Sunsets in Fredonia
a story by Janelle Rinker
“All of us are notes sitting at our own respective ledger lines, suspended unstrung until a medium comes along to breathe life into our right and into our left.” ~Bora Yoon, Ledger Lines
*
June guessed they were somewhere above Erie , Pennsylvania . On her lap was the package that arrived on her doorstep before she left her apartment for the airport. She looked at the brown paper wrapped tightly and secured with package tape. Her name and address were carefully written in black Sharpie. She looked out her window and as the clouds started to swallow the plane she could see the lights from the houses below disappearing. The lights looked like a river of stars winding through the darkness. It looked like the world was flipped and she was looking down at the sky.
*
In junior high June had to dissect a fetal pig in science class. The smell of formaldehyde swam into her body as soon as she entered the lab. The pig was lying on its side in a dark, metal pan. It reminded June of a brownie pan. She held the scalpel in her left hand and made an incision into the skin at the chest bone while her partner, Luca, took notes on a chart their teacher had distributed. She watched the skin pull apart like a zipper as the scalpel sliced its way through. As she revealed the tiny, doll sized insides, she heard the ghost of the pig scream. The scream shattered the silence that had been lying over the classroom like a heavy blanket. June dropped the scalpel and tried with shaky fingers to push the skin back together. Through her gloves she felt the smoothness of flesh. She raised her gloved hands to her ears and covered them to drown out the sound of the pig’s cries. Around her, the other small pigs with their half dissected bodies began screaming.. They screamed for their freedom and for their mothers and for the pain that they felt. They screamed in unison as one full, strong voice. June squeezed her hands over her ears and when she closed her eyes all she could see was the tiny, pink pig and the incision that stopped halfway down his belly, and one of his eyes opened and stared at her through the darkness of her own closed eyelid.
*
“See that one June? That cluster of six on the edge of the Milky Way?” She let her head fall back as she gazed up into the darkness trying to follow the point of his finger. “That’s Columba or The Dove.” Alex explained that the belief was the Argonauts had to sail their ship through two sets of rocks that started moving toward one another as the ship approached. The Argonauts had been told by Phineus that if any living creature passed safely through, the rocks would never move again. They decided to release a white dove which they hoped would fly through and cause the rocks to pause infinitely. The dove flew so gracefully and quickly through the rocks that only a few feathers were sacrificed when the rocks crashed into one another. “As the rocks drifted backwards,” he continued, still staring at the constellation, his voice soft and delicate and smooth, “the ship was able to sail through them and the dove returned to the ship. Athena eventually put the dove into the sky and named her the constellation Columba.” After a moment of listening to her breathe he found June’s hand in the darkness and held it up to his lips, breathing heavily and tasting the sweetness and saltiness of her skin. He felt how soft her skin was and how when it touched his lips it felt like home.
*
When she was younger she loved summer. At night she would run through the damp grass in her bare feet. She would unlock the gate that surrounded the pool and drop her beach towel on the cement. Diving in, she would feel the coolness of the water as it slid over her hot skin. She was an explorer searching for homeless bracelets and necklaces at the bottom. When she finally emerged she would feel the chill of the night on her face, neck and shoulders and try to sink down so that the horizon of the water would rest just below her nose.
When her fingers became rough and her legs became tired from treading, she would pull herself out, wrap her towel around her and tuck the loose corner down into her chest like she’d seen her mom do.
Most nights, with her hair dripping down her neck and back, she would lie on her back on the diving board letting the darkness wrap its arms around her. She would listen to her mom and dad talking inside the house. Their voices would slip out of the opened windows like the fragile petals of wildflowers; the white ones that grab a hold of your secrets and fly away when the gentlest breath has touched them. She would picture her mom in her nightgown, the breeze from the night blowing into the house. Her parents would turn the radio on to an oldies station and June would see their shadows collide with one another behind the curtain in their bedroom. She would picture her mom and dad, his arms around her waist, her head pressed against his chest, feeling safe. He would kiss her forehead, sticky from a sweaty summer day and then he would whisper along to the words of the song. Sometimes Unchained Melody sometimes Sinatra. And for June, that dance made time stand still. She would find herself holding her breath with her eyes closed, feeling the warmness of their two bodies lying on her eyelids and covering her up. And then in one instant, the Four Seasons and Walk like a Man would push their way into that little world. June would open her eyes and watch the two dark figures pull away from one another; a heart breaking in half.
June knew that when she went back inside, her parents would be in bed.. The light above the stove would be on illuminating the jar of warm chocolate chip cookies. Until then, she would listen to the orchestra of crickets, and feel the coarseness of the diving board along her spine, and watch the rounds of heat lightning as they lit up the soft, still sky.
*
At night Alex took June to the outskirts of Fredonia to Straight Road . They drove for miles into the country, the stresses of student teaching flying off of June and out the open windows of the car. Sometimes she thought she saw them, her thoughts and fears and questions, dancing like fireflies into the darkening night, shining brightly for a second and then disappearing so she never saw the same thought twice.
He would make a u-turn at the same spot every time and pull up onto the gravel that was sleeping on the side of the road. The night she most remembers going there was the night her grandmother died. “We’re gonna miss it,” he whispered and got out of the car, glancing behind him to make sure June followed. She stepped inside the footprints he left for her in the too-tall dew covered grass, and pulled his Much More Chill sweatshirt over her head. She lifted the collar of it over her nose and breathed in his familiarity. “What’re you smiling at?” She hadn’t noticed that he had stopped walking and was staring at her with his left eyebrow raised: the eyebrow with the small scar scratched through it from top to bottom.
“My feet are cold,” June responded, signaling to her feet which were barely covered in her flip flops. They spread the blanket on the grass and lie down facing Lake Erie . They watched the purple clouds fade to gray then pink as the sun slipped lower, carefully tucking itself behind a cloud that was resting just above the horizon. He pulled a torn sheet of lined paper from his pocket. He began reading the words that were hastily written on the paper, but as she watched him she saw that his eyes weren’t looking at the paper; they were focused completely on the glow of the lake as the sun came closer to touching it. “Por eso eres sin fin, recogeme como si fueras toda solmnidad, toda nocturn como una zona, hasta que te confundas con las lineas del ,” he took a deep breath and turned to face June, “tiempo.”
*
“Why is everyone’s laugh different?” Her father thought about her question, and about how June always had a way of looking at the world that made everyone around her stop and look too.
“What do you mean Junebug?” It was a hot summer day; one where even freeze pops and running through a water rainbow from a hose wouldn’t help. She was wearing boxers and one of her mother’s exercise shirts. “Pedro welcomes you to the South of the Border!” was written in large, bold, red and yellow letters and there was a picture of a short man with a mustache wearing a sombrero. June’s dad sat twisting a blade of faded grass around his pinky finger.
“I mean, you have this low, deep laugh that seems to erupt from nowhere and shake the floor. And mom’s laugh is quiet. She opens her mouth and all you hear is her breath escaping in small puffs. And Alex. His laugh is contagious. I hear it and I start laughing too. His laugh makes me happy to be alive.” She watched as several drops of sweat rolled from underneath her father’s hairline.
“What about your laugh Junebug? What’s that like?”
“Kinda dull I guess. Nothing special.” She shifted her gaze to the sky and saw two blurs of red.
“I think your laugh is kind of like a cardinal,” he said. “It’s quick, you know? Like you don’t expect it and then all of a sudden, there it is, bold and bright and beautiful, and just as quickly as it appeared, it’s gone, leaving you wishing for more.” He looked at June and watched her face as his words slowly fell onto her. She smiled, lips pressed together, and blinked up at the sun. “You know those were both males. The females are tan. But they both have feathery mohawks.” He flung the blade of grass and she watched as it became flesh with all the other browned grass. “I’ve never seen two males flying together. What do you think they were doing?”
“Maybe they were listening to each other laugh.”
*
The first time they made love it was an unusually warm New York night in March. June’s parents were out for the evening and the house was dark and quiet. She led Alex by the hand and felt his cool, sweaty fingers interlaced with her own. She pulled a fleece blanket off the back of the couch and dragged it behind them down the hallway and out the back door. June spread the blanket on the deck and smoothed the wrinkles with her palms. Alex watched and asked, “Do you think global warming is for real?” Then, “What if, you know, we make a mistake?” and he touched June’s stomach with a softness that made her skin cry.
“I think this is for real.” June placed his hand on her chest to feel her heart beat.
“Sometimes when I’m with you I think it can’t be real life. Like, this isn’t me, June. The real me is watching this whole scene from somewhere. In that tree maybe or from inside the house. But this person standing in front of you is just a dream.” June looked at Alex and stepped closer to him; so close she could feel his breath on her cheek and it smelled like blue raspberry slushie from 7-11.
She didn’t feel much that night aside from his fingertips as they trickled over her body. She remembers the fuzzies from the fleece sticking to her sweaty thighs and remembers his brown eyes opening wide to look at her right before his body crashed on top of her. With his mouth on her shoulder breathing steadily, she watched the sky. She thought about how still the trees were and watched the soft clouds roll against a black canvas. She noticed bright Venus staring down at them as June stared back up at her.
*
As a child June thought she was a witch. She could smell any gift before unwrapping it and know which store it had come from..
On her sixteenth birthday June’s mother handed her a gift the size of a shoe box wrapped in pink and blue flowered paper. “Happy birthday, baby,” her mom whispered, kissing her lightly on the forehead. Her mom’s forehead kisses were always the same, predictable. Her lips were soft and smooth and felt hot when they touched June’s skin. When she pulled her lips away June always still felt a burning that seemed to run through the rest of her body.
June looked at the web of bright pink ribbon looping around itself on top of the gift. Her mom’s bows always reminded her of modern art; haphazard but meticulous. When she ripped the bow off she always felt like she was ripping the skin off of a body. It always felt like tears.
She pushed her finger underneath the crease of the paper and slid it across being careful to avoid a paper cut. Before going further she held the box to her nose, breathed deeply, and smiled. It smelled like city life and bright lights and hope. “Tiffany’s,” she said and glanced at her mom.
“Well open it and find out, silly.” June tore the rest of the paper off and opened the white box to find a small, baby blue box enveloped in blue tissue paper. Inside the box was a velour pouch that held a heart necklace. “So you never forget to follow your heart.” June’s mom whispered it quietly with her hand on her heart like she was saying the pledge.
*
When June met Elle for the first and only time, she was not at all as she’d pictured her. They met unexpectedly at Starbucks. June had been sitting, sipping her peppermint mocha, listening to the couple at the table next to her discuss the book Weetzie Bat. They talked about Dirk and Duck and Slinkster Dog. They talked about Witch Baby and the tragedy of Charlie Bat’s suicide. They talked about the notion of happily ever after and leaned over the small, round coffee table and kissed with lips still warm from cappuccino.
“Hey June.” June blinked and looked away from the couple next to her, only to see another couple in front of her. Elle broke June’s heart. She was short with long curly black hair and eyes that seemed to be reading everything they saw. She wore cute, pink ballet flats and black leggings underneath a t-shirt that barely covered her five-month belly. “June?” She hadn’t seen Alex in about a month. His eyes were barely visible but the familiarity and softness of them immediately struck June.. She remembered watching him fish once on his grandfather’s dock. They had driven to his house in Barker and as soon as they got there, his grandpa came out of the garage to greet them with a tin bucket and several fishing poles. Alex and his grandfather held one another in a long, gentle embrace as June watched and felt the heat from the October sun. As they walked toward the dock, the men spoke about Alex’s mother and college and the storm that was supposed to hit the following weekend. “Here’s your pole, June.” Alex’s grandpa held a fishing pole toward her.
“Oh, no thank you. I’m just observing today.”
“June thinks it’s cruel,” Alex said, smiling at her as he sat down on the edge of the dock. She sat for hours watching Alex catch fish after fish, removing each hook carefully as if pulling it out of his own flesh. He would look each one in the eyes and gently set it onto the surface of the lake, encouraging it to swim back to its family. She didn’t understand the serenity that he said came with fishing but she did understand the magic that he said he felt on that dock. She watched red and orange leaves fall from the tree that sat at the edge of the water. The leaves wavered in the air for several seconds before finally settling to rest on the water. Unlike the fish, the leaves did not swim away. They rocked back and forth with the mild tempered lake waves like dancers. She watched them dance with one another until the waves pulled them too far away from the shore to see anymore.
Then she sat behind Alex, her legs wrapped around his waist, and rested her head on his back. She could hear his heart beat through him and it made her feel good to have his heart beating into her. He started reciting lines from an e.e. cummings poem that she had never read. As she listened, his voice and his heartbeat sang a song together and she thought she saw the leaves dancing on the water to the beat.
“June this is Elle,” he said as he gestured awkwardly toward Elle and stared down at his feet. He didn’t look good. He reminded June of a shadow.
“I heard you like banana pancakes,” Elle said. “I’m going to go order our drinks, okay Al?” Alex smiled shyly as Elle gracefully walked away.
“She’s all about food right now. I made her banana pancakes the other night and she can’t stop raving about them.. I mentioned how much you used to love them.” He hesitated as he sat down across from her. “Sorry.”
“You didn’t know I’d be here Alex, don’t apologize.” Then she quietly, so quietly he wasn’t sure if it had been a dream or not, said, “I still do love banana pancakes.” She itched her ankle and started biting her top lip. Alex watched her intently, studying the face that he used to take for granted. He took a snapshot in his head of the wrinkles at the edges of her eyes and the scar on her chin from when she fell at a Dave Matthews concert after some drunk girl pushed her during Two Step. He memorized her ears and the three piercings in each and the way her cheeks flushed down to her neck when she got nervous or was asked a question on the spot. He painted a picture of her to remember for the future on lonely days or sad days or days when he would feel like he was missing something. Then he turned and looked at Elle standing in line tapping the baby inside of her with her fingers and mouthing the words to a song.
June followed his stare and watched Elle’s lips; a soft, pretty pink. She wished that she didn’t care about Alex and Elle and this baby that was inside Elle’s belly. But she did. Whatever was in there, half of it came from Alex. Half of it would have his soft skin and his thick eyebrows and the toes where the second one is taller than the big one. She wondered if their baby would refuse to use chopsticks like Alex because he thought they were pointless, or eat rainbow sherbet with his popcorn. Would their baby smell like tangerines and cloves and have a space between his two front teeth?
“I’d really just like to talk to you sometime June. We never just talked.”
June took a sip of her coffee and looked out the window. Without looking at Alex she said, “I get it. There’s nothing to really talk about. You made the choice you had to make.”
“I heard your parents moved to Lake Norman ?”
“Yeah, they just decided they’re done with New York winters. It’s beautiful down there though. They’re right on the lake.” The chair next to her scraped across the floor and Elle sat down, a twist of hair falling onto her face. She wore a pink rubber wristband that read Obama Girl.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you, June. Awkward, I know, right?” She scrunched her nose and squinted her eyes and June thought that Elle’s left eyebrow arched like a sideways question mark. “But I think that awkwardness is the key to finding oneself. Awkwardness reminds us all that we are alive. I think she’ll be a dancer.” Elle rubbed her hands on her belly and made kissing noises. “Sometimes I feel her in there and it’s like she’s doing a dance to the beat of a steal drum band the way her feet bump inside me.”
The three of them sat for several minutes watching one another. Elle watched Alex rub his eyes. Alex watched June stir her coffee, five, six, seven times around the mug. June watched her coffee spin around inside the mug, swirling with the whipped topping and creating a bull’s eye. She stuck her finger into the center of the eye and watched the swirl fall apart. She licked her finger and continued stirring. “I better get going. I have a final tomorrow and my family is flying in for graduation.” June stood up and cleared her throat. She reached inside her purse and grabbed her car keys. Alex and Elle stood next to each other with the backs of their hands brushing. June felt a wave of heat pour over her. Alex took one step toward her with outstretched arms and grazed his fingertips along her shoulders. She shook her head and held out her hand to shake.
“You live in my soul.” He whispered it like a secret. He whispered it like the wind whispers through a chimney on a cold December night. He whispered it like heavy rain right before it kisses warm pavement. He whispered it like it was a dream he could hold on to or like a memory stuck between now and then. He held her hand for a second longer than he should have. He rubbed his thumb along the top of her hand and down the soft, webbed slope of skin between her thumb and forefinger. He looked at her chewed fingernails with chipped green nail polish. She looked at him and blinked in slow motion, opening to reveal sad hazel eyes.
June opened the door to leave and turned back for one last look. Elle was whispering sweet nothings to the baby in her belly while Alex stood staring out the window, his back turned to June. As June got into her car, the gray clouds pulled themselves apart and the rain fell so fast and so hard that it burned her ears. She bent over and threw up onto the black pavement. She watched the brown get swept up by the rain and snake through the parking lot. Then she opened the door of her car and smelled her hands. They smelled like tangerines and cloves and the rain drowned out the sounds of her tears falling onto the steering wheel.
*
When they were freshmen in college June and Alex broke up for two days. She felt like a character inside a book instead of a real life character and told him that she needed to write her own lines for a while. She had been wearing a bandana on her head to cover her unwashed hair and when he hugged her, his chest rubbed against the bandana and it slid off. She watched it fall to the ground, a pool of white fabric that reminded her of the moon.
Alex walked out of June’s dorm and onto a campus filled with springtime energy. He got lost in a rush of guys wearing their SUNY Fredonia baseball hats and playing frisbee behind the William’s Center. A mob of girls eating blueberry muffins and lattés that they bought from Café G rushed by him giggling on their way to their critical reading class in Fenton Hall. A group of students carrying instruments—violins, guitars, cellos and djembes—wrapped around him as he blindly made his way past Mason Hall. He finally sat with his back pressed against the cool, red brick of the building, his forehead resting on his knees, his ipod shuffling through an album of African music. As he listened to the sad, melodic drone of a didgeridoo, he felt like if someone tapped his shoulder, the sound would resemble the hollowness of that instrument.
That night, June felt like glitter. She felt like the tiny specks of flair on Manhattan sidewalks at night. When she was younger and her family visited New York City , those specks would remind her of stars. She would scour the sidewalks in search of The Milky Way and The Big Dipper, feeling certain that the constellations she learned about in Science class would be mirrored onto the sidewalk.
She listened to Melissa Ethridge and got ready for a night at Muldoons and Hairy Lemon and maybe even Sunnys if she and her suitemates were drunk and desperate enough. She wore her knee-high red leather boots with the zipper running up the calf. They made her two inches taller and made her stand up straight and walk kind of sexy.
They walked downtown and she ended up listening to stories from a kid with dark hair and beach eyes. His eyes made her think of ocean waves and tides on the sand and daiquiris at the end of a pier.. He ordered her a vodka and cranberry which she hated but always ordered because it was easiest. He talked about how he was a pilot and went to Jamestown Community College and lived with his mom and sister and liked baseball and hated winters and the last book he read was Catcher in the Rye and he didn’t understand the significance of the carousel. He told her that he really dug her red boots-he thought they were sexy-and as Closing Time came through over the stereo he asked her if she wanted to go for a ride.
They drove into Dunkirk and she sat trying to remember what his name was and thinking about how much she loved winter. She watched him pull a joint out of an empty box of Marlboro Menthols and light it. He breathed in laughter and memories and calm. He offered it to her but she didn’t feel safe like she did when she was with Alex.
At the dark-haired boy’s apartment, they sat on his green and yellow plaid couch, the fabric unraveling on the arm rests. He grabbed them both a can of Busch and after one gulp he set his can down and pushed her back so she was lying down. Metallica was playing in the apartment next door as he unzipped and pulled off her red leather boots, throwing them across the room. They knocked over a lamp and he pressed his lips onto hers and she tasted beer and peanuts. The spring coil from the couch dug into her spine making her feel very alive. “Be right back,” he muttered and ran through the kitchen and into the bathroom. She heard him puke into the toilet and cough and get a drink of water and puke again. June grabbed her cardigan from the chair by the door and scribbled a note to the dark-haired boy: The carousel is the recognition of something beautiful. Then she walked into the cool April night, leaving her red leather boots next to the tipped over lamp.
*
The last time June and Alex made love she was wearing an apron and cooking him dinner. For a while he stood in the doorway to the kitchen and listened as she sang along to songs from the Garden State soundtrack. He watched her stir her mom’s recipe for homemade spaghetti sauce, her lips chapped from constantly biting them. “Can I kiss the cook?” Wrapping his arms around her waist, he kissed the back of her neck and shoulders. Her hair was pinned up revealing her tattoo. He traced a mini Buddha outlined in black. He knew he was being unfair and unkind that night when he gently laid June down on his bed. Pulling his down comforter back, he wrapped himself around her, feeling every part of her body. He didn’t ever want to forget the way her skin melted when he touched it or the way her eyes flickered when he kissed her collarbone. He paid special attention to her hair and her fingers and her hip bones. They lay next to each other and she whispered that falling in love with him was the most amazing feeling she had ever had. He wanted to tell her all of his secrets and dreams and hopes for the future and tell her that he fell in love with her the first second he saw her and that every time he saw her after that he lost his breath and that he made a mistake and it was burning up his insides. But he didn’t say any of those things. Instead he stared at the mini Buddha on the back of her neck and silently prayed an apology to any God that would listen.
*
Remember we used to dance
And everyone wanted to be
You and me
I want to be too
What day is this
Besides the day you left me?
What day is this
Besides the day you went?
Stay or leave
I want you not to go
But you should
It was good as good goes
Stay or leave.
~Dave Matthews, Stay or Leave
*
When he was around the age of twelve, Alex dreamed of flying. He would lie on his back in the grass in his parent’s backyard, watching the clouds perform a waltz across a blue sky. He used to name the clouds after adjectives that they reminded him of: Grace, Agile, Stunning, Sad, Lonely. When he pictured himself flying, he imagined the wind rushing around him as he burst through a cloud and emerged on the other side.. He would make friends with birds as they flew south and would wave at passengers on planes that were traveling to see family. Or traveling away from family. He used to picture one girl in particular with brown hair but no face. Through the plane window her face was always blurred from her tears. He wondered where she was going and if she even knew.
*
June held the package up to her nose and breathed in. She could smell the brown package paper but nothing else. She opened the package and pulled out a packet of paper with a note paper-clipped on top of it.
June, you are indistinguishable from the lines of time. Now every time I search the sky, you will be there staring down at me. Alex.
Beneath the note was a certificate stating that a star was named after her. It was among a cluster of other unnamed stars.. She looked out the window and watched as the darkness engulfed the airplane. The pilot’s voice broke into her thoughts and announced that they were going to begin the descent to the Charlotte Douglas International Airport . As the plane tipped its nose downward June put her hand on her belly. She wondered if her baby would smell like tangerines and cloves and have a space between his teeth. June looked out the window to see if they were flying anywhere near her star.