June (40 page)

The phone rang and rang. Life inside Two Oaks was almost as it had been: she did not answer the doorbell and she did not open her mail, which piled through the slot in the door into a great mound of disappointment. But the house had stopped dreaming.

Elda had insisted on hiring roof repairmen, so they came and went from the side door, the footprints from their work boots muddying the brown paper they’d taped to the master stairs. Cassie slept in the maid’s room on the air mattress, which she had to inflate every night before bed, and which had her lying flat on the floor by morning. She kept to the back of the house: kitchen, dining room, servant stairs, which felt right somehow, new, and punishing. But still no dreams.

Soon, the photographers figured out that Tate was gone for good. Cassie supposed they’d follow the trail of Jack’s money back to St. Jude eventually. But when would the millions find their way to her? It was a fun guessing game; she supposed other, more responsible adults would seek out the solution to it. She very much considered getting a lawyer, especially when she lay in bed and watched the moonlight fill the small pine box of a room. She’d probably have to pay a lot of taxes. So, then, also an accountant? Or one of those money managers or something? She meant to call the bank, really, she did. But it was so much easier to stay in bed. The executors and financial advisers and attorneys and accountants could come to her. Maybe if she stayed in bed long enough, Two Oaks would swallow her again in its velvety dreams.

She didn’t know many, or any, people anymore, so she didn’t have to suffer advice. She didn’t talk to anyone for weeks, except for Elda, who left her with a cell phone and insisted Cassie pick up when she called, which happened every night between the hours of ten and one. Elda mostly blathered on about her grandsons’ swimming lessons and helping her twin granddaughters prepare for college in the fall, lulling Cassie into a false sense of security until she’d interject—“are you eating?” or “have you taken any pictures?” or “did you go outside today?”—and Cassie would resolve not to pick up the cell phone the next night, and then, the next night, the cell phone would ring, and she would, of course, pick up.

The truth was, Cassie did eat well, at least for the first few weeks, since Hank had left truckloads of food behind. But then Hank’s groceries dwindled to a small bag of French lentils and a single block of frozen spinach, and even Cassie couldn’t justify gumming frozen vegetables for dinner. Before, she’d enjoyed the walk to the Pantry Pride, but it felt like an epic journey now—her little old lady cart, the patch of town without a sidewalk, and, worst of all, the stares and whispers as she passed her neighbors’ homes. They held up their cell phones and took her picture. Soon, whenever the money came, she’d be able to buy herself a car and she wouldn’t feel so on display. Soon, she’d open her mail and she’d start answering the landline; maybe today was the day.

They watched her in the grocery store—a round old woman picking up a birthday cake with fluorescent rosettes from the bakery counter, a teenage girl who snapped a picture in the cracker aisle—but at least they didn’t talk to her. Cassie supposed she should care what she looked like, since pictures were probably making their way onto the Internet, linked as she now was to Tate and Elda, but she found she didn’t much mind sullying the family name. And then she remembered that Tate wasn’t actually in the family, and that she, herself, was, and she felt guilty (three frozen pizzas) and mad at herself for feeling guilty (okay, fine, some zucchini).

When she got up to checkout, all three tabloids above the conveyor belt featured Tate.
TATE’S TANTRUM! TATE’S SCANDALOUS SEX TAPE! MAX MOVES OUT!
Tate looked an absolute wreck in the pictures, even with her sunglasses on—her cheeks were gaunt, her mouth severe. Apparently she’d gotten into a drunken screaming match at someone’s party? And she’d fired Hank? And Nick was threatening to quit after a blowout over his paycheck? Cassie felt a stirring of sympathy, a tingle of curiosity. She grabbed a Twix and finished it before she got to the register. The girl pointed to the corner of her own mouth, and Cassie wiped away the chocolate with her sleeve. At least she’d made it past the magazines.

It was July. Hot and quiet, every door swollen in its frame. Even the dogs weren’t barking in the middle of the day. Cassie felt like a vampire. It was too much to put everything but the perishables away, too much even to shower, or to do anything but go to bed. She was alone. She longed for the dream people. Sleep in the maid’s room was dark and impermeable, nothing more than heavy-limbed slumber.

Summer pushed on. Some days, Cassie awoke crisp and rational. She’d be seized with the desire to sort the mail and answer the phone and do crunches and eat kale salads. Those days, she could see the whole pathetic tangle from a polite distance: Why are you depressed, Cassie? Is it because your grandmother died? Are you sad because you left Jim? Or because Nick left you? Was either of them really ever “with” you to begin with? You didn’t really want Tate to stay, did you? You know she’s a sociopath, right? Get up get up get up. Everyone loses their grandmother. Plenty of people lose their parents. You didn’t even know about Tate and Elda and Jack a month ago, and now they have you cowering in bed? You sad little freak. You’re going to die alone.

Occasionally, original thoughts cleared the brambles. Such as: she was disappointed in her grandmother. Since finding out about Jack, Cassie’d had this hope that he and June had shared some great eternal love. But maybe Tate hadn’t been so off the mark when she’d called June a townie—maybe June had only been some slutty girl who’d done a movie star. And maybe Jack had only left everything to Cassie in order to screw over his daughters. Daughter—she kept forgetting it was singular now. She wondered if Jack had always known Tate wasn’t his. Maybe leaving everything to Cassie had been an elaborate way to make sure Tate found out her mother wasn’t as saintly as she’d believed.

It was better in bed. Even without the dream people, who’d definitely abandoned her, it was better.

But then, toward the end of July, she had a Saturday of clarity. The landline was ringing again and she answered it, like that, on a whim. It wasn’t the first time she’d done this—it was a fun game, like fishing for sport, because you could always hang up without saying a word. But this was the only time the person on the other end asked not for Cassandra, or Cassandra Danvers, but for Cassie.

“Yes?” Cassie realized she hadn’t spoken in a couple of days. The word leapt out of her, as if it had been waiting for its chance.

“Oh hello!” The woman on the other end of the line sounded pleased. “I’ve been trying you but haven’t had any luck.”

“I’ve been sick,” Cassie lied. Or maybe it wasn’t a lie, but “heartsick” sounded ridiculous, and, anyway, she didn’t know if that’s what she was.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Who is this?”

“I apologize! This is Betty, Betty Prange, from the library? I was hoping to have you over for that tuna casserole Bob and I promised.”

From the darkest corners of Cassie’s mind, she pulled a memory of the lovely older librarian who’d said Cassie looked just like June. “Bob was up in Lima last week,” Betty explained, “at our storage unit. I asked him to see if he could turn up any of his father’s pictures—the ones I mentioned, of that party they had at Two Oaks—and, well, he has. I think you’ll want to see what he found.”

So tuna casserole it was. And how about tonight? Cassie had no reason to refuse, though it did take her a couple of hours to make herself fit for human companionship. Turned out Bob and Betty lived only a few streets over. She walked toward town in the evening light, admiring the sunny haze that had settled over St. Jude, sticking her tongue out at the old woman spying from the little wooden house across the side lawn as Cassie passed by.

Bob was Betty’s perfect match. He waved from the center of the front walk, a pink lump of white oxford shirt and shiny forehead and red, bulbous nose; Cassie guessed he liked his cocktails. She remembered what Betty had said about him being the first responder at the accident, and, as she neared him, she searched his face for any recognition she might feel. She remembered so many strange shards from that awful night, but not his face, even though, she could tell from the grandfatherly way he drank in the sight of her, that he and Betty really did think of her as “our miracle.” He made sure she smelled each and every one of Betty’s roses as they ambled to the front door: citrus, musk, honey.

Dinner started at 5:30 on the dot. The sun was harsh through the dining room windows of the small, old house. The casserole was accompanied by boxed mashed potatoes topped with Kraft macaroni and cheese, and a side salad of raw broccoli swathed in thick, milky mayonnaise. The women drank Smirnoff Ice screwdrivers, and Bob drank a Bud Light.

Cassie felt, at once, at home. June’s tastes had run a bit more bohemian—the art books, the Chopin—but Bob and Betty’s house bore many of the same relaxed, practical touches as the Columbus home in which she’d been raised: twinned tray tables, thick mauve curtains, and, on the kitchen counter, a large ceramic cookie jar. Why, then, did Cassie feel so nervous? Her gut churned uncomfortably, and she answered their questions with the sense that something big was about to burst out of her, even if she didn’t know quite what it was.

They wondered how she was doing all alone in that big old house. What exactly did she do all day? Had the roofers finished yet? Looked like a big job. She guessed, from the fact that they didn’t ask about the movie stars, that they knew all about the Montgomery situation but had decided not to bring it up.

Betty went to prepare dessert, and Cassie found herself alone at the table with Bob. It was easy, once she saw what her own question was—easy and terrible. “You were at my accident, weren’t you?” she asked, although that was not the hard question. She endured the sadness he showed and smiled as he praised her survival—“not a scratch on you,” he said, with tears in his eyes—then pushed on to the real question.

“I remember parts of that night,” she said. “I’d been at my grandparents’ for the weekend, and my parents had come to pick me up.” Bob wanted to interject, Cassie could see it, but she held up her hand and he kept his silence. “I remember my grandmother begging my father not to drive, not in the state he was in. I didn’t know what that meant. I remember her standing on the Two Oaks porch wringing her hands as we drove away. And then, I remember being a way out of town, and watching my father swig from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He had one hand on the wheel and one hand on the bottle, and he passed the bottle to my mother and she drank too.” Bob was looking uncomfortable now, but, to his credit, he wasn’t stopping her. “But when I looked at the police report, there was no mention of a bottle of whiskey or of my father’s blood alcohol level.”

“He was dead at the scene,” Bob said defensively. “No reason to test him.”

“Okay,” Cassie said evenly. “But the bottle. What happened to the bottle?”

Bob paled. The sounds from the kitchen had grown quiet; Cassie supposed Betty was listening.

“It’s okay,” Cassie said. “I won’t be angry. I just want to know what happened.”

Bob fiddled with his dessert spoon. “I was the first one there. Your dad was behind the wheel. Your mom had been flung through the windshield.” The spoon again, twisting through his fingers. “You sure you want to hear this?”

She could have told him that the scene had obsessed her every waking moment for the two preceding years, leading up to her show last summer, as she painstakingly re-created every aspect of the accident that she could remember. She could have told him that nothing could faze her, not the hole where her mother had been, not the blood pouring from the back of her father’s head, not the horrible sound of the panicked adults on the outside of the car when they’d heard her call for help, adults, she now knew, who had included Bob.

Instead, she put her hand on the spoon, on his hands, and stilled him.

“I was the first one to get there. I knew it was your dad’s car right away. I called it in. I could see there’d be fatalities. I had no idea you were in there too—we didn’t know until the ambulance arrived.” She could tell it was costing him a lot to repeat this, and she squeezed his hand. “I saw it there, on the floor, the whiskey. You have to understand—I’d known your grandma a long time. She wasn’t what I would have called a friend, but this is a small town, and she was a real special lady. So was your grandpa Arthur. They helped everyone, buying groceries for the families who couldn’t afford it, tutoring kids who deserved a chance at college. I saw the whiskey, and I knew, if anyone else found it, it would have to go in the official report. That would have destroyed them both. So I reached in and got it, and I threw it into the cornfield, and I didn’t tell anyone about it until just this second.”

“But she knew,” Cassie said, remembering June’s words to her at the art show—“That was our business.”

“Maybe she did,” Bob said. “But what I mean is it would have been just awful to see her walk around this town with that gossip hanging around her. People already called Adelbert a party animal, said he was out of control—I’m sorry to tell you that, but it was the truth. And June and Artie were mild-mannered, good people. Better, I thought, for everyone to think it was a plain old tragedy than something worse.” He frowned. “It might not have been the right thing to do, but I’m glad I did it.”

Cassie nodded, finally understanding June’s pain at the sight of that Jack Daniel’s bottle in Cassie’s installation. How that bottle must have confirmed her suspicions, and filled her with guilt and sorrow. Cassie wanted to climb into bed for a week, reliving that moment when she’d followed June outside, onto the Manhattan street, and June had turned back to her with a wild unknowing in her eye, as though Cassie was not to be recognized. That look was a black hole.

Betty reemerged from the kitchen. Her eyes were wet, but she’d put on a smile, and she bore red Jell-O, which quaked in the shape of a Bundt pan and was topped with Cool Whip. She served it in silence, then plopped herself down and said, “We’ve got those pictures to show you,” urging the night along.