Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [95]
AS SOON as Lewis turned off the Santa Bernita Highway toward Rito, round rocks began to appear: first a single boulder-sized specimen at the mouth of a private drive; then a granite honeydew atop a concrete pillar; and finally, in profusion, gradated cannonballs bordering a weedy bed of roses, a yard filled with gray basketballs.
Rito was more or less as Lewis remembered it from three years ago—cluttered yards, cacti in lard buckets, chickens pecking in the foxtails—and a homesickness he’d never felt welled up within him. So many things about the town seemed comic and benign, like stray parts of a joke: a pony tethered to a palm tree; dogs sleeping stretched out, belly up, in the street; a butter-yellow Oldsmobile station wagon stalled in the middle of Church Street, hood up, as six men gazed, rapt, into the engine cavity. I was so lost when I lived here, he thought, yet it was so funny. And safe.
David’s uncle lived two miles out of town and down a gravel lane in a dusty, weathered orchard cottage. The porch sagged with bougainvillea and morning glories. Roses, delphinium, and ranunculus bloomed in the yard with preternatural good health.
They were greeted by a tiny, raffish wirehaired mutt and a small flock of colorful bantam chickens. Lewis and David exchanged phone numbers, and Lewis refused an invitation to come inside to meet David’s relatives. “I’m thinking,” he said, “I might pay a surprise visit to Round Rock.”
David shook his hand. “Good luck, and keep in touch.”
THE FIRST time Libby became truly angry with Red was shortly after they started spending every night together. Joe was due down for a weekend, and Red not only suggested they sleep separately for those two nights—Libby had no argument there—but also felt they shouldn’t see each other at all. “You mean you don’t want Joe to know we’re together?”
Red blushed profoundly, hemmed and hawed. She had never seen him so bollixed. “I need time,” he whispered.
This was not a line Libby liked to hear. “Time for what?”
“When Joe was here last, you were sleeping with Lewis,” he said. “The switch seems, well, kind of quick.”
She saw he was ashamed of his—their—actions, and she argued that children need to see that adults, too, can move gracelessly, and sometimes stumble into the right thing.
Red wouldn’t agree. “I’d rather model appropriate behavior.”
“Do what you feel is best, then,” she told him as he left for the airport. “But you can save that jargon for your drunks. And I can’t guarantee I’ll want to see you come Sunday, or ever.”
It never occurred to them that Little Bill had long since informed Joe of the romantic reversal. When Red met him at the gate, Joe’s first words were, “Where’s Libby?” He made Red call her from the nearest pay phone. “Don’t blow this one, Dad.”
The second time Libby felt that deep, potentially life-shifting anger was over two and a half years later, the night Lewis showed up out of the blue at Round Rock.
She and Red had been at the new house with the plumber, who needed a light. Libby was already in a bad mood; if they had a real plumber instead of an ex-resident moonlighting as one, he’d possess the right equipment and they wouldn’t have spent all Sunday afternoon running errands for him. “I’ll dash in,” she said when Red pulled up at the garage.
The door was unlocked, surprisingly. She immediately spotted a caged shop light on a pegboard on the far wall and started for it.
“Hello?”
She stopped. In the far bay, a man unfolded before her. She gave a short yelp even as she recognized him. “Lewis?” He looked helplessly young, even vulnerable. “What are you doing here?”
“I stopped by to see Red, but he wasn’t home. Then I remembered these dashboard knobs I bought for the Fairlane.”
She moved forward and could see what looked like ivory acorns scattered at his feet. Radio and heater knobs. She looked