Ten years had passed since June’s Uncle Art had faced the challenge of constructing a fully self-sufficient treehouse, twelve since Nora’s lapse into catalepsy. Yet as bone-deep as the climb from crow’s-nest to treehouse had become, he knew the tree was ever poised to surprise him, and sixty-five was sixty-five no matter how you sliced it.
He took his time descending, a man in no rush whatsoever. A solid grip, a firm foothold, the supportive lean of a thick branch. He would stop and savor them, feel the texture of bark, breathe the sweet smell of sap and green leaf and living oak. This was what his millions were good for: letting him live the bulk of his life up here above the fray, pursuing and pinpointing his dreams, arguing full-voice with his muse like a crazy man (he knew how they talked about him and cared not in the least about it), wrestling the right squiggles of ink onto the page so that his harried readership could deny their dreary lives for a few days and be with him in spirit, where hissing treetops kissed the sky.
Grampa’s tennis shoes touched the roof. He found the rope-handle to the trapdoor, raised it, and slipped inside, lowering and latching it as he descended the floor-to-ceiling ladder into his study.
A bright room. The skylight and two generous windows saw to that. One of the remaining walls was nothing but workspace, a blonde laminate table with room for his PC, his LaserJet, the laptop, a CD-ROM drive, a modem, a tape backup unit. The last wall was stuffed, shelf upon shelf, with books and folders, back issues of odd journals, and the effluvia of a career thirty years old and counting: four tiers of first editions, U.S. and foreign, and signed limiteds—from Elf Bane, a debut he could still be proud of, to Dragon Toast, about to deluge the stores, already the featured selection of umpteen book clubs, guaranteed to sell tens of millions of copies and bring him the usual flood of praise and fan mail. Nice. But after the twentieth time—hell after the twelfth—it was more like a warm kiss on the cheek than a zap of energy that stole away your sleep for days, the illusion of love and support was so convincing, and so necessary at first.
Grampa fired up his PC and unzipped the laptop. Too much a business. Another book, another nine million. The trap of being T. E. Jameson. Four shelves of albatross.
Need me?
Body tremor. “Jesus, don’t do that!” His heartbeat claimed his attention for half a dozen rapid throbs. Esme warped the air between the printer and the doorway to the living room: rich clear glass, there and not there.
Sorry.
“Take a hike, will you? You’re forever pulling this crap on me. I call, you come. Simple as that. I don’t call, you stay the hell away.” But she drooped in shame and was gone halfway through Grampa’s outburst, which he felt foolish finishing but finished anyway.
He thought about her as he transferred the file to his PC and then copied the entire THALIA directory to a second disk, this one to go into Joydrop’s safe (Maxine Hong Kingston had lost a finished novel to the Berkeley fires two years before, and Grampa had taken the hint). Muse talk had been in the air early in his career, and in those days, when he’d mingled more with other fantasists, he jokingly called his Esme. Vaguely poetic; formed a nice pun (is-me); and reminded him of Esmeralda, which recalled Maureen O’Hara, his favorite actress growing up. But once he named her, she had taken on voice, a whisper to begin with, then more distinct.
At first he resisted her, confiding in a close friend who had seemed true but fell away to monger rumors about him in the writerly community. He took a gamble, did an if-this-be-insanity, plunged full-fray into conceiving and birthing A Sunlit Wood with Esme, and saw the gamble pay off the following year in soaring sales and royalty checks he thought at first must have been misdrawn.
Now Esme was no big deal, nothing extraordinary, unless he stopped to think about her in so-called real-world terms. If he regretted anything to do with her, it was the fallout on his grandson, who had clung far too long to his invisible companion Timothy and taken some heat for it at school. Ward was a fine caring boy. He kept meaning to do more with him, go fishing or something else of a grandfatherly nature, but those plans seemed never to come to fruition and Ward spiraled a football up in the air or kept to his clubhouse, June his only friend.
Grampa checked his shelves: Thalia called for two reams, but he had only the open packet for correspondence, and that was down a hundred sheets. Hand on the phone, he decided to spare Joydrop the bother and retrieve them from her office himself. As he crossed the sunlit living room, he glimpsed Auroville in the distance, touristy but not tacky, still small-town enough for his fame not to matter much. It had been a stroke of good fortune, coming here in 1980 to help their daughter through the last month of her pregnancy, his wife Nora still normal then. He was suddenly there again, happy to see Laura of course, but coveting at first sight the tree, huge, ancient, majestic, inviting, its sturdy arms begging to loft him high above the world. Even then, he began to see how the house would sit. He had kept that vision—then a pipe dream—private, which made his daughter’s invitation to stay all the more miraculous when it came.
Through the circular cut in the balcony flooring and down the anchored rope ladder he went. The ground when it came up to meet him was always so solid . . . for all its soft grass, a hard harsh platform of clodded stolidity. The incline leading up to the house, though slight, seemed ever a penance, partly because of his wife’s unwavering stare, but mostly because gravity reclaimed him, reminding him of his age and his insignificance, making him pay for the time spent above it all.
When he slid open the door to the kitchen and slipped through, he heard the flush of a toilet, a short burst of sink water, and the opening of a door down the hall. Joy looked startled to see him, then relieved and happy. “Hi, Ted,” she said, an alto flute to her voice. “The sky god descends. To what do we owe the honor?”
“Good news, Joy.”
“Thalia’s wrapped?” Her pleased astonishment every time was always real, always a treat.
“Tight as a fish.” He held up the floppy, reverent as a communion wafer. “A gift from the gods. I went up into the mountains, well actually it was that old oak out back, and returned with these millions of magnetic ons and offs—”
“—the divine yeas and nays—”
“—precisely, in just the right combination to flood our coffers and keep us both in clover for eons to come.” They shared a laugh and she hugged him, nothing romantic, just nice and friendly and by now an expected ritual. “I need two reams of twenty-pound.”
“No problem.” As she passed Nora’s door, he thought of his wife in there, in the silence. Then Joydrop was in the hall again, the wrapped paper in either arm up against her chest like Mosaic tablets, and the front door opened to let in Ward.
“Hi, Grampa. Hi, Joy.” He headed straight for the fridge, avoiding their eyes, and began to assemble a lunch for himself. Joy went to help, stacking the paper on the kitchen table, but Ward said “I can do it” in a tone that conveyed uncharacteristic exasperation.
Grampa, about to chide him, held back. There was an odd feeling lifting off Ward where he bent to fetch yogurt and bread and peanut butter. He stepped into the kitchen near where Joy stood, and for the flash of an instant Esme appeared, filling the kitchen, gently clasping him in the warm grip of love. He could see her, straight on, and she was beautiful, smiling just a hint, and larger by far than the role he’d confined her to for so many years. Then she was gone, memory lost, a mirage, and he started breathing, audibly, without realizing he had stopped.
“You all right?” Joy touched on his upper arm.
He looked at her, her face glowing with goodness, and nodded.
“You’re sure, Grampa?” Now Ward met his eyes. He was a joy to behold. How had those years slipped by so quickly? They grew, these children, every phase a marvel, each one forgotten in the wonder of the next.
“Yes, Ward. Thank you, I’m fine.”
Ward tore off a banana, then slid the door wide enough to squeak through, hove it to behind him, and was away
to the clubhouse, the cloud he’d carried into the house still upon him.
“What happened?” Joy asked.
“Hm? Nothing, a tremor, something lovely. Nothing like a stroke, stop looking so nurselike; that’s better, no, it was a kind of blessing, a benediction—well, it is Sunday after all.”
“Okay.” She put a hand to his forehead, feeling for fever. What a find she had been. Somewhat flighty in the head, given to crystals and magic rocks, but the perfect secretary and with the credentials and caring to provide for Nora’s needs as well. He couldn’t have asked for a more ideal helpmate.
“How is she?”
Joy paused. “As always.”
His impulse was to return to the treehouse. “Leave the paper here. I think I’ll go sit beside her for a few minutes.”
“I’m sure she’d like that.”
Grampa nodded. He turned, going through the TV room and down the hall. Too gloomy, he thought, we could use a brighter bulb in this hallway.
Then his fingers touched the doorknob and it turned clockwise and he took in the high-backed chair and his wife sitting in it, staring out the window like a doll stuffed with sawdust.
3. Easy Love, Tough Love
The next morning, June told her parents she was off to the library, after which she would probably meet Sharla Kraft at the movies. Probability zero, she thought to herself, easing the lie. Her dad gave her a spy novel and a book on railroading to return, but that was okay. She’d meant to hit the library anyway, see what they had by Wilhelm Reich. It was still cool for shorts at nine, but the day would warm up and the walk would invigorate her. So shorts it was, sandals, a peach blouse, and her hip pack, fluorescent green, worn in front like a kangaroo pouch.
The library had little Reich, but June scanned the Britannica entry, checked out a paperback copy of Listen, Little Man, and requested through interlibrary loan three other books, including Fury on Earth, the biography Jeff had raved about. Then she crossed I-50 and started the winding uphill walk along Bedford Avenue past restored Victorians and up into less populated country, the sight and scent of forest and field delighting her senses.
Ward hadn’t said much on the phone. She got the impression that beneath his enthusiasm at hearing from her lay resentment at having been summoned to the house for her call, as if he were cocooned, undergoing a sea change, not pleased with being torn from his chrysalis. But that might have been imagined. It was more likely the hovering of his grandfather’s secretary that had made Ward sound that way.
Mariposite Lane welcomed her at the left, a gentle rise in the road taking her past a neighbor whose mailbox bore the name “Grant” but whom she had never met. Ward said he was a shut-in with plenty of money and ill health, who had crews come in to beautify his lawn and garden but never once to his recollection ventured out to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Over the rise: a languid hundred-yard paved road through sparse forest to Ward’s house, the ribbon of road surging around a stand of spruce as if it continued for miles more. As the house grew near, she saw through the picture window Joy sitting on the couch, facing away, her head bowed in shame or prayer—no, she was reading a book, the flick of a fingertip as she turned the page. Then the sound of June’s sandals on roadbed made its way through the screen and Joy turned, a glow to her face, an upraised hand as she twisted on the couch and rose. June returned her wave. To Joy’s “Hi, June!” she shouted “Hello!”
Joydrop enthused over her as usual, but more so out of long absence, the air pleasantly tight with quick hugs and usherings, bird-flutters in her hands and her voice, how was she, how did camp go, was she glad to be home, and her attempts to answer cut short because Joy understood she was here to see Ward, not her. Even as the questions bubbled up and the enthusiasm spilled out of her mouth, she sheepdogged June through the house to the kitchen door and out, waving again and then making a point of vanishing so as not to seem a snoop, which June knew she was at heart. But that was just Joydrop and right as rain with her.
June turned. There was the massive oak and its amazing treehouse that looked as if it had been extruded from the tree itself. And there upon the ground to its right sat the clubhouse, a woodchopper’s hut straight from faerie, or more precisely her Uncle Art’s best guess as to what such a hut might look like.
But no Ward.
She approached the clubhouse, the dew from the grass cool on her toes. No noise from inside, no noise from the treetops. But then Ward had told her that his grampa’s new novel had gone from knockdown-dragout mode into print-and-ship.
For a moment, she felt absurdly like a little girl in a fairy tale. Uncle Art’s gingerbread shingles, overlapping like the coverts on an eagle’s wing and stippled with bright knobby gumdrops, had held up well under eight years of weather. She ran a finger over the scenes of celebrating elves—the Maypole dance, the barleyfield harvest, the defeat of a lumbering red-toothed ogre under tempestuous skies—and found the mage-head at the center, the iron ring through its septum now resting on its chin-plate. She gave three soft taps, metal on metal, knowing how well the lightest rap carried.
The door unlatched and eased open. There was Ward, looking taller than she remembered. He said something. But her attention remained on his face, a warmth in his eyes at once piercing and enveloping. Then his words coalesced: “June, hi, come on in.”
“Sure, I . . . sure. Um, it’s good to see you.” She stepped into the warm woody embrace of the room, feeling whole and serene in this place where the best of her childhood had passed. “You’ve changed. Happy birthday, by the way.”
“Thanks. You look great,” he said. “I have?”
By instinct her body found the cushioned rocker, its assertive arms making her feel queenly as she molded her arms to them. “Yeah, there’s this neat way your face kind of glows, I mean it’s not just your face, but—”
“I don’t see anything.” Ward glanced at the mirror over his dresser. “Someone else said—”
“Well it’s not like it’s visible, exactly. It isn’t like a nightlight, or fake vampire-teeth.” Her hands flailed. “More like the light on a field of daisies when there’s hardly any moon.”
“I don’t get it.” Ward rested an elbow on the dresser top. His other arm seemed at a loss until he put his hand in his pocket.
“It’s hard to explain. I don’t even know how much of it is you and how much me. It’s subtle too. But it’s there. There’s um . . . a completeness about you that you didn’t have before, the way you’re standing there, how you’re looking at me, even that self-conscious smile. And somehow it’s linked to something inside me.”
Ward shrugged. “If you say so. I don’t feel any different from when you left.”
She raised her arms and hooked her fingers over the back of the rocking chair. “It’s great to be here,” she said after a long sigh of contentment. “Remember when us five used to sit in a circle on the carpet?”
“Len was more a lounger, but yeah.”
“Right, I meant ‘sit’ loosely. Given these fat throw pillows your mother made, those of us who couldn’t prop ourselves up against the bed shifted around a lot, on our bellies or on our sides. Then Angela moved to San Diego.”
“I don’t remember her much.”
“I do,” said June. “Blond pigtails she used to whip around a lot, lion-faced barrettes, dresses with bows in the back. Her voice had this pleading edge, almost but not quite a whine. And her companion, she said, filled this room like a huge marshmallow, warm and toasty and a better friend to her than any of us could ever be, even though—I can still hear her nasal voice—we were very good friends indeed.”
“Right!” said Ward, animated. “His name was Opie. Now I remember. He’d roll around under her feet as she walked, a squirrel inside a beach ball. His face looked out and in at the same time, right in front of her about basketball-hoop high. It was, what, four years ago that she moved?”
“More like six,” said June. “Middle of second grade.
She hugged Mrs. Hancock and cried. I wrote to her a few times. She sent a Christmas card and that was it.”
“Good old Angela,” he said. She echoed him, and then he said it again with comic exaggeration and they shared a laugh. When it was over and they lapsed into silence, she asked, “Is Timothy still here?” trying to make it neutral, hearing the anxiety she hoped to mask.
She wanted him to have chosen, these weeks she’d been away, to have abandoned his stubborn belief in Timothy, as she’d given up Jeannie when fifth grade began. Jeannie had been a godsend, growing up, and it was fun sharing her with the Shy Friends Club. But there came a time when she was more pretend than real. When Len left, Calvin close behind, she told Ward she no longer believed, which he had taken much better than she thought he would.
“Yeah, he’s right beside me, leaping all around. He helped me out of a jam today.” His voice trailed off. Then he started on a different tack: “It’s such a relief to be able to talk about him.”
“What happened?”
“Some other time.”
“Why’s he leaping around?” It felt right to keep talking about Timothy as if he existed, and there were times, what with Ward’s eye-cues, that she fancied she could see him. “Usually isn’t he just, you know, sort of beside you, pretty quiet, absorbed in what you’re doing?”
Ward’s fingers jiggled at the drawer handle. “He’s firing off all sorts of neat thoughts about you in my head, like how super you look and . . . and that sort of thing. So. Did you have a good time?”
“At camp?”
Ward nodded.
“Yeah, it was great. We went horseback riding twice, and we swam and rowboated on this perfect lake. We camped once in Yosemite, cold beside a mirror of water where the air smelled like vanilla extract, which almost made up for having to do crafts. It was fun and a half.”
“Bet you made lots of new friends.”
She rehearsed her cabin mates and counselors for him, mentioning mostly new girlfriends, but a few boys in with them, Jeff included. But he went by pretty fast, so she figured no special freight had attached to his name.
A Flight of Storks and Angels Page 5
