Well, he wasn’t tougher than she was. She could play a long game too.
And did it matter if Del was seeing someone? Maybe it mattered if he were in love. But if he were, he’d missed his opportunity to move June out. And it wasn’t like Del to miss an opportunity he wanted.
So who was she?
June smelled something, a different salty, sweaty something, on his skin.
9
June’s pregnancy stretched into the long, slow months, and she experienced the world as simultaneously leaden and diaphanous. There was the not knowing whose baby she carried, there was the knowledge that her husband was capable of hiding things from her that she would not have been able to hide from him, there was the small boy who chattered at her side, there was the extraordinary sensation of a new person shifting within her. And then there was Eddie: the way his face had been swollen, how his skin had tasted, the words he had said, what she had felt in that room with him. All of this echoed in her mind, night and day.
In November, Cora stopped by the El Capitan to have lunch with June. They sat outside because the weather was warm, and June arched her neck to feel the sun on her face. Del’s grandmother wore an olive green hat and carefully positioned herself in the shade, though her deeply lined skin revealed decades lived in the desert.
“Del’s pleased about the baby. He thinks it’s a girl.” Cora slipped a cigarette between her lips, offered another to June, then placed the pack on the table where she could easily reach for it.
“Yeah, he’s sure it’s a girl. He says I look different than I did with Marshall.”
“I don’t see that, really.”
“I feel different. I feel bigger. Like a car.”
“You carry your babies right up front. From the back, you don’t even look pregnant.”
“Well, from the side . . .”
“From the side, you look pregnant.”
“I look like a car.”
“Or a train.”
June snorted. Cora could make her laugh.
She was huge. Twice, she’d hit her stomach on the side table. She grew so fast, she couldn’t figure out where her body started and stopped. Marshall could crouch directly under her belly, and she couldn’t even see him. She’d told him this, and after first saying “I don’t like it, Mommy, I don’t like to be inbisible,” he decided it was funny. He would slip underneath her and yell, “Daddy, look! Mommy can’t see me here.”
And then he would peek out, give her a long sideways glance—his lashes so lush they looked fake—and say, “Hi, Mommy. It’s your Marshall.”
In the evenings, June sometimes lay next to Marshall in his bed. Stroking her belly with his fat, soft fingers, he placed his ear on her stomach and said, “Can you hear me, baby? Can you hear me, my brother?” One time Del was there and whispered, “What if it’s a sister?” And Marshall said, “It’s not.”
Which was why June tended to think it was a boy too.
She did feel different this time. Not just wider. But different. She was queasy every day.
Still, it seemed as if Marshall might know. Her son was so aware of the baby. He would talk to him while he played with his cars, or ask if the baby liked what June was eating. Maybe almost-three-year-olds had some special knowledge. From the day he was born, June could sometimes look in his eyes and think that he saw things, that he knew things, she didn’t see or know.
“Daddy, is Chuck coming?”
“Chuck?” June asked.
“A runner at the Sands,” Del told her. “He brought some papers here last week. You were home.”
“Oh, yeah. I didn’t see him.”
“Chuck has red candy, Mommy.”
Del winked at June.
“That’s right. He had candy. He gave Marshall a piece. I might have told him not to tell you.”
June smiled. She had thought there might never be a time like this again. And yet here it was. Even after Eddie. Even after Ray. An easy moment, just the three of them. It was Marshall who made this possible. And maybe there would be more moments like this. Maybe they would come more often. She placed her hand on her stomach and found the lump of her baby’s foot. Please, she whispered to herself, please.
Marshall stood up on the bed and jumped.
“Hey, little man,” Del said. “Let’s read a book.”
“I Know a Lot of Things! Let’s read I Know a Lot of Things.”
“That’s just the one I was going to get. Up you go.”
And Del carted Marshall off to the big chair where they liked to read, and June got up and poured herself a glass of wine. Then she straightened up the kitchen, and thought about two little boys, riding their bikes, and kicking a ball, and going off to school hand in hand.
Her pains came early.
The baby was Del’s.
That was her first thought.
She waited with them through the day, and when they seemed to ebb at dinnertime, she didn’t mention them to her husband. She’d had contractions for a month with Marshall, and it was early. Del put Marshall to bed, June ran a bath. Getting into the tub was a bit of comedy; things like this made her laugh. She concentrated on her balance as she stepped in, but from the corner of her eye, she could see the absurd watermelon of her stomach, and the dark line that divided it vertically. It was funny being human.
It happened all at once. The baby kicked, her belly contracted sharply, her foot slid on the damp tile floor. Painfully, bent forward, June started to fall, grabbed wildly at the air, caught her legs on either side of the bathtub rim, and slipped sideways into the tub. A surge of water landed on the floor. She could not catch her breath. Her stomach hurt, her private parts hurt, she had twisted her back, she was panting heavily, afraid. She gripped the edge of the bathtub and pulled herself upright, willing herself to relax. Breathe. Relax.
A contraction came again, so sharp she let out a sort of whistle. This didn’t feel the same as Marshall. She’d had an easy birth. He’d come quickly. Dr. Bruno had said she was made for giving birth; that not many women had such a simple time with a first child.
Again, a contraction.
“Del!”
“Del!”