Nightingale Page 14
June felt Robert’s hand stiffen on her back.
“Is everything okay, Bill?” Robert’s dad asked, looking concerned. “Can I help?”
Dad went to the front door and opened it. Robert rose beside June, taking his hand away at last, but she didn’t even notice, since all she could think about was how Fred had looked at her when he’d first come out of the bedroom, and how Dad had refused to look at her after the initial stare when Fred had started whispering in his ear.
“Thanks, Stewart,” Dad said, a pained smile on his face, “but everything’s fine. Just a bit of a family issue to be discussed privately.”
You’ve been caught somehow. He knows about New York.
She had been so careful! She’d intercepted not just the acceptance letter, but the additional information that had been mailed to her, even the bus ticket and flight itinerary that had come in a third letter. June hoped with all her heart that it was news of a relative’s death instead, but then she realized that Fred’s face wouldn’t have been flush with excitement like it was. She thought about how irritated Fred had seemed whenever Mom or Dad had praised her in the past few weeks.
As soon as Robert and his father were gone, Dad shut the door, locked it, then picked his drink back up from the coffee table. After gulping down what was left, he stared at the glass in his hand for a moment, turning it slowly as if it were a kaleidoscope.
“Well, what on earth is it?” Mom demanded, clearly upset at the lost opportunity to play charades. “What was so important that it couldn’t wait?”
“That was the bus station that called,” Dad said, and the pit in June’s stomach became a cannonball. “They wanted to let June know that her ride to the airport was going to be delayed by a half hour.”
days past
What followed was a rush of pure and total agony. June felt everyone’s eyes on her, studying her quizzically. Maybe if she was very, very careful about how she handled this, it could still work somehow. Maybe if she convinced them to let her go...
“What do you mean the airport?” Mom asked, confused. “June’s never even been on an airplane before.”
June returned Fred’s stare, narrowing her eyes in a way that she hoped told him how much she despised what he’d done. If he’d just kept his stupid mouth shut, if he’d tried to pull June aside privately and let her explain before telling their parents, if he’d taken two goddamn seconds to realize that letting her go would have meant giving himself all the space in the world to be the favorite child...
“I haven’t,” June said. Careful, careful. “But I’ll be getting on one tomorrow.”
“But to where?” Mom wailed at the same time that Dad yelled, “Over my dead body!”
The lines beneath June’s eyes burned and burned. “I applied for a scholarship,” she started. “For a—”
“College?” Dad roared, throwing his glass down, which landed with a heavy thud on the carpet. “You were going to disappear to college without thinking to talk to your Mom or me about it? I already told you, June, you don’t need college. You have no use for it!”
“No, it wasn’t—” June tried to correct, but was cut off again when Dad went on a rampage about honor and respect and the fact that June totally lacked either of those things (“Either of them!”). In her mind, there was a curious tingling feeling, like a hand made of bees had come down slowly to rest over the soft, pulsing tissues of her brain.
The very air in the house smelled different. She was suddenly aware of the stars in the sky on the other side of her ceiling. She just as suddenly realized that she wasn’t going to be going to New York after all.
She would not be living in a retreat cottage, drinking and napping and going for walks, away from all the stupid little people in her stupid little life. She would not be finishing her book late one night, would not cry and dance and lie on her roof until the sun came up. She would not be meeting anyone who knew how to go about getting published.
“You were going to disappear?” Mom repeated clumsily, grasping to understand the concept. Just moments ago her drunken state had given her pep, but now it weighed her down, made her mouth hang open, made her face pitiful and ugly. “June Ellen Hardie.”
“It would have been okay,” June said and realized that she had been crying for a long time, her cheeks cold and soaked. “I would have come back.”
“How dare you?” Dad asked and went across the room with a sudden movement that made her jump. “Robert didn’t know about your plans, did he? He would have lost you just like the rest of us.”
Lost you, as if her presence in their lives was something that was even close to necessary, as if their minor disruption could ever compare to her enormous freedom and the potential that would come with it. They were just used to getting what they wanted, how they wanted it. To consider her feelings fully would be an empty and uncomfortable task.
“I think I should go to bed now,” she felt herself say. “Could we please talk about this in the morning?”
“Give me that bus ticket.” Dad’s voice was deadly. “Now.”
June walked halfway up the stairs, then looked over her shoulder and gave them all a glance. Mom looked like she was about to be sick in multiple ways. Dad looked like he was about to have a heart attack from rage. Fred looked stunned.
“Fuck you, Fred,” June said, then went up the rest of the stairs.
She cut the sound of Mom’s gasp and Dad’s barking with her bedroom door. As soon as it closed, she paced her room madly, her hands on her head as she considered wildly what to do next. She could leave now, right now; she could take the bus ticket and sleep at the station until her ride came; she could hop the plane and leave no trail for them to follow.
Dad would know where to find you. He’d have police swarming that bus station well before yours even pulled up.
June went to the closet, opened it, and stared with the heaviest of hearts at the suitcase tucked carefully in its place. She lifted it out, laid it on her bed, thumbed the latches. Resting directly on top of her story, which was bound with oversize rubber bands and nestled among a packed array of clothes and shoes and candies, was the bus ticket that had been sent to her from the people at the writing retreat.
June laughed out loud then; she hadn’t even gotten to tell her family that it wasn’t college she was leaving them for, that it was her book. The difference would mean nothing to them. It was all the same.
June’s door opened, and Dad came in. Without hesitation, he went to the bed and snatched the bus ticket up from the open suitcase, glaring at it before tearing it into pieces. Then he went for June’s story, and it was then that something in her broke with a cold hard snap.
“Put that down!” she screamed and ripped it from his hands. She hugged it close to her, backed into the corner, sunk down into it. She was vaguely aware of her head hitting the wall as she thrashed about, sobbing, shrieking, totally out of control and a stranger to her own body. She would never grow up to be her own person. Just a shell, always on display, always expected to be better. Stuck.
Be a better young woman.
“June, Jesus!” Dad cried, and took her by the shoulders to shake her, the second time that night a man had caused her teeth to click. “Stop this! What’s happening to you right now? I’m going to get your mother. Just shut the hell up, for God’s sake. The neighbors are going to think we’re murdering you!”
Then her mother was there, a cool hand patting June’s bare foot. June did not remember taking her shoes and stockings off, did not remember how she’d got from the corner of her room to the bathroom, vomiting into the toilet as the lights flickered overhead.
“What a time for the bulb to go out,” Mom murmured, and June realized for the first time that she was completely silent. When had she stopped screaming?
“My story,” June croaked, cringing at the flickering bulb, hating
how even when she closed her eyes she could still see it. There were magnets in her head again.
“It’s on your desk, June,” Mom scolded. “No need to get hysterical again.”
By the time June’s breathing slowed, the lightbulb was no longer flickering. When she felt up to it, she sat up, her mother sitting silently beside her, appearing much more sober than earlier. “That,” Mom said in all seriousness, “was not okay.”
“I’m sorry—”
“You’re not,” Mom snapped, putting her finger over June’s lips. “You’re not sorry for applying to college under our noses. You’re sorry that you got caught.”
“It wasn’t even college, Mom. It was a writing program.”
Mom gave a shrill little laugh then. “Oh, it was a writing program, and that’s supposed to—what?—make me forget that you’ve become a liar and a deceiver and someone with absolutely zero regard for anyone’s feelings other than her own?”
June rested her head in her hands.
“And that fit you had,” Mom went on. “You don’t feel like answering for your own mess, so you resort to the most childish of reactions, screaming and thrashing. It was so selfish, June. You’ve always been selfish. Except...” She trailed off, and June’s breath caught in her throat.
“Your recent change,” Mom said, straightening up as if realizing something. “All the times you cooked and cleaned without complaining, all the help you’ve been offering, all of your sweet talk about Robert. None of that was real. You knew you were leaving. You’ve been planning this for weeks!”
She stood, stepping away from June in disgust. She looked down at her daughter, her arms crossed. “I don’t even know who you are, June. I need to talk to your father about all of this. Your little outburst sure has put things on hold here. How convenient for you.”
“Mom,” June said. She struggled to keep her voice from breaking, and had to take a slow breath in through her nose before continuing. “You do know me. You just don’t like me.”
Mom turned and left June’s bathroom. A few seconds later, June heard the door to her bedroom close.
After a few minutes passed, June stood and shambled out of her bathroom. The first thing she saw was that her manuscript was indeed sitting on her desk, disheveled as all hell. She went to it and let out a tiny cry as she gathered the papers into her hands, straightening them out as best as she could. She noticed a smear of dried blood on the title page—had she been cut without remembering? She inspected her arms and hands without result, only for her fingertips to discover a streak of something dried and crusted over below her nose.
She must have had a nosebleed at some point, June realized as she looked into the vanity mirror and saw that the dried crust was red. She almost looked dead, with all the blackness of her mascara staining the skin around her eyes, and her lipstick smeared. Her perfectly set curls had been torn into a wild, dark mess.
The dress that had fit wonderfully earlier in the evening now felt tight in all the wrong places, an unforgiving meat casing of pastel green and chiffon. June peeled it off and put on a nightgown that her mother had always compared to a potato sack. She washed her face in the bathroom.
“I’ll still finish it,” she whispered to herself after she was done, holding the stack of papers to her chest again as she rocked side to side. “I’ll still write the end.”
For a moment June considered changing the ending, keeping the heroine away from Earth forever, making her suffer unspeakably before killing her in a long and undignified way. She waited and waited for her parents to come back into her room, but they never did, and at three in the morning June stupidly realized she was the only one awake in the house. Finally, she unpacked her suitcase and turned off the lights.
No, she decided as she drifted off to sleep at last. She remembered abruptly that she had graduated high school just hours ago. She’ll go back to Earth like I originally planned. She still has to fulfill her destiny. Even if she wanted to escape it, she couldn’t. It’s fate.
And oh, what a marvelous bloodbath that fate would turn out to be! Her heroine would certainly have earned it by then.
* * *
The next morning, June awoke to both parents standing in her room, studying her like an insect under a magnifying glass. Her stomach sank.
“It’s nearly noon,” Mom said, unimpressed. Gone was the disheveled drunkenness her mother had radiated last night, replaced with a polished bun, and clean sweater, dress, and slippers. “You’ve had long enough to sleep.”
“We’ve had a chance to talk about all the choices you made,” Dad started, and June’s stomach sank even further than it already had. “Needless to say, you are going to be grounded for a very long time.”
“I’m already grounded,” June mumbled. “I always have been, haven’t I?”
Without warning, her mother reached forward and slapped her on the face. “You will quit it with that sass,” Mom sputtered, her face red. She looked simultaneously embarrassed. June was glad.
“There are no words to even begin to describe how much of a disappointment you’ve become to us,” Dad said, and turned away from June to stare out the window. “I will never be able to forget your betrayal of this family.”
Did it all have to be so dramatic? Was anyone surprised, really surprised, that the oddball child with a penchant for everything out of the ordinary would attempt to, say, live her goddamn life? From the looks on their faces, yes, they were surprised. Apparently June had done a really fantastic job at pretending. She had a flashback to the night with the poodle skirt, the night she had tried to break up with Robert and failed, and wanted to vomit again.
“I want you to consider what Stewart Dennings would have done had you disappeared this morning as planned,” Dad said, but instead June considered where she’d be at this exact moment had she made it. She’d surely be waiting at the airport by now, sipping an ice water while she nervously tapped her foot, scared to death at the prospect of her first flight but out-of-her-mind excited to board.
“I’ll tell you what he would have done,” Dad went on after it was clear June didn’t plan on answering. “He would have assumed that all of our kindness thus far was to sucker him into going into business. He would have thought that your dating Robert was all a big ploy.”
It was, June yearned to say, but didn’t fancy the idea of another slap on the face from Mom. That’s exactly what it was, and you know it.
How he could sit here like this and talk down to her as if his hands were clean astounded June. She steeled herself not to let them get the best of her, not to let them make her cry because she knew the moment she started to tear up, she’d be accused of trying to manipulate. As if they knew when she was manipulating and when she wasn’t.
June changed her mind, then, about what she said to Mom the night before. Maybe neither of her parents really knew her at all. Was that her fault? Theirs?
“You could have ruined our entire lives,” Dad said. Mom was crying now. June wished she’d just shut up already. “You’re going to spend a whole lot of time in here thinking about what you’ve done. Figure out how to turn it all around and get it together, June. This is the last time I will allow something major like this to go by without consequence.”
June remembered her fit the night before, how she’d lost control, lost time. The flickering light that had given her a headache. Mom calling her selfish and hysterical. Without consequence, she repeated slowly in her brain. Bullshit.
She wouldn’t meet their eyes and, after a few moments, Mom and Dad left. Mom lingered for just a moment before closing the door behind her. “You’re going to stay in here until you come around,” she said sadly. June thought about when they’d made the meat loaf together and felt a stab of regret. “You have a bathroom, and I’ll bring you lunch and dinner. No visitors. There’ll be nothing to do but think about what you’ve done.”
Now, maybe, she thought to herself as she inserted the most recent page back into the typewriter carriage, maybe having to exist in a single room forever won’t be too awful of a thing.
the institution
“What did you say?” June asked Nurse Joya, who had popped her head in after lunch to relay a message to June.
“I said,” the nurse answered, her eyes glittering in excitement, “that there’s someone here to visit you. Let’s go.”
A visitor? June had never heard of any of the other girls getting visitors. She was desperate to know what Eleanor would think of the whole thing, but Eleanor was in the bathroom washing up. June wondered if Nurse Joya had deliberately waited until she knew June was alone.
“A few visitors, actually.” Joya led the way through one of the never-ending hallways that spider-legged out from the recreation room. “But we’re still unsure whether it’s a good idea to let you see your parents first. We’ll start off with Robert, your husband.”
“He’s not my husband,” June said through gritted teeth. “And my parents are here? With Robert?”
“That’s what I said!” Joya’s voice was too bright not to be either sarcastic or phony. “It said on your admission sheet that you were married to him.”
June was too shocked to bother answering or correcting Joya. It had been difficult for her to even remember that they were real people these past few weeks—it was just like Eleanor had described, like a dream. She just couldn’t believe that Robert and her parents were actually here, after weeks of what June had assumed was a hospital-imposed ban on all forms of communication from the outside world.
In fact, what if this visitor business was just a trick to lure her away from the main part of the building where everyone else was? Eleanor must have been beside herself by now, to return to their room only to find June missing without a trace. It was against the rules of their pact. She’d know that June had been taken. She’d be worried sick.