Our Lady of Infidelity

by Jackie Parker

  “But Michael is not a child.”

  “To Her.”

  Zoe can feel the strange silver-fish feeling bubbling around the back of her neck. What else do you know about Michael? Zoe almost asks. But she would be afraid to hear Luz’s answer. She will not go there. She will stay with the game. “Okay, Luz Reyes, if She called Michael, then did She call me?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, that’s not fair,” Zoe says, aware of the falsity of her tone and of a certain sober reflection in Luz’s face.

  “Maybe She called you, but you weren’t listening. Why are you smiling?”

  “Me? I don’t know. What you say makes me smile,” Zoe says, looking now into her bowl of refrescas, where the ice has melted into a golden slush.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Luz.”

  “But you are still nice, Felangela.” Why can the Felangela do all these good things and not know what Luz says is true?

  “But I am not an angel.”

  “I know that!” Luz laughs.

  “Then what’s this felangela business?”

  Luz puts down her spoon and covers her left hand with her right. “It’s a mean thing.”

  “That beautiful word means something mean?”

  “Mean mean,” Luz says, looking up, delighted.

  “Mean, mean. Now tell me.”

  Luz points to Zoe’s missing digit.

  “What?”

  “Fingertip—in Spanish. Because you lost it, your felangela.”

  Zoe takes a moment to let it sink in. “You mean little teaser,” she says and bursts into laughter. The idea of it delights her. Felangela, they call her—Josefina and Luz playing a game. She sits back in her chair and looks at Luz. “Felangela!” Zoe exclaims. Luz smiles. Zoe stretches her legs, gazes down at her dingy white slacks. She had better wash them tonight, Zoe thinks. Walk around wrapped in the pale green sheet because in the morning she will have only these clothes once again. How could she have missed that road to her campsite?

  “Ask me one more question about Our Lady,” Luz says.

  “One question about Our Lady is one question too many! Okay, one more. After that we are changing the subject.”

  “Make a good question. A very good question.”

  “Hmmnn, let me think.” Zoe stands up and walks to the sink with her bowl, rinses it, then refills the loaf pan with water and replaces it in the freezer, wipes off the big knife and puts it away in the drawer. Shakes the moisture out of the big silver bowl. She turns to Luz Reyes, waiting with solemn dark eyes.

  “Why does Our Lady call you?” Zoe asks.

  Oh no, thinks Luz. The question whose answer she does not yet know. She gets up from her chair and walks, stepping first on a white square and then on a black. She closes her eyes. She will wait. If no answer comes, she will say nothing. She opens her eyes and looks into the Felangela’s smiling face, her shining clear yellow-brown eyes, the Felangela who is almost as beautiful when she smiles as Our Lady. Zoe Luedke, Felangela, thinks Luz, who put in the window crooked or straight. A small sun bursts open in Luz Reyes’ heart. The words come sailing toward her. From Zoe Luedke, Luz has found something that Our Lady wants her to know.

  “I have the reason,” says Luz.

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “Our Lady calls me because I am little and I love the world.”

  “Oh, Luz,” Zoe says. If only she could pick up this child and keep her safe from all that awaits her. All Zoe’s fears about Luz fall from her then. Luz is only a child, little and loving, surrounded by all kinds of sorrows, and yet look what she knows of herself. Look how she opens to life. Zoe can hardly stand it, such an answer, from such a child, a child whose life is crowded with death.

  “Why,” says Luz, “don’t you love it too?”

  * * *

  That night, as Luz climbs into bed under the glinting white canopy, Zoe smells the faint aroma of roses once again, rising and falling as if on a gentle spring wind. She is just about to ask Luz if she smells it too when Luz lifts her arms and pulls Zoe down for a kiss.

  “I want to tell you the real real secret,” Luz whispers.

  “About what?” The kiss is delicious, but Zoe is weak, drained in her body and mind. It will be all she can do to put in a wash: the yellow dress, her own three-day-worn clothes.

  “Our Lady,” Luz whispers.

  “Oh no, you promised, remember? No more on this subject. It will have to wait until morning.” Zoe reaches out and strokes Luz’s hair, heavy and damp from her bath. But at least now she gets it, the obsession is becoming a little bit clearer. Luz has turned to Our Lady for comfort. She has just turned a little too far.

  CHAPTER 14

  Close to midnight, with her clothes and Luz’s tumbling around in the dryer and Zoe dozing on the brown couch, the phone startles her awake. Michael, thinks Zoe, no matter that Michael has no idea where she is, no way to reach her, Michael, who seems in this moment, irretrievably gone.

  She goes into the kitchen in darkness and feels her way to the phone, expecting to hear his voice. It is Father Bill calling to apologize. He had no time to speak to her earlier and explain. A surgical procedure was done on Josefina in midafternoon. A small catheter has been implanted in her chest. The surgery took less than an hour. Josefina has come through it okay, although Zoe suspects from his tone that it was not a smooth ride. “Tomorrow afternoon,” he explains, “Josefina will have her dialysis, and then, God willing, she will respond, right away, the doctors have said, and be ready to go home.”

  Zoe wants to get down on her knees right there in the kitchen. “I am so glad,” she says, surprised at how grateful she feels for this little bit of good news.

  “I think I can catch a few hours of actual sleep tonight,” Father Bill says. “Now tell me how are you doing? How’s Luz?”

  Where to begin? Zoe thinks. She should tell him about the campgrounds. No question. That she has taken Luz there. Maybe she should tell him about the sheep in the campgrounds, what an experience it was to see Luz with them, unafraid, welcoming, even. Amazing, really. But maybe not to Father Bill, maybe to him the whole thing would be nothing but disturbing—the campgrounds off limits to Luz. She should wait to tell it in person, Zoe decides. What else can she tell then—that today Luz had asked if her mother could die?

  “What’s wrong?’ he asks.

  Zoe pauses a little bit longer. “It’s the window I put in for Walt,” she says. “It didn’t go in right. I think I made some kind of mistake.” But when she goes on to describe what has happened and how Walt reacted, Father Bill only laughs. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Anytime else it might not seem funny, but now . . .” Then he tells her a little about Walt. How long it has taken him to put the thing in. How he has obsessed for a year over what to do with his window, afraid he would make a mistake.

  And after this she feels better, much lighter, sees the whole thing as funny, Walt’s fears coming right home to roost. Then she finds all kinds of encouraging things to say about Luz, that her appetite was excellent, listing all that she ate, how helpful Luz was in 29 Palms, friendly and curious. Now Luz has joined in the search for Michael. Again Father Bill laughed, and Zoe is cheered. Luz took her bath, put on her summer pajamas, read to Zoe, quite well, Zoe adds, told all kinds of stories. Luz has quite an imagination, Zoe adds. “Yes,” says Father Bill, “we know about that.” Though she wouldn’t do her summer school homework, but still Luz did not once complain on the long trip to Twenty-Nine Palms, did not complain about bedtime even. “She’s really quite something. She helped me so much, I don’t even know what to say except Luz is a beautiful child.”

  “I am so happy to hear this. So grateful,” Father Bill says. “Thank you, Zoe. You are a gift to us all.”

  A gift! Zoe thinks when she hangs up the phone, feeling less guilty for her evasions, then tremendous relief. Even a little bit celebratory and reckless! All kinds of good things, it turns out, have come of this
day, a day that started so poorly, with the window, and Walt, those little girls at the diner who had run circles around Luz, taunting her, Zoe is sure. Even the bartender remembering he had a purple flyer—what a surprise to find another all these thousands of miles from Michael’s sock drawer—seems in this moment a reason for hope. She goes to the front door and unbolts all three locks, walks outside the blue house in the quiet, looking at the lights in the little stucco houses up and down Mariposa Lane. Not a soul passes on foot. No car engine sounds. No one is even out walking a dog. Nothing threatens to enter the blue house but the night air. The only intruder the rose scent, which hovers behind her while Zoe takes five bold steps and then ten more. Until she is right in the middle of the street, in the middle of the black dot, the velvet black hulk of the San Jacinto Mountains behind her, the uncountable stars, and the expanding High Desert night sky above.

  CHAPTER 15

  The day before Josefina’s homecoming, Zoe and Luz decide they will make the house perfect, but first they will buy Josefina a gift. They drive past the car wash, see the window still there, still tilting, four or five cars lined up and waiting in front of the light-sparking wash. Tomorrow, Zoe thinks, after she leaves Luz she will try and get Walt to let her take another look. She of all people, whose work is meticulous. Maybe by then Walt will have calmed down.

  At the Yucca Valley Mall Luz knows just where to go, just what they’ll buy: red lipstick, magazines that are in Spanish. At the cosmetics counter of J. C. Penney, Zoe catches herself in the mirror, wild-eyed and disheveled in those same worn-out whites, the tee shirt, the light cotton pants. She’s forgotten her appearance entirely these days. All her focus has been on Luz.

  At the A&P they find the magazines and then flowers the size of cantaloupes, three white snowball mums, peppery and cool. At the bakery department Luz picks out a coconut cake from the case.

  In the blue house they work together to clean every room. They put fresh sheets on the two beds. They scour the bathroom. Luz colors a welcome-home sign in two languages.

  In Josefina’s bedroom they mop lightly, dust the little dresser, Luz kisses the photo of her father, Raphael Reyes, then replaces it on the wall, puts the magazines she has bought for her mother on the table, tapes up the welcome home sign outside the front door.

  Zoe keeps Luz busy every moment she can. Only one round of Sorrowful Mysteries, a three-day record. Not a mention of the forbidden Lady, Zoe notes with relief. No word of the secret Luz has promised to tell.

  In the evening when it’s cool, they sit on the back step and eat dinner. Soggy sub sandwiches they have bought at the mall that Luz loves. Right across the drive, the Ottos sit at their umbrella table, talking softly over their dinner. “Why don’t you join us, dears?” Emily Otto calls in a velvety voice.

  “Would you like that?” asks Zoe.

  “We can’t,” says Luz. “We don’t go to the house of a stranger.”

  “But they are neighbors. And you see Emily Otto at—”

  “We can wave,” Luz says.

  “Thanks,” says Zoe, standing up and gathering the remains of their sandwiches, “but we were just going in.”

  Inside the kitchen, the day’s heat persists, and though they have scoured the house, the aroma of roses is undeniable, growing stronger in the living room and in the hall. How will she ever explain it? Could it be her fault, some lapse? Something she has or has not done to Luz that has caused it to erupt from the floorboards or seep through the joists? Something Zoe herself has unknowingly brought into the house?

  At bedtime Luz asks to say one prayer only: an out-of-order Joyful Mystery, for Josefina, for Michael, for everyone in Infidelity who may need it. Zoe thinks of Father Bill. Luz names Tommy Platz and Amanda, who threw the most rocks.

  “What rocks?” Zoe asks, sitting for the final time on the edge of Luz’s bed, with Luz in her summer pajamas looking clean and, yes, Zoe thinks, even relaxed.

  “Are you ready to know the secret?” Luz asks. “Did you think I forgot?”

  I was hoping, Zoe thinks. “I was just waiting,” Zoe says.

  It is many long weeks that Luz Reyes, too, has been waiting—for the one who could listen and not say she lies. Waiting to tell of the day that her feet took her fast to the campgrounds—the day of the one tree when the winds moved in quickly and cooled her and brought in the face, then the voice of Our Lady very strong. She must try to speak slowly so Zoe can understand every part, but once she begins she can hardly keep up with her words. Like her feet sometimes, Luz’s tongue has a mind of its own.

  Luz sits up very straight and looks directly at Zoe. “You’re ready?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Luz takes a big breath and then she begins. “I was on the high swing at recess and I could finally hear it for the first time in life, Her beautiful voice. Her words were like singing so beautiful. Not the bad song. That is Mozote.”

  “The bad song is Mozote?” Zoe asks.

  “Shhh,” says Luz, “wait till the end. I was hearing the voice that is music—Our Lady’s voice. Then I was crying from the voice because the children in my country, they need the good song, and I started to say a Rosary for them only. Tommy shouted, ‘Look at Luz!’ And Amanda ran to the swing and the children came running behind her.”

  “Wait, who is Amanda? Who is Tommy? I forget.”

  “You already saw her. Amanda is the one with the face like a doll and hair that is red. She threw the first rock. Tommy Platz is my friend that plays wild. He did not throw one rock. He told me, ‘Come down, you’ll fall.’ When I came down, the children were looking at me with the sun beating so hot. Their words were mean. And rocks came from their hands, small ones and big ones that made the mark.” Luz points to the place on her cheek, the faint curl of a scar.

  Zoe straightens up, fascinated. So this is what happened in the spring. “Didn’t anyone stop them from throwing the rocks? Didn’t Tommy?”

  “Nobody stopped. I could already see Her up in a cloud. And I felt the shining and I felt the rocks. Then my feet started running too fast.”

  “That’s why you ran to the campgrounds? When the children threw rocks at you at school?” At last, Zoe thinks, it is starting to make sense.

  No, Luz thinks, that is not why. “I already told you. I didn’t do it. Our Lady gave me the fast feet. She sang Her song. She showed Her face. Our Lady gave me the fast feet to run to the campgrounds.”

  “It was not a good thing those kids did to you,” says Zoe.

  “Yes it was a good thing. It was the best,” Luz puts her hand in the middle of her chest. A strong brown hand against pale blue pajamas. When Zoe takes it in hers it is warm, the palm damp. But Luz is not finished, her voice low and insistent, her face so close Zoe can feel the puffs of breath hitting her cheek as Luz speaks. “Because that was the day I knew Our Lady was coming. For me and for Mami, for my country El Salvador, and for all of Infidelity.”

  Zoe reaches for Luz’s other hand, and holds both between her own. How full of feeling she is for this strange troubled child. “What a beautiful child you are.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Father Bill pushes up from the chrome chair, slowly as if he cannot quite lift his weight, his fingertips touching, his thumbs gripping the underside of Josefina’s kitchen table, his face set with barely concealed rage.

  Zoe should get up as well, but she can’t. She feels stuck to her chair, well she is, she is sweating through her thin cotton pants, as she tries to describe the innocent foray she took with Luz. The thick female smell of her mixing with the sickly sweet undertone of roses, faintest in the kitchen at least. The smell that Father Bill has not yet mentioned.

  “You took Luz to the campgrounds, even after you knew that the campgrounds were out of bounds.”

  Once again she tries to explain. Again, she is speaking of sheep. What does he care about two bighorn sheep? He has reached the refrigerator, leaning against the cool metal. He does not want to hear Zoe’s ex
planation. She has no idea about Luz, the tendencies which had revealed themselves in the campgrounds in late spring. Those mystical gifts he does not believe in that he has succeeded in quelling. There, he has admitted it. He has succeeded in quelling them.

  He takes a breath and looks at Zoe. It is better to stand across the room from her. This hapless woman, this Zoe Luedke with the clear wide-set eyes and musical voice, who he had believed was going to be something extraordinary for them, the one who had been sent. Is he a child himself that he still believes such things? She has turned out to have no judgment at all. Not for installing a window or for caring for a child. And who knows where else it is lacking? She is broke. Her husband has fled. Still, he knows he cannot blame Luz on Zoe. If there is blame for Luz it is his. “Did anything happen to Luz in the campgrounds?” he asks. “Did she say or do anything that seemed in any way alarming?”

  “Alarming? Not really,” Zoe says.

  At least it is not what he fears. Neither of the things she had mentioned is cause for alarm. Luz had no dissociative episode in the campgrounds. She did not fall into transport in Zoe’s presence. She touched the sheep. She had walked among the Joshua trees.

  They can hear her now, her high laugh, Josefina’s occasional admonition, the low undertone of their voices at the far end of the house. Josefina is settled in her bed, Luz has not left her side. The house is very clean, Father Bill thinks. And there were lovely flowers, white snowball mums beside Josefina’s bed. There is a coconut cake in a box in the refrigerator, which Josefina cannot eat. Zoe has tried, he thinks. She is not a bad person. But Luz has spent hours in prayer in her presence, and the house reeks of roses.

  “Why didn’t you just follow the list?”

  How can Zoe answer? The list did not seem to apply. It seemed to get lost. “I tried,” she said. Now she should really get up, make her apology, say good-bye. She has failed, she can see that, failed with Luz. Failed with the window. She had better get up and leave. But there is something she wants to say, what is it? In the face of Father Bill’s censure she has seen herself in a way that makes her feel wrong in her thoughts, in her choices. Wrong to the core. He has not said the word “irresponsible,” yet that is how she feels now. That is how he thinks of her anyway. Zoe wriggles in the seat, lifts up, pulling the fabric of her pants away from her thighs. She is hot, and she stinks. She can smell herself. She needs a shower. What will she do, now that she is going back to the campgrounds where no showers exist? A shower or a bath, or, even better, a swim. Long Lake is a clear mile across, small sandy inlets, great dark blue-green pines. She used to swim across Long Lake every summer from the time she was twelve. For years there was a law forbidding boats with gas-powered motors and the water was pure and dark, bracing and cold straight through August.