The Round House Read Free

Cher was on the cover. I could read the words beside Cher’s jaw: She’s made Moonstruck a megahit, her lover is 23 and she’s tough enough to say “mess with me and I’ll kill you.” But Cher did not look tough. She looked like a surprised plastic doll. The bony, bulgey woman peeked around Cher and spoke to the knitting lady.
    Looked like that poor woman had a miscarriage or maybe—her voice went sly—a rape.
    The woman’s lip lifted up off her rabbit teeth as she looked at me. Her ratty yellow hair quivered. I looked right back, into her lashless hazel eyes. Then I did something odd by instinct. I went over and took the magazine out of her hands. Still staring at her, I tore off the cover and dropped the rest of the magazine. I ripped again. Cher’s identical eyebrows parted. The lady who was knitting pursed her lips, counting stitches. I gave the cover back and the woman accepted the pieces. Then suddenly I felt bad about Cher. What had she done to me? I got up and walked out the door.
    I stood outside. I could hear the woman’s voice, raised, triumphant, complaining to the nurse. The sun was almost down. The air had gone cold, and with the darkness a stealthy chill entered me. I hopped up and down and swung my arms. I didn’t care what. I was not going back in until that woman was gone, or until my father came out and told me that my mother was all right. I could not stop thinking about what that woman had said. Those two words stabbed my thoughts, as she had meant them to do. Miscarriage. A word I didn’t altogether understand but knew had to do with babies. Which I knew were impossible. My mother had told me, six years before, when I’d pestered her for a brother, that the doctor had made sure that after me she could not get pregnant. It just could not happen. So that left the other word.
    A fter a while, I saw a nurse take the pregnant lady back in through the emergency doors. I hoped they would not put her anywhere near my mother. I went in and again called my aunt, who said that she’d leave Edward to watch Mooshum and drive right over. She also asked me what had happened, what was wrong.
    Mom’s bleeding, I said. My throat shut and I couldn’t say more.
    She’s hurt? Was there an accident?
    I got it out that I didn’t know and Clemence hung up. A poker-faced nurse came out and told me to go back to my mother. The nurse disapproved that my mother had asked for me. Insisted, she said. I wanted to run ahead, but I followed the nurse down a bright-lit hall, into a windowless room lined with green glass-fronted metal cabinets. The room had been dimmed and my mother was wearing a flimsy hospital gown. A sheet was tucked around her legs. There was no blood, anywhere. My father was standing at the head of her bed, his hand on the metal rail of the headboard. At first I didn’t look at him, just at her. My mother was a beautiful woman—that’s something I always knew. A given among family, among strangers. She and Clemence had coffee-cream skin and hot black glossy curls. Slim even after their children. Calm and direct, with take-charge eyes and movie-star lips. When overcome with laughter, they lost all dignity, however, and choked, snorted, burped, wheezed, even farted, which made them ever more hysterical. They usually sent each other into fits, but sometimes my father, too, could make them lose control. Even then, they were beautiful.
    Now I saw my mother’s face puffed with welts and distorted to an ugly shape. She peered through slits in the swollen flesh of her lids.
    What happened? I asked stupidly.
    She didn’t answer. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. She blotted them away with a gauze-wrapped fist. I’m all right, Joe. Look at me. See?
    And I looked at her. But she was not all right. There were scrapes of blows and the awful lopsidedness. Her skin had lost its normal warm color. It was gray as ash. Her lips