June Friday

Summary

In a hamlet still smelling of wet soil after spring rain, a man whose veins hiss with white powder batters his wife until she folds herself into death like a broken umbrella, leaving only a blood-flecked infant on a splintered doorstep. The child is gathered up by a spinster shopkeeper whose calendar says June and whose heart says Friday; she christens the foundling June Friday and raises her among yard-goods and penny candy while the widower fiend is scourged beyond the parish limits. Years unspool; the girl grows tall as a sunflower, skin smelling of brown paper sacks and licorice whips. Enter a Manhattan rake whose smile is a gold coin spent too often—he spins metropolitan fairytales, lures June to the electric dusk of New York, installs her in a gilded nail salon, and stages a sham marriage officiated by her own cadaverous father disguised in clerical black. When the masquerade sours and blackmail blooms, the rake flees to South America, leaving June with counterfeit vows and rent overdue. She scrubs cuticles until a quiet architect of bridges falls for her soothed hands and marries her into respectability. But destiny is a cracked phonograph record: the profligate returns, corners June, lunges, and finds his chest hosting her defensive blade. Over his collapsing body she kneels, mascara bleeding into confession, while her penitent father ghosts through corridors to claim the crime, seal her innocence with ink, and surrender his last breath to the river.

Synopsis

Samuel Blake, a cocaine fiend, treats his wife so brutally that she takes her own life, after leaving her infant, a girl, on the doorstep of the village general store. Miss Huntley, the storekeeper, finds the baby and decides to adopt it. Since the month is June and the day Friday, she decides to call the baby "June Friday." Blake, meanwhile, has been driven out of the village. Eighteen years later, June is still with Miss Huntley, and helps her in the store. Paul Duncan, a profligate young New Yorker, meets June, and is soon making love to her, she showing that she is drawn to him. He fills her head with stories of the great city. June, resenting the unkind treatment of her foster mother, follows Duncan to New York. He secures her a position in a manicure parlor, and finally gets her promise to marry him. Fate has caused Samuel Blake, after being driven from his native village, to eventually enter Duncan's employ as a valet. He is still addicted to the drug, and knowing this, Duncan persuades him to masquerade as a minister and go through a fake marriage ceremony between himself and June. Not many weeks later, during which time Duncan treats June very badly, one of the men who acted as witnesses at the "wedding" tries to blackmail Duncan. Their conversation is overheard by Duncan's uncle, who immediately dismisses him from the office and cuts off his allowance. Shortly afterward, his uncle tells him that he will reinstate him and look after his future if he will give June up and undertake a business trip to South America. Duncan's "yellow streak" immediately shows itself, and he accepts, leaving a note in which June is told that even the furniture has been sold to a dealer. Reading the note, June realizes her position, and gives the valet her rings and other jewelry to pawn for her. In taking off a locket, it is opened, and Blake realizes the truth at once, and tells June. She is compelled to return to her old position in the manicure parlor. Here she meets Tom Van Est, a friend of Duncan's, but a man of very different character. Not knowing of her past, he falls in love with June, and after much persuasion, induces her to become his wife. Four years later Duncan returns from South America. Visiting Van Est, he is brought face to face with his friend's wife, the girl he has wronged. He tells her that, unless she visits him at his hotel that evening, he will tell her husband. She promises to come to Duncan's rooms, but before leaving tells her father that she is going there to plead for mercy in the name of her child. Blake determines to follow her, and gains entry to the hotel by one of the rear doors. Knowing the number of Duncan's apartment, Blake arrives just as June is kneeling over the body of Duncan. He had attempted to force his attentions upon her and she, picking up a knife to defend herself, killed him in the struggle that followed. Blake drags June away with him and takes her home. Since Blake has been thrown out of the hotel on a previous occasion when he was heard to threaten Duncan, he is suspected of being the murderer. He writes a confession and sends another sealed note to his daughter, begging her to remain silent and so protect her honor and her life. Then Blake commits suicide, after leaving the notes where they will be found by the police.