Round Rock

by Michelle Huneven

  Libby intuitively played according to his rules. No accidentally bumping into him around town. No hangup phone calls at work. No surprise visits, ever. He made it clear he was leaving the first week of September, and she’d made no attempt to weave any connective threads into the future.

  “It’s not serious,” Lewis assured Red in one postprandial walk over to the Blue House. “It’s just fun.”

  “You’re seeing her three, four times a week? Sounds full-steam-ahead to me.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not about to move in with her.”

  “But you’ve considered it?”

  “I could never live in a trailer. Not with Libby, not with the Queen of Sheba.”

  Red’s lips twitched in a smile, instantly suppressed.

  “And if you must know, Libby’s not really my body type.”

  “That matters so much to you?”

  “I’m not saying anything’s wrong with her. She’s not accountable for my taste.” Lewis honestly did prefer either tiny, slim women or tall, strong, regal women—the dainty or the glorious—and Libby was neither. “She’s more like a friend than someone I’d fall in love with.”

  “Ah, all this self-knowledge,” said Red. “Could it be the result of a fearless and searching moral inventory?”

  Lewis balled up his fist and delivered a light punch to Red’s shoulder. “Nag, nag, nag,” he said.

  IF PEOPLE wanted to know about Deputy Sheriff Burt McLemoore leaving his wife for the babysitter, they had to go to the grocería. If they wanted to know about town council and school board meetings, weddings and church news, blood drives and how promptly the fire department responded to a man in anaphylactic shock from a bee sting, they turned to the Rito River News, a small-town tabloid leavened with local advertisements. Round Rock placed the same ad every week: a photo of an unidentifiable man hunched over a bottle and a glass, with the caption “Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired?”

  The most entertaining writing was usually found in short pieces from a third-rate wire service, stories selected solely on the basis of how much unsold ad space needed to be filled. WIFE BEHEADS HUSBAND—HEAD FOUND IN BREADBOX. CANNIBALISM IN ECUADOR. WOMAN MARKETS GRANDMOTHER’S SECRET WART CURE.

  Libby was paging through the paper as Lewis cooked dinner and Red arranged small, heat-kissed roses in a vase. “Hey, you guys,” Libby said, spreading the paper over Red’s kitchen table. “Read this.”

  HUMAN TOUCH PRESERVES

  Home Experiment Spurs UC Scientists

  Santa Cruz, CA. In a home experiment, local massage therapist Heiko Hakuono may have found proof that human touch is capable of preserving perishable organic matter.

  Hakuono, who owns Full Body Care, Inc., has long been convinced of the healing power of human hands. One day, when a friend of hers gave her half a dozen fresh eggs, Hakuono came up with a way to prove it.

  Hakuono cracked three of the eggs into a jar and stored the jar in her cupboard. The other three eggs she cracked into an identical second jar which was distinguished by a small daub of red nail polish. Hakuono held the second jar in her hands for two hours every day. “I held it as I talked on the phone, as I watched TV. I held it in both hands as if it was something very precious, something alive.” In six weeks, the untouched eggs in the cupboard were, according to Hakuono, “foaming up and looking very toxic, very scary,” whereas the eggs she had held for a minimum of two hours a day were as bright and fresh-looking as the day they were laid.

  Hakuono and her eggs have made a number of appearances on local television talk shows. Several leading scientists at U.C. Santa Cruz have vowed to re-create her experiment under laboratory conditions. “Some people may be surprised by such results,” says Hakuono. “As a massage therapist, I merely saw new proof of what I observe daily in my work.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” Red said. “In AA meetings, you can see people relax when they hold hands for the prayer or hug each other.”

  “Ugh,” said Lewis. “Hugging and the Lord’s Prayer. What I hate most in AA.” He jabbed the article with his finger. “Did this massage therapist open that jar of eggs? The real proof would be if she scrambled ’em up for breakfast.”

  “I bet she could’ve,” said Libby. “I’d like to try this experiment.”

  “Why?” said Lewis.

  “What if it’s true?” Libby asked. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “No.”

  “I have fresh eggs.” Red opened the refrigerator. “Dropped off this morning.”

  “Are you guys serious?” said Lewis.

  Red and Libby rummaged through the cupboards until they found small, matching jam jars, which they sterilized in the water Lewis had boiling for pasta. After the jars cooled, they carefully cracked three eggs into each one. One jar went into the pantry next to cans of Progresso soup. Throughout dinner, Libby held the other jar on her lap, cupping it when she could.

  Both Red and Libby became positively religious about those eggs. Lewis would find Red at all hours, at the table or watching television, clasping the jar as he would a crystal ball. “Hey,” he’d say, “how’s Operation Stinkbomb?”

  Red would hold up the jar, three slumpy yellow orbs in two inches of viscous, slightly cloudy fluid. “Looking pretty darn good, don’t you think?”

  LAKE Rito on Sunday morning was the color of tarnished silver. The damp morning air was heavily spiced with sage. The sun was up elsewhere, but not in the narrow inlet where Libby and Lewis set up the poles. Libby cut the bait, pork livers that looked like clumps of solid blood. Lewis couldn’t watch or he’d gag. Instead, he positioned the chairs, secured poles against them, divided up the Sunday paper.

  They each manned two poles, drinking coffee from a green metal Thermos. Fishermen trolled past, their engines a low throb. Libby wrote in her journal. Lewis meditated. A Tibetan Buddhist monk was drying out at Round Rock—a guy from Cincinnati named Simon—and he’d given Lewis meditation techniques, such as counting out-breaths up to ten, over and over, which supposedly could quell the ceaseless inner dithering. Lewis practiced this every morning for twenty minutes. Here at the lake, the sun appeared as a thin red line between his eyelids. The wind funnelled empty space into his lungs. He experienced infinitesimal stretches of mental rest.

  Lewis rubbed his eyes, stretched his legs, pulling out of his meditation. Libby kept scratching away in her little cardboard-bound notebook. That killed him. Here he was, the published essayist, just loafing, while she filled page after page in her almost-daily journal.

  Lewis touched her arm. “Hey, Lib. Read me something from your journal. I won’t be critical.” He jiggled her shoulder. “Something about me. I know it’s in there.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” she said, and thumbed through pages of her symmetrical, clever handwriting. “Here’s where you and Red and I talked about who would write the novels of our lives. Remember?”

  The conversation at dinner last week. “Sure. Read that.”

  He hoped to follow along over her shoulder, but she canted the journal so all he could see was the faux-marbleized cover.

  “Lewis, barefoot as usual, sits perched on the kitchen stool, picks at his toes. Picking at one’s toenails, he says, is one of the great unsung pleasures of life.”

  “I can’t believe you wrote that down!” said Lewis. “Jesus!”

  “I won’t read if you’re going to interrupt me every two sentences.”

  “I’ll be quiet.” He was so curious now, he would’ve agreed to almost anything.

  “I consider collecting his peeled-off nail bits in case I ever need to send them to Madame Wanda the Wangateuse.”

  “Wait just a second. Madame what?”

  “Madame Wanda,” said Libby, “is a Haitian hoodoo doctor I knew in New Orleans.”

  “You’d send my toenails to a hoodoo doctor?”

  “Hopefully I won’t have to.” She gave him a round-eyed, leveling look. “But I can’t read if you’re going to keep flipping out.
”

  “I’m not flipping out. I just don’t want my toenails going to New Orleans. But go on. Please.”

  “Red comes in and says he just was at the grocería, and Victor Ibañez told him we were having chicken and red potatoes and chocolate mint ice cream for dinner.

  “Can’t you buy one damn bag of groceries in this town without it becoming a matter of public record? Lewis says. Don’t people around here have anything more important to talk about?

  “We can’t all be gloriously profound like you, I tell him.

  “Me? says Lewis. I’m not so profound.

  “Oh no, Red says. You only think you’re living a Dostoyevsky novel.

  “What’s wrong with that? Lewis says. If anybody were to write the novel of my life, I’d want it to be Dostoyevsky.

  “I can just see it, says Red. The Genius. A companion volume to The Idiot.

  “Hey thanks, Redsy. But more likely it would be The Obsessed, companion volume to The Possessed.

  “I say, Who would write the novel of Red’s life?

  “Red says, I could see myself as a bit player in a Dickens novel. One of those good-hearted ninnies running a hopeless institution.

  “No, I say, I mean the novel of your life. You can’t be a secondary character.

  “Red thinks for a while and says, So how about Henry James? He’s suitably stylish and unflinching.

  “Perfect! Lewis yells. Perfect! It could be Portrait of a Saint, companion volume to Portrait of a Lady.

  “Red’s face reddens. Uh, I was thinking maybe, The Ritonians, like The Bostonians.

  “Lewis says, I know who’d write Libby’s novel. Jane Austen.

  “I don’t think so, I say. All she could do was get people married. And I’ve already been married. I need an author who can write beyond the happily-ever-after. Maybe Emily Bronte. Isn’t Wuthering Heights about how the wrong boyfriend wrecks life for two generations?

  “Lewis rolls his eyes.”

  “I did not,” Lewis said. “I did not roll my eyes.”

  “Yes you did, and you said ‘Priceless,’ too, really sarcastically.”

  “It was priceless. I just wish my nineteenth-century-Brit-lit prof could’ve heard your synopsis.” He slipped his hand around Libby’s thigh. “Go on. Please. I’ll be good.”

  “Red says, It could be titled simply Libby Daw. Like Jane Eyre.

  “Wuthering Heights was a house, I say. So mine could be The Manatee.

  “You mean the sea cow? says Red. I don’t get it.

  “Manatee’s the brand of my trailer.

  “Lewis says, How ’bout In the Belly of the Manatee?”

  Lewis burst out laughing. “Sorry, sorry,” he sputtered.

  “Ha, ha, ha,” Libby said, and read on.

  “Who knows? says Red. Maybe Lewis will write the book of all our lives.

  “What, hollers Lewis, and bore everyone to death?”

  Lewis kicked the mud flats under his heels. “You’re already writing the book! I have to start watching what I say around you!”

  Libby stuffed her journal into her canvas tote and turned away. He saw then that he couldn’t joke with her, not about her writing. “It’s good, Libby. Really. You even make me sound funny.”

  “Right. Like that’s my whole purpose in life.”

  JOE, Red’s son, spent every August at Round Rock. During the last week in July, Red drove up to San Francisco to fetch him. Red hadn’t been gone six hours when Libby’s car pulled up in front of the Round Rock office.

  Lewis’s heart sank. Did she think, now that Red was out of town for a few days, she could come over any old time? He didn’t want this casual dropping-by business to start. He’d say he was too busy to talk. Nip the impulse in the bud. As he waited for her knock, the phone rang. He talked to a woman about her husband’s medical insurance for ten minutes. When he got off the phone, Libby still hadn’t come to the door.

  He found her in Red Ray’s living room. “Oh, hi!” She was curled up on the sofa watching the local news and drinking a glass of ice water. She had on a black tank top and snow white shorts. Her skin was the color of roasted peanuts.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Done with work for the day?” she asked.

  “Nope. I’m swamped with stuff.”

  She held up the jar of eggs, then nestled them back between her legs. “Egg sitting,” she said.

  “Why not take them over to your house?”

  “Red and I agreed that the two jars should be in the same place, the only variable being human touch.”

  Lewis stood between her and the television. She smiled up at him, a question.

  “I got a lot of work to do,” he said.

  “So you said.” She leaned to one side, to look past him at the television.

  Back at the office, he kept wondering if he should go over again and act a little nicer. In the meantime, the Falcon disappeared.

  Libby showed up the next day, too, going into Red’s without so much as a “Hi, how are you?” Red and Libby’s little science project was beginning to irritate the hell out of him. What was so damn fascinating about a couple of rotting eggs?

  He found her in exactly the same circumstance: sofa, ice water, TV on, eggs nestled in lap. Lewis knelt and slid a hand inside her tank top, over her lace-harnessed breast. She held the eggs up and over to the side. “Put those damn things down,” he said, taking the jar from her grasp, “and let me demonstrate the benefits of human touch.”

  YVETTE released Joe to Red with the familiar litany of instructions: Do things with him. He’s at that age when he really needs his father.

  Joe had grown four inches in the last six months. A trauma, Yvette told Red, and physically quite painful. The boy’s skin was so pale and his limbs so skinny that he looked long, cartilaginous, new, as if he’d just uncurled from incubation. His eyes were blue, his hair ash and likely to turn white in his twenties, as his mother’s had.

  The two of them drove down the coast. Joe talked about baseball until it became obvious that Red didn’t know who was on any of the teams. The boy then read a Rolling Stone and the Sunday sports section. Spend time with him, Yvette had said. Do some projects together. These instructions sounded more and more like Zen koans.

  Once at Round Rock, Joe was independent, intent on amusing himself. He’d brought fat science-fiction and spy novels. Every morning, while Red showered and made breakfast, Joe took a forty-minute run, returning flushed, bright red, every capillary in his sheer skin pumped full of blood. In the evenings, when Red went to his meetings, Joe ran again. Once, Red stepped out on the Blue House’s front porch and spotted Joe moving noiselessly down on the roadway, his skin gray in the dusk, his arms and legs pumping, spidery.

  Think of some interactive activities: Yvette spoke with such a plea in her voice, Red wondered if Joe had any friends at all in San Francisco. Here in Rito, at least, he had Little Bill Fitzgerald. They hiked together, rode bikes, swam in the river, and, he hoped, amused themselves without resorting to anything illegal. When Red was Joe’s age, Frank was his best friend and their favorite activities were breaking-and-entering and drinking, naturally, whatever they got their hands on.

  Yvette’s imperatives heightened Red’s already firm sense of parental inadequacy. “His mother says I’m supposed to think up interactive activities,” he told Lewis.

  “Take him fishing,” Lewis said.

  “I haven’t fished for years. I wouldn’t remember which end of the line to put in the water.”

  “Nothing to it,” Lewis said. “Take him to the lake, fish from the bank like Libby and I do. It’s great. Fresh air. Big body of water. Something always happens.”

  “I don’t know,” Red said. “Rods, reels, hooks, tackle boxes, bait—it’s overwhelming.”

  “Talk to Libby. She’s got it down to an art. Want me to ask her? We go every Sunday, anyway, so maybe we could all go together. Whaddaya say?”

  Somehow, through no effort of his own, Red a
nd son were booked for Sunday’s excursion. The night before, he took Joe to the Kmart and bought rods and reels. At five-thirty a.m., Libby and Lewis drove up and loaded an ungodly amount of fishing and picnic supplies into the back of Red’s pickup. Joe was thrilled to ride in the back while Red, Libby, and Lewis were crammed into the cab. Libby, in the middle, kept one hand against the dash to brace herself from leaning into Red. He had to touch her thigh every time he shifted gears. Her ponytail switched his face. She smelled of sandalwood soap.

  “Maybe we’ll have bass for dinner,” Libby said. “Makes me hungry just thinking about it. Did anyone have breakfast? I’m starving. Lewis,” she said, “could you hand me one of those apples in the bag at your feet?”

  Lewis dug around in the canvas sack and found an apple. Libby’s enormous, thirsty bites sent juice spraying. “Wanna bite, Red?” She held the half-eaten fruit so close to Red’s face that he could smell the cider, see her lipstick staining the crumpled white meat.

  “Naw, no thanks, Lib,” he muttered, blood suffusing his face.

  In all the years he’d lived in Rito, Red hadn’t spent much time at the lake. A CCC project from the thirties, a reservoir for Los Angeles, it looked to him bleak and inhospitable, simply a valley in chaparral foothills plugged up and filled with water. An enormous county park with spaces for four hundred RVs was often filled to capacity during the summer, and you had to pay six dollars at the park entrance to visit two small, overcrowded stretches of sandy beach.

  Libby, however, directed him down a dirt road outside the park gates. The road, cut like a shelf in the hill, ran alongside a skinny inlet. Red parked behind three other vehicles and a trash can spewing beer cans and soggy garbage.

  Toting a rusty cooler, lawn chairs, old quilts, and thickets of fishing poles, they picked their way down a steep bank of sharp fill rock. The water was as opaque and green as a farm pond. The wedge of sky overhead had a lemon-colored tint. Lewis led them along the shore halfway to the main body of the lake, then stopped and planted the ice chest a few feet from the water. The mud-flat bank looked like a floor of warped tiles.