Voices of Ash

by Jill Zeller

  When Mother came back, she started in again.

  His back was cold. Hank opened his eyes and saw stars. Distant, blinking. Something soft under his head. His elbow, up on a pillow, throbbed, wrapped with something really cold.

  “Hank, caro mio.” Luz’s voice. Luz’s hand on his cheek.

  Hank looked at her, hair behind one ear, eyes bright in the dim light. He said, “You came back. I’m so sorry Luz. I should never have let her say those things.”

  “It’s OK now. I see it now. I didn’t realize what she is.”

  Sitting up, Hank realized he was not at home, lying on the sofa, but in Susan’s backyard on his back on the grass. Moving his elbow sent a shock-load of pain up his arm.

  Luz sat on the grass next to him, leaning on the chaise lounge, Diego cuddling next to her, eating a banana. Susan was no where to be seen.

  “You fainted. We couldn’t get you up, so we just let you lay here until you came around. I think your elbow is fractured.”

  Hank couldn’t take his eyes off her. “I should never have let her get away with it. I was an idiot. She made me forget you. With her words. She talked and talked and ate up my memory with her words.”

  Nodding, Luz brushed his cheek again. “She knows a magic, too. But it’s not the same as mine.”

  Hank had to agree, remembering the vision of the woman slicing into the fruit. But he didn’t tell Luz about that, or the previous one he had when he walked into the studio those long weeks ago. That magic for now would stay safely sealed inside his brain.

  They were silent for a while, sitting among the crickets. The Cyclist stood on the patio table, Grandfather Joel’s secret wish, one he made on Hank. Around them, dark retreated in increments that could not be seen until they had gone. Dawn was coming. The air was cold, the grass damp, but neither of them wanted to move.

  “You need to get to a doctor, Hank.” Susan appeared, wearing her robe, her face pale and scored with weariness. “Luz, you could borrow my car, get him to a doctor and get Diego home.”

  Hank struggled to his feet. His head felt like a balloon was expanding inside it, but he kept his balance. Susan looked so beautiful, her hair trailing down one side of her face, green eyes looking around her garden as she sighed.

  Hank went to her, stood below her at the bottom step. “Thank you. I need to thank you.”

  He worried, what did she think? He was leaving her for Luz. How long had she known this would happen?

  Susan gave him a crooked smile. “My young lover, your girlfriend is my pupil. I have no doubt I will be seeing more of you than ever before.”

  Feeling his face grow warm, Hank looked at her bare feet, white and longer than Luz’s.

  “How is Joseph doing?”

  She shrugged, shook her head. “Asleep. I think he’s catching up on years of lost sleep.”

  Good, Hank thought. Good.

  He and Luz woke up the same doctor who had tended Hank through his meningitis. Shaking his head, the doctor said the only way to set the bone was through surgery. Hank disliked that idea, but by now he would have cut off his arm if it would help the pain go away.

  The doctor drove him straight to the hospital and the deed was done. Luz left him in the doctor’s capable hands, taking Diego home to his worried grandma. They touched hands through the doctor’s car window, the spark of her touch stayed with Hank all through the anesthesia and even when he woke up to find Carl sitting at his bedside.

  Thirty-One

  Carl was amused to hear Hank’s tale of the missing child, especially when he learned that the Diego Del Mar was Hank’s son. But he sobered as Hank rattled on about Connie’s role in the disappearance.

  “She hasn’t been home yet. She must still be staying out at Sam’s.” Carl knew all about Sam. But he too, did not remember the abortion or the first of Connie’s attempted kidnappings.

  “You mean Mom talked us out of it?”

  “Has to be,” Hank’s arm was attached to a rig over his bed, elevated above his heart. His forearm itched like crazy but he couldn’t scratch it. He was going to have to stay like this for a week, the doctor said, but Hank was already planning how he could escape with Carl’s help.

  He said, “How is it neither of us remember any of it? She is a master with words, she and Dad. But Mother is better at it. Dad will read a script and make it come alive, but Mother invents hers.”

  Hank could see Carl did not quite believe him, so he dropped the point for now.

  Carl added, “Mom is very anxious for you to get home. I had a hell of a time figuring out where you were. Susan said Luz took you took a doctor because you broke your elbow, but she didn’t know which one. Doctor, I mean.”

  Wondering what Carl thought about Susan, or more to the point, if Susan could see anything useful in Carl, Hank nodded. “Did you tell Mom where I was?”

  Carl gave a crooked smile. “Hell no. Let her stew. Dad is getting tired of taking care of her already, so both of them are looking forward to you coming home.”

  “Right.” Hank had no intention of coming home just yet. When he squirmed out of his traction, he was headed straight to Luz’s house.

  “Right. They just need to hire a damn nurse.”

  Only three days later, the doctor himself discharged Hank, impressed with how his pain level had improved and how vigorously his fingers moved. He sent Hank home with a sort of brace made of leather and metal bars to keep his elbow elevated, and signed the papers for release.

  Carl picked him up. As soon as Hank got into the car, he took the damn brace off.

  He spent the afternoon with Luz and Diego. Mrs. Del Mar cooked them a supper of shredded duck and homemade tortillas before she left for some church function. How long Rosa had known Hank was Diego’s father, she would not let on.

  As Hank and Luz sat on the top step together in the bungalow’s garden, Luz told Hank she thought her mother always knew exactly who had gotten her daughter pregnant, but until Luz was ready to tell, Rosa kept silent about it.

  Luz fell silent after this, running her fingers along a long blade of red-shaded grass. Then, “You know your father called here, for your mother.”

  The idea of Luz having to speak to Mom gored Hank, and he sat up, bumping his elbow on the step.

  “You’re joking. The fucking nerve!”

  “Calm down. I didn’t speak to him. Mama did but only for a moment. She was asking that if we heard from you, to ask you to call her.”

  Hank’s chest twisted. He felt his face grow warm. So Mother knew where Luz lived. She had called. She knew. She knew about Diego.

  Rising, Hank took a step down toward the sidewalk. Stopped. What was he going to do, walk all the way to Westwood? But it was time, more than time, to have The Talk with Mom.

  “Where are you going?” Luz stood on the top step. Long fingers of palm shadows striped the sidewalk where Hank stood; westering sunlight lit Luz’s body above him as she shaded her eyes, looking down at him.

  She turned away, hearing, as Hank did, the phone ringing inside the house. Frustrated, Hank sat on the bottom step. The neighborhood came alive as workers returned home and children, released from school, burst from houses with the slam of screen doors.

  A few moments later, Luz called him to the phone.

  As he came in, she covered the speaker with her hand. “It’s Susan. Something’s wrong with Joseph. I have to go over there. Talk to her. She’s upset.”

  Something about a fire. They were putting it out now, but the police wanted to take Joseph away. When Luz reappeared with her jacket and bag, Hank stopped her. “How are you going to get there?”

  “The Red Car, I guess, or the bus.” She squeezed her hands. “What about Diego?”

  “Nope. Susan, we’ll be there as quick as we can.” Hanging up, Hank dialed his house, praying, hoping that either Carl or Connie, if she was home, would answer.

  To his immense relief it was Carl. He readily agreed to pick them up and take them to Susan’s
. Luz bundled up Diego and they waited.

  Smells of wet ash met them as they pulled up to Susan’s bungalow. Carl had broken several laws to get them there in a hurry; luckily it seemed all the County police were at Susan’s rather than patrolling the beach towns. They were able to park across the street and got out to stare.

  The back roof of Susan’s bungalow was scorched black. The front seemed untouched, and as Hank and Carl, following Luz, carrying Diego, walked up the driveway, they saw the extent of the damage.

  The kitchen and back bedroom were a blackened heap of charred wood. The smell was intense, made worse by puddles of water everywhere. Gray smoke trailed upward into a sky the color of milk.

  On the soaked grass, near the intact kiln and studio, stood Susan, arms folded defiantly as two police officers talked to her. On one of the patio chairs, another cop standing close, sat Joseph wrapped in a blanket. Hank could see his bare feet sticking out.

  Joseph had shaved not only his beard, but his head as well. He seemed lucid, paying attention to what Susan or the police were saying. When he saw Luz, he sat up, his face, smeared with smoke, beamed in a smile. “Beauty is here. She came as if summoned by the gods.”

  He started to get up, but the cop laid a hand on his shoulder. Pressing his lips together, Joseph shrugged, and obeyed.

  The policeman turned to see who had come. One of them asked, “Is this the nurse?”

  Susan nodded. “It was her day off. I promised I would keep an eye on him, but I got distracted.” Susan closed on Luz, took her hand. Her face was open, bright. Cheeks grazed with pink. “Thanks for coming like this, on short notice. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep him under control. I thought I could, but he is best when you’re around.”

  Luz nodded, going along with this little play for the police.”

  That’s fine, Miss Chagall. Is he hurt?” Putting Diego down, she went to Joseph, knelt beside him. He patted her head and smiled.

  The little boy stared wide eyed at everything. Hank moved closer to him, as if pulled by a string, unable to take his eyes off Diego.

  “This won’t happen again, officers. I promise.” Susan ran a shaking smoke-smudged hand through her hair.

  The officers had to admit there had been no complaints. This was a war hero, after all, and his sister seemed quite sane. As Hank remembered that day, weeks ago, when a cop came to the door to tell them Joseph had jumped from a moving streetcar. Strangely, Diego’s hand a soft warm thing in his, Hank felt as though he had raced through each of nine lives, if humans had that many, to come stand here with Luz, and Susan, with his son’s hand in his.

  Susan signed something, and the cops left. The firemen were already gone. Curious neighbors lingered at the driveway. None of them came in the yard. None of them so far had offered Susan food or a place to stay. Susan had always said the neighbors were afraid of Joseph.

  Finally it was just the five of them standing in Susan’s yard. Susan pulled her sweater around her, dry eyed, looking over the remains of her house. The crickets were quiet as night closed in.

  “Sorry, Suze. It kinda got out of hand.” Joseph looked at his sister, who shook her head, unable to speak.

  “No shit,” muttered Carl. Hank saw that the patio table was gone, as was the chaise lounge. A black jumbled circle indicated the source of the fire. Going closer, in the black sludge, Hank could make out small bits of figurines. His stomach twisted. Joseph had made a pyre of his fellow ceramic soldiers of ash. Not the Cyclist too?

  As if he could read minds today, Joseph said, “Only Donut-boy and the others. I put yours over there, with the bowl and the animals.”

  Getting up, Joseph held the blanket around himself like a toga. Hank could see that he was naked underneath. He stood as close to Hank as he could get without touching him. Hank resisted the urge to step back.

  “I just wanted to burn them again. I don’t want to remember that any more. I thought, if I burned them, then I could burn them out of my brain, too. But they won’t go.”

  “Oh, Joseph. Oh, my god.” Susan pressed her hands to her eyes. To Hank’s astonishment, Carl put his arms around Susan and she sort of sank against him, burying her face in his shoulder.

  The Cyclist was in the Chagall bowl, sitting crookedly on a pile of bricks left over from the building of the kiln. Luz came around to stand on Joseph’s other side.

  He said, “I just kept adding fuel. The chair, and the lounge, to make the fire hotter. But they wouldn’t burn. I guess it got too hot and something caught on the porch and by then, the neighbors maybe had called the firemen to come.” He ran his hand over his head. Razor marks nicked his scalp.

  “For kindling I used my hair,” he said to Luz. “I was growing it long, in case I needed it for something. A necklace, or, heh, a fire.”

  Like a cat, Joseph brushed Luz’s arm. “Can you take them away? You gave them back to me because I asked, but I don’t want them now.”

  Luz shook her head. “I can’t do that, Joseph. But if you take them to the doctor at the VA, the one you have been talking to, he can help you put them somewhere they can’t hurt you.”

  Frowning, Joseph thinned his lips. “Nurses. Always telling you to do what you don’t the hell want to do.” His fine, spidery fingers gripped his blanket closer.

  “Can’t you make a forgetting glaze, like the memory glaze?”

  “Joseph, stop bothering her. Haven’t you made enough of a mess of things already?” Susan broke away from Carl, grabbed her brother by the arm. “My house. Our house. Where are we going to live now, you idiot? In the studio? Camp out in the cemetery?” She pushed and pulled at his arm, and he stared at her in a forlorn way.

  “Susan, please. Try to understand.” Luz touched Susan’s arm.

  “I don’t understand,” she shouted, face red, tears running streaks through the smoke. “I don’t understand why this is my burden. What did I do? What the hell did I do?” Throwing up her hands, she fell heavily into the remaining patio chair, covered her face.

  “You’ll stay with us,” Carl said, decisively. Hank stared at him, then realized how perfect it would be. The guesthouse over the garage, of course.

  “Until, at least, you can get your house rebuilt.”

  Susan didn’t make any sound. Joseph frowned again. “Will Luz be there?”

  Carl opened his mouth, closed it again. Hank turned to face Luz. Behind her, craggy outcrops of singed beams stuck fingers into the dusk sky, maybe a bit like the Italian castle.

  He said, “I think that yes, Luz will be there.”

  Hank saw a blaze come and go on Luz’s face. Turning away, she picked up Diego, who had slipped Hank’s hand and knelt before the blackened pyre, his hands black from soot. Hank caught up to Luz in the driveway.

  “Please, Luz. Just for a little while. Mom and Dad are at each other’s throats. Mom needs a nurse. She can’t fire you if Carl hires you. He has his own money.”

  She stood still, arms folded around their boy, looking across the street. A group of onlookers still lingered there in the gathering dusk. Then she turned back to Hank.

  “My conditions are this: I get double salary. Hazardous duty pay. And what I say goes. No arguments. I get my own room in the house, not a cot in there with her. It can be next door, if necessary. And—” She pointed a finger at him. “You go get Diego every day and bring him to me, then take him home again.”

  Diego thrust a hand at him; in his palm lay Donut-Boy, black with soot and the glaze broken and cracked but an intact little soldier.

  “Thank you,” Hank said, taking the figurine.

  Then, arm cast, Diego and all, Hank crushed Luz to him with his good arm, and kissed her full on the lips. From the sidewalk he heard a few chuckles.

  Thirty-Two

  Joaquin’s eyebrows rose several inches when he saw Luz and Hank walk into the kitchen together. Then a smirk grew on his lips.

  “The beautiful señorita has returned a la casa. Or should I say, dos senoritas?” With his
spatula Joaquin indicated the guest house. “Will there be more for dinner?”

  Hank held Luz’s hand tight in his. Yes, the beautiful girl has returned to the house, three years after being thrown out. No one was going to throw her out again.

  His head turning side to side, Joaquin stabbed his spatula under a tortilla. “Only one arm to hold her with. Que lastima.”

  “One’s enough, no importarle a uno.”

  Diego moved against Luz’s leg, tugging to get away from her firm hand, as if he wanted to run straight to Joaquin. Joaquin’s dark gaze took in the little boy.

  He nodded, smiling. “Hola, companero. Are you hungry?”

  Leaving Diego with a slice of warm tortilla and in Joaquin’s capable hands, Hank took Luz into the dark and quiet living room. Hank wasn’t worried that Dad would ever find out about the origin of the Cyclist, which Hank placed on the other side of the urn from the marquess. The marquess was back on the mantel shelf, along with Grandfather Joel’s urn, even though half of his ashes were gone. It wasn’t likely that Dad would look inside or even pick the thing up.

  They had already quietly moved Joseph and Susan into the guesthouse, after retrieving scorched-smelling and somewhat damp clothing and belongings for them. They also packed up a box of the figurines that had survived the fire, including the blackened hulks of the soldiers, all of which besides Donut-boy had survived Joseph’s bonfire intact.

  Luz spent a period of time on the phone in the hallway with Joseph’s and Mother’s doctors, writing things down. She had a list of necessities and a prescription for Joseph for the all-night drug store down in Hollywood. Carl obediently went to get it filled.

  They waited in the dining room before slices of flank steak and a platter of asparagus. But no one was hungry except Diego. The telephone rang, and rang, and Joaquin refused to answer it, so Hank trudged back into the hallway.

  “Hank?” Connie’s voice, breathless, rushed. “Is the little boy OK?”

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  Silence, the hiss of the line. For a moment, Hank worried she had hung up.