And so Jules rolled down the windows of the U-Haul and ordered his family to “Breathe!” gulping air until Leslie and Eva were giggling. Brooks complained, of course, calling Jules a “total dork,” but soon even Brooks was laughing and Jules’s head spun from all that oxygen. He knew that dizzy feeling was happiness.
When they reached the gates of the Castle, the U-Haul screeching to a halt, and Jules saw the pair of marble eagles guarding the entrance like Rottweilers, his first thought was he’d gone and brought his family—his son—to a prison. Leslie unlocked the salt-rusted chain, and from the driver’s seat, with the sun behind them, he could see through her sheer skirt the V where her thighs met. She skipped back to the car and, once inside, the car jerking forward and onto the long graveled driveway, she’d kissed him, engulfing him in the scent that was hers alone. Almonds. Jasmine oil. The sugar that sits at the bottom of a cup of coffee. That last delicious sip.
He parked at the end of the drive. His family sat in silence, staring up at the Castle, the sun shining her brightest (like she knew they were coming) so the white marble sparkled with sugary light.
Eva poked her head between the front two seats and whispered, “Do a king and queen live there?”
Jules looked at Leslie, who gazed up at the Castle, chewing her lower lip.
“They do now,” he said. “And you can be our princess.”
“Barf,” Brooks groaned from the backseat.
Jules turned just in time to see Leslie roll her eyes in Brooks’s direction, as in Your dad is such a cheeseball. Jules wouldn’t let their ganging up on him like usual bust his sunny mood. He was high on sea breeze, on honeysuckle.
“Um, Mom? Is that, like, an iron gate on the front door?”
His son’s voice shook and Jules was grateful when Leslie spoke.
“Actually, it’s bronze,” she said. “Forged on this very island, in the Ironworks. Don’t worry, sweetie, we’ll always leave it unlocked. Cross my heart.”
“Unless you miss curfew, young man,” Jules added. “Psych!”
“Ha-ha, hilarious,” Brooks said. Then added, “Not.”
“We’ll be living in the cottage next door anyway,” Leslie said, turning around in her seat and chucking Brooks under his newly defined chin. “Just until I fix up the old place.”
The cottage was a short walk through the hedge maze. Jules was excited, and a bit nervous, to show the kids the maze—what if little Eva got lost? He explained to Brooks how to navigate the labyrinth.
“There are two types of non-unicursal, or puzzle, mazes.” Jules had spent hours researching mazes at the city library, brushing up on general info he’d absorbed way back in grad school. “Branching and island mazes. This one is a branching, which is pretty cool, since it’s the older kind.”
Brooks puffed out a sigh.
“Dad, can you just, like, get on with it? I don’t need a plant lesson. Just the directions.”
It stung, his son’s rejection, even more so, Brooks’s sudden loathing for anything green. Leslie had tried to comfort Jules with some psychobabble about the son having to reject his father to become his own person, but still.
“Fine,” Jules said, struggling to keep calm when he wanted to shout at Brooks, call him a spoiled brat, “keep your hand—doesn’t matter which one—on the same wall. When you hit a dead end, move your hand around the end of the path. You’ll retrace your steps and end up where you started.” He added, “That simple enough for you?”
Leslie had taught Jules the series of turns—a long combination of rights and lefts—for each route through the maze. The first path was from the front of the Castle to the cottage, and the second, the front of the Castle to the gardens. Jules had tried his best to memorize both but flubbed them each time Leslie tested him.
They made a game out of it for little Eva using the tune of “Heigh-Ho” from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Jules and Leslie sang as their family marched through the maze. Jules played the clown—his arms pumping and legs lifting like a manic soldier. Right, right … Left, right … Right, left, left, right … Eva giggled, Brooks rolled his eyes again, and Leslie smiled. Maybe they were home, Jules hoped.
*
He had promised Leslie he would go to the party with her. An apology of sorts for what she called his overreaction to the fight at the fair.
“I wouldn’t even call it a fight,” Leslie had said. “More like a tussle.”
“White boys will be white boys,” he had said in the high-pitched voice of his aunt Lorraine, which he often used to tease Leslie. She’d swatted him. Pursed her lips thoughtfully, “A rumble? A spat?”
There had been a gun. He’d sworn to her he’d seen it on one of those heavy-metal kids. But Leslie had only nodded like he was little Eva complaining about the bogeyman under her bed.
He showered in the cottage’s narrow bathroom stall, scrubbing the dirt from his nails with a wooden brush. God forbid he should offend any more of Avalon’s blue-haired ladies, he thought.
“What are you laughing at?” Leslie asked.
“Just wondering if Orchid Lady will be there tonight.”
“You are a troublemaker,” Leslie said, smiling. “And if she is who I think she is, you better watch that sweet ass of yours. Mrs. Hennessey is infamous for her roving fingers. The busboys at the club can attest.”
“You trying to turn me on?”
“Can you blame her?” she said. “I was watching you work in the garden. Looking all sexy out there with no shirt. All sweaty. Wood chips stuck to your muscles.”
This woman, he thought. Her words alone made his soap-lathered penis grow hard.
Leslie let out a frustrated groan.
“What’s the matter?” He slid the shower curtain open and it rattled on rusted rings.
She stood in front of the vanity mirror wiggling into the control-top panty hose he’d only seen her wear when visiting her parents.
“You’re wearing those?”
He toweled himself with a raggedy thing that smelled like mildew. Leslie had yet to abandon her rule forbidding living in the Castle and so they were stuck with the portable washing machine that hooked up to the cottage kitchen sink. The clothes and towels were hung out to dry on a clothesline out back and returned with a damp, fishy odor.
“I thought you said panty hose were sexist torture devices? Invented to keep women from moving fast enough to achieve their goals. I’m just paraphrasing, of course.”
“When in Rome,” Leslie grumbled as she hopped up and down trying to scoot the flesh-toned elastic fabric over her pale ass. “And don’t mess with a woman shoving herself into Spandex, Julius. She just might murder you.”
Jules looked out the bathroom window and spotted Brooks heading down the driveway. His skateboard was tucked under an arm and his backpack hung low like it was full and heavy. Maybe with beer, Jules guessed, and reminded himself to give Brooks another talk about getting in cars with drunk teen drivers—a new concern out here in the country.