Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [55]
The conversation at dinner last week. “Sure. Read that.”
He hoped to follow along over her shoulder, but she canted the journal so all he could see was the faux-marbleized cover.
“Lewis, barefoot as usual, sits perched on the kitchen stool, picks at his toes. Picking at one’s toenails, he says, is one of the great unsung pleasures of life.”
“I can’t believe you wrote that down!” said Lewis. “Jesus!”
“I won’t read if you’re going to interrupt me every two sentences.”
“I’ll be quiet.” He was so curious now, he would’ve agreed to almost anything.
“I consider collecting his peeled-off nail bits in case I ever need to send them to Madame Wanda the Wangateuse.”
“Wait just a second. Madame what?”
“Madame Wanda,” said Libby, “is a Haitian hoodoo doctor I knew in New Orleans.”
“You’d send my toenails to a hoodoo doctor?”
“Hopefully I won’t have to.” She gave him a round-eyed, leveling look. “But I can’t read if you’re going to keep flipping out.”
“I’m not flipping out. I just don’t want my toenails going to New Orleans. But go on. Please.”
“Red comes in and says he just was at the grocería, and Victor Ibañez told him we were having chicken and red potatoes and chocolate mint ice cream for dinner.
“Can’t you buy one damn bag of groceries in this town without it becoming a matter of public record? Lewis says. Don’t people around here have anything more important to talk about?
“We can’t all be gloriously profound like you, I tell him.
“Me? says Lewis. I’m not so profound.
“Oh no, Red says. You only think you’re living a Dostoyevsky novel.
“What’s wrong with that? Lewis says. If anybody were to write the novel of my life, I’d want it to be Dostoyevsky.
“I can just see it, says Red. The Genius. A companion volume to The Idiot.
“Hey thanks, Redsy. But more likely it would be The Obsessed, companion volume to The Possessed.
“I say, Who would write the novel of Red’s life?
“Red says, I could see myself as a bit player in a Dickens novel. One of those good-hearted ninnies running a hopeless institution.
“No, I say, I mean the novel of your life. You can’t be a secondary character.
“Red thinks for a while and says, So how about Henry James? He’s suitably stylish and unflinching.
“Perfect! Lewis yells. Perfect! It could be Portrait of a Saint, companion volume to Portrait of a Lady.
“Red’s face reddens. Uh, I was thinking maybe, The Ritonians, like The Bostonians.
“Lewis says, I know who’d write Libby’s novel. Jane Austen.
“I don’t think so, I say. All she could do was get people married. And I’ve already been married. I need an author who can write beyond the happily-ever-after. Maybe Emily Bronte. Isn’t Wuthering Heights about how the wrong boyfriend wrecks life for two generations?
“Lewis rolls his eyes.”
“I did not,” Lewis said. “I did not roll my eyes.”
“Yes you did, and you said ‘Priceless,’ too, really sarcastically.”
“It was priceless. I just wish my nineteenth-century-Brit-lit prof could’ve heard your synopsis.” He slipped his hand around Libby’s thigh. “Go on. Please. I’ll be good.”
“Red says, It could be titled simply Libby Daw. Like Jane Eyre.
“Wuthering Heights was a house, I say. So mine could be The Manatee.
“You mean the sea cow? says Red. I don’t get it.
“Manatee’s the brand of my trailer.
“Lewis says, How ’bout In the Belly of the Manatee?”
Lewis burst out laughing. “Sorry, sorry,” he sputtered.
“Ha, ha, ha,” Libby said, and read on.
“Who knows? says Red. Maybe Lewis will write the book of all our lives.
“What, hollers Lewis, and bore everyone to death?”
Lewis kicked the mud flats under his heels. “You’re already writing the book! I have to start watching what I say around you!”
Libby stuffed her journal into her canvas tote and turned away. He saw then that he couldn’t joke with her, not about her writing. “It’s good, Libby. Really. You even make me sound funny.”
“Right. Like that’s my whole purpose in life.”
JOE, Red’s son, spent every August at Round Rock. During the last week in July, Red drove up to San Francisco to