'Round Midnight

by Laura McBride

  Coral was really interested now. This Malaya was surprising in so many ways.

  “You found this on the Internet?”

  “Well, it wasn’t easy. Because the search engine in the paper isn’t very good. So I went to the library on Flamingo, and the librarian helped me.”

  Coral thought of her own trips to that library, straining her eyes to see the faded microfiche records of Del Dibb’s life.

  “That was smart.”

  “Anyway, this article about the Filipina who won the money, I just read it for fun, because I wasn’t finding anything. But there was a picture of her.”

  Coral knew what she was going to say.

  “It was my mom.”

  Unbelievable. Incredible story.

  “Her name was Rita Wohlmann. And she was married to this guy James. From Chicago. It was really easy after that. I just Googled him. He runs a big company, and I sent him an email.”

  “Wow. Wow! That’s really an amazing story.”

  “Yeah. Like, did you know my mom won more than a million dollars?”

  “No.” She felt almost giddy listening to the girl. Malaya had done it. She’d found her dad. It made Coral want to jump up and cheer, even in the middle of this—what?—incident.

  “And she was married. I mean, like, I’ve spent my whole life trying to explain to people why I don’t have a dad. And there was this real asshole kid in fifth grade; he said I was a bastard. Which is stupid. Because half the kids I know are bastards. Just not the ones at my school.”

  Coral reached over and hugged Malaya awkwardly in her chair. She was so proud of her, and she was sorry about the fifth grader who had called her a name.

  It was unbelievable that Malaya had actually found some record of her mom in the paper. With a different name. That’s what it took. Some luck. At one point when Coral had been hunting for her mother, when she’d been doing research yet again, she had gone into some chat rooms and talked with other people looking for their parents. Usually straight-up adoptees, whose records were sealed. And the ones that found them—the mothers who found their babies or the children who found their parents—they almost always got lucky. There was one stray detail that turned out to be true, wasn’t part of the standard story, and that detail led to everything else. My mother had eight siblings and was over six feet tall. My mother was an identical twin, and her brothers were identical twins too. Stuff like that.

  And with genetic testing, all you had to know was that it was possible you had the right person. From there, if everybody agreed, you could actually be sure. She wondered if James Wohlmann really was Malaya’s father. The girl was young. Honorata could have been married, but that didn’t mean he was Malaya’s father.

  “What did your father say when you emailed him?”

  “He asked me for a photo. Of my mom.”

  “And you sent it?”

  “Yeah. And then he asked me if I was willing to do a test. To prove it. He sent me a kit, and then I sent it back to the company, with my blood and stuff.”

  “So, you’re sure.”

  “Yeah. He’s definitely my dad.”

  “Did he know about you?”

  “No. He didn’t even know my mom had a baby.”

  “You were a big surprise.”

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “Does he have a family? Kids?”

  “No.”

  “You’re the only one?”

  “Yes.”

  Coral saw Tom walking toward them again, and he signaled her to meet him.

  “Malaya, I see my friend Tom. I’m going to ask him if he knows anything. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “I see a cooler over there. I think you can probably have a Coke if you want it.”

  “Okay.”

  Coral walked to the back of the canopy and then over to the next yard, where Malaya could not see her talking with Tom.

  “Tom, what’s going on?”

  “We’re not sure. We think there’s a situation, and we’ve got a visual, but we haven’t seen a gun. Nobody seems to be being held.”

  “Have you knocked on the door?”

  “Not yet. That’s the next step. We called, and a man answered once, but he hung up pretty quickly. We’re just taking our time. No need kicking it up a notch too early.”

  “It’s her father.”

  “Yeah? What’s the story?”

  “Malaya found her father online. He didn’t know she existed. He had her confirm it with tests, and then he told her he was coming to see her.”

  “Okay. That’s helpful. Know anything about the relationship? With the mom?”

  “Not much. They were married. She’s from the Philippines. He’s from Chicago. They came out here, and she hit a jackpot. Malaya says she won a million dollars. So I’m guessing that was the end of the marriage. And he never knew she was pregnant.”

  Tom whistled.

  “Yeah. That’s a bombshell.”

  “Only in Vegas, right?”

  Coral glanced over at Malaya, who was talking to a police officer who looked barely older than she was. “Any idea how long?”

  “Not really. I mean, I’d like to talk to him on the phone first. Get a sense of the guy before I knock on the door. But if he won’t answer, that’s the next step.”

  “You haven’t heard anything in there? Is something happening?”

  “So 911 got a call. Couldn’t make out much, except some woman who said ‘gun’ and ‘man.’ We sent a patrol over, and he got a visual just from the neighbor’s yard. Two women. One man. No visible gun. No ropes. Looks like a tense conversation. It’s not a lot to go on. But your information helps.”

  “The other woman is her grandmother. She lives with them.”

  “I don’t think so. She’s young. Looks Hispanic. Maybe the housekeeper?”

  “Oh.” Coral was surprised that Honorata had a housekeeper. “Well, I’ve seen someone get off the bus before. But the grandmother lives there too. You haven’t seen her?”

  “No. Damn. I have to ask the girl about her. Where the grandmother’s room is. I don’t want to scare her, though.”

  “Malaya?”

  “Yes?” The young officer walked away, avoiding Tom’s gaze.

  Coral knew Malaya would be frightened by Tom’s question, so she put her hand on the girl’s thin back. Coral could feel her trembling even as she looked up at Tom defiantly.

  “You have a grandmother? She lives with you?”

  “Lola? Is Lola okay?” Malaya looked to Coral with fear.

  “I’m sure she is. I was just confirming that she lives in your house.”

  “Yes. But she’s not here right now. She’s staying at her friend’s house.”

  Coral and Tom looked at each other. She could see his relief.

  “Do you expect her to come home today?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, thank you. That’s all I need right now.”

  “Is this about my dad?”

  “Coral told me about your dad. That helps us. But I don’t know. Listen, nothing’s happened. We’re being very cautious. It’s really helpful if you just stay here.”

  Malaya looked at Tom, and Coral hoped she would not get angry. She had heard Malaya and Honorata shouting more than once. Tom reached out and took the girl’s hand. “Thank you. You’re doing great here. I really appreciate it.” This calmed Malaya, and she shook her head and dropped to the grass in one fluid move.

  “Whatever. My mom’s going to be really mad if it’s my dad. And she’s crazy.”

  Tom looked down at Malaya a minute, as if he were about to say something. Then he thought better of it, nodded to Coral, and walked back toward the police officers in the cul-de-sac.

  32

  “Mi shebeirach avoteinu,” June sang as sweetly as a child in a choir.

  “Oh, Miss June, that’s beautiful,” said Jessy.

  “M’kor hab’racha l’imoteinu.”

  Her voice was clear and strong t
oday, as if she were a younger woman.

  “I wonder if you could teach me your prayers? I could sing them with you.”

  June banged her hand sharply on her knee.

  “Do you think Miriam has a songbook? Or that you could bring one home with you from services this week?”

  Her leg jutted out straight.

  “Arf!” she said.

  Jessy laughed.

  “I’ll mention it to Miriam when she comes by later, so she can help you get it.”

  “Ruff!”

  “Can you sing it again?”

  June flopped her head toward her stomach.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, June. Let me hum the tune for you.”

  She had a pretty good ear, Jessy. She had the tune right, all the way through, though of course she had heard only the first two lines. She hummed it over and over, and June pushed the puzzle pieces around on the jigsaw puzzle, and knocked the one border that was finished to the floor.

  Jessy bent down to pick up the pieces while still humming, and June noticed the red glare of a police cruiser’s light flashing in the street. She watched it in a sort of dazed way. It made her think of Christmas, and of the neon lights of the El Capitan’s Christmas display, and then of the dripping red and white stripes of a candy cane already licked.

  “Ooooohhhhhhh!” she called.

  “It’s just a police car, Miss June. The light’s out at Eastern, and there’s an officer directing traffic. It was like that when I drove in.”

  “Oh doctor, I’m in trouble,” sang June.

  “Well, goodness gracious me,” sang Jessy.

  Jessy beamed at June, and June wished she could tell her how beautiful she was—how gloriously beautiful—though she supposed that Jessy did not think she was pretty at all. What Jessy thought of herself was there in her clothes. Today she wore a long-sleeved black cotton T-shirt that bunched up awkwardly under the lightweight fabric of a flowered halter-style dress. She wore black spandex shorts under the dress, and her heavy red-splotched legs disappeared into inexpensive maroon ankle boots, with a sharply angled heel that made her wobble as she walked. These clothes touched June.

  Sometimes Jessy took her on excursions, to the indoor garden at the Bellagio or the Barrick Museum on UNLV’s campus. And on the way home, they would stop at a convenience store for Diet Cokes, and sometimes for Diet Cokes with chocolate donuts. Jessy would lead her in and carefully fill two giant Styrofoam cups with ice and soda, and June would look around and wish that she could make herself say hello to the little girl touching all the bags of Doritos or to the old man with the SpongeBob backpack and the plaid pants.

  It was the sort of place Marshall would never believe his mother could be, where no one else she knew would ever take her, or imagine that she had been, and June loved these trips. Sometimes the stores reeked of smoke and were filled with signs forbidding things: no debit cards for purchases under five dollars, no checks cashed, no standing near the machines, no loitering, no change available. In these stores, there was almost always someone with hollowed-out eyes waiting to buy a pack of cigarettes, or jutting a hand into June’s face and asking for a dollar. The Cokes cost twice as much in these places as they did in the cleaner stores, the ones with cheerful clerks and a display case of fresh donuts and a clear plastic box where you could leave change for the people at Opportunity Village.

  One time June noticed a woman give a dollar to someone begging outside a store, and then she saw the panhandler walk in and buy his own jumbo soda—the day was so hot—for eighty-five cents. And the cheerful clerk, with a broken tooth and her hair pulled back over a broad bald patch, asked the man if he would like to leave his change for Opportunity Village. The panhandler looked at the clerk, and then at the photos of the middle-aged men who worked at the training center, and then at the change in his palm. He tipped the nickel and the dime into the plastic box. “Thank you!” said the clerk, to which the man replied, “Of course.”

  Seeing this made June shake her head violently and caused her to bump Jessy, and there was a little fuss about the spill and her dress. June couldn’t explain that her head shook because the man had given away the coins in order to help someone else, and because she never would have seen this if Jessy had not taken her into the Circle K—into the place that someone like June would never go.

  On Friday evening, a van picked up her and Miriam and took them to services at Congregation Ner Tamid. June had known Miriam for almost fifty years, and while they had not really been friends, time had knit them together. Now they were both widows, they were both old Jews, they were both longtime residents of the same declining neighborhood, with wide, low-slung houses far too large for them and yards that stretched a hundred feet in every direction. When they made their way to the van on Friday nights, they passed through sunken living rooms and marble entryways and chandeliers weighted with crystal drops that coruscated light and memories as if they were the same thing.

  It was Miriam who had asked June to donate to the campaign to build a synagogue in their neighborhood decades ago, and Miriam who had persuaded her to make a much larger donation when the synagogue decided to move to the suburbs years later. June had given the first time because it was easy, and because she and Miriam saw each other at school gatherings, and because her father would have been pleased to know she did it. She gave the second time because, at a certain point, after she had mostly retired from the El Capitan, after Marshall was busy with his own family, after she had started to recognize the first symptoms of whatever was wrong with her now, she had taken to stopping by Ner Tamid from time to time.

  Initially, she simply walked in the garden or by the wall that proclaimed itself to be the Moe B. Dalitz Religious School, and the staff got to know her and called out her name when she went by. Finally, she started to come to services on Friday nights.

  It was a reform synagogue, and the call-and-response in English surprised her at first, but the prayers were the same as she had always known them. The Hebrew came back to her effortlessly, easier almost than English sometimes, and the standing before the ark, the mournful sound of the Sh’ma—not a mournful prayer at all—and the little children who padded up to stand around the bimah when the rabbi called them up each week; these all moved her. When she was a child, the rabbi did not invite the children this way. She had tried to be quiet in synagogue.

  But the congregation built its new synagogue and moved miles away from where June lived. The old building was a Baptist church now. The rabbi’s assistant sent a van for her and Miriam each Friday night, and it stopped at the Sunrise Villas, and then, with the seats usually full, made its way to the new Ner Tamid on Valle Verde Drive. June had been determined not to like the pristine building, in spite of having helped fund it, but it was impossible not to appreciate the warm cream of the Israeli marble, the flicker of green palo verde leaves through the glass on either side of the bimah, the drape of the heavy velvet cloths that surrounded the arc. Too, the seats were comfortable, the sound system excellent, and the same rabbi and the same cantor led the services each Friday night.

  Of course, June was not the same as she had been.

  Miriam had always been as petite and small as June, and she was too frail to help her friend make her unsteady, unpredictable way into the temple. Usually the bus driver helped June down, and then one of the members of the men’s club took her arm, and danced with her, back and forth and tipping giddily away from wherever she intended to go, until she was seated with a heavy and unreadable siddur in her lap. She suspected that the usher handed her the prayer book in the hope that it would provide ballast. June hoped the same, though she had learned not to count on it.

  Tonight she made it all the way to the Mi Shebeirach—the prayer for healing—without attracting any attention to herself. She longed to sing, though she could rarely get any sound to emerge for these prayers she had known her whole life. This evening was no different. June concentrated on thinking about something else: her breakfast th
at morning or the outfit Marshall had worn to an Easter egg hunt when he was four. Sometimes this allowed her to sing. She would hear her own voice, slight but on pitch, as if it were someone else’s. Now the sanctuary’s lights were dimmed. Small twinkling bulbs had been strung through the potted trees, and the rabbi read out the names of those in need of healing, while the cantor prepared to lead the Mi Shebeirach, and some people behind her stood and said the names of people who had not been on the rabbi’s list.

  “Michael Jackson!” June yelled.

  The rabbi nodded her way.

  “Salvador Dali!”

  The rabbi nodded again and then turned slightly to look at the cantor. The woman at the piano began to play the first haunting notes.

  “Mu’ammar Gaddhafi!”

  June could not stop. She was standing now, and this bizarre list of names was flying out of her mouth, louder and louder. Miriam tugged on her elbow, and the usher from the men’s club hurried toward her, and she wished he would hurry a little faster, the old bum, and at this thought, she erupted into laughter. At least June didn’t call out any more names, but her hilarity was so absolute and so infectious that at first the rabbi gave a gentle smile, and then he nodded encouragingly to the usher—the man really was slow—and then suddenly, June heard the cantor give a snort, and someone to her left laughed, and then there was a titter and another laugh, and a whole row broke down, and then some member of the choir. Finally, the cantor was laughing and could not stop, and the rabbi, who had great control, gave in and started to laugh as well.

  When it was over, when the usher had her firmly by the arm and near the door, when Miriam looked away whether because she could not bear to see June like this or because she might start to laugh again—there was no way to know—the rabbi said, “Well, there’s nothing more healing than laughter,” and the congregants clapped, and June did that damn shimmy thing with her shoulders—good grief, there was no humiliation too great—and the service went on. June sat next to the usher on a padded bench in the hallway, which is where she ended up from time to time and did not mind so much. She could hear everything.