A week passed before he finally saw June. The only visitor had been the warbler, and on that first day Jameson had bent and crimped a scrap of copper gutter into a bowl-shaped birdbath, wedged it into the ground so that it would not tip, and filled it with water. The warbler jumped right in, and Jameson wandered beneath the shade, entertained by the bird’s spastic bath, a small act offering them both an oversized pleasure, that day and every day since.
Now here it was midafternoon, and Jameson felt the day’s heat at the workbench, even in the shade, his vinyl safety earmuffs damp and dripping perspiration down the sides of his neck. The table saw ran through a strip of yellow pine trim when some kind of movement caught his eye. The warbler had returned to his bath, and directly beyond him, into June’s backyard, lay June.
Jameson lost his grip, slipped forward, and came within inches of severing his hand at the wrist.
June was dressed in jean shorts and a white tank top, braless—from twenty yards away he could see through her sheer white shirt, see that she was tall with long, tanned legs, her knees bent, feet flat on the ground. Sunglasses covered her eyes, her hair a dark round mass beneath her head, and she reached back and scooped it off her neck and to the side so that it lay halfway off her blanket on the grass. Then she crossed her thighs and swung her dangling foot like she was waiting for something, or losing patience in the waiting.
Jameson closed his eyes and swiped his hairline. When he looked again, June had dropped both legs flat, crossed her ankles, and spread her arms out to the sides like wings.
Evenings, he’d noticed the lights on in her kitchen and upstairs bedroom, and the shadows behind the blinds appeared to belong to only one person. He understood the need for privacy, but how hard could it have been for her to step out of her house for five minutes and say hello? Now here she was in the wide open, and there was no way for her to think he couldn’t see.
They had shared one phone call since he arrived, when she rang to ask if there was anything he needed, anything she could provide, and made no mention of her absence. He said he couldn’t think of what was lacking, though in truth he’d thought of a mini-fridge filled with a few cold beers. He didn’t dare say it, even as a joke, and in thinking about it he wondered if maybe she had fallen off the wagon and this was the reason she hadn’t left the house. Then he guessed such thinking was the go-to when something went wrong, or right, with a person getting sober, everything stemming from a singular cause. People had thought such things about Jameson and Sarah Anne: no matter their moods or actions, their lives became defined by a single event. The looks, the sighs, the I admire you two after all you’ve been through, as if Jameson and Sarah Anne could never be motivated by anything else, never be anyone else, other than the couple whose children had been gunned down in a gas station convenience store.
As she lay there, he thought a person with a hangover wouldn’t want to be out like that in this heat.
“Are you sure I can’t put you up at the San Dune while you’re here?” she had asked again during the phone call. “I’d be relieved—”
“I’ve already made my pallet in the dining room. I’m comfortable as can be.”
“The dining room?”
“Is that all right?”
“Of course. But it’s so warm with all that direct light. I’m sure the whole house is warm. And you don’t have a fan. Oh, I should have gotten you a fan!”
“It’s not bad at all. The air cools things off by ten o’clock.” In fact, sometimes that didn’t happen until one o’clock in the morning. He had slept on top of his sleeping bag in nothing but his boxers, and did wish he’d had a fan. “I don’t need anything,” he told her, unable to accept, once again, her offer of kindness. “I’m right as rain.”
He could ignore her now, he would ignore her, by returning to other work inside the house. But it was hotter inside than out, and after trying to nail down trim with salty sweat in his eyes, he returned to the yard and looked again for the sole purpose of seeing her, and she was there as before, lying on her back, arms spread wide as if waiting for something or someone to drop out of the sky.
He had told her on the phone that he was doing just fine, and it was true. A week in, and not nearly as bad as he’d feared it might be. He began each day with the sun devouring that old-growth grain of the walls and floors, surrounding him with a radiating, cadmium orange, a glaze of color like a cast-iron pot that his mother once owned. His sleeping bag lay along the far wall, and mornings arrived like an alchemy of senses, a yellow dawn behind white trees, chattering songbirds, a steady crash of waves. His arms and legs filled with the kind of low-grade satisfaction he’d had no name for in his youth, a way of moving through the world untroubled. It was gratifying to boil water on the propane burner for pour-over coffee to drink with his morning banana bread from Helen’s Bakery. Gratifying to be right there and nowhere else.
June had gone quiet on the phone when he didn’t accept her offers. Jameson worried he’d offended her. “I prefer it this way,” he said. “You understand that, right?”
“I cannot say I do. But if you insist, I can certainly go along.”
“I insist,” he said. “And thank you.”
“Certainly not, don’t thank me,” she said. “But I do like hearing what you’ve said about the dining room.”
“The colors—”
“Oh. Well. Yes. And the view of the trees. As a child I would sit in there and . . . just, well, sit, I don’t know. I would sit and think and feel, I suppose, if that is what children do.”
“I’d say they do just that,” he said, and closed his eyes and prayed she would not ask if he had children.
“Anyway . . .” she said.
“So was this before or after you moved away?” he asked.
“What do you mean, moved away?”
“Your accent. It didn’t come from Nestucca Beach.”
“Oh. Oh. Yes. I’ve one foot in and one foot out my entire life, I suppose. The Irish think I sound American. Everyone here believes I’m foreign. A citizen of nowhere and everywhere.”
“Sure,” he said, and though he wanted her to go on, he didn’t know what else to say. “Well,” he said after a time. “I guess I should get back to work. I’m not getting paid to make conversation.” It was a stupid thing to say.
“I shouldn’t like to dock you,” she said.
“I shouldn’t like that either,” he said, sounding a bit like June.
“Are you mocking me?” she asked, in a tone that meant she was mocking him.
Jameson gave a small laugh, and then, perhaps it was the way her voice fell on the last word, he felt a sudden seriousness. “Goodbye, June,” he said.
“Goodbye, Jameson,” she’d said.
That was days ago. Now he was looking right at her, with the heat nearly tropical and his perspiration streaming as if he’d been dunked into a vat of hot steam. And then she lifted her phone, plucked a finger around, and brought it to her ear.
His phone vibrated on the workbench. He glanced at her, then the phone.
“Jameson here,” he answered, and she said, “Hello, Jameson,” with a tone of such familiarity that he wondered again if she might be drunk. “How’s it going up there?” she asked, a little more American than usual.
“June. It’s going. About what I expected. No surprises. Not yet, anyway.” He took several steps back, stuck his free hand in his front pocket, pulled it out, and scratched behind his ear.
“Well,” she said. “Good. Good.” Her knees were back up, one leg was thrown over the other, and her foot was swinging and swinging. She lifted her head slightly and ran her hand through her hair, then she loosened the whole of it again so that it sprawled from her head like a dark and twisted tail. “I’d like to pop over if that’s all right.”
Jameson turned in a half-circle, looking up at the house and down into the yard, which was full of junk piles, the mess rising before him as if it had just appeared out of nowhere. “Of course.”
“I know you don’t like to be disturbed.”
“I know you don’t either.”
Then silence.
“It’s your house,” he finally said. “Please. Come whenever you like.”
June was saying something, but his phone began to beep with another call. He held it out and saw that it was Sarah Anne.
“Well. If you really don’t mind,” June said as the phone reached his ear, “there are a few things I want to talk about.”
“Not at all. Listen, I’ve got something coming through on the other line. Do you mind if I call you back?’
“No need. Sit tight. I’ll see you in a bit.”
He nodded and switched over the call, feeling the full discomfort of sweat weighing on his clothes. He backed up and sat in the shade against a white trunk.
“Hi, baby,” Sarah Anne said, an endearment neither of them had used since the children had died.
“Sarah Anne. How are you? How’s the boy today?”
“We’re both well, really well. I’ve got news. I don’t want to get your hopes up, but Melinda called Jessie to ask about the adoption.”
Jessie. It took a moment to realize Jessie was the caseworker’s name. “Oh, you mean . . . she’s asking how to do it? She’s asking how to let him go?” He was glad to be sitting down.
“Yes. That is what I mean. And you sound tired.”
“It’s hot,” he said. “I’m sure it’s even worse for you.”
“Of course it is, but Jameson? Did you hear what I said?”
This heavy wave of fatigue . . . Had he not been getting enough sleep? His dreams had come to him like fleeting, hovering moods, forgotten as soon as he woke.
“Yes, yes, I did, of course, you didn’t call to talk about the weather. You caught me off guard with my hands full.”
“Aren’t you happy? Is everything all right?”
“I’m good, no, this is great, just . . . a little exhausted and all that, but listen, I don’t want you to get your hopes up. Melinda says a lot of things . . .”
“I think she means it. I really do. Jessie had a serious, very honest conversation with her after our last visit. I think . . . well, do you want it, if it’s true?”
“Do I want it? Oh, Sarah Anne. Of course I want it. Of course I want him.” Jameson stood and fanned his shirt. He closed his eyes, opened them, and looked down to see that June was no longer on the lawn. “I’ve got my hands full, like I said. In the middle of a thousand things.”
“I’m sorry. I figured as much. It’s OK. Call me later. Will you call me later?”
“I will. In a little while. I’ll call you by this evening at the latest.”
He hung up and stood, trying to collect himself as sweat ran through the grime and sawdust on his face. He lifted off his T-shirt and crossed the yard, using the fabric to dab his face, and then he thought that June might be watching, and figured the only thing to do was keep walking and dabbing his neck in a way that seemed mannerly and considerate of her seeing him, though it made no sense, and still he steadied his pace so as not to give anything away.
He rinsed his face and neck at the kitchen sink, dried himself off with his dirty shirt, and pulled a clean, wrinkled T-shirt from his duffel. He didn’t know that he could parent that boy. He didn’t know that Sarah Anne could not. He drank two full glasses of water and shook his damp hair like a dog.