The Shrine at Altamira

by John L'Heureux

  “I just wanted to see John. Once. Before the divorce.”

  “Come on,” she said. “Don’t wake him.”

  They stepped into the little alcove, where John lay in a tangle of sheets. His face was wet and he kicked out helplessly against the fever.

  “Daddy,” he said, a mumbled sound. And then very clearly, “Daddy.”

  “I’m here, John,” Russell said, and placed his hand on the child’s brow. He sat in the chair next to the bed. “I’m right here, son.”

  John stopped kicking and for a moment he lay still, as if the fever had passed.

  “I’m here,” Russell said.

  Maria left the room and ran the water for tea. She put the kettle on the stove. She stood there, hugging herself for a moment, then she went and stood behind Russell. “You’ll have to leave now,” she said. “You’re disturbing him.”

  “He’s a little better now,” Russell said. “He’s not so hot now.”

  Maria looked at John, sleeping quietly. “He always falls asleep toward morning,” she said. “You had nothing to do with it. You’ve got to go.”

  Russell stood, then bent over to kiss his son’s forehead.

  “Will you just go!” Maria said.

  He looked at her, curious.

  “Now!” she said.

  “He’s the only thing you’ve ever cared about,” Russell said. “Isn’t he.”

  Maria struck out at him, but he grabbed her by the wrist, and then the other wrist, and held them tight.

  “Isn’t he,” he said.

  She turned her face away.

  “Isn’t he?” he asked, squeezing tighter.

  “Yes,” she said.

  A single tear ran down her cheek.

  “God damn you,” he said. “You’re killing me.”

  “There’s a man in there,” Janelle said, but Emory Whitaker paid no attention to her until he saw the back door unlocked. He pushed it open tentatively, peeked into the kitchen, and then made his way on tiptoe through the little house. When he got to Russell’s old room, he saw that there was no need for quiet. It was just his son. Russell lay, unconscious, on his bed.

  Emory sat beside him for a moment, until he found the smell of old booze suffocating, and then he got up and opened the windows. Russell’s skin was gray, and he looked half dead. When he woke up—if he woke up—he’d have a murderous hangover. Emory Whitaker knew about these things.

  He went to his own room and got his copy of One Day at a Time and placed it on the chair beside Russell’s bed. Then he went to the kitchen to make dinner. He still hadn’t gotten the hang of eating regularly, but it was part of the program, so he did it. Swanson’s Hungry Man dinner. Salisbury steak. Yummy.

  On the second day, Emory came home and found Russell still asleep. The book and the AA pamphlets were on the floor, and there was a mess in the bathroom, so Russell must have gotten up and taken a shower or something. Emory stood and watched him breathe for a while. His son. Russell had grown into a big man, tall and broad. And screwed up, Emory thought.

  He busied himself tidying the bathroom. He put out fresh towels and a new bar of oatmeal soap. He used Windex on the mirror. Then he went into the kitchen and made a pot of tea. He toasted some bread, and buttered it, and put everything on a tray. He placed the tray on the chair next to Russell’s bed, so that he’d find it when he woke up.

  The next day when Emory came home, Russell was sitting on his bed, wearing only his shorts. Emory was surprised to find him up, and surprised too at how powerful he looked.

  Emory stood in the doorway, and they exchanged looks.

  “Hello, son,” Emory said.

  Russell looked away from him.

  “Feeling any better? I’ll make you some tea and toast.”

  “So what’s all this?” Russell asked. “Part of AA?”

  “Would you like some juice? Tomato?”

  “I don’t want anything from you.”

  “I’ll get the tea,” Emory said.

  “Get fucked,” Russell said.

  When he was washed and dressed, he went to the kitchen, where Emory had laid out toast and jam and a bowl of oranges. Emory was pouring tea into a mug that said Have a Nice Day!

  “I’m having lasagna,” Emory said. “It’s frozen, but it’s good.”

  Russell sat down and took a sip of tea. He made a face, then took another sip.

  “I know. It’s tough,” Emory said. “Try to get some toast down, if you can. It’s whole wheat. The sooner you get a little food in you, the better you’ll feel. And there’s some B12 here.” He pushed a bottle of pills across the table. “You need rehydration and you need a vitamin supplement. I’ll make you some—”

  “Since when did you get to be Mother Teresa?” Russell stood up from the table. “What is all this Mary Poppins shit? You.” He said it as if it were a dirty word. “You.”

  “It’s all right. I’m only getting what I deserve.” He poured Russell another cup of tea.

  “Christ!” Russell said, and stood there speechless. A moment later he slammed the door to his room.

  That weekend Russell stayed in his room with the door shut. The divorce agreement allowed him to see John for two days every other week, Saturday and Sunday, providing he remained sober, but now that he was sober he seemed unable to move. He lay in bed and looked at the ceiling. Sometimes he slept. After a while, he couldn’t tell whether he was awake or sleeping. Lying there, he was a boy again, listening to his mother and father fight. He could hear their voices rise with anger and with drink. He could hear the shouts and accusations, the bitter laughter, taunting, and then a scream, the broken glass, the body slammed hard against the wall, the dull sound of blows, and crying. He could hear them even when he knew he was awake—and his mother gone more than twenty years now, and his father in AA. He turned over on his side and brought his knees up to his chest. The shouts and the crying would echo in this room forever.

  It was a weekend like so many Russell had spent as a child.

  On Monday when Emory got home from work, he found Russell’s door still shut. He tapped lightly and listened for an answer. He tapped again, louder, and then eased the door open. Russell was lying on the bed fully clothed.

  “We have to talk,” Emory said. “I have to say something to you.”

  Russell looked at him.

  “I’m in AA, as you know, and I’ve got my life back on track, and I’m going through the twelve steps.” He sat down on the end of Russell’s bed. “Okay?” he asked. “One of the things we have to do in AA is make amends for the damage we did while we were drinking. We have to admit it and we have to do something about it. Anybody we hurt, we have to apologize to. You know?”

  Russell said nothing, but he looked as if he had stopped breathing.

  “So, what I want to say, Russell, is this.” Emory paused, placing his hand on Russell’s ankle. “If I’ve ever done anything to hurt you, I apologize. Sincerely.” He saw tears forming in his son’s eyes. “I mean that,” he said, and patted Russell’s foot. Then he got up and left, closing the door behind him.

  Russell felt the tears pricking at his eyes as he held up his ruined hand before his face. He turned it over in the light and examined the pink and hideous palm. He turned it palm-down and looked at it. He could see his father’s face contorted with rage as he dragged him, struggling, to the stove and forced his hand into the flames. He could hear the flesh hiss, and he could smell it as the pain struck, sudden and hard, a hot knife in his brain. He could feel his heart melting away.

  Russell lurched from the bed and collapsed against the chair. He lowered himself to the floor and knelt with his head bent over till it touched the carpet. He brought his elbows up and dug them deep into his stomach. And then he raised his head and turned his face to the ceiling and—with no sound, with no sound at all—emptied out his grief and rage in a long silent howl that echoed only in his brain, but echoed over and over and over again.

  . . . . .

>   Ana Luisa parked her old junker in front of the house and looked around. It was a neighborhood like her own, only worse. A little girl was playing in the dirt at the curb.

  “Is this where the Whitakers live?” she asked the girl.

  “Uncle Emory lives there, and I live here,” the girl said.

  The screen door opened and the child’s mother called, “Janelle? You come here now.”

  “What’s your name?” Janelle asked.

  “You’d better go in,” Ana Luisa said. She got out of the car and approached the house.

  The girl followed her. “Do you know what?” she said. “My kitty made peepee on my blanket, and now I can’t keep her in the house. She doesn’t mind, my mama says, but I think she does.”

  Ana Luisa rang the bell.

  From next door the woman shouted, “Janelle!” in a different tone this time, and at once Janelle was down the stairs and pelting toward home. “I’ve told you and I’ve told you,” the woman said, shaking the little girl, and then there was a wet slapping sound, and a howl of pain and indignation, and finally the sound of crying.

  Ana Luisa rang the bell again and listened, but she could hear nothing inside. A battered mailbox shaped like a lantern hung next to the doorbell, and through the slot in the side she could see a letter. She glanced over at Janelle’s house, as if they might be watching, and then she lifted the letter from the box. It was a phone bill addressed to Mr. Emory Whitaker. So this must be the house. She dropped the letter back in the box and knocked on the door. She knocked again, firmly. This time she heard noise inside, the sound of a chair falling over, somebody banging things around. She pressed the bell.

  The door opened a crack. She could see a man’s eye, milky blue, and a part of his unshaved face. He reeked of alcohol.

  “What?” he said.

  “I’m looking for Russell Whitaker,” she said. “Are you his father?”

  He leaned his head against the door, and it closed.

  She banged on the door.

  “Mr. Whitaker,” she said. “I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “Mr. Whitaker,” she said, shouting.

  He opened the door and looked at her. Then he turned and went into the kitchen, where she could see him trying to pick up an overturned chair. She stepped inside and glanced around her. The living room was dark because the shades were drawn, but it was neat and clean, as if nobody ever used it. She followed him into the kitchen, which was a mess. There were dirty dishes piled in the sink, and the counter was littered with soup cans and jam jars and packets of frozen food. There was a jumbo bag of potato chips and two large packages of Twinkies. On the table was a bottle of gin, more than half empty, and a glass that was full. Which explained everything.

  Ana Luisa took in the kitchen sink and the counter and the table and then turned her attention to the man himself. He had managed to right the chair and now he stood behind it, clutching it for balance. He was small, pitifully thin, with a sunken chest and skinny arms. He was wearing only a soiled tee shirt and trousers. His bare feet were filthy.

  “I’m looking for Russell,” Ana Luisa said. “His son is sick.”

  He looked up at her, uncomprehending. “Do you want a drink?” he said, and with difficulty managed to get himself into the chair. He touched the bottle. “Drink?” he said.

  “Russell’s son is sick,” she said, “and needs to see him. Is Russell here? Do you know where he is?”

  He reached for his glass and tried to lift it, but he was shaking too much.

  Ana Luisa took the glass from his hand and banged it on the table. “Never mind that now,” she said. “Just tell me where he is.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and tears rushed to his eyes. “I’m not supposed to drink.” Suddenly he began to cry. He leaned forward on the table, his head on his arms, and sobbed.

  Virgen Santísima, she said to herself, and to him she said, “Stop that crying and be a man. Are you a crazy?” She shook him by the shoulder, but it did no good. He kept on crying like an idiot. Finally she gave up.

  She looked around the room and thought that maybe she should give this place a good cleaning. Throw out the garbage, at least, and wash the dishes. Pour the gin down the toilet. Make him some coffee. She looked at him, slumped over the table, and thought: men. They’re all the same. Whether they beat you or cry on your breast or push their thing in you all the way up to your lungs, they’re all children, they’re all selfish. To hell with them all.

  She left the kitchen and the house and drove back to her own house where everything was nice and neat and where—no matter what else you could say about it—at least there were no men.

  Russell lay on the grass, as nearly unconscious as he could get. He had drunk a pint bottle of Thunderbird and had taken three black beauties and at last he was beginning to feel numb. He was neither alive nor dead, just suspended, and he didn’t have to think.

  He had been living this way for a year now, sleeping in the park at night, panhandling by day, taking handouts wherever he could get them, just part of the San Francisco scene. He was not waiting for some reason to kill himself or to kill somebody else. He was just waiting.

  He lay on the grass with his eyes closed, numb at last. He felt nothing. He was incapable of thought.

  But then a little breeze came up and troubled the leaves above his head, and the sunlight made patterns of the leaves, and on his closed eyelids there slowly formed the image of Maria.

  Maria smiling.

  Maria sad.

  Maria with John.

  Maria in love.

  Maria in love, but not in love with him.

  John was five and a half, thin and nervous, but tough. At school he could beat up any kid his age and some who were older. At home, he was quiet and polite, even shy. He took out the trash, he put away his toys, he never used bad words. Mostly he watched television or sat in his little alcove with the curtain pulled shut. He liked to hide in there, turning the pages of his picture books. He was no trouble at all, except very rarely when he got angry. He had his father’s temper. But he was a good boy.

  Maria placed a small sheaf of papers on Mr. Acker-man’s desk, where they’d be ready for him in the morning. She did the locking up—his office, her office, the foyer—and took the elevator down to the main lobby. She said good night to Mrs. Mehta, the cleaning lady, and to Raoul, the custodian, who was seated at the Information desk reading the Wall Street journal. As she crossed the lobby, she listened with satisfaction to the click of her heels on the marble floor and the dull echo that sprang up around her. It was the sound of her new authority.

  That week Maria had been made personal assistant to Mr. Ackerman and, in a way, this promotion put her in charge of all the clerical help in the office. Mr. Lang, that fag, had made the mistake of giving Mr. Ackerman an ultimatum. “I simply cannot work with that woman a single minute longer. Either she goes or I go,” he said. “You’ll have to choose.” And of course Mr. Ackerman chose Maria.

  She loved her job, or rather she loved the sense of power that went with her job. She got to the office early, and she left late. There was always extra work to do, and even when she delegated it, she supervised anything that went to Mr. Ackerman under her name. She was invaluable, Ackerman told her, and she intended to stay that way.

  She went to the parking lot and got into her car. She flipped on the radio and pulled out of the lot, heading east on Santa Cruz. She twirled the dial until she hit a station where they were playing Buddy Holly. Rock ‘n’ roll. She loved the old songs.

  She did not notice the battered Chevy that followed her from the lot, turned east on Santa Cruz, and continued on past her house after she’d parked and gone in.

  She swept John into her arms and gave him five kisses—one for each birthday—and a sixth for his coming birthday. She greeted her mother. She collapsed, gratefully, on the couch.

  Outside the house and down the street, Russell parked his battered Chevy and prepared to wait.
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  He had spent more than a year in San Francisco, drunk and drugged, not caring. But for the past month he’d been back in San Jose, living with his father, spying on his former wife, waiting.

  If she went out, he would know where. If somebody came to the house, he would know who. If there was another man in her life, he would kill him.

  His teeth ached and his breath was sour, with love.

  Ana Luisa stood at the stove and gave another poke to the chicken breasts she was frying. It was foolish and wasteful to cook chicken this way, but it was how Emory liked it, and it was his house and his chicken, so she fried it for him. She couldn’t get out of the habit of trying to please men.

  “Russell’s back,” she said. “Where has he been?”

  “Seattle, he says.” Emory sat at the kitchen table, sipping Diet Coke. “But who knows?”

  “I saw his car pull out as I pulled in.”

  “It’s not much of a car.”

  “He doesn’t come see John. He doesn’t come see his own son. John is going to be six soon.”

  Emory said nothing.

  Ana Luisa lifted a chicken breast to see how it was doing and decided it was not brown enough yet. She shook her head. What was so special about fried chicken? At least when you baked a chicken, you didn’t have to stand next to it for an hour, coaxing it along.

  “Fried food is not good for you,” she said.

  “He never even talks to me,” Emory said. “He looks at me as if I’m not there. Here.”

  “He misses his son. It’s only natural. He misses Maria.”

  They were silent then, with their separate thoughts.

  When the chicken was done, Ana Luisa put aside two breasts for Emory to eat later, and she served him the other two—the crispiest ones—with green beans and new potatoes and corn bread. She sat down and watched him eat. They were both silent.

  Ana Luisa missed Russell. She could see him in John, in the shape of John’s mouth and chin, in the way he spoke sometimes, in his shyness. And in John’s sudden anger.

  But she could see no resemblance between Russell and his father. Emory was small and sickly, a weak, gentle man who spoke very little and, when he did, spoke softly. He seemed to have no anger in him at all. He was one of those men you wanted to help, so she cooked for him once a month. And in the back of her mind she thought this might be a way to bring Russell back into the family. Maria had not remarried. John needed his father. And divorce was a terrible thing.