And, really, losing a baby was what had happened. June had lost a baby, and afterward she had fallen down some hole, gone down so deep that some days he couldn’t even remember who she had been. And then, when he had more or less given up—was actually wondering if committing her was the one option left—she had crawled back up. He and Marshall had lain down at the lip of that hole, with their arms outstretched, reaching for her, for June, for Mommy, for the woman who had once been so joyful, and almost, almost, they had pulled her up. They’d had her fingers in their hands; they had all been smiling.
They’d had eight months of the old June. Looking back, it was moving that had made her better. Selling the house and buying another one on the other side of the Strip. A house where no baby had been born and lost. A house without neighbors who had noticed June, too drunk by ten in the morning to get to the mailbox without tripping, or who had heard her boozy “Haaaaayyyyrrooo!” to the newspaper boy and then watched her fall down laughing at how funny the word came out. A couple of those neighbors had even seen June climbing the ash tree, sawing off the branches as she went up, dressed in a pink silk robe and singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Binnie was there that day. It was the maid who had noticed that Marshall was alone out back; that his mommy had climbed up a tree. After phoning Del, she bundled the boy off to his bedroom and read him stories while the drama at the front of the house played out.
So they moved. Del hadn’t known what else to do. The psychologist didn’t help. The pills Dr. Bruno prescribed: they definitely didn’t help. (It took him awhile to persuade Dr. Bruno to stop giving them to her, but then it was so easy for her to get more. He couldn’t plug every damn hole.) Del had moved without any hope that it would actually make a difference. But it had. June had seen her chance. She had made Marshall her captain, and they had planned and painted and purchased: the new house a project that worked when doctors, when pleading, when medicines did not. For eight months, he had his little family back.
And then, just like that, for no reason that he could figure, she had disappeared back down the hole. One evening he came home from work—it was Binnie’s day off, but June was fine being left alone with Marshall then, they were all so happy—and as soon as he opened the door, Del heard the dog barking, smelled something burned in the kitchen, knew something bad had happened.
He found June passed out drunk by the pool. And where was Marshall? Where was Marshall? The pool? Thank God, no. He started yelling “Marshall! Marshall!” and he shook June. “Where is he? Where’s Marshall?” and the dog barked faster, and Del was frantic, racing through the house: not in the kitchen, not in his bedroom, not in the bathroom. He dashed to the front door, ran halfway into the street, grabbed Mrs. Walkenshaw: “Have you seen Marshall? Did you see Marshall outside?” She looked alarmed and then said, “I’ll help you look,” but already Del was running back to the house. Where was he?
A neighbor called the fire department, and it took an hour, but someone finally found Marshall huddled in a cabinet in June’s dressing room. He had closed the door on himself, and Del hoped he had fallen asleep curled up in the dark, but he thought probably his son had just sat there, having seen or heard whatever he had seen or heard to send him there, and unable to answer all the people, even his dad, calling his name.
And that had been the beginning of it all over again. Only this time, Del didn’t believe she would get better. And Marshall was different too. The little boy who’d weathered all that had come before, who had seemed cheerful and loving and marvelously obtuse about his mother’s behavior, disappeared. In his place was a nervous six-year-old who would throw fits in public places, and who had night terrors, and who crawled into their bed and slept curled against Del night after night, sucking his thumb and shuddering in his sleep.
Del never knew what made June fall back down. He would lie in bed, listening to Marshall’s light snoring and to June’s footsteps as she restlessly roamed the floor below, and he would remember. He remembered holding June’s hand—so tiny, such thin fingers—in that bar on the Westside. He had been able to feel the excitement coursing through her. It hadn’t bothered her to be the only white woman there; she was not uncomfortable. She liked the pulse of the place, everyone a regular, the bartender sliding drinks over without needing to be asked, three couples dancing, their feet whirling. That was the night they met Eddie Knox.
And he remembered June laughing, spilling the night’s take on the table as he and Eddie and some woman—who was she?—drank champagne and sang “Bye Bye Love.” They had sounded pretty good, drunk as they were, with June and Eddie taking harmony, he and what’s-her-name taking the melody. There was a moment—there was often a moment on those nights—when Del felt perfectly happy, perfectly at ease, when the four of them singing and drinking and celebrating felt like everything that could be right in the world.
One night, he had taken Eddie to the vault to get him some cash. They were sloshed, of course, and June had gone to bed. After Del handed him the money, Eddie got sentimental. He told Del he’d never had a friend like him before, pulled him into a hug, and Del’s body, flat against Eddie’s, reacted instantly. Del should have been horrified, but he was on fire, he couldn’t bear to move away from him. And Eddie waited, still, just a second, and then said, “Sorry, man. Man, I’m really sorry.” Eddie stepped back. Del looked away. They left the vault, quiet.
And from then on, Eddie knew it all, knew what Del kept secret. He knew it all, but he didn’t do anything with it—at least not then, at least not for a long time. If only Eddie could have left it that way. If only Eddie hadn’t threatened Hugh. If only Del hadn’t been the one with the gaming license, the one who couldn’t be guilty of a crime. Eddie was smart, but not smart enough to figure out how dangerous a thing he knew.
Del remembered other moments.
Laying his palm on June’s belly and waiting for the flutter-kick move that was the first sign of Marshall. Then later, June’s belly would roil so fiercely, and he could make out the shape of Marshall’s foot rolling from one side to the other. They hadn’t known it would be Marshall. It might have been Marilyn.
And the girl. The real baby girl.
Del had known the baby would be Eddie’s.
He’d pretended that it could be otherwise, but he’d been planning, thinking, calculating all along. He had thought he would have to pay off the nurses at the hospital, so he’d kept a roll of cash in his coat pocket that whole last month. Weeks earlier, Dr. Bruno had helped him with the arrangements. There was a place in California, near Anaheim. It mostly took in unwed teens, but it also placed babies.