Voices of Ash

by Jill Zeller

  Hank knew she lived in a modest neighborhood of middle-class Mexicans, maybe better off than most because her father had a good paying job. Her father had supported her while she attended the fancy private school, bravely, alone.

  Then Hank remembered how they met; she and Hank hit it off the first time they met in a reading study circle. They liked the same books, movies. She looked Mexican but she spoke and acted like the other girls, with something more, indescribable.

  What had happened between them, and how could he correct this tear in his memory? More recollections tumbled into his head; they loved being together, one time they snuck out to a film. Several times they rode bikes together. Luz had an old rusty Schwinn; Hank remembered tuning it up for her, cleaning and oiling, replacing bearings, tightening the spokes.

  When it came time for him to fill in the years between, he found he had little to say. He graduated, he turned down, for now, the idea of college. His parents didn’t seem in a hurry for him to leave their nest—if he got accepted to a school, they would support it, but, they seemed to want him at home.

  Luz had used the money Julio Del Mar left her—a huge sum, it was implied, and she seemed honored and shocked that he had deeded that to her—to go to nursing school. And she put the rest away, saving it, she said. For what she would not say.

  Silence hung between them. Hank could not take his eyes off her, and she glanced at him, then away, then back, as if she struggled with how often she should look at him.

  Hank considered. He didn’t know how long he could stay. He knew he didn’t want to be here when Susan and Joseph got home. But he needed connection. He needed to see Luz again. He wanted, in the worst way, to invite her home, but he hesitated. He wanted, in the worst way, for her to invite him to her home. He had never met her mother.

  She said, fingering the half-painted rooster she had been working on, “I may give up nursing, go to work at Metlox. Miss Chagall says I have a talent for this. In fact, she really is impressed with some of my glazes.” She folded her arms, looked at Hank as if to get his opinion.

  He couldn’t think what to say. He was absorbed by her beauty, watching her watching him. She took his silence for assent, she figured, because she took down the jaguar again.

  “This is special. I made the glaze from the ashes of my father.”

  A cold hand slid down Hank’s back. He found he couldn’t look at the jaguar anymore, but he could see, in the corner of his eye, how its head turned to regard him and the yellow eyes sparked with recognition.

  When he glanced at Luz, he saw her watching him, her eyes bright, narrowed. You saw that, too, her eyes said.

  Hastily she replaced the jaguar on the shelf, and as Hank stared at it, he saw that it was just a ceramic figurine, precisely painted and smooth as glass.

  Swallowing, he tried to think of something normal to say, some comment on the weather—how warm it was getting.

  But all he croaked out was, “Ashes, huh?”

  Nodding, Luz pushed a bolt of hair behind her ears. She still wore tiny gold globes in her pierced lobes. “My mother did that. Yes, Catholics don’t, but Indians do. She wanted me to have a piece of him, I guess.”

  Hank slid off his stool, approached, drawn, really, to her side. She smelled like fields of grass and a hint of carbolic.

  “How did you learn to do that?” A strange thought travelled through his mind. “Did Susan show you?”

  “Actually, no. Actually I taught her.” Gazing up at him, Luz’s cheeks flushed slightly, and she kept his gaze as she ran her finger back and forth along the stained table top. “My mother uses ashes. She paints with them, mixed in her colors. I just thought, well, why not mix them in the glaze? Susan suggested a slow, low fire; it worked perfectly the first time. We made quite a team.”

  It was macabre, ghoulish, but Hank couldn’t really care about that, standing so close to Luz for the first time in three years. He tried to imagine Susan’s face when Luz revealed her special formula. But all he could see was Luz, smell her, watch a silver-blue light travel through the strands of her hair.

  Before he could stop himself, he slipped his hand around her back, pushed her to him, and kissed her.

  She did not resist this time. And she kissed back, deep and hard, her mouth tasting like cloves and marigolds. He felt the mounds of her breasts against him and grew hard. They didn’t hear the car, or the doors slamming, until Hank saw a movement in the doorway, and Susan’s face, watching.

  Twenty-One

  Susan vanished from the window the moment Hank saw her and pushed apart from Luz, who seemed to know what had happened, because she turned back to the table and reached for the rooster.

  Coming into the doorway, Susan’s face was clear, expectant, almost self-satisfied. Hank’s heart tumbled inside him, an acrobat of conflicts as he watched her, seeking a plan; what should he do, what should he say?

  Susan wore a navy hat with two white feathers like dove-wings, her blazing orange hair neatly coiffed in big rolls down her shoulders. In a pert navy suit, a glazed brooch in the lapel, she was someone else, a business woman or a church lady.

  The few seconds of voiceless silence siphoned away Hank’s breath. He watched Luz as she calmly sat down at the work table and picked up a pencil.

  “Oh, Susan, you’re back,” Luz said, holding her pencil in the air. “How is Joseph?”

  “A walking miracle,” came his voice from outside, out of sight. “Ready to sit the fuck down.”

  Grimacing, Susan almost smiled. Her mood was strange, Hank thought. She didn’t look as if she was going to spiral into a jealous rage, or turn and stomp away.

  “We’re starving,” she said finally, gazing at Hank. “Lunch?”

  “Sounds great,” Luz said, and, as if this were a cue in a play, Luz got up and followed Susan out the door. Hank sat frozen for a moment, completely at sea about what just happened. His only thin veil of protection was that Susan wasn’t, at least at the moment, going to make a scene about what she had seen.

  That afternoon began a strange and pleasing phase in Hank’s life that he couldn’t have predicted or completely understood.

  The world shifted as spring drew its subtle breath over Southern California. Aside from the usual narcissus and lilacs spreading a dizzying floral haze over everything, bougainvillea and bird-of-paradise colored the landscape with garish bright hues. Luz’s glazes took these colors and intensified them. Hank’s routine shifted. He came to see Susan on Tuesdays, Luz on Fridays, and the entire trio on weekends. Susan always with one excuse or another, was never there on the Fridays, Luz’s day off at the hospital and her studio day at Susan’s. Joseph defied the odds and by the end of the week he was walking with two canes. He was persuaded somehow, by his sister, to leave the Fridays to Luz and Hank.

  Mostly, Hank just watched Luz work and they talked. There was never a lag in the conversation. Hank spoke more words about the events of his life, and the world, in one afternoon with Luz than he did in an entire year at home. He gathered, after three weeks of this, that Luz knew far more about him than he knew about her.

  But Susan accepted him into her bed, lips, and body. In fact, lovemaking with Susan was more intense, focused, and driven, than he had ever known. Reveling in this, he tried to keep his mind divided in two, not thinking about Luz, who was never there on Tuesdays.

  It was a sweet, fine time in Hank’s life. But as all sweet times, fine or not, this one too must come to an end.

  Hank rode home on a warm Friday night, leaving Susan’s house after a barbecue on the patio, attended by the Chagalls and Luz and Hank and an army of brightly glazed animals ringing the bricks—an audience prepared by Luz who laid them out in a dress circle. They had wine, and Hank, not generally one to drink spirits, got a little drunk.

  After, remembering, as he rode home how he couldn’t keep his eyes off Luz, a sense of guilt tugged at Hank. He had, he knew, practically ignored Susan. He had no idea how she felt about his attention to Lu
z, especially when he danced with Luz to a crazy song Joseph was singing in a well-trained tenor voice, because he had not looked at Susan the entire evening. Except when he kissed her good-by, chastely on the cheek. Her eyes were in shadow, her mouth inexplicable.

  To ease his thoughts, and to delay having to go home to a house of pain, and to increase his mileage, he decided to take the very long way around through Hollywood, do a hill-climb up to Sunset, then home. He would not have attempted such a thing if he had not been a little drunk, but it was Friday night and warm and spring brought people out of their houses and into the streets; odors of grilled beef and music spilled from yards.

  Hollywood Boulevard was a forest of neon, a raging river of automobiles and people flowing back and forth between bars and bistros and movie houses. On his bike Hank dodged cars and wove between people on the sidewalks. Eateries poured their fragrances into the street; music of a different type, fervent, brassy, loud, echoed from the clubs.

  Coincidence was a given in Hank’s life, especially lately. Taking a route he rarely took, on a Friday night, it was inevitable that he would see someone he knew.

  It was the flash of silver hair, shifting blue to red in neon glow that caught his eye, on a girl exiting a club. Instantly Hank thought it was Connie, out for a night on the town; the girl looked his way and stared, as if she knew this was Hank, crazy enough to be out on a bicycle at night on Sunset.

  But as he slowed, ready to hop off and say hi, he saw that she wasn’t Connie at all, but he did recognize the man with her. Kenneth Cleveland reached for the girl, pulled her back to him, and tucked his arm into hers. Her features too sharp, eyes layered thickly with mascara, the girl tucked her head—she was taller than Dad—and kissed his forehead. Her movement jiggled his glasses, and as he righted them he smiled at her in way of most men other that his father. As Hank glided past, staring, Dad and the girl crawled into a waiting taxi.

  A honk directly behind Hank startled him, he looked around, a car pushed past, the passenger glaring at him, and when Hank glanced back, the taxi was gone, melding with the flow of traffic into the mild, nervous night.

  Hank arrived home just after midnight, having narrowly missed fatality at the wheels of two different drunken drivers on Sunset. Weary from the long ride and the after-effects of alcohol, he coasted into the garage and carelessly rested the Raleigh against the Peugeot.

  He didn’t want to go inside yet. The night was velvet; the city lay scattered on its hem. Taking the time to get a glass of water in the dark and vacant kitchen, he went back out to the pool.

  Waves disturbed the surface, and it was not vacant.

  At first he thought Mom was floating on her back, resting on the bed of water, watching the sky. But as he circled the pool’s edge to the deep end, he saw that instead she was watching the pool bottom.

  Tearing at his shoes, Hank managed to fling one off, but in his panic, gave up and jumped in. Reaching her in seconds that seemed to be ages of precious time, he seized her hair and lifted her face out of the water.

  Eyes closed, mouth open, cheeks and lips blue from lack of oxygen. He struggled with her body; it dragged against the water, as if it didn’t want to leave its wet comfort. Prudently, thinking clearly as his heart and stomach lurched with horror, he shoved his way to the shallows, realizing it would be far easier to get her out of the pool from there.

  His shouts roused Joaquin, who scrambled from the kitchen door, hastily fumbling with his robe. When he got close enough, Joaquin gripped Mom’s shoulders and arms, and between the two of them, they hauled her onto the brick.

  Lights came on in the houses, the neighbors, and in moments, as Hank shivered and tried to catch the air, any air around him, Joaquin administered respiratory aid in a very professional manner.

  Mom’s face waxy still, limp and heavy. Naked. Dead.

  Hank felt hands on his arms, a towel. Turning, he saw Carl, his face stiff with shock, the faint smell of alcohol enveloping them both. “I called the hospital.”

  Standing for shivering moments, while all they could hear in the overwhelming silence was Joaquin grunting and the swish and slap of Mom’s arms as he raised them and lowered them, and pressed on her back.

  Eternity went through Hank’s mind in a moment of stand-still time, before he heard what he had not expected to ever hear again. Mom coughed, loudly, and again, her voice rasping and pained. Her right arm moved, hand to her face, she brought her knees up and rolled onto her side, retching. A clear puddle of pool water spooled from her mouth and nose.

  Hank stood rooted, unbelieving, rolling back the footage in his head. He had just come home in time to save his mother’s life. Any delay of even a few minutes, and she would be dead.

  Carl kicked a patio table out of the way, knelt, picked Mom up as if she were a child, and carried her toward the French doors. Joaquin, shaking himself out of his shocked relief, ran to open them, and Hank trailed them inside.

  Laying her on the sofa, Carl wrapped her in blankets carried in by Joaquin.

  “Where is Dad?” Carl sat beside Mom, rubbing her face and hands. They looked, to Hank, the same color as that of the porcelain marquess. “Is he home?”

  “I don’t think so.” Hank pulled his towel close as a shiver raced across his shoulders. “I was just getting home. If I hadn’t felt like staying outside, and gone out to the pool—”

  Carl rubbed the bags under his eyes, his craggy dimples dark and deep, his lips pale. He was drunk again, Hank knew, had been pretty continually since the break-up. But sober now, and behaving in a quite soldierly and disciplined way in this time of need. Hank was impressed.

  Mom breathed, and coughed, and breathed. She didn’t open her eyes, she said nothing. The brothers eyed each other, questions unasked, waiting for later.

  Twenty-Two

  Mom would be OK, they said. She needed rest. She was in an oxygen tent. She had pneumonia. She will be just fine. Please, go home now.

  Hank and Carl sat in the living room as the day raised its paw and swiped at the night. Carl pointed his glass at the marquess. “You see, she didn’t fall. That means Mom won’t die.”

  They hadn’t turned on any lights, just sat in the pale light from the French doors, where the city sat and the pool waited for its next victim. Now it was morning. Saturday morning.

  Nearly asleep, Hank raised his head from the back of the couch, recrossed his ankles on the coffee table. Every time he dozed off, Hank was jumping into the pool again, or falling in, or diving to the bottom to pick up the little marquess from where she lay on the pool floor.

  “It’s so weird without her here.” Carl rubbed his glass across his forehead. It was empty, but he made no move to get up to refill it, Hank was glad to see. Hank wondered if Carl were referring to Mom or to Connie but he didn’t ask.

  Sitting up, Carl reached over to touch Hank’s foot. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask, how come you knew Dad wasn’t home?”

  They had spoken about everything else: Hank’s just making it home in time and his heroism. Carl taking control of the situation, directing the doctor to Mom on the couch, explaining calmly what happened. Even comforting Joaquin, who was visibly shaken, crossing himself, muttering prayers neither of them had ever heard him say before.

  Leaning his head on his hand, wishing Carl would fall asleep so he could, Hank told him what he had seen down in Hollywood. The entire incident had flicked through his mind on and off as he tried to puzzle out what happened and why.

  “Oh, yeah. He was with her again,” Carl said, sighing, waving his glass in the air. “I’ve known about that for a while. Con told me.” He shook his head, rubbed the sides of his mouth as if it tasted bad, and Hank could believe that by now they both did not smell like fresh flowers.

  Carl said, “Con knows everything. That’s been going on for a month or so. She’s his latest. Was she young? Blond?”

  Hank nodded. “Young, blond, and at first I thought she was Connie. But she wasn’t pretty enoug
h.”

  “No one is.” Carl upended his glass; nothing came out. Sitting up, Hank took it away from him. Shrugging, Carl leaned his head back on the couch, and so did Hank. They were, he thought, bookends.

  Carl sighed. “Think about that, young Hank. Dad likes them young and looking like his daughter. Think there’s a connection?”

  Under ordinary circumstance, unexhausted and clear of mind, Hank would have become annoyed, but now he thought about his dad having the hots for his own daughter.

  “I don’t think so. Mom was young and blond once. She’s still blond, but she’s no longer young.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.” Carl coughed, curled his hands behind his head. Hank stared at him. Carl accepted Hank’s opinion? Carl continued. “But it’s hard. You of all people know how hard it was, hard it is, with someone as pretty and sexy as Connie around.”

  Discomfort curled around Hank’s chest. This seemed to be, to Hank, Carl’s confessional time, and Father Hank was present and listening. He really didn’t want to hear it.

  “You know, that one time you walked in on us was the only time. And don’t think for a minute that anyone got taken advantage of. It was Connie’s idea. She was curious, and I sure had the hots for her.”

  Sitting up, Hank folded his hands in front of him, pulled his feet off the table. His head throbbed and a curious ringing in his ears strengthened, and Carl’s voice tuned in and out like a bad radio signal.

  “And now, she wants nothing to do with me.” Carl’s voice faltered, or maybe it was the ringing or was it singing, in Hank’s ears. He worried that Carl was going to cry.

  After a moment, Carl continued, his voice steady again. “I didn’t do anything to that girl, you know. I know no one believes me. We went to the hotel room sure, and I thought we were going to just drink and party and probably end up in the bed together, but she chickened out, cooled off. I was a gentleman. I’m always a gentleman. If the girl doesn’t want it . . .”