'Round Midnight

by Laura McBride

  “God gave you that voice, child. God gave you that voice.”

  “Whew. That cat can sing. That is some singing.”

  “Eddie, can I sing with you?”

  “Eddie, sing in church.”

  “Eddie, that is the Lord’s voice.”

  “Eddie, what you singing with that voice the Lord gave you?”

  “Eddie, where’d you get that? Where’d you get that money, where’d you get that bottle, where’d you get that girl, where’d you get that dope, where’d you get that voice, where’d you get that face, where’d you get that song? Eddie, where’d you get that?”

  “Eddie, where you been?”

  “Where were you all night?”

  “Don’t come around here, you gonna be singing that stuff.”

  “God gave you that voice, and you give it to the devil?”

  “Eddie, can you sing for me?”

  “Eddie, will you sing?”

  “Eddie, make it better.”

  “Eddie, I got something for you.”

  “Eddie I got money I got pussy I got champagne I got money I got dope. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, will you sing?”

  11

  Marshall refused to go to school. He locked his feet against the floor of the car, wrapped his hands around the loop over the door, and elevated his six-year-old body like a two-by-four above the seat. Everyone in the drop-off zone heard him screaming. “No, no, no! I won’t go! I’m not going to school, Daddy!” Plenty of them heard Del begging Marshall to calm down, offering him a new GI Joe tank, threatening to spank him. There he was, Del Dibb, in a white Cadillac, arguing with his six-year-old son in front of John S. Park Elementary School, and wondering if he could wrench him out of the car without hurting him. And then what?

  Marshall had picked a really tough day. Binnie had gone to help her sister recover from a surgery. Cora was in Texas, visiting a cousin Del didn’t remember having. He had meetings scheduled all morning, and he had to be at the county commission hearing that afternoon, and he was already late, since he wasn’t expecting to have to fix Marshall his breakfast and take him to school.

  Of course, June was home. She was swimming. Had wandered downstairs while Marshall was eating a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. “Good morning, Mommy!” Marshall had said, but June looked at him as if she had never seen a child before, and then said, wearily, to no one in particular, “I’m late to start my mile, and I wonder if there will be any fish in the water.”

  Del had not thought to look at Marshall’s face.

  What Del had noticed was that June was calm. It was a relief that she was calm.

  So he had raced, trying to get Marshall ready, on the phone with Leo about how to handle his first appointment, feeling a little sorry about the Cocoa Puffs, though Marshall was pleased. He had said, “Thanks, Daddy!” in his sweet, high voice, and then a rich brown stream had slipped out of his mouth and onto his pale-blue shirt.

  But now Marshall was lodged in the front seat of the car like a stick in a cog, and Del was out of options. He couldn’t leave his son home alone with June.

  “Okay, Marshall. You’ll have to come to work with me. But I have meetings, so you’ll have to stay with someone else.”

  “No, Daddy, no! I’m not going to work! I’m not going!”

  “Marshall, what are you doing? What do you want?”

  “I don’t want to go to school! I don’t want to go to work! I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!”

  “I have to go to work today. Grandma’s in Texas. Binnie’s sister is sick. So you have to go to school, or you have to go to work with me. Now which is it?”

  “I want to go home!”

  “You can’t go home!”

  Marshall screamed. He screamed so long that he started to choke, and then he threw up, brown Cocoa Puffs all over the clean shirt and his pants and the front seat of the car.

  Del gave up.

  “Okay, Marshall. We’re going home. It’s okay, buddy. It’s okay. We’re going home.”

  Marshall pulled his knees to his chest, and rode home with his cheek resting on his knees, looking at his dad.

  “Buddy, I know it’s tough. But you got to pull it together. A man has to do the right thing. He has to go to school, he has to go to work.”

  Marshall just stared at Del, expressionless, his eyes rimmed in red. He didn’t look away.

  When they got home, Del called Leo and told him he wouldn’t be in. Send Mack to the commission meeting. Tell him to handle things the best he could. Things at home had come to a head, so he didn’t know when he’d be in. Screw it. He’d make this up to him. Then Del sent Marshall in to find clean clothes, and walked outside looking for June. She was there, stretched out on the lounger, her body still wet from her swim.

  “June.”

  She didn’t answer, didn’t open her eyes.

  “Marshall wouldn’t go to school today. He’s upset. You didn’t say anything to him this morning.”

  June didn’t open her eyes. He couldn’t tell if she was listening.

  “Did you notice him? Did you see him sitting there?”

  She opened her eyes, staring at him blankly.

  “What are you on? What’d you take?”

  His wife rolled to her side, facing the wall.

  “Miltown?”

  She said nothing.

  “Where’d you get it? One of your friends?”

  She moaned, rolled back over, and looked at him.

  “Well, I’m not waiting for it. I’m not sitting here, with Marshall, waiting to find you dead. My son is not living his whole life with what you are doing to him right now. You were better—I thought you were better—but today . . . today it ends.”

  She sat up.

  “There’s a place in LA.”

  She shook her head slowly.

  “I’ve called them, and as soon as someone’s here to watch Marshall, we’re going. You don’t need to pack. You won’t need anything.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re going.”

  “You can’t make me go. You can’t make me do anything. You can’t just do anything you want.”

  Her voice was rising, reaching a squeak. It was an old argument. They had both heard it, over and over.

  “I can make you.”

  “No!”

  “I’m going to take you to this place, and if you refuse to go in, I’m going to leave you there at the door. I’ve already drawn up all the paperwork. We’ll be divorced in six weeks. And you won’t see Marshall. There isn’t a judge in this town that will let you near him.”

  “There’s other towns.”

  “Try it.”

  She puckered her lip and spit at him, but she was so wrecked that the saliva simply dribbled down her chin. Del felt sick.

  But that afternoon, June went with him. He was afraid he would have to restrain her in the car, but she sat without moving, staring blankly out the window for most of the five-hour ride. As they drove onto the clinic grounds, down a long drive with walls fringed in bougainvillea, she finally spoke.

  “When it’s over, let me come back.”

  “I’ll let you come back.”

  June hadn’t recovered from the loss of the baby.

  That’s how the world understood it. That her baby had died, and she had never been the same. Del supposed that Cora guessed there was more, but she didn’t ask him. His grandmother had never asked him about any of it. About Hugh. About Ray’s death. Any of it.

  Of course Dr. Bruno knew about the baby. He was the one who had given June the pills first.

  “These will help her through, Del. She needs some relief.”

  Damn.

  And, really, losing a baby was what had happened. June had lost a baby, and afterward she had fallen down some hole, gone down so deep that some days he couldn’t even remember who she had been. And then, when he had more or less given up—was actually wondering if committing her was the one option left—she had crawled
back up. He and Marshall had lain down at the lip of that hole, with their arms outstretched, reaching for her, for June, for Mommy, for the woman who had once been so joyful, and almost, almost, they had pulled her up. They’d had her fingers in their hands; they had all been smiling.

  They’d had eight months of the old June. Looking back, it was moving that had made her better. Selling the house and buying another one on the other side of the Strip. A house where no baby had been born and lost. A house without neighbors who had noticed June, too drunk by ten in the morning to get to the mailbox without tripping, or who had heard her boozy “Haaaaayyyyrrooo!” to the newspaper boy and then watched her fall down laughing at how funny the word came out. A couple of those neighbors had even seen June climbing the ash tree, sawing off the branches as she went up, dressed in a pink silk robe and singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Binnie was there that day. It was the maid who had noticed that Marshall was alone out back; that his mommy had climbed up a tree. After phoning Del, she bundled the boy off to his bedroom and read him stories while the drama at the front of the house played out.

  So they moved. Del hadn’t known what else to do. The psychologist didn’t help. The pills Dr. Bruno prescribed: they definitely didn’t help. (It took him awhile to persuade Dr. Bruno to stop giving them to her, but then it was so easy for her to get more. He couldn’t plug every damn hole.) Del had moved without any hope that it would actually make a difference. But it had. June had seen her chance. She had made Marshall her captain, and they had planned and painted and purchased: the new house a project that worked when doctors, when pleading, when medicines did not. For eight months, he had his little family back.

  And then, just like that, for no reason that he could figure, she had disappeared back down the hole. One evening he came home from work—it was Binnie’s day off, but June was fine being left alone with Marshall then, they were all so happy—and as soon as he opened the door, Del heard the dog barking, smelled something burned in the kitchen, knew something bad had happened.

  He found June passed out drunk by the pool. And where was Marshall? Where was Marshall? The pool? Thank God, no. He started yelling “Marshall! Marshall!” and he shook June. “Where is he? Where’s Marshall?” and the dog barked faster, and Del was frantic, racing through the house: not in the kitchen, not in his bedroom, not in the bathroom. He dashed to the front door, ran halfway into the street, grabbed Mrs. Walkenshaw: “Have you seen Marshall? Did you see Marshall outside?” She looked alarmed and then said, “I’ll help you look,” but already Del was running back to the house. Where was he?

  A neighbor called the fire department, and it took an hour, but someone finally found Marshall huddled in a cabinet in June’s dressing room. He had closed the door on himself, and Del hoped he had fallen asleep curled up in the dark, but he thought probably his son had just sat there, having seen or heard whatever he had seen or heard to send him there, and unable to answer all the people, even his dad, calling his name.

  And that had been the beginning of it all over again. Only this time, Del didn’t believe she would get better. And Marshall was different too. The little boy who’d weathered all that had come before, who had seemed cheerful and loving and marvelously obtuse about his mother’s behavior, disappeared. In his place was a nervous six-year-old who would throw fits in public places, and who had night terrors, and who crawled into their bed and slept curled against Del night after night, sucking his thumb and shuddering in his sleep.

  Del never knew what made June fall back down. He would lie in bed, listening to Marshall’s light snoring and to June’s footsteps as she restlessly roamed the floor below, and he would remember. He remembered holding June’s hand—so tiny, such thin fingers—in that bar on the Westside. He had been able to feel the excitement coursing through her. It hadn’t bothered her to be the only white woman there; she was not uncomfortable. She liked the pulse of the place, everyone a regular, the bartender sliding drinks over without needing to be asked, three couples dancing, their feet whirling. That was the night they met Eddie Knox.

  And he remembered June laughing, spilling the night’s take on the table as he and Eddie and some woman—who was she?—drank champagne and sang “Bye Bye Love.” They had sounded pretty good, drunk as they were, with June and Eddie taking harmony, he and what’s-her-name taking the melody. There was a moment—there was often a moment on those nights—when Del felt perfectly happy, perfectly at ease, when the four of them singing and drinking and celebrating felt like everything that could be right in the world.

  One night, he had taken Eddie to the vault to get him some cash. They were sloshed, of course, and June had gone to bed. After Del handed him the money, Eddie got sentimental. He told Del he’d never had a friend like him before, pulled him into a hug, and Del’s body, flat against Eddie’s, reacted instantly. Del should have been horrified, but he was on fire, he couldn’t bear to move away from him. And Eddie waited, still, just a second, and then said, “Sorry, man. Man, I’m really sorry.” Eddie stepped back. Del looked away. They left the vault, quiet.

  And from then on, Eddie knew it all, knew what Del kept secret. He knew it all, but he didn’t do anything with it—at least not then, at least not for a long time. If only Eddie could have left it that way. If only Eddie hadn’t threatened Hugh. If only Del hadn’t been the one with the gaming license, the one who couldn’t be guilty of a crime. Eddie was smart, but not smart enough to figure out how dangerous a thing he knew.

  Del remembered other moments.

  Laying his palm on June’s belly and waiting for the flutter-kick move that was the first sign of Marshall. Then later, June’s belly would roil so fiercely, and he could make out the shape of Marshall’s foot rolling from one side to the other. They hadn’t known it would be Marshall. It might have been Marilyn.

  And the girl. The real baby girl.

  Del had known the baby would be Eddie’s.

  He’d pretended that it could be otherwise, but he’d been planning, thinking, calculating all along. He had thought he would have to pay off the nurses at the hospital, so he’d kept a roll of cash in his coat pocket that whole last month. Weeks earlier, Dr. Bruno had helped him with the arrangements. There was a place in California, near Anaheim. It mostly took in unwed teens, but it also placed babies.

  Of course, nothing happened the way he had planned.

  Because Del hadn’t known he would fall in love. He hadn’t known that the color of her skin, the awareness of who she was, wouldn’t make any difference. He would fall in love with her, just as he had with Marshall. She would be born, and there would be the instant of shock, of sadness, and then, without warning, there would be that same mad total falling in love that he had felt when Marshall was born. And maybe knowing who she was, seeing this tiniest, newest human being, knowing how things were going to go for her, made the experience more intense. Del couldn’t bear to take her from her mother. He couldn’t bear not to set her on June’s breast. Poor thing. She needed her mother.

  No, Del had not imagined he would feel this.

  From there, the plan just kept unraveling. Because he didn’t feel the way he thought he would. Because he loved her mother and maybe he had loved her father, and mostly, he loved the baby. He had thought there was nothing he could not do, if it needed to be done. But that turned out not to be true.

  And this is why he put up with June. This is why he continued. Because what had happened to June shouldn’t happen to anyone, and not just Eddie, not just the baby, but him, Del. He shouldn’t have happened to June. Marrying June had made everything possible for him, but she was a calculated choice, and she had not known, and Del was not such an operator that he did not appreciate the magnitude of that betrayal. It was not June who had betrayed Del.

  What she wanted, what she begged for, what he would not give her, was to know where.

  Where was she?

  Wherewasshe, wherewasshe, wherewasshe.

  How could he tell her?

/>   He would never be able to tell her. That was the mistake he had made, when he was driving around with a baby in a basket, when he drove past the spot where he had agreed to bring her—drove past it one time, two times, three, thinking all the while, What could he do? What were the other options? None of them was possible, all of them were worse, because what if Hugh found out? Hugh would not tolerate this risk. And then the baby had started to make her little mews, her little scratchy yowl, her hands and feet pushing the blanket into a storm of pink silk and cotton beside him, and he was out of time, she was hungry, she had to eat.

  He had wished he could talk to Ray. He had wished Ray were next to him, in that car, with that baby. Ray would have known what to do. Or Ray would have told him to stick to the plan. And Del would have listened. He would have listened to that deep, soft voice, to the one person who knew everything there was to know about Odell Dibb and who loved him anyway. He could have taken care of things if he’d had Ray next to him.

  So that’s how it happened. How Del made the choice he did. How he went to the one place he should not have gone. How he put them all at risk, when risk was what he had been trying to avoid.

  This was what he couldn’t tell June. He couldn’t tell her where the baby was, because it would be piling error on top of error, because he wouldn’t ruin another mother’s life, because Hugh was a dangerous man. There was no way to predict how Hugh might react, and Del couldn’t risk finding out. June had the right to know where her husband had taken her baby, but Del would never be able to tell her.

  He had tried to help, but he’d made the worst choice of all.

  HONORATA

  The one who got lucky

  and

  CORAL

  The one who always wondered

  OCTOBER 19, 1992

  In the Midnight Room

  The priest noticed the woman, but she did not notice him.

  She was small and dark. Asian, maybe Filipino. She had on evening clothes, a silk dress beaded at the front and gold sandals with heels that seemed too high for her tiny feet. She was carrying a plastic bucket of coins, and it was heavy; her shoulder drooped slightly with the weight.