'Round Midnight

by Laura McBride

  Del said nothing. Got up and walked out of the room. June heard him talking to Marshall, offering to go outside and toss him a ball.

  Leo told her what he had heard about the NAACP threatening sit-down demonstrations, but he said nothing about Eddie. Nobody said anything. Not if it was drugs. Not if it was gambling debts. Not if it was a woman. Not even if it was Vegas. Eddie was always going somewhere on the weeks he was off. And June didn’t care, really. It didn’t matter what it was.

  Every day, she visited him at the hospital.

  Some days he was glad to see her, and other days he asked her to leave. Told her that she was making it worse. That he had earned what he got, and she had to stay away.

  After two weeks, they were ready to let him out. Eddie didn’t want to tell June what his plans were, just that he was going away, would lay low awhile. Del had already negotiated a new headliner act, a band that had appeared at the El Capitan before. But Eddie was really banged up, both his arms were broken, the vision in one eye wasn’t back yet. He couldn’t take care of himself; he couldn’t move somewhere on his own.

  June approached Del after dinner, when he was reading the paper and sipping a whiskey sour.

  “I’ve told Eddie to come back to the apartment for a few days. He can’t leave yet.”

  “That’s a bad idea.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “He’s got family in Alabama. He can go there.”

  “I’ve already told him that we agree. That he can come to the apartment.”

  “And he believed you?”

  “He said he would come. He said he’d be out of there fast, that he had to be.”

  “Okay, June. You’re on your own here. He stays there. He doesn’t come out. He doesn’t come out of that apartment until he’s headed out of town.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “And Marshall doesn’t visit him.”

  “Marshall loves Eddie.”

  “Marshall’s never going to see Eddie again. That’s a deal breaker. Marshall does not go to that apartment.”

  She had gotten as much as she could. And she hadn’t really thought about Marshall and Eddie anyway. She didn’t want him to see Eddie the way he was now. But what Del said: that their son was never going to see Eddie again. Never. She couldn’t think that far ahead; couldn’t think about next month. June needed to take care of Eddie right now. She couldn’t bear that he would leave, and she would never have any chance to show that she understood—that she finally understood—what he meant when he said she was a death sentence; what it meant that Nancy and Shirley didn’t want to sleep in a hotel room that someone colored had slept in. She had known all of this, she had known all of it, but she had not understood what it meant.

  And that’s where it happened. Maybe that was predictable. But it wasn’t what June was expecting, it wasn’t what she had planned, it wasn’t why she brought Eddie to the apartment for those days.

  He needed a lot of help. He couldn’t get dressed on his own. Couldn’t wash himself. Del didn’t say anything when June had one of the maids take a night shift in Eddie’s apartment. He didn’t say anything when she left Marshall with Cora all day, and when she disappeared most of those days into that apartment.

  In Del’s mind, this was a problem that would go away on its own, that would disappear when Eddie did, and one of the reasons he was so good at running a casino was that Del didn’t take on problems that would solve themselves. He kept the focus on what he needed to do. If Del wondered what June was doing, he didn’t say it.

  At first, June felt uneasy in the apartment with Eddie.

  She had spent so much time there; she and Marshall had spent hundreds of hours there.

  But now it was different.

  Different because Eddie was vulnerable, different because he needed physical help, different because he had been beaten, and he was afraid, and he did not sparkle with energy and optimism and confidence—everything that had made him Eddie Knox, and everything that was probably the reason he was sitting there, broken, defeated, unsure.

  But different as well because June had never been this close to Eddie when she was in love with him, or when she had known she was in love with him.

  Had she ever been in love with anyone? She loved Del. She loved him even now. But had she ever been in love with him? Had she ever trembled with the possibility that he did not love her? Had she ever felt the terror of being in love with someone, knowing what one would risk for that feeling—for an instant of that feeling?

  Until now, she had thought that love felt like power.

  They were talking about Marshall. June told Eddie that her son had decided to become a robber. He said he liked robbers better than soldiers, better than pilots, better than cowboys. He said he would grow up and be a robber and steal all the money, and he would be rich, and he would give some to June and to Del and to his grandma. Also, robbers used swords. So everything in the house had become a sword. A towel could be a sword. He would plant his feet wide apart and challenge his dad to fight with “sowds.”

  Eddie laughed.

  “Jacob liked to fight with swords too. Almost took my eye out once, when he was about five.”

  June felt the tears in her eyes. She didn’t know why. Eddie hadn’t mentioned Jacob with any sense of pain, he hadn’t ever told her anything more about his brother. But everything felt fragile right then, everything important teetered, a rounding drop about to fall, glistening with light, an instant before dissolution.

  Eddie reached over, caught one tear with a finger that emerged from a graying cast, and June leaned in, and finally, after four years, they kissed. It was as sweet and demanding a sensation as June had ever experienced. And if their lovemaking looked awkward from a distance, with Eddie’s casts, and his bruises, and the difficulty in finding just how to move, just where to embrace, it didn’t feel awkward. It felt tender and absolute, exhilarating and unyielding, inevitable, glorious, terrifying, gentle. And when it was over, they lay tangled on Eddie’s bed, and they kissed more, and they tried to say words, but then they kissed, and they made love again, and this is what they did, pretty much all they did, in those hours—for those days—in which June was in that apartment, and Marshall was at his great-grandmother’s, and Del ran the casino.

  June knew that it would end, though she told herself that something would happen. There would be a way; she would take Marshall and go with Eddie. Something. It was not possible that she would never see him again, and they did not speak of it. Then on Friday, Del asked her if she would like to have coffee with him before she went to see Eddie, and Mack asked if she had seen the plans for the new card room. By the time she got to the apartment, Eddie was not there. Some of his clothes were gone, and his wallet; and he was gone too. No note.

  8

  She was five months pregnant.

  It might be Del’s.

  She and Eddie had been careful. She and Del had been on the dining room floor. The doctor’s due date split the difference between these events—a perfect split, though she had given him no dates.

  It had to be Del’s.

  They planned as if it were Del’s.

  Del never asked her anything about Eddie.

  Of course, she had asked Del. She had gone straight to Del when she found Eddie gone, demanding to know where he was, whether Del had shipped him off, why he had asked her for coffee that morning.

  Del had been patient, and then been annoyed, but all he’d said was that they both knew Eddie had to leave—there was never any doubt about it—and didn’t she realize he could have ended up dead?

  “Is he alive? Do you know he’s alive?”

  “He’s alive.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know where. But he’ll start singing somewhere. We’ll know.”

  “Will you tell me?”

  “Yes.”

  And six weeks later, Del had told her. Eddie was in Cuba. Things were a little different there than they ha
d been, but Havana was still a great place for him. He could work. He’d do well. He’d been smart to get out of the country.

  And that’s all Del would ever say. He made it clear he would not speak of Eddie again.

  And maybe June could have chipped away at that resolve, but by then, she knew she was pregnant and she was calculating the odds, and wondering whether Del would ask, and wondering what she wanted—what she really wanted—except she knew. She knew the baby had to be Del’s.

  She wrote Eddie a letter. Mailed it to a casino in Havana after she overheard a guest saying he was appearing there. She didn’t say much in the letter. Just wanted to know that he would get it, that they would be able to stay in touch.

  She thought about the letter every day. Where it might be, what day it would arrive in Cuba, how long it might take to wind from the casino’s mailroom to Eddie. Did he have a regular gig? Had he appeared only once? Would they know how to forward it to him?

  But one day, Del dropped the letter on the desk in the study.

  “You can’t write him.”

  “How did you get this?”

  “No letters.”

  She stared at the envelope. It hadn’t been opened. She’d put it in the mail slot to be delivered; how had Del gotten it? But, of course, he could get to any mail in the casino. If he were watching it, if someone at the hotel were watching it. Her face flushed hot.

  “I’m not messing around,” Del said. “Eddie Knox is out of our lives. No letters, no phone calls. Don’t cross me on this.”

  Don’t cross him? Del had never spoken to her in this way. It was a tone of voice she had heard him use only in rooms with men talking about cardsharps. He had no right to speak to her like that. Hot fury coursed through her.

  “You’re going to have a baby.” Del’s voice was strained, in a way June almost never heard it. “We have Marshall.”

  Was it a threat? Did he also wonder about this baby inside her? Even as they repainted the nursery, even as they told Cora that a little girl would be named for her, even as he ordered bottles of champagne?

  She had betrayed Del.

  She had betrayed him, and he might know it, and he had allowed it, and maybe even he had understood. And that was worth something. But still, he didn’t have the right to stop her letters. He didn’t have the right to speak to her in this way.

  She took the car and drove.

  It often relaxed her to drive without knowing where she was going: to get in the Chrysler and drive west, toward the mountains (she might not stop until the sea); or north, toward the proving ground (she might watch a nuclear bomb explode); or east, toward the rest of the country (she might go home to her mother). Today June drove up Charleston until the road turned to dirt, and then aimlessly back on Sahara. She crossed over the Strip, and turned on Maryland Parkway before remembering that a school was right there and the children would be leaving now. Sure enough, a nun in full habit stood in the street holding a stop sign. June turned at the corner before the walkway, thinking she could avoid stopping, but it was not a street, just a drive into a small parking lot. She turned off the car. A giant oleander bush, with its hot-pink flowers finally fading and wilting and starting to drop, blocked her view of the building. She breathed in and thought.

  It was possible that Del knew about her and Eddie. How could he not, when she had been so wild last spring, when she cared not a whit what anyone thought; when the sight of Eddie lying unrecognizable in the hospital bed had driven her mad? Del was not someone who needed to share what he was thinking. Of course he knew. He must have known then. He had said nothing.

  What sort of husband would say nothing?

  It was unbearable to think of never seeing Eddie again. But what other choice was there? She and Del owned the El Capitan. They had Marshall. She was pregnant. There had to be another choice.

  There wasn’t another choice.

  The fury with which she had taken the car and started to drive had already begun to ebb. Now, in this strange little parking lot, with pink flowers draped lasciviously across her window, June felt a thick heaviness descend. For an instant, she wanted to close her eyes and stop. Stop everything. Sit in this car until something forced her to go. Anything not to move.

  There was only one way to play this hand, and Del had already figured that out. She had trouble gripping the steering wheel. Del had known before she did. But he was right. She would have to accept this.

  June started the car and nearly backed into a man walking behind her. She heard his startled “Whoa!” and saw him in the rearview mirror.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t look.”

  “No harm done. I hopped.”

  He was young and very good-looking. He wore a priest’s collar, and June realized that the parking lot probably belonged to the church or the school next door.

  “Thank you. I was thinking about something. I’m really sorry.”

  “Do you need anything? Were you here to see someone?”

  “No. I . . . I pulled in because the children were crossing the street. And I got distracted.”

  “It’s not a problem, but if you wanted to talk with someone, I’m here. Father Burns, at your service.”

  His blue eyes twinkled.

  June couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Or you could talk to Father Fahey?” He seemed embarrassed that he might have been forward.

  “Oh, no. I’m Jewish. I didn’t even know I’d pulled into a church.”

  “Well, we’re happy to talk with anyone. Even Jews.” He smiled when he said this.

  Why would someone who looked like him be a priest? She hesitated a moment, because suddenly she did want to talk with someone. Someone who would hear the whole story; someone who might understand. Weren’t priests sworn to secrecy?

  He waited.

  He was so young. No. She didn’t need to talk to a priest. She was June Stein. She knew what she had to do.

  “No, I just made a wrong turn. Thank you, though. Sorry.” She was starting to babble.

  “Sure,” he said easily. His eyes flitted to her rounded belly, and June thought, maybe he could bless the baby. Which was a strange thought, and unsettling. She drove away quickly.

  If she hadn’t had those days with Eddie, then she might never have noticed certain things that Del did. The way he answered the phone in the study, even if the hall phone was closer. The way that Leo or Mack sometimes told her where Del was before she had asked. Even the smell of sweat, of salt, on his skin: some nights she noticed it, some nights it caught her attention, but she couldn’t put her finger on why.

  And one day, when Mack offered to drive her home because Del would be late, June asked.

  “Is he in a meeting? Do you know where he is?”

  Mack wasn’t expecting this, and there was a split second between her question and his answer, a second imprinted on his face; a moment where he recalibrated what she had just asked and how he would reply.

  “He had a meeting with some guys from the golf course. It’s a charity event for that new school on Sahara.”

  June didn’t answer. She didn’t look at Mack. He was loyal to Del, and she didn’t want him to know what she had seen in his face. When he drove up to the house, she said lightly, “Marshall’s going to be so excited. Del told me your car was a rocket, and Marshall thinks it is a rocket.”

  “Should I give him a ride?”

  “He’d love it. Let me go and get him.”

  She tried to decide if it mattered to her. What she felt. She wondered how long it had been going on. She’d noticed things only in the last month or so, but the truth was, she hadn’t been looking for anything. Before having her own secret, June hadn’t considered what a secret looked like.

  But who?

  Del didn’t seem to pay particular attention to anyone at the hotel. In fact, she couldn’t remember any time when she had noticed Del notice someone. She had noticed Eddie notice, from the first night she met him. It was an instinc
tive part of being around him, the way women looked at him, the subtle ways he indicated interest back. She’d practically done a study of it, long before she had admitted she cared. She and Del had sometimes mentioned it; heck, she and Eddie had laughed about it. So June tried. She tried to remember a time when Del had suddenly noticed a woman, and she could not.

  Nor did she see it now. Now that she was watching for it.

  He was a cool cat, Del. He played a long game, following beginnings out to their possible endings, and adjusting course before his competition knew the race was on. June knew this about him. Perhaps she hadn’t fully considered what it might mean for her.

  Well, he wasn’t tougher than she was. She could play a long game too.

  And did it matter if Del was seeing someone? Maybe it mattered if he were in love. But if he were, he’d missed his opportunity to move June out. And it wasn’t like Del to miss an opportunity he wanted.

  So who was she?

  June smelled something, a different salty, sweaty something, on his skin.

  9

  June’s pregnancy stretched into the long, slow months, and she experienced the world as simultaneously leaden and diaphanous. There was the not knowing whose baby she carried, there was the knowledge that her husband was capable of hiding things from her that she would not have been able to hide from him, there was the small boy who chattered at her side, there was the extraordinary sensation of a new person shifting within her. And then there was Eddie: the way his face had been swollen, how his skin had tasted, the words he had said, what she had felt in that room with him. All of this echoed in her mind, night and day.

  In November, Cora stopped by the El Capitan to have lunch with June. They sat outside because the weather was warm, and June arched her neck to feel the sun on her face. Del’s grandmother wore an olive green hat and carefully positioned herself in the shade, though her deeply lined skin revealed decades lived in the desert.