Authors: Michelle Huneven
Barbara directed her squint at Lewis’s back, smiled again. “I love him.”
“I can’t say that.”
“Oh, Lewis has an affectionate nature. I have to beat it out of him sometimes, but he can be incredibly loyal and helpful in his own way.”
“Red likes him, too.”
At the village, the three men and Barbara went to look at the refurbished bungalow where Lewis might bunk, and also at the boarded-up bungalow where David grew up.
Libby, claiming the excuse of pressing duties, ducked into the office, lay down on the sofa, and immediately drifted off. One of pregnancy’s few boons: the instant nap. A few minutes later, footsteps on the porch woke her up.
“So tell me,” Lewis said. “What do you think so far?”
“I like it here,” Barbara answered. “It’s so tranquil. And Red Ray is a babe. A total babe.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah. And Libby too. She has such a great face.”
“Libby hates me,” he said.
“Yeah, well,” said Barbara. “And David’s adorable.”
“He’s already taken, Barb. He has a rich girlfriend down in T.J.”
“Lewis, please. You mean
I’m
already taken.”
Libby didn’t have to guess that it was Lewis who kicked a porch support. A long silence followed—had they gone away?—then Lewis finally said, “You won’t miss me too much if I take the job?”
Barbara’s laugh was so long and loud, it would’ve yanked Libby from the deepest sleep. “Lewis, Lewis, Lewis. Let’s get this straight. Who’s gonna miss whom?”
O
N A
Monday morning, Red dropped his ’46 Ford at the Ruiz brothers’ garage, then walked up Main Street. The pickup needed its carburetor rebuilt, a job Red didn’t trust to anyone presently working in the Round Rock garage. He had considered waiting on the carburetor until Lewis came back up, but there was no way of telling if he was actually going to take the job. Convincing him to come cook at the farm was like luring a skittish animal to hand-held food. Red had been careful not to push or get his own hopes up, while making it clear that Lewis was wholly welcome. Libby didn’t understand—and Red wasn’t so sure he did, either—why he so yearned to have him back at the farm. Some people you had business with in this life, and Lewis was one of those people in Red’s. Libby felt Lewis had already fulfilled his function in bringing the two of them together. Perhaps so;
and he’d also helped Red see his own shortcomings as sponsor, friend, confidant—an unpleasant but useful lesson. Still, Lewis’s return was much prayed for, a second chance to set things right and, from there, assess what business might remain.
Red walked until he came to the wood-slat bench outside his former law office, now vacant except when an accountant rented it at tax time. Red had overestimated how long it would take to hand his truck over and had fifteen minutes before Libby would pick him up on the way to her doctor’s appointment in Buchanan.
The bench was in the shade of the building, but a sharp line of sunlight inched toward him. In one of the upstairs apartments over the laundromat a woman sang in a light, clear voice: “I’ll see you, when your troubles are like mine, I’ll see you, when you haven’t got a dime, weeping like a willow, moaning like a dove….” This song and the pending sunlight made Red think of Frank. Even when they were children, Frank cared for nothing so much as a prime spot in the sun and a brand-new cigarette.
Frank now lived at the Buena Vista Rest Home in Buchanan, having run away so many times, there was no option but supervised care. Red had kept him out of such institutions for years, fearing that he’d be neglected and left to disintegrate. But Frank slid into life at the Buena Vista so smoothly it was almost a reproach. He had a reliable source of not only cigarettes and sunshine but also friendship—specifically with an elderly schizophrenic man and another large mute accident victim. Red invariably found the three parked, smoking, around a small trickling fountain in the courtyard. Orderlies called them the Terrible Three—not because they caused any trouble, but because it was so difficult to get them inside for meals or bed.
When Frank left Round Rock, some central vortex at the farm had lost its pull. If Frank, the one eternal resident, could leave, why not the other diehards? In firing John, then accepting Ernie’s notice, Red had feared Round Rock itself might be drawing to a close, especially since he never was any good at hiring people.
After Billie’s allegations, Red had called up David’s references: a Park Avenue psychologist, the director of a Manhattan recovery house, and a New Mexican M.D. with a homeopathic practice. The calls produced the usual bath of hyperbole as well as a few insights:
“such a gifted practitioner” … “remarkable composure in times of crisis” … “works intensively with others without suffering burnout.” The downside? “Runs behind in his appointments” … “unstable female clients cathect with him.” Could he be trusted around money? This question provoked a laugh from the Manhattan therapist. “Definitely, but he sure can’t be motivated by it….”
Last night, when David came to the AA meeting, Red took him aside during the coffee break. They walked down the driveway until the house sat on the hill behind them like a lit-up stage. Roses fogged the air with moist, lemony scent.
Red crammed his hands into his pockets and, after two years off cigarettes, longed for nicotine to ease the moment. “Your references, everything I’ve seen about you, makes me want to hire you,” he said. “But a good friend of ours here in Rito says you’re not to be trusted.”
David, walking, stiffened as if alerted to danger.
“Do you have any idea what this is about?” Red asked.
“I think so.”
“Want to tell me?”
“I’m not at liberty to,” said David. “You’ll have to go by what she says.”
“She wasn’t specific, either,” said Red. “And I don’t need to know the details. She implied you took some money.”
“Twenty years ago, when she and I last had any dealings with each other, I did take some money that was offered to me.”
“Oh, so this is wreckage from the distant past?”
David paused and turned to face him. “I will say, for what it’s worth, I’ve made what amends I could. The money given to me was repaid with interest. And other amends were attempted. Although I can’t say they were taken in the spirit I’d hoped for.”
In David’s careful syntax, Red caught the unmistakable whiff of Billie’s intractability. “What, she never forgave you?” Red gave a short, knowing snort. “No? Now how did I guess?”
They stood at the foot of the lawn. Sprinklers hissed in the groves. Voices wafted down to them from the house. The bell clanged for the meeting to resume. “I need to know,” said Red, “if this could interfere with your work here.”
“Not with my work, no,” David said. “But I’m afraid it puts you in an awkward position.”
“Please. I don’t hire people based on whether or not my friends like them.”
Later that night, when Red started to relate this conversation to Libby, she interrupted him.
“I don’t care who you hire.” She grabbed hold of his waistband. “I’m sorry I stuck my two cents in. You know what you’re doing. I wash my hands of the whole business. Now, can we please get this house built and furnished? I feel a serious need to drag heavy furniture around.” She pulled him roughly toward her, pushed him up against the bed, and tugged off all his clothes.
It surprised Red how much Libby still wanted sex as her pregnancy advanced, how she’d scramble onto him, cling to him, pull him this way and that.
Red ran a finger along the bench’s rusted iron armrest. The sun now sat in his lap, and when he looked up, Libby was parked at the curb in the beige Mercedes. Twelve years old and in tip-top condition, the car had been his one-year anniversary present to her. But this obvious ploy to make her ditch the eternally faulty Falcon had caused unforeseen embarrassment. Hadn’t Yvette driven a black Mercedes? That Libby might know this, or care, had somehow eluded Red, who was therefore deeply mortified. He’d explained, awkwardly, that he respected, indeed revered, older Mercedes Benzes, to the point he’d want
any
wife of his to drive one. And maybe he did, on some level, want to re-create his former marriage; he’d enjoyed it, even thrived in it, although he no longer missed Yvette. Libby, high-colored and possibly amused, had allowed these stumbly confessions. Red offered to trade the car in on a Volvo or Saab or anything else she wanted. No, no, Libby said, she wasn’t a fool, it was a beautiful gift, and at least this car wasn’t black.
Red walked up to the driver’s-side door. Libby was wearing sunglasses, red lipstick, her hair in a high ponytail. He tasted salt in her kiss. “Sweetheart. What’s wrong?”
She spoke to the ground. “I’m having cramps and spotting.”
Red drove. Libby tied the black leather strap of her handbag into fat knots. “It’s that abortion I had in New Orleans,” she said.
Red knew about this; Libby had been dating Stockton only a few months at the time, and they’d agreed early on to terminate the pregnancy. “I didn’t know they could affect pregnancies,” he said.
“It wasn’t a real abortion. I mean, it was real enough. Stockton
knew this script doctor who’d been disbarred, or whatever, for writing too many prescriptions for Seconal and Quaaludes and stuff.”
“I know what a script doctor is,” Red said dryly.
“Anyway, he was making his living doing illegal abortions. He did them in his house. Cheap. That was the draw—a bargain abortion. A bedroom outfitted with hospital equipment. He didn’t have a suction thing, just scraped you out. I was conscious as hell but all drugged up. It really hurt. I just couldn’t summon the energy to resist. Then, in the middle of things, he tells me I had a beautiful cervix. What can you do? So, I got an infection anyway and ended up in the hospital. Those doctors said this was bound to happen, and if I ever got pregnant again, I’d probably have trouble carrying full-term. You know, you’re twenty-two, you’re invincible, you think it’s cool to know criminals. Nobody will ever hurt you and all the bad stuff happens to somebody else.”
“That’s youth all right,” Red said, careful not to exhibit his distress.
“I never imagined it would hurt a real living baby. Or you.”
“If anything happens,” Red said, “nobody would ever blame you.”
At the doctor’s, Red told the receptionist that Libby might be having a miscarriage and she was called in right away. He sat in the waiting room trying desperately to stay calm. Next to him, a woman glugged from a large bottle of Evian between whimpers. Red tried to read a celebrity magazine, but the sentences didn’t follow one another in any coherent fashion. After ten minutes or so, a nurse called him into the room, where Libby, now dressed, sat on the examining table while a doctor jotted notes on her chart.
A few dots of blood and cramping, the doctor said, was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to be alarmed about. He was a pleasant, boyish man with blond hair, at least five years younger than Libby. There was no dilation, he said. Nothing wrong with her blood. No sign of miscarriage. Libby was healthy and everything was normal. Even the dark, irrational fears were normal. The doctor nodded encouragement to Libby. So far, there were no signs she might have any trouble carrying to term. And if there was any loss of womb strength from a poorly administered abortion, they’d put something called a cerclage around the cervix to hold it shut, and prescribe bed rest for the duration. But this was the worst that could happen.
On the way home, Libby’s spirits were buoyant, elated. “ ‘Cerclage.’ Such a beautiful word if you don’t think about what it does—lassoes the cervix. Now, Red, did you happen to notice how enormous the doctor’s head is? I pity his wife when they have kids. I’d be terrified my whole pregnancy just thinking about having a baby with a head that big. I’d sign up for a C-section right off the bat. Now you, Red, you have a beautiful head. A dream head.”
D
AVID
stayed inside Tuesday morning.
Día veintiuno.
Day twenty-one. He read and talked to his parents and cousins on the phone. Around noon, he moved outside with the dog under the shade of the plum tree in his uncle’s backyard, amid the drunken buzzing of flies and soft conversation of chickens. He shucked sweet corn for his aunt and helped her with dinner. “I can feel people’s prayers,” he said. His uncle had been working with him daily, praying with him, giving him a bitter tea that made his blood race. “You must kill off a part of yourself to satisfy the poison,” Rafael said. “Otherwise, it takes all of you.”
They ate outside on the picnic table, staying until it grew dark and the earth exuded dampness, then moved inside, where David and Rafael did a small ritual, a sweeping, with herbs and a prayer. They smudged the house with rosemary and sage and chanted more prayers. His aunt Gloria lit candles at the kitchen altar, where the votives flickered in red and blue glass and the virgin revealed her flaming heart.
They sat around the kitchen table under the portrait of Jesus, who stood, arms apart, in brown robes the same color as his hair, his halo a fuzzy yellow light. The old dog slept under the table on David’s feet. They spoke quietly in Spanish. David told about the time his father got so mad, he threw a pot of
nopales
in a boiling green wave onto the floor; and how, for years, David’s mother found tiny dry squares of cactus throughout the house, even in the attic, as if they’d migrated under furniture and carpet and up the walls after the original spill. Rafael told how his brother-in-law Umberto García got drunk and accidentally butchered his prize fighting cock for Sunday dinner.
The dog’s snoring became a rhythmic rasping. They drank cool water from a clay pitcher. “The thing is,” David said, “I feel so wide and full and clear, I’m willing for anything to happen. Some of it’s fear. But this fear is so spacious, and full of energy, and not dark at all—more dim, with a dull glow, like an empty cathedral.”
At midnight, everyone laughed a little and embraced one another. David went into the bedroom where he was staying. He lit a few candles of his own, said a prayer: “I am grateful to rejoin those who don’t know when they’re going to die.” The old dog curled up on a rug at the foot of the bed. David slept and did not dream, but woke in an hour or so to a room full of devils as a guttering candle sent shadows stretching up the walls. He blew out the flame, slept again. He awoke once more, this time convinced all the air had been sucked from the room. The night was so still, he thought for a moment he was indeed dead. He had the distinct sensation of a claw drawn across his chest. He leapt up and before he was halfway across the room, he knew what had happened.