Round Rock

by Michelle Huneven

“And shots explode, ring out, so close and loud, I’m sure we’re already dead. Red and I leap apart. Behind us, a dozen laughing men, blue and gray, raise their smoking muskets.”

  Libby closed the book, wiped at her cheeks.

  Lewis handed her a paper towel. She blew her nose loudly. “Thanks for listening, Lewis,” she said. “I really wanted you to hear this.”

  LITTLE BILL came bearing gifts. He brought his own copy of Goodnight, Moon, a clever wooden rattle, and a tiny Stanford T-shirt sent from Joe.

  “So you know about my dad and all,” Little Bill said.

  “Yes,” said Libby. “And I’m sorry. Having parents shouldn’t be so difficult.”

  Little Bill shrugged. They smiled awkwardly at each other. “Mom just closed on a house in Bel Air.”

  In a recent conversation, Joe had told her that Billie was househunting, but this information caused in Libby a general physical loosening, as if all her muscles had gone flat. So. Now she knew.

  “I hope she finds what she wants,” Libby said. “And what will become of the house here, and the ranch?”

  Little Bill shrugged. “Rogelio will run the groves. Some producer wants to lease the house. If that doesn’t work out, she might sell.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to live here. Maybe later, but not now.”

  Libby could hear David’s timing in Little Bill’s careful way with words, and see the same inimitable sweetness in the boy’s eyes and face.

  “And Old Bill—what’s he going to do?”

  “Grandpa’s moving into Uncle John’s,” Little Bill said. “He lives only two blocks from Mom’s new place.”

  “Well, that makes sense,” said Libby, “the family close together like that. It’s still hard to imagine your mother living anywhere but here.”

  Little Bill smiled his kind smile. “I keep telling her she’ll be miserable not walking her irrigation lines every night. She says no, that was misery, and she’d much rather walk the aisles at Barneys. Who knows, maybe she’ll marry a movie star.”

  “Think you’ll ever tell her that you see your dad?”

  “I want to. I told my uncle John when I went to work for him. He was pretty cool about it. He thinks we should tell her, but only after she moves, so he can keep an eye on her. Actually …” Little Bill frowned. “Uncle John says we should check her into a hospital and then tell her, in case she flips. But I think, Right, and how do we get her into the hospital?”

  “You might feel relieved when everything’s out in the open.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.”

  Billie must have done many things right with this boy, Libby thought, for him to end up so measured and quiet and wise.

  “I’ll miss you,” she said.

  “Oh, I’ll be up all the time to see my dad. At least that will be easier. Next week, and Joe’s coming along. He says …” Little Bill paused, suddenly embarrassed.

  “He says … ?” Libby prompted.

  “He says maybe his new sister will be here by then.”

  “Tell him I’m working on it.”

  25 October 1:22 a.m. Dearest Red. Labor woke me up. I haven’t called anybody. Nothing severe so far, only the sensation of large hands tightening around my back, almost an embrace—I like to think that it’s you. I’m not scared yet. I’m going to take a bath.

  2:39. My skin’s all pruney, but somehow, warm water felt exactly right. Also, the shower jet on my back was great. Big movement afoot. I’m not uncomfortable yet. Except that I miss you so much. I’m writing this by candlelight. Cat on the chair next to me.

  Twelve minutes apart. It’s exciting and strange, and there’s a little pain creeping in. It comes almost after the contraction, almost an accompaniment to the thought, oh, that one’s over. A twinge, a little kiss of things to come, each one a little tighter than the last.

  In a way it almost seems polite, this pain. I’ll give you a little glimpse of me, it seems to say. Let you get used to me bit by bit.

  There’s a great urge to call somebody, and I’m going to yield to it in a minute. Oh, I wish it was you, Red. I won’t say it again. But I want to state it clearly, before I start this work. I wish you were here. I hate that you’re not. I want to register this complaint, just once, just here. I have your friends, your trusted servants, but they’re not you.

  I do see you moving through them.

  Baby, if I don’t write to you for a long time, you’ll know why.

  LEWIS was deep in a dream of an old section of Los Angeles, where he was driven over a bridge lit with acorn-shaped street lamps and into a realm where nomads’ fires burned across a plain. Something called his name, the syllables squawky, swaddled in static.

  “Huh … what?” Speaking, he woke himself up.

  “It’s started.” Libby’s voice came from the monitor.

  Lewis took in her words with a breath. Then they hit. “Jesus Christ!” he cried, and was out of bed, feet in pants, in one fluid movement. Then, his fingers were so uncooperative that he had to dial David’s number twice. “Libby’s in labor.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  The three of them took the Mercedes, Lewis driving.

  “It doesn’t really hurt yet,” Libby would say, then make the most scrunched-up face.

  “Long, smooth breaths, Lib,” David said. “Don’t forget.”

  The moon had set and trees, houses, hills, even the skies were silvery. Gloria, wrapped in a blue shawl, was waiting for them in front of her house. Rafael, small, spry, and white-haired, waved from the porch. A rooster crowed.

  They arrived at Buchanan General at four-fifteen a.m. Since the hospital wasn’t officially open, they had to use the emergency entrance. Lewis carried Libby’s overnight bag and stood to one side with Gloria while David and Libby negotiated at the desk. She was preregistered, but they still wanted to check her in and put her in a wheelchair. The wheelchair took forever to arrive, so Libby and David practiced breathing. “I’ll have this girl in the lobby if they don’t hurry up,” Libby said. When the wheelchair finally came, they loaded her bag and coat into it and Libby herself pushed it down the hall, into the elevator, and out into obstetrics on the fourth floor.

  The birthing room was painted a rose-tinted peach, with not-too-ugly watercolors of flowers and a baby’s building blocks. There was a rocking chair, a bed, a little cabinet to stash things in.

  Libby didn’t want to sit or lie down. She wanted to hike, climb stairs. “I need to move,” she said. “If I keep going, it’s like I can stay one step ahead of the pain. Or maybe I’ll be like that lady in Louisiana who gave birth standing in a bank line. They had to cut open her slacks because the baby was stuck in a pant leg.” Libby laughed and then gasped. David held up a finger to represent a candle, and Libby blew out air as if to extinguish it. “I don’t think this cervix is so fucking incompetent,” she said when the pain receded. “It’s feeling pretty damn competent to me.”

  She did have one terrible moment, when she just stood in the hall and wept, head in hands, tears streaming down her arms. She didn’t say anything, but you didn’t need a Ph.D. to guess what she was crying about.

  She roamed up and down the halls in Red’s enormous white terrycloth robe. Barbara showed up around six with big hugs all around. She and David and Gloria and Lewis took turns walking Libby up to the sixth floor, down to the lobby and back. Whenever Libby had a contraction, Lewis felt embarrassed by his inadequacy. “Breathe,” he’d say helplessly.

  A mistrust and dislike of the hospital staff gave Libby a reckless buoyancy. “Somebody tell that nurse to get a better peroxide job,” she said. She referred to her doctor as Big Head, with variations. “Where is Big Head, anyway? Tell him to finish his Cheerios already and get his ass down here. I can’t wait all day.” Passing by the nursing station, she said, “Tell Cabeza Grande to load up that epidural.”

  “Oooohh,” said the nurse with the bad hair. “
Somebody’s in transition.” She herded everyone into the birthing room and a different doctor came in and measured Libby. Big Head was allegedly on his way.

  Once Libby’s legs were up in the stirrups, Lewis got that fizzy feeling in hands and lips. He strayed to the periphery of the action, gave a good long look at the painting of those building blocks. After some time, the doctor said, “Okay, go ahead, push. Push. … Yes, yes. Beautiful. … That’s great—you’re doing great.” Lewis lasted for about two pushes. Seeing Libby’s entire body constricted in pain, hearing her whimpers and rough groaning, was more than he could take. Frankly, the whole thing was a tad too gynecological for him. Looking at those peachy walls, he had a wild urge to find someone, anyone, who could just stop the whole process. Then the gray linoleum floor slid upwards in a slick, waxy wave.

  “One’s going down,” someone said, and two attendants grabbed Lewis’s arms before he hit the floor.

  “Let’s find you a chair,” one attendant said. “You’re pale as a ghost.” He led Lewis out of the room. “We don’t need people passing out in there.”

  Lewis was too busy not throwing up to argue. In the waiting room across the hall, the walls were mercifully yellow. The attendant brought him a paper cup of water and instructed him to lower his head below his heart until he felt better. Lewis hung his head between his knees. By then, it was close to noon.

  “Hello? Are you okay?” A tall woman with brown hair and brown eyes was looking down at him. White blouse. Cotton flowered skirt. Hose and sensible shoes. Hospital ID card on her shirt pocket. She looked to be in her mid-thirties and was pretty in an appealing, midwestern way: big-breasted and buttoned-up.

  “Just catching my breath,” Lewis said. “Got a little intense in there.” He waved toward the birthing room.

  “You with María Mendoza?”

  “No, no—Libby Ray.”

  “Oh, so this is your first?”

  “The first birth I’ve seen, yeah,” he said.

  “I saw my first one yesterday,” she said. “Of course, I gave birth sixteen years ago, so there were no real surprises. Still, it’s unbelievably moving. And, of course, I also knew it would be over soon. It will be over for you too—before you know it.”

  Lewis looked at her more closely. “Are you a doctor?”

  “No, a chaplain. A student chaplain. I’m in seminary, and I have to do this clinical-pastoral internship before I can be ordained. This is my second day. I have no idea what I’m doing. They tell you to be a presence, to just sit there and listen.” She caught herself, then laughed. “And here I am blabbing away.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t have anything to say. I almost passed out. I’m still a little shaky.” The woman’s badge did, in fact, say “Clergy.” Lewis held up a vibrating hand. “I mean, it’s educational, but God—so much pain. I’m never going to complain about my mother again. Makes me queasy just to think about it.” Lewis put his head back down between his knees, speaking up at her sideways. “It’s funny. Some of my friends say I should be a minister. The only problem is, I don’t have a religion. I mean, I have spiritual leanings, and I meditate, but I don’t believe in God. Major hitch.”

  “Oh, I don’t know if I believe in God God,” she said. “I’m pretty much a Hindu myself.”

  “Don’t you have to believe in God to be a minister?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” She laughed gaily. “At least nobody’s made me sign any loyalty oath.”

  Her name was Linda. She was a Unitarian, she said, and practiced Hindu chanting meditation for serenity, Buddhist breathing meditation for insight.

  Lewis heard thudding and sprang to his feet. He made it into the hall and saw a blond-haired doctor sprint past and push through the clot of people standing in Libby’s doorway. “Oh!” Lewis said. “Something’s going on.” His head buzzed. He didn’t know what to do.

  “Want me to go see?” asked Linda.

  “Please.”

  Alone, Lewis took a deep breath. God, he thought, or whatever, don’t let anything happen to Libby and that baby now. He limped over to the waiting room’s window, steadied himself against the sill. Outside, a roof was the color of cigarette ashes, with pink vents and large aluminum air-conditioner cowlings. Farther off, the tinder-dry hills were the color of lions. The sky was milky, the glare intense. Libby’s pain was going to be over soon, Lewis told himself, no matter what.

  Linda reappeared almost immediately, hair flying, eyes ablaze, skirt swishing with her sudden turn at the door. “Hey!” She grabbed Lewis by the hand. “Hurry up! Come meet your beautiful baby girl!”