Lady Sunshine

by Amy Mason Doan

  When the campfire broke up, she stood, stretched, then walked, graceful and unhurried, out of the stone circle, up the field, and toward the woods behind her house.

  I waited a minute and followed her. No flashlight, no jacket. It wasn’t a conscious choice. I simply had to know where she went every evening.

  I hung back so she wouldn’t see me, tried to step lightly on the carpet of dead pine needles so she wouldn’t hear me. I tried to keep up with her light, but it grew smaller and smaller, and once it disappeared before, thankfully, appearing again, small as a firefly in the greenish dark. I rushed through the trees, scraping my right elbow, until the light was bigger, about thirty feet ahead of me. We were high on the steep, wooded ridge behind the house.

  What was this? Did she meet a lover here? A boy from town, someone Graham wouldn’t approve of—a kid who played an electronic keyboard or worshipped Glen Campbell?

  Willa knew this land far better than me, and there was no path. She was as graceful and strong on this hill as I was awkward and out of shape.

  Then the light vanished completely, and this time I couldn’t find it again. I paused to listen for Willa’s crackles ahead of me, and heard nothing but the wind whistling through the trees.

  I’d lost her.

  I was cold and turned to leave. The moon had swum behind the fog, but the lights from the house down below were bright, the voices in the field beyond still loud enough to guide me back. I started down the hill.

  “Why are you following me?”

  The voice came from high up.

  It was my cousin. It sounded like she’d climbed a tree. Not ahead of me, but behind me, closer to the house. Somehow she’d slipped from my sight, doubled back, and begun following me. But where was she? I scanned the trees against the starry sky, trying to make out a human silhouette, but saw nothing except the fluffy vertical zigzags of a thousand branches.

  “I’m not,” I called back into the darkness, unnerved. “Where are you?” I hated people watching me without my permission. I preferred to do the spying.

  “First tell me why you’re following me.” The disembodied voice again, from up high.

  “Screw this.” I marched down the hill toward the house.

  I walked fast, stumbling.

  Soft thuds, crackles, then—“Jacqueline, wait.” Willa, so close behind me I could smell her perfume, a musky-peachy scent.

  I turned, my entire body juttering with surprise. “What are you, half puma?”

  “Sorry. My dad says it creeps him out when I steal up on him like that. I’m sort of known for it.”

  “I can see why.”

  “So, you weren’t looking for me?”

  “Why would I be?”

  “I’m not sure, it just felt like it. But it surprised me...because your stepmom told me that you prefer your own space. That you like to keep to yourself and came here to...convalesce after a difficult year.”

  Patricia. Goddamned Patricia. What the hell had she said? She’d made me out to be some kind of invalid?

  But there was relief in my rage; Willa’d avoided me because of Patricia.

  “You’re the one who talked to her? What, exactly, did she say about me?”

  “Well, she said...” My cousin stopped, bit her lip.

  “I can handle it. Tell me.”

  “She said you need plenty of alone time. That sometimes you...”

  “I what?”

  “That you explode if people try to deprive you of that.”

  I hoped Patricia would fall in the Seine. Eat a bad moule. Get lost, permanently, in a wine cave.

  “Maybe I misunderstood,” Willa said, seeing my reaction. “Or maybe your stepmom thought she was only looking out for you?”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “But I don’t need space.”

  “You mean, unless it’s...”

  “Between me and my stepmother.”

  “Ahh. Is she wicked?”

  “Wicked would be way more interesting than what Patricia is. She’s oblivious. Perky to the point of derangement.”

  Willa smiled, a dazzling sight even in the weak yellow glow from the garden lamp.

  I imagined Patricia offering “safe handling” instructions for me, thinking she was doing everyone a favor. She lived in a fantasyland where there was a clinical reason for the fact that I couldn’t stand her. All spring, when I’d come home from school to find Patricia’s travel agent perched beside her on our new yellow sofa, I’d pounded the piano in an earsplitting double forte until they grabbed their brochures and fled for the back patio.

  If I’d exploded at my father, it was only because he’d replaced my mother, seventeen years after her death, with this birdlike but hugely disruptive person.

  “She really said convalesce?” I asked.

  “It might have been recharge.”

  “Well. I’m charged. Thanks for telling me.” I turned, but Willa touched my elbow.

  “Wait. I’m glad she’s wrong about what you wanted.” She smiled again. “It means we can hang out, right?”

  She’d been warned by a close relative that I could detonate at any time, but she was still up for spending time with me? I knew it for sure then: my cousin was braver than me.

  “I liked those stories you told at campfire,” she added.

  “Stories? Actually, they were—” I wouldn’t correct her. Not now that she’d offered an olive branch. “Thanks.”

  “Want to see something?” she asked.

  But I was already following her billowing, spangled yellow skirt back up the hill, and into the trees.

  7

  2000 Encroaching

  1999

  It’s so quiet. So strange to be here without Willa. Her voice, her ambergris-peach scent. Strange to be here without Graham’s strumming and laughter, Kate’s hmphing and dinner-bell clatters. The soft trickles of Angela’s watering can in the garden.

  I’ve been staring through the dining room window out at the deep green woods off and on all morning, but I force myself to turn away and focus on my task—clearing the walnut sideboard. As I empty each drawer, I run my hand along the felt bottom, the back, to make sure I haven’t missed anything.

  It’s become a habit. I double-check under beds and sofas, peer between cushions. Just being thorough, I tell myself. As if I’m not looking for anything in particular. As if my hand isn’t anticipating the feel of it.

  As if I didn’t hunt for it everywhere frantically, while the town car waited to return me to San Francisco on my last day here. After I had to cut my stay short.

  It was quiet that day, too.

  I worried about Shane’s crew screwing on countertops, popping pills, desecrating the place, that they’d be immature session musicians only here for quick cash and a free roof. But since they arrived a few days ago—about a dozen of them, from what I can gather—they haven’t left so much as a cigarette butt. They use the back entrance to the studio, tiptoe in and out. They’re true fans, artists.

  The only thing I hear is the occasional suppressed giggles of the two kids staying here with their parents. A girl with purple glasses and a boy in a Dodgers baseball cap who watch me through the Sandcastle’s windows. They love that game—Spy on the weird lady we’re not supposed to bother.

  I’m folding a lace table runner when a car honks way down at the gate. It’s one already? I’ve only filled two boxes today.

  “Why don’t I fly out and help?” Paul asked, when I called him last week from the beach pay phone to say I was staying for three weeks instead of one, as I’d initially planned. “Mo’ll cover my summer school classes.”

  “You’re sweet,” I’d said. “But I can handle it.”

  “I just hate to think of you rattling around some old house all alone for two extra weeks...”

  I haven’t told Pa
ul about the album, or my guests. He wouldn’t understand the hold this place has on me. Why should he, when I’ve kept it secret from him?

  * * *

  Vivienne DePuis, Estate Specialist and Platinum Key award winner for Windward & Associates Realty five years running, waits for me outside the gate by her cream-colored BMW. Her suit is cream, too.

  “Sorry I’m a little late,” I say. “Time got away from me.”

  “So good to get this checked off of our punch list!” she says, striding toward me, her manicured hand outstretched.

  This doesn’t make sense—wouldn’t you punch a punch list instead of checking things off of it? But I nod. Vivienne loves to talk about “our” punch lists, and every time she uses the term, I picture her sitting in her office down in Mendocino, a much-perforated piece of paper in one hand, a shiny punching device in the other. In my imagination, the tool is like those pointy silver rotary-phone dialers women use in classic movies.

  “We’ve already had major interest in the property as a pocket listing, Jacqueline. I think we’re looking at a very quick sale. This is Louise, photographer extraordinaire. She’s our absolute best.”

  Louise is young, curly-haired, and silent. Clearly not the cream-suit type. She’s in cargo pants and a sleeveless black sweater, a camera around her neck and a serious-looking tripod case on her back. I can smell the french fries from her lunch when she shakes my hand.

  Louise clicks away capably, taking exteriors of the main house and grounds from various angles.

  But when we ascend the field and she starts shooting Kingfisher cabin on our right, Vivienne shakes her head at her. “We won’t be featuring that. Too specific.” She says the same thing near the shed, and when I show her the shell-covered chimney, and Angela’s garden.

  Apparently a lot of the Kingstons’ cherished improvements are “too specific.”

  “You really don’t think the history of this place will interest anyone?” I ask, taken aback. I’ve seen two of Graham’s devotees since I arrived—one coming down the trail to the beach when I was coming up, and another placing flowers by the gate. But they stayed respectfully outside of the fence, and seemed blissed out simply to be here.

  “Well, frankly, Jacqueline, that’s not the way we should go here. It’s highly unlikely to remain a single-family residence. So we can’t limit ourselves.”

  “Oh. Right.” I’d hoped some wealthy fan or musician might want this land, might even keep the studio in place, but maybe I’m biased, overestimating the property’s importance.

  “Now, what about this waterfall overlooking the ocean I’ve heard about? It would be perfect to show the tranquility of the location.”

  “No.” It comes out fast. Surprising all of us. Willa wouldn’t want her father’s falls on a sales brochure. It would be a violation, sacrilege. “I don’t want that in any of the materials you send out.”

  “Not even a file photo? If we want to get top dollar it only makes sense—”

  “No.”

  Louise, who still hasn’t said a word, busies herself changing lenses.

  Vivienne has expanding ovals of sweat under her cream silk jacket, and they give me a perverse flutter of joy. Maybe that’s cruel. She’s only acting in my best financial interests.

  “I have an idea,” I say, to make up for it. “There’s another pretty view of the ocean from this overlook I know, on the other side of the property. I can take you there instead.”

  “Well. I guess that would be all right. Is it far?”

  “It’s north of here, about a half-hour walk.” I check my watch. It’s barely two, so Shane and his crew won’t emerge for hours. I picked this afternoon for the shoot because I knew they’d be safely down in the studio.

  It’s no secret that I’m selling, but I don’t want the album people meeting Windward & Associates Realty’s finest. It would feel wrong, somehow.

  We hike up the narrow path and stop at the first clearing. “There’s a good place for an ocean shot twenty feet up,” I say to Louise, who preps her camera.

  “This is pretty,” Vivienne says. “Absolutely stunning country up here. What do you think of leading with this for the brochure—Perched high on a tranquil ocean cliff, this pristine—”

  “Butt face!”

  “Dude, stop calling me that. Be a little creative in your insults, at least.”

  “Wait up. Hey, Fee. Did you know dude means a pimple on a donkey’s butt?”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah way! I read it in this book we have at home...”

  It’s the kids who spy on me. The tween girl in purple rhinestone glasses scrambles up the trail, breathless, followed by the younger boy in his blue baseball cap. They stop short when they see us. They know who I am—not Lady Sunshine, but the lady they’re not supposed to disturb.

  They probably think I’m some kind of witch, in my black-and-gray clothes. I wish I’d packed more, but I’d been in such a daze, getting ready for this trip. And I thought I’d be alone.

  There’s whistling and adult laughter behind the kids. Shane and Bree Lang come around the bend, five or six others not far behind.

  “Oh,” Shane says, stopping. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “I thought you’d be in the house.”

  “No, I...” Miserably, I introduce Vivienne and Louise as friends, hoping to avoid telling the group why they’re here.

  But Vivienne hands out business cards, explaining to them all about the morning’s photo shoot for Windward Realty, the buyers salivating over this land.

  Shane makes his introductions, and I shake hands with everyone, pretend I’m taking in names. But I already know most of them. I’ve eavesdropped on the kids whispering on the porch.

  Mat’s short for Matui. He’s the sound engineer, the big, good-natured guy, born in New Zealand but a Californian for a long time. Mat’s wife is a pathologist in Reseda, where they live, and she’s coming up for a visit soon. Their little boy is Kauri, one of my spies. They’re staying in Kingfisher cabin. Piper’s the blonde bassist, and her wife is April, and their daughter in the purple glasses is Fiona—Fee. They’re staying in Painted Seal.

  And of course I know Bree Lang. I’ve owned her CDs for years. Over the last week, I’ve seen her, briefly, from behind windowpanes: a tall, friendly-looking woman in bright clothes. Her long silver Airstream trailer sits in the old gravel parking lot like a glamorous UFO. Two satellites landed on either side the same day she arrived: one for her chef, one for her personal assistants. Each time I catch a glimpse of Bree or her shiny trailer, I’m in awe that she’s here. My guest.

  “Nice to meet you all,” I say. “Gorgeous afternoon.”

  “Yes, isn’t it?” Shane says. “Well.”

  Worlds colliding. That was from some sitcom. Seinfeld, maybe. It was played for laughs on the show, but in this moment it’s excruciating. Especially when Vivienne goes on and on about how terrific the listing is. That’s what she calls the Kingstons’ home: the listing.

  Shane winces when she says that. Though the group is polite, asking about the photo shoot, now I do feel like that mean purple octopus lady in The Little Mermaid. Demolishing music history for my own greedy ends.

  They don’t know that I’m not keeping the money. The sale money or Graham’s royalties.

  After the pleasantries, everyone clumps up on the narrow trail between the ferns. We’re poster children for unsafe hiking practices.

  “You’re not working today?” I ask Shane. His black T-shirt has a dark sweat triangle on the chest and he’s plucking at it, trying to cool off. Or else—like me—uncomfortably aware of how close we have to stand to each other because of the tight quarters on the trail.

  “We busted an amp tube. Won’t have a replacement ’til tomorrow.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. Is that a tough part to replace?” />
  “Only when your engineer’s the biggest amp snob of all time,” Shane says.

  “Hey, Chook,” Mat says, clapping him on the shoulder. “You’ll thank me later. Don’t listen to anything he says about me, Jackie.” I like the easy way he says my nickname, and how he never asked to use it; his cheerful Kiwi accent makes it sound like Jaaay-kee.

  We’re all looking at each other awkwardly when Fiona boasts, “Shane’s taking us up to a really cool swing he knows about.”

  “It’s supposed to feel like flying,” Kauri dares, his eyes shining.

  “It’s in my ‘Off the Beaten Path’ guidebook,” Shane says to me, quickly. “It’s supposed to be in a big tree on state land just over that way. Do you know about it? I thought you’d be in the house, so I’m sorry if we—”

  “No, it’s fine—”

  “Last-minute plan...you know.”

  “Sure. The swing over Triangle Point. It’s worth the hike, if it’s still there.”

  The Flying Swing, we’d called it. If you looked straight ahead, it felt like you were swinging out a thousand feet above the ocean, when really you were a few feet above a gently sloping hill covered with silky ferns, giving only the illusion of great height and danger. Willa could swing without looking down, but I always cheated. I needed to see where I really was.

  “Can you be our guide?” Mat asks. “I don’t trust this joker to navigate. He’ll probably take a wrong turn and send us all into a ravine.”

  “You’ll find it. Just stay left at the fork in the trail fifty feet up, then go right, then left.”

  “Jacqueline, come with us,” Bree Lang urges me.

  I didn’t know she even knew my name, but the expression in her eyes is playful and welcoming, as if it’d be the most natural thing in the world for our two hiking parties to merge.

  “Oh, that’s nice, but I need to get these two back to their car.”

  “No, we’d love to come along! We can take some shots of the swing for the brochure!” Goddamned Vivienne.

  * * *