Our Lady of Infidelity

by Jackie Parker

  The day clerk arrives. Blankenship comes through the front doors still declaiming about Luz. That’s when Walt goes after him—knocks him to the ground with one clean blow to the gut. It takes three CHP officers to pull Walt off Blankenship when he’s down. They have to put Walt in a squad car to cool off. By the time they let him out, Blankenship is gone, and Walt leaves in the Civic.

  Things quiet down for a while. Bobbie goes back to the diner. Most of the strangers go back to the field, though some head to the hill district, demanding to see Luz. The volunteer fire squad hangs around drinking coffee—in all that heat—talking softly to Patty Platz and her friends, trying to calm them. “Stop crying and listen. No child killed anyone.”

  The guests clear out of the motel. One death this close is one death too many for any vacation, a few of them say—whatever the cause.

  Then over the firemen’s phone comes the call for an ambulance: an ambulance needed on Mariposa, stat.

  CHAPTER 62

  “Stay away!” Josefina cries, “don’t come near me.” She stands with her back to the front door. Too many voices. Too many people telling her she must step aside, must open the locks. Luz, Father Bill, the Felangela, and an officer in uniform who has been in the house for two hours or more.

  How Josefina has managed to return to the front door is a feat of endurance that only Father Bill understands, having seen her walk three times from the Ilopango prison, three times outliving her rumored deaths.

  “Mami, please,” calls Luz.

  She may faint once again. What is the fear and what is the illness? She cannot say. Police at her back door, police at her front door, and another within. No escaudero, this much she knows. When he entered the house, he had right away removed his sunglasses, spoken his name, a name she cannot now remember, nor can she read it on the little black plate on his shirt. “We are here to help you. What do you need?”

  “Those people. They want my daughter. Get them away from my door!”

  Now Luz comes toward her, Luz who must not see her mother go once again in the ambulance. Her step is hesitant, her face pale from her own bout with fever, her child who had crouched in the hall, cowed by the taunts of the strangers. “Let them take you for your treatment. Go in the ambulance, please.”

  “Listen to her, Josefina,” says the officer. He stands with his hands hanging loose past the heavy black belt she cannot look at, stands at a distance, safe, very still, as if it is not outside the bounds of his understanding that a woman who can barely stand up on two feet is refusing the ambulance she herself called. “All those people are gone. We did as you asked. Even your neighbors have gone into their houses,” he says.

  “No one will get near your daughter or you. I promise you that. What do you say?” he asks.

  “How can you promise? They have ways of returning you don’t even know.”

  “Josefina,” says Father Bill.

  “I know what he says.” She looks past the officer to William, wavering slightly as if he is beckoning from a very far place. William who knows very well that once she steps out of the blue house she may never come back.

  “I do not want to be carried. I must walk.”

  The officer nods. “Good girl,” he says under his breath. His phone crackles as he brings it to his mouth. “Put the stretcher away. Then come on back. We’ll walk her out.”

  Luz runs to embrace her mother, bites hard on her lower lip so she will not cry, bites harder, tastes her own blood. Josefina puts her hands on Luz’s cheeks, looks into her face, two daughters, three daughters, all of them frightened. Where are the eyes of her sister that she has lost once again, those beautiful eyes of her lost Esperanza that she needs for her daughter to salve Luz’s pain with their inexhaustible love?

  CHAPTER 63

  Luz opens her eyes, sees the Joshua trees with their ragged gray up-pointing branches speeding before her. She lifts her head. “Why am I in Walt’s car? Why did you bring me to the campgrounds? I want to go home.”

  “Shhh, try to go back to sleep. You’ll see Mami soon.” The police had been vehement. You never know with these people, they had explained. Fanatics, notoriously unstable. You don’t want to risk it. Better keep Luz away.

  She had gone to the campgrounds, the place that Luz loves.

  What stranger would search for Luz here? But now Zoe wonders if she’s made a mistake.

  Luz tries to drift back to sleep. Tries not to know where she is.

  “Is it your girl who was lost in the campgrounds last spring?” the policeman asked Mami. Then Father Bill had taken Luz into the kitchen and poured her juice. “Sip slowly. I’ll be right back,” he said.

  From the kitchen Luz could not hear the policeman. Sometimes his voice was too soft. “Did you take Luz to the motel?” “No,” said Mami. “No,” said Zoe. “What do you think we are?” said Father Bill. “William,” said her mother, so much love in her voice. “Tell me what’s been going on here,” the policeman said. Everyone talked soft. No one said “sidewalk.” She only heard Luz, Luz. “Could Luz have gone out when you were sleeping?” asked the policeman. Then murmurs, and only one word clear, motel, motel, motel.

  But Luz heard what Walt said when he came to the house. Someone died at the motel, Walt had told Zoe—a man whose name Walt did not know.

  Did Luz see the man? she wonders. Did he sit on the sidewalk?

  “Did I walk in the night?” Luz asks suddenly. Zoe startles at the wheel, thrown by the sudden intrusion of Luz’s voice. She pulls the Civic to the side of the road, takes off her seatbelt and turns around. “What did you say?”

  “Did I walk to the motel?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  Luz sits up. “Did I?”

  “Do you think that you did?” Zoe says softly.

  “I don’t know. The people say—”

  “What people?” Zoe gets out of the car and slides in the back beside Luz, lifting her feet and holding them in her lap. “You were sick last night, remember? Father Bill was there and Walt and Mami.”

  “Yes, but after,” says Luz, “then what did I do?”

  “You took your medicine, took a couple of nice cold baths, you told a lot of amazing stories. Oh, you told us some doozies. . . . Then at long last you fell asleep.”

  “Then who walked?” asks Luz.

  Zoe leans into the front seat, grabs a bottle of water. “No one. The strangers. Drink.”

  “Did the man that died go to the sidewalk?”

  Zoe is silent.

  “Do we know who he is?”

  “Yes,” says Zoe. “He used to come to the sidewalk. But you did not walk. Now drink.”

  Luz drinks the water while Zoe looks past her. A couple of hikers are moving among the Joshua trees across the road from where they have stopped. No cars on Park Boulevard except the faraway parked ones. Two more hours, she thinks, until they can go to the hospital.

  “What did he look like?” says Luz.

  “Luz,” says Zoe. “It has nothing to do with you!”

  “Yes,” says Luz. “Maybe it could.”

  “The one with the very white face.”

  And tan hands?” says Luz.

  “Yes.”

  Luz hurls the bottle of water at Zoe then bolts from the car.

  CHAPTER 64

  That they are only one hour late is a miracle. Zoe was afraid there would be no Luz to bring to the High Desert Hospital. In the two hours that Luz was lost in the campgrounds, she was certain that she would never see Luz again.

  Now the shaking that wracked her has subsided. Her teeth have stopped chattering, but there is a constant sensation of cold running down Zoe’s neck, down her back. Her mouth is dry. Nausea remains in the pit of her stomach. A mother’s fear, she thinks. Though she is not Luz’s mother. She parks the car as close as she can to the hospital, lifts Luz from the back seat and manages to carry her into the lobby. Luz whimpering softly, her face hidden in Zoe’s shoulder, her injured foot wrapped in a cold pac
k, the pain sharp and constant, the worst pain Luz has known.

  “It’s all right,” Zoe says. “We’re here.”

  The cold air of the hospital lobby threatens to set off Zoe’s trembling. She clasps Luz tightly in her arms.

  “Emergency is back through those doors,” the receptionist says. “No,” says Zoe. “We’re here for Josefina Reyes, a patient.” The receptionist checks the computer. “Third floor,” she says. “You won’t be able to bring a child there.” Zoe starts for the elevators and is called back. She has forgotten to fill out the pass.

  When they get to the third floor, Father Bill is standing just outside the closed green glass doors of Intensive Care, his face drained of color. He rushes toward the elevator to meet them. “Just Luz,” he says to Zoe. “She had a fall, her foot,” Zoe says. She does not say what else. Does not speak of the way that Luz ran, or the way she had nearly lost her. No time to tell Father Bill what she has seen Luz do. Or how the rangers and hikers fanned out through the Joshua Tree Forest at Covington Flats searching for nearly an hour before they found Luz, down on the hard pan, her foot lodged in a crevice at an impossible angle. “You’d better have that looked at,” the ranger said, after they’d packed it in ice at the First Aid Center. “An X-ray, probably. This is some lucky girl. How did you get so far away from your mother so fast?”

  “She’s not my mother,” said Luz.

  The ranger had laughed.

  “Poor Luz,” says Father Bill, leaning into the doors of Intensive Care. “What a bad time you are having.”

  CHAPTER 65

  The elevator is empty. They step in. Zoe and Father Bill, unkempt beyond caring. We are those people you see in hospitals and don’t want to acknowledge, Zoe thinks. The ones you never want to be.

  “It’s not good,” Father Bill says as the doors close and the elevator starts down. He speaks of numbers, the results of her tests, Josefina’s BUN, her astronomical blood pressure. “She’s got a shitload of complications, right now it’s the blood pressure they are most worried about; she could stroke out, as they say. Lovely phrase. She is in the fight of her life.”

  The elevator stops and they get out. “We’re going to talk to social services,” he says. “Follow me.” The corridors are long, and they have to make several turns. Zoe cannot shake the feeling that Luz is gone, disappeared, the sensation she had looking across Park Boulevard and seeing Luz in flight, far off among the Joshuas. Luz and Josefina, together right now in Intensive Care. She has not quite absorbed it, she thinks. It is coming at her too fast. Father Bill opens a door to a small office where a woman in a tan suit and a serious demeanor sits behind a desk, whose surface is covered with files. The woman is talking into a phone. She points to the chairs, acknowledges Zoe with a nod and continues talking. On the desk is a blue glass vase with enormous white crepe paper flowers that seem to be eating the air.

  “How are you holding up?” the woman says to Father Bill as soon as she hangs up the phone.

  “Okay,” he says.

  “Luz is with her?”

  He nods.

  The woman holds out her hand, greets Zoe by name, explains that she is handling Josefina’s case. “Josefina and Luz,” she says and sighs. “We’re old friends from the spring. Have I met you before?”

  “No,” says Zoe.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  The woman has enormous white teeth, absolute choppers. “This must be very hard for you,” she says to Zoe.

  For me? Zoe thinks, but says yes, not wanting to disagree.

  The woman takes a breath, glances from Zoe to Father Bill, as if she’s not sure how to begin. “Do you speak Spanish?” she says to Zoe.

  “No,” says Zoe.

  “Are there children of Hispanic background in your district?”

  “My district?”

  “In your school district.”

  “I don’t know,” Zoe says.

  The social worker looks quizzically at Father Bill. He turns to Zoe. “Has Father Bill told you what this about?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Would you like me to . . . ?”

  “Let me do it,” he says.

  Father Bill turns his chair to Zoe, and the moment he does her eyes start to burn, even before he speaks she is fighting to control the part of her that knows what he is about to say. Zoe’s breath is coming fast. Her mouth has turned dry. She looks into Father Bill’s tired gray eyes, at the silver black stubble of his unshaven face. He smiles at her, she smiles back, her bottom lip trembles. She hates herself for it. He takes her hands in his. They have spent so little time together, have spoken so little. How can that be, she wonders, with all that they have shared, Zoe Luedke and Father Bill Esposito? Bill Esposito in truth, though even after he has gathered his parish for the announcement, it will be days before he can bring himself to say it. Bill Esposito, the man. No longer a man of his calling. No longer a priest.

  “Josefina is in stage five—failure. They don’t know if she can be brought back. She will need to be dialyzed three or four times a day. It is going to be touch and go for . . . we don’t know how long. Someone needs to be there for Luz. Josefina has asked that you be the one.”

  “Okay,” Zoe murmurs dream-like, an acknowledgement only that she has heard these words. She has nearly lost Luz today. How can she possibly take her after that? And then she thinks right away of Michael at work on the Grosvenors’ river-view kitchen. What a terrible thought, Zoe chastises herself. But then again, maybe it is not so terrible. Maybe, Zoe thinks, she can take Luz with her for a while, away from Infidelity, away from the campgrounds, the places where Luz walks, take Luz to her house in Cold Spring and Michael. Where no one sits on a sidewalk losing themselves in the gold. And so when Father Bill says it, she is already picturing it, Luz in the big house, the one she and Michael had hoped to fill with their children. How will she explain it to him? She is returning. She is bringing a child.

  “Josefina wants you to have legal custody of Luz.”

  He looks at Zoe, who has turned her face away. And in that small office a silence takes over that seems not to know its own end.

  “Will you need time to think about this?” asks the social worker.

  Legal custody, thinks Zoe. Permanent custody? Are they telling her this is it, Josefina will die? She turns to Father Bill again. Why not you? she does not say. Why has she bypassed you? “Are you sure this is right?”

  “I am sure,” he says.

  “Can you tell me how it works?” Zoe asks. The social worker reaches for a stack of papers, half stands, then leans across her desk and places them in front of Zoe. “Power of Attorney for Care of a Child” printed over the top in large black type.

  “Read through the document,” she says, “It’s pretty clear. If you have any questions, I’ll try to answer. Understand that this might only be temporary. The mother retains the right to revoke it at any time. So if she is again able to care for her, Luz will come back. You’ll bring her back. And in the event of her death you can decide whether you want to make a permanent commitment. If you decide against it, we will have to make other arrangements.”

  “Other?” asks Zoe.

  “Foster care.”

  Zoe glances again at the papers to anchor herself. “Know all men by these presents,” it begins. What presents? Zoe wonders. What men? Father Bill? Walt Adair? The moon-faced-man? Why is it not Father Bill who will get Luz? Is it because he’s a priest? Know all men by these presents, Zoe reads it again. Josefina in stage five kidney failure. Will two deaths have come from the sidewalk, then? The moon-faced man, and now Josefina’s. Why did Josefina not go back to the clinic? Did no one know that her symptoms had returned? Were they all asleep? What was everyone doing, sitting out there in some kind of dream world? Seeing visions, ignoring the truth. Awe-struck, deluded, the officer had described the strangers outside the blue house. Awe and hate are not far from each other, he had explained, his voice low so Luz would not hear. We don’t know w
hat kind of maniac will turn up. Best if you take Luz away. Well, maybe we do, Zoe thinks. Two deaths, and now this. Zoe being asked to take Power of Attorney for Care of a Child. They are giving her Luz.

  Before she has read another word, before she has taken the moment, several moments, the rest of her life to read this document and consider what it could possibly mean, she thinks of Michael, solid, undependable Michael who is waiting for her, who will not in any way understand what Zoe has done, will not understand the sidewalk experience, even if she could explain it, even if she herself did not doubt it, as she does right now.

  I went into in the home of a stranger, she will tell him, and she gave me her child.

  Zoe flips the page. She is supposed to be reading. Here it is, her new list. Her list of instructions for Luz.

  Father Bill watches Zoe read, smiling an unfathomable smile, as if he is already beyond this moment, as if he finds something about it beautiful. He has been watching Zoe’s hands as she holds the document, her long fingers, the missing felangela. What did he think when he dreamed of her hands in spring? He thought she was going to help them, widen the parish, bring new people to his flock, perhaps. He had thought he himself might be changed in some way he was not yet aware of. But his thinking was vague, and he was arrogant, not sure how he could be changed any more than he already had been, ground to a powder, barely reconstituted, even now. After El Salvador. After Josefina. He did not think this person he had dreamed was going to take Luz. He could never have imagined that these were the hands that would take Luz from him.

  “You’ll need two witnesses and a notary,” says the social worker.

  Father Bill nods. He looks again at Zoe, his whole face softens. Don’t worry, his look says. Don’t let this scare you. Everything is all right. “Walt is on his way.”

  “There’s a notary ten minutes from here in the Palms. If you call, he will meet you. I’ll give you his information. I know you’ll have questions. You can call me at home tonight.” She hands Zoe a card and stands up. “Sit here a few minutes. Catch your breath. I’ll go upstairs and get the list from Luz.”