Lady Sunshine

by Amy Mason Doan

  But he doesn’t slow as we pass the treehouse. I stop and glance up—it was always well-hidden, and there’s not enough moonlight in this spot to see if anything’s left of its base. I trail my fingers along the bark. How many pink-and-white scrapes did it leave on my clumsy legs and hands that summer? By July I could climb up the rope ladder without worry, but I was never as swift or graceful as Willa.

  Shane’s clambering faster now and I press on, trying to keep my panting under control so he won’t hear me. We continue straight uphill, to the ridge that marks the eastern edge of the Kingston land. There he stops, his back to me, looking down over the neighboring property. He rubs his left side, under his T-shirt; he has a stitch from hiking so fast.

  As I watch from behind a trunk, he picks up a rock or branch—it’s hard to tell—and throws it over the ridge. He throws another. And another.

  Then he turns and walks slowly downhill.

  When it’s safe I creep up to the ridge and look for what might have incited his rage. But it’s only rolling hills and trees sloping down, down, down for acres. Toward a few distant roofs, silvery in the moonlight.

  I follow Shane’s flashlight downhill.

  This time he stops at the treehouse. Right under it.

  Against its thick trunk, he sits. Rests the back of his head on its bark, his neck stretched long. He’s looking up at the dear old hideout—or, if its simple plywood frame has been battered to nothing in a storm, where it used to be. He reaches up with both hands and strums his fingers along the bark. A little washboard-music song.

  What is this? Why here, of all the square feet on these 416 acres?

  My head’s pounding—I was too tense to eat today, nothing but that gulp of cider on the porch. I should go back for a glass of milk, bed, forget this madness. Shane has an artist’s temperament and keeps artist’s hours. The live oak’s trunk is an inviting place to sit. That’s all.

  Crack.

  The glass jar, slick with my sweat, has shot from my fingers and smashed on a rock.

  “Hey!”

  I duck behind a tree and freeze, hold my breath.

  “Hey. Who’s there?” Shane’s up, walking in my direction. Any second his flashlight will reveal me.

  I could creep away. I still know these woods. But the broken jar—I can see it from here. Big, broken pieces like cups of moonlight, waiting to give me away.

  “Jackie?” His voice is softer than before. Surprised, but not angry.

  I move toward him. For a minute, I stand in my white nightshirt in the beam of his flashlight.

  How did we get to this point? The day started so relaxed. Me and Mat and Shane on the porch joking around, enjoying cider. And now I’m out here in the dead of night like a ghost, sneaking around...

  He lowers the beam to the glass between our feet, bends to pick up the miniature key. He hands it to me, then goes for the glass, carefully wrapping the shards in a Kleenex from his pocket and setting them on a stump.

  I wait for him to ask what the key opens, what the hell I’m doing out here in the middle of the night spying on him, throwing jam jars.

  “Can’t sleep?” he asks.

  “Didn’t even try.”

  “Jangly night.”

  “Yes.”

  “Been out here long?”

  “Awhile.”

  “Oh.” He nods.

  “You can tell me if you want to be alone,” I say.

  “Actually, I’d very much prefer not to be alone. If you’re not needed elsewhere.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Then sit with me a little while?”

  We sit at the base of the giant live oak tree on Shane’s spread-out sweatshirt, our backs against its massive trunk. I try not to look up. Try not to show how hard it is for me not to look up.

  “So, how’s your packing going?” he asks.

  “I haven’t been upstairs yet,” I confess.

  “It’s hard, letting go of stuff.”

  “Yes.” It’s a relief to say it. “If I don’t pick up the pace, I’ll be ready to sell by next Labor Day.”

  “Terrible shame.”

  “Oh, right. I’m sure you’re devastated by my lack of progress.”

  He smiles a little, and I smile back.

  “I could help you if you want, on breaks. That’s the least I could do. Since you’re our belatedly credited songwriter and all.”

  “Thank you. I may take you up on that.”

  “So. Your guy’s here. Been together a long time?”

  Paul. Alone, dangling on the porch.

  “I’m not... Paul is... We have a lot in common. Both teachers, same age.”

  “He seems like a really good guy.”

  “He is! He is. And he played in a garage band when he was in high school. They were called the Bananas Foster. Because his last name is Foster.”

  We let that hang there for a minute, let it congeal and harden into full absurdity.

  “I didn’t know he was coming,” I admit. “It’s a little awkward.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “Thanks for being so welcoming to him. That was nice of you.”

  He looks me in the eyes. “Not really.”

  I glance down at the key in my hand. Then—I can’t help myself—I look up.

  “It’s still there,” Shane says softly. “If you were wondering.”

  I stare at him. “You know. You know what’s up there?”

  He nods.

  He hands me the flashlight and I shine it straight up. There. Plywood floor. The pale rope ladder looped on a high branch.

  So it is still there. I wonder what it’s like inside, if any of the homey touches Willa and I worked on together so happily remain.

  “When did you notice it?” I ask. “You were on a hike and happened to look up right here, or what?”

  Nothing.

  “Shane?”

  He touches my knee. His hand is warm. “Jackie, I need to tell you something.”

  21

  A Race

  1979

  I was watching the kids on the slide. Willa was in the garden talking to her mom and Colin was gone for the night, visiting some friends in Humboldt.

  I was about to round the kids up for the beach when Graham came over with a metal disc in his hands.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Trash. A year’s worth of trash. Who wants to race?” he yelled.

  Alice, a fearless little girl from Sausalito, ran over.

  “Ready, set, go!” He set the disc on the hill and watched it roll, gathering speed.

  Something was flapping from it—a shiny tongue of brown-gray plastic—and it hit me. This was a recording reel. What was Graham doing?

  Alice jumped on the bright yellow slide belly-down, easily outpacing the tape spool. It made it all the way to the bottom of the bowl, bouncing and skidding, the ribbon of shiny brown tape behind it, before it stopped.

  “Your music’s not on there, is it?” I asked gently.

  He stalked toward his waterfall trail as if he hadn’t heard me.

  I sat on the grass and smiled blankly at the kids playing. Beyond them, the neighbor boy—the skittish one from the thrift shop, the one Willa called “our fan club”—was spying on the happy scene from the trees. A minute ago I’d have tried to coax him from his hiding spot, invited him for a slide. But all I could do was swallow the tears that threatened.

  It was the first time Graham had been unkind to me. I tried to focus on that day he’d neglected his work to tell me about my mom, about “Janey.”

  Maybe he hadn’t heard. If he had, he was entitled to one bad mood.

  But I was glad Colin was gone for the night. It would confirm his opinion that Graham was overindulged—a spoiled artiste.

 
; “Theatrics.”

  I looked up. Kate.

  “I saw from the kitchen window.”

  “Is he okay?” I asked.

  “He’s fine. Once he threw an entire master in the ocean. This is nothing.”

  “I didn’t know he was recording his own music again. He said it has a year’s worth of stuff on it.”

  “It might. Then again, it might not. Take my advice and don’t waste another second worrying about it.” Kate gathered up the tape and rolled it back up on the spindle. “I’ll leave it in the basket outside the studio door tomorrow, with the doughnuts and coffee. He’ll have forgotten all about it by then.” She pointed it at me. “And you should, too.”

  Willa came up then, with a canvas bag of new toys—Angela’s old trowels and rakes and tin pots.

  “For sandcastles,” she said, excited. “Let’s take the kids down to the beach.”

  “Beach, guys!” I yelled. I thought about mentioning the incident to Willa, but Kate certainly seemed nonplussed, and I didn’t want to worry her over such a silly thing. So this was my moment of crushing disillusionment that Colin was so concerned about? It was nothing. Merely proof that I was in Graham’s inner circle—he’d let me in enough to show me how he struggled. How he hurt.

  Maybe by the end of the summer we could even talk about it, about how painful it could be when your hopes for a song were dashed. Willa and I hadn’t told anyone about our dabbling, yet, but maybe we’d write something good enough to share.

  By dinner, Graham was back to normal. Buoyant, in fact.

  We all ate together at six, summoned by the rusty dude-ranch triangle Kate rang from the porch, crowding onto the shoved-together picnic tables. The people gathered at the tables changed constantly, but family dinner was a constant.

  I was sitting across from Graham, and Willa was filling her glass up at the water urn on the porch.

  “So, I have a little gig in August,” Graham announced. “If it doesn’t fall through. I’m playing the Gate benefit in Golden Gate Park.”

  “That’s huge, man!”

  “Neil Young and Jerry Garcia headlined last year, right?”

  “It’s no big deal,” Graham said. “But they’re giving me a bunch of comp tickets. If any of you bums have nothing better to do.”

  “You know I’ll be there, man...”

  “It’s about time!” said some new guy a few feet down the table to my left. A greasy-haired man in a black T-shirt that said “Skylab Collection Crew 1979,” with drawings of blood dripping down the shoulders.

  Skylab guy got elbow-jabbed by the woman next to him, and he quickly added, “You know what I mean.” He looked around for help, got nothing. People were suddenly intensely interested in their farmer-cheese-and-sprouts-on-date-bread sandwiches. “It’s been too long since he...since you were onstage, that’s all. I mean, I get why you’d want to stay here... It’s ‘a magic scrap of the world.’” This was from one of my uncle’s songs. “A clean corner of the dirty world, you know?”

  I wished Willa was here to translate for me, to say it was nothing. I knew it had been years since Graham had performed in a real show, but was he actually ashamed to be purely behind the scenes now, donating the studio so selflessly, helping others make their music? The awkward silence made it seem like he should be.

  The guy tried to recover: “I only meant I’d pay to watch him play live every night.”

  Graham nodded and swigged his beer, then directed his response, inexplicably, to me. Smiling. “I’m only an unbilled guest, it’s nothing. An old friend from my Fillmore days set it up. As they say, I’ll believe it when it happens... I didn’t even decide to do it ’til today.”

  I nodded, proud that he’d distinguished me above everyone else. I wished Colin was here to see it.

  Angela, who’d been eating quietly by Graham’s side, got up and left, drifting behind the house. To the garden, surely. It struck me as odd that she wouldn’t share in her husband’s excitement, but that was Angela. She was always doing that, disappearing to tend her garden, disinterested in music-business talk. She preferred long hours in the woods with her newsboy bag, collecting interesting pine cones, or flowers to press.

  Someone switched the conversation to Kenny Rogers and Glen Campbell, how their popularity said something about the country. Something grim.

  “I’m telling you, man,” a woman down the table said. “It means something. We’re going straight back to the ’50s. Cowboys and bar fights and defending the little woman’s honor.”

  Then everyone got into a long debate about who was more painful, Kenny or Glen Campbell. That was the word my uncle always used for music he didn’t like—painful.

  I finished my sandwich, glad that the easy dinner conversation had returned. Equally glad that I’d left The Gambler, which I knew by heart and loved fiercely, back in my bedroom in San Francisco.

  Out of nowhere, my uncle faced me once more. “Hey, Lady Sunshine. I’ve been meaning to tell you. Don’t let that dreamy daughter of mine make you fall behind on your summer research project.”

  I stiffened and stared down at my plate, waiting for the rest. For words that would lay bare my lie about my diary.

  But the blow didn’t come. And I realized that there hadn’t been a trace of mockery in the way he’d said summer research project, though he knew perfectly well that had been fictional. When I looked up at him, his expression was friendly.

  I have thought about this moment a lot in the years since. About how good it felt to count him as an ally, so unlike the adults I’d known in San Francisco. To learn that he wouldn’t use my lie to diminish me or entertain his guests. If he had, maybe I’d have kept my wall up.

  And so much would’ve been different.

  But there at the table, on that sunny midsummer afternoon, with my uncle’s glamorous, shaggy friends all around, I was grateful to find warmth in his eyes. He knew why I’d tried to hide behind the “research notebook.” That I’d been afraid to admit the truth—that I was lonely, and wasting away in San Francisco.

  Here was everything I craved—family, warmth, noise, freedom.

  My uncle had plenty of flaws, but he understood pride.

  “I can take a break,” I said.

  “Right on. I’d hate for you to waste all summer working, Lady.” He lifted his beer bottle. “To breaks.”

  Willa returned and squeezed next to me. “Breaks?”

  Graham finished his second beer and wiped froth from his mustache. “Skylab. They should’ve given it brakes.” He joined another conversation on his left.

  We never talked about my diary lie again, my junior anthropologist disguise.

  But maybe I had a trace of archaeologist in me.

  Because when no one was looking, I slid an artifact into the front pocket of my culottes: the cap from my uncle’s cerveza. I taped it into the diary, after the lyrics to “Superman.”

  Dear Ray,

  Hope you don’t mind a little Scotch tape. Or beer fumes.

  I’ll be gentle...

  If my Vaughn Academy Spanish from Señorita Miller is correct, “Uno D’Oro” means “One of Gold.”

  I’m not sure why I took it. Am I regressing to thirteen instead of seventeen? Or maybe it’s my marker, like in that story I read about gamblers? And...I took it because I feel indebted to him, and I don’t want to forget that I owe him?

  Oh, I’m lying, Ray. I’m making it so much more complicated than it is. I took the beer cap because I’m a fan. Not of his music. It’s pretty, but I’m a disco girl, not a folk lady.

  But somehow...look at me. A groupie. Can you be a groupie of someone’s existence? Of the world they’ve created?

  There’s the evidence, undeniable, laminated under Scotch tape for you. I’m like that kid I saw in the alley behind the Dead show in Oakland last year. He pocketed some r
oadie’s cigarette butt like it was a splinter from the True Cross.

  Next thing you know, you’ll be a big fat fan sandwich, stuffed with more junk that I can’t resist grabbing—busted guitar strings, Black Jack gum wrappers, pulp from the pages he throws in the pools.

  Watch out, Ray.

  I know he’s not perfect. Colin thinks I’m setting myself up for disappointment.

  But I’m not perfect, either. I know what it’s like to lash out. We have that in common.

  I locked the diary. Hid the key in the mason jar under my cabin stairs as always. Then, instead of putting it under my mattress, as I had until now, I sought out a safer hideaway for the diary. I hiked up to the treehouse and stored it in the fat crook of the limbs on the east side.

  The next entry was—

  Ray, you have a better hiding place, under the treehouse. Don’t get a big head.

  22

  Satyr

  1999

  “I need to tell you something,” Shane says, leaning his cheek against the tree trunk.

  I’m afraid. Because he looks afraid.

  “I used to live here. Just over that ridge. I guess you could say I grew up next door.”

  I echo him: “You grew up next door.”

  “Yes.”

  “You lived next door to this place.” If I keep saying it, maybe it will start to make sense.

  “I did. From when I was born ’til I was twelve.”

  “Back when Graham was alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you just forgot to mention it.”

  “No.”

  I think back to the microsecond pauses in our conversations. A distant look here, a stiffness in his shoulders there, the occasional, slight reshuffling behind his features. Words chosen too carefully. How he found the pond so easily. His bitterness about this place being sold, hurling rocks over the ridge only minutes ago. I should have seen it.

  “You’re one of the satyrs,” I say. “Willa’s satyrs.”

  “What?”

  “Willa called your family the satyrs. The goat people.”

  He breathes deep and nods. “Goat people. Yes. We kept a few. And sheep, for cheese. We tried alpacas, a couple of summers. Minks, one disastrous winter...not much else. Never enough to make a decent living, anyway. The bank repossessed in ’82. Too bad. If my pop had been able to hold on, he might have made a lot of money. His mistake was falling in love with this land a little too early.” He massages his left side again. “I’m out of practice on these hills. God, I used to run up and down as easily as...”