The doorbell rings and it’s June. Not the month of June, but June from Dad’s office.
“Who is it?” Dad calls from his bedroom.
“It’s June!” Mom and June sing simultaneously. Then they giggle and hug one another. June rubs Mom’s back. “Aw, honey,” she says. “How are you doing?”
“It’s tough,” Mom whispers. “He’s having trouble with the medication.”
“It takes time,” June responds, squeezing Mom’s hand. “I’ve heard that sometimes you have to try two or three before you get the right one.”
June is a type of woman that usually disturbs Mom. “She treats herself well, doesn’t she?” Mom sometimes says, hinting that this may not be a good thing. But she makes an exception when it comes to June. June is wearing a warm-up suit that makes me think of creamy, shampooed sheep. The style of her white-blond hair is practically TV quality.
Dad comes into the living room. June lays a paper cone of carnations and a stack of magazines on the coffee table.
“Ah, Newsweek,” Dad says.
“I know you like to keep up with the news, Bill,” June says.
Dad sits on the couch. I help him roll down his sleeves, careful not to break any of the blisters. “I’m depressed, June,” he says. He stares at the floor.
June pats him on the knee. “I hear ya,” she says.
Mom, June, and I sit with Dad in the conversation area. Linda is out with her obnoxious friend Jodie. At first June doesn’t seem to register that Dad is covered with pink bumps that have grown together to form crests, with rivers of yellow pus running in the valleys. She begins a series of funny stories. One about the people in their office, where she is the bookkeeper. One about the company tennis tournament that Dad sometimes plays in. A couple about her husband, Ben, whom she once considered divorcing but now won’t, and about her daughter’s bat mitzvah eight months from now, which we are all invited to. Mom goes into the kitchen and gets a tray of chips, salsa, and ginger ale.
“So what’s this rash about, Bill?” June asks, leaning across the coffee table. I can’t believe she treats Dad’s condition so casually. Just an annoyance, like the caterer who wants to serve mini-crepes instead of make-your-own tacos at Lisa’s bat mitzvah.
Dad opens his collar, showing June a set of pustules that form, if you look at them from the side, the letter D. June bends over the coffee table to inspect, and I can smell her scent of expensive lotions. I, too, have always liked June, or as I call her, Mrs. Melman. I seem to run into her all over town, with no bad repercussions. Once she came into a magazine store and found Mitchell and me looking at what he called “the naked magazines.” Mitchell, in fact, was trying to stash a rolled-up one under his sweater. When Mrs. Melman saw us, she said, “There are many good books on that subject at the library,” and I never heard anything from Mom about it, which means Mrs. Melman never told.
“They make him look young again, don’t they, Adele?” June says to Mom. “Like an oily-faced teenager. Remember acne? Lisa’s starting to break out now. She thinks it’s the end of the world, but it’s not, is it? I told her to think of it as a signal that she’s growing up. She thinks she’s the center of the universe, you know. I had to tell her, ‘You’re a lovely girl, honey, and Daddy and I think you’re the most beautiful thing on earth, but you have to realize that at this age not everyone is thinking about you all the time like you’re thinking about yourself. They’re all thinking about themselves.’ Right, Billy? Anyway, Bill, I could stop by again with some more magazines and a few of the tubes of little creams Dr. Favola gave Lisa, and you could have fun with them, try them all out. I don’t know if they’d have much effect, but we have so many left over because Lisa wants to try them all. She and her friends. I tell her, ‘Stop worrying about it, Lisa. You’re a beautiful girl, and when you get to be my age you’ll be grateful that you had a little extra oil on your skin.’ Right, Adele? Is Linda getting to be like that too?”
“Oh, June,” Mom sighs. “I wish Linda were a little less sure of herself. She hasn’t found a thing wrong—not yet, anyway. She keeps staring at herself in the mirror, and she’s even given herself a new nickname: Lucky Linda.”
“I certainly didn’t think of myself as lucky at that age,” June answers. “Did you, Adele?”
“Not lucky. Yucky.” They both laugh and sip ginger ale.
“Well,” June sighs, “most of us are somewhere between lucky and yucky. And I think that’s a fine place to be.” Mrs. Melman is downplaying her own fantastic beauty. I grab a handful of tortilla chips so I can get the delicate fragrance of her lotions out of my nose.
“I hadn’t seen the house next door for a while,” June says. “Big, isn’t it?”
“Isn’t it tacky? People were snickering about it in the supermarket.”
June takes a large envelope from her purse and hands it to Dad.
Inside is a card that says, “We heard you were a little under the weather.” It shows ten people huddled under a tiny umbrella in driving rain. When Dad opens it to read the signatures, two twenty-dollar bills fall out.
“I tried to stop people from putting money in. I told them it wasn’t necessary, but they insisted. Pick up something you really like to eat, or anything that will make you feel more comfortable. I’m sure a number of people would have liked to come in person.”
Getting up from the couch, June tugs on the jacket of her warm-up suit. “Thank you for the snacks, sweetie,” she says to Mom. She bends down to pat the top of Dad’s head, where there are no sores, pecks me on the cheek, and gives Mom a squeeze when Mom opens the door for her. It sounds clichéd, but each of us feels a little special.
Before leaving she looks back at Dad. “Any messages for the poor working stiffs back at the office? Anything you’d like me to report to your fans?”
“Thank them for me, will you, June?” Dad says. He puts a hand up to his neck where his rash is hurting. “Tell them I’ll be back soon.”