Our Lady of Infidelity

by Jackie Parker

  Five-inch plaster saints, these are her toys? No wonder she’s obsessed, Zoe thinks.

  “Our Lady of the Miraculous. Isn’t she pretty?” asks Luz.

  “Gorgeous. I love the blue robe. Did Mami buy them for you?”

  “No,” says Luz. “We found the box from the lady who gave Father Billy the house. Mami said throw them out.”

  “Wait, a lady gave Father Bill this house?”

  “Yes, because she died. But she was very old. And she used to give me yellow candy after Mass, but I didn’t eat them because they were sour.”

  “Were they lemon drops?”

  “Yes. Here, this one is a man. Take him.” And Luz hands Zoe a handsome winged figure. Then she grins.

  To see such a smile on the face of this child lightens the burden of the day. I only need to play with her, Zoe thinks. Just hang out with Luz on the floor and play with her saints and try not to pass out from the heat.

  “Do you know who you have?” Luz asks.

  “I have no idea.”

  “He is the one who carries the souls to heaven. Now do you know him?”

  “Sorry, I don’t.”

  “His name is Saint Michael.”

  “Saint Michael. What do you know? After he takes them to heaven, what does he do?”

  “He gets more souls and brings them.”

  “Nice job,” Zoe says.

  Luz takes Saint Michael from Zoe’s hand and replaces it with another winged figure. “Raf-ay-elllll! I love him,” Luz shouts, hugging the little man to her chest. Then she gives Zoe the Holy Family, three figures that have been fused into one.

  “And this,” says Luz before Zoe can even admire the tiny child or reach again for the winged Michael, en route to heaven while Zoe’s Michael has left her in hell, “this is Saint Lucy. The one that gets Mami really angry that I hide.”

  Zoe says nothing, though she thinks Lucy is cute.

  “Do you think they are stories or are they real?” Luz asks, looking appraisingly at Zoe so close beside her she can feel the heat of her flesh and smell the sharp sweat smell that is not like her mother’s.

  “I like stories,” says Zoe.

  “Because they are real.”

  “I guess. In a way, so touché.”

  “What is touché?” says Luz.

  “It’s French.”

  “Oh,” says Luz, reaching for another figure. “So is she. Bernadette, from Lourdes, France.” She holds up a pretty long-haired saint with a small rosy mouth and a lovely silver dress, albeit plaster.

  Later Luz will put her communion veil on Zoe’s head, with its crown of little seed pearls. She will show Zoe her white gloves, the dress like a little bride’s, and her communion album of gold-bordered white leather, the first photo taken on the steps of Our Lady of Guadalupe, fat pink peonies in the planting box beside them. Josefina is unsmiling, an obviously reluctant celebrant. Luz is in full white regalia, grinning big. And there is one photograph with all three of them, Luz in the middle, Father Bill looking proud. My girls, thinks Zoe. Isn’t that what he’d called them when he invited her to share a meal at the rectory? “My girls will be there,” he had said. “I’d like them to meet you.” Does Father Bill know that one of his girls is obsessed?

  “Do you know Father Bill a long time?” Zoe asks, having coaxed Luz into the kitchen to drink and to have an early lunch. She takes out the paper bag from the refrigerator where she had forgotten it that morning and puts the cold tamales on a plate, stands the raisin box beside it, chilled solid as brick.

  “I know Father Bill from before I was born,” Luz says, taking a bite of tamale. Zoe’s own stomach is growling. She goes back to the refrigerator and takes out the peppers she had seen the previous night. Josefina’s food, Zoe thinks guiltily.

  “From before you were born, that’s impossible,” Zoe says, as she puts the peppers on a plate and brings them to the table.

  Luz gets up and goes out of the kitchen, returning with a framed newspaper article written in Spanish, the article that has been folded many times over and is already yellowed.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “From Mami’s room.”

  The paper is El Diario de Hoy, the date, 18 Agosto 1987. Above the text is the photograph of a man with Luz’s dark eyes and broad, stony forehead, an intense expression. The photograph has captured him in the midst of speaking, as if he is exhorting a crowd. “Dr. Raphael Reyes,” says Luz. Zoe makes out the words. Universidad de El Salvador, muerto con veinte otros.

  “This is my father. Dr. Raphael Reyes. Not a doctor. A teacher in the college. Do you like his face?”

  “Yes, very much. I think you look like him.”

  “Yes. And Father Bill knew him too. Father Bill was a priest and a teacher in my country but for the poor people with Mami. People who could not read.”

  “Oh, I see. And they were all friends?”

  “Teachers and friends in my country.”

  Where you lost all the family, Zoe thinks, but why? Zoe wonders but does not ask. “So that’s how Father Bill knew you before you were born?”

  “Yes,” says Luz. “We have to put it right back now.”

  Zoe helps Luz replace the photograph on the nail above the small white dresser in Josefina’s tiny bedroom, the bed unmade, a sheet tossed on the floor, the closet flung open, a wrong acrid odor permeating the air. She has walked into lives of people she cannot fathom, some who are living, some who have already died.

  “When will they call me?” Luz asks once they have returned to the kitchen. She sits at the table but does not touch the second tamale.

  “Soon, honey, I’m sure. Try to eat a little. You must be hungry. You hardly ate breakfast.”

  “Now will we go to the campground?”

  “Let’s wait until it gets cooler. Four-thirty or five.”

  When the phone call comes, Zoe is sitting at the kitchen table trying to decipher a Spanish language magazine, drowsy with heat and three hours of sleep, wishing she could nap. Luz is back in her room. Zoe calls out her name, but Luz does not appear.

  “I think she is sleeping,” Zoe says to Father Bill.

  “She doesn’t sleep in the middle of the day,” he says abruptly. “Go and see what she’s doing.”

  It is in the bathroom that Zoe finds Luz. Zoe has to open the door with her credit card, sliding it under the lock. Luz jumps off the edge of the tub where she has been perched, staring into the mirror.

  “Didn’t you hear the telephone? Didn’t you hear me calling?”

  “No,” says Luz thickly.

  And for the first time Zoe smells the scent, the too-sweet aroma of roses.

  CHAPTER 10

  When Luz puts her ear to the phone, she hears her mother saying her name. It sounds like Josefina is speaking from under deep water.

  “Why are you talking so soft?”

  “The medicines do this. For making me tired. They say I must sleep. You ate?”

  “Yes,” says Luz, “but just one tamale. What is wrong with you? Why did you fall down?”

  “We don’t know yet. They are testing my blood, mamita. They are testing my everything. They are giving me medicine. Soon I’ll be home. Do not worry. I will come to you soon.”

  “She talked soft,” Luz says to Zoe after she puts down the phone.

  “The tests must be making her tired.”

  “I will be quiet. When she comes home, I’ll let her keep sleeping.”

  You are already quiet, Luz Reyes, thinks Zoe. “Why don’t we go to the campgrounds?”

  “No,” says Luz as she heads out of the kitchen.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have to do something.”

  “What?” Zoe asks.

  “Something for Mami.”

  “I want to see it. Don’t leave me alone in the kitchen.”

  Luz turns. “You are lonely? Come to my room. I will show you.”

  How can Zoe object to the prayer cards? To the Joyful and
Sorrowful Mysteries, not to mention the Luminous Ones? To the little system Luz shows her in secret and teaches her to say? Ten days of these magic Rosaries for someone in need.

  “Is that what you have been doing when you lock the door?” Zoe asks. “Have you been saying Rosaries for Mami?”

  “Yes,” says Luz. “But don’t tell Father Bill. He doesn’t want me to do it too much.”

  Ah, Zoe thinks.

  “Do you want to say it for Michael?”

  “Saint Michael?”

  “Your Michael,” says Luz as she strokes Zoe’s hand.

  “Who told you I had a Michael?”

  Luz looks down at the floor. “I hear everything they say, Mami and Father Bill.” Zoe puts her hand on Luz’s neck, the fingers long and cool. “The ones that disappear need every prayer,” says Luz.

  “The ones that disappear?”

  “Ask deep,” Luz says, “with your body. I will show you.”

  A Glorious Mystery for Wednesday. A Luminous One for tomorrow, very long, very involved, Zoe thinks. Still, it makes Luz so happy to say it. And Zoe will not be with Luz for long. Why should she not help Luz endure what is here in the moment and the unspeakable thing that is to come? The ones who disappear need every prayer. And the ones who remain. She says a Glorious Mystery for Michael. A Luminous one for herself.

  When they have finished, Zoe can smell it distinctly, a sweet thick scent rising off of Luz’s skin. “Are you wearing your mother’s perfume?”

  “Perfume?” asks Luz.

  “Don’t think I can’t smell it. It’s coming from you.” Zoe says nuzzling Luz in the neck.

  Luz laughs. A small crackling fire of a laugh. Luz throws back her head.

  “Don’t tell Father Bill what you smell.”

  “Is it his?”

  “He doesn’t wear perfume.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  Luz shrugs.

  “If you took it from Mami, you have to put it right back.”

  “Okay,” says Luz getting up from the floor and walking to her dresser, “when you go back to the kitchen.”

  “Are you kicking me out?”

  “You are funny.”

  “Well, are you?”

  “Yes!” says Luz.

  “Remember, don’t lock the door.”

  Zoe goes back to the kitchen and does the few lunch dishes. She hears Luz walking to her mother’s bedroom. She hears the door open and close and then suddenly Luz’s running feet as she comes flying back to the kitchen.

  “What is it?” asks Zoe,

  Luz stands with her hands pressed against her ears, her face contorted.

  “What’s wrong, Luz? Did you hurt yourself?”

  “Mozote,” is all she can say.

  But Zoe has never heard of Mozote. And Luz, who has told too many secrets already, is unable to explain.

  CHAPTER 11

  That night, instead of telling Father Bill her concerns about Luz, Zoe ends up trying to cheer him (and maybe herself) by saying how well Luz is doing, how helpful the list is, neglecting to mention the peculiar rose smell, the endless Rosaries, the locked doors, the family in El Salvador Luz has told her about who are gone. After their phone call, Zoe lies exhausted on the brown couch in the same tee shirt and pants she has worn for two days. Tomorrow she will get to the campgrounds and retrieve her clothes.

  Right now she should get up and go through the house and look for the source of that smell, which lingers. Or maybe it’s grown. But she is unable to move, her body heavy with their sorrow and the sickly sweet smell with no source.

  Searching her own house day after day after Michael left, looking for she did not know what—love notes with which to wound herself—Zoe had come upon a lilac flyer hidden in Michael’s sock drawer, Pilgrims Unite for a Great Event, it read. Below was a hand-drawn map. This must be a joke, she had thought: the Mojave, the Joshua Tree Campgrounds, a black dot the size of a dime due east of the campgrounds. Join us in an uprising of spirit, a congregation of joy. It was the kind of thing she and Michael might make fun of. But Michael had been in the Mojave, she remembered. It was where he had learned he had a gift for wood.

  He had come to her shop looking for work. She had not talked to him since high school. Thirty-two, a wanderer, no profession. Son of a respected doctor, his father’s shame. He had been on four continents by then. Zoe had never gone further than Maine, third generation woodworker. Her own shop by thirty. The only woman in the wood trade for miles. Michael was driving a school bus, coaching youth hockey at the Ice House in Rhinebeck. She had glimpsed him one night at the locals’ hangout, alone at the bar. Seen him early one morning sitting on the esplanade wall, gazing at the river. The same sense of distance about him. The same sweetness of face. Something fine she could not quite name. Zoe, who can look into wood and see grain. This is my husband, she had thought as he looked up, a clear quiet voice in the mind.

  He takes her to the back of his truck, unwraps a cabinet two feet by three. Old, she thinks at first as he puts it in her hands. Bird’s-Eye maple, deeply figured, dovetail joints in cherry, pale maple drawers. Intricate work. More art than craft. She runs a hand over the finish, holds her breath as he slides out the drawers. Amazing. “I built it,” he says. Hint of a smile. Where had he learned? “There was a man in Utah, a Navajo carver. I spent three years with him, the best years of my life. Another year traveling. Have you been West? The Mojave? Beautiful. You should go some time.”

  Michael was twelve when his mother walked out. One night he woke to the sound of smashing glass, his father’s feet running down the stairs, his voice booming “Miriam! Miriam!” A month later, home after hockey practice, Michael walks into his house, drops his bag and his stick, feels the emptiness. A Wednesday, the night his father is on duty at the hospital. Afraid to go into her bedroom and look, afraid to open the coat closet, he waits until midnight to pick up the phone. A week later they find her in Boston. “She’s gone and there’s nothing we can do,” his father explains, takes the boy in his arms. “Don’t let this ruin things. It isn’t the end of the world.” Later it becomes a command. “Did she want to talk to me?” “Not yet,” said his father.

  When Michael was a senior in high school, he took a bus up to Boston, pretending to look at colleges. Miriam Payne had a job in customer service, some big insurance company, a second-floor apartment, a boyfriend, a married man. “Here’s what I remember about her. Even when she was home she was never there. Absent when she was right in front of you. It’s history,” he said to Zoe who wanted more. Everyone urging her to be careful. Go slow. Common knowledge: Michael Payne had never stayed with a woman longer than half a year. “It’s the past,” Michael said. “It won’t happen with you. I will never walk away. It would be like walking away from myself.”

  Michael and Zoe go to all the fall parties in Cold Spring that year. Zoe in rose velvet, at home in her beauty. Anyone could see how happy they were. Michael raises his beer, taps it with a knife, “I’ve come back to Cold Spring to marry Zoe Luedke!”

  Love is stronger than history, they tell each other. Their love.

  Five months later they marry, buy a wreck of a house with a view of the Hudson, sturdy hundred-year-old barn out back for their work. Luedke & Payne Cabinet Makers. The clients love Michael, his careful details, his quickness. (And Zoe so slow.) Their house fills with friends. Michael Payne come into his own. Even his father has hope. It lasts exactly three years.

  This isn’t happening, she thought, when he left. Unable to bear it, not just her own pain, but his. History stronger than love. She puts the purple flyer on the bed table. Every morning there it is. One day Zoe throws some clothes in a duffle, sticks the flyer in her jeans, grabs the tent and a sleeping bag, the red tool box—her first—for luck, takes off in the Nova, not even sure until she is on the Thruway where it is she is going to go. The black dot. The Mojave. Pilgrims Unite.

  * * *

  In the morning Luz has to be prodded to get ou
t of bed. She eats little breakfast, does not want to get dressed. At least the rose smell is gone, Zoe notes with relief. “You will feel better when you are in school.” “No,” says Luz. “Take your books,” says Zoe, handing Luz her backpack. Luz refuses.

  “I didn’t eat breakfast,” Luz tells Father Bill as he kneels on the steps of the church after Mass, trying to convince her to try summer school—for the morning, at least. He is hollow-eyed, frail in spite of his thickness as if one touch could knock him flat. “I didn’t do the homework,” Luz pleads.

  He looks at Zoe apologetically.

  “If she wants to stay home again, I could take her to Twenty-Nine Palms—or the campgrounds.”

  “The campgrounds? Whose idea was that?” Father Bill says.

  “Mine, I think,” Zoe says.

  “She knows she cannot go there. The campgrounds are not allowed. Mami wants you in school, Luz. You won’t be able to talk to her until evening. That’s a long time to wait.”

  “I am patient,” Luz says.

  The campgrounds are not allowed? Zoe thinks.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Father Bill says. “Did she sleep?”

  “I slept in the night. I didn’t wake up,” Luz offers.

  “Very good,” says Father Bill, “but do you see I am speaking to Zoe?”

  “We’ll fill up the day. It’s okay if she wants to stay home,” Zoe says.

  “Thank you for understanding.” Father Bill clasps Zoe’s hands. Then he bends down and embraces Luz and says something that Zoe cannot hear, watches as they walk to the Dart.

  “How ’bout we go see how the window is doing? Would you like that?” Zoe asks. “And then we can go to the diner for breakfast. After that maybe you can help me find Michael.”

  Yes, Luz says to it all and sits back in the seat of the Dart. Father Bill had said try not to worry. Mami is coming home soon. But why can’t Luz talk to her until the night? She had not asked. Then they are driving the Dart on the freeway that Luz knows so well and Father Bill is gone.

  “You didn’t tell me you aren’t allowed to go to the campgrounds.”