She wishes she could tell Father Bill the way that Luz looked with the sheep, or walking among the Joshuas. But Zoe cannot describe it in a way that will carry the quality of Luz that she has glimpsed, rare and unusual, she believes, Zoe, who can look into wood and see grain. Father Bill does not want to hear it—the beauty that she sees in this little girl, Luz. He is pushing it away; she can feel his resistance as if he has put up his hands. As if he is saying, don’t tell me so much.
Now the small triumphs of the past twenty-four hours have been spoiled: the way Josefina had responded so quickly to the treatment, the look of relief on Luz’s face when Josefina came into the house, in sandals and blue dress, lipstick and freshly washed hair, the neckline of the dress hiding the gauze of her bandage. These small gifts have been spoiled for him and he is back in the pit of his misery. The blue house seems poisoned with the dense smell of roses.
In this light, everything Zoe has done with Luz is wrong. In this light, under Father Bill’s questions, in the mirror of his distress Zoe sees all her misjudgments: play-acting with plaster saints, the endless rounds of out-of-order Rosaries. “How many times did you sit with her in prayer?” “In prayer?” she had echoed. Is that what it was? “I did what she did. What she seemed to want.”
“And she wanted to go to the campgrounds?”
“No, I did. I had no clothes.”
She has not done justice to it, not to Luz, not to herself. Something had happened between them, something good, Zoe thinks, even if she can’t give it a name. And though she would like to say that she thinks the whole problem with Luz is her obsession with a certain lady, she does not want to betray Luz and whatever serves Luz, this little girl with her life so crowded with death.
He takes out the two hundred dollars and walks to the table and puts the bills down.
“I can’t take the money,” says Zoe and stands up. “I’m sorry. I really thought I was helping. I’ll go in and say good-bye.”
CHAPTER 17
Luz lies beside Josefina, worrying her hand above the bandage she cannot touch. A square of gauze lightly taped just over the place on her mother where Luz likes to rest.
Josefina takes Luz’s face in her hand. Solemn and guilty, the red lipstick mouth.
“Who let you put on such makeup.”
“You know.”
“Who gave you that perfume, mi hija? You don’t have fever?”
“No,” says Luz. “I am cool.” Luz reaches to kiss her neck.
“Careful.” But already Josefina feels better. Her daughter, that is her medicine. The best of all. The nearness of Luz is beginning to ease the pain. “Now I will tell you a secret,” Josefina says, covering the access with a cupped hand. Luz smiles, puts her ear to Josefina’s mouth in the customary way, closes her eyes and waits for the secret to start. Her mother tells wonderful secrets, each one taking away sorrow, like bringing in good dreams and sending out bad. “The doctors have discovered something strong in my blood, so now they are going to take from me only to give it to others. Don’t worry, the body can quickly make more blood. Can you share me? I must go three, maybe four times a week, and sit with the needle for hours. I will take you to watch it so you will know.”
“Yes,” says Luz. She doesn’t like the word “needle.” It spoils the story. But Luz will not dwell on it. She will not tell her mother she does not want to watch it. “They will do it to help make people strong?”
This is a good thing, a big thing. She loves this new piece of her mother, this gift that she has that they have discovered in the hospital. She moves her head slightly from her mother’s mouth, puts her head on the clean white pillow; her feet remain on the floor as her mother has said that they must.
“Good-bye, Luz,” calls the voice of Zoe. Luz opens her eyes. Zoe is standing in the doorway, very tall, far away.
“Come in,” says Josefina. “I want to thank you for Luz.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Zoe says. “I don’t want to . . .” Her voice dies out. She is thinking of Father Bill’s accusations.
“My daughter is happy. And my house is so beautiful. You worked so hard. Please, come back.”
“Please, come back,” says Luz, “And thank you for me.”
“You’re very welcome,” says Zoe.
Luz says her words without moving. She is so still that even before Zoe Luedke-Felangela has left the room she has begun to turn gold.
“What kind of thank-you is that?” says Josefina.
“She knows,” says Luz with her red smiling mouth.
“The Felangela was good? She makes you happy from letting you do as you wish? Not like me who makes you do what you hate. You like her better because she lets you stay home from summer school and cover your face with my makeup that you have no doubt ruined? And that perfume! If you don’t wash it off, I won’t let you return to my bed. But don’t worry. I am here for you now to make you go to the summer school and do everything that you hate so you will have a good future.”
“And be bossy,” Luz says, quite happy now.
“Very bossy. The most bossy.”
Luz listens to the words of her mother that make her happy in her heart because of the music. Because of her language that she loves that is so full of songs. The words do not matter. Her mother can say anything. Even crazy things like Luz wears the perfume of Zoe. Zoe has no perfume. Zoe smells the way snow smells, Luz thinks, though she was only a baby when she smelled the snow. But now Luz is happy in two ways. Happy she told Zoe the secret that will stay and maybe grow as Our Lady has grown inside Luz. Happy her mother did not die in the hospital. Now Luz can breathe—all the way in and float with her feet still on the floor. She and her mother are one thing again.
CHAPTER 18
On the morning of his son’s play-off game, Walt wakes early, afraid he’ll be late. His bedroom is filled with a midday brightness, and right away he knows the worst has happened. He has overslept and missed his son’s game. He sits up, heart hammering in panic, leans over and checks the alarm clock, his wrist watch, and the travel alarm lined up on the mission oak table beside him. All three read 6:46. He is fine.
He looks straight ahead at the old six-drawer dresser, the oak closet door beside it, and then turns to the uncurtained sliding glass door at his right where the light is strongest, staring like a man who has locked eyes with the sun and can’t pull away. He tries to decide where he’s seen light like this, which has presence, as if it weighs something. It is almost opaque. Looking out at his backyard, he sees only dim curves and lines, the Teddy Bear cholla, rock fountain, the trailer for his daughter—all ghosts of themselves in the eerie white light. He thinks of his father and fishing, the shimmering iridescence of trout leaving traces of opal in his mind.
For a moment he considers he is dreaming until he puts his hand on himself, leans back against the pillows and gives himself to the pleasures of his rhythm and his own silken skin. At least he knows he’s awake now and not dreaming that light.
He forces himself to get out of bed, slides open the door, and steps naked into his yard. No neighbors for miles. It is beastly hot. Mid-nineties, he guesses, maybe more. If this keeps up Ryan is in for one hell of a day. Why expect anything less from the dog days of summer? He does. Walt Adair expects the gods to line up for his son. He expects no afternoon smog and an unseasonable seventy-eight degrees, if not here, then in Fullerton. He expects the gentlest of breezes and he lets the sky know this, right there, naked in his own cactus garden, and why not? It’s the least they can do. And look what they give him, this impossible light, this soon-to-be-record heat.
In all he has asked of this day, he has overlooked weather. Instead he has talked daily to Ryan after practice, reminded him ad nauseam to hold back with the sinker till he has them expecting the fastball. Assured Gwen three times at least he will be there, let her insults breeze by him. He even managed to get his daughter on the phone, asked if she liked yellow or white gold. “Oh, Dad, please don’t buy me anythi
ng, we just want to see you.” The earrings he bought her are oval with tiny blue sapphires, her birthstone and also the color of her lovely round eyes.
He walks back inside through his bedroom, to the hallway and into the bathroom and turns on the water in the small prefab shower. Amazing what he’s grown used to, amenity-wise. Otherwise as well. This place is nine hundred square feet, his custom-built Newport house close to nine thousand. Stepping awkwardly into the small shower, he thinks of his white marble bath (the size of the living room in this house), the steam shower for two, and the ledge where he used to sit and scrub his tennis-calloused feet. No tennis, no calluses, and a small pot belly from no exercise. He will not be appearing naked for inspection before his family, he reminds himself, and is startled to hear his own laugh. Then he pees long and with great satisfaction.
When he has soaped up, he puts his head back and leans into the too-thin flow of the water. He is happy beyond reason this morning. He lets himself bask in it now, the shaking off of sleep, the water like a new skin on his skin, his body’s persistent arousal. Today for a whole day and well into the night he will be with his family. And he will be fine.
The night before, he had set out his clothes for the day. Now they wait on a black kitchen stool next to the counter, where the green Newport Tigers cap always sits. The blue oxford (he has gotten pretty good at ironing his shirts now) on a wooden hanger, and on the second stool the polished cordovan loafers that he will transfer to the back of the Civic. He slips on a white tee shirt, then the chinos, which he also had ironed and which hold up quite well even on a two-hour drive, white socks, an old pair of tennis shoes. He has forgotten the socks he will wear with the cordovans. He goes back down to the hall to his bedroom, opens his sock drawer, and picks out a pair of brown silk he has not worn in years. They will feel good. And when his family sees him, he will look like his old self, down to his feet.
He has planned to go early to the car wash, which he usually opens a little before eight. He’ll keep it open till ten or ten thirty the latest, and then, for the first time in three years, he will close down on a Friday.
He has prepared for this day for a week, put all of his energy into it, in fact, which helped him get past his window fiasco. The whole thing compounded by the behavior of the one man in Infidelity that Walt considers a genuine friend, Father Bill, who has just disappeared on him. No call to say how Josefina is doing since she’s come back, no apology for his part in what has turned out to be quite an expensive mistake for Walt. Father Bill had just left Walt guessing as to whether Josefina was living or dead. Josefina had to walk into his wash herself for him to know she was fine, with the energy he has not seen in weeks and the swollen look gone from her face. There she was eight ten in the morning, in her pink uniform and the heavy white shoes on her way in to work. “I am back from the dead,” she had said, “I hope you did not worry too much after seeing me in my condition.”
“Don’t even think about it. I’m just glad to see you, period.” But what condition? he had wanted to say. She had acted like he knows it, but he doesn’t, not its name or its anything, and he sees very plainly the big square of gauze that pokes through her uniform right over her heart. There she is smiling with those flashing black eyes, throwing him off with that way she has so he can’t bring himself to ask, What condition? You know, you’ve never really said.
“And for my daughter’s behavior, I am sorry she got wild with you. She was frightened, you know? But still, that is not a reason.”
“She was certainly frightened that night,” says Walt. “And now how is she?”
“She went back to summer school. Don’t ask about the homework. But I made her do everything, all the math worksheets, so she will get credit. We are all back to normal.”
“She was well taken care of in your absence? No complaints?” He can’t bring himself to say the name Zoe Luedke, though he thinks it. He can’t escape thinking it. He hears it enough, Zoe Luedke, that long-legged beauty, who took Walt for six hundred dollars.
“Luz was so happy with Sewey. She talks all the time about Sewey this, Sewey that. But you have only disappointment from her, I am sorry to see. Thank you, but I cannot drink coffee. The doctors are changing my diet.”
And then she had asked about his children. She always asked about them, and he often spoke of them to her. So he’d told her that Ryan had made starting pitcher and that he was going to Ryan’s Little League play-off game. She gave him the smile that could keep him going straight through the morning.
“I wish you every good luck. Let your son be the winner, but the most important thing is that you will be with your family.”
“Hey, I’ve missed you,” he said. “Don’t be a stranger.”
“You will come to my house for eating next week. We will celebrate your boy.”
Tactful, too. Only the mildest reference to his window. After seeing Josefina, Walt is immensely relieved. He even changes his mind about Luz. What he thought had happened with her at the blue house he has decided now was all in his mind. The face of that splendid woman overriding Luz’s little face when he brought her to look at the window? That too, he must have imagined. No possible way it could be real.
Tonight with his own family at the restaurant after the game, whatever the outcome, they’ll celebrate on him. He will waylay the waiter, getting up from the table just after they’ve ordered, so there’s no question as to who gets the bill. He does not want Gwen to insist she will pay, or to argue, nothing that will give his children a moment’s unease.
At a little after seven, as he’s going outside to turn off his fountain, he reaches for the doorknob and is aware of a peculiar vibration in his hand, both hands, in fact, his feet, his forehead, and even his throat, his body about to do something off—his heart maybe or some arterial event in his brain that will land him in the emergency room of the High Desert Hospital, where, very likely, his body will pick this day to die. That’s just guilt, thinks Walt, that’s just what Father Bill keeps warning him to watch for—ways he is punishing himself—because the truth is he is happy, pure and simple. The sensation in his body is no doubt excitement, something he’s not used to these days, he tells himself as he walks out the door and goes to the side of the house to turn off his fish fountain. He flips the switch. The water ceases running from the mouth of the trout. There is absolute silence and, under the strange morning glare, absolute white. Everything’s pearly. He stops to admire, though it hurts his eyes to look: the stones, the water, the trailer, Jen’s trailer, he thinks. Everything this morning is washed in a light already too bright for him to look at bare-eyed. And he can’t find his sunglasses. He hopes they’re not lost. He’ll need them for driving and then for the game. Maybe he’s left them in the car.
After he has locked his front door, he rechecks his pants pocket for the box with Jen’s earrings, and with the shirt on the hanger, the shoes and the socks in their case, the green Tigers cap on his head, makes his way to the Civic. When his things are stowed and he is seated, he places the cap on the passenger seat, then feels around the gearshift for his sunglasses and finds them. Not lost at all. There they are, waiting, a very good sign.
CHAPTER 19
On the last day of her stay in the campgrounds, Zoe wakes to the light flooding through the walls of her green tent. When she opens the flap and looks out, she can hardly see through to the mountain; the light is dense and granular as snowfall.
Unnatural, she thinks, and wonders what Luz would think of the campgrounds today. Would the animals still come to her in this light? Zoe was going to stop at the blue house today. She would see Josefina and Luz. A quick good-bye visit. Josefina had insisted. “Come for a little party. She finishes summer school.” Zoe was going to have to hang around, kill some time, leave later than she had planned. “I’ll bring the cake,” Zoe offered. “But you didn’t find Michael,” said Luz taking the phone from her mother. Zoe held her breath, afraid of what Luz might say. Don’t go, please. “Bri
ng a coconut cake,” said Luz. “Of course,” Zoe said.
When Zoe steps outside, she has to don sunglasses just to disassemble the tent. She pulls out an end pole, and the whole thing falls in a heap. A fitting end for her stay in this part of the world. She gathers the tent in her arms, drags it to the Dart and hurls it into the trunk, zips up her duffle, and stows her empty water containers before starting the familiar drive to the ranger station at Cottonwood where she will check out of the campgrounds. Then up to the auto shop for the Nova having earned just enough jobbing in at a shop in Twenty-Nine Palms to pay for her car and an uneventful drive east. As she drives up Park Boulevard, she keeps the windows of the Dart wide open, although it is beastly hot. Zoe has grown used to the noisy desert stillness, the odd humming music that resides in the silence. Grown to welcome the sight of the climbers dotting the mountains in blazing neon spandex and bisecting colored ropes, the endless stretches of desert long and white, the dry brown extrusions that the photos in the visitor center show in spring, risen up in bright colors, orange poppy-covered hillsides, the tall ocotillo with its spiky red blooms, and the Joshuas, Luz’s trees.
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