Of course, nothing happened the way he had planned.
Because Del hadn’t known he would fall in love. He hadn’t known that the color of her skin, the awareness of who she was, wouldn’t make any difference. He would fall in love with her, just as he had with Marshall. She would be born, and there would be the instant of shock, of sadness, and then, without warning, there would be that same mad total falling in love that he had felt when Marshall was born. And maybe knowing who she was, seeing this tiniest, newest human being, knowing how things were going to go for her, made the experience more intense. Del couldn’t bear to take her from her mother. He couldn’t bear not to set her on June’s breast. Poor thing. She needed her mother.
No, Del had not imagined he would feel this.
From there, the plan just kept unraveling. Because he didn’t feel the way he thought he would. Because he loved her mother and maybe he had loved her father, and mostly, he loved the baby. He had thought there was nothing he could not do, if it needed to be done. But that turned out not to be true.
And this is why he put up with June. This is why he continued. Because what had happened to June shouldn’t happen to anyone, and not just Eddie, not just the baby, but him, Del. He shouldn’t have happened to June. Marrying June had made everything possible for him, but she was a calculated choice, and she had not known, and Del was not such an operator that he did not appreciate the magnitude of that betrayal. It was not June who had betrayed Del.
What she wanted, what she begged for, what he would not give her, was to know where.
Where was she?
Wherewasshe, wherewasshe, wherewasshe.
How could he tell her?
He would never be able to tell her. That was the mistake he had made, when he was driving around with a baby in a basket, when he drove past the spot where he had agreed to bring her—drove past it one time, two times, three, thinking all the while, What could he do? What were the other options? None of them was possible, all of them were worse, because what if Hugh found out? Hugh would not tolerate this risk. And then the baby had started to make her little mews, her little scratchy yowl, her hands and feet pushing the blanket into a storm of pink silk and cotton beside him, and he was out of time, she was hungry, she had to eat.
He had wished he could talk to Ray. He had wished Ray were next to him, in that car, with that baby. Ray would have known what to do. Or Ray would have told him to stick to the plan. And Del would have listened. He would have listened to that deep, soft voice, to the one person who knew everything there was to know about Odell Dibb and who loved him anyway. He could have taken care of things if he’d had Ray next to him.
So that’s how it happened. How Del made the choice he did. How he went to the one place he should not have gone. How he put them all at risk, when risk was what he had been trying to avoid.
This was what he couldn’t tell June. He couldn’t tell her where the baby was, because it would be piling error on top of error, because he wouldn’t ruin another mother’s life, because Hugh was a dangerous man. There was no way to predict how Hugh might react, and Del couldn’t risk finding out. June had the right to know where her husband had taken her baby, but Del would never be able to tell her.
He had tried to help, but he’d made the worst choice of all.
HONORATA
The one who got lucky
and
CORAL
The one who always wondered
OCTOBER 19, 1992
In the Midnight Room
The priest noticed the woman, but she did not notice him.
She was small and dark. Asian, maybe Filipino. She had on evening clothes, a silk dress beaded at the front and gold sandals with heels that seemed too high for her tiny feet. She was carrying a plastic bucket of coins, and it was heavy; her shoulder drooped slightly with the weight.
He had noticed her the night before, dressed in a similar way, carrying the same heavy bucket, wandering disinterestedly from one area of the casino to another. He often noticed the people in the casinos where he played. The regulars. The tourists. It was an occupational hazard to wonder who they were, what brought them there, whether they were having a good time, whether they believed this place would change their lives. He could think like this—he could think about other people gambling and how foolish they might be, how vulnerable—but he couldn’t stop himself from playing, couldn’t stop thinking about the whir of the reels spinning, the lights, the feel of the heavy metal ball in his hand as he pulled on the machine’s arm. No, he couldn’t stop thinking of these things, even as he sat and listened to a confession or helped an altar boy lift the heavy book to a stand.
He was sorry for his weakness. Sorry and embarrassed and discouraged. He tried to make up for it in other ways.
The small woman stopped to read the playbill outside the Midnight Room. Father Burns had seen the show: it was a “Psychedelic Sixties Revue” whose pulsing lights and electronic sounds had only made him want to play more, so here he was hours later, in this dark corner of the casino, sitting at a machine that had not hit in a long time. An employee slowly moved a carpet sweeper back and forth, an older woman with a cigarette turned mostly to ash stared blankly at the reels of her own machine. The Filipino woman studied the poster of the 1960s revue, opened the door that led to the nightclub, and looked inside for a moment. Then she turned and walked unsteadily toward the oversized Megabucks machine just a few feet away.
Megabucks was even more of a sucker’s game than the slot machines to which he and ash-lady were tethered. He watched her climb onto the slightly too high seat; he saw her look for a place to set down the bucket, and then decide to balance it between her knees, with the silk dress stretched along her thighs. She played slowly and without enthusiasm, mechanically dropping in three one-dollar coins, lifting them from the bucket one by one, letting each one drop and settle before adding the next. Then she leaned forward, reached out her hand as far as it would go, and pulled down the oversized arm. She did it again and again. The priest could have set his watch to her methodical motions, and somehow it transfixed him: the tiny woman, the huge machine, the drop-drop-drop of coins, the body stretching to catch the great arm and pull it down.
When the machine hit, when the lights and the bells and the horn sounded, the woman reared back as if there had been an explosion. The still-heavy bucket slipped and fell to the floor. Coins rolled. The woman with the cigarette yelled. The employee dropped the handle of the vacuum. Father Burns jumped to his feet. And the woman looked stunned, afraid, confused.
People started running toward her, toward the machine. Before the crowd descended, the priest saw the words and the numbers running across the top of it.
“Jackpot! $1,414,153.00! Winner!”
12