Lady Sunshine

by Amy Mason Doan

  The swing is still there, a quarter-mile north, up the squiggling trail. It’s perfectly safe, the cliff hasn’t eroded, and should anyone fall off, they’d only tumble onto the soft grass-covered hill, which drops off gently here for ten feet, before a steep vertical cut in the cliff.

  Fiona goes first, of course, and she’s fearless from the start, not looking at her feet or the hill, but instinctively straight out at the horizon. It’s the only way to maintain the illusion of soaring over the waves.

  When I was seventeen, it had taken me three visits to get up the courage to do that. Willa had taught me to memorize Jonathan Livingston Seagull as she pushed me, her hands featherlight on my lower back. The length of each swing was perfectly suited to the lilting rhythm of the book, the part about birds “touching perfection” in flight, how that was the most important thing to each of them. Willa had been so proud when we discovered Jonathan had an important thing in it, like the Margaret Wise Brown book in the picture of my mother, the book I’d told her I loved. She’d thought it was a sign that she and I were meant to meet.

  Fiona won’t stop swinging. “The ocean goes on forever!” she yells. She yodels, she sings, she screams greetings at gulls. Gravity’s no match for her; her feet dance effortlessly on the cliff to keep her momentum going whenever the swing threatens to slow down.

  “I’m sorry. She’s a hopeless ham,” Piper says.

  “Kinda like her mother?” Mat says, and Piper jumps onto his back as easily as little Kauri does.

  Piper yells over Mat’s head as he spins her, “Fiona Janis, hop your butt off that swing this second and give Kauri a turn.”

  The kids get their fill, and then the adults. Mat, who’s surprisingly graceful for a big man, soaring out over the blue. Shane, who can’t seem to keep the swing from twirling and slides off so dizzy he has to stand in the shade for a minute, his head down. Even Louise goes for a ride, taking one-handed pictures midair.

  I’m stuck with Vivienne DePuis. Now that she’s punched off the photos, she’s making the most of her time with me. I’m trapped nodding to her about comps and zoning and top-dollar results. Shane’s on the shady grass behind us, listening, looking more miserable than me. He’s thinking about this place changing, turning into everything the Kingstons hated. What did he say that day we met? By fall it’ll be some god-awful housing development.

  “Jacqueline, take a turn?” Piper calls.

  I want to know if it’s as wonderful as I remember, infinite blue space in front of me but somehow no space for worry. I want to fly, to show the kids that I’m a good witch, not a bad one. Leave Vivienne and our grim business behind me, if only for a minute.

  But it would feel empty without Willa standing behind me, her small hands tapping my lower back on each descent, less a push than a simple reminder that she was there.

  “Another time,” I say.

  “Then, your turn,” Shane says to Vivienne, holding the swing for her.

  “Oh, no.” She smooths her crepe skirt.

  “You sure? It’s such an important part of the listing. Hop on. I’ll give you a push.”

  I study his face. Yes. He seems like he wants to give her a good push—straight off the swing and into the Pacific.

  “Thank you, but it’s time I got back to the office.” She waves her mobile phone around to show us that there’s no reception here, that we’re holding her up.

  We all troop down the trail, our backs to the sun.

  “Thanks for having us here,” Bree Lang says to me, skillfully pulling me away from Vivienne as we walk. “I’ve been trying to thank you for days, but you’ve been somewhat hard to slow down. A gray streak shooting across the field.”

  I wonder if that’s a dig at my drab wardrobe. I’ve only seen Bree in jewel-toned dresses and caftans and shawls. But she doesn’t seem unkind—just observant.

  “You’re more than welcome here, but it’s not really my place.”

  “No?” she asks.

  Piles of paperwork say I’m the owner, but that’s meaningless. It will always, only, belong to the Kingstons. “I mean, it doesn’t feel like mine.”

  “Aaaah. I get that.”

  “Um. Jacqueline?” Kauri edges over to me, with Fiona behind him, giggling.

  “Can we play your piano sometime?” he asks. I can tell by the mischievous flash in Fiona’s eyes that she’s dared him to approach.

  “Yes, whenever you want. If you like, I could show you this triple-part song I teach my kids back home.”

  “You have kids?” Fiona asks.

  “I do. Seventy-two of them.” Their eyes widen.

  “I’m a music teacher at an elementary school in Boston. I had seventy-two students last year.”

  Kauri giggles at this, and even Fiona allows herself a half smile.

  “You’re in for it now, Teach,” Bree Lang says. “Those two won’t give you a minute’s peace.”

  “I’ve been to Boston,” Fiona says. “My mom had a job playing in a band there when I was little.”

  “I wish I’d seen her. Your parents have probably taught you a lot on the piano, huh? You know middle C?”

  “I do!” Kauri, proud.

  “Of course I do!” Fiona, haughty. “That’s baby stuff.”

  “I thought you’d know it. I was just checking.”

  “Will you teach us really soon, Jacqueline?” Kauri asks.

  “Yes, and you can call me Jackie.”

  What’s the harm in a lesson? I need to stay sharp. And I miss my students. I hope they’re practicing this summer, that the ones I was able to get into summer music camp on scholarship are attending.

  Shane comes up from behind me and walks on my right. “You don’t have to do that. We’re intruding on you so much already, and now we’re crashing your real estate meetings.”

  “Is that sarcastic?” I hate being lumped in with Vivienne. One of the joyless number-crunchers.

  “What?”

  “Well. I’ve picked up on some hostility.” I nod at Vivienne, who’s ahead of us on the steep, green-flanked trail, chattering at Bree.

  “Oh. Sorry. It’s just sad to think about everything changing.” He gazes down at the house, the point of the shell spire just beginning to show through the leaves. “The real world encroaching. The year 2000 encroaching. I don’t know what I mean.”

  “I do.” I recall something Angela told me. “These woods are walls. Keeping out the present.”

  He pauses in surprise, gives me a curious look. “Exactly. Graham liked everything old-fashioned, didn’t he? Those funky medieval-looking tapestries in the studio, weaving his Irish ballads into his songs, giving everyone titles. Lady Sunshine and all that.”

  “Angela told you he called me that?”

  “Oh. Yeah. She did, sorry if...”

  “It’s okay. It just—it’s fine.”

  “She mentioned it when she was telling me you’d be interested in the project. Because Graham was fond of you.”

  “Ah. Of course.”

  We both go quiet for a minute. Shane’s the only guest sleeping in the house—he wanted to be near the studio, and I’ll be gone soon, anyway—but we haven’t exchanged more than a few words until now.

  “It’s not your fault,” he says. “It can’t stay the same forever. And I’ll be on my best behavior with your lovely real estate agent from now on. Swear. But I can’t let you give piano lessons when you’re so busy packing. On top of everything else you’ve done for us? No way.”

  He’s being the polite guest I asked for, but he’s overcompensating. “It’s nothing. Really. I like them—they crack me up.”

  On cue, Kauri and Fiona duel with saplings in front of us. With their long hair and big, fierce eyes and dirty knees, they’re like feral children out of a medieval tapestry.

  “Little beasties,” Shane
says. But he likes them too, I can tell.

  The piano dealer is supposed to come tomorrow to haul the old Rec Room upright away. I make a mental note to reschedule him.

  8

  Nest

  1979

  I followed Willa back up the steep hill where I’d been secretly trailing her—or thought I had—minutes earlier, and we reentered the thick inland woods.

  She moved slowly this time, so I could catch up and find my footing on the sharp slope, but I was afraid of losing her again and stayed close, my eyes fixed on her skirt’s gold sequins. Hundreds of them glittering in the dark, twinkling from waist to hem. I was a sailor navigating by synthetic stars. But still she disappeared; she abruptly snapped her flashlight off.

  “Willa?” I whirled, reaching out blindly, my fingers finding only leaves.

  “I’m up here...just a second...stay right where you are...” Her voice came from up high again. Branches rustled and scraped, the sounds rising, growing fainter. Then a circle of light appeared at my feet: she’d flicked her flashlight back on.

  I followed the beam up, up, up...to Willa, who sat, casual as anything, fifteen feet above me, in a tree.

  “Come up!”

  “How?”

  “It’s easy, look.” She shifted her flashlight to show me where she sat: a wooden platform about seven feet square, nearly hidden by leaves, built into the U-shaped cradle of the tree’s fat upper branches. She spotlighted the way up: a long white rope hanging near the trunk, knots spaced every two feet. It ended at my waist and was still swinging gently back and forth from Willa’s climb.

  I wasn’t afraid of heights. I was afraid of human error. The rope ladder could be rotten, frayed, attached to a flimsy branch. But Willa waited, eager for me to join her in the air, her It’s easy so matter-of-fact I couldn’t question it.

  I reached, grabbed the rope with both hands, and clamped my thighs around the lowest knot. As I dangled, my hips and butt took turns slamming the tree trunk, but the rope held, and I grunted my way up to the next knot.

  “What was that? Are you all right?” she called down to me.

  “Sure,” I panted.

  Twirling and swaying back and forth, scraping my knuckles on bark, and feigning more confidence than I felt, I climbed up to my cousin. Willa had grown up scrambling around these seaside hills, while my exercise routine had consisted entirely of turning seductively during The Hustle at Teena’s DreamTraxx and pounding Space Invaders buttons in the Fillmore Street corner arcade.

  “You’re doing great! Almost there!”

  Willa would love Vaughn Academy’s indoor PE days. When it rained, Ms. Binny relied heavily on the gym rope climb. I’d never ascended more than a couple of feet, while other kids shimmied up like monkeys in purple polyester uniforms, dinging a little brass bell on the ceiling. I was only ever rewarded, once I’d slid down and thudded on the basketball court in defeat, with Ms. Binny’s delusional “Good effort, Pierce!”

  “Just a little more!” Willa called.

  She’d tied the top of the ladder to a large branch. No bell here: only my cousin’s outstretched arm. I clasped it, held on for dear life, and let her drag me to safety.

  “It’s nothing once you get the hang of it, right?” she asked, standing over me.

  “Nothing.” I was limp and sweaty, facedown on plywood. “How much weight can this thing hold?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. But we can’t be much more than two hundred together.”

  Cautiously, I rolled onto my back. Willa bounced, laughing, circling her flashlight above her head so it illuminated wood, leaves, a length of spangly scarlet fabric draped on branches.

  “Can you not do that?”

  Anyone else would have laughed. Jumped higher. Willa stopped immediately. “Sorry.”

  She sat, setting her flashlight beam-down on the wood so it softened into a night-light.

  “So, what is this?”

  “It’s sort of...my secret place. I come when I want to get away.”

  So, like her mother, Willa sometimes needed to separate herself. But maybe that was why she always looked so tranquil. Even when her home was overrun, she knew that her hideaway waited for her.

  “Did you build it?”

  She shook her head. “I found it when I was seven, the year we moved in. It was already here.”

  “Kate must know about it. She doesn’t miss a trick.”

  “Kate never hikes this high on the hill. She says anything past the garden is too steep and uncultivated for her old-lady knees.”

  I stood and explored, tentatively at first. Holding on to a branch for safety, I peered through the leaves on the coast side where we’d entered. There was Angela’s curving glow stone path in her garden, two bright upstairs windows. Beyond that, the lantern down by the pool. Someone was having a night swim.

  “You can see all the way down to the pool.”

  “Oh...you can see way past that.” Willa came to my side, leaning forward to look out, fearless. “You can see headlights in the parking lot, over that way.” She pointed down the hill. “And when the fog burns off in the afternoon, there’s a long triangle of ocean right there. My dad’s waterfall is behind those trees.” She nodded at a spot left of the house, on the southern ridge. Then she pointed to the right, north. “And you can see people hiking up to the Flying Swing over there.”

  “Flying Swing?”

  “I’ll take you.”

  I inched closer to the edge. We were at the top of the Kingstons’ sprawling property. It was the perfect lookout. “It’s incredible up here.”

  “My mom told me when I was little that these woods are like walls, holding back time. She’s the one who found this land. My dad wanted to live in the city.”

  This surprised me; my uncle seemed so much a part of this place, so in charge of it. “It seems like it’s grown on him.”

  I crossed to the other side of the treehouse, facing inland, and Willa followed.

  “That’s our closest neighbor on this side, down the east hills,” she said. “The goat people.”

  I peered into the darkness. “Goat people. Satyrs?”

  “They aren’t goats; they used to raise goats. But we can call them satyrs. You can just make out their barn light down there, see?”

  In the charcoal light I picked out a distant, orangey glow.

  “I wish they were satyrs... They don’t like us much. The little boy is cute. He comes over here sometimes to watch us, like our own little fan club. But Kate says the parents don’t like the idea of us—of Daddy’s friends. And my mom’s plants.”

  “The neighbors behind us in the city filed a complaint because my stepmother had the gardener prune too many branches from their gum tree. They were blocking her greenhouse.”

  “How weird, to live in a city,” Willa said dreamily. “Don’t you feel trapped?”

  “I never thought about it.”

  “Daddy said you’re rich... But you probably think the way we live here is boring.”

  “No.” I meant it. Willa had room to ramble and explore. I had lived, I realized, an embarrassingly compact life compared with hers. Grand-looking from afar, but narrow. My narrow, elegant home, my narrow, prestigious school. The walls between households, between the grown-up world and my own, were so high back home. I’d tried to scale them, with my messing around and my disco nights. But my attempts now seemed childish.

  I picked up a pine cone from the plywood floor and tossed it out into the night, waiting a second for its faint thud.

  “Oh, no, Mr. Bill!” I cried.

  “What?” Willa looked at me, baffled.

  “Mr. Bill.”

  “Who’s Mr. Bill?”

  “It’s a joke. You know, from Saturday Night Live? He’s that little clay man who’s always getting dropped off cliffs and...” Nothing. �
��Willa, have you really never heard of Mr. Bill?”

  “We don’t have a TV,” she said, simply. “I’ve never watched it. Look up.”

  So that’s why my campfire act had been a dud, why Willa called my impressions “stories”; no one had a clue what I was doing up there. In that case, their laughter wasn’t stingy, but charitable.

  I was still trying to process the TV thing, pitying my Saturday Night Live– and Mork and Mindy– and That’s Incredible!–deprived cousin, when the view above stopped me short.

  Stars, framed by leaves. A sight that put the butter-yellow portable RCA TV set in my bedroom to shame. Willa didn’t pity herself. She couldn’t, not here.

  We stood side by side, silently looking up at the sky, for a long time.

  Something happened to me then, next to this relative I barely knew. A girl I’d have dismissed as spacy or immature a week ago. In that stretch of still, quiet minutes—I couldn’t say if five or fifty passed—I felt calmer than I had in a long time.

  “Hey,” I said quietly. “Thanks.”

  “For what?” she asked, eyes still on the sky.

  “For inviting me up here.”

  “You’re family.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to such a simple, generous proclamation. But I stored it up to savor later. I would think about those two words many times over the years. Long after Willa vanished from my life.

  Noises came from below—the scrape and burst of a match, then the short, barking coughs and breaks in conversation that meant people were sharing a joint. It sounded like they were right under us.

  “I hate to say it, man,” Graham said, his voice tight. A long pause, then, full and relaxed: “The heart’s missing from that one. I think it’s dead weight. Here.”

  “Thanks,” a woman said. Silence, a drawn-out exhale. “I hear you. And it’s your dime, but...” Cough. “What does that leave me with?”

  “Maybe we can thicken it up, I don’t know...”

  “This is amazing,” I whispered.

  “Don’t worry, they can’t hear us,” Willa said. “They wouldn’t unless we yelled. Sound carries up here, but not the other way.”