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JUNE

Chapter 1

A Girl, Her Cousin, and a Waterfall

1999

I rattle the padlock on the gate, strum my fingers along the cold chain-link fence.

I own this place.

Maybe if I repeat it often enough I’ll believe it.

All along the base of the fence are tributes: shells, notes, sketches, bunches of flowers. Some still fresh, some so old the petals are crisp as parchment. I follow the fence uphill, along the coast side, and stop at a wooden, waist-high sign marking the path up to the waterfall. It wasn’t here the summer I visited.

The sign is covered in words and drawings, so tattooed-over by fan messages that you can barely read the official one. I run my fingertips over the engravings: initials, peace symbols, Thank you’s, I Love You’s. Fragments of favorite lyrics. After coming so far to visit the legendary estate, people need to do something, leave their mark, if only with a rock on fog-softened wood.

Song titles from my uncle’s final album, Three, are carved everywhere. “Heart, Home, Hope.”

“Leaf, Shell, Raindrop.”

“Angel, Lion, Willow.”Someone has etched that last one in symbols instead of words. The angel refers to Angela, my aunt. The lion is my uncle Graham.

And the willow tree. Willa, my cousin.

I have a pointy metal travel nail file in my suitcase; I could add my message to the rest, my own tribute to this place, to the Kingstons. To try to explain what happened the summer I spent here. I could tell it like one of the campfire tales I used to spin for Willa.

This is the story of a girl, her cousin, and a waterfall…

But there’s no time for that, not with only seven days to clear the house for sale. Back at the gate, where Toby’s asleep in his cat carrier in the shade, I dig in my overnight bag for the keys. They came in a FedEx with a fat stack of documents I must’ve read on the plane from Boston a dozen times—thousands of words, all dressed up in legal jargon. When it’s so simple, really. Everything inside that fence is mine now, whether I want it or not.

Iunlock the gate, lift the metal shackle, and walk uphill to the highest point, where the gravel widens into a parking lot, then fades away into grass. The field opens out below me just like I remember. We called it “the bowl,” because of the way the edges curve up all around it. A golden bowl scooped into the hills, rimmed on three sides by dark green woods. The house, a quarter mile ahead of me at the top of the far slope, is a pale smudge in the fir trees.

I stop to take it in, this piece of land I now own. The Sandcastle, everyone called it.

Without the neighbors’ goats and Graham’s guests to keep the grass down, the field has grown wild, many of the yellow weeds high as my belly button.

Willa stood here with me once and showed me how from this angle the estate resembled a sun. The kind a child would draw, with a happy face inside. Once I saw it, it was impossible to un-see:

The round, straw-colored field, trails squiggling off to the woods in every direction, like rays. The left eye—the campfire circle. The right eye—the blue aboveground pool. The nose was the vertical line of picnic benches in the middle of the circle that served as our communal outdoor dining table. The smile was the curving line of parked cars and motorcycles and campers.

All that’s gone now, save for the pool, which is squinting, collapsed, moldy green instead of its old bright blue.

I should go back for my bag and Toby but I can’t resist—I move on, down to the center of the field. Far to my right in the woods, the brown roofline of the biggest A-frame cabin, Kingfisher, pokes through the firs. But no other cabins are visible, the foliage is so thick now. Good. Each alteration from the place of my memories gives me confidence. I can handle this for a week. One peaceful, private week to box things up and send them away.

“Sure you don’t want me to come help?” Paul had asked when he dropped me at the airport this morning. “We could squeeze in a romantic weekend somewhere. I’ve always wanted to go to San Francisco.”

“You have summer school classes, remember? Anyway, it’ll be totally boring, believe me.”

I’d told him—earnest, sweet Paul, who all the sixth-graders at the elementary school where we work hope they get as their teacher and who wants to marry me—that the trip was no big deal. That I’d be away for a week because my aunt in California passed away. That I barely knew her and just had to help pack up her old place to get it ready for sale.

He believed me.

I didn’t tell him that the “old place” is a stunning, sprawling property perched over the Pacific, studded with cabins and outbuildings and a legendary basement recording studio. That the land bubbles with natural hot springs and creeks and waterfalls.

Or that I’ve inherited it. All of it. The fields, the woods, the house, the studio. And my uncle’s music catalog.

I didn’t tell him that I visited here once as a teenager, or that for a little while, a long time ago, I was sure I’d stay forever.

 

Chapter 2

4 Sea Cliff

1979

As the black town car hurled me north from San Francisco to my uncle’s house near Humboldt County, I sat in the back seat, staring out the window at the roiling blue-gray waves. Awed by what my anger had accomplished.

I was seventeen, and about to spend ten weeks at a place where I knew no one, with relatives I’d never met. And I had nobody to blame but myself.

My father and his new bride were spending the summer in Europe. An overdue honeymoon in France and Italy. Patricia had floated the idea of me joining them, but the prospect of staying in San Francisco, just me and Thea, our housekeeper, was bliss.

Thea was the only person I still acted like myself with. She wouldn’t put up with anything less. Then Thea’s mom broke her hip trying to change a smoke detector battery in the middle of the night, and Thea had to fly home to Tucson, and my summer plans were shattered along with that seventy-two-year-old coxal bone.

I’d proposed my coming here as a test for my father, a dare. I was sure he’d veto it immediately. To him, rugged Humboldt County, on the coast hours north of San Francisco, might as well have been the Yukon Territory.

He’d said, “Fine,” and turned up the volume on the golf. Now he and Patricia were somewhere over the Atlantic, toasting their clean getaway.

“How much longer?” I leaned forward in my seat.

“About five minutes, miss.”

“Thank you.”

We pulled off the coast highway, passed a boarded-up frozen custard shop, a surf shack, a house with burled-wood animal sculptures for sale in the front yard. Then we turned inland, climbing up a steep, bumpy gravel road.

The driver slowed, stopped. “We’re here, miss.”

I got out, certain my father had tricked me and sent me to camp. And not a good one. My punishment for how I’d acted all year. The multiple calls from Headmaster Dietz about the “reputation” I’d earned, the doors I’d slammed…

I looked around—a weedy, windy field. Picnic tables, a circle of stones and split logs ringing a stone fire pit, an outhouse, a wooden outdoor shower with a single filthy towel flapping on a peg. Scattered in the trees on either side, flanking this open, sunken area, were a dozen or so brown cabins.

I clenched my fist around the five-dollar bill I’d been given for the driver’s tip.

He must’ve noticed my confusion because he said, a little defensively, “This is it. 4 Sea Cliff.” Pulling my yellow suitcase out of the trunk, he said, “Need me to walk you to the door?” Then he looked at the far-flung buildings, surely thinking what I was—Which damn door?

“No thanks, it’s not far,” I chirped, Patricia-like, as if I’d been here dozens of times. I handed the driver the crumpled five and took my suitcase, and the town car coasted back down the hill behind me, gravel pinging its undercarriage.

This was my uncle’s house? I knew he was a folk singer whose string of hits had ended long ago, and that my father disliked him. I knew little else. On the few occasions I’d probed him about my mother’s side of the family, he’d dismissed them alternately as “perpetual infants” or “freaks.”

I don’t know what I expected. But not this ghost town. The only sounds were the flapping of the towel by the shower—a fitting flag for this grimy, abandoned place—and the wind sighing throughthe trees.

I could hitchhike back to San Francisco and hole up in the house, where at least I’d have my piano and record player. At night, I’d go to Teena’s DreamTraxx and obliterate reality with the jug of Gallo Ruby shared in the alley with strangers. My body, jotted in rainbow lights, could whirl and Hustle away the summer with all the other bodies.

But in the distance, up the hill, something flashed. A luminous white point in the sky. And it drew me closer.

The spire topped the tallest structure, a wide, sand-colored stucco building that I guessed, because of its size and piercing adornment, was the hub of this strange encampment. When I reached it, I set my suitcase on the grass and shaded my eyes with my hand. What had looked like a spire from the field was actually the tip of a chimney in the middle of the roof, its sides built up into points to mimic a turret. The top was covered in a pink-and-white layer of mismatched pearlescent tiles. Or…could it be?

“Shells.”

I turned to a broad, pink-faced woman in a denim work shirt, long white braids wound on top of her head like a coronet. She was way too old to be my aunt Angela, but offered no introduction.

“He mortared them onto the old chimney a dozen years ago, to celebrate when they wrapped Three. Frank Lloyd Wright was rolling in his grave. Not to mention he could’ve broken his neck up there.”

“It’s pretty, though. I’m Jackie.” No recognition in her faded green eyes. “Pierce. From San Francisco? I’m staying here for the summer?”

“Oh? Kate.” No last name, no explanation of her role or relationship to the household. “Well, your timing’s good,” she said. “They’re still in the dungeon finishing up. Weeks late, as always. Wills is camping down on the beach, and everyone else knows to stay away `til they’ve wrapped. So you have your choice of squats. Personally, I’d grab Slipstream.”

Willswould be Willa, my cousin. A few months younger than me, I’d been told. Every other part of this speech raised more questions than it answered.

“Slipstream?”

She pointed across the field to our right. “The last cabin down on the north side of the bowl. The bed’s good, and it’s the quietest.Turn right at the tall spruce with the split crown. Then left at the stump that looks like a guitar pick, and you’re there.”

So I wasn’t staying in the main house with the family? Or was this how they all lived, hiding in the trees like squirrels?

I was ten yards away when she called out—perhaps taking pity on me, banished to the woods in my ironed white culottes and red I. Magnin flutter-sleeve blouse—“Grab it before the hordes descend!”

“What hordes?” I yelled back.

“You’ll see!”

 

Chapter 3

The King of the Castle

1979

It was after nine, and I was in my cabin, in bed, eating Fun Dip I’d bought from the gas station down the highway and reading by flashlight a 1960 Vogue I’d grabbed from the Rec Room in the main house. There were piles of old magazines there, and a stereo, and stacks of albums and 45s in low cubbies along every wall—but the house felt so deserted I didn’t like to stay there long.

I’d been here for four days, and still no sign of anyone but Kate. Sometimes she let me tag along as she filled the aboveground pool and staved wood hot tub, or picked blueberries, or clipped sheets to the clothesline.

“Tell me about the hordes,” I asked her, daily.

“You’ll see,” she said, always.

I’d never had so much freedom. I could have hitched a thousand miles by now and no one would have noticed. But mostly, I stayed in my ten-foot-square cabin. Kate rose and slept with the sun, so my nights were long. Lonely.

Slipstream—a burnt wood sign hung over the door—held a sagging double bed, a child’s low dresser under a speckled mirror, a braided rag rug, a pile of hatboxes for a nightstand. Its limp white curtains had been cut from flour sacks, and the quilt was sewn of old men’s dress shirts and ties. No electricity, no water.

I’d decorated as best I could, arranging my things artfully on the beat-up dresser: stationery and stamps for letters to Thea, a tub of Noxzema and Coty CornSilk powder to battle my oily skin, my watch, green pearl eye shadow, wands of lip gloss. I propped my favorite albums and 45s on their sides against the mirror.

Not that I had anything to play them on in my cabin.

I’d brought a rolled-up Blondie poster but had forgotten tape, so I’d stuck it to the door with four well-chewed gobs of gum. That project killed twenty minutes.

On the nightstand I’d set only one possession. I picked it up now, gently polishing the frame with my blouse hem—my favorite picture of my mother. She was pregnant with me, in a billowing white smock over bell-bottom jeans. Her feet were bare, her long, honey-colored hair tucked under a red bandanna. She was fixing up my nursery. Laughing at the camera, arranging children’s books on a white shelf. With a magnifying glass, I’d been able to make out one title: The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown.

I set the picture back, carefully swiveling it to face my bed, and grabbed another magazine, turning the water-rippled pages. Jane Fonda’s No Daddy’s Girl…Sophia Loren, (Oscar’s) Golden Girl…

Are you a summer, spring, winter, or fall? Whoever’d taken the quiz before me was a Summer, but she’d crossed out her results and written, “I AM ALL SEASONS. I WILL NOT BE TRAPPED IN ONE!”

I liked this girl. I wished she was here in person, instead of only scribbles.

Pop-pop! Pop-pop-pop!

An engine. Old and sputtering. I switched off my flashlight and looked out the window above my bed. A single headlight at the top of the driveway: a motorcycle.

After a minute, a yellow flashlight beam descended the hill to meet it, like a fairy greeting another in the dark.

Not Kate. I knew her brisk walk, and this welcoming glow of light was moving too slowly, swinging back and forth too languidly. The engine stopped and the motorcycle headlight went out.

“Who’s that, the king of the castle?” the man on the motorcycle called. He was laughing, but his voice sounded tired. “Come out to greet the dirty rascal?”

“Your words, good sir, not mine. Pray, how was the journey?” This voice, from the man with the flashlight, was an appealing, resonant baritone, booming and wide-awake despite the hour.

So this was my uncle. Anyone else talking like that, in Old English witticisms, would have annoyed me. But his velvety voice saved him from sounding obnoxious, and it was clear this routine was a familiar joke to both men.

“I hauled ass,” Weary Voice said. “Haven’t stopped since the city.”

“You must be famished. Would sir care to partake of our local delicacy before he passes out in his cabin?”

“Man, I’ve been drooling over Kate’s chili since Sacramento. Mitch and Sooz here yet?”

“You know Madame Suzette. Friday might mean a week from Friday.” My uncle paused. “She’s bringing a new beau.” Then he dropped the fake formality and went on in a regular voice, sincere and tinged with pity. “Mitchell’s coming tomorrow. Alone.”

A dramatic whistle. “Poor Mitch. He’s got it bad.”

“He’ll survive. This is the best rehab west of the Rockies for the brokenhearted.”

“You include yourself in that group?”

“Easy, there.”

“Daddy!”

I hurried to my front steps for a better view of the field. My cousin, here at last. But I was too far away to see more than a mass of lamplit yellow hair.

“We need help carrying tables,” she called.

“Coming, boss!” my uncle yelled up to her, laughing. “Let’s get you fed. Wait’ll you see my Willow. She’s taller than you. And I’ve got to show you this tape gadget someone sent me from Japan. It’s a trip. Makes the music sound like an underwater kazoo, but what the hell do I know…”

I strained to hear more but the voices faded, and my uncle’s swinging flashlight beam crossed the field, climbing back up the hill.

I stayed on my dark porch, observing. For hours I watched, behind a curtain of leaves, as the hordes came. Three cars, another motorcycle, and something long and groaning—a bus or camper. Once they parked, the visitors ascended the hill, heading for the main house. These were happy invaders; their calls, as they got out of their cars, stretching after their long drives, were full of joy.

Laughter rang out across the field, car doors plunked, names were tossed.

“Put on a few pounds, Kip!”

“Hey. Hey, take it easy.”

“April here yet?”

“…coming with Max tomorrow night…”

“Seen Kingston?”

“Yeah, up at the house. In fine form…”

I was curious whether Suzette would arrive with her mysterious beau, and if Mitchell’s voice would sound as broken as his heart, but I didn’t hear their names again that night. I heard many others—and many fragments of other dramas.

It wasn’t simply entertaining, listening in the dark to strangers. It was mesmerizing. An intoxicating feeling of control—because I chose when to turn the drama on and off, unlike in my own life—and escapism—because I was out of my head, away from my own problems. Hovering over another world. I was a veteran eavesdropper at home and at school. But I hadn’t heard anything as interesting as this before. These were adults, yet they sounded like kids on the first day of summer camp. Anticipation was the undercurrent. I imagined faces to match the disembodied voices, stories to fill out the hints.

My uncle didn’t reappear; he stayed up at the main house. The traffic flowed uphill, to him. Footsteps tromped in the gravel, beer tabs plinked in the night air, more fairy flashlights danced in the field, and bursts of laughter rang out from the main house.

Around midnight the cars stopped coming, around one I heard splashes and hoots in the pool, and by two most of the cabins were aglow.

From Plover, the cabin nearest me, a baby’s wail soared high over the trees, but it stopped almost immediately, the desperate sound replaced by a man’s soothing bass singing “Mockingbird.”

I couldn’t see my new neighbors, but the father’s voice was clear, and lovely:

 

“‘And if that diamond ring don’t shine…’”

 

I went inside and curled under my quilt made of old shirts and neckties.

*

In the morning, I crept outside in my nightshirt, peeking out at the field from the trees. Color everywhere—bright beach towels and picnic blankets, print dresses, sun hitting henna’d hair.

Back inside, I brushed my hair with my round brush, coaxing it into the neat curled-under Dorothy Hamill style I usually wore. Then I remembered where I was and messed it up. My clothes were a bigger problem. Everything was too new, too tailored. Matching blouses and culottes from the Young Miss department at Saks, which kept my measurements and family account number on file. I wished I’d armed myself with Levi’s so worn they were nearly white, prairie skirts, concert T-shirts aged to limpness.

I crumpled a dry-cleaned green blouse and knotted it at my waist, rolled up my white Jordaches.

Time to study the hordes up close.

But first I pulled my suitcase from under my bed. The only things I hadn’t unpacked—both gifts from Patricia—would be good insurance. I needed something to do with my hands, the only decent advice I’d heard in therapy. Everyone else’s seemed busy with guitars and berry baskets and other hands and other people’s long hair.

The first prop was a yellow hat Patricia had found antiquing and framed for my room. She wanted me to rip down my concert posters and let her “spruce up” my walls in proper Nob Hill frilly style. Instead, I’d hung it right between Donna Summer and Debbie Harry to bug her. But when I was packing and Patricia passed my doorway to offer a train case she wasn’t bringing to Europe, I’d impulsively grabbed the frame off the wall and pried out her gift. She’d watched this impromptu surgery in shock.

“It’ll be perfect for the beach this summer,” I’d said, smiling.

I’d planned to throw it away, not knowing it would come in handy here. I could tilt the brim down, fan myself with it, tilt the brim back up. But I drew the line at baby’s breath; I plucked it off the hatband and threw it out the window.

My next prop—the other gift in Patricia’s “yellow series”—was a diary. Patricia thought that buying me cheerful yellow objects would transform me into the sunny stepdaughter she deserved.

I grabbed the diary, threw on the hat, and ventured outside.

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