'Round Midnight

by Laura McBride

  The other tests are less relaxing. For four minutes, there is a high-pitched series of whirs and clicks that remind me of my grandson playing video games at the beach house, and then there are three or four more tests, all identified for me by their duration: this one three minutes and thirty seconds, that one forty-five seconds, the next one five minutes. I have lived long enough to hear the sound of magnets taking photos of my brain, and I am pleased about this, and I wish I could live longer, to see all of the other things we will discover.

  Afterward, I am very tired. Helen takes me home, and I go to the sunroom, where I like to take a nap in the afternoons. I don’t know how long I’m there, a few minutes, a few hours, but I wake to the sound of the doorbell ringing, and then of Helen telling someone—someone she doesn’t recognize, I can tell—that I am not available, that I do not take callers without an appointment, that the woman can call my son, Marshall, if she wishes to see me.

  “Please. My name’s Coral. I just want to say hello. I think she’ll want to see me.”

  “No. I’ve asked you to leave, and if I have to, I’ll call the police.”

  “Of course. I understand. You’re doing your job, and I know Ms. Dibb is not well, I know I’m asking a lot. It’s just, I really want to see her. And I think she’ll want to see me.”

  By this time, I have gotten up and headed for the door. Whatever Helen gave me this morning makes me loopy, but it also seems to help me do what I want. I crack sharply into a hutch. Well, at least it sort of helps me. I am headed to the door, if not in a very direct way.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!”I call.

  “Miss June, it’s okay. You’re all right. There’s nothing you need to worry about out here.”

  Helen is annoyed. At me, at whoever is at the door.

  “Oh!” I call louder.

  “Ma’am, you’ll have to go. I’m busy.”

  I can’t see what is happening, but I don’t hear the door close. I can’t hear what the woman who is there says.

  “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow,” I sing, bizarrely.

  “Everything’s all right, Miss June. I’m coming.”

  “Rockin’ robin. Tweet, tweet, tweet! Rockin’ robin.” I am coming full speed now. I’ve taken a route through the dining room, instead of straight to the front door, but the singing is helping me get there.

  “Hopping and a-bopping and a-singing his song.”

  I come around the corner and catch sight of my visitor. She’s a black woman, maybe fifty, wearing a well-cut suit and good shoes and holding a leather bag. I don’t know her, which is disappointing, because I thought she said I would want to see her.

  “There was no reason to get up,” Helen says to me.

  “Hello, Mrs. Dibb,” says the woman in a strangely strained way.

  “Tweet, tweet, tweet!” I sing.

  The woman looks toward Helen, who isn’t about to explain anything to her. Helen tells me to go back to the sunroom—I really don’t like Helen very much—and then she tells the woman that I have had a very long morning and cannot be disturbed.

  “I’m sorry to bother you. I’d like to come back. Maybe another day this week? I’d just like to talk with Mrs. Dibb for a little bit.”

  “I told you to contact Mrs. Dibb’s son. If he says it’s okay, then that will be fine.”

  I flail my right arm wildly, and it knocks against the entryway table, which hurts, and which also causes a picture frame that is standing there to fall over. Helen comes over to steady me, and the woman looks at me intently. I think about Matt, I think about him singing “S’wonderful,” and the way the sun helps me stretch when we do our therapy sessions outside. I concentrate on Matt as hard as I can, and sure enough, I say what I want to say.

  “Please stay. Please stay now.”

  “Miss June, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Helen, go in the kitchen.”

  “I’ll stay with you, Miss June.”

  “No!”

  My voice is sharp, and the woman listens to the two of us quietly, without saying anything, and then she says, “What about if Mrs. Dibb and I just sit down, right over there? Mrs. Dibb?”

  And she reaches out her hand, and I take it, and, miraculously, we just walk over to the two chairs arranged by the fireplace, and I sit down, without a jolt or a jerk or a pull in the wrong direction. The woman holds my hand lightly, but she does not let it go when I sit down. She looks at it; she looks at my hand as if it means something to her, so I look at it, and I look at hers, darker than mine, but similarly long and slender. We both have shell-shaped nails. I never liked my nails, but they look sort of nice on her.

  Helen rustles over, impatience brimming.

  “Tea,” I say.

  I’m feeling really proud of myself, which is a mistake, because it will almost certainly put an end to this little moment where my body seems to be listening to me. The woman sits down in the chair next to mine.

  “My name’s Coral Jackson. I teach choir at Foothill High School.”

  Oh darn. I hope she’s not here to ask for money.

  “But that lucky old sun got nothin’ to do but roll around heaven all day.” I’d rather sing than talk about money. If I wanted to do something with my money, I wouldn’t be able to do it. Marshall handles all that, and I can’t even tell him that I want a bite of dinner.

  I’ve already stopped thinking about Coral Jackson, but she surprises me by picking up my song.

  “Fuss with my woman, toil for my kids, sweat ’til I’m wrinkled and gray.”

  She has a beautiful voice. Beautiful. I stomp my feet and shake my head a bit. And she keeps singing.

  “While that lucky old sun has nothin’ to do, but roll around heaven all day.”

  “Roll around heaven all day,” I sing back.

  She smiles.

  “I’m sorry to come without calling. I was going to call your son, Marshall.”

  She knows Marshall.

  “But . . . but I . . . I didn’t do it.”

  Is this about Marshall? Is he okay? How does she know Marshall?

  “I mean, I will call him. I’m happy to call him and tell him that I want to visit you. I just . . . I was nearby. I just stopped.”

  I wish she would sing again. I try. “Would you like to swing on a star? Carry moonbeams home in a jar?”

  Something about my singing bothers her. I see her lip tremble, and her forehead crease. She looks down at her hands.

  “My mother is Augusta Jackson.”

  It’s a familiar name. But, of course, there could be a lot of Augusta Jacksons. Who was Augusta?

  “She worked for your husband a long time ago.”

  Augusta Jackson! Of course. Ray’s wife.

  “No, no, no,” I say, nodding my head and smiling.

  “You remember her?”

  She understands that I meant yes. This is Augusta’s daughter. She’s coming to say thank you. All those years that Del took care of that family. And Leo kept it up after, whatever it was that Del had arranged.

  “My mother told me a story.”

  It’s nice of her to come and see me, an old woman. I wonder if Augusta’s still alive. She was about my age. A little older, maybe.

  “She told me a story about your husband.”

  Are those tears? There are tears running down Coral Jackson’s face. But she keeps talking, as if they aren’t even there.

  “It was 1960.”

  So Augusta’s daughter is a teacher. She dresses nicely for a teacher. It’s great to think that Del helped her somehow. He loved Ray so much. This must be Ray’s youngest, the one that was the same age as Marshall.

  The woman is looking down at her lap. She seems to be having trouble speaking. I want to pat her on the knee, tell her it was really so little. That money. She shouldn’t feel a debt, because her father had been so important to Del. Del would have given Ray much more than that if he’d lived. And also, nobody had ever really known what happened when Ray died.


  I don’t like to think of those days. How naïve I was. How little I understood. I sing to stop thinking.

  “Ol’ man river. That old man river. He just keeps rolling. He just keeps rolling along.”

  She doesn’t join me this time.

  She keeps looking down, and I can hear the teakettle whistling, and I know Helen is making some tea for us.

  “I get weary, and sick of trying. I’m tired of living, and feared of dying.”

  I hear Helen pick it up in the kitchen. She can sing too, though she almost never sings with me. “And ol’ man river, he just keeps rolling along.”

  The woman looks up. She is clearly crying; she seems really upset. I feel bad for her, and I want so much to tell her that it is okay. That things will be okay. Whatever is wrong. Things will work out. I really believe that. If you just get lucky and stay alive, a lot of things work out.

  “Augusta wasn’t really my mother.”

  I wish I could nod my head, look like I’m listening to her. I am listening, but for some reason, I have decided to do a little bebop rhythm in my chair. My shoulders are shaking, and my head is bobbing, and I feel lucky just to be able to see her face out of the corner of my eye.

  “Odell Dibb brought me to her as a baby. When I was just a few days old.”

  What?

  “He didn’t tell my mother . . . Augusta . . . where I came from. He just asked her to take care of me.”

  I have flung myself out of the chair, and I am banging my head against the fireplace. Helen comes running.

  “What’s going on here? Miss June, stop! What did you say to her?”

  Coral Jackson is on her feet, and she is trying to capture me in her arms, she is trying to keep me from banging my head—pound, pound—on the wall. My head really hurts, and my stomach is sick, and I can’t get my body to stop convulsing, but I am trying to look at her, I am trying to look at Coral Jackson. Coral! Of course. Coral!

  Helen comes and pushes Coral out of the way.

  “You need to leave. You need to leave this house right away!”

  And I can hear Coral trying to catch her breath, crying, and saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I just had to see you. I’ve been looking—”

  And at that, I wrench myself away from Helen, and just by accident, I am facing Coral, I am looking at my daughter, at the person I never once stopped dreaming about, at the person I did not think I would ever see, and I can’t say anything I want to say, I can’t control my expression, I can’t tell her in any way how fervently I hunted for her, how I didn’t know where to look, how Del died, how she wasn’t in Alabama, how there was no one to ask. How I hoped. Until there was nothing left to hope for. Until I could not imagine any wild, serendipitous, impossible way that I could find her. How had she found me? And really, how could it be that I would never be able to tell her how much I had wanted to find her?

  Tears stream down her face, and I can see that she is about to leave. That she doesn’t know what else to do. That it is all too much. And I think of Eddie, her father, and how she looks more like me than like him. But her voice. It’s beautiful. She has Eddie’s voice.

  “In this world of hope, in this world of fear.”

  Just like that, the song comes to me.

  “I’ll be your rock. And you’ll be my cheer. Every moment with you is so dear.”

  Eddie’s song.

  She knows it.

  I see it on her face. She knows the song. She knows why I am singing it. She knows that I know.

  And like that, my daughter steps forward and takes my wayward, truculent, unruly body into her arms.

  So that we can dance.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The correct answer to who made it possible to write ’Round Midnight is everyone I ever loved, and everyone who ever loved me. My editor, wise soul, suggests I make the list a bit shorter.

  So I’ll start at the top of the marquee. My husband, Bill Yaffe, for his great stores of patience, kindness, and humor (I noticed). And my editor, Trish Todd, for her counsel, her insight, and her commitment. Without her, no dream comes true.

  There are others. My spirited agent Stephanie Cabot. All the cool kids at Touchstone—if this is our ride, then my hands are up and my eyes wide open—especially Susan Moldow, Tara Parsons, David Falk, Shida Carr, Kelsey Manning, Meredith Vilarello, Kaitlin Olson, Leah Morse, Cherlynne Li, Loretta Denner, and Philip Bashe (plus a coolest-of-all button for Wendy Sheanin). Those brave first readers: Jamie Jadid, Jodi McBride, Deb Newman, Vicki McBride, Randee Kelley, Tracy Conley, and Maya McBride. The College of Southern Nevada, for championing my journey. Dawn Stuart, whose Books In Common so enriched my author life. The Gernert Company, particularly Ellen Coughtrey. For meaningful favors: Grace McBride, Yolanda Hernandez, and Third Chan. And for delighting me: Leah Deborah and Noah Max.

  To publish a novel is to find oneself suddenly immersed in a new world. To the readers who shared their deeply felt experiences. To the authors, who encouraged and allowed and celebrated, without hesitation. (In particular, Joanna Rakoff, Patry Francis, Margot Livesey.) And to the booksellers, those fairy godparents. Thank you. Two small words that do not begin to say all I feel.

  Touchstone Reading Group Guide

  'Round Midnight

  This reading group guide for ’Round Midnight includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Laura McBride. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

  Introduction

  What is it about the Midnight Club?

  Spanning the six decades during which Las Vegas grows from a dusty whistle-stop into a melting-pot metropolis, ’Round Midnight tells the story of four women whose lives intertwine after each one experiences a transformative moment in this Las Vegas nightclub.

  The one who falls in love. June hires a charismatic black singer to anchor her club, but her fast-paced lifestyle runs aground as racial tensions mount.

  The one who gets lucky. Honorata leaves the Philippines to become a mail-order bride, then strikes it rich in the Midnight Room.

  The one whose heart is broken. Engracia finds bad luck in the Midnight Room, and becomes enmeshed in Honorata’s secrets when she confronts a man with a gun.

  The one who keeps hoping. Coral struggles with her mysterious past until an attempt to help Engracia steers her to the Midnight Room.

  Even in their darkest hours, these women make courageous choices that transform those they love, those they don’t know, and most profoundly, each other.

  Topics & Questions for Discussion

  1. Describe El Capitan. What does June love about it? How and why is it significant to the other characters in ’Round Midnight? Does it change throughout time?

  2. Why do you think McBride introduces the principal characters as falling in love, and getting lucky, and so on? How does those descriptions affect your reading of their stories?

  3. When June Stein first appears, the narrator says of her, “She was bad for the neighborhood. Things happened to other girls because of June Stein.” What were your initial impressions of June? Did you like her? Were you surprised by the way her story ended?

  4. At the end of June’s section, Del examines the choices he made. What were they? Were they bad?

  5. When Honorata arrived in the United States, she thought that “the Honorata who had lived in Manila did not exist anymore.” How has she changed?

  6. Augusta tells Coral: “Life is long. There’s a lot of ways for a secret to come out.” What secret has Augusta been keeping? Do you agree with her decision to do so?

  7. When Coral tells Ada she’s afraid to share news of her pregnancy, Ada instructs her to “give up that Coral thing. . . . that everything-has-to-be-right, my-life-isn’t-messy thing.” Do you think Coral is a perfectionist, needing
to control everything around her? How have her experiences shaped her? Why is she afraid to tell Koji about her pregnancy?

  8. Nanay tells Honorata that Malaya is “an American,” who “should do American things.” What does she mean? Do you think Malaya and Honorata are alike despite coming of age in different cultures?

  9. In the aftermath of June’s pregnancy, she believes that “Del was not the one who had made the mistake. It was not Del who had risked Marshall’s world.” Do you agree? What mistakes have been made? How does Del handle this situation?

  10. Do you think Del’s actions are justified? What effect do they have on both Del and June?

  11. Coral sees her relationship with Gerald as “a private shame.” Do you think any of the romantic relationships in ’Round Midnight are healthy?

  12. Cora believes that, ultimately, marrying Del “was going to be the best decision June ever made.” Do you agree? Is June’s marriage to Del beneficial to her? Did you find any aspects of their relationship surprising?

  13. Moving to Las Vegas was “not the hardest thing [Engracia] had done. It was easy to do hard things for her son.” What other sacrifices, if any, does Engracia make for him? Do you think she’s a good mother? Do other characters in ’Round Midnight make sacrifices for their children? Were there any that you found particularly moving?

  14. Once Coral was older, “she sometimes imagined Odell Dibb differently than Augusta had described him.” What did you think of Odell? Did you like him?

  15. Eddie, speaking to June about their relationship, says, “For you, it’s fun. For me, it’s the end.” Is the friendship dangerous for each of them? Do they also support each other?