Nightingale

by Amy Lukavics

  Finish it, she felt like they were whispering directly into her brain. Finish it now. See what will come next. See what will happen to you once it’s done.

  She resisted the impossible. She wasn’t ready to face what would happen once she finished. She wasn’t ready to face the nothingness, the empty ache of being lonesome and a failure. So she ignored the creatures that came into her room night after night, lurking in the dark, begging her to return to the typewriter. She started fearing it more than she feared them. They never hurt her. Sometimes they only stared.

  But the typewriter beckoned.

  Now, standing in the beautifully lit garden of the venue, she could see staff hustling to prepare the tables inside for dinner. All of the tables had candles, floral centerpieces, and lavish tablecloths. Gold, ivory, cream. How Mom must have delighted in all of these little details! June didn’t want to imagine what the wedding itself would be like.

  If the wedding ever came to be, that was. June had done a lot of thinking in her hours of lying awake. Never was she able to visualize the ceremony and what it would be like to actually live with Robert. She wondered if it would be possible to do something else. Maybe run away. Maybe kill herself. The shame of even considering such a thing was awful, unbearably heavy.

  Rest. What June really needed was rest. She’d been using the eye drops from the medicine cabinet to whiten her violently red eyes. She looked fine enough, but it was only a matter of time before she shut down, and in the back of her mind, June knew she would. The gin wasn’t helping that either, but it was helping with a whole lot of other things, so in the end June kept sipping from her glass.

  “Boo!” came a deep voice at the same time that a pair of arms wrapped around June from behind. She screamed, really screamed, and dropped her drink to shatter on the cobblestones. Everybody at the party looked over in shock, to the awkward sight of Robert stepping away from June, his face twisted in confusion.

  “It was only me,” he exclaimed, his hands up as though surrendering to police. “I didn’t mean to scare you, darling!”

  “Robert,” June sputtered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t hear you coming...” She looked around at everybody, and spotted her parents standing with Stewart Dennings, staring in absolute horror. “I’m so sorry,” June said louder, giving a silly little wave of her hand before turning back to Robert. “You’re late.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Robert gave a little laugh, but June was able to read right through it: it was empty and irritated and supremely unamused. “You were the one who was late. I’ve been here since six.”

  Six o’clock was when June had been digging for eye drops, Mom bellowing up the stairs that it was time to go now, now, now!

  “Oh” was all she could say. Her head felt light. “Sorry, I don’t feel so well.”

  “I can see,” he said, his mouth pulled into a line as he looked at her sweaty face and the ketchup stain on the front of her dress. “You know, darling, there’s really no pressure here tonight at all. I feel as though you expect too much from yourself. You must learn to relax. Would you like me to get you another drink?”

  What world was this?

  She accepted the drink and let herself be guided inside, where dinner was being served. June and Robert sat at a large round table with Stewart, Mom, Dad, Fred, Stewart’s brother Jack and Jack’s wife, Barbara. A bowl of gelatinous orange soup with crushed cashews on top was already waiting at her place, with Robert’s family digging in. June dipped her spoon into the soup but couldn’t stomach the notion of actually eating it; suddenly all the appetizers she’d stuffed down sat heavily and made her feel sick.

  Once all the tables were filled, Mom stood with a microphone on the empty dance floor and thanked everybody for coming. “We hope you’ll all be able to make the wedding next winter,” she closed with, and that’s how June found out that she was to be married in the winter. At least she’d be old enough to run away without the police coming for her by then.

  You won’t be able to go that long without finishing the story, an eerie little voice whispered inside. June could hear the smile in the voice. You have to finish it. Tonight. Do it tonight. Do it now.

  Her hands trembled as she pretended to gather another spoonful of the off-putting soup. She would not finish the story tonight. Perhaps she would never finish it at all. She could try to revisit it once she was away from here and somewhere safe. But who would take in a person like herself? She had no work experience, no money saved. How did she expect to find somewhere to live?

  Likely, she thought as she thanked the waiter who came to take the soup bowls away, she’d simply end up cutting her wrists in a steaming bath.

  It was a relief to her how quickly the courses passed. There was salad, fish in some sort of white sauce, roasted potatoes. There were tiny chocolate cakes which expelled thick, sticky syrup when cut into. June didn’t eat any of it, only drank her new cocktail while she looked over the rest of the table, all of them shoveling food in as though it would be their last meal for a week.

  June was most relieved when the dancing began. They’d have a real band at the wedding, Dad assured her, but for now they just turned a record player up beside the microphone while everyone shimmied and shook. June went into the bathroom, locked herself in a stall, and leaned against the cool, calming wall of metal, enjoying the silence.

  It didn’t feel like anything, just like she’d shut her eyes and taken a deep breath. But before she could understand what was happening, there was a loud banging on the other side of the stall door. She hadn’t even noted hearing anyone come into the bathroom.

  “June!” It was Mom. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere! You’ve been in here almost all night, goddamn it! Come out here, and listen to Stewart’s speech.”

  Stunned, June straightened up and stumbled out of the stall. Apparently the alcohol was affecting her more than she’d thought. “Sorry,” she mumbled as she followed Mom out, but Mom gave no sign that she’d heard.

  Everyone was at their tables and stared as her mother walked her back to her seat. June tried to remember to smile but felt like she probably looked rather clownish. Whenever she made eye contact with someone, they instantly looked uncomfortable. What was she doing wrong?

  “There’s our June,” Stewart said into the microphone from where he stood near the record player. “We were beginning to think you got cold feet.”

  Laughter rang through the venue, and June shifted in her seat. “I’ll save those for the wedding,” she called out in an attempted joke, trying to sound easygoing and silly but instead coming across as unhinged and borderline hysterical. Nobody laughed, and Mom looked like she was about to transform into a werewolf and eat June alive. Robert put his hand on June’s knee under the table, heavily.

  “Right,” Stewart said, then continued a little louder. “The Hardies and I wanted to let you-all know just how pleased we are that you’ve come to celebrate Robert and June with us. It was fireworks when these kids came together a year ago, and it became clear pretty quickly that they were destined to be together.”

  Destiny. This idiot knew nothing of the meaning of the word. But then again, June thought, perhaps she didn’t either.

  There came a round of light polite applause. “Furthermore,” Stewart said, “I wanted to surprise the kids tonight with something big.”

  An excited murmur grew in the room; if a high roller like Stewart Dennings said it was big, that really meant it was huge.

  “I just signed the contract on a brand-new house for my son and the future Mrs. Dennings!” he announced in a theatrical voice, at which the crowd gasped and clapped and whooped. June’s face went cold. “Robert will be moving in next week, and there he’ll wait for winter to come so his new bride can join him.”

  June stood without meaning to. She realized that doing so caused a lot of people to look at her, expectantly, scanni
ng her for her reaction to such a grand gift. She pulled a smile so wide it felt like it would cause her face to tear. Robert stood and pulled her into an embrace.

  “Surprise!” he said in her ear. “You’ll just love it. Wait until you see it: there’s even a room you can use to write until the baby comes.”

  So it wasn’t a surprise to the kids after all. It was only a surprise to June. Robert had known about the engagement, the wedding, and now the house and apparently a fucking baby, all before she did. It wasn’t right. The fairy lights that decorated the lawn outside shorted out, causing everything outside the window walls to disappear into pure darkness. The speaker that was amplifying Stewart’s microphone gave off a faint buzzing sound.

  “There’s so much to say about June,” Stewart went on, gesturing to his future daughter-in-law. “She came into our lives so shortly after Robert’s mother passed away. It’s hard to say who needed the other more.”

  I needed you and Robert in my life like I needed a brain tumor. A frightening calm took over June, and she put her hand over her heart and rested her head on Robert’s shoulder. She was doing a better job pretending now: she could tell by the way her parents beamed at her, how the guests looked on in admiration.

  “She was one of the most interesting women Robert had ever met or dated,” Stewart remarked, his words slightly slurred by alcohol, and the crowd laughed. “When I asked him what she did in her free time, he told me that she liked to write stories about aliens from outer space.”

  June’s heart skipped a beat. She lifted her head off Robert’s shoulder.

  “And while I don’t think you’ll ever be able to make a dime writing about aliens from outer space,” Stewart went on, getting another laugh from the crowd, “you’re lucky enough that you won’t have to worry about that. Robert will take care of you forever, dear June, and you’re a very lucky woman indeed.”

  People were still laughing about the alien story. Some whispered behind their hands at each other while keeping their eyes on June. June stepped away from Robert, her face undoing itself in anguish, as she went up to Stewart, her fists balled. She could vaguely hear herself growling—growling!—as if she were an angry tiger on the loose.

  “How dare you mock me?” she yelled, her voice strained, and at the same time she began to cry. The entire venue fell dead silent. She heard a chair scraping and then saw her mother rushing over. “I never asked for this! I never asked for a stupid house or a stupid husband!”

  Gasps from the crowd.

  “June...” Stewart said, his eyes wide in shock, taking a step back. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Why don’t you just—” June bellowed, about to continue with drop dead, but at that exact same moment, Stewart Dennings’s face relaxed into a blank expression, and he collapsed to the floor. A light flickered overhead, as did the string lights outside.

  “What happened?” Mom cried out as she reached June, squeezing her arms hard enough to open the skin. “Somebody call an ambulance!”

  “Father!” Robert was there now, too, dropping to his knees at Stewart’s side. June stared at his gray face, his unblinking eyes, already in full understanding that he was dead. She dropped to her knees.

  June had killed Stewart Dennings. Nobody seemed to notice this detail. In fact, people seemed to finally be looking through June as though she were invisible, which was all she’d wanted since arriving at this cursed party. People were yelling among the crowd, asking if there were any doctors present. There were. They whaled on Stewart’s chest with their fists, taking turns, causing Mom to cry out in anguish with every blow.

  And then Fred was there, grabbing June roughly, lifting her off the floor. “Get up, June,” he growled. “Move, damn it!”

  “Come on, Stewart!” Dad was yelling into the dead man’s face. “We’re not done here yet, Stewart! Wake up and snap out of it!”

  “Dad!” Robert cried, holding Stewart’s hand. “I need you, Dad! Please, don’t leave me like Mom did. Don’t you dare leave me, Dad...”

  June stood and watched all of this, awestruck. Was she in a waking nightmare? Did that really just happen? “I’m sorry,” she whispered, but nobody heard her.

  The ambulance came. They told Robert that Stewart was dead, and they took his body away. The police came, too, to address the disturbance that someone had called in. When June shakily told them the truth of what had happened, they took her by the shoulders and looked at her sympathetically and told her that it wasn’t her fault, that it had been a massive heart attack out of her control, maybe even an aneurysm.

  June knew better, though. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that, somehow, it had absolutely been her fault. She had caused it.

  Workers from the venue had been wordlessly clearing dirty plates and glasses and breaking down the tables. Most people left when the ambulance did, Stewart’s body under a white sheet in the back of the vehicle. Robert sobbed from where he sat on the floor. June rigidly made her way to his side. She let her fingertips rest on the top of his head.

  “You did that,” he nearly spat, shaking off her touch. “I don’t know how, but you did.”

  Across the room, June saw a blond woman with red lipstick lead her parents into a different room in the back, whispering in Mom’s ear as though she had something important to share. They slipped away, but June was too shaken to think twice on it and didn’t remember the woman later.

  When Mom and Dad had returned from the room, they were a little more stiff than before. They walked to June, told her to get in the car. She complied and cried the entire way home. She expected her parents to yell at her, disown her, tell her they were sending her away forever, which might not have been such a bad thing. But instead they were uncharacteristically silent, with Fred looking blankly out the window as the car pulled into their driveway.

  “Go to bed,” Dad said to June after they walked in, in a voice that was calmer than June had heard him use in years. His business was ruined with Stewart gone, she knew. Robert wouldn’t be able to fill his shoes by a long shot, at least not for a very long time. Maybe that had broken Dad somehow. Maybe he’d murder her in her sleep tonight. She’d be ready. She wouldn’t fight it.

  June went upstairs and closed the door behind her. She collapsed into bed without taking off her ketchup-stained yellow dress, didn’t even peel off the awful stockings that burned against her damp skin like a rash. She turned the light out, and there the creatures were, waiting for her. June didn’t give them the chance to whisper to her this time. She stared at them for only a moment before standing, turning on the light, and sitting down at her typewriter.

  She finished her story in one long, furious sitting, all the madness that had gathered either releasing or multiplying, she couldn’t tell, and her eyes burned ever so. The sun was just coming up as she typed THE END and then sat, in disbelief, at the finished page before her.

  It was done.

  She took a shower and put on clean clothes. She had no idea what awaited her downstairs, couldn’t imagine the harshness of the words that were surely going to be thrown her way. It didn’t matter what would happen to her now: the story was finished at last. And June had ruined everything—the business, the future of her family, her relationship with Robert. She’d face the music because that was what she deserved. After combing her wet hair straight back and giving herself an encouraging look in the mirror, June went downstairs for breakfast, ready for anything.

  “Good morning, Nightingale,” the Mom-thing said to her in greeting, and that was when June had begun to scream.

  the institution

  When June woke up, she was in her room. It was night, and Eleanor was missing. She sat up with a jolt and a gasp, her hand flying to the side of her head to feel the gauze that was still wrapped around it. Her mind clawed through what had happened, each second becoming significantly heavier than the one
that preceded it. The secret laboratory behind the doctor’s main office, the whirring machine and the metal plates on her head and the bar between her teeth. The plastic sheet hanging from the ceiling.

  Adie.

  “Oh, my god,” June moaned, and barely made it to the wastebasket before she vomited. Her head ached desperately. Nurse Joya and the doctor were monsters. Real monsters. The vision in the tunnel had been completely real.

  But how had June gotten into the tunnel? She stared now at the space on the wall, went over to it again, ran her hand over it. Solid. The monster nurse inside had seemed fascinated and surprised at June’s presence. Hadn’t it been the drugs that she’d injected into June that had made that possible? If so, why didn’t the nurse understand that?

  But the drugs hadn’t had the same effect on Eleanor, and in addition, the red pill that everybody took daily to make them forget their lives before the hospital had needed to be doubled to have any effect on June. Even then, it had worn off long before the nurse and doctor had planned. Why was she more immune to the treatments than other patients?

  All this time, Nurse Joya had obsessed over the story of how Stewart Dennings died, dropping dead the second June yelled at him. Obsessed with her mind, trying to dig her way through it. What a brain you have, June Hardie. What an absolute marvel!

  June touched the gauze again. If she’d really been the one to cause Stewart’s death, just as she’d known in her bones the moment it happened, did that mean that she could have also forced the tunnel to appear? With...her mind?

  She stared at the place on the wall, tried to imagine the tunnel vividly enough that it would appear for real. Again, and again, and again. The wall stayed solid. June shook her head as though trying to rattle loose her building paranoia.