The Shrine at Altamira

by John L'Heureux

  As she stood there deciding what to do next, she heard loud rock music, and then a car came hurtling down the street, a low rider painted with green and silver stripes. The music got louder and louder. The driver stepped hard on the brakes and the car screeched to a halt, the rear end bouncing up and down on its extra springs. As Ana Luisa watched, fascinated, the door flew open and a girl got out. It was Janelle. She was laughing, and the kids inside were calling out to her, but Ana Luisa could hear nothing except the crash of the music. In the next second the car took off, spewing dirt and gravel, and the music trailed it down the street. Janelle stood looking after the car, waving.

  She was a pretty little thing, almost a teenager, and she wore a short black skirt and a tee shirt that showed her breasts to advantage. It hung loosely off one shoulder. She gave Ana Luisa a cold, hard look.

  “Is he home?” Ana Luisa called.

  Janelle smiled, recognizing her at last. “I can’t see without my glasses,” she said. “How ya doing, Ana?”

  “I’m cool,” Ana Luisa said, and they both laughed. John always laughed, too, when she said she was cool. “Is he at home?”

  “Use the key, why don’t you. It’s in the back,” Janelle said, and started up the stairs. At once the screen door opened and her mother was there, hand on hip. “Where the hell have you been?” she said. “Do you know what time it is?” and Janelle, her voice ugly, said, “Don’t start with me, you. Just don’t start with me.” The screen door slammed shut and they continued to quarrel.

  “Families,” Ana Luisa said. She went down the steps and around the back and let herself in.

  She had the albóndigas made and in the oven before Emory got home. When she opened the door to him, she could tell at once that he’d been drinking. His eyes were hooded and he had a crooked smile and he reeked of old beer. She didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ve got albóndigas” she said, “my specialty.”

  He blinked for a moment and looked around. His crooked smile became apologetic. “I’ve had a drink,” he said. “Just a beer.”

  She looked at him.

  “A few beers,” he said. “I had more than one. I had a few.”

  “Come sit down,” she said. She had never seen him like this, except that first time, and of course she didn’t know him then. Should she call somebody? What should she do? When her Paco got drunk, God rest his soul, she used to ignore him or, if he got too friendly when she wasn’t in the mood, she’d just push him off or hit him with a pan. But this man, who was in AA? What would you do with him? “Five minutes,” she said, “I’ll have it on the table. With a green salad and some nice corn bread.”

  Emory sat down at the table, shakily, and watched her as she moved from the stove to the sink and back again. “I suppose you’re shocked that I’ve had a beer,” he said. “A few beers. I suppose you think I shouldn’t.”

  “I’m not shocked,” she said.

  “I suppose you think I don’t have any reason to drink.”

  She said nothing.

  “Oh God,” he said, slumping forward. “I live a good life. I try and I try and I try. But I’ve got a son who sets his own kid on fire, a maniac, a devil from hell. And what am I supposed to do? I shouldn’t have a drink?”

  “Sit up,” she said. “For God’s sake, act the man.”

  He shot a quick look at her and then slumped back over the table. “What do you know about it, for Christ’s sake. Chiquita Banana cooks me a spic treat and she thinks she runs the place.” He stood up, pushing back the chair so that it nearly toppled over. “I run this place. I’m the master of the house around here. Just get that straight. Don’t have any doubts about that.” He stomped off to the bathroom.

  He left the door open behind him and peed noisily into the center of the toilet bowl. “Hear that?” he shouted. “I run this place and don’t you forget it.” He flushed the toilet and slammed down the seat and sat on it. He had to get his bearings.

  After a while he closed the door and knelt down and reached deep into the narrow cupboard next to the bathtub. He felt around blindly until his finger slipped through the knothole at the back. He pulled the loose board forward and grabbed the quart of bourbon he kept on hand there, just in case. He sat on the floor and took a long slug straight from the bottle.

  “It’s ready,” Ana Luisa called. “It’s dinner.”

  He smiled down at the bottle. Fuck dinner. A fucking woman telling him what to do. Keeping him from having a drink. He tipped the bottle up to his mouth again and drank. He was halfway there, he could feel it. In a while nothing would matter, and he’d lie down with his bottle by his side and stay drunk as long as he could. Drunk and peaceful. Drunk and happy.

  Ana Luisa knocked at the door, sharply. “Your dinner’s getting cold,” she said, and went back to the kitchen.

  He tried to get up, but he fell back and banged his head. He took another drink and then rolled sideways, so that he ended up on all fours. Bracing himself against the toilet, he stood up and waited for his head to clear. He could hear her in the kitchen, the bitch, banging pots around. Act like a man? He pulled the bathroom door open and lurched down the hall and into the kitchen.

  “What the fuck is this?” he said.

  She was at the sink, and she turned now and faced him. “Albóndigas” she said. “Like a big meatball, with rice in it; very tasty.”

  He moved to the table and looked down at the mess she’d prepared. Spic meatballs. Did she think he was a fucking wetback?

  He looked at her, and she was looking at him. “Act like a man?” he said. “You want me to act like a man?”

  He grabbed the corner of the oilcloth and gave it a yank, hard. The dishes went flying into the air, there was a crashing sound, and he stood holding the oilcloth in his hand as plates and bowls smashed against the floor and the albóndigas bounced off into a corner and the salad bowl rolled in a large circle and then a small one and then, finally, stopped. There was brown gravy everywhere.

  Suddenly he was at her. He grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her forward and then back, so that she lost balance. He held her wrist hard with one hand while, with the other, he turned the gas jet to high. And then he bent her arm backward, twisting her hand toward the fire.

  Ana Luisa saw what was happening and did nothing to stop it until she felt the flames on her hand. Then she came alive and pulled away from the fire, dragging him with her, and leaning far back, she landed a hard blow to the side of his head. His face went blank, and he looked confused, and fell backward against the refrigerator door.

  “What?” he said.

  She pinned him against the refrigerator, leaning hard against him, with her hand at his throat. “You did it to him, didn’t you?” she said. “You burned his hand.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, reasonable now. “You’ve got it wrong,” he said. “You’ve got it all wrong.”

  “Russell’s hand. Your son’s hand.”

  “He was playing around a fire with a bunch of kids,” he said patiently, his voice dreamy, as if he were reciting from memory. “He threw some lighter fluid in the flames, and it exploded. That’s all that happened. Everybody knows that’s what happened.”

  She leaned closer and whispered to him. “I could kill you,” she said. “I’m strong enough.”

  He smiled at her, lost now. “It was just a game,” he said. “They were kids, playing a game.”

  She let him go then. She stepped back from him, got her purse from the counter, and left the house by the front door. She got in her car and drove, and she did not cry until she reached home and knelt before her living room shrine. When she was done crying, she said to the Virgin, “I should have killed him. And you know it too.” Then she poured herself a glass of wine and tried to resign herself to the holy will of God.

  . . . . .

  John put down his book and closed his eyes to think about it. He was reading Saints for Our Times, and he had just finished Joan of Arc, and he
was not sure how much of it he could believe. He believed she heard the voices, because they made sense and because she was a saint and everything, and he believed she liberated France because it was even in the history books, but he was not sure he believed that she chose to be burned at the stake rather than deny her voices. The voices were from God, the book said, and so she died for the love of God. He wasn’t sure he believed that anybody would be willing to die for God. Not in a fire. And he wasn’t sure he believed that while she was burning she cried out “Jesus!” When you were burning, you just screamed. You couldn’t cry out “Jesus” or “Daddy” or anybody. But Joan of Arc was a saint, of course, and that probably made a difference.

  He thought about it for a long while, and he fell asleep thinking about it. When he woke up the next morning, he still wasn’t sure how much he could believe, but he was sure of one thing. He would never be a saint if it meant going into the fire. Not for God. Not for anybody.

  Maria looked up from her computer and listened. The elevator doors had opened and closed, but she hadn’t heard anybody in the corridor. It was the silence that caught her attention.

  She was working late again, typing a legal brief that one of her staff could just as easily have done. She stayed late at the office not because she had to but because it gave her an excuse for not going back to that house, to Ana Luisa, and to her son, whom she could not look at without crying.

  She sat at the computer, listening. Everybody had left over an hour ago, so she was alone in this place. If it were the custodian, she’d hear the banging of wastebaskets and high-dusting poles and all his cleaning stuff. Besides, his cart had those squeaky wheels. But she could hear nothing.

  She got up and went to the outer office and looked around. It was empty, and everything was just as it should be, except that the new receptionist, a girl called Velma, who chewed gum and wore too much makeup, had left a coffee mug on the corner of her desk. Office rules were very precise about this: absolutely nothing was to be left on desks overnight.

  Maria scooped up the mug and bent down to put it in the bottom drawer of the receptionist’s desk. She was still bending over when she became aware that somebody was standing in the doorway. It was a tall, thin black man, twenty or twenty-five. He had a close beard and he wore a tee shirt that said Hard Rock Café on the front. He just stood there, staring at her.

  “I didn’t hear you,” she said. She moved closer to the desk. How did he get in here? How did he get past the guard downstairs? “That door is supposed to be locked,” she said.

  “It was open.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter,” she said, “because we’re closed.”

  He said nothing.

  “You’ll have to come back tomorrow,” she said.

  “I’m looking for somebody.”

  “There’s nobody here,” she said, and wished she hadn’t. “Except the maintenance men and the guards, of course.” She nudged the chair away from the desk and began, slowly, to slide the middle drawer open. She glanced down—paper clips and file cards and old phone memos—and then looked up at him.

  He was still staring at her.

  “You have to go,” she said.

  He took a step backward into the corridor and looked one way and then the other.

  She yanked the drawer farther out and there, toward the back, half hidden in a mess of papers, lay the letter opener she was hoping to find. Her fingers closed around the handle, and with one quick motion she took it from the drawer and concealed it in the folds of her skirt.

  She looked up at him, but he was gone.

  She stood behind the desk, motionless, not knowing what to do. Then, slowly, she moved toward the open door and looked down the corridor to the elevator. He was standing there, his hands folded behind his back, looking at his shoes. Suddenly, at the far end of the corridor, the women’s room door opened and Velma came out. “Sugar,” she yelled, and went running to the man, who held his arms out to her. Maria closed the door and locked it.

  She leaned against it, like somebody in a bad movie, thinking, What’s happening to me? A guy comes to pick up his girlfriend and I think he’s going to murder me. Still, why didn’t he say he was looking for Velma? Why didn’t he say something?

  Quickly she crossed through her own office into Mr. Ackerman’s, where she could look straight down to the front of the building. In a few minutes the door opened and the couple came out, Velma in a purple suit, the guy in jeans and a tee shirt. He had his arm around her.

  Maria sat down and covered her face with her hands, the letter opener hard against her cheek. She began to shake.

  In a moment, though, she pulled herself together. She was not going to give in to craziness; she’d had enough of that in her life. She was going to do something. She was going to save herself at least, since it was too late to save anybody else.

  She got her bag and her coat, and on her way out of the office she dropped the letter opener into the receptionist’s desk. Enough of that lunacy.

  As she was crossing the parking lot to her car, however, something strange happened to her. She felt as if somehow she were suspended by strings—just ordinary strings—and far, far below her lay not the tarmac but the waves of a black ocean that she could fall into at any moment. It was like one of those out-of-body experiences she had read about, where you’re still yourself but you’re able to watch what is happening to you. And she knew, suspended from these long strings, that if she looked down, she would fall, and be lost forever. And she heard herself say, “So don’t look down.” And, still aware of the danger, she fixed her gaze on her car and kept walking.

  She would refuse to think of John. She would just put him out of her mind. It was five years since it had happened. She wanted to start living again, and she would.

  In her car, she ran a comb through her short hair, and shook it, and she put on fresh lipstick. She was as ready as she’d ever be. She drove a short distance to the Get Lucky Lounge, parked her car, and—she was going to do this and she was not going to think about it—she went inside.

  The place was dark and smoky, and the rock music was too loud. She paused inside the door and waited till her eyes adjusted to the dim light. What the hell, she said to herself, and moved through the crowd up to the bar. A man turned to look at her. That was good. If she was going to go crazy, she might as well have some fun doing it. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to scream.

  “White wine, please,” she said, and looked into the mirror where she could see they were checking her out. There were more men than women, and the women looked pretty, but she could still hold her own. She, at least, didn’t look desperate—which was funny when you thought about it because she was more desperate than anybody there. But in a different way.

  “White wine,” the bartender said, and slid the glass across the bar. She put a five-dollar bill next to the glass and pushed it toward him, but he just left it there.

  She felt somebody at her back and as he bent toward her she could smell his cologne. It was expensive, like Mr. Ackerman’s. She could feel his chest against her shoulder and she waited for what would happen. She could feel his breath at her ear.

  “I bet you really want it,” he said, playing the phantom lover. His voice was deep and full, even though he whispered. “I bet you’d love it.”

  She turned on the barstool to face him, and then she broke into laughter. He was short and thin and he wore granny glasses. Her phantom lover was a computer nerd. She laughed again.

  “What’s so funny?” he said, rattled, and he stepped back from her.

  “You’re funny,” she said, “and I haven’t laughed in … days.”

  “My name is Arthur.”

  “Yes, I want it, Arthur,” she said, fixing him with her eyes. “Yes, I’d love it.”

  Arthur laughed too, then, and he held out his hand to her, and they left the Get Lucky Lounge together.

  “My place?” he said, and she laughed again. It was good to laugh. It was go
od to be crazy.

  . . . . .

  An anonymous letter came addressed to Russell Whitaker, and after the prison authorities opened it, they decided to give it to him. A guard shoved it through the bars, and waited.

  The envelope contained a newspaper clipping about John, and a picture of him celebrating his eleventh birthday. They called him the miracle boy. He had survived third-degree burns on eighty percent of his body, they said, and he had survived over a hundred operations as well. He was cutting a birthday cake and smiling at the camera. He didn’t really have a smile; it was just a gaping hole with no real lips and no sign of teeth, but the caption beneath the picture said he was smiling. The last line of the article reminded the reader that John’s father, Russell Whitaker, had done this to him. Russell Whitaker, it said, would be eligible for parole in just one more year.

  Russell looked at the picture without any show of emotion, until finally the guard gave up watching and went away.

  That night one of the jockers let himself into the cell and told Boyle to suck him off. Boyle refused. The jocker had bought him from Sharkey for two packs of cigarettes, so he slapped Boyle around a little bit, and Boyle pleaded with him to stop, and then finally the jocker got tired of Boyle’s whining. He yanked him up off his cot and sat him down on the toilet and stood in front of him. “Now suck it,” he said, “or I’ll have to get rough.”

  Russell had been lying on his cot, deliberately deaf and blind, thinking as always of his son, John. But suddenly he heard Boyle’s voice saying Please and Please, and it was John’s voice, and at once he was all over the jocker, punching and flailing, crazy with rage, and he did not stop until the jocker lay there unconscious.

  After that, the word went around that Boyle was Whitaker’s kid, and so they left Boyle alone.

  At school, at home with Ana Luisa, in the hospital, John wanted only to read. It was as if the world he lived in was the pretend world and the one in books was real. At eight he had read all of Thornton Burgess, and at nine he went on to the Lone Ranger and the Hardy Boys and even Nancy Drew. Suddenly there was nothing left to read, and he watched television all the time, but it didn’t take, and at ten he was back reading again. Now, at ten and a half, he had just finished reading Catcher in the Rye and Robinson Crusoe and Jane Eyre. He liked these books. They were about people like himself, who lived in secret.