When Jameson returned Sarah Anne’s call, her excitement had carried across the line with a charge he had not heard or felt from her in years. It got into him and all over him, until the enthusiasm he offered her in return was genuine, straight from the heart.
And yet, he’d thought about the rumpled warbler while Sarah Anne was talking, the joy of witnessing this little bird in a bath, the smallest pleasures he’d lost track of these past three years, but he didn’t speak of it to Sarah Anne. What he did say was “I’m going to be taking a few days off when the roofers get here. What if you and Ernest come out and we rent a place down the coast?” Sarah Anne got her calendar and said how good it would be to get away, the three of them together, and Jameson said, “Yes, yes,” and he could feel the way their words were igniting the system of life, the way so much of what was said was leaving out so much of what was not. But that night he lay awake imagining Sarah Anne driving across the state with Ernest in the back seat, having to stop for gas and pretend there was nothing wrong with her, that she had gotten a grain of sand or speck of dust in her eye, while Ernest stared at her in the rearview mirror, absorbing her lie.
Now here it was early the following morning, and from the back of the bungalow’s yard he heard the distant roar of an engine in low gear approaching. The ground shook, and Jameson stepped out to the front porch to see a large moving van lurching up the hill. It came to a stop in front of June’s house. It was seven a.m.
June was on her porch, dressed in the same shorts and tank top she’d worn while lying in the sun, but this time she was wearing a bra. Her hair hung loose down her back, well past her shoulders. She was barefoot.
Three men climbed out of the truck, came toward her, and shook her hand. Then she caught sight of Jameson and, looking up into the eastern sun, made a visor with her hand. “My things from Ireland!” she yelled, sounding not very pleased.
“Can I help?” he asked.
She shook her head and thanked him and said something about there not being much, while the three men began hustling around her, bringing boxes into the house.
He expected her to say she would see him later, but she disappeared inside. After a number of trips two of the men returned to the front yard, removed their hats, wiped their heads, and waited in the Adirondack chairs. They didn’t appear to say a word, just sat looking out at the ocean and drinking from paper coffee cups they’d retrieved from the truck. Jameson recognized the cups from Helen’s, where he’d been grabbing sandwiches and banana bread since he arrived, and it gave him an idea.
He washed his hands and drove down and bought a cupcake for June.
When he returned, the moving truck was pulling away. There was no sign of June, and he did not see her for the rest of the day. She didn’t call, and he got the impression she didn’t want him to call her, either. He didn’t know, but the air had shifted, and come evening her kitchen was dark, and around nine p.m. Jameson ate the cinnamon-spice cupcake with buttercream icing, and twice caught himself moaning at how good it was.
June didn’t show up the next day, or the one after that. Jameson didn’t see her for another week.
And that was fine. He had plenty to do before the roofers came, and before Sarah Anne and Ernest got there, and he was glad to see the flooring he’d ordered arrive on time. He worked twice as hard as he believed he was capable, carefully pounding in the subfloor and every tongue-and-groove plank into place. But he couldn’t help wondering if he’d said or done something he shouldn’t have, and if he had, whether it was the thing that was keeping June away.
His desire to talk to her grew. He wanted to ask her things: Did she listen to the coyotes at night, and did she think those signals were a call to come closer or to stay away? Did she leave her windows open the way he did? Or close them tightly so as to not hear a thing? And how about the flickers drumming the cedars in the early afternoons? Had she heard their amplified clatter from across the golf course? The first time the sounds caught his attention, he thought someone was using a jackhammer.
Morning after morning came for him as if by prayer or meditation, a rising sun like a rising benediction for a man who was never quite sure he deserved all the good he’d been given, and in turn everything else seemed a punishment he’d rightfully earned. Back home Sarah Anne and Ernest would be battling a heat much harsher than the one Jameson was battling here, and without much comfort of a breeze, and they’d have to wait out the day for the night desert to cool things off. By then Ernest would be asleep, and Sarah Anne would be alone in the house without him, and he wondered why she didn’t call him a whole lot more than she did.
When June left the other day, Jameson had gone on standing in the bedroom, staring at the empty doorway, recalling the time he’d discovered, in another house, a strange impression on a bedroom doorframe. He’d placed his palm into the groove about even with his head, and his hand fit just right in the indentation, and he imagined that a man had stood bracing himself in that doorway, looking into the room, again and again, for what must have amounted to years. What would hold a man’s attention this way? Had more than one person come to stand there? If so, they would have been of similar height. It didn’t seem likely. Jameson wanted to believe a sick child had been watched over from this place at the door. Or a parent, a grandparent, someone in need of care. He would never know, but even if he had known, the truth didn’t always turn out the way he’d like for it to be. Over the years he’d seen all kinds of things, like evidence that a dog had spent a lifetime clawing to get out of a room. He’d found wainscoting ruptured by bullets, and the spread of black stains in subfloors, proof that at least one person had made his mark. Slivers of green glass burrowed deep inside floorboards might have been the result of carelessness, but there were times when Jameson felt certain that a jar had been thrown in a moment of anger or despair.
So he’d stood there the other day thinking about all that when June had called up to him about the pail, and he’d forgotten what it was he was doing.
When Sarah Anne was speaking in rapid-fire excitement about adopting Ernest, Jameson’s heart had pulled toward her. “I know you don’t want me to get my hopes up,” she said, “but Melinda actually requested the paperwork, Jay. She called Jess and initiated the entire thing.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. Not really. The last thing in the world I would ever wish for is for you not to have hope.”
He’d listened and thought about holding the boy, the feel of his tiny arms up against him, but then he couldn’t help recalling Piper and Nate, the weight and smell of them, the sound of their voices, their laughter, their tears, and a hollowness filled his insides the way it always did when Jameson reached out to this boy.
Sarah Anne was caught inside a fever of her own happiness, if that was what it was, and Jameson believed it was, some form of happiness, and he hadn’t said a whole lot during their conversation, and that was fine, he was glad not to have to speak, and by the end of the call he wondered if he could have been anyone on the other end of the line, so long as Sarah Anne had a person with whom she could share the good news.
It had been June’s birthday that day, and he guessed she hadn’t celebrated, hadn’t even remembered until later in the day, and so far as he could tell she had spent the rest of the day alone, and he didn’t know what to make of that. He assumed by now that she lived by herself, and of course he’d noticed that she didn’t wear a ring. To each his own, he thought, but it didn’t seem right spending a birthday by oneself, and he wondered if she thought so little of who she was that she could forget the day she was born, no matter her age. But that didn’t seem possible, to look at her.
He was thinking that he might prepare a little something for the next time she called up and said she was coming over. Like lunch. Not lunch, not really, but what to call it? She could bring that blanket she’d been lying on in her backyard, and he could pick up a few things from Helen’s Bakery after he consolidated the piles out back and made room for them to sit in the shade. Or maybe they could sit on the front porch and watch the ocean while they ate. But how on earth to ask? And what if she agreed to join him for something that looked an awful lot like a picnic?
For starters, he would need a topic of conversation, something he could rely on once they settled down and unwrapped the sandwiches. He would ask about her own work. How could he not have asked her about it already? He imagined her swallowing politely while he talked, waiting for the point he was trying to make, but even in his own imagination he wasn’t saying a whole lot that made good sense and he wasn’t putting either of them at ease. He chewed too quickly and for too long, wiped his mouth more than was needed, and nodded his head without purpose. And what was the point? He didn’t know, not the full spectrum of it, though he was pretty sure he was no kind of man to be offering a picnic to a woman who was not his wife.
This wasn’t like him. He didn’t think this way. He’d never been involved in anything that could have been interpreted the wrong way.
But there were points to be made about the house. Practical details about ceilings and floors, and whether to replace the cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom, or not.
I bought some sandwiches and berries.
It didn’t sound right, even in his own mind.
Would you care to have lunch with me?
No, that was all wrong.
I picked up enough for the both of us.
Just, no.
People have to eat.
Maybe this was all just the heat going to his head. Maybe the salty sea air and all that lavender poking purple through the weeds and that swirl of bees had gone to his head. Maybe her accent muddled his clarity of mind. Maybe the coyotes yipping in the night weren’t helping matters. He’d listened in complete darkness to their sounds of yearning, and he knew without knowing that she was listening, too.
But now here it was, a week since he’d seen her, and in two days Sarah Anne and Ernest would be here, and the roofers would take over the place. Jameson thought about all of that at once while washing his hands at the sink.
Then June appeared.
She rapped a knuckle on the open dining room door.
He startled so badly he cursed.
And then he laughed at the sight of her holding up a brown paper bag he recognized from the bakery. Beneath her other arm was the rolled-up blanket, and in that hand, dangling at her side, was a white pail.
“I haven’t heard you stop to eat yet today. I thought you might appreciate a sandwich.”
“Come on in.” He dried his hands on a paper towel.
So she was listening for the way he did things over here, was watchful of his habits throughout the day. This house held the strange and prescient. She was here, and she was holding the very things that had been in his mind, and he wondered what else. “Well,” he said. “All right. Thank you.”
June set the pail down on the porch, stepped inside, and glanced around. Her eyes grew larger. “It’s beautiful. You’ve already replaced the trim . . . and the batten walls, the floor . . . Everything looks the way it’s supposed to.” Her arms fell to her sides and her mouth hung slightly open. “Aw, Jameson.”
He looked away at the sound of his name.
She took a step back and seemed to shake off whatever thoughts she was having. “Right, then. How about we sit on the front porch?”
And just like that, the blanket was rolled out and the food was uncovered. They talked about the corner column he had replaced, and how the slope of the porch was plumb for the roofers, and she was saying how she’d been busy writing, and how it pleased her that there had been a bit of a draft. She apologized for not returning before today, explaining that sometimes, if she was lucky, the work swept in and took over, and when that happened, she had to run with it or lose it, and there’d be no guarantee of its return, and no real idea what she may have lost to begin with—those hours were particular to that moment in time and could never come for her again in the same way.
Jameson had to stop himself from staring at her mouth. He didn’t know how to add to what she was saying, but it didn’t seem to matter. He sat with the wonder of it, and as far as he could tell she didn’t mind him listening to her that way.
Then the sandwiches were gone, and they were having what was left of the berries, and Jameson was poking his plastic fork into a blueberry just as June asked what the weirdest part about his work was.
“ Weirdest?”
June shrugged. “Unexpected, I guess. The kind of thing people don’t realize or guess about.”
Jameson had never been asked that question, but he already knew the answer. “The stuff I find hidden in the walls.”
June leaned back and raised an eyebrow. “Oh my.”
“It’s more common than you think. Things show up beneath floorboards and the corners of attics. Wallpaper and crown molding are perfect for slipping letters and documents behind, the kind written on that old thin paper.”
June faced him crossed-legged. “And what’s one of the more interesting things you’ve found?”
Jameson didn’t have to think about that, either. “A keepsake tin full of photographs of women in varying stages of undress.”
He could hardly believe he’d said it.
June’s eyebrows shot up, but she was laughing, and now he was laughing too.
He didn’t tell her how the women’s legs were open and their knees raised, and he didn’t mention the crude drawings of male and female genitalia that accompanied them, but he was seeing it all behind his eyes, and could feel the heat in his face.
“What about love letters?” June asked, and his heart kicked an extra beat.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve found a few.”
“Oh?”
He looked down at the berries, stuffed a few in his mouth, and felt certain he was veering into territory in which he ought not go.
“Can you tell me about them?”
“Well.” He swallowed his last bite. “They mostly end up in shoe boxes in attics, a lot of them written on tiny folded stationery that’s hard to decipher.”
“And others?” June smiled boldly, and God help him, he nearly reached out and touched her beautiful face.
He curled his hands and closed his fists on his knees and told her that most had to do with lust, though it seemed that people chickened out before mailing off that kind of stuff. “Most weren’t postmarked, but maybe they were handed over in person.”
June leaned away and placed her hands on the porch, behind her hips. “Lust,” she repeated.
He didn’t want her to see him blush. He ought to change the subject, but something had gotten hold of him and he kept on. “And other things, of a different deal.” He’d said too much. She was going to ask what he meant, and he was going to tell her.
“Such as?”
“Cravings,” he said, speaking to her as if he had a right to speak that way, free and familiar. “Strange kinds of desires.”
June’s mouth opened slightly. She leaned toward him and looked directly into his eyes.
“I mean, I’ve read all kinds. Where one person wants to hurt another for pleasure. Or a woman longing for another woman. A man crying his heart out for another man while having to make love to his wife.”
June lowered her chin and raised her eyebrows, and she did not take her eyes from his. Her hands were clasped in her lap.
Jameson was first to look away.
“There’s more,” she said. “Tell me.”
“No, it’s just that those letters were as desperate as anything I’ve ever come across. Hard to shake all that misery and longing. And I feel pretty awful about it. None of it was meant for me to see.”
June’s breath had quickened. She was looking at the ocean, and he was looking at the way her chest and shoulders lifted and fell when she breathed.
“But not every hidden thing was so dark, right?” she finally asked.
“No. That’s true. People leave behind whimsical, peculiar things. Everyday objects made mysterious by the act of hiding them. Like a red plate or a canning jar full of green cat’s-eye marbles.” The word “marbles” shifted the conversation, ushered in a reprieve, and June leaned away again. “One time I found a slide rule twisted with twine onto a compass. No idea what that was ever meant to be or why someone needed to stow it. I found an awful painting of a mermaid. I imagined a child had done it after reading Hans Christian Andersen, but why hide it?”
“What do you do with all that stuff?”
“I give it to the owners.”
“Of course.”
“Some places leave behind a whole mess of things. Others not a trace.” He guessed she wanted to know, too, if he had found something in her grandmother’s house, something that rightfully belonged to her.
“One time I found a gold bracelet tucked inside a potato sack behind a wall, and next to that a newspaper article on a railroad that was never built. The article was wrapped inside a handkerchief monogramed HG. No one knew who that could be. Not the owners who had searched the archives of the local papers, not the elderly neighbors. Not everything makes sense. In fact, most of it doesn’t seem to.”
His voice had taken on an excitement, an energy not so different from Sarah Anne’s on the phone. But whatever he was saying did not appear to be taken in the way he had meant it. June’s face had a look of concern, and then a small judgment, it seemed, as if she were hearing something beyond the words he was saying.
“You ever get a little lost in their lives?” she asked.
Jameson cocked his head. “I guess I do. Kind of a perk, I suppose.”
“I do, too. Get lost in the lives of others.”
They turned toward the ocean. In the quiet Jameson felt the temperature slowly begin to cool.
“So that’s it, then,” June said. “All the weird stuff you’ve found?”
“Well. No. Let’s see.”
He watched as she drank from a bottle of water, her head tilted, exposing her throat.
“I’ve come across a couple of suicide notes,” he said.
June set the bottle down, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and leveled her eyes at him.
“One inside a wallpaper seam where no one would ever read it. A draft, I guess. Practice on a work in progress.”
June stared, eyes stark and piercing, the corner of her bottom lip suddenly held between her teeth.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to sound so crude.”
June shook her head. “Of course not.”
Jameson offered an apologetic smile.
“What did the note say?” she asked.
“Oh, you know. Like you’d imagine: Please forgive me for what I’m about to do . . .”
June nodded once.
“I’m sorry. This doesn’t seem like the best topic.”
“Have you found anything like that here?”
“What, like a suicide note?”
June nodded.
Jameson felt like an idiot. He drew a deep breath. The sorrow in this place. The source of grief. Whoever it was and whatever the circumstances, it was being resurrected inside of June, forming across her face this very moment. “No. But I’m not done here. Who knows? There’s still plenty to deal with.” That could not have been close to the right thing to say, yet June seemed pleased.
She smirked, looking at the porch.
“Is there something I should be on the lookout for?” he asked.
“Not necessarily.”
“I see.”
“Do you think the person who hid that note behind the wallpaper took his or her own life in the end?”
Jameson hesitated. “There’s no way to know . . .”
“I mean,” she said, “if the note was hard to find, it doesn’t make sense. Don’t you think if this person had done it, the note wouldn’t have been hidden away?”
“Logic would have it, but logic doesn’t always enter into the equation.”
“True.”
“The other one I found was tacked to a stud in the attic where a person would have needed to go looking to find it, and in that same house in another room I came across bits of frayed rope on the top edge of an exposed ceiling beam. There was a groove worn in the wood. A man would have had to hang a long while to make a groove like that, so yes, at least that man seemed to have done it in the end, I suppose.”
June appeared shocked for the first time.
“Oh God. I’m sorry. That was crass. I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this stuff.” He started to get up, but June stopped him.
“Because I asked you to,” she said.
“Yes, but. I’m getting a little liberal in the tongue.”
“I appreciate your honesty.”
“All right. Well. I think it was . . .”
“Maybe he was just heavy,” she said. “The man.”
Their laughter was stifled at first, and then nearly wicked the way they let loose.