Goodnight June: A Novel (10 page)

This world can be wonderful and worrisome at the same time, can’t it, Brownie?

Wish you were here. Yes, please come to Seattle. I will host the most lavish party for your reading.

With love,

Ruby

P.S. Thank you for what you wrote about being the authors of the stories of our lives. I have never heard anyone put such a thought into words so succinctly and so wisely. I shall remember it always, especially during the rainy season.

I set the letters in a little basket by Ruby’s bed, where I keep each pair I discover, and I think about why she might have selected these pages for me to read. She’s trying to tell me something. She’s trying to teach me something she wasn’t able to before she died. I lean back against the headboard of the bed and tuck my knees into my chest. Operation Sisterhood. Is this what Ruby had in mind for Amy and me? Was it her hope that we would salvage our relationship because she wasn’t able to do the same with her sister? Or maybe it’s something else, something more personal, directed only at me. I think about Margaret’s words.
Whenever you’re down on your luck, and when things aren’t going the way you like, remember that you are the author of your own story. You can write it any way you like, with anyone you choose. And it can be a beautiful story or a sad and tragic one. You get to pick.
Yes.

Her words gnaw at me for some time. I think of my office in New York, Arthur, and the rest of the team at the bank. I can picture them sitting around the conference room table. I see myself there too, with a shrewd, tense look on my face. My heart rate quickens when I realize that this isn’t the beautiful life story Margaret alluded to, nor is it the story I want to write for myself. I take a pill from the prescription bottle and wash it down with a sip of water. “Ruby?” I whisper into the air. “Are you there? Are you listening? I want to rewrite my story, but what happens if I don’t know how?”

I
stand in front of May Magnuson’s house at nine thirty on Tuesday morning and from the front stoop, I gaze up at the massive white Georgian colonial with Ionic columns reminiscent of the White House. Precisely trimmed boxwood hedges frame the front garden, which is lined with white and pink impatiens, not a petal askew. I’ve always thought of them as beautiful flowers. Ruby used to keep them in terra cotta pots in front of the bookstore. As a child, I once asked her why they are called “impatiens,” and she looked up from the rusty green watering can and said simply, “because they remind us to be patient. Nothing good ever comes from rushing.” I close my eyes and sigh—
yes
—then ring the front doorbell. My heart beats rapidly as I hear footsteps inside.

The door opens and a young woman stands before me. “You must be June,” she says in a businesslike tone. “I’m Kerry, Ms. Magnuson’s personal assistant.”

“Yes, hello,” I say, following her inside the home.

The woman indicates a room across the hall, and I follow. “Please have a seat,” she says. “Ms. Magnuson is just finishing up in her office and will join you momentarily.” I’m struck by her formality. “Would you like a cup of coffee while you wait?”

“No, thank you,” I say. “I’m fine.”

Alone in the room, I survey my surroundings. There’s a fireplace, unlit, on the far wall. Hanging above is a formal family portrait: a man in a suit, a beautifully dressed dark-haired woman, and their young daughter. No one is smiling. There’s a Jack Russell terrier seated at the foot of the man. Even the dog looks stiff.

A crystal vase of lilies rests on the coffee table in front of me, and I pause to admire them.

“Mother loves lilies,” a woman says from behind me. “We keep them in every room.”

I turn around quickly to see a middle-aged woman standing in the doorway. She’s slim and wears a navy-blue pantsuit. Her brown hair is cut blunt at her shoulders and a floral scarf is tied around her elegant neck in a tidy knot.

“Does your mother live here, with you?”

“Yes,” May says a little guardedly, as if my question has raised her hackles. She takes a seat on the sofa across from me. The vase of lilies on the table stands between us like a referee. “Mother’s in good health, for ninety. She still gets around, with the help of her nurse.” May arranges a stack of magazines on the table so their spines are perfectly aligned. “And she likes things to be just so.”

I think about Mom, and even though I’ve spent my life annoyed by her laid-back, forgetful ways, I find myself grateful for her in light of the alternative: rigidity.

“So,” May continues. “I must say, I was quite surprised to receive your e-mail.”

“Oh?”

She nods. “Of course, I’d heard of Ruby’s passing, and let me say, I am sorry for your loss.”

She has kind eyes, but her expression is distant, guarded.

“Thank you.”

“June,” she says, “how much do you know about your aunt’s past?”

“Well,” I say a little nervously, “I know that your father and my aunt were—”

“Lovers?” she says, without emotion. “Yes. They were.”

A silence falls on the room, and I see that Ruby and Anthony’s relationship is still a sore subject for May. And then, suddenly, I can see her as she was in 1946. A little girl in braids wearing a private school uniform and patent leather shoes, caught in the middle of her parents’ unhappiness.

“It killed Mother,” she continues. “The way they carried on all those years.” She sighs. “Mother used to drive by the store, with me in the back. She’d park outside just to watch her, just to try to see what she had that Mom didn’t. Well, thankfully, her memory loss has diminished that burden. It’s the only welcoming thing about dementia.”

The pain of the past is obviously still raw. I decide not to say anything and just listen. For now.

“I was thirteen when I put it all together. I asked Mother, and she told me. She didn’t spare any of the vulgar words she used to describe your aunt, either.” She sighs. “Daddy spent all of his time with her at the bookstore. It was their love nest, you know. Our family life, at home, was just . . . a formality.”

“I’m sorry,” I finally say. “I didn’t know that.” Hearing May’s perspective casts a shadow on the beautiful love story I’ve conjured up in my mind. And I wonder if there is a dark side to every great love story. With great love comes great hurt. I wonder if it’s inevitable.

“I always wanted to know what was so wonderful about Bluebird Books that Daddy would want to spend all his time there,” she says. Her eyes are stormy, and she looks like she might cry or laugh. “I remember one night,” she continues. “It was my birthday. My tenth birthday. It’s a tender age, you know, an age when a girl needs her father. And Mother had prepared a big dinner, and a chocolate cake for dessert. We waited until the food got cold, and he never did come. Of course, he brought a gift the next day, but it . . . well, it hurt.”

“Oh, May,” I say, my words flooding with emotion. I don’t know what to say, and yet part of me feels that I ought to apologize to her, for Ruby. I know she would have never wanted to hurt young May. “That must have been so hard for you.”

“Well,” she says stiffly, expertly navigating away from any sentimentality between us. “You’ve obviously come here for a reason. How can I help you?”

“Yes,” I say cautiously. “I hoped to learn more about my aunt’s life. I left Seattle when I was quite young myself, and there was so much about my aunt I didn’t know. I owe it to her to learn about her past. For instance, I had no idea that she and your father were in love.”

“Love,” she says. “It’s such a funny thing. You see, he was supposed to love us, but apparently we couldn’t hold his attention the way your aunt did.”

“Did you ever meet her, my aunt?” I ask, remembering the brief reference to May in the letters.

“A few times,” she says. “But my loyalty was with Mother.”

“Forgive me for asking this, but why didn’t your mother divorce him?”

“She loved him,” May says simply, as if there was no other explanation. “Even in spite of it all. She made a vow, and she never dreamed of breaking it.”

“And your father?” I ask. “Did he want a divorce?”

May shakes her head. “He needed her fortune to shore up his work in the community,” she explains. “You can put a pretty spin on it, but in actuality, what he did was use her.”

“But surely your mother could have gotten a divorce if she really wanted to.”

May shakes her head. “There was great shame in divorce in those days. She didn’t want her marriage to fail.”

I wonder if this is the truth or merely a story May has told herself over the years. Ruby’s letters described Victoria as a foreboding woman who was very much in charge of her affairs. If she really wanted a divorce, at least according to the picture Ruby painted, she could have gotten one. I look up at the striking dark-haired woman in the painting over the mantel and wonder, suddenly, if Victoria refused a divorce to
punish
Anthony and Ruby. By agreeing to a divorce, she’d allow them to be married, and perhaps she was too prideful to let that happen.

“And then there was the ultimate betrayal,” May continues, “when Ruby got pregnant.”

I sit up straighter. “What do you mean?”

May nods. “I had a feeling this would be news to you.”

I shake my head, speechless.

“It was a shock to everyone, really,” May adds. “Father was in his sixties then, and Ruby had to be in her forties. I got the news from Mother when I was traveling in Europe. She left a message at my hotel. I’ll never forget the way the maître d’s lip trembled when he came to my room to relay the news.”

I shake my head. “I don’t understand. Ruby never told me she was a mother. Are you sure?”

May sighs. “Perhaps she didn’t want anyone to know. She gave the baby up for adoption. He would have been about your age now. To think she has a son out there. And I have a brother.” She shakes her head as if this is a very disturbing thought.

I’m simply . . . stunned. “All these years,” I say. “I had no idea.”

“Well,” she adds, “Father never got to meet him. He died while Ruby was pregnant. They went out ice skating on Green Lake, and he fell. They thought it was a simple concussion. But he died four hours later.”

“How horrible,” I say. “For everyone.” I want to say,
Especially for Ruby
, but I don’t. I think of my aunt, pregnant, hovering over Anthony on the ice. I think of them together in the back of an ambulance, him reassuring her that everything will be fine. And then I picture her crying over his lifeless body in a hospital bed. Alone.

“So you have a brother somewhere,” I say, as if somehow, by uttering the words aloud, I’ll come closer to understanding a part of my aunt’s life I never knew existed.

“Well, a half brother,” May says.

“Did you ever . . . meet him?”

She closes her eyes for a moment, then opens them again. “No, I never did, and never will. It was a closed adoption. Ruby wanted it that way. I think because she didn’t want the Magnuson family meddling in his life. It was her way of keeping control. To think there was a little boy that was the flesh and blood of Father, and we couldn’t even know him.” May lets out a deep sigh. “Mother hired a private investigator to tail Ruby and Father for years, and after the baby was born, I know she had her PI keep a close eye on the bookstore. Maybe it spooked your aunt.”

“Why would your mother do that?”

“Listen,” May continues. “If there was a
Magnuson
being raised in the bookstore by her husband’s bohemian lover, then she wanted to be sure the child was raised well.” She sighs. “Yes, I think the ongoing surveillance compelled your aunt to give him up.”

I shake my head. “I can’t imagine Ruby giving up her only child as . . . revenge.”

May smirks. “Then I guess you never knew your aunt.”

For a moment, I begin to think that May could be right. If Ruby could hide a friendship with the legendary Margaret Wise Brown, what else could she hide?

“I don’t know what to say,” I finally concede.

“Well,” she continues, “we might be able to work together. We share a family member. He’s out there somewhere, and if we combine our efforts we might be able to find him.”

I think for a moment, and consider the fact that if Ruby wanted to find him, wanted us to find him, she would have included him in her will, or left a letter about his whereabouts, if she even knew.

“As curious as I am, there are Ruby’s wishes to consider,” I say.

May sighs to herself. “There have been far too many secrets kept in my family,” she says to me. “Please, help me.”

“And if we find this long-lost brother,” I say, “which would be my . . . cousin, I suppose—what then?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I just think it’s time I found him. He’s my brother, after all. Surely you can understand that.”

I think of the store then, and consider the fact that this long-lost son of Ruby’s might make a claim on Bluebird Books. With no sentimentality about a mother he never knew, he might try to sell it. And even though my intentions for the store are equally questionable, the business side of me is poised for a fight. Ruby left the store to me, not him.

“Your aunt must have kept some documentation about her child,” she says.

“But you said it was a closed adoption.”

“Yes,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about this for so many years now and I’ve come to this conclusion: This was the son of my father, the greatest love of her life. Would she really give the boy away and cut off all contact with him forever?” May shakes her head. “I don’t think so. It was her last tie to Anthony. She would have found a way to keep her son in her life, from a distance, and in a way that fooled everyone else.” May nods to herself. “Mother received word through our attorney that the boy had been given up for adoption, and that the proceedings were sealed. In some ways, it helped Mother attain closure. She stepped back. But I never could.”

Though I feel uncertain of May’s intentions, I think she’s right about Ruby: She must have kept in some kind of contact with her son.

“I thought, maybe, I might come over, to the bookstore, and have a look around,” she says. “There has to be some old paperwork that would lead us to her son.”

I think of the pain Victoria, and possibly even May, might have caused Ruby over the years, and I decide Ruby, if she were still alive, might not be thrilled about one of them riffling through her possessions. “I’ll keep an eye out, and I promise to let you know if anything turns up.”

She seems vaguely disappointed by my response, then turns to the doorway, where her assistant stands.

“Excuse me for interrupting, Ms. Magnuson, but you’re wanted on the telephone.”

“Please take the call,” I say quickly. “I was just leaving.”

“Shall I show you out?” the young assistant asks me.

“No,” I say, gathering my purse. “That’s all right.”

“Well, good-bye, June,” May says.

“Good-bye.”

She and her assistant disappear into the hallway, and I stand there for a moment, a little stunned, before making my way to the doorway, where I nearly collide with an old woman, who I instantly realize is May’s mother, Victoria. Her gray hair is short and curled close to her head. The tired skin sags on her face like wrinkled silk, but even so, I can tell that she once was very beautiful, perhaps more beautiful than her daughter could ever have been. I wonder what kind of effect this had on May, growing up in her mother’s shadow.