Our Lady of Infidelity

by Jackie Parker

  “The list?” Zoe asks.

  “The things that she wants to bring with her.”

  “Why can’t I take her back to the house?” Zoe asks.

  “Not a good idea. You’ll go yourself.”

  CHAPTER 66

  “Why do they have the big tube in your body?”

  “Don’t look, mamita. Look at my face.” Josefina says slowly, raising her right hand in a futile attempt to cover the access.

  “Why are you talking so soft?”

  “Shhh, only listen. I have important things I must tell you, and I am so tired.”

  “Open your eyes, Mami.”

  “Luz,” says the nurse who is standing behind the wheelchair where Luz sits, her right leg elevated, the foot wrapped in a package of ice. She hardly feels it. “Remember what we said? Your mother is doing the best that she can.” The nurse had explained it as she was looking at Luz’s foot. Her mother was sleeping. They would wake her to talk to Luz. There was a tube in Josefina’s heart, the blood going around, there were screens with numbers and lights and a big plastic bag high up on a pole with her food that looks like water, there were needles under the tape on her left arm. Talking will not be easy, the nurse had said. If her mother grows quiet, Luz must patiently wait.

  Now, even with her eyes closed, Josefina can see Luz’s face shimmering before her, a wondrous gold. “My beautiful Luz, are you frightened by all this? You are so good, mamita. Do you know how much I love you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How everyone loves you? How the children loved you again? Tell me the names of our neighbor again.”

  “The Ottos?”

  “Remember I went to them for the first time? Remember how good all the people were to us every day?”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “Come closer. Go to the other side of the bed. All right, stay. It was good, mamita. I want you to remember your sidewalk was good. Will you? Forgive me that I . . .”

  “I don’t know what she’s talking about.” Luz says to the nurse.

  “Do you want to leave?” says the nurse. “We can try later.”

  “No,” says Luz.

  “Then be patient. Let her talk.”

  Josefina resumes. Luz tries to look at her face, to find the parts of her mother that the sickness has not yet claimed. “There are many people waiting to love you. And many more people you are going to love.” Josefina is smiling. Can she already see this? The life Luz will have in the future? “You will see. You are only just beginning.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “You are going away now.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “With the Felangela.”

  “Where will she take me?”

  “To her home.”

  “For a long or a short time?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “A short or a long time?” Luz shudders. The heat comes to her arms and her shoulders. The heat then the cold.

  Josefina makes a great effort. She opens her eyes. She sees Luz’s features forming themselves through the gold. “Long.”

  “And then I’ll come back,” Luz says.

  “We don’t know.”

  “Don’t let it happen, please, Mami.”

  “It is not up to us.” Now, she has lost Luz again, seeing only the light, only the gold, her daughter who has turned into light. “Come here, mamita. Give me your hand. I will tell you a secret. This is the most important secret I have ever told you.”

  Luz looks at the nurse who stands right behind her. “All right,” whispers the nurse. “I’m right here.”

  Luz leans toward her mother, bending out of the wheelchair, into the space where the rail of the bed has been lowered. Josefina slowly raises her unencumbered hand to cup Luz’s face, thin, not the face she is used to, the bones too close to the skin. “You will always have me. Even if you don’t have me like this. Do you know what I am saying?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you do know.”

  “You will be feeling me always. You will be seeing me, even when I am not here.”

  “Don’t tell me this, Mami. Don’t talk.”

  “Shhhh. Listen. It is important. Even if one goes away, the love between two people can grow. Even if only one stays living. Do you know how I know this? Because of your window. Esperanza was there. She came to me. You brought her back.”

  “This is a bad story.”

  “It is the truth. This is a very big truth.”

  “I don’t want to hear. I don’t want the Felangela.”

  “For now. Just for now, take her.”

  “Because you could die?”

  “Because I could die.” Josefina hears Luz’s voiceless sobs, the quick in and out of her breath, then the tears of her daughter run into the palm of her hand. “Cry, mamita,” Josefina says, “you can cry. Don’t be ashamed. Just remember you will always have me. You will see how I come to you.”

  “I won’t see anything. I won’t see you. I won’t have anything. Please, don’t let it happen, Mami. If you die, I don’t want to be alive anymore.”

  “Shhh, mamita. We don’t decide these things.”

  Yes, thinks Luz. It is Our Lady. She is the one who does this to us. With a bad smell and only a shadow for a face. And Father Bill who tells lies. “God has given you a gift,” he had said, “and you have brought it to us.” “No!” Luz shouts, startling Josefina awake. “If you can’t live, then I’m not going to stay in life either. Please, Mami, don’t go to sleep. Try, try not to die.”

  Josefina drops into darkness. Her daughter’s face slips from her hand.

  And just as she feared, worse, when they come to her bed to take Luz, Luz refuses to go. She clings to the rails; she screams. One nurse. Two nurses. And then William. Josefina in darkness can do nothing but listen, every voice urging Luz to let go. Every one of her daughter’s last cries.

  CHAPTER 67

  There is a single police car outside the motel when Walt arrives back in Infidelity, but none at the wash, not for hours, no customers either. No one to sell them a ticket. In his haste to get to the notary he had locked his office but left the wash open, the little white structure looking small and abandoned against the brilliant purples and blues, the great pink expanse of nightfall. He walks out to the wash to give it a cursory look before shutting the doors, sees that the floor of the wash is covered with glass all the way to the rinse line. A deep unease settles through him as he goes to the light box and turns on the lights. All day he had swallowed his grief over Josefina, reassuring people that things were okay. Nothing was going to happen to anyone, he had said a hundred times, maybe more. Infidelity would not be inundated because someone had died at the motel, not by seekers or maniacs. Not for a moment had he thought that his wash would be anything but safe. He looks up at the lights. Now he can see the damage, half of the delicate ceiling bulbs have been smashed, lopped off like upside-down boiled breakfast eggs, filaments exposed. Blankenship, probably, Walt thinks as he tries to gauge the state of the overhead piping, his shoes crackling on shards as he steps onto the conveyor and looks up.

  Or perhaps not Blankenship. Others were afraid and looking for something or someone to blame, maybe kids, maybe a stranger, one nut, someone convinced of the purity of his intentions. The pipes appear untouched, but he won’t know until he turns on the water. He walks slowly to the valve, releases it, waits, then watches the water spurt from the pipes sending pockets of needle-thin spray up to the ceiling and out to the air. It is going to cost him a bundle to fix this.

  Still, it seems minor. Nothing like what is transpiring right now with Josefina and Luz. Only weeks ago this would have felt catastrophic. Now it seems small. Fixable, he thinks. He sighs, turns off the valve and the light switch. Pulls down the doors. They will use this, he thinks, those who need to, as proof. What they’d all done on the sidewalk had led to no good. But nothing that’s happened, even the tragedy of Josefina and Luz can lead him to
doubt his experience. He had even defended the strangers camped on his field. Why had he ever allowed it? the CHP officers asked. “Because their hunger is real,” he had said.

  Our hunger is real, Walt thinks as he walks back to the office under the darkening sky. He had said this to those who came to his office full of doubt for the whole thing that day. It’s all right to want what we wanted. Nothing is wrong in this town. The fear that Walt harbors is for Luz. For in spite of what he has told others, Walt does not disbelieve what the strangers have said. He has seen those feet not quite touching the ground, is prepared to believe there are things he may not quite be able to fathom, in their own way as real as the ground holding him now. Why must Luz, not even eight years old, be made to bear them?

  He enters his office, sighs with relief, locks the door, grabs a beer, settles down on the couch. One cushion missing.

  Walt lies back, puts his feet up, sips at the beer, thinks of Josefina in her hospital bed, the Civic piled with Luz’s things. “We’ll work it out later,” he had said to Zoe, insisting she take it for the drive east. “I want you to have a good car.” In a minute he has to leave for the hospital to see them off. He hopes that the traffic has cleared and he makes good time. He gets up and walks through the office to the phone. Before he leaves, he wants to call his kids. He is going to drive up to Newport and take them to dinner. Wait till they see what he’s driving. He smiles as he picks up the phone. If only the monk hadn’t died. If only he could have lived with his joy.

  CHAPTER 68

  “Don’t get out of the car!” Father Bill calls as Zoe stops the Civic in the hospital parking lot where he and Walt wait in the glare of white lights, Luz in his arms, struggling against him. “No!” shouts Luz when Walt opens the back door and the men try to ease her into the seat. Pillows and quilts in a heap, two black plastic sacks with her toys on the floor, everything Luz owns packed in the car for the trip. “I’m not going! You can’t make me!” They pull her back up. Father Bill rocks her, crooning softly, “You’ll be okay.”

  Walt hands Zoe a yellow pad, the map of her route, that Father Bill has prepared, places where Zoe must stop. “At every stop you’ll be met,” Father Bill half shouts over Luz’s cries.

  “I’ll be met?” Zoe says.

  “You’ll have help on the drive.” The route lists cities and churches where someone will be waiting to join her, take over the wheel, three hours or four, so she can sleep. “Don’t worry. It has all been worked out.” How? Zoe wonders. Who are these people? She sees Unitarian, Catholic, Presbyterian. All kinds of churches. How will she find them? She watches Father Bill and Walt struggle with Luz, who is hitting out now with her fists, kicking with her good foot. When they put her on the seat, belt her in, finally close the back door she is sobbing weakly, begging them now to let her stay with her mother. When Zoe hears the door close, she starts up the car, afraid Luz will rip off the seat belt, leap out, run in spite of her foot. She does not say good-bye, does not look back, drives off leaving Father Bill and Walt standing in the parking lot, watching.

  Sixty miles later, Luz stops crying, slides down on the seat in defeat, turning her back. Zoe lets out a long sigh, tries to picture Cold Spring, her home, Michael waiting, a continent away, a world away, the big house where Luz will be safe. She lets herself see the late summer flowers, the ragged back lawn, Michael standing at the front door, “A child?” he had said. “You’re bringing a child? Zoe, I don’t understand.”

  It is nearly midnight, the roads heavy with holiday traffic. The sky black and starless. Not until they get across the state line to Arizona does Luz stop crying, her anger and sorrow given over to sleep. Their first stop is Flagstaff, but once Luz gets quiet exhaustion overtakes Zoe. She may have to pull over and rest, leave whoever is waiting at St. Paul the Apostle on North Velez Street waiting longer, but at least Luz is quiet. Zoe opens the windows to the chill air and keeps driving.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” says Luz. Zoe looks into the rearview mirror. She is pale and drawn, the tension etched into her face. “Okay, honey,” she says. At the rest stop, Luz leans at the sink, trying to wash her hands. “Does it hurt?” Zoe says. She bends down to touch the foot, loosely strapped into a sandal. Luz winces. The sole of her foot has ballooned. Zoe’s heartbeat quickens. When Zoe calls Michael, Luz stands close and listens, looks up when she hears Zoe say her name. “There’s a very nice doctor where we are going,” Zoe says. “Michael’s father.” “Michael?” says Luz. “Yes, Michael. He is waiting for us right now.”

  “You forgot my toothbrush,” says Luz.

  Zoe had packed it, but where had she put it? She had packed nearly everything of Luz’s, pulling things down from her closet, emptying Luz’s drawers. She had torn through the house, found no suitcase, used trash bags. She could not get out of there fast enough.

  Just after dawn they arrive in Flagstaff, a smoky white sky, low buildings still holding their gray. Luz has woken but only briefly, whimpered, refused water, gone back to sleep. St. Paul’s is two miles off the I 40, only one wrong turn before Zoe finds it—a plain granite building flanked by a laundromat and a small apartment house. A car is parked in front of the church, a woman behind the wheel reading a book. Zoe slows down, opens the window. The woman looks up, says Zoe’s name, smiles. “You made good time.”

  There will be many stops like this one, in Albuquerque, Houston, Kansas City, Columbus, Ohio, Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Men and women who are happy to give up their Labor Day weekend for the privilege of this, not disposed to talk, reminding Zoe she needs to sleep. “Are you trained to do this?” she asks. “Do you know each other?” They reveal nothing. Only the driver who meets them in Albuquerque, a gray-haired woman in a pink sweatshirt who speaks with a brogue, tells Zoe that she knew Raphael Reyes, had no idea he had lived to have a child.

  “Did you go to my country?” Luz will say, startling them both. “Yes, I was there many years, sweetheart.” And for a little while the woman and Luz will speak, but the conversation is in Spanish, and Zoe drifts off. When Zoe wakes, there is Luz sitting up, looking out at the road, her dark eyes shining. “Tell Father Bill Sister Anne says hello,” she says when four hours later in the clear morning light Zoe drops her at a bus station in Amarillo, then checks in by phone with Father Bill. “Who are these people?” she asks.

  “Sanctuary,” he says. “Another time I will explain.” He tells her Josefina is hanging on. He’s got the nursing staff praying for her and all of Infidelity.

  The driver who meets them in Columbus is surprised at how well Luz understands English. “Did she get hurt running the border?” he had asked. “Is that where she lost her parents?” “I’m not lost,” says Luz. “I’m on a short trip.” “And her mother’s alive,” Zoe says.

  Luz begins eating, cries only when she is asleep. She sits looking out the window, drawn into the shell of silence in a way that makes Zoe question every moment she had sat at the window, seduced by the gold.

  Ten hours from Cold Spring it rains, a hard rain drums on the roof of the car, pelts the windshield, makes the road dissolve into gray. Zoe slows down, looks longingly at every motel sign, thinks of turning off the interstate and checking them in. How good it will be to stretch out in her bed. Her knees have been aching since Ohio. She longs for sleep, long and deep. How will she ever sleep now that she has Luz?

  By dawn the rain has stopped and the world has turned green, drenched, the air thickly sweet. Just ahead a school bus has stopped, flashing its red lights. They wait behind it. Clean, well-groomed children with new shoes and backpacks are bidding their parents good-bye, walking solemnly onto the bus. The bus starts up, the parents wave, keep waving. The car behind Zoe honks loudly, twice. “Is it the first day?” asks Luz. “I think so,” says Zoe. They have entered the world of the living, a country where they have no place.

  “Smell,” Zoe says as she rolls down the window. “Nice, isn’t it? We’re almost there.”

  Now they can see the
Hudson. A faint mist rises up over the water, gray and soft, the tree line a little indistinct, exhausted by summer. Too early for the oaks to turn gold.

  “Okay,” says Zoe, “we are going to turn up a hill, and then you will see a big gray house. That is the house I told you about where I live. We are almost there.” Luz is all eyes. Nothing of her voice seems to have survived the trip. They start the climb; Zoe’s heart beats fast. She loves everything her eyes touch, the old stone walls lining the drive, dark from the night’s rain, the towering white pines and the deep green of low-growing hosta. Now they can see the house, the gray-painted shingles, immaculate white window trim, side porches, the wide, shaded lawn, Cosmos and black-eyed Susans along the brick walk, droopy with rain. And there is the car she has been tracking for weeks, searching the field behind Walt’s office, searching parking lots up and down the Joshua Freeway, Michael and Zoe’s white van parked in the driveway next to the kitchen door. She pulls up beside it, seeing her name in blue letters on the side panel, Michael’s name, their Cold Spring address. And for a moment Zoe can almost believe she has never gone anywhere, Michael has never gone anywhere; she had only driven up to a friend’s house for the Labor Day weekend and waited till Tuesday, this day, to make the trip home.

  CHAPTER 69

  He must have been at the living room window watching for her, for he is out the front door in an instant, running down the flower-rimmed walk in bare feet and jeans, an olive green tee shirt, all quick aliveness and agile gait, unruly dark hair. And before Zoe can turn off the engine he is beside her, reaching through the open window to clasp her bare arm, the familiar heat and weight of his hand against her skin, his fingertips resting on her wrist. Once she opens the door and gets out, they will speak. If they are lucky, the improbable truth. But right now they have only this: Michael’s hand on her arm, the way he does not let it go.