And that’s where it happened. Maybe that was predictable. But it wasn’t what June was expecting, it wasn’t what she had planned, it wasn’t why she brought Eddie to the apartment for those days.
He needed a lot of help. He couldn’t get dressed on his own. Couldn’t wash himself. Del didn’t say anything when June had one of the maids take a night shift in Eddie’s apartment. He didn’t say anything when she left Marshall with Cora all day, and when she disappeared most of those days into that apartment.
In Del’s mind, this was a problem that would go away on its own, that would disappear when Eddie did, and one of the reasons he was so good at running a casino was that Del didn’t take on problems that would solve themselves. He kept the focus on what he needed to do. If Del wondered what June was doing, he didn’t say it.
At first, June felt uneasy in the apartment with Eddie.
She had spent so much time there; she and Marshall had spent hundreds of hours there.
But now it was different.
Different because Eddie was vulnerable, different because he needed physical help, different because he had been beaten, and he was afraid, and he did not sparkle with energy and optimism and confidence—everything that had made him Eddie Knox, and everything that was probably the reason he was sitting there, broken, defeated, unsure.
But different as well because June had never been this close to Eddie when she was in love with him, or when she had known she was in love with him.
Had she ever been in love with anyone? She loved Del. She loved him even now. But had she ever been in love with him? Had she ever trembled with the possibility that he did not love her? Had she ever felt the terror of being in love with someone, knowing what one would risk for that feeling—for an instant of that feeling?
Until now, she had thought that love felt like power.
They were talking about Marshall. June told Eddie that her son had decided to become a robber. He said he liked robbers better than soldiers, better than pilots, better than cowboys. He said he would grow up and be a robber and steal all the money, and he would be rich, and he would give some to June and to Del and to his grandma. Also, robbers used swords. So everything in the house had become a sword. A towel could be a sword. He would plant his feet wide apart and challenge his dad to fight with “sowds.”
Eddie laughed.
“Jacob liked to fight with swords too. Almost took my eye out once, when he was about five.”
June felt the tears in her eyes. She didn’t know why. Eddie hadn’t mentioned Jacob with any sense of pain, he hadn’t ever told her anything more about his brother. But everything felt fragile right then, everything important teetered, a rounding drop about to fall, glistening with light, an instant before dissolution.
Eddie reached over, caught one tear with a finger that emerged from a graying cast, and June leaned in, and finally, after four years, they kissed. It was as sweet and demanding a sensation as June had ever experienced. And if their lovemaking looked awkward from a distance, with Eddie’s casts, and his bruises, and the difficulty in finding just how to move, just where to embrace, it didn’t feel awkward. It felt tender and absolute, exhilarating and unyielding, inevitable, glorious, terrifying, gentle. And when it was over, they lay tangled on Eddie’s bed, and they kissed more, and they tried to say words, but then they kissed, and they made love again, and this is what they did, pretty much all they did, in those hours—for those days—in which June was in that apartment, and Marshall was at his great-grandmother’s, and Del ran the casino.
June knew that it would end, though she told herself that something would happen. There would be a way; she would take Marshall and go with Eddie. Something. It was not possible that she would never see him again, and they did not speak of it. Then on Friday, Del asked her if she would like to have coffee with him before she went to see Eddie, and Mack asked if she had seen the plans for the new card room. By the time she got to the apartment, Eddie was not there. Some of his clothes were gone, and his wallet; and he was gone too. No note.
8
She was five months pregnant.
It might be Del’s.
She and Eddie had been careful. She and Del had been on the dining room floor. The doctor’s due date split the difference between these events—a perfect split, though she had given him no dates.
It had to be Del’s.
They planned as if it were Del’s.
Del never asked her anything about Eddie.
Of course, she had asked Del. She had gone straight to Del when she found Eddie gone, demanding to know where he was, whether Del had shipped him off, why he had asked her for coffee that morning.
Del had been patient, and then been annoyed, but all he’d said was that they both knew Eddie had to leave—there was never any doubt about it—and didn’t she realize he could have ended up dead?
“Is he alive? Do you know he’s alive?”
“He’s alive.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know where. But he’ll start singing somewhere. We’ll know.”
“Will you tell me?”
“Yes.”
And six weeks later, Del had told her. Eddie was in Cuba. Things were a little different there than they had been, but Havana was still a great place for him. He could work. He’d do well. He’d been smart to get out of the country.
And that’s all Del would ever say. He made it clear he would not speak of Eddie again.
And maybe June could have chipped away at that resolve, but by then, she knew she was pregnant and she was calculating the odds, and wondering whether Del would ask, and wondering what she wanted—what she really wanted—except she knew. She knew the baby had to be Del’s.
She wrote Eddie a letter. Mailed it to a casino in Havana after she overheard a guest saying he was appearing there. She didn’t say much in the letter. Just wanted to know that he would get it, that they would be able to stay in touch.
She thought about the letter every day. Where it might be, what day it would arrive in Cuba, how long it might take to wind from the casino’s mailroom to Eddie. Did he have a regular gig? Had he appeared only once? Would they know how to forward it to him?
But one day, Del dropped the letter on the desk in the study.
“You can’t write him.”
“How did you get this?”
“No letters.”
She stared at the envelope. It hadn’t been opened. She’d put it in the mail slot to be delivered; how had Del gotten it? But, of course, he could get to any mail in the casino. If he were watching it, if someone at the hotel were watching it. Her face flushed hot.
“I’m not messing around,” Del said. “Eddie Knox is out of our lives. No letters, no phone calls. Don’t cross me on this.”