Stranger Things Happen (9 page)

He took a deep breath. "The tailfeathers sounded like silk
dresses brushing against the ground. I remember that. They sounded
like women in long silk dresses. I didn't make a sound. If I made a
sound, they might notice me. They crowded my mother up against the
curb of a stone fountain, and she was pushing at them with her
hands, shooing them, and then she just fell backwards. The fountain
only had two inches of water in it. I heard her head crack against
the bottom when she fell. It knocked her unconscious and she
drowned before anyone came."

His face was serious and beseeching. She could see the small
flutter of pulse against the white flesh—thin as paper—of his
jaw.

"That's horrible," June said. "Who took care of you?"

"My mother and father weren't married," he said. "He already had
a wife. My mother didn't have any family, so my father gave me to
his sisters. Aunt Minnie, Aunt Prune, Aunt Di, and Aunt Rose."

"My father emigrated to Australia when I was two," June said. "I
don't remember him much. My mother remarried about a year ago."

"I've never seen my father," the boy said. "Aunt Rose says it
would be too dangerous. His wife, Vera, hates me even though she's
never seen me, because I'm her husband's bastard. She's a little
insane."

"What's your name?"

"Humphrey Bogart Stoneking," he said. "My mother was a big fan.
What's your name?"

"June," said June.

They were silent for a moment. June rubbed her hands together
for comfort. "Are you cold?" asked Humphrey. She nodded and he
moved closer and put his arm around her.

"You smell nice," he said after a moment. He sniffed
thoughtfully. "Familiar, sort of."

"Yeah?" She turned her head and their mouths bumped together,
soft and cold.

8. Rose Read on young lovers
.

It's all the fault of that damned perfume, and that mooning,
meddling, milky-faced perfumer. He could have had it back and no
harm done, if he didn't love mischief more than his mother. So it
might have been my idea—it might have been an accident. Or maybe it
was Fate. If I'm still around, so is that tired old hag. Do you
think that I have the time to see to every love affair in the world
personally?

Those hesitating kisses, the tender fumbles and stumbles and
awkward meetings of body parts give me indigestion. Heartburn. Give
me two knowledgeable parties who know what is up and what fits
where; give me Helen of Troy, fornicating her way across the
ancient world, Achilles and Patroclos amusing themselves in a
sweaty tent.

A swan, a bull, a shower of gold, something new, something old,
something borrowed, something blue. He seduced Sarah Stoneking in
an empty movie house, stepped right off of the screen during the
matinee and lisped "Shweetheart" at her. She fell into the old
goat's arms. I know, I was there.

9. In which a discovery is made.

The sky stayed clear and pale all night long. When they were
cold again, they wrapped themselves in Humphrey's coat, and leaned
back against the wall. June took out the box of chocolates and ate
them as Humphrey explored her pack. He pulled out the perfume.
"Where'd you get this?"

"I nicked it from a perfume shop off Market Street."

"I should have known." He pulled out the book. "Aunt Rose," he
said.

"She's your aunt?" June said. "I guess I should give it to you
to give back."

He shook his head. "If she didn't mean for you to have it, you
wouldn't even have thought of taking it. Might as well keep it now.
She probably set this whole thing up."

"How?" June said. "Is she psychic or something?"

"This must be how they're planning to stop me," Humphrey said.
"They think if I have a girlfriend, I'll give up on the flying
lessons, take up fucking as a new hobby."

"Right." June said, affronted. "It was nice to meet you too. I
don't usually go around doing this."

"Wait," he said, catching at her pack as she stood up. "I didn't
mean it that way. You're right. This is a complete coincidence. And
I didn't think that you did."

He smiled up at her. June sat back down, mollified, stretching
her legs out in front of her. "Why are you taking flying
lessons?"

"I've been saving up for it," he said. "I went to see a
psychologist about a year ago, and he suggested that flying lessons
might make me less afraid of birds. Besides, I've always wanted to.
I used to dream about it. The aunts say it's a bad idea, but
they're just superstitious. I have my first lesson tomorrow. Today,
actually."

"I think flying would be wonderful," June said. She was
shivering. It was because she was cold. It wasn't because she was
cold. She slipped her hands up inside his shirt. "But I know
something just as nice."

"What?" he said. So she showed him. His mouth was so sweet.

10. Going to hell. Instructions and advice.

As the others step over the dog he doesn't wake. If you step
over him, he will smell live flesh and he will tear you to
pieces.

Take this perfume with you and when you come to Bonehouse, dab
it behind your ears, at your wrists and elbows, at the back of your
knees. Stroke it into the vee of your sex, as you would for a
lover. The scent is heavy and rich, like the first cold handful of
dirt tossed into the dug grave. It will trick the dog's nose.

Inside the door, there is no light but the foxfire glow of your
own body. The dead flicker like candles around you. They are
burning their memories for warmth. They may brush up against you,
drawn to what is stronger and hotter and brighter in you. Don't
speak to them.

There are no walls, no roof above you except darkness. There are
no doors, only the luminous windows that the dead have become.
Unravel the left arm of his sweater and let it fall to the
ground.

11. In the All-Night Bakery at dawn.

June and Humphrey went around the corner of the bulwark, down
over an outcropping of rocks, slick with gray light, down to the
beach. A seagull, perched like a lantern upon the castle wall,
watched them go.

They walked down Market Street, the heavy, wet air clinging like
ghosts to their hair and skin. The sound of their feet, hollow and
sharp, rang like bells on the cobblestones. They came to the
All-Night Bakery and June could hear someone singing inside.

Behind the counter there were long rows of white ovens and
cooling racks, as tall as June. A woman stood with her strong back
to them, sliding trays stacked with half-moon loaves into an oven,
like a mother tucking her children into warm sheets.

She was singing to herself, low and deep, and as June watched
and listened, the fat loaves, the ovens, the woman and her lullaby
threw out light, warmth. The ovens, the loaves, the woman grew
brighter and larger and crowded the bakery and June's senses so
that she began to doubt there was room for herself, for the houses
and street, the dawn outside to exist. The woman shut the oven
door, and June was afraid that presently she would turn around and
show June her face, flickering pale and enormous as the moon.

She stumbled back outside. Humphrey followed her, his pockets
stuffed with doughnuts and meat pies.

"My Aunt Di," he said. He handed June a pastry. "Some nights I
work here with her."

He went with her to the station, and wrapped up two greasy bacon
pies and gave them to her. She wrote her address and telephone on a
corner of the napkin, and then reached into her pocket. She took
out the crumpled banknotes, the small, heavy coins. "Here," she
said. "For your flying lesson."

She dumped them into his cupped hands, and then before she could
decide if the blush on his face was one of pleasure or
embarrassment, the train was coming into the station. She got on
and didn't look back.

She slept on the train and dreamed about birds.

Home again, and Lily and Walter were finishing the breakfast
cleanup. June handed the book and the perfume to her mother. "Happy
birthday, Lily."

"Where were you last night?" Lily said. She held the perfume
bottle between her thumb and middle finger as if it were a dead
rat.

"With a friend," June said vaguely, and pretended not to see
Lily's frown. She went up the stairs to the top of the house, to
her room in the attic. The honeymooners' door was shut, but she
could hear them as she went past in the hall. It sounded just like
pigeons, soft little noises and gasps. She slammed her door shut
and went straight to sleep. What did she dream about? More birds?
When she woke up, she couldn't remember, but her hands hurt as if
she had been holding on to something.

When she came down again—hands and face washed, hair combed back
neat—the cake that Walter had made, square and plain, with a dozen
pink candles spelling out Lily's name, was on the table. Lily was
looking at it as if it might explode. June said, "How do you like
the perfume?"

"I don't," Lily said. She clattered the knives and forks down.
"It smells cheap and too sweet. Not subtle at all."

Walter came up behind Lily and squeezed her around the middle.
She pushed at him, but not hard. "I quite liked it," he said. "Your
mother's been sitting with her feet up in the parlor all day,
reading the rubbishy romance you got her. Very subtle, that."

"Rubbish is right," Lily said. She blew out the candles with one
efficient breath, a tiny smile on her face.

12. The occupant in room five.

Two days later the honeymooners left. When June went into the
room, she could smell sex, reeky and insistent. She flung open the
windows and stripped the ravaged bed, but the smell lingered in the
walls and in the carpet.

In the afternoon, a woman dressed in expensive dark clothing
came looking for a room. "It would be for some time," the woman
said. She spoke very carefully, as if she was used to being
misunderstood. June, sitting in the parlor, idly leafing through
sex advice columns in American magazines left behind by the
honeymooners, looked up for a second. She thought the woman in
black had an antique look about her, precise and hard, like a face
on a cameo.

"We do have a room," said Lily. "But I don't know that you'll
want it. We try to be nice here, but you look like you might be
accustomed to better."

The woman sighed. "I am getting a divorce from my husband," she
said. "He has been unfaithful. I don't want him to find me, so I
will stay here where he would not think to look. You were
recommended to me."

"Really?" said Lily, looking pleased. "By who?"

But the woman couldn't remember. She signed her name, Mrs. Vera
Ambrosia, in a thick slant of ink, and produced £40, and another
£40 as a deposit. When June showed her up to Room Five, her
nostrils flared, but she said nothing. She had with her one small
suitcase, and a covered box. Out of the box she took a birdcage on
a collapsible stand. There was nothing in the birdcage but
dust.

When June left, she was standing at the window looking out. She
was smiling at something.

13. A game of golf.

June tried not to think about Humphrey. It was a silly name
anyway. She went out with her friends and she never mentioned his
name. They would have laughed at his name. It was probably made
up.

She thought of describing how his eyebrows met, in a straight
bar across his face. She decided that it should repulse her. It
did. And he was a liar too. Not even a good liar.

All the same, she rented old movies, 
Key
Largo 
and 
Casablanca
, and watched them with
Walter and Lily. And sometimes she wondered if he had been telling
the truth. Her period came and so she didn't have to worry about
that; she worried anyway, and she began to notice the way that
birds watched from telephone lines as she walked past them. She
counted them, trying to remember how they added up for joy, how for
sorrow.

She asked Walter who said, "Sweetheart, for you they mean joy.
You're a good girl and you deserve to be happy." He was touching up
the red trim around the front door. June sat hunched on the step
beside him, swirling the paint around in the canister.

"Didn't my mother deserve to be happy?" she said sharply.

"Well, she's got me, hasn't she?" Walter said, his eyebrows
shooting up. He pretended to be wounded. "Oh, I see. Sweetheart,
you've got to be patient. Plenty of time to fall in love when
you're a bit older."

"She was my age when she had me!" June said. "And where were you
then? And where is 
he 
now?" She got up awkwardly
and ran inside, past a pair of startled guests, past Lily who stood
in the narrow hall and watched her pass, no expression at all on
her mother's face.

#

That night June had a dream. She stood in her nightgown, an old
one that had belonged to her mother, her bare feet resting on cold
silky grass. The wind went through the holes in the flannel, curled
around her body and fluttered the hem of the nightgown. She tasted
salt in her mouth, and saw the white moth-eaten glow of the waves
below her, stitching water to the shore. The moon was sharp and
thin as if someone had eaten the juicy bit and left the rind.

"Fore!" someone called. She realized she was standing barefoot
and nearly naked on the St. Andrews golf course. "Why hello, little
thief," someone said.

June pinched herself, and it hurt just a little, and she didn't
wake up. Rose Read still stood in front of her, dressed all in
white: white cashmere sweater; white wool trousers; spotless white
leather shoes and gloves. "You look positively frostbitten, darling
child," Rose Read said.

She leaned towards June and pressed her soft, warm mouth against
June's mouth. June opened her mouth to protest, and Rose Read
breathed down her throat. It was delicious, like drinking fire. She
felt Rose Read's kiss rushing out towards her ten fingers, her icy
feet, pooling somewhere down below her stomach. She felt like a
June-shaped bowl brimming over with warmth and radiance.