Chicago, 1922
It was ninety-one degrees, hot for early summer in Chicago. The sun drew sweat to the faces of the people milling on the beach in bathing suits, street clothes, or coveralls, and radiated from the dirty sand baking June’s bare feet. She glanced at John, toeing the sand next to her, and shivered.
He had shown up at her Three Arts Club rooms that afternoon, where she had been packing. She was to stay with the Whiteleathers for the rest of the summer, an arrangement to which she’d agreed only when Mrs. Whiteleather had offered it. She had taken the train from St. Paul the previous week to get her things. Richard would be collecting her tomorrow.
“Knock, knock,” someone had called through the half-open door. “I hear that there’s a famous artist up here.”
The blood left June’s head. John. She hadn’t spoken to him since the night at the Dil Pickle. She didn’t think that she ever would again, nor did she think that she ever wanted to, not since Ruth had let drop that she was corresponding with him.
Her traitor body tingled at the sight of him filling her doorway. Levelly, she said, “Why are you here?”
He ducked his head. “Ouch. Well, I guess I should have expected that.”
His black hair was raked to perfection; his white shirt ironed and buttoned to his chin in spite of the heat; a new fedora hung from his large, slender hands. An edge of her heart softened to see him trying so hard.
Her roommate, Norma, sashayed over in her kimono. “Want me to get the house mother?”
“No. That’s not necessary. I think he’ll do the right thing and leave.”
“June, could I please just talk to you?” He stopped, his face earnest. “Just as a friend.”
Somehow, several howlingly awkward minutes later, she and John were walking down the frying sidewalks of Tower Town. And somehow—June didn’t really know how—several minutes later, in the course of which she’d shed her filmy jacket (a present from Mrs. Whiteleather) and he’d unbuttoned his collar and removed his hat in the heat, they had made their cautious amends. Somehow, by the time they passed bony children flinging themselves into the blast of a gushing fire hydrant, they were giddy with relief. By the time they’d reached the Oak Street Beach, they were good old friends, if by good old friends one meant friends who kept touching each other’s arms as they reminisced, friends who laughed a lot at nothing, friends of which one was engaged to Richard.
At the beach, it was as if the skyscrapers looming over the neighborhood had been split open and both sand and humans had come tumbling out. Men in trunks and singlets flirted with women in headwraps and bathing dresses. Old women in flowered frocks knelt over picnic baskets, doling out sandwiches. Little children hopped about like toads.
Directly before the wall that the two good old friends had found at the edge of the beach where they could sit and dig their bare toes in the sand, a drama was unfolding. A policeman had stopped two young women and, his jacket straining over his portly belly, was now on his knee, huffing and puffing as he applied a tape measure to the bare thigh of first one girl then the other.
“What’s going on?” John whispered to his good old pal.
Do not let yourself be so happy. “Decency law. Six inches are allowed between the bottom of a woman’s bathing suit and her knees.”
From the feet up, the women were covered with bathing slippers and sheer knee socks. But above their knees, their bare thighs—one set thin and stringy, the other chunky with muscles—gleamed like beacons in the dark sea of wool and cotton worn by the other women on the beach.
“I think they’re in trouble.”
If only I could burrow into his arms. “Oh, he’ll just send them home. I’ve seen it before. The offenders are given blankets, then they usually run off, giggling.”
As if June’s words had ordered her up, a police matron in black dress, stockings, and prim pumps struggled across the sand with a holey green army blanket opened to receive the miscreants. The commotion attracted a crowd, whose excitement grew as the girls dodged the blanket like bulls through a matador’s cape.
The burly officer laid fingers thick as cow’s utters on the skinny girl’s arm. She wriggled from his grip as the matron grasped the other girl and fought to cover her.
“You want to dress like a man?” A bystander tossed a frankfurter into the melee. “Be one.” The wiener bounced from the skinny girl’s arm, leaving a smear of mustard.
“Hey!” yelled her friend.
The policeman took advantage of his quarry’s momentary distraction to lock her in a squeeze hold and hoist her off her feet. To the cheers of the crowd, he carried her kicking from the beach.
John caught up with June as she stalked away. “That was ugly.”
When he could see her face, he said, “Hey. Hey, I’m sorry. We should have left sooner. I can see that it really bothered you.”
She couldn’t keep the words in. “She reminded me of Ruth.”
He winced.
What had she been thinking, imagining that they could be friends—or whatever they were. Ruth would always be between them.
“June. I said I was sorry.”
“Let’s forget it.” She started back to her apartment.
“Look, I bunged things up six ways to Sunday. I know that. But we can do something about it. That’s why I came to see you. We don’t have to just go along with the way things are going. We can be honest with Ruth and Richard right now. Let’s tell them. As soon as we get back.”
She stopped. “Why do you have to tell Ruth? I thought she was just your pen pal.”
He took off his hat, and then fit it back on. “I don’t understand. Don’t you want to get back together? Isn’t that why you came out here with me?”
“The fact is, Ruth kissed you. And you kissed her.”
“That was nothing. It was stupid. I told you that.”
Ruth had seen something in him that had encouraged her to kiss him that night. Ruth was smart. She wouldn’t have imagined that.
“I don’t think she thinks it was stupid. I don’t think she thinks that at all.”
She pushed ahead, past two little girls holding hands and skipping, past a mother steering a rubber-wheeled baby buggy, past a man selling ice cream from a cart.
“June,” he said, following, “is this punishment? Are you punishing me because of a meaningless kiss? Because if so, it worked. I’ve been miserable since then.”
“That’s not why.”
“How many times have you kissed Richard? My having to picture that—now that’s punishment. You can really dole it out.”
She slowed. There was some truth to that. She was punishing him. He’d not paid enough for having hurt her and she was making him bleed. Deep down, she could be terribly cold. She didn’t know why. She hated this about herself.
“June, let’s not be like this. If I can get past your getting engaged to a rich guy, then you can get past me talking to your sister.”
She stopped again. “The problem is, I admire Ruth. She’s the most honest person among us.”
“I admire her, too, but—June, I’m in love with you. I love you, June. You know that I do.”
She glanced up at the mansion behind him, then at the seagulls lined up on the peak of its roof. She would never live in a place like this with him. But maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe that was the least important thing in the world.
“I love you, too. I really do. You’re all I think about.”
Relief, then gratitude, then joy dawned across John’s face, mirroring June’s own growing elation. He was stepping toward her, his eyes rich with affection, when a horn blasted.
Richard puttered his open roadster to the curb. “Junie! Your roommate said I might find you out here. Johnny, what are you doing in town, old man?”
He didn’t wait for John’s answer—he might not have gotten one in any case. John was staring at the idling car with disbelief.
Richard hopped out and opened the door for June. “I left last night and just drove straight. I about hit a deer in Wisconsin!” He kissed her on the cheek. “I couldn’t wait to see you.”
Every nerve was screaming as she got in the car.
“How are you, darling?” Richard jumped back into the car. “Here, let me help you put on your jacket. You coming?” he called up to John.
She put one arm into the sleeve of the filmy wrap and then the other. She looked up at John. Claim me. I’m yours. But you have got to claim me.
“Not coming?” Richard let out the clutch. “Whatever you say, friend.” He applied the gas.