Our Lady of Infidelity

by Jackie Parker

  “We did very well. A little quiet this year. Not our usual crowd. The kids had fun.”

  “I guess I was the competition. The car wash.”

  Father Bill does not respond to Walt’s half-hearted joke. He rises, wincing, and steps around his desk. “And how was the game?”

  “Not what I hoped. It was a pretty bad loss. They’re done for the season.”

  “How’d your son he take it?” Father Bill puts his arm under Walt’s elbow, guiding Walt to the door. A polite man. Practiced in his professional courtesies, Walt thinks. A man who knows more than anyone how Walt has struggled to find his way back into his children’s lives. They have discussed it countless times, in this very room. This man is brushing Walt off. This man Walt considered a friend.

  “He took it hard.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a record-breaking day for me business-wise.”

  “Congratulations. That’s a nice benefit.” Now Father Bill opens the door. The night sky is breathtakingly black. The stars sharp as cut glass, the air so sweet Walt wants to feed it into his children’s lungs.

  No, thinks Walt. He will not let it end so easily.

  “How did Luz get to me today?”

  The question stops Father Bill cold. “I think it’s pretty clear that she walked,” then he pauses. “It turns out Josefina was mistaken about the time.”

  “Mistaken how?”

  “Luz left the house at seven.”

  “Left at seven and was headed for eight o’clock Mass?”

  “Something wrong with their clocks. A power surge in the night, we figure. Her time was all off this morning.”

  “And when did she realize this?”

  “This evening. When they got home and she looked at her clocks; they were off by an hour.”

  “Well, I’m glad to know that. I was pretty disturbed. About the time thing. So then she just walked along the freeway to me by herself, in all that traffic in that light?”

  “There is a problem with Luz and her walking off. But we all know that. I’m sorry it upset you. I’ll let you go now, Walt. You must be exhausted. It’s been such a long day for us all. By tomorrow this whole thing will be behind us. I am going to make sure none of my parishioners go back. And thanks once again for your help today with Luz. And for the shirt. I’ll get it back to you soon.” Father Bill puts a light hand on Walt’s shoulder then lets it linger just for an instant, and for an instant Walt thinks he is going to ask him back inside. “Goodnight, Walt,” Father Bill says, and lifts his hand and goes into the rectory, closing and locking the door.

  I am alone with it now, Walt thinks as he walks to his car. How deftly Father Bill has avoided any discussion of Luz. He has lied too, of course, about Josefina’s clocks. Walt is sure of it. They must have decided on that story, Father Bill and Josefina, in a conversation he cannot begin to imagine.

  He approaches the Civic, feeling suddenly used, a rawness taking hold in the center of his chest, a tightness in his windpipe as the doubts come with a vengeance. Is he ridiculous? Dangerous or deluded? Had he imagined those faces and Luz? He and the others, all drawn to his sidewalk out of what—the need to connect with something more spacious than their own failed lives? Suddenly he is wrong again, wrong in the old way. How can he trust his experience of this day when he feels himself wrong to the core?

  He pauses, turning back to Our Lady of Guadalupe, entirely dark save for the light in the rectory. The wideness of the High Desert night sky devours the last of his pride. He has nothing again. Only these feelings and faces and hunches. Like that, they have been taken away—the joy and the certainty completely dissolved. Even the beauty of the sky—a summer sky with a spectacularly red Antares—seems like a rebuke. He will drive to his sorry little cinderblock house that would make his kids frightened, ashamed. They are wise to avoid it. He’ll drink a few beers, or more than a few until his body is numb and his mind is a blur, and then he will sleep off this day.

  He gets into the Civic and begins the trip home, taking the back way over unpaved roads, avoiding the freeway, avoiding his car wash. He is bumping over hard dry earth, driving straight into the night sky. He waits to be swallowed, for the stars to stop his thoughts, but even the brilliance of the stars insults him tonight, the stars with their deceptive presence, all those suns that have long ago died that he sees clearly but knows are not there.

  CHAPTER 38

  From the moment she wakes, even before she looks in the mirror, Josefina Reyes knows something amazing has happened to her. She had felt it even earlier, in the night, as if a great hand has come through her body and scoured her clean.

  In the morning she is able to stand at the sink, look at her face in the mirror and not flinch. No swelling distorts her jaw and her cheeks; her color does not bear a hint of the yellowish cast, the whites of her eyes white to the rims. And her skin so taut and shining, she looks just as she did in the years she was healthy and pretty, and Raphael, bending to kiss her, would cover his eyes pretending to be blinded by the sheen of her face.

  It was all due to her day on the sidewalk, she thinks. For herself, if not for Luz, she had done such a good thing to stay there. Her daughter chastened, her body rested to the core. That’s what it had been. Her face is the proof. So she had forced Luz, well, perhaps that was just what they needed. Perhaps she has worried too much every second for her daughter’s opinion and feelings. Perhaps a little forcing of Luz will have been for the best. It does not matter that Luz had hardly eaten dinner, would not speak (not even to demand to be taken to the feast), went straight to bed, refusing her goodnight kiss.

  For the first time in memory Josefina had not worried at all about Luz. She herself had been able to stay awake long past midnight, no rushing to the bathroom with every thin stream of urine. Nor did her feet develop the achy bruised swelling that had plagued her for months. There was no need even to elevate them, though she did out of habit, sitting with Zoe on the brown couch, sipping her half cup of tea while Zoe with her bare feet planted firmly on the hard wood floor drank several whiskeys in quick succession, unable herself to relax. Had it not been for Zoe, Josefina would have enjoyed a whole evening’s peace.

  “I thought the day would never end,” Zoe had said. “I thought I’d be stuck on that sidewalk the rest of my life.”

  “For me, I must tell you, it was just as everyone said. Very peaceful, quite beautiful, really. I am sorry you suffered.”

  Even the eye that had appeared to her in the window at the end of the day seemed insignificant compared to the delight Josefina felt from being on the sidewalk, among good people, able to feel their goodness. Her daughter was well and close by, dozing lightly, not one complaint. There had been some nice food and that lovely umbrella to shelter them from the sun. Everything perfect, even the silver smell before the rains and the cool air that followed. She could let go of the eye in the window the same way she was able to let go of the question of how Luz had managed the one-mile walk to the car wash. The question floated up through the roof of the blue house that night, where it hovered but did not spoil her peace.

  It was Zoe who worried her way through the evening, mostly about Luz. Several times, just to pacify Zoe, Josefina had taken her to look in on Luz as she slept. To bend over the bed with the canopy floating above them and gaze at her child in her summer pajamas, sleeping deeply, her dreamless lids still and delicate as shells, her brow cool. Not a hint of the rose smell, even. How charming, Josefina thought, as she looked at Zoe gazing down on her child, that the Felangela had formed such an attachment to Luz.

  Now the Felangela was uncertain whether to go back to her Cold Spring home as she had planned. Because of Luz, she had confessed, when they sat once more on the couch and picked up their drinks, but also because of the influx of strangers. Her husband might soon be among them.

  “And why would he come to Infidelity? Because your window has suddenly grown famous?” Josefina had teased as she moved closer and patted
the Felangela’s strong thigh. The Felangela did not even smile. It was then that she tried to tell Josefina the rumors she had heard, first in Walt’s office and then later from the strangers camped on the field, all the places she had run to when she couldn’t find peace on the sidewalk. “But there are always rumors in this town,” Josefina dismissed them. “Many people stepped out of their lives for a rest and a little fun on a day that my daughter was punished. In one day it will all be forgotten. Of course, you are welcome to stay if you choose. But don’t fool yourself that your husband is coming, or that anything amazing is going to happen here.” Josefina felt the warmth of friendship spread through her chest in a rush, a feeling so familiar yet so long lost she had nearly forgotten how lovely it was. She wished she had some place comfortable to offer the Felangela, a room with a lovely cool bed, clean linens, a vase of tall flowers. But the Felangela was happy to sleep on the brown couch with only a sheet. “Maybe in the morning when I see that Luz is okay, I’ll feel better about everything. Maybe then I’ll be ready to go. Unless Michael shows up.”

  “She is okay, believe me I know my own child. Try not to worry so much. This was an excellent lesson for Luz. You’ll see. And don’t get your hopes up about that husband of yours. That isn’t wise.” But now the thought of the Felangela actually leaving made her sad. She drank the last sip of tea and kissed Zoe goodnight. Only the prospect of the four-hour treatment Josefina would have to endure in the morning distressed her that night.

  Josefina slept deeply and well, dreaming of Esperanza and Raphael, such a warm pleasant dream, the three of them sitting in the garden of her parents’ pink stucco house under the shade of the dark-leafed ceiba. Esperanza no longer a girl but a woman, with full breasts and laughing eyes, had been telling a story. Such an interesting woman she has become, Josefina thought, so intelligent, so full of humor. She was about to say as much to Raphael, who was listening himself, his eyes so keen and alive Josefina woke with a pang of longing such as she had not felt in years. And for several moments she was able to reach into the dream and be happy, her husband and sister living and well, her own life unbroken by loss.

  “Why is Luz sleeping?” the Felangela greets her as soon as Josefina comes down the hall. She stands beside the dog-eared Madonnas of the Centuries that Josefina looks at briefly with amusement. “Children sleep, sometimes,” says Josefina. “They sometimes surprise us by sleeping late. I am going to make some tea. Would you like some? Or maybe first you will take a chower.”

  Zoe chooses the shower and Josefina is glad, the dream of her sister and husband is still with her and she wants to hold onto it as long as she can.

  Later when Zoe is dressing, Josefina takes her half cup of spearmint tea and looks through the kitchen window and into the light, not even knowing the time, for her clocks are all off, and her telephone as well. Even the temperamental television that came with the house is blaring, and she has to run back from the kitchen to turn it off lest it wake Luz.

  Her clinic appointment is for ten o’clock. Father Bill is going to arrive between nine fifteen and nine thirty. Her kitchen clock says 2:22, and the one in her bedroom 4:44. How strange, she thinks, when they had only last night discussed what to tell people about Luz’s inexplicable walk to the car wash. “Blame it on a power surge,” Father Bill had suggested. Apparently, they have had one.

  Then she returns to the kitchen, opens her back door, and steps outside. The blinding white light forces her to shield her eyes. The light is harsh, but the air feels kind. How good, she thinks, and takes a strong breath of the sweet air. Four hours at least she will have to sit on the chair in the clinic for her treatment, and on a day when she feels so thoroughly fine she swears she could run to the car wash herself and still not be tired.

  Across the driveway through the scrim of the light she can see Wren Otto sitting in his backyard in business dress, that peacock blue tie, drinking his coffee and reading the paper as he does every morning. He looks up, catches her watching, then waves. Josefina waves back. A great feeling of affection for her neighbor sweeps through her. She walks in her housedress and her soft blue cloth slippers across the driveway and into his bone-dry yard with the little beds of yellow and orange manzanita and says good morning and asks how he is, filled with the simple happiness of morning. “Fine and dandy,” he replies, rising in a half bow, the formality of which she finds charming. “How about I fix you some coffee?” “No coffee, thank you. I already have tea.” “How ’bout a biscuit at least?” “All right, thank you.” And she sits down in the chair opposite Wren Otto’s chair under a flowered umbrella with the faded yellow tassels that she has seen from her kitchen window every morning of the four months she has lived on Mariposa Lane. Under the umbrella that, all that time, has seemed as distant as the white peaks of the San Jacinto Mountains.

  “Emily’s going to be jealous when she comes back from church and I tell her I had my coffee with a beautiful young woman.” He has returned with the biscuits on a white and gold plate.

  “Thank you,” she says, as she takes a biscuit, “but maybe we should not tell your wife.”

  When Wren Otto smiles, Josefina can see how handsome he must have been in his youth, his fine even features, the light in his eyes. “Oh, Emily will find out some way, I don’t think we can keep this a secret. Besides, she’ll be glad. She’s quite the fan of your daughter, you know.” He sits down, slowly, as if his bones were not quite certain of themselves. “Where is Miss Luz this morning? Did she go off to Mass?”

  “Sleeping off her punishment, I am afraid.”

  “Punished? What did she do?”

  Josefina makes up a small lie, for she remembers how happy he had been on the sidewalk and does not want to insult him, and Wren Otto does not question her further. He picks up a biscuit, studies it with pleasure, then takes a bite. Then he offers her a section of newspaper and she reads a wonderful small story about the Mojave tortoise, which is returning in strength in their region. She finishes her tea and her delicious lemon biscuit, then says good-bye and goes into the blue house to see if Luz is awake.

  Later, after she has gotten Luz ready and the Felangela has left for the day looking lovely and calm in that attractive white dress, and William has arrived to drive them to the clinic for her treatment—the first one that Luz will watch—Josefina remembers the good news about the Mojave tortoise and turns from the passenger seat to look at her daughter, who is seated in the back. Luz looks withdrawn, as she had looked the previous night—the same distant expression she had worn after her dangerous walk to the campgrounds in the spring. “I missed the Feast,” Luz says.

  Ah, thinks Josefina, now we are in for it.

  “And we missed you,” William says, cheerfully. “But there will be next year,” though the moment he says it he knows in that way that he cannot explain, there will not be.

  “Mamita, this is a new day. You have school starting in two weeks and new books, and new friends to think about. And the Felangela has promised to come back tonight with your cake.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “You know what she does. She went to search for her husband. Maybe she will find him this time and bring him to the house in the Nova. Wouldn’t that be exciting?”

  “But where did she go?”

  “I am sure she will tell us when she gets back.”

  I know where Zoe went, Luz thinks, and she touches her right knee then her left, then reaches down to feel one foot then the other because her body feels strange and far away. And when Father Bill turns just for a second from the driving seat to look down at her, Luz is surprised that he is smiling the old way. As if she had not seen him yesterday frightened and sweating and telling her over and over, “Come back, Luz, you must not do this!” As if he has forgotten the sidewalk already, with Luz far down in the gold of Our Lady where he had not wanted her to go.

  The whole ride to the clinic she thinks about the sidewalk and the way she had been called, and her heart bangs hard wit
h excitement. But she cannot remember the feeling of her feet. She thinks of the big green wings she has seen so clearly and of the gold feeling that had come to her and stayed. All day long after her mother had made her go back to the sidewalk, Luz felt the gold rising up and running out, rising up and running out, wider and wider until she had drifted far from her body, becoming part of the ocean of gold. She wonders about the people in the chairs and how so many had come to the sidewalk and wonders if anyone else had the gold ocean feeling. If anyone else had been called. But whom could she ask? She had tried the Felangela, but she had said no. Maybe Walt, thinks Luz. And yet, even though the gold was so good, something was missing, in spite of the gold and the rising, in spite of how far Luz could reach, Our Lady had not shown Luz Her face.

  And all of a sudden in Father Bill’s car with her mother looking so pretty and being so cheerful, Luz’s body feels hungry, not for food but for something else. The hunger begins in her body on the Joshua Freeway in the middle of the drive to the clinic, stronger than the hunger for any food. She could tell her mother who likes when she’s hungry, but Luz does not know how to say it. She does not know where in her body it comes from. It seems like it comes from everyplace inside her. Every muscle, every part of her skin. Every small cell.

  And the hunger does not go away until the nurse, dressed in flowers and sneakers at the clinic, calls her mother back for a second test and, instead of going for the treatment after that, calls her mother a third time. This time her mother has to go to the desk and talk on the phone to the doctor, who is at a different place. Then Luz feels like herself again. She feels her whole body, even the knees and the feet.

  That day Luz does not go to the J. C. Penney with Father Bill and twenty-five dollars for anything she wants for school. She does not see the tube near her mother’s heart or her mother’s blood going around and around in the special dialysis for giving Mami’s strong blood to others. Because after Josefina had talked on the phone to the doctor, they had left and gone back to the blue house for lunch.