by Jill Zeller
“The nurse. She looked familiar. Did you recognize her?”
Mom’s voice was too casual, which made the hair on the back of Hank’s rise up.
“Yeah, I think so. I think I knew her in high school.”
“Yes.” Mom said from where she leaned against the dresser, playing with her lighter. “I remember her. She was a very cute girl, a very lovely young woman. But, you didn’t seem to be friends with her long, right?” Mom swept her hand down her blouse, as if wiping something off. Hank couldn’t see anything there.
“No, not very long. I saw her a few times, that’s all.” He tried to remember, thinking there must be more. He had felt really angry about something when the Girl was his friend. And when he tried to bring up the memory associated with it, he failed.
“You know, Mom.” He had to ask. He couldn’t help himself. “I can’t remember her name.”
Mom’s lips moved slightly, but nothing else in her face. A good lawyerly visage, revealing no reaction. Mom has prepared herself for this. She’s been waiting for this.
“I don’t remember either.” She was very still, arms folded, leaning against the dresser. “She was just one of the girls who hung around you.”
Mom sighed. “Well, I have a lot to do.” But when Hank turned to go, understanding he was dismissed, she said “How does one get another voice? Do you suppose they can be grown or purchased?”
Hank heard the snick of her lighter behind him as she lit the cigarette she had been playing with the entire time. He turned to look at her as she inhaled the smoke, a small seed of anger lodged under his ribs.
“Maybe you should get a parrot.”
She smiled at him crookedly, lifted her chin. “Maybe I should.”
Sixteen
Hank lay on his bed, staring at the same crack in the ceiling. He might have dozed, but all he could think about was finding out the name of the Girl. And he knew Mom knew it. And he wondered why she pretended she didn’t, and why he had forgotten that he had been deeply, obsessively in love with the Girl.
Connie was singing, something she did when she was nervous, her voice winding through the voices of Carl and his parents. They were all downstairs in the living room, and the conversation sounded pretty wrought up.
Drawn to the vocal spectacle below, Hank wanted to sit a moment in the growing dusk as cool air flowed through the French doors. When he had come back to his room after listening to Mom, his body propelled him directly to the bed, requesting rest. The moments had stretched into hours, and someone had closed the doors to just a crack and turned on the lamp on his desk, the bright bulb angled away from his face like a night light. Mom must have walked noiselessly through the room; she might have touched his hair, pulled the bedspread over his shoulders.
Hank pushed himself off the bed, went to his desk chair, sat staring into the dusk. What would it be like, knowing you were losing an essential piece, half of a matched set like the Meissen marquess and her husband? A leg, an eye, a kidney. You would not be yourself anymore, especially not Mom, who used her voice to persuade, cajole, influence. A voice inside his head all his life. Would it still be there, after it all was gone?
Hank still felt a faint, twisting fury at something he could not recall. He had not thought about the Girl for years, yet now that he had seen her, he hungered to remember.
Getting up, he went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. He looked terrible, he thought, needing a shave, black stubble contrasting against pearl-gray skin. He needed to get out on his bike. He needed to be in the sun. He needed Susan. He wanted to see the Girl one more time.
Sharp, angry voices beckoned him into the living room. When Hank arrived Carl was on the sofa belting back scotch , Dad stood near the drinks wagon, Mom at the mantle, opening and closing the evening paper as she shifted through the stories.
Only Connie noticed Hank enter. In the dining room archway, behind the table set and ready for supper, she hummed and stretched. Seeing Hank, she rolled her eyes.
He took his place in his favorite chair in front of the French doors. A fire burned in the fireplace against the chilly night.
“What I don’t understand is,” Carl was saying, “why this girl is going after me? I’m nobody. I don’t even know her. Not really.”
Mom crumpled the newspaper edges. “Because you are getting known, Carl, that’s just the thing. You and Connie are being talked about. You’ve been mentioned on the front page of Varsity. There’s talk about a picture featuring you two in major roles. And television, this new thing, television.”
“Oh that,” Dad said, returning from the drinks cart empty-handed and sitting down on the sofa next to Carl. “That’s going nowhere. Tiny ugly screens? How can that compete with the sound and glamor of the big screen? People aren’t going to want to stay home and watch our Connie and Carl dance and sing in miniature. And the sound! Horrendous!”
Mom ignored him. Hank wondered if he was the only one who noticed her fumbling over words. What if she invented this whole nerve disorder thing just to reel him back in?
Carl waved his hand. “I’m not going to hide under a rock this time, Mom. This is different. This girl says I raped her!”
This was interesting. Getting off his chair, Hank moved closer, leaned against the mantle, looked at Carl.
“You’re joking,” he said.
“No I’m not. Look at what the bitch told the papers.” Getting up, Carl snatched the newspaper from Mom and handed it to Hank.
“Carl, you have to ignore this.” Mom tried to touch Carl’s arm, but he pulled away. “You can’t dignify this with a response. We know it isn’t true. You might have stayed with her, mutually agreeing to sexual intercourse, no strings, and now she’s claiming rape. Let the authorities unravel her lies. It’s only a matter of time.”
Hank looked at a photo of the girl, a pretty blond, a starlet at some studio. She related, in lurid detail, how Carl lured her to a room at the Roosevelt and attacked her. She claimed bruises and scratches, but by the time she got up her courage to go to the police, they were healed. Didn’t sound too good for the girl, Hank thought.
Connie twirled in the corner of the room. Mom rattled on with plans about how Carl should conduct his life in the next few weeks, staying away from the Roosevelt, laying low. Dad picked up a script and murmured the words, occasionally gesturing. In her corner, Connie began to sing a nonsense song, and Hank could pick up words like ‘house’ and ‘insane’. He had to agree.
“Connie STOP THAT!” This from Mom, her voice perfectly clear without a hitch. Everyone stared at her and the room fell into blessed silence.
Hank watched Mom. A flush covered her cheeks and her hands were shaking. He noticed, too, and wondered if anyone else did, that she was not smoking.
“Oh fuck you! Fuck you all!” Connie whirled, stomped through the archway and up the stairs just as Joaquin came into the dining room doorway to announce supper was ready.
Mom squeezed her knuckles, turned her wedding ring. Getting up, Carl sent Hank a perplexed shrug and walked toward the dining room, hands in his pockets, followed by Dad, who glanced back at Mom over his reading glasses, but didn’t say a word to her.
Hank waited. Mom was shaking her head, as if to clear it.
“Maybe you should have one, just to calm down,” he said, picking up the cigarette jar from the coffee table.
Shaking her head fiercely, Mom looked up at the ceiling, and then at Hank. “Tell her I’m sorry. I can’t just now, I can’t.”
“She’s such a bitch sometimes,” Connie said after Hank knocked and came through the door. She lay on her back, staring at her blue print canopy.
“She’s trying to quit smoking. It’s making her crazy.”
Sitting up, Connie smiled at him and sighed. “Why would she do a crazy thing like that?” Shifting, she reached into her bedside table, pulled out a pack, offered one to Hank who refused, and lit up.
She inhaled. “You know, I think Carl did rape t
hat girl.”
Leaning against the chest of drawers, one elbow on top, Hank felt a cold wave go through him. He looked at his sister, wondering why she said that.
“Look, little brother. You know him. He never has a girlfriend for long. He’s had hundreds of girls, probably. He gets rough with them, sometimes. I’ve seen it. I know.” Her mouth set firmly; her lipstick was rubbed off and she looked like she was fifteen again. Hank wondered what she did know. He knew what had happened at least once between Connie and Carl. She gazed at him through the smoke, squinting.
She said, “OK, I think she was willing to go to his room and go all the way. Tons of girls make that decision. They, or at least most of them, know what they are doing. But maybe she changed her mind, Carl didn’t like that, and he went ahead and now she’s miffed about it. Maybe she was stalking him and he ignored her. Maybe she thinks she’s pregnant. End of story.”
Hank watched his sister. She gazed out her window, a square of black, curtains open, facing the windows of the house next door. He wondered if she left them open when she undressed.
“I think Mom’s right. He needs to stay underground for a while.”
“Oh, that’s a laugh. Carl keeping his dick in his pants for two weeks? Not likely. And I don’t want to be around him ‘under the ground’.”
He looked at her, still thinking about the time he had walked into Carl’s room without knocking, and there they were, Carl and Connie, on the bed together, doing something he had only a glimmer of understanding. As if she could read his thoughts, Connie smirked, stubbed out her smoke, and slid off the bed.
“Yeah, you know what I mean, little Hank.” Approaching, she chucked him under the chin, then rubbed her hand.
“You need a shave, little man.” A moment later she crossed her arms, rubbed her elbows. “I wouldn’t want to be that girl right now, either.”
Hank looked at her, wondering what had spooked her.
“It’s Mom you silly. She’ll get her machine going and that girl will be no bigger than a greasy spot.” Connie’s mouth sagged, all pretense at sardonicism drained away. “She’s done it before. She can do it again.”
Hank had no doubt she had done it before, manipulating the timing of the world to protect the family’s good name. But he wondered which time Connie was thinking about now as she gazed past him and out the window. He thought he knew every bone in all the Cleveland family skeletons, but now he wasn’t so sure.
She looked at him again, one corner of her mouth lifted in a smile. “And by the way, Carl and I don’t do that shit anymore. That was the only time, I swear. We are a nice little brother and sister act. He has his friends, I have mine. But I wouldn’t want to tempt him. Let’s eat. I’m starving.”
Part II: Luz
Seventeen
Hank parked at the end of the block. He wanted to walk to the house and look at the blue stucco from across the street. It was nearly three weeks since he had been here, an eon of time, and his body thirsted for the place, as if every wooden beam and rag rug were becoming a part of him.
The day was glorious, broadcasting spring with sun and mild breezes off the ocean and a clear sky matching the colors of Susan’s bungalow. The palm twitched lazily in the breeze, the Bermuda grass took on the barest sheen of green. The salty spice of the sea came into his nose. He yearned for a hundred mile ride along the coast, but was far from that glory at present. For now, he had just been riding up and down Sunset, teaching his muscles to stretch and grow.
But today he had the car. A luxury, a waste. He could have taken a Red Car, transferring at Venice and walking six blocks north to Susan’s, but he was too anxious to get here. And now that he was here, he lingered across the street from her house.
The neighborhood was busy. Children played ball in the street. A woman mowed her lawn, a man washed his car. Hank was among people who lived and worked and raised families. So unlike his cold, tidy world, where Mexicans did the mowing and washing of cars, and neighbors barely knew each other.
Finally, Hank crossed the street. Susan’s car was in the driveway. He had told her he was coming this afternoon. Anticipation stirred in his stomach, and he felt his heart beat rise in tempo as he walked up the driveway and into the back yard.
The kiln stood in its corner under the trees. The garage side door stood ajar, and Hank knew Susan would be in there, painting or sculpting or making molds. A headache touched his scalp with tiny fingers and he was annoyed. Nothing could spoil this moment.
Stepping through the open door, he saw her at her workbench, working a figurine with a curved knife. It was of a donkey, or mule, raised on its hind legs, and it was dancing. But as he watched her, fascinated at her deft molding and scraping, he realized something was not quite right.
It was the room itself, or the light. Someone had painted the walls yellow, with blue trim around the windows. The closed garage doors were framed and inside was a mural of a cave, Trompe L’Oeil style, with beaded hangings and niches filled with skulls.
Susan had done all this while he was recovering? It was amazing and smelled different, not of solvents and oils, but of damp earth and incense. He stepped in, wondering what to say, and could think of nothing.
Hank waited until Susan was done; he knew how she hated to be interrupted at her work, but he wanted to see the look on her face as she turned around and saw who it was.
But something was wrong. Hank blinked, squinted, trying to clear his vision. The woman sitting at the workbench had black hair, caught in a blue scarf. Had Susan dyed her hair? And then it hit him, hard and miraculous. This was not Susan at all. This was Luz.
Her name. That is the Girl’s name. Luz Del Mar.
His heart did a back flip and a sweat broke out on his hands. Holding his breath, he waited for her to notice him. He fought an urge to run away, to back out of the room, go into the house and look for Susan, but he was rooted to the spot, his shoes nailed to the boards covering the earth.
She worked quickly. He watched the turn of her shoulder. She wore a blue work shirt, dungarees with the cuffs turned up, shoes with no socks. He stared at her ankle. He remembered Luz being clever with her hands, getting A’s for her craftwork and designs, but he could see she was better even than Susan as she sculpted the dancing donkey, giving the animal a smile, sombrero, a garland of lilies.
Hank’s knees trembled. He thought he should sit down, but he fought it. He was well, cured, and stronger every day. As he was considering moving to a chair, like a coyote catching his scent, Luz turned and saw him.
A quick intake of breath, and then she was out of the chair and moving toward him, quickly, and caught him in her arms.
Cinnamon and coconut filled his nostrils, the real and familiar smell. And the voice that nuzzled in his ears familiar as well.
“Hank, Hank. I missed you so much.”
Susan’s voice. Hank pushed her back, cupped her face in his hands. Susan’s face, moist chocolate eyes, freckles, and lips full and wanting. Her face shifted, changed, and she stared back at him.
“What’s the matter? Hank?”
He didn’t understand what had just happened. Pulling Susan to him, he felt her breasts against him, and grew hard for the first time in weeks. Pressing her lips into his neck, her hands crawled up and down his back. He grasped her hair, tore at the scarf holding it in. As he did this, he looked over her shoulder. The garage door was blankly white-washed, the oil smell in his nostrils, the statuette on the bench a swan, not a donkey. Where was the mural? Where was Luz?
They made love in the garage, on the floor. His muscles took on a new strength as he molded and placed her body, and she moaned in a new way, he thought, as he buried his lips and tongue in the warm, moist place between her thighs, and she bit her hand as she came. Then, he was inside, pleasure climbing and building, and she watched him, her face eager and pleased as he came and closed his eyes to bite back shouts of love.
After, they held each other and he nuzzled her hair, ran
his fingers over the curves of her breasts and hips. Occasionally, her hand would find him and she would trace the skin around it, avoiding its tender tip. Then he was hard again, and she was ready, and they did it again.
Finally, after, they said few words, sorted out their clothes, dressed and Hank followed Susan into the house. He said nothing about the vision, knowing it was a crazy dream, a remnant of illness that his brain fired off. But as he entered the kitchen, where breakfast dishes still sat on the table and in the sink, where the floor needed sweeping and the smell of coffee was heavy in the air, Hank worried again. What if Luz walked in right now and saw the film of sex that covered them both?
And yet, he wanted to see Luz more than the peanut butter sandwich Susan was making him.
But the house was silent. Not even the radio was on. It felt utterly empty.
“Where is Joseph? How are his ankles coming along?”
Piling up the dishes—two plates, he saw, half-eaten toast, a yellow smear of eggs—and setting them on the counter, giving the table a lazy wipe, Susan laid the sandwich in front of Hank.
“Casts are off. He’s walking now. On crutches.” She pushed back a hunk of red hair, her cheeks flushed, eyes bright. “I think he’s taking a nap.”
Hank wondered how to ask, how to make it casual, when his heart was racing. “And the nurse? She still around?”
If Susan thought his interest in the nurse out of line, she made no indication. “She left yesterday. She said she had another assignment that was more urgent, and she and the doctor thought Joseph was able to look after himself pretty well.”
Hank knew he should be happy. Susan would think this would make him happy, they could meet here now. They didn’t have to arrange a place. Something had changed; Susan didn’t seem to care if Joseph was home when they met.
So he tried to be happy, but panic engulfed him. He wanted to be away, he wanted to look for Luz. He had seen her, in the garage. He had seen her as she helped him get ready to go home. He had seen her in his delirious nightmares, felt her cool hand on his forehead, dragging an icy cloth against his fever.