Voices of Ash

by Jill Zeller

  “No, no problema, Senorita. No trouble at all.” Her English, unlike Luz’s, was heavily accented, but clean and good.

  Sitting down, Connie crossed her legs. Hank stayed near the kitchen doorway; behind him was a dining table littered with medical books, papers, a typewriter. A half-drunk cup of coffee.

  “What a beautiful little boy,” Connie said slowly, a breath of awe in her voice. Hank turned to look at his sister. Her face was rapt almost, as she gazed at Diego. Hank had never seen her look that way before, at least not in a very long time.

  “How old?”

  “Diego is almost three.” Luz’s smile was strained, but Hank thought that it was because she was talking to a well-known entertainer sitting in her living room. “My little brother. A late one, you know, just before my father passed away.”

  Connie nodded in a jerky way, and murmured condolences. But she wouldn’t take her eyes off the boy, who gazed back at her, solemn, unmoving, his head against Luz’s shoulder.

  Luz glanced at Hank, who gripped the table behind him. “He’s been sick. I was so worried, you know, with polio going around. I stayed home to take care of him. He’s getting better, but he’s not out of the woods yet.” Muttering something in Spanish to the boy, who did seem tired, she excused herself and left the room, vanishing through a doorway.

  Connie sat still as stone, her gloved hands folded in her lap. Hank’s chest opened, relaxed, as if his heart had liquefied and pooled in his stomach. Here he stood in her house, met her mother, and her mother, Rosa, seemed to approve of him.

  Hank could hear Luz singing to Diego in a back bedroom. He could hear Rosa moving in the kitchen amid the clink of plates and silverware, the rising whistle of the teakettle. He could, he though, just stay here. Never, ever go home.

  “Let’s get out of here.” Connie rose, skirted the coffee table, grabbed Hank’s arm. He pulled against her and she looked at him, her eyes rimmed with tears, her face flushed with fear. “Please, Hank, I’m losing it. Please, get me out of here.”

  “But let me at least tell them we are going—”

  “No. No!” She ran to the door, opened it. Hank waited, torn, the sounds of the women in the house, the coolness.

  “Hank!”

  Following Connie down the steps, Hank stopped on the sidewalk, looked up at the house. The windows remained vacant; no one came out onto the porch.

  Hands shaking, Connie had a cigarette going by the time he got into the car. But he didn’t start the motor. He turned to look at her.

  “OK, I’m a shit. But I couldn’t. Hank, I couldn’t.” She pressed her hands to her eyes, the cigarette burning between two fingers.

  “What? They invited us in.” Heat filled him and he pounded the back of the seat. Connie dropped her hands and stared at him.

  “I wanted to stay.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Then stay. I can drive myself home.” Pushing open the door, she scrambled to get out of the car. Hank understood the mood she was in, although he didn’t know what had triggered it.

  “Forget it. You’ll get yourself killed.”

  Connie sat, two feet on the curb. Pulling them in, she sat stiffly, picking bits of tobacco off her lips. Hank started the motor, anger flooding him, intense and sharp.

  “What the fuck is the matter with you?”

  Lifting her chin, Connie stared at the visor, pulled it down, flipped it back up. But before she could speak, Luz appeared in the window beside her.

  “You’re not leaving?” Luz was looking across Connie at Hank, pure fear on her face, almost desperate.

  Hank stared at her, wanted to flow through the car somehow and appear at her side, hold her, brush her with kisses. But he couldn’t, as Connie inhaled sharply, impatiently between them.

  “Connie’s not feeling well. I’ve got to get her home. Tell your mom I’m sorry.”

  “Oh.” It was clear Luz didn’t believe him. She didn’t even look at Connie, but kept her gaze on Hank for a moment, and they looked at each other across a great gulf. Then Luz stepped back, and Hank drove away.

  He was going to drop Connie off, then go back. Connie seemed to calm down by the time they arrived at home. They hadn’t spoken a word since they left Luz’s house until they were in the driveway at home.

  “That little boy,” Connie said, brushing ash off her skirt. “He was sure cute, wasn’t he?”

  “If you thought he was so cute why did you drag me out of there?

  Connie looked at him, apologized. “I just had a sort of panic attack I guess. You know me. It happens sometimes. Don’t be mad.”

  But Hank was mad; he pushed open the car door and left her, walked through the kitchen, said nothing to Joaquin, who stood at the open door Frigidaire.

  Joaquin said, not looking up. “You think I have nothing better to do than answer the telephone all day?”

  “Why? Who called?” Hank felt like a spear had been caught under his ribs. He stood, wondering whether to eat or puke.

  “You all fly around like a flock of frightened pigeons when Señora Cleveland isn’t here.” Joaquin slammed the Frigidaire door; held a bunch of carrots by their green feathery tops as he would a chicken he was going to gut.

  He muttered something in Spanish that Hank couldn’t quite make out. Then, in English, “She talks and you fall under the spell of her words. She’s la bruja, the old priestess. She makes people forget what they should know, the way she talks.”

  Hank stood near the table, as Joaquin picked up his big chef’s knife and began to sever the carrots. Little bits flew up like orange confetti. Hank didn’t remember seeing Joaquin this annoyed before.

  A flush covering his cheeks, Joaquin gestured with his blade. “You need to stop listening all the time and remember and do what you are supposed to do.”

  “What are you talking about?” Hank’s heart clawed at his ribs. For a moment, he thought he was going to fall over.

  Joaquin stopped chopping. Hank thought maybe an explanation was coming, but instead Joaquin fished a big onion out of the basket and executed it with a huge swipe of the blade.

  “Go read your messages. I have to get the dinner.”

  They were piled beside the phone and there were several. Sorting out the ones for Connie and Carl, Hank found his: one from the hospital, saying his mother had asked for him specifically to come see her before she came home tomorrow. The other from Joseph Chagall, asking for a call back. Urgent.

  As Hank stared at the messages written in Joaquin’s neat script, the writing getting quicker and careless as the phone kept ringing, Connie walked past, looked at him, shoes in hand, then started up the stairs. He turned his back, his hand on the phone.

  Carl appeared in the archway to the living room, drink in hand. He looked tragically and romantically dissipated, and his eyes followed his sister as she climbed upward.

  Hank said, “You’ve been here all this time? How come you didn’t answer the phone? Joaquin is like a mad bull in there.”

  Carl shrugged. “I guess I fell asleep.”

  Turning his back on him, Hank dialed Susan’s number, if for nothing else, to distract him from his moments seeing Luz. Joseph answered after the first ring. His voice was quick, blurry. He needed to see Hank, he said. He needed Hank to help him with something for Susan, something that he wanted to do for her.

  Hank made a half-hearted promise to show up, but Joseph insisted that it be tonight, late—he wanted Hank to pick him up down the block, not at their house, but at the corner. Close to midnight.

  Hank started to turn Joseph down, but then thought, what the hell. Hank knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep much tonight anyway.

  That done, Hank faced Carl. “You need to snap out of it,” he snapped, disgusted. “Come with me to the hospital.”

  Family, Hank thought, as Carl obediently poured the rest of his drink down the bathroom sink, ran a comb through his hair and gargled.

  Mom had a private room in the private wing. Dad was there, sitting
in her suite. He had been reading to her, and she sat up in bed, against pillows, in a quilted bed jacket. Her hair neatly wrapped in a ribbon, her dark grey-streaked roots showing, Mom looked thinner than ever, but her cheeks held a good color. Flowing past plaid curtains, sun came in through the window. Flowers in varying states of freshness and decay filled vases on the tables and window sill. The room smelled antiseptic and clean; the nurse, far less lovely than Luz, stuck her head in the door and nodded approvingly.

  Mom gave Hank and Carl both hugs, something she rarely did any more. Her arms were strong, but very thin. Dad rose from his chair. He wore his reading glasses and a tan polo shirt and slacks; he laid the book down on the bed.

  “I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said in his velvet voice. “Carl, come with me for a second. The nurses want your autograph.”

  Dad closed the door behind himself and Carl after sending a knowing gaze at Mom, and Hank wondered whose idea this visit really was. Mom patted her bed and Hank sat. Silence, edged with birdsong and faint voices, movements and bangs and rolling carts of the busy hospital corridor, settled between them.

  Waiting, Hank looked at the flowers and cards, and smelled the bitter odor of antiseptics. Mom just looked at him, blue eyes wide and excited. An unpleasant thought intruded in Hank’s mind, wound around like a monkey tail. To confirm it, he watched as Mom reached behind her pillow and brought out a small pad. She picked a pencil from behind her ear. Hank had not even noticed how odd it was for a patient to have a pencil behind her ear, but he was so used to seeing Mom that way, he hadn’t questioned it.

  He stopped her hand, encircled her wrist. “You can’t talk at all now?”

  Her lips thinned, and she gave her head a short shake. Her eyebrows formed a V of worry. She began scribbling on the pad.

  “I don’t want the others to know.”

  “Mom, they have to know. You are coming home tomorrow.”

  “I need your help. You can talk for me.”

  Putting down the pad, Hank stared at her. He hated to talk. He listened, he didn’t speak. People spoke for him, read his mind, said what he was thinking.

  And Mom knew what he was thinking. She started scribbling again, a long paragraph, taking minutes and minutes.

  “We can do it. You can ask me yes or no questions. You can answer the phone for me. We can play back the Dictaphone. I have recorded hours of words.”

  Hank sighed and she grabbed his wrist, squeezed, her fingernails digging in. “You have to do this,” she mouthed, and he read her lips clearly.

  He felt the air go out of the room. He felt his life closing in, as if he were in a box, no—a coffin in the ground, with only a straw to breathe through.

  “OK, yes or no questions.”

  She nodded furiously.

  “Did you fall into the pool by accident?”

  Her mouth slammed shut and she stared at him, the familiar Mom-calculating-wheels-turning-behind-her-eyes look. Then, to his astonishment, she shook her head.

  He blinked, then pressed on. “Were you going to kill yourself?”

  Again, she shook her head, and confusion filled him, but he continued on.

  “You went into the water on purpose?”

  A nod.

  “You didn’t go in thinking you would drown yourself?”

  A shake.

  “But when you got into the water, you thought you would do it?”

  Hesitation, and then a slow nod, a shrug.

  “Did you think of it because you were losing your voice?”

  A shrug: “I don’t know.”

  Hank could understand that. But he wanted to keep Mom in her corner.

  “Did you think of it because Dad is unfaithful?”

  She gave him an exasperated look, eyes narrow, lips pulled in. Shook her head rapidly.

  “You’ve known about all his girlfriends?”

  A nod, a shrug. “Yes I’ve known and I don’t care.”

  This he could not understand. “How could you not care?”

  He had broken the rule about a yes or no question, and she picked up her pad. “It runs in the family. I am beyond caring.”

  Hank looked at her. “Grandfather Joel?”

  Mom’s pencil stayed poised over the pad, as if she were composing something else to add. Hank stared out the window at a row of trees brushed by wind.

  Finally she scribbled a short note. “Get out of here. Come back in a half hour. This will take a while.”

  Twenty-Five

  Eight-thirty in a sweet velvet night, and Hank was parked across the street from Susan’s house. He was here early because as soon as he dropped Carl off at home, he drove straight back to Luz’s house. Luz was not at home, Rosa told him, holding the little boy who still seemed feverish and fussy. Luz’s house looked warm and cozy inside, candles burning on a blue-painted sideboard on the wall behind Mrs. Del Mar. She invited him to come in, but it could be a few hours before Luz got home.

  Carl’s mood improved greatly after his session with the nurses. They all knew who he was, remembered him from several of his small roles in pictures with Connie. None of them knew or cared about the recent bad publicity. They didn’t believe Carl’s accuser, either. He spoke about it all the way home, said he was going to make some changes. One of them was television. He was going to see if he could get onto one of the variety shows as a singing act.

  Since Mom’s ‘accident’ Dad had spent every day at the hospital with her, made arrangements for a live-in nurse for Mom when she got home, organized Mom’s room to perfection, setting up the bed and arranging things. Hank had some odd prayerful notion that the live-in nurse might be Luz, but he knew that would be highly unlikely. It was as if Dad cherished something he had nearly lost, as if he were trying to paste the broken marquis back together.

  Mom’s note, three pages of it, was folded into Hank’s trouser pocket. When she handed it to him, her eyes held a kind of desperate light, needy and yearning. These were not Bess Cleveland’s eyes, but the eyes of a wary spirit, la bruja, like Joaquin said. Looking frail and weak, but any moment could gut you with a razor talon.

  Leaning back into the seat, Hank closed his eyes, remembered Mrs. Del Mar in the doorway, looking at Hank in a piercing way, not at all unfriendly.

  “You need to listen,” she said finally, as Hank was turning to go, having refused her offer to wait for Luz. “There is a voice in your head that is saying the truth.”

  Hank’s ears still rang, buzzed, and he only noticed it when he thought about it. He had heard enough truths for one day, he thought.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Del Mar. I’ll try to listen.”

  She nodded, but he didn’t think she believed him.

  On the way to Susan’s he stopped for a quick dinner at a diner on Wilshire. The smells of the evening’s cooking at the Del Mar’s ignited a firestorm of hunger, and he devoured one-and-a-half hamburgers, French fries, and a vanilla shake.

  He didn’t care that Joseph might be miffed at him for showing up way before midnight, but he had to see Luz. Even though her mother had not said where she was, he knew she was here. If secrecy was a must, he would think of something.

  A light was on in the studio. A string of Christmas lights ran from the back-porch to the clothesline. Another string adorned the clothesline itself, wound around its pole. An audience of figurines encircled it, as if it were a May Pole. Was it May already?

  Crickets pulsed in the grasses. Someone was grilling. Hank crept to the studio window and peeked in.

  Two gooseneck lamps illuminated the work bench. Susan and Luz sat before it, heads together, shifting dry ingredients in a wooden bowl. Beyond, he could see their faces reflected in the window, a pair of sirens concocting a potion to lure their personal Odysseus in and keep him captive. Susan’s scarf was red, Luz’s blue. They both wore khaki work shirts and shorts. Luz’s ankles were wrapped around the legs of her stool. She was barefoot. Susan wore tennis shoes without socks.

  Glancing up, Luz
saw Hank’s face reflected in the window before her. But she gave no indication to Susan, just smiled quickly, then turned her attention to Susan, who was saying something about the glaze mixture.

  Watching for a while, Hank left them to lie down on one of the lounge chairs to stare at the sky and think about what Rose Del Mar might have meant.

  What other truth would there be to learn? One he was afraid to ask about. He had his chance, back there in the hospital. He could have asked Mom about the day she threw Luz out of the house and why he couldn’t remember that. But he chickened out.

  Fingering Mom’s pages in his pocket, he wondered if the truth might be there in her written words.

  But he must have fallen asleep; a shred of a dream left him with the idea that Susan on one side and Luz on the other had each kissed his cheek. When he came fully aware he was alone on the patio still, flanked by a ceramic donkey on one side of the lounge and a poodle on the other, each perched on little tables that had not been there when he lay down.

  Checking his watch, he found he had slept for over two hours. It was nearly midnight. His stomach lurched at the thought of helping Joseph in whatever insane idea he had, but he wanted to follow through, lurch off on some crazy journey with crazy Joseph.

  Getting up, he found Luz by herself in the studio, modeling a human figurine. Going in, he stood close to her.

  “You saw me, in the window,” he said. He couldn’t stop himself from touching a curl of hair covering her ear.

  “I saw you asleep on the patio, too.” She didn’t look up from her work, making a neat cut along what was looking to be the long skirt the figurine was wearing.

  “I’m sorry about leaving you like that, earlier.” Hank sat on the stool next to her. “I wanted to stay. I went back there, tonight, but your mother told me you were out.”

  “And you knew where I’d be.”

  Her voice was teasing, soft. Hank watched her eyelashes move as her eyes followed her hands.

  “Diego looked like he was feeling a little better.”

  Luz nodded, smiling. “I am so relieved.”