The Shrine at Altamira

by John L'Heureux

  “Well, hell, why not? Maybe I could learn too, and do it when you don’t feel like it, or just to surprise you?”

  “I want to do it for you,” she said.

  Russell gave that little gulping sound he made—half gratitude and half passion—and, putting his arm around her, he pulled her close. She settled against him, her hand on his knee, her arm resting on his thigh. They drove in silence, very happy.

  That night they lay in bed, quiet, after making love. Russell was no better at it than he’d ever been, but he did his best not to hurt her and to slow down before he came because she seemed to like that best. He had slowed down tonight, slowed almost to a stop, and withdrew nearly his full length, and as he was about to plunge in for the last hard thrust, something in his brain went black and he saw himself looking into a dark, deep pit and he heard himself say, “I’m gonna pour my soul into you,” and at once he saw that if he went on, he would plunge into that pit, lost, without a soul of his own, and be damned forever. He thrust hard into her, and they came together, and it felt very good.

  Now, as he lay in bed looking at the ceiling, he called back the image of this black pit, this pouring out of his soul, and he wondered what this vision could have meant, and what he had chosen, and what the consequence would be. He turned his head on the pillow and looked at Maria. Her eyes were closed, and he could see she was pretending to be asleep. She had hated him for a week, and then she had tried to love him, and now she loved him again. It was all too much for him. He closed his eyes and slept.

  Maria noticed finally—and how had she missed it before this?—that sometime during the past month or two Russell had begun to love her the way she used to love him. She pushed the thought aside. It would be something to think about later. At the moment she had her high school graduation to think of, and her morning sickness—she was pregnant for real this time—and getting the beef braised just right for her daube de boeuf à la Marseilles. Her mother was coming to dinner tonight and she wanted to show off a little. She dropped another gob of butter in the pan and it sizzled up and turned brown. “Shit,” she said, and her heart sank. The heat was too high. She put some chunks of beef into the pot, tentatively, as if she feared they might bruise, and waited as—miraculously—they began to brown. Her heart rose. Cooking was easy.

  Russell was so happy he couldn’t stand to be with Bog during lunch break, so he invented an errand—a trip to the bank—and drove off without bothering to eat. He was happy because of the way things had turned out. Maria loved him, and he spent every waking minute thinking of her, and he spied on her. He did not consider it spying. He just wanted to see her, to be near her.

  He decided he would drive, just once, past her school, and if he saw her he would wave and keep on going. He slowed down as he approached the school, but he saw only a postman wheeling a huge sack of mail up the front walk. Nobody else. He drove down the block, then three blocks, and made a huge square and came back once more. He wanted only a glimpse of her. A tiny little look. A couple teachers were out front now, smoking, and there was a black kid sitting with his back against a tree, but nobody else. Russell slowed to a crawl, and when the teachers turned to look at him, he stepped on the gas and got out of there. He would go back to work. His mouth was dry and he was getting a terrific headache. He shouldn’t be doing this anyway. She’d hate it if she knew. But he decided—his head pounding—he would circle one more time, just in case. Nobody was there. He parked, letting the motor idle. He was sweaty and frightened and he wanted to see her. He wanted her to be with him, only him. If he let her out of his sight, she would go, the way his mother had gone, leaving him alone, with nobody, with nothing.

  A bell rang, long and loud. At once all the doors were thrown open and kids began to come out, at first only a few and then crowds of them.

  Sick, disgusted, Russell stepped on the gas and drove away. He didn’t belong here. He didn’t belong anywhere.

  The cooking phase had not lasted very long, and once again they were at Ana Luisa’s house for dinner and TV. Maria had begun to show, and she had filled out quite a lot, and this time it was clear she was pregnant. She and Russell sat on the couch holding hands, and from time to time he would look deep into her eyes and she would look back at him with a melting look that made Ana Luisa turn away in embarrassment. She was glad they were so happy, but she knew that love like this couldn’t last. She waited until Maria got up to go to the bathroom.

  “So, everything’s fine again with you two?” Ana Luisa said.

  Russell nodded. “Wonderful,” he said.

  “You’re glad about the baby? A baby is nice.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Of course you’ll have to share Maria with the little one. A baby takes up a lot of time.” She waited for him to say something. “I wonder, perhaps, if you love Maria too much.”

  Russell looked up at her, sharply.

  “Just a little bit too much. Tantito?”

  Maria came out of the bathroom then. She sat on the couch with her legs tucked under her and her shoulder against Russell’s chest. He put his arm around her and they folded into one another easily, naturally, as if it would always be this way.

  Maria was six months pregnant and desperate to get out of that damned trailer. She had decided she would not go to work until after the baby was born, and so she was alone all day with nothing to do except watch television and pace up and down the tiny living room. It was impossible, she said.

  “Look!” She got up from the table, put her dish in the sink, and then lay down on the bed. She hadn’t moved more than a foot in either direction. “I’ve got to get out of this tiny place,” she said, “or I’ll go out of my mind.”

  “It’s our home,” he said. “You used to like it.”

  “It’s a trap,” she said.

  He tried to think.

  He was already working overtime whenever he could, and he worked Saturdays at handyman jobs for people whose houses he had painted, and he would gladly work nights and Sundays if he could, but there still wasn’t enough money. Where was he going to get the money? The doctor bills were covered, more or less, but his medical plan was shitty, and he had to get together all that extra money for the hospital and for shots and for God knows what, and how was he going to do it? And now she wanted to move.

  “Okay, sure,” he said, because she had to have whatever she needed. “But where?”

  “I want to live with Mama.”

  “We can’t live with Mama. There’s no room. There’s no privacy. Her place is not much bigger than this.”

  “Well, it doesn’t have to be both of us.” She let that sink in for a moment, and then she looked up at him from where she lay on the bed. “You know?”

  He stood there, uncomprehending.

  “I mean I could go myself. And just live there with Mama.” She could see him beginning to understand. “There’s more room there, and I wouldn’t be trapped in one tiny trailer that wherever I move I’m still in the same place. I’ve got to move around. I can’t live like this. I can’t live in a trap like some animal.” She paused, and then rushed on. “I’m not like you. I’ve got to have air. I’ve got to get out once in a while and see people and feel that I’m alive. It’s too much, you can’t ask this much of me, who do you think you are anyway?” He was just standing there, sunk into himself. He looked old and shriveled. “Listen,” she said. “I’ve thought about this, Russell, and it’s the right thing to do. I’ll move in with Mama, and she can take care of me and everything, and you can come over nights to see me. It’ll be just like it was, except that I won’t be going crazy in this place. Okay? Okay?”

  She got up from the bed and put her arms around him.

  “It’s for the baby,” she said, whispering.

  She kissed him on the neck. She had him now. He would do whatever she asked.

  “Okay?” she said.

  He pushed her away, hard, and she fell to the bed. He stood over her, white with anger, his
whole body trembling with rage, and he shook his fist in her face. Still no words came. He turned from her and, swinging wildly, blind and speechless with frustration, he drove his fist into the wall. There was a crunching sound and a dull thunk as his fist went through the wood paneling and struck the metal shell of the trailer. He punched the wall again and again. When he turned back to her, his fist was bleeding, but the worst of his anger was gone. “The baby,” he said. “It’s always the goddamned baby. That’s all it was right from the beginning. You don’t care about me. It’s just him. It’s just that thing. It’s just that little … nothing.”

  She huddled on the bed, silent.

  “You haven’t looked at me, you haven’t paid attention to me once in the past six months. You’ve used me and let me wait on you and work overtime and scrape around for money, just so you could be alone with that … thing.”

  “That’s not true,” she said. “Russell? That’s not fair.”

  “It is true. You never wanted me. You never cared about me.”

  She let him say it.

  “It’s been you and him all along. Just you and the baby. That’s all you ever wanted.”

  “Russell,” she said, looking at him.

  “Come on,” she said, “look at me.”

  “Sweetheart,” she said.

  He looked up at her finally. “Sweetheart,” he said, and his voice was bitter, but he kept on looking at her.

  She concentrated hard, looking. You are the only one, she thought, you are everything in the world to me.

  She repeated these words to herself, waiting for them to take their place in her look, so that her eyes would shine and he would see she loved only him, and then he would be hers again.

  You only, she thought, it’s you only that I love.

  But her attention wandered and she thought first of the baby and then of her mother’s house, and suddenly she realized she had lost him.

  For a brief moment, though, he had convinced himself that she loved him and only him, that everything would be all right, and so at least he wanted to be saved. He still had some hope left in him and she could work on that.

  “We’ll both go,” she said. “Okay? We’ll both go stay with Mama.”

  He hugged her hard, grateful, terrified. Would he ever have her to himself again?

  Maria’s life was good now. By the time she got up each morning, Russell had already left for work, so she didn’t have to deal with him and his incessant need for attention. If Ana Luisa was still there, she would make Maria a breakfast of eggs and toast and raspberry jam. It was important, she said, that Maria keep her strength up and have something sweet with each meal. Maria ate whatever her mother cooked. She was always hungry. And it was nice to be waited on. If Ana Luisa had already left for work, Maria would make her own breakfast—toast and jam, some cookies or sweet rolls, whatever was around—and then for the rest of the morning she would watch the game shows on TV. In the afternoon she had the soaps and the great maternal satisfaction of lying on the couch and feeling the baby move inside her. Getting comfortable, she imagined. Sometimes giving a kick.

  This was the real reason she had wanted to come back to her mother’s house: to be alone and at peace with her baby. Sometimes she would lie for hours, softly caressing the mound of her belly, talking to the little boy inside. It was a mystical experience, and it lifted her high above the boredom and ugliness of ordinary life. The old saint stories she’d heard as a child came back to her now and she recognized something true in them. This is what Joan of Arc must have felt when she heard voices, or Saint Teresa when she levitated. The experience was beyond words, but it left Maria feeling holy, chosen. At these times she could forget she had ever married. There was no Russell, there was no life at all outside of her and the baby. For all her advanced ideas, she admitted to herself now that this was what she had always wanted.

  In the evening, if Russell didn’t have a night job, she would sit with him and her mother, watching TV. He drove her crazy, looking at her with that big moony face, expecting, demanding that she return his look, stupid, full of love. She was fed up with all that. She had the baby to think about, and she deliberately refused Russell’s look, and to hell with him. That’s why she liked having Ana Luisa there while they watched TV. It kept Russell in his place.

  Sometimes Maria would glance at him while he was eating or getting her a drink or shuffling around the little house, and she would wonder what on earth had ever made her love him. His Anglo name? His blue eyes? They were a pale blue, a milky blue. She hated the sight of them, to tell the truth. They were like everything else about him, weak and needy. Only his name was any good, and it was hers now. Hers and her son’s.

  On nights when Russell didn’t have a job and there was no TV worth watching, they would get in the car—Ana Luisa too—and go out for a drive and an ice cream. The summer was unusually hot, and it was nice to drive up over the mountains and out to the coast. Russell would deliberately park the car at places where they had made love—on promontories with the sea crashing below them, or up above sandy beaches—but Maria pretended not to recognize the places, and even when he leaned close to her or tried to put his hand on her leg, she’d give him no response. She’d just chatter on about game shows and money and buying a summer house on the beach. She could feel her mother’s anger directed at her from the back seat and she could feel Russell’s neediness and despair, but she was carrying a baby, she was about to give birth, and she couldn’t worry herself about them. Why did everybody want something from her?

  On the way back, they would always stop for ice cream, which was stupid, but it was something to do. And then, finally, they would go home. Maria continually surprised herself by her eagerness for home. When she was a kid, hanging around with Michelle Gross and Jennifer Benniger, she had never let them see where she lived. She went to Michelle’s house or to Benni’s, but she never invited them to hers. They were rich girls, with nice families, and they lived in big houses with clipped lawns in front and back, with bushes and flowers all around and lots of trees. The girls understood why they weren’t invited to Maria’s, and they didn’t seem to mind. Back then, shy and ashamed, Maria knew how they’d see her house: a Mexican nightmare, a pile of cement blocks painted purple. The road out front was unpaved, with no sidewalks, and there were big old American cars—some just beat up, some completely abandoned—parked every which way up and down the street, in driveways, on front lawns. She had seen it that way herself. But now, married and with a baby due any minute, she saw it all differently. The place was messy, yes, but it was filled with life. The people were poor, but they knew who they were and they had values and family traditions that mattered. They weren’t white-collar criminals like some people. They had no pretensions. And her house itself was warm and cozy. A perfect place for a baby to be born. Approaching it at night, seeing the living room light left burning, she felt a surge of warmth and love that included even Russell. She would touch him at these times, just a hand on his arm or even a little nudge, and she could see him shed his despair for a minute or two and be happy with her. But these moments were unimportant, really. What mattered was the baby. What mattered was the coming birth of John.

  Russell woke her in the night. He leaned above her in the secret dark and said, “Listen to me.”

  “Listen,” he said. “My father did this to me. He took my hand and held it in the fire. There was never any accident. He did it to me. He made up the story about a bunch of kids playing around a fire, and I told it to the nurse at the hospital, and I told it at school, but the truth was he did it himself. Maria?”

  Silence.

  “Did you hear me?”

  The night was black. The room where they lay was black. They could have been alone in the world. They could have been at sea.

  “Maria?”

  “I don’t want to hear this. Why are you doing this?”

  “You’ve got to know me. You’ve got to know about me.”

 
“I know you.”

  “You’ve got to love me.”

  Silence and darkness.

  She put her hand up and touched his face. It was wet, with perspiration or with tears; she couldn’t tell. She let her hand rest there for a minute.

  “I love you,” he whispered over and over.

  She fell asleep, her open hand against his cheek.

  “I love you. And I love the baby,” he whispered. “I love you.”

  John was born with a halo of blond curls and eyes as pale and blue as Russell’s own. Russell looked at the baby through the glass window, tapped at it, got his attention. The baby seemed to smile at him. Russell was relieved to find that he was very happy. He loved his son. He would be a good father.

  Later he saw Maria with the baby, a fat little blond thing wriggling at her breast.

  “John,” Maria said, “because it sounds so American.”

  Russell smiled at her, and at the baby, and at her again, but she did not look up at him.

  After a while, though, she did look up, but vaguely, distracted. She did not see Russell at all. He could have been anybody. Or nobody.

  She had eyes only for the baby.

  That night—late, late in the night—Russell stood before the bathroom mirror and drew a razor blade, hard, across his chest in a huge X, as if in this way he could cancel out his heart.

  TWO

  The birth, they told her, was an easy one. There had been a moment, just before the baby’s head appeared, when Maria felt her whole body splitting open. She wanted to die, and she wanted the baby to die, and she wanted Russell to die. But in the next moment she was almost done, and with another push, and another, and a long thin shuddering intake of breath, she gave birth. The baby was big, with Russell’s squarish face and pale blue eyes. There were wisps of yellow hair on his head. Even red and squalling, he was the most beautiful baby she had ever seen.