by Jill Zeller
Sliding onto the stool next to Luz, Hank inhaled the musty odor of wet clay. “I let Joseph talk me into some kind of caper tonight. He says it’s a surprise for Susan.”
Putting down her knife, Luz looked at him; a wrinkle crossed her forehead. “What kind of caper?”
Hank shrugged. “Beats me. But I thought I’d better tag along to keep him out of trouble.
Luz nodded. “You know he’s very unstable.”
She could have meant this two ways: Joseph’s mind or his ankles. Probably both.
Picking up the knife, she incised another fold in the skirt, “He had a terrible experience in the war. I used to sit with him, and he tried to tell me about it, but always got to the same part in the story and stopped, and it was as if his memory had been erased.”
Hank found himself fingering a shard of greenware. The same thing in regards to Luz had happened to him. This had nothing to do with seeing the horrors of war. But how in the world had he forgotten her name for so long or even the memory of her coming to the house? As he looked at the piece in his hand, he saw that it was a small human leg. A memory nudged him, and before it ran away laughing, he saw Luz’s face, hair tangled, eyes closed, moving from side to side.
Connie told him Mom had thrown Luz out of the house. Moving closer to her, Hank folded his arms to hide his shaking hands.
“Do you remember when my mother—”
Luz gave him a sideways glance. “I don’t like to remember that. It was humiliating.”
The room went cold, as if he were standing in a refrigerator. What had happened? What had he done? What had Mom done?
Luz looked at him now, scrutinizing, as if judging. He looked away as she touched his upper arm. Just as he was certain she was going to say something, they both heard a clunking sound at the studio door.
A four-legged stick-creature against the porch light behind him, hunched on his two canes, Joseph stood just outside the studio. Hank wondered how long he had been out there. And he wondered where Susan was. Joseph had, just now, knocked one of his canes against the wall.
“I know she’s beautiful,” he said, “But you and I have a date, buddy.”
Sighing, Hank nodded and gave a smile to Luz, who still looked disturbed. She put down her knife. “I’m going with you.”
She brushed past Hank and ran into the house. Hank’s heart tumbled around, confused, while Joseph shrugged.
“You can’t say no to a nurse.”
Twenty-Six
The Santa Monica Cemetery gates stood open, just as Joseph said they would be, but he directed Hank to park the Caddy on the street. All the way, sliding along quiet streets through Venice and into Santa Monica they said little, Luz in the passenger seat beside Hank, Joseph in the back seat filling the car with cigarette smoke.
A breeze built up, crawled its way up the hillsides, cooled Hank’s skin as he got out of the car. Around them, wind stirred palms and pepper trees and sycamores; a paved lane wound up a short rise; mausoleums dotted the hillside, white against the black fabric of the grass.
Hank and Luz glanced at one another as Joseph slid out of the back seat. This was the cemetery where Joseph worked. Perhaps they were coming for something he left here.
They followed Joseph along a winding lane to the corner of a barn-like building, a storage shop discreetly hidden under trailing vines of bougainvillea and jasmine. Except for the breath of the wind in the trees, the cemetery surrounded them in eerie quiet. Joseph led them through an unlocked door into a place of tools and machines, all for the careful interment of the dead and the comfort of the living. Grass clippers, two power lawn mowers, shovels, picks, hoes, rolls of green cloth, folded canopies, folding chairs and in the center of it all, a small tractor.
“C’mon,” Joseph said as he picked a key from a wall of keys. “I need you to open the doors for me.”
“Joseph, what’s up?” Worry gnawed at Hank. Joseph might have worked here, but that didn’t give him the right to break into the workshop in the middle of the night.
Joseph hoisted himself onto the tractor seat, saying, “I told you. This is for Susan. She’s put up with me all my damn life and I am going to repay her big time.”
With that the tractor coughed and spit and began to growl and move forward, barely in time for Luz and Hank to get the garage doors open. Joseph drove through the parking lot, and down the winding drive, Luz and Hank running behind him.
The sound of the tractor echoed across the level graveyard and into the surrounding neighborhood. Hank prayed no one would be curious enough about the sound of a motor grumbling through the cemetery to call the police. Like a red-haired pasha on his royal elephant, Joseph bounced on the seat, driving with purpose, at the old machine’s highest speed.
By the time Hank caught up with Joseph he had somehow climbed down off the tractor in front of a starkly white mausoleum. Flanking the door were twin figures, holding identical ewers from which flowed marble rivers. These conjoined over the entry archway into Latin words that Hank did not understand. Behind him Luz stood, catching her breath.
“Hank, help me up here.” Joseph was on the top step, a pry bar in his hand.
Why would this door be locked, Hank wondered, if the gate to the cemetery was open? Would the families have keys to let them in? Would they have a secret password, like “sesame”, to open the doors?
“I don’t think we should break in here.” Hank took the pry bar from Joseph, who offered it to him. Luz stood warily at the base of the steps, looking around as if on guard.
“Yes, we should. Go on, Hank my lad, you’re stronger than me.”
Hank shook his head, and Joseph pushed his shoulder.
He said, “If you don’t help me, and soon, we will get arrested with the night watchman drives through. Which will be in about 30 minutes.”
Cursing under his breath, Hank understood how he had been manipulated. He hesitated only a moment, while Joseph tried to grab the pry bar from him.
“All right, hang on.” Hank pushed the bar between the iron doors, and with one quick jerk, the doors sprang open much more easily than he expected, and the force threw him backward. Joseph caught his arm.
“C’mon.” He disappeared inside.
An old smell, must and mold, floated out of the black interior. That and a hit of flowers, like an old garden deep in heavy soil. Hank walked in, and saw a flashlight bobbing ahead, dimly reflecting off of vertical ranks of bronze plaques engraved with the names of the dead.
Joseph had stopped before one of the plaques along the left-hand wall, two rows from the bottom. The pry in his hand, he produced from somewhere a hammer, and began pounding on the marble facade, hammer blows ringing.
“Jesus, Joseph, what are you doing?” Hank didn’t want to get any closer as bits of rock sprayed onto the floor. Passing him was Luz, moving up behind Joseph, but saying nothing. She scanned the plaques as if reading the names; some of them she even touched.
Joseph didn’t answer him, but continued to pound. If any watchman was anywhere close, they would definitely be heard.
“Hank, help me with this.”
Hank moved to help, getting down on his knees as Joseph gave one last heave with the hammer. The marble separated from the wall in one piece, and clattered to the floor. It was far heavier than either of them could handle, and Hank pulled Joseph back as the rock fell.
Dust flew up around them, glittering a million minute fireflies around the flashlight beam. By now, Luz was several feet away, reaching up to touch another plaque. As the stone fell, she started.
Coughing, Joseph reached into the crypt and pulled out a metal container shaped like a genie lamp. “Hi, Dad,” he whispered, and a cold finger traveled up Hank’s spine.
Seizing Joseph’s jacket Hank pulled him to his feet. Luz approached, and between the two of them they herded Joseph out of the crypt, leaving behind hammer, pry and fingerprints.
Below in the funeral home lot they saw lights moving. The night watchman had arrived, an
d would be making his rounds, checking the doors to the mausoleums. But as soon as he saw the open shop doors, he would know something was amiss.
“We can’t go that way,” Joseph whispered. He indicated the rise behind them. And they stumbled up the grassy hill past headstones and angels and biers glowing murky white against the blackness. They were as quiet as they could be, their breathing ragged. None of them looked back, but they couldn’t hear any footsteps behind.
As they reached the top, Hank thought they were home free. An expanse of hillside spread before them, spotted with heavy shadows of thickets of trees for shelter. They wouldn’t be caught, he thought.
He coughed as dust filled his throat.
They froze and looked down the hill behind them. The watchman’s light swung around in their direction. Luz clapped her hand over her mouth as if to stifle nervous laughter.
Hank didn’t care if he or even Joseph got caught, but he worried about Luz. To his relief Joseph grabbed his arm.
“We need to split up. Luz, you circle around to the street, get the car. Go around the block and pick us up on the north side.”
Luz shook her head, eyes wide and glinting in the darkness.
“Take this.” Joseph thrust the urn at her, and she cradled it in her arms. “Get him out of here safe.”
Hank leaned in, kissed her. She gazed at him a minute, then took off running through the forest of gravestones.
Joseph directed Hank as they hobbled toward the north end of the cemetery. He expertly led them to a gap in the fence, one he could, evidently find with his eyes closed, because here darkness seeped into every seam. Crossing the street, they turned up an alley, and at the end, like the coach of Dracula, the black Caddy appeared, and they vanished into the night along with the ashes of the dead.
Part III: Diego
Twenty-Seven
The brown eyes in the skull’s sockets watched Hank. The bony face was level with his as he lay on the sofa. He could have been looking into the remains of Grandfather Joel, until he remembered where he really was.
Sun filtered through the curtain behind him. A yellow-painted room, a bright rug and a human skull, staring at him inches from his face.
Odors of strong coffee, tortillas. He was not at home, smelling Joaquin’s cooking. He was at Luz’s house, and the staring, serious skull observing him was a mask, and behind it a little boy. If this was a dream, why bother to wake up?
Diego had wrapped himself in a blanket that someone, probably Luz, had draped over Hank and had fallen to the floor. Covering his eyes, Hank pretended to be in terror, and the little boy giggled.
Voices murmured from the kitchen. Sitting up, Hank stretched, wondering how long he had slept, remembering that today mom was coming home.
Luz appeared in the doorway wearing the same clothes she’d worn the night before, her hair loose. Kneeling beside him, Luz looked at him carefully, almost assessing.
“What a crazy night.” Hank sat up. “So Joseph thinks that having his father’s ashes will help him deal with whatever happened to him over in Italy?”
Sitting on the couch beside him, Luz leaned back. Hank wondered if she had slept at all. “That’s what he thinks. Maybe it will work.”
“I don’t know if I want to hear the rest of that story.”
“Me neither.” She looked at him; he wanted to kiss her.
I will never ever leave here. “You were pretty cool out there, under fire. You saved the ashes.”
Sitting up, Luz pulled her hair into a pony tail and let it go. Diego climbed into her lap.
“My little skeleton boy,” she murmured to him.
Hank’s next words burst out, as if pulled from his mouth by Diego’s pudgy hands. “Luz, my mother needs a nurse. Would you be my mother’s nurse?”
He saw her stiffen. She stopped stroking Diego’s head.
Hank sat up. “I mean, she’s coming home from the hospital today.” He told her everything, Mom’s neurological problem, her ‘accident’ in the pool. Luz listened, but she said nothing, sat as stiffly as a bird trying to evade a predator.
“Please, Luz. You could do it. You would be great.” He knew she would do it. She would have to do it. He knew, deep down, she was the perfect choice. No battle-axe or Charles Atlas, but his beautiful Luz.
Luz got up from the couch. She walked into the kitchen without looking back.
Following, Hank was drawn as if by a rope strung from his heart to hers. Through the kitchen windows he saw Rosa Del Mar hanging laundry. Her back to Hank Luz picked up a sponge and started worrying a pot with it.
“Luz, listen. It would be the perfect revenge.”
Hank could not remember, his head burned trying to remember why he didn’t hate his mother for throwing Luz out of the house. He must try to remember that Luz would despise Bess Cleveland with all her heart.
“She would have to rely on you. She couldn’t say no. She already said she needs me to be her voice, but what if it was you I brought to her?”
Luz scrubbed, her elbow working up and down. Standing behind her, Hank watched her shoulder muscle bulging. How strong she was. She could lift up the world.
Now he should confess. Now he should tell her he couldn’t remember. Now he should ask her what really happened.
“Then we could be together,” he said. “I could see you every day.”
She still didn’t reply. She dipped the pan in the soapy water, started in again. Diego came in carrying a metal truck, ran it across the linoleum, making truck noises.
“Please.” Hank touched her hair. I love you.
This he remembered. How much he loved her. How could he have forgotten about her?
Luz turned to face him. Her cheeks were red and her eyes angry.
“How can you ask me that? How can you, Hank?”
Dropping the pan in the water, ignoring the splash of water onto the floor, she left the kitchen, walked into the front room and through the front door. Hank trailed her, appalled at how much he had upset her.
Going down the steps she started along the sidewalk, Hank a few feet behind. The morning promised heat. Magnolias lining the street were starting to bloom.
They reached the corner, and Luz turned, walking rapidly. Hank couldn’t believe how fast she could walk. He trotted up, fell in step next to her.
“Luz, I need you to help me with this. Mother needs to see that I love you. That I want to be only with you.”
Stopping in the driveway of a tidy bungalow, Luz inhaled sharply. “If you want to be with only me, how come you let her do that to me?” Her fists closed, knuckles white.
Hank could think of nothing to say. He stood, near her. At least she was speaking to him.
“That’s what I thought.” She started walking and Hank followed. At the next corner she turned right again.
“I was stupid, an idiot. A moron.” Hank knew he was all these things. The thought that he let his mother abuse Luz stabbed him like a knife. Why can’t I remember?
Luz stopped and looked at him. The fury in her face impressed him.
“Is that all you have to say? You disappeared. You made no attempt to contact me. It was as if you completely forgot me, what, an upstart Latina, no better than the maid to have a fling with. Never good enough or white enough to be in the company of one of the great Clevelands.”
Tears rimmed her eyes. “My father should never have sent me to that school. He wanted us to be better, he wanted me to be better than what he could do in this country. He was an attorney in Mexico, did you know that? And all he could do here was work as a file clerk for a bunch of pendejos who treated him like shit.”
Pressing her cheeks she turned her face away. “And all I did was break his heart.” Her hands muffled her words, but Hank could hear the strain in her voice. He touched her shoulder, but she shrugged him away, faced him.
Her chin raised, she said. “I can’t believe you asked me that. Your mother is nothing to me. The best thing that ever happened to her is
losing her voice.”
Hank followed her back to the house. On the porch, where Diego watched through the screen door, Luz stopped him.
“You better go. Your mother needs you.”
The door slammed behind her. Hank saw her pick up Diego and take him away, down the dark hallway to where the bedrooms must be.
He found a pack of Connie’s cigarettes in the glove compartment, lit one, tasted the smoke. Luz’s house didn’t look as bright; he could see from across the street where he parked the car, cracks in the stucco and broken tiles on the roof. And inside the charred remains of what had been his heart.
By the time he got home after looping around Beverley Hills, driving into the canyons and back out again until the gas gauge read nearly zero, Mom was definitely home. Since Hank had the Caddy, Dad had used Mom’s coupe, top town, to ferry her and her jungle of flowers home from the hospital. Many of them remained in the back seat, wilting in the sun. Pulling in behind the roadster, Hank reached in as he passed and broke off a blue bachelor button.
His mouth tasted sour and the house looked dull and dark. Dread nagged at him from the horrifying thought that he might never see Luz again. But if there was one other person than himself he could blame for that, it would be Bess Cleveland.
From Mom’s bedroom upstairs Dad’s voice boomed with laughter. Joaquin came down, a smile on his face. Seeing Hank standing at the bottom, he tried to scowl.
“Now you show up. Your mother’s asking where you are, young Hank.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Get up there. She is hungry, thank God.”
Joaquin lowered his voice. “She is skinnier than a praying mantis. I will cook her such a meal!”
At least someone is happy she’s home, Hank thought as he climbed the stairs. Stopping outside the room, he lit another cigarette, opened the door.
Mom sat on the side of the bed. Dad was crossing the room, carrying the Dictaphone. Carl turned away from the window, where he stood looking bored. No sign of Connie.
“’Bout time you showed up.” Carl shifted his gaze toward Mom, indicating that Hank should watch out.