Our Lady of Infidelity

by Jackie Parker

  “Have you ever been West?” Michael had asked the day he showed up at her shop. “The Mojave? Beautiful. You should go some time.”

  Now she had.

  When Zoe gets onto the freeway, the light nearly blinds her. It is worse than the light in the campgrounds, denser, more glaring; it’s like looking through midday snow. The sun should be behind her, and yet it seems to be hitting her right in the eyes. She has to drive slowly, barely noting when she has passed Our Lady of Guadalupe—pea green shingles lost behind a scrim—the houses in the hill district all but erased. Less than a half mile beyond them, the traffic in front of her is stalled, a line of red brake lights dimmed in the uncertain distance.

  Higher up and farther ahead she sees a blur of blue neon. Immaculate Autos. Walt must have turned on the sign. She has drifted into the slow lane and now sees there’s a crowd on the sidewalk facing the window. Walt stands before them holding an oversized umbrella, white and blue, Father Bill in his clerical robe gesturing to the crowd.

  Then Walt hands the umbrella to Father Bill, steps forward, and raises his hands as if he is going to push or bless someone. A few people begin to stir, a step or two back, a little apart. Zoe looks through the crowd, sees nothing at first and then she sees perfectly—the sturdy brown legs, the skirt of the yellow dress, the soles of the sandals. Oh, please, Zoe asks, let this not be what it is. Make it another, any other child, not kneeling but fallen—an accident, a trick of the light.

  CHAPTER 20

  It was just about eight when Walt saw her that morning. She was out there on the sidewalk staring through the window of his office. He had looked up, checking traffic, and there she was. At first he didn’t know it was Luz. The light made it hard to discern her face. But one thing he did know, it was a child. He went outside, walked down to the place where she stood, asked how she got there, what she was seeing, where her mother was. She said she was looking at wings, that a lady had sent her. All the stuff that he knew she’d made up.

  When he bent to touch her she was hot as a furnace, and there was something about her smell, like someone had doused her in rosewater. Sun poisoned, maybe, he thought.

  He took her into his office, sat her down on the couch, got the ice, wiped her down. She looked at him straight, her black eyes so intense for a second he felt she could see into his mind. Then she smiled and he relaxed to a place he had no business being, heard himself sigh, felt himself falling, though he was right there beside her on his sofa. Somehow he had sat down. Inside his body he began to feel warmth. Like coming to a warm spot in the cold of the ocean. He relaxed even deeper. They stared into each other’s eyes like lovers. The warmth in his body finding spaces to congregate. Little pulses in his throat, in his heart, in his gut. The spaces wheeled and pulsed like tiny new stars. Not a word passed between them. They just sat on the sofa in absolute silence in a heaven of looking, eyes to eyes, the light charging through the crooked new window. It was gorgeous. It lasted for an eon or a moment. And then he was back.

  “What the hell,” he said, and shot up from the couch. He wanted to walk into the street and thank everything that had ever been and would ever be for giving him this moment, which, when he got right down to it, was simply an immense dose of ordinary love—discounting the little zones whirring in his body. But love for what? Not strictly speaking for Luz, for himself, for what he’d just felt. It kept coming at him, or through him, a softness, a rich flooding warmth, growing till he couldn’t hold any more. What the hell is this? he thought. Whatever it is, it is wonderful.

  “How ’bout we call your mother?” he said.

  That’s when she runs for the door—and him after her. He is right with her when she makes it back to the sidewalk. This time when he reaches for her, she fights him. She kicks out hard when he tries to lift her, the print of her sandal leaving a mark on his chinos just above the groin.

  “Shit,” he says. Now he is going to have to go home and change for Ryan’s game. And he hasn’t yet opened the wash.

  Then Luz turns her head and looks around. For a moment he thinks it is over, that she is about to stand up, take his hand, ask him to drive her to summer school or wherever she is supposed to be. She looks up at him. A succession of faces begins to eclipse her face, or rise through it, erasing Luz’s features completely. He hardly has time to absorb one face when another appears as if someone is flipping the pages of a fine book of portraits—much too fast. They are men’s faces mostly, and not one that he recognizes, but he knows they are holy—saints, maybe, faces he has never seen—not in the papers or magazines, not in books, not on TV or in movies, not even faces he had dreamed. He wonders if maybe Gandhi will pop up, or if Gandhi is even a saint, but then comes the woman whose face he had seen the night they discovered the window was crooked—what a beauty—and Walt wants to shout for the flickering to stop, but on it goes. All of the faces are beautiful in ways he can hardly describe. Wise and deep in the way of saints. Then just like that they are gone. He kneels to study her, black eyes on the window, mouth moving, no sound. What is she, anyway, that this stuff can come to him from her? Or is it all hallucination? Is he quite possibly nuts? Can he dare to reveal it—to whom? Father Bill?

  Now she is making a sound, low and far back in her throat. “Mmmm.” He’d like to close his eyes and stay there beside her, but inside are customers and a schedule for the day—his family, his son. He is already off it.

  “Mmmmm,” says Luz, like she’s dreaming of something delicious.

  CHAPTER 21

  By the time Father Bill arrives, running down the walk to the window, his black robe trailing behind him, Luz appears light as spun sugar, her color a rich rosy-gold. Father Bill sees the splendor that is Luz and goes straight to the curb, leans dangerously close to the oncoming traffic, and heaves up the remains of his previous night’s dinner.

  When he looks back, he can see right through her. Luz is a radiant shell—not even living perhaps. She reminds him of a story he had read at seminary, a great Hindu saint who one morning slipped out of his body at prayer. Hours later, a disciple brushed past and the body fell over, light as a husk.

  Then a young girl comes toward him, Bobbie’s girl, Skye, stepping out of the gold that holds Luz. She is dense with flesh as the living should be, safely anchored in color: purple swath of hair, black tee shirt, pink stripes down her black climber’s shorts. She is crying.

  “Father Bill,” she beseeches, afraid he will leap straight into traffic. She strips off her shirt and reaches out to blot the vomit on the front of his surplice. “You’ve ruined your beautiful robe!”

  “What’s wrong with you? Cover yourself.” He turns his gaze away from her breasts and shrinks from her hand.

  Skye will not remember, and only Father Bill will carry it, how sweetly she came toward him, the tender white cones of her breasts as she lifted her arm to blot the stain that had already ruined the silk.

  “Go into the office. Tell Walt to give you his shirt. Get him out here.”

  Now he sidesteps past Skye and enters the space where the light is most intense and Luz the child is barely to be seen. He will touch Luz’s shoulder and bring her back from the illusion of this dangerous light. “Luz,” he says softly and kneels.

  Up close Luz is vivid and etched with the surpassing sweetness of one of her Madonnas of the Centuries, a nimbus of gold more beautiful than even the Renaissance masters could paint. He squats beside her, places his palm on her shoulder, curls his fingers on the bones, feeling the curve of the scapular. She does not respond to his touch, but neither does she fall. The fabric of her dress is warmly damp. She is living, that much he knows.

  Now his eyes start to burn; he can’t stop from blinking. Any moment he will look as if he is crying. Yet he feels no sadness, he is emptied of feeling, quite calm and relaxed, the state he achieves when he’s deep in his prayers: as if time has quietly stopped. He shifts his position to study her eyes, squatting directly in front of her face, elbows on his knees, h
ands together, palms barely touching. It is the posture Luz’s father, Dr. Raphael Reyes, so often adopted when surrounded by his students or the rapt campesinos he had been teaching in secret for years. Immediately, Luz shuffles past him, keeping her eyes on the window.

  “Querida,” he whispers, and begs her in Spanish for her mother’s sake, for the memory of her father, for the sake of her mother’s employment, for the green-winged quetzal and for every living thing that she cherishes, “don’t do this to us.”

  CHAPTER 22

  At nine thirty, with Father Bill still on the sidewalk, with Luz encircled by his parishioners, a host of onlookers, twenty, or so, maybe more, Walt’s palms start to sweat and things start to fall from his hands. Credit cards slip to the floor, a stack of coupon books slides into the trash, a can of Dr. Pepper spills over his counter, and Chico Platz, whom he’s called in to help, has to run to the bathroom for the paper towels that have disappeared from the shelf below. Walt has allowed too many customers into his wash. There is a line from the door to the drink cabinets. People sprawl on the couch, stand at the window, deliberating over Luz. It is nine forty-five. The cars are backed up in the entry lane. Finally, Walt goes back out.

  “Would you like me to get Josefina?” Walt asks.

  “I can do it.”

  Walt holds out his hand, an offering, a reminder that his friend must stand up. The smell of vomit is overpowering. It’s a wonder it doesn’t make Luz sick to her stomach, Luz’s hum now deepens to a growl. Father Bill’s parishioners perk up their ears and begin to move closer.

  Father Bill looks at Walt with alarm as he rises. He turns to the crowd. Expectation rises. Relief. He will speak to them at last. He will tell them what this is.

  “For God’s sake step back,” he says. They don’t move.

  “Can’t you see there is nothing? Go home.”

  Everyone stunned as much by his demeanor as by what he has said, the harshness in his voice, the priest’s complete indifference to their withheld joy. Nothing?

  “Get back,” Walt echoes.

  They shuffle a little—small steps to the side, then move a little bit back.

  “How can I bring Josefina to this?”

  Even now, knowing he will never arrive at the Fullerton College ball field in time to wish his son luck, give his daughter the earrings, settle down in the stands next to the woman he still calls his wife, Walt considers whether he owes it to Father Bill, to himself, to everyone on the sidewalk and perhaps most of all to Luz not to let one more moment pass without trying to convey to his friend what has happened to him. He should take Father Bill into his office, clear out the customers and try to describe it, how those faces came to him through her face, how many there were of those probable saints, how clearly he saw them, the dimensions he senses are waiting, things he has never imagined. The joy this has brought is still anchored within him, a calm, steady sense of the possible largeness of life.

  “Father Bill,” he says, putting his arm on his friend’s shoulder, “Maybe you should take off the robe.”

  Father Bill looks down at himself as if he has forgotten what he is wearing. “Can you help me?” he asks. “Don’t let it touch the ground.” When the robe is off, Father Bill stands in his white tee shirt, sweat-stained, ungainly, a derelict who has lost the ability to care for himself.

  “Wait,” says Walt and races to the back of the wash to his car, opens the door, grabs the blue oxford shirt he had ironed and brings it back to his friend. “Go ahead, put it on. It will be easier for Josefina if she sees you looking nice.”

  Father Bill looks at the shirt.

  “Trust me. Bad news goes down easier in a blue cloth shirt. Good news as well.”

  “All right.”

  “Go inside. Wash up.”

  “I think I will.”

  “Get some coffee. Take some with you on the drive.”

  Father Bill nods, hands Walt the umbrella, takes the shirt. “I want you to promise that you’ll stay right here until I get back. Don’t let anyone touch her, don’t let her touch anybody—”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t leave. I’ll be her hawk.”

  Father Bill says nothing to Luz, ignores the throng as he starts down the sidewalk, his steps a little tentative as if he is not sure his own legs will carry him.

  A few of his parishioners follow him, “Go down to the church. Get everything ready for tonight. Do what we planned,” he tells them. Then Father Bill goes into the car wash office and into the bathroom to wash. The shirt is too small. He does the best he can, does not tuck it into his pants, leaves the bottom three buttons undone.

  Seeing the way Father Bill looked, Chico Platz will tell people later, he was afraid for a second that maybe Luz had died.

  Once Father Bill drives off, Walt is barraged with questions.

  Walt Adair takes a long breath. There are thirty or more standing on the sidewalk, not a one of them he cannot see through, past the thick encrustations of years to the bright hearts of their yearning. He looks into the face of Emily Otto to the girl she still is, shining with life, then looks at Wren, her beloved beside her, ninety-three this fall, and ageless.

  Something has come to this sidewalk, Walt thinks, and I do not know its name. He stands before them with his embarrassed tears, the blue and white umbrella, and the unaccustomed weight of a love-heavy heart, the pungent robe of Father Bill over his arm. He raises the umbrella to still their voices, and before him they open like blossoms. Ah, he thinks, it is true. And in this moment Walt Adair ceased to doubt. Whatever Luz Reyes had brought, or was being brought through her, it was going to be beautiful.

  CHAPTER 23

  Zoe stands in the back of the crowd holding her breath, her hands on her throat as if she’s arrived on the scene of an accident, afraid she will cry out or scream.

  “What is she doing?” Zoe asks the man beside her, vaguely familiar, the shock of red hair. She has seen him in that group at a noisy back table in the diner.

  “Can’t say.”

  She has only to take a few steps to where Luz kneels beside Walt, slip under the umbrella, put her hands around Luz’s face, look in her eyes to pull Luz out of the far place. She knows this child’s secrets, the things she imagines that keep her safe. Any moment Luz may do something awful, cry out—fall to the ground. Bring into fulfillment Father Bill’s fears. Or someone else might fall, or declare that they’re seeing a vision, and then they are in for it. One of those crazy visions, Jesus on a taco shell in El Paso, Texas, the bee-sting savior in a man’s beefy chest that she has seen in a photograph somewhere, a billboard-sized Our Lady on a glass-fronted complex in Clearwater, Florida. Our Lady in Walt’s single-pane horizontal slider. Her window, her crooked window.

  Oh, Luz, thinks Zoe, you were supposed to be in summer school. You did all the homework. This was your last day.

  What a mess this has become. Better she should slip away now, drive to Platz’s garage, swap the Dart for the Nova, leave Infidelity without saying good-bye—leave Luz swirling out of control, the child of this terrible light.

  But instead, without thinking, throwing logic to the high desert wind, Zoe starts through the crowd, maneuvering past lawn chairs, ducking her head past the unfurled umbrellas, the parishioners of Our Lady of Guadalupe settling in as if on some invisible beach, while Zoe, on instinct, runs to the shore on a blinding hot day to rescue a child who is drowning.

  Walt turns around and meets her gaze, his eyes entirely changed. Who are you again? she wonders, his eyes, the light that surrounds them both like a prelude to sleep or enchantment. Soft. Softer, the silence like stepping through fog. Luz’s tender back, the black braids like gold in this light, a cocoon of gold so palpable Zoe imagines incipient wings hidden under the folds of Luz’s bright yellow dress.

  “What happened,” whispers Zoe as she kneels behind Luz.

  “She walked to me,” Walt says, his voice thick and indistinct as if he has just woken up.

  Walked on fast f
eet? Walked like she walked to the campgrounds in spring? Impossibly fast invisible feet. Walked because she was called?

  “What do you mean? How do you know she walked?”

  “Shhh,” says Walt. “Just sit for a moment. Relax. Everything’s fine.” She believes him, or rather she neither believes nor disbelieves. Belief seems out of the question. What has happened to the man that his face looks so ringingly alive? She sits down on the hot sidewalk right beside Luz, inhales Luz’s smell, the faint breath of rose. Through the gold haze that surrounds her, Luz’s skin burns a deep orange-pink. Around her a border of tiny gold threads wave like cilia. What is this child? Zoe thinks, and reaches her hand through the light. Before Walt can tell her, “Don’t touch,” she has traced a circle around Luz’s left wrist, drawn her finger up Luz’s arm.

  “Hey, my friend, I was just on my way to the A&P to buy you a coconut cake.”

  Luz neither moves nor responds.

  “Is coconut still your favorite?”

  “Ummm,” says Luz from a faraway place.

  “Yes,” says Zoe, “umm. We love coconut cake.”

  “Did she speak?” someone in the crowd calls out.

  “Did she say ‘cake’?” asks Emily Otto.

  Now Luz begins to shift to the left, her head advancing by quarter inches until her gaze falls directly upon Zoe’s. Luz smiles through half-lidded eyes, gives a small nod.

  Come out, come out wherever you are Luz, Zoe thinks, and is just about to say it when Luz looks right at her. Something barrels at Zoe with the brightness of a bearable sun, a firestorm of light from the depths of the engine that is Luz. Turn away, a voice within Zoe warns: don’t look at her eyes. Too late. Back Zoe goes falling onto the sidewalk like an upended swan in slow motion, a sound rising out of her, the rich throaty warble that hums out when she is losing herself into pleasure. On and on it goes, rising and falling long after she is downed. A few sitters rise from their chairs for a better look. There lies Zoe Luedke for all to see, sprawled on the sidewalk, those much-noted legs, one sandal kicked off, her whole half-clad length on display. Knocked out by the child.