AN HOUR LATER WE’D come to some decisions and divided the responsibilities in what seemed a suitably collective way. Ray would stay in touch with Zee’s Filipino group, especially Benny and Carlos, and help rally support for her; Penny would be the link to Marta and the new lawyer and everything judicial; Hadley and I, with June’s help, would keep conducting our private investigation into Jeremy’s life, as well as X’s motives for killing him. We also agreed that, for now, nothing was to be said publicly about the merger idea or sabotaging of B. Violet. That would only confuse things.
Although I agreed to this, I couldn’t help feeling that Fran was getting off too lightly. Hadley and I would probably have to testify how we’d found Jeremy; Fran wouldn’t. Fran had been the one who said she saw him destroying B. Violet, who’d supposedly seen him being passed a parcel by two men. But Fran wasn’t being held responsible for any of this, by any of us.
Finally, we decided that we would start back to work tomorrow for sure and that, at least temporarily, Hadley would take over Jeremy’s job in the darkroom.
“What about Elena?” June asked, standing up and stretching her compact body. Her round, hazelnut eyes looked tired; she yawned.
No one answered. Penny and Ray were halfway out the door to buy food for the barbecue here later this afternoon; Hadley was talking about going swimming, and I was thinking about Hadley in a bathing suit. I didn’t know whether June meant we should tell Elena about our plans or to get her to start coming into work again too. Personally I felt that Elena had had more than enough to cope with lately; she wasn’t really needed anyway.
“So you and Hadley are going to do some investigating,” June said suddenly. “What kind of help do you want from me?”
It felt awkward. In dividing up the tasks, no one had wanted to acknowledge one painful fact: That until a few days ago June and Jeremy had been lovers. In spite of her anger she must have cared about him. Maybe a lot. Maybe a lot more than she was willing to let on.
June had dropped back into the chair and was regarding us. “Or do you want any help at all?”
“Of course we do,” I said. “You knew Jeremy better than we did. How he spent his time, with whom, what kind of stuff he might have been playing around with…It’s just a question of whether you want to talk about any of it to us…”
I trailed off. I had the sudden feeling that June had put up a wall against me, that I’d said something wrong. She was tapping a sneakered foot in a complicated rhythm on the carpet, containing something.
“You’re just curious, that it? Think I might have the key, not even know it myself?” June paused, then looked directly at me and her look wasn’t friendly. “Listen. I may not be proud of being with a guy who was screwing other women, a guy who was married to someone else. I may even think there was something pretty nasty about that guy—yeah, there was for sure—and I may want to find out why he was killed as much as you do, maybe more…But I don’t want to be your negro doing your work for you. And I’m not about to go confessing my private life so you can figure out the mystery and take the credit.”
“Christ, June,” I said, shocked. “You know me better than that. I’m not interested in exploiting your private life, and I sure don’t expect you to do my work for me.”
“Don’t you?” she said, standing up and going to the door. “Listen, Pam, I know you went around with Ray and maybe got some looks, but believe me, it was nothing like what Jeremy and I got. I mean, Ray can talk up a storm about racism; he’s not joking when he tells that story about them practically kicking his ass out of town there in Utah when his car broke down—they didn’t know if he was a chinaman or a chicano, but they didn’t like either one—but you know as well as I do, Ray’s got privileges most everybody else is just dreaming about.”
What was she getting at? Her voice was no longer angry, just a little flat, a little dangerous. I realized she didn’t know I was involved with Hadley now—and also that Hadley hadn’t known I’d been involved with Ray. I stammered, “Well, I, we…”
June was leaning against the door. “Jeremy and I might have been black and white, but we did have some things in common, especially in your collective. Before he got there I was the youngest, before he got there I was the only one who’d never been to college, much less had some kind of graduate degree. We’d been around in ways you can’t even imagine. Sure, your politics impressed me; I didn’t know beans about no revolution, girl,” she laughed shortly and opened the door to go. “I guess I still don’t.”
“But we need your help, June.” I wanted to explain: Look, I’ve fallen in love with Hadley and that’s part of what’s happening here, that’s maybe why we seem like some kind of team, but I couldn’t find the words. I mumbled instead, “Penny said you wanted to help…”
“Yeah, but you and Penny are two different kettles of fish,” June said, hand on the door knob. “She’s not afraid to jump out of an airplane, for one thing.”
“So, does this mean you don’t want to help us?” Hadley asked calmly.
“I mean to follow some leads on my own,” said June. “We’ll see who gets there first.” She gave us a curious smile and disappeared out the door. “See you later!”
When Penny came back from the store I told her what had happened.
“It’s not my fault I’m too chicken to skydive—and now June thinks I’m being racist.”
In spite of her concern Penny seemed amused. “Don’t forget ageist and classist.”
She was peeling fruit for a salad, and Hadley had taken a hand in hulling the strawberries.
“I can’t help feeling that June is hiding something,” Hadley said. “Are you sure she didn’t know anything about the forging? I mean, who was printing that stuff, anyway?”
“June’s no murderer,” Penny said. “She’s been hurt and now she’s pissed at being offered some minor role in something that’s still a big emotional thing for her. You want her to share her information, but you don’t want to share anything with her.”
Ray had been outside getting the charcoal fire going in the rusty old barbecue. He came in looking for the grill. “Maybe the collective method doesn’t work so well when it comes to solving crimes,” he said. “But I’m interested in what June said about what she and Jeremy had in common. It makes sense that they’d be drawn to each other and against us. A class issue, why didn’t I ever think of that before?” he wondered, pulling at his black beard.
“You’re so goddamned theoretical all the time,” I exploded. “June has practically accused me of being a plantation mistress and as usual you’ve totally missed the point.”
For answer Ray threw a convenient banana in my direction and slammed out the back door.
“Not again,” groaned Penny and went after him.
“Now I think I see why you didn’t tell me about this previous relationship,” Hadley said. “Still a little rocky, eh?”
A cookout that was actually cooked-out—what could be more unique and thrilling in the Northwest? Although most of our backyard was taken up with the garden, we still had a patch of grass and a rectangular courtyard our family—hauling flat rocks from the beach—had built many summers ago. The evening had that northern slant of light that seems to last for hours without fluctuating. A golden evening fringed with green leaves, smelling of roses, sounding of children, with hamburgers and sourdough rolls and baked beans and buttered corn on the cob and five kinds of salad: fruit, spinach, pasta, carrot and potato. It was rare to be able to sit outside like this, without a sweater anyway, in the evening during a Seattle summer—though year after year we bundled into our jackets and blankets at eight o’clock and huddled around the barbecue, pretending we were in San Diego.
Sam and Jude came back from a day hiking; phone calls brought neighbors and friends. June returned in an apparently chipper mood with her daughters Amina and Ade.
Penny greeted her as if nothing had happened; she got June husking corn and she herself played a game of tag with the girls. To Amina and Ade she was Auntie Penny, though four-year-old Amina thought it was pretty hilarious to call her Auntie Nickel, Auntie Quarter or sometimes even Auntie Million Dollar.
I couldn’t help noticing, in my present guilty mood, that there were no other Blacks here—though there was Ray’s friend Bill Asuka and his new Korean-American girlfriend, Evelyn, and Maggie Chin, the Taiwanese student from next door, and Ray himself…but what was wrong with me, anyway, counting like this?
I remembered suddenly what Penny had said to me one day, “You know, Pam, you worry about being called racist as if it were syphilis or something. Like you were accused of carrying some dread, disfiguring, incurable disease. But I think it’s more like telling someone or being told, ‘Hey, you’ve got snot hanging out of your nose.’ You say thank you and wipe it off. Though that doesn’t mean the snot’s not going to ever drip again.”
“Gross! You’re always so disgusting, Penny!”
But it was true. I worried much more about racism than she did, resisted the charge, would do anything to avoid it…No wonder June felt more comfortable with Penny than with me. Penny treated her like a human being; I treated her like a symbol of something I was terribly afraid of not pleasing—or just plain terribly afraid of.
June seemed ready, at any rate, to put the afternoon behind her.
“About this, this investigation stuff,” I said, sitting down on the step above her and her children on the back porch after dinner.
“No problem, Pam. I’ve been thinking about it and I decided that what you and Hadley have going for you is objectivity. I’ve got a lot to deal with on my own. I don’t want to be getting much more involved than I already am.”
Surprisingly I wasn’t relieved. “But you could tell us a lot…we could tell you, too…”
“Probably not much more than you could find out on your own. Jeremy was a closed-up guy, remember. Anybody who could keep a marriage secret didn’t go around spilling any other kind of beans.”
Could it be true, as Hadley suggested, that June was hiding something? She didn’t look one bit secretive at the moment. Ade and Amina were sitting on either side of her, quietly figuring out what half-eaten corn cobs could be made to do.
“What about your leads—you said you were going to follow up some leads?”
June shrugged her small strong shoulders. She was wearing a tube top that showed them off to perfection. “I guess I just had too many sunbeams this afternoon.” She changed the subject.
“So, what’s this Penny tells me about you and Hadley?”
“Oh…just one of those things…”
“Well, I wish you luck.” She looked a little doubtful. “Just kind of happened, huh? Just like that?”
I couldn’t say I’d always been a lesbian. Some of it definitely had to do with Hadley.
“I like her a lot, you know.”
We watched Hadley throwing a ball with some kids in the alley. Her long arms flew around like the hands of a large clock; her silvery hair whirled around her plain face. She was having a great time.
“Well, she’s tall, anyway,” June said charitably.
Later the full moon went up like a handheld prop in a cheap stage production, far too decorative to be anywhere out in space. Our guests lingered on and on, even though it was Sunday night, Monday morning tomorrow. They had to marvel over and over at the magical weather, feel the warmth and moonlight on their bare skins.
I looked over and saw Amina and Ade sleeping on June’s lap, and Penny talking to her in what seemed a serious manner.
“We’re just talking about the possibility of June going away for a while,” Penny said, when I joined them a little hesitantly. “There’s still a good chance that the press could pick up on her initial arrest. I’d like to spare her that.”
“Go where?”
“Well, my sister lives in California, Oakland…” June didn’t sound too sure. “I don’t know…”
“I think it’s a great idea,” insisted Penny. “A change of scene would do you good. Don’t worry about the shop. We’d call you if we felt we couldn’t handle it.”
“You wouldn’t be trying to get rid of me?” June asked mildly. She glanced from Penny to me.
“If anyone deserves a vacation,” I said, “it’s you.”
“Deserving ain’t always getting.” She stretched and stood up. “But what the hell. I’ll leave tomorrow.”