The Lovely Shadow (17 page)

I was still too dazed with bliss to respond
verbally so I just nodded my head vigorously until I nearly gave
myself whiplash, tears finally finding purchase in my wide, dry
eyes.

June smiled and her eyes filled with tears
that never spilled over the rims, but instead puddled on the rims,
swelling up and seeming to defy gravity. She sniffled softly, and
still smiling, said, “Good! I’m so happy Johnny! We’ll make a great
team, you and me. We’ll take on the whole world, and nothing will
be able to get in our way! We’ll be like superheroes or
something.”

We both laughed at that idea, and then June
asked me if I’d like to go get some ice cream. I thought about it
for a second before deciding that as appealing as ice cream
sounded, at the moment I’d rather just get some sleep, in a real
bed, in a real room, with a real night light, but not a Snoopy
night light; no, never a Snoopy night light again.

I told her about my desire for sleep and she
accepted my preference without complaint and put the car in drive.
She drove out of the park much more sanely than she had driven into
it. She drove cautiously the rest of the way to her house, which
lay beyond the suburbs, out into the countryside, where the nearest
neighbor was at least two miles away, and throughout the entire
trip, she gave no little old men any reason to complain, and I fell
asleep listening to the gentle hum of tires on blacktop instead of
the clunking of laundry appliances.

I slept during most of the trip to June’s
modest farm and awoke only when she stopped the car in front of the
large gate that barred her driveway. June was still unbuckling her
seatbelt when I awoke and she looked over at me and smiled.

“We’re home, Sugar Dumpling,” she said. “I
just gotta get the gate, and then we’ll get you to bed, ok
Soldier?”

I nodded my sleepy head and thought how
wonderful it was to have somebody who cared enough about me to give
me nicknames. Joe had given me a nickname that I would cherish for
the rest of my life; ‘Squirt’. But my long lost Aunt June seemed to
have a limitless supply of nicknames for me, and every new name she
called me seemed sweeter and more wonderful than the one before
it.

I watched her getting the gate and wondered,
not for the first time that evening, if this could really be
happening. I could only barely believe that I was really free from
the basement and free from my tyrannical, mentally unbalanced
torturer; aka Mom. I couldn’t believe that someone had come into my
life who loved me every bit as much as Joe had, and they wanted
me.

After the life I’d had thus far, it was
pretty hard to believe, and the fuzzy glow surrounding everything I
saw was still lending that weird, surreal element of unreality to
the whole situation.

I gave myself a quick slap across the face
before June made it back to the car to test the theory that this
might be a dream, but the immediate pain I felt in my still sore
fingers, and across my face assured me that I was really awake and
everything was really happening.

June made it back to the car as I was busy
rubbing my eyes, (they had started watering from the injured finger
face slap I’d just administered).

“You ok, Sport?” she asked. “You ain’t crying
are you?”

“No, Ma’am,” I replied. “I’m just tired; eyes
are watering a bit. That’s all.”

June seemed to believe me. She smiled and
said, “Well, Little Buddy, I’ve got a room that’s got a bed with
nice thick blankets, and a big old fluffy pillow in it, and it’s
just waitin’ for a big old Honker like yourself to jump in it and
go to sleep. What do ya say we quit gabbin’ out here and get you in
that bed?”

I smiled and shook my head in eager approval
of her plan, and June drove the car up the driveway to a garage
that was detached from a big, old farm house.

From the front, I could see that the house
was a big white two story shaped like a rectangular box with a roof
on top and a big covered porch out front.

Along each side of the house, poking out of
the steeply slanted roof, were two small dormers; one towards the
front of the house on each side, and one towards the rear on each
side.

All the trim was painted gray and the main
structure, which was sided with three inch lap siding, was painted
white.

Windows ran down the length of the house,
windows peeked out of the front of each dormer, and two big picture
windows flanked the bright red door that was centered in the width
of the front of house.

The roof appeared to be a tar shingle roof
and was a dark green color. Several red brick chimneys poked out of
the roof in different locations, lending a homey appearance to the
entire setting. The only thing missing was a wisp of welcoming
smoke rising lazily from one of the chimneys. If one had been
smoking it would have made the house seem like something out of a
Dickens novel.

The house sat confidently in the midst of a
green sea of well manicured lawn that was fenced in all the way
around with a weather worn split rail fence. Beyond the fenced lawn
appeared to be pasture land.

The small, one car garage sat about fifteen
feet away from the house, to the left if your orientation was
directly in front of the house, facing it. The garage was sided
with the same three inch lap siding as the house and painted the
same white color, with gray trim and a green roof.

Two four pane windows hung in the wall along
both sides of the garage, one towards the front, and one towards
the back, and a normal sized entry door stood just to the right of
the front-most window. One big, wooden garage door took up nearly
the whole front of the garage. The door was not of the type that
you open by lifting it up and in to the garage, but rather it was
one that had to be rolled off to the side to open.

It was directly in front of that door that
June parked her car and turned to me as I was surveying the
entirety of the scene around me in the blue light cast off by the
many halogen lamps that June had scattered about on tall poles
around the house, yard and garage.

I could feel June looking at me so I cut my
visual exploration of her property short and looked back at
her.

“You have a lot of lights.” I said
matter-of-factly.

June snickered through her nose and replied,
“I told you I was afraid of the dark.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I was really scared of the
dark in the basement, but then Joe came and showed me that there
was nothing to be afraid of. I’m not afraid any more, but I still
don’t like the dark. I’m glad you have lights.”

“Well,” said June while opening her car door,
“I’m glad I have such a brave little trooper in my family now. You
can keep me safe until we get to the house, ok?”

I smiled, knowing full well that she didn’t
need me to keep her safe, but I appreciated the patronization
nonetheless.

“Ok, I’ll do that.” I said, getting out of
the car.

June came around to my side of the car and
held out her hand. I grabbed it and let her lead me up the sidewalk
to the front porch of her big farmhouse where she let go of my hand
in order to unlock the front door.

June stuck the key in the lock and struggled
for a second to unlock the door before realizing that it was
already unlocked.

“Hmm,” she said, “that’s odd. I could have
sworn I locked the door when I left tonight.”

June’s eyebrows had arched down and her lips
had compressed tightly, slightly puckering her face in an obvious
look of concern. Though she resembled my mother in many aspects,
the slight puckering of her face did not have nearly the same
uglifying effect on June’s face that it had had on my mother’s
face.

“Maybe you only thought you locked it,” I
suggested helpfully. “You know, like since you don’t usually lock
it, maybe you thought you had it locked, but it never locked all
the way or something.”

June’s lips stayed tightly compressed, but
she slid them off to the side of her face and puckered them outward
slightly. She cocked her head, squinted one eye, and raised the
eyebrow over her one wide open eye in a look of exaggerated
thoughtfulness.

“Yeah, Honeybunch, you’re probably right,”
she said, giving her head a slight nod. “I probably just messed up
when I was locking it. Lord knows it wouldn’t be the first thing I
screwed up.”

She laughed as she spoke, and as she laughed
all of the confusion and apprehension drained out of her face, and
was replaced by her previous radiant cheerfulness.

“Doing stuff like that always makes me wonder
if I’m losin’ my marbles.”

“You’re not crazy,” I said solemnly. “I’ve
seen crazy before, and you’re not it.”

June stopped in the foyer that was just
inside the door and turned to me, offering a sad, appreciative
smile. She ruffled my hair and bent down and kissed my
forehead.

“Sweet Cheeks,” she said seriously, “I’m so
sorry about what your mom put you through, and I’m gonna do
everything in my power to make it up to you. You are just the
sweetest damn thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and I can’t wait to
get to know you better.”

I smiled back at her weakly until a yawn
forced my smile into something that must have more resembled a
snarl.

“Ok, Toots, let’s get you to bed,” June said
as she stood erect again.

June grabbed my hand and led me through the
spacious house. Normally my curiosity about a new environment would
have been kicked into high gear by a situation like this, but I was
so tired that I paid little attention to the house as we breezed
through it. All I remember is the fuzzy haze that seemed to
surround every object that came into my field of vision.

My focus didn’t snap back to attention until
we entered what was to be my bedroom. The bedroom was on the second
floor, (though I have no recollection of walking up the stairs) and
was huge. A large dormer window sat in the center of the far wall,
facing east to catch the first rays of the rising sun each
morning.

The dormer window was recessed from the main
wall, sticking out towards the east about four feet, and was
trimmed in a polished dark wood. A shelf, about two feet deep was
built into the window frame, just below the window, and ran the
full length of the cubicle that the window was set into. The shelf
was made of the same highly polished dark wood that framed the
window, and gave the whole area a very sophisticated
appearance.

An oak chair with a deep red velvet seat
cushion sat in front of the shelf, making it look more like a
tabletop than a shelf, and looked to be a very inviting place to
sit and watch the sun come up.

The window in the dormer had a set of wooden
venetian blinds, each slat about two inches wide. The blinds were a
slightly lighter color than the rest of the wood trim in the area,
and were rolled down, offering a rich, warm, contrast to the dark
wood trim that dominated the area.

A huge, queen sized bed sat against the wall
just beside the dormer window to the right. The head of the bed was
up against the eastern wall and the foot of the bed was out towards
the center of the room, towards the entry door.

The bed was covered with a thick, plush
comforter, deep red in color, which hung nearly to the floor on
three sides of the bed and covered a mountain of pillows at the
head of the bed.

To the right of the bed, up against the
eastern and southern walls sat a small night table made of a wood
that was so deeply stained and polished that it appeared black in
color. The four legs of the table were ornately carved, with
shallow fins that spiraled down their entire length, and similarly
carved cross members offered support to each leg in the center of
their length on all four sides.

A small white porcelain lamp sat on the
table, glowing softly through its stained glass lampshade,
illuminating the entire room in a warm multi-colored light. Images
of wildlife decorated the shade, as well as the porcelain body of
the lamp.

Along the northern wall, to the left of the
dormer wall, a spacious closet ran nearly the full length of the
wall, with two big sliding doors made of the same highly polished
dark wood that framed in the dormer. The doors met nearly
seamlessly in the middle of the closet.

All the walls as well as the ceiling of the
room were painted a soft cream color and were accentuated by wooden
moldings that ran along the bottom of the walls at the floor, as
well as at the top, against the ceiling. The wood moldings were of
the same dark wood color that most of the other wood in the room
was, and gave the room a nice continuity that did not distract from
the inviting atmosphere the room created.

The room was carpeted in a plush soft carpet;
deep red in color, almost an exact match to the color of the
bedspread.

I observed the entirety of the room in only a
few seconds, but my eye was compulsively drawn to the bed over and
over. I was as tired as I could ever remember having been in my
life and really only wanted to sleep in that big soft bed.

“I don’t have any pajamas for you, Sweetie,”
June said sympathetically. “I have some big old tee shirts that I
use for P.J.’s though, would you like me to get you one?”

I shook my head. “No thank you, June. I’ve
become accustomed to sleeping nude, but I think I’ll just sleep in
my underwear, if that’s ok?”

June smiled and said that would be just fine.
Then she kissed my forehead and turned politely away as I stripped
and climbed into the bed. Once I was snuggled in, June turned back
to me and kissed my forehead again.

‘If she keeps doing that, she’s gonna wear a
hole in my forehead,’ I thought to myself with a smile. ‘That’d be
ok though. I’d rather lose my mind through a hole in my forehead
created by love than by the Sickness that took Mamma.’