Marshall refused to go to school. He locked his feet against the floor of the car, wrapped his hands around the loop over the door, and elevated his six-year-old body like a two-by-four above the seat. Everyone in the drop-off zone heard him screaming. “No, no, no! I won’t go! I’m not going to school, Daddy!” Plenty of them heard Del begging Marshall to calm down, offering him a new GI Joe tank, threatening to spank him. There he was, Del Dibb, in a white Cadillac, arguing with his six-year-old son in front of John S. Park Elementary School, and wondering if he could wrench him out of the car without hurting him. And then what?
Marshall had picked a really tough day. Binnie had gone to help her sister recover from a surgery. Cora was in Texas, visiting a cousin Del didn’t remember having. He had meetings scheduled all morning, and he had to be at the county commission hearing that afternoon, and he was already late, since he wasn’t expecting to have to fix Marshall his breakfast and take him to school.
Of course, June was home. She was swimming. Had wandered downstairs while Marshall was eating a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. “Good morning, Mommy!” Marshall had said, but June looked at him as if she had never seen a child before, and then said, wearily, to no one in particular, “I’m late to start my mile, and I wonder if there will be any fish in the water.”
Del had not thought to look at Marshall’s face.
What Del had noticed was that June was calm. It was a relief that she was calm.
So he had raced, trying to get Marshall ready, on the phone with Leo about how to handle his first appointment, feeling a little sorry about the Cocoa Puffs, though Marshall was pleased. He had said, “Thanks, Daddy!” in his sweet, high voice, and then a rich brown stream had slipped out of his mouth and onto his pale-blue shirt.
But now Marshall was lodged in the front seat of the car like a stick in a cog, and Del was out of options. He couldn’t leave his son home alone with June.
“Okay, Marshall. You’ll have to come to work with me. But I have meetings, so you’ll have to stay with someone else.”
“No, Daddy, no! I’m not going to work! I’m not going!”
“Marshall, what are you doing? What do you want?”
“I don’t want to go to school! I don’t want to go to work! I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!”
“I have to go to work today. Grandma’s in Texas. Binnie’s sister is sick. So you have to go to school, or you have to go to work with me. Now which is it?”
“I want to go home!”
“You can’t go home!”
Marshall screamed. He screamed so long that he started to choke, and then he threw up, brown Cocoa Puffs all over the clean shirt and his pants and the front seat of the car.
Del gave up.
“Okay, Marshall. We’re going home. It’s okay, buddy. It’s okay. We’re going home.”
Marshall pulled his knees to his chest, and rode home with his cheek resting on his knees, looking at his dad.
“Buddy, I know it’s tough. But you got to pull it together. A man has to do the right thing. He has to go to school, he has to go to work.”
Marshall just stared at Del, expressionless, his eyes rimmed in red. He didn’t look away.
When they got home, Del called Leo and told him he wouldn’t be in. Send Mack to the commission meeting. Tell him to handle things the best he could. Things at home had come to a head, so he didn’t know when he’d be in. Screw it. He’d make this up to him. Then Del sent Marshall in to find clean clothes, and walked outside looking for June. She was there, stretched out on the lounger, her body still wet from her swim.
“June.”
She didn’t answer, didn’t open her eyes.
“Marshall wouldn’t go to school today. He’s upset. You didn’t say anything to him this morning.”
June didn’t open her eyes. He couldn’t tell if she was listening.
“Did you notice him? Did you see him sitting there?”
She opened her eyes, staring at him blankly.
“What are you on? What’d you take?”
His wife rolled to her side, facing the wall.
“Miltown?”
She said nothing.
“Where’d you get it? One of your friends?”
She moaned, rolled back over, and looked at him.
“Well, I’m not waiting for it. I’m not sitting here, with Marshall, waiting to find you dead. My son is not living his whole life with what you are doing to him right now. You were better—I thought you were better—but today . . . today it ends.”
She sat up.
“There’s a place in LA.”
She shook her head slowly.
“I’ve called them, and as soon as someone’s here to watch Marshall, we’re going. You don’t need to pack. You won’t need anything.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re going.”
“You can’t make me go. You can’t make me do anything. You can’t just do anything you want.”
Her voice was rising, reaching a squeak. It was an old argument. They had both heard it, over and over.
“I can make you.”
“No!”
“I’m going to take you to this place, and if you refuse to go in, I’m going to leave you there at the door. I’ve already drawn up all the paperwork. We’ll be divorced in six weeks. And you won’t see Marshall. There isn’t a judge in this town that will let you near him.”
“There’s other towns.”
“Try it.”
She puckered her lip and spit at him, but she was so wrecked that the saliva simply dribbled down her chin. Del felt sick.
But that afternoon, June went with him. He was afraid he would have to restrain her in the car, but she sat without moving, staring blankly out the window for most of the five-hour ride. As they drove onto the clinic grounds, down a long drive with walls fringed in bougainvillea, she finally spoke.
“When it’s over, let me come back.”
“I’ll let you come back.”
June hadn’t recovered from the loss of the baby.
That’s how the world understood it. That her baby had died, and she had never been the same. Del supposed that Cora guessed there was more, but she didn’t ask him. His grandmother had never asked him about any of it. About Hugh. About Ray’s death. Any of it.
Of course Dr. Bruno knew about the baby. He was the one who had given June the pills first.
“These will help her through, Del. She needs some relief.”
Damn.