“I’ve been speaking to my husband.”
He tries to disguise his surprise. It is not what he was expecting. What was he expecting, then?
“He’s home. Five days already. He just picked up the phone and said hello.”
Anyone else and he would have been happy, happy at her good news, at the chance of reconciliation. The sacrament of marriage. Does he not even honor that?
“He was at a friend’s cabin in the Adirondacks. It’s up in—”
“I know the Adirondacks.” It is where he had gone to seminary. He remembers the winters, the starkness of the landscape, the rolling brown hills, the blackened trees, the silence, the white winter sky.
“All that time and he wasn’t even very far away. A few hundred miles. He ended up helping these people put in a new kitchen. He told them his wife was home working. That I couldn’t get away. Every night he pretended to call me so they’d think . . .” She breaks off.
He wants to ask if she believes this. He doesn’t want to ask.
Father Bill leans forward. Is that Luz in the hall? Has she crept out of her room to listen to this? “Luz, is that you?” he calls.
“She knows Michael is back. I already told her.”
He shakes his head. Luz, he thinks. His shirt is damp with perspiration. The heat is doing its work on him. Late morning and no ventilation in this house. He needs to leave for the car wash. Still, he turns back to Zoe, prepared to wait as long as she needs if she wants to discuss her next step.
“Right now, I want to be in two places at once.”
“I understand.”
She swallows, feels something swell and open in her chest. Puts her hand there. Something soft and lovely, the feeling she gets at the window. Here it is, come to her on the brown couch. “He sounds so sad. He keeps saying he is sorry. It was nothing I’d done, it was just him. He’s afraid for himself.”
“Well, that’s good. That’s a start. He can’t make it right in himself if he doesn’t feel pain for what he’s done.”
“If I tell him about this, us, what I’ve, we’ve been doing, he’ll think I’ve lost my mind.”
“Well, in a way you have. You’ve lost your old mind. Michael has no way to understand. He hasn’t had our experience.” He looks around at the bare living room, the gates on the windows. A laugh escapes from his throat. “This is a very hard thing to explain.” She has closed her eyes, her head rests against the back of the couch, her hand over her heart. He sits in the silence, in the hot stuffy house, the faint smell of rose. He turns his head and there she is. He was right. Luz has been standing in the hall.
“I can’t leave yet,” says Zoe.
“When the time is right, you’ll know how to go back. It will be clear.” He says it softly, hoping Luz will not hear. Zoe opens her eyes, looks at him with disbelief. “You will see,” he says.
Now he reaches out, puts his hand on the top of her head. She could close her eyes and sleep if only he would keep it there. Her eyes fill again. He takes his hand away and stands up. “You’re doing very well. Just know that.”
“So I’ve been told.”
That night she calls Michael and for the first time her heart quickens with the realness of his voice. He tells her about his day’s work, tells her how much he loves her. She can almost feel Michael again, almost believe she has passed through the first of it, at least. She gives him a taste of it now, the barest outlines, an introduction, the flyer, but he does not remember a purple flyer. It must have been something he’d meant to toss out, picked up in a thoughtless moment, something handed to him by someone he cannot remember. “Are you trying to hurt me? Is there a man?” The priest who had dreamed her. She describes Infidelity. She tells him what it feels like to sit at the window.
“I can’t listen to this,” he says. “Zoe, you are breaking my heart.”
“Michael, please. You have to trust me.”
“Do you know how you sound? Infidelity? A black dot? You know what this is. I’m not saying it isn’t my fault. But you’re in your own world, baby. You’re in that old place. Just tell me where you really are. Where on the map.”
* * *
“Good-bye, my Lucy, Luz,” Father Bill says. She is standing where the little calendar Madonnas he had given her used to be, holding a hairbrush. She’s still in pajamas, her face unwashed. The skin under her eyes bruised blue from little sleep. “Zoe will help you get dressed now. You have missed breakfast. You need to eat. Mami will be home soon from work.” When he bends to her and tries to touch her face, she walks past him to Zoe.
“Thank you,” Zoe says just before he goes out the door. Luz is sitting on her lap, Zoe brushing her hair. He looks at Zoe in all her womanly beauty, her beautiful human misery. “Thank you,” he says back.
Outside he does not acknowledge the people standing across the street in the glaring heat of midday waiting for what—a glimpse of Luz? A great event? He gets into the Cavalier. Michael is back, but Zoe has chosen to stay. He starts the car, forgets for a moment where he is headed, and when he remembers realizes that what he has set out to do he may not be able to do.
Make it go away—this thing he is coming to cherish. That they all are coming to cherish. He had said nothing to his bishop. He had withheld his opinion, muzzled his joy. Lies great and small, he thinks. This is his life. He should be ashamed of his infidelities. He is not. Something large is moving through him, moving through them all. Something he trusts. Zoe will remain. And Hope Merton has refinanced her house. They have money for Josefina. And Luz is protected. She is held in a circle of love. With all these blessings, can their experience be anything but good? Make it go away, said his bishop. Make it go.
He drives down Mariposa Lane, right onto the Joshua Freeway. It is early afternoon. At least there is not much traffic and his car is cool. He tries to let his life fall away and give himself to the landscape, the annihilating blue of the sky. Any day might send him to a place with a narrow gray one, a city with no vista at all. He will not care. Not if Josefina has her chance. He will leave just like that. Overnight. Abandon his parish, his people, whom he truly loves. He will leave everything, he thinks. They will say he did it for a woman. Is this, then, his truth?
Now the traffic has slowed and soon he will be caught in the line that has in three weeks become a familiar feature of the freeway. The sidewalk convocation that the bishop could not help but hear of, the child and her reputed powers. The whole thing is outside his province to dismiss, outside his province to bless.
He looks out the window of his car at the crowd in their bright, casual attire. Several people are standing together, chatting, laughing. The sounds reach him past the sealed windows of the Cavalier, the hum of the air conditioning. A group of tee-shirted men drinking beer, newspapers strewn at their feet. Emily Otto in her polka-dot hat; she has disobeyed him and taken her seat on the sidewalk. A matter of conscience, she said. Good for you, he had thought. Heresy of thought. And behind her the moon-faced man in his nimbus of devotion, the light around him pale. Few faces today that he recognizes. It looks harmless, an open air waiting room, flat. Maybe it is over, he thinks. Luz will not return. Josefina won’t bring her back. Amazing, really how Josefina does not see it, what Luz is. When he asks why she goes to the window she says, “I go for the people, to enjoy them. The other you would not understand.” “Is that so?” he says, bemused. “You should try it sometime,” she urges. “Sit with us.” And then she had touched his mouth. “Or are you afraid?”
The entrance line is hardly moving, and he cannot maneuver around it. Now his stomach is growling. He is hollowed out with hunger. Has he even eaten breakfast? Suddenly, he wants to cook. A big meal. A nice bracciole. Arugula with walnuts and seed tomatoes, shaved Parmesan. A fruity olive oil, three cloves of fragrant garlic, and some good semolina. Why is it that nowhere in this state can he find a good semolina bread? Maybe he should skip the talk with Walt and just head for the A&P, though the bread there is cotton and dust. P
erhaps he doesn’t need to do anything today but cook and eat. Give a little dinner. Perhaps the whole thing will fade away on its own and he won’t have to ask Walt to shut down the wash.
At last the cars have moved. He parks the Cavalier next to Walt’s Civic. He has not far to walk, just up the stairs past the lines at the entrance to the office. The people he passes are here to buy wash tickets, not paying to sit on Walt’s sidewalk and have a dangerous experience. “The priest,” he hears. “That one . . .” He has dressed, deliberately, in his collar. This is an official visit. No green parrot shirt to hide what he is.
CHAPTER 56
“You must have known it wouldn’t last forever,” Father Bill says. Walt has cleared out the office as he’d asked, gone behind the counter where he stands now, eyeing Father Bill. The priest walks casually around it to the wall where the prize Connors racquet hangs and reaches up to take the racquet in his hands. A racquet whose grip he knows well. He will do this slowly, he thinks. Let Walt be his partner in it. Now he pretends to be fascinated by the racquet, looking down to read the writing on the inside rim: Kinetic Stabilizer. Official Racquet of Team Estusa. He looks up at Walt and smiles. “Been a while between matches for us,” Father Bill says. “Is the Prince here?”
“Bottom shelf,” says Walt.
They will conclude this together, Father Bill thinks. He knows how to reason with Walt. The racquet in his hand cost Walt a thousand dollars, one of the actual four used by the great Jimmy Connors in his last U.S. Open. Connors, 40, versus Krickstein, 21: five hours and forty-four minutes till Jimbo went down. A man who drops a thousand dollars at a charity auction—that’s the life Walt Adair left.
“You may be surprised by how much business you end up retaining from this, once the sidewalk production is over.”
A slow burn spreads through Walt Adair’s chest. He comes around the counter and takes a step toward Father Bill. “Don’t insult me.”
Father Bill flushes with embarrassment, surprised at Walt’s reaction. “I didn’t mean to.” He bounces the racquet strings against his palm, listening to the ping of the gut. Of course, how could he have forgotten? Walt had had an experience. He had not asked about it, and has never heard exactly what kind of experience it was.
“We need to think of Luz and Josefina, and the children. After that bracelet misunderstanding, all of them are having a difficult time,” Father Bill says. “A week, that’s all I’m asking. Shut down for a week and give things a chance to get back to normal.”
As if Walt were not deluged with calls, with people stopping in to discuss their sleepless kids, their own uncertainties now. Perhaps it would be better for Josefina and Luz if Walt closed down the wash, if the strangers left. If everything came to a halt. “Do you think that hasn’t been on my mind?”
At another time, Walt thinks, he might have complied simply because Father Bill had asked it. But something has happened—at his place, not at Father Bill’s church. It is not Father Bill who decides when it ends. “I’d be happy to help Josefina and Luz any way that I can, but I’m not inclined to shut down my car wash.”
Father Bill smiles in spite of himself. “Well, that certainly complicates things.”
“Have you discussed this with Luz?” Walt asks.
“With Luz?” Father Bill says, taken aback. “What kind of a question is that?”
“She might have an opinion.”
“Walt,” says Father Bill.
“You think she doesn’t know what’s gone on here?”
“I know she doesn’t.”
“Well, then maybe you should explain it to her.”
“Just what do you think I can tell her?”
“You can tell her what she is, for one. She’s way out there somewhere all alone. I don’t know what to call it, this gift that she has. I am sure she didn’t ask for it. Don’t you think she has a right to a little understanding of herself?”
Father Bill puts the Connors down on the counter. “Let’s be a little careful right now.” He looks at Walt. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t need your advice when it comes to Luz. I’m here on a practical matter. The bishop has asked me to bring this to an end.”
“So that’s what this is all about,” says Walt. For a moment he stands looking at his friend. In a flash Walt sees exactly what he must do. And then he smiles, walks back around the counter, bends down, disappears briefly then comes out with a single yellow tennis ball and the Prince Jr., his son’s old racquet, with a cracked frame and a broken main string. “I’ll play you for the call. You use the Connors. I win, I stay open. You win, I will shut down the wash.”
The priest is dumbfounded. He’s got Jimmy Connors’ racquet in his hand. Walt might as well have a broom. “I can’t do that. Not with such an unfair advantage.”
* * *
It is five sets to one, forty-love when Walt serves the final ace that has Father Bill reaching so far back on the return that the tip of the Connors connects with the window. Thin as that single-pane glass is, it does not shatter. The sidewalk crowd gasps and struggles for balance as the ones gathered near the window leap back.
“I could have won with a broom today,” Walt says, crossing the office to shake hands with the priest, who is still shaking his head with disbelief.
“How about giving me two out of three?” Father Bill asks, panting. “I’m just warmed up.”
“Not on your life. I’ve got customers waiting.”
“I’ll remember that for next time.”
Then the men down several cups of spring water, ignoring the catcalls on the street, the pounding at the door. “Now what?” Walt asks.
“I’m going to have to rely on my powers of persuasion.”
“Can I remind you what happened the last time you did that?”
“No need,” says Father Bill, hanging the Connors back on its hook. He goes into the bathroom and washes his face, runs his wet hands through his hair. He stands for a while, and before he steps out he closes his eyes, asks that whatever comes through him when he speaks, he be guided to serve what is highest.
Afterwards he returns to the blue house. He takes Luz’s brown hands in his, walks her from the kitchen to her room, sits down on the edge of her bed, looks into her eyes, and tells her what she is.
I don’t do bad things?”
“You do very good things.”
“But I don’t want to be special. I don’t want to do special things.”
She is right, of course. And he tries to explain it differently. It is not by her but through her that all this has happened. Through them all.
She is quiet for a while. How he wishes he could read her thoughts. “So let me go back one more time. Tell it to Mami. Make her say yes.”
CHAPTER 57
“And now I will try to become like Sewey.” Josefina says, looking from Zoe to Walt. They have just finished eating. The rest of the blue house is dark, Luz in a dead sleep, too tired from the great exertion of the day even to take off her yellow dress. The kitchen lit only by a small white lamp, the strangers at bay. “I also will become too patient. Three times a week I will sit for the dialysis four hours, maybe five. Don’t look so sorry. I will live. It is just till my body gets strength to make itself right again.” Josefina takes Walt’s hands and squeezes to reassure him. She does not succeed. “Though to tell you the truth after what I have seen from your window I should be like a newborn right now. Please, I am sorry, I have ruined this beautiful meal.”
And then Josefina hears a soft cry, faint as a memory. It could be the sound she will hear when she is no longer with Luz on earth. She listens again then makes a move to rise, her hands on the tabletop, beside the dinner plate with the remains of the omelette, the fruit, the tortilla, her feet so heavy she can scarcely feel them. The throbbing in her skull grows sharp when she tries to stand up. But she has known worse pain than this. “Luz,” she says and gets to her feet. Walt and Zoe rise as well. “No, please. Stay here. I will go myself.” They watch h
er struggle to stand. “At least no one can accuse Luz of making miracle cures on her mother,” Josefina says ruefully, beginning her slow walk. She crosses the black-and-white squares then disappears into the dark living room, where she stops for breath and to turn on a lamp. “I am coming, mamita,” she calls. “One more minute.”
In the silence of the kitchen they listen to her heavy steps, the sound of Luz’s faraway voice, calling.
“Did you know?” Walt asks.
“Yes.”
“Did Father Bill tell you?”
“Yes, that first night at the hospital.”
He can feel the weight of her, her leg inches from his, her bare arm. And something else, the whole sense of her body. One of them should get up, clear the table. He moves his leg imperceptibly, leans to his left, one quarter inch. How he feels her. She is moving a fork around her plate, making little designs, thin strips of red pepper, a glazed fragment of onion. He would touch her, but it is better if he does not. She will stay in Infidelity but not for him. These nights she is back at the blue house with Josefina and Luz, but once he closes the wash he comes to her. And in the morning, when she is with Luz she calls him to talk. There is a softness between them, something he would kill to hold onto, watch grow, this thing that has opened between them. Look up, he wants to say, just look at me.
They can hear the low voices of Josefina and Luz, the sounds of the people gathered across Mariposa Lane, indistinct. The ones for whom even today’s sidewalk experience was not enough. The depth of the light that seemed to blaze through Luz’s little body and enter theirs. How much do they want from this child? Sometime in the night a neighbor will get tired of them and call the police, then the police will come to the blue house. What can Josefina say when they question her? Those people on the street are crazy. I don’t know what they are waiting for. I have no idea why they blame their fantasies on Luz.
“It isn’t as simple as she makes it seem, her condition,” Zoe says, her voice is hushed.
“I didn’t think that it was,” Walt says.
Our Lady of Infidelity Page 25
