed and said, “You could certainly
say that again! Your mom came out of the house screaming loud
enough to wake the dead. I was mortified to see how bad she looked.
She looked like she’d aged ten years when it had only been about
one year since I’d last seen her.”

“Anyway,” June continued, “She came out
screaming and waving a broom around like she was gonna beat Katelyn
and me to death with it, and we both ran for our cars before your
mom could make contact with the broom or the neighbors could call
the cops, assuming that we were up to no good.”

“Did you get away?” I asked breathlessly.

“Oh yeah, we made it,” June said. “We both
got our cars started in record time and peeled away down the block
like we were race car drivers.”

I giggled as I pictured the scene in my head.
Two women in their late twenties running for their lives from a
broom wielding maniac, and then racing their midsize sedans
recklessly down the street in the middle of Suburbia, while little
old men in coveralls and plaid shirts wearing John Deere baseball
caps stood up from the work they were doing in their flower gardens
and shook their fists towards the sky shouting, “Slow down, you
darned fool idiots!”

June laughed with me, and then continued her
story.

“Well we drove like maniacs for a couple of
blocks until we came to the park that’s down the road from here. Do
you know where that is?”

I nodded. I had been to the park with Joe
quite a few times back in the good old days.

“Well,” she continued, “we pulled off there
and got out of our cars, laughing like a couple of love-struck
teenage girls. We had a good chat there and shared our stories
about your mom, and we exchanged phone numbers. Katelyn and I
agreed that it might not be wise for me to try and visit again, but
Katelyn said she would keep me informed of important events in your
mom’s life. That’s how I found out about her pregnancy with
you.”

I was reveling in the history that I was
hearing. My mother had been so tight lipped about any events in her
life that didn’t involve John that it felt like I was only able to
know her through the remembrances of others.

“You said you were there when I was born,” I
said. “But how did you know I was being born? Mama had already
excommunicated Katelyn from her life before that.”

June laughed again. I loved her laugh. Then
she said, “There you go with your big words again. That’s gonna
take some getting used to, my little friend. You’re right though,
Katelyn didn’t know when your mom went into labor, because your mom
wouldn’t talk to her, but Joe understood what was happening when
your mom started having labor pains, and he called Katelyn. Katelyn
called an ambulance and then she called me.”

“I got to the hospital about twenty minutes
after the ambulance had dropped off your mom, but I stayed out of
the way until after you were born. I talked to the doctor that was
overseeing the delivery and asked him to alert me after you were
born, and then I went to wait in the cafeteria with Katelyn, who’d
also come.”

I listened to her story in rapt silence,
hanging on every word. Learning anything about my past was
fascinating to me. I was never able to ask my mother about my past
because the only answer I would get before the Sickness took her
completely was a bunch of screaming about “poison”, and “good for
nothing sex fiends”, and after the Sickness took her I was liable
to get a thrashing if I asked. And while asking Joe was a lot safer
route, he didn’t have a lot of answers for me either. He told me
what he knew, of course, but he could only remember so much.

“Did Momma know that you and Katelyn were
there?” I asked.

June shook her head emphatically as she
answered. “No way! We made sure and stay out of sight until after
you were born. We were afraid that if we upset your mom while she
was in labor, it might complicate the birth somehow.”

“At any rate,” June continued, “the doctor
came down to the cafeteria about two hours later and told Katelyn
and I that your mom had delivered a healthy young baby boy, and she
was now sleeping peacefully in room 612. We decided that if she was
sleeping, that was a perfect time to sneak a peek at you without
your mom freaking out on us, so we went up.”

“We opened her door up just a little bit and
peeked in; all we could see of your mom was her feet. The way the
room was built, there was a bathroom right next to the entry door,
and the rest of her room didn’t open up until about ten feet
further in. But, we could see you.”

“Where was I?” I asked in awe.

“You, my dear,” June said while giving my
hair a little ruffling, just the way Joe used to, “were in a crib,
up against the wall, across the room from your mom’s smelly
feet.”

I laughed at joke, and waited for her to
continue her story.

“Katelyn and I walked in as quietly as we
could, so we could get a closer look at you without waking your mom
up, but unfortunately, she was already awake.”

“Uh-oh”, I said.

“Yeah,” June laughed, “uh-oh indeed. She
didn’t have a broom nearby, and she was still too sore from having
just given birth to put up much fight, but she sure could
scream!”

I laughed loudly as I said, “Yeah! She still
has a special capacity for ululation.”

June laughed and ruffled my hair again as she
said, “You need to stop with the vocabulary, Dude! I’ll never know
what you’re talking about!”

“Sorry,” I said, smiling. “I’ll try to be
better.”

I was well aware that I had no intentions of
trying to be better.

My whole life had been spent being a second
class citizen, I could never hope to be as wonderful as my
namesake, and I was never going to be as wonderful as Joe, who
shared a blood connection with my namesake. But in my communicative
skills, I had surpassed nearly average citizen and had become a bit
of a prodigy. I was not going to let my one advantage over the
common man go very easily. I rather enjoyed being special, even if
I was only special because of my unconventional vocabulary.

“But, yeah,” June said, “she screamed like a
banshee and threw her water glass at us. Luckily her aim
sucked!”

I giggled again.

“She just kept screaming obscenities at us,
threatening us with death; you know…the usual.”

I smiled knowingly.

“Eventually, the doctor came rushing in and
told us we had to leave. I screamed at your mom as I was being
ushered out to tell me your name, but she told me I could rot in
Hell and she’d never give me your name. Then the doctor ran us out
and I never talked to your mom again, or even tried to for that
matter.”

At this last little bit of history I cocked
my head and managed to open my eyes all the way up without so much
pain. My sensitivity to light was slowly diminishing, though it was
still uncomfortable.

I looked at June more clearly, and saw for
the first time how much she resembled my mother. Her face was
similar to my mother’s, although without all the wrinkles and
without the mask of malice that my mother had worn.

She had the same facial features; cheekbones,
nose, mouth, eye shape. But her eyes were not the same color as my
mother’s. June’s eyes were a bluish grey, just like Kim Basinger’s
had been on the Playboy cover. And June had different hair.

My mother’s hair had been dark and stringy,
but June’s hair was lush, honey colored, and hung thickly about her
face in loose ringlets. Her hair was the finishing touch that
accentuated her beautiful face like the artfully crafted roses on
wedding cake.

Though June was stunningly pretty, I was
suddenly beginning to doubt the veracity of all her claims, and
said, “But you knew my name when you came down here. How did you
know my name? And how did you even know where to look, and what
you’d find?”

June must have sensed the doubt in my voice
because she bent down just slightly and made sure that our eyes
were locked and she said, “I told you, Johnny, I saw you in a
dream. I have had the same dream for the last five nights. In the
dream, I’m always standing in darkness and this teenage boy with
long blonde hair walks up behind me and gently tugs on my sleeve.
When I turn around and look at him, he smiles and reaches out for
my hand.”

“He has such a look of…purity; I guess is the
word for it, that I feel like I have to grab his hand. Anyway, I
take his hand and the darkness fades away and suddenly we’re
standing on the porch of this house. I recognize it as this house
because, as you might recall, I have a vivid memory of being chased
away from here with a broom.”

I had to laugh at that, recalling my own
imaginations of old men and flower gardens protesting speeding
idiots.

June politely waited for me to finish
snickering before she continued.