This Day's Death Read online

  Mrs. Girard: “I’ve been a good wife, a good mother!” Amelia Robles, gleefully: “Some terrible sin—festering, festering!”

  “I can’t remember!” cries Mrs. Girard.

  Jim enters his mother’s room, quickly. She sits on the bed, her hands at her temples, her head thrust back, eyes shut, as she tries to dig into her mind for the black sin these people are insisting she find. The man and the woman are standing by her bed, almost a duplication of the drawing on their orange card—except for the ghost of Jesus; and this: Miss Lucía is there, too, one hand touching the statue of the Mother of Sorrows, as if to charge herself from a Catholic current emanating from the Virgin to banish the Protestant man and woman.

  Carlos and Amelia Robles are not yet aware of Jim.

  Amelia Robles: “Illness is— . . .”

  “. . . —God’s judgment!” Carlos Robles finishes.

  Amelia Robles: “Maybe God doesn’t want you to— . . .”

  “. . . —be well. This illness may be His Divine Way of cleansing you— . . .”

  “. . . —of Sin,” Amelia finishes. “A corrupt life— . . .”

  “What the hell do you know about her life?” Jim said, almost softly, to the strange man and his wife. He stands by his mother, his hand on her shoulder.

  The man and woman look at him curiously, as if they don’t understand. Automatically, smiles slash their faces again.

  Mrs. Girard’s eyes remain closed: “What grave sin, my Son?” And she covers his hand with hers.

  “Join us!” says Amelia Robles, extending her hand to Jim. Though the smile is still there—as if she had forgotten it—the rest of her face is grave. “Join us, young-man! You mustn’t— . . .”

  “. . . —turn from God!” Carlos Robles finishes.

  “Get the hell out!” Jim says firmly.

  Moving arthritically, Amelia Robles makes an incongruous little laugh, as if she had been goosed.

  “There’s grave Evil in this house,” says Carlos Robles, inching away from Jim.

  “Oh, I could sense it immediately!” Amelia Robles choruses; and as if she has found the source of evil, can even smell it, she sniffs at Jim; but she too begins to move away.

  “It’ll go when you leave,” Jim says, still in control—but precariously.

  “Our fee— . . .” Amelia Robles says frostily.

  “Go to hell,” Jim says, moving menacingly toward the man. They march out of the house.

  Miss Lucía sits next to Mrs. Girard, soothing her. “You don’t yell at God like that,” she said. “You try to reason with Him—softly—and hope He’ll listen. . . . I know a woman in Juarez who really cures—a curandera—a healer—she doesn’t cure with curses; she cures with crosses and amulets of the saints—a few herbs and holy palm, a candle— . . . She’s a good Catholic.” And then she begins to invoke saints Jim has never heard of—her own, perhaps made-up, personal array: “Little Rogelio, saint of the fields; Santa Carmelita, patroness of the wounded, of ranchers, children, movie stars— . . .” And she crouches there, so tiny and suddenly frightened, this exaggeratedly made-up woman, looking like an aged, rejected play-doll, a tiny old child; and the two, she and his mother, hold hands as if for mutual protection.

  “What sin?” Mrs. Girard kept asking. “Have we . . . sinned terribly, my Son?” she asked him. And she covers her eyes with the dark glasses.

  We— . . . Jim frowns.

  She looks at him from behind the dark glasses. Then abruptly, surprising him, she says: “I do want you to be happy, Salvador!”—invoking the ghost of her dead son, as if in a trance.

  “I’m not Salvador,” Jim says quietly.

  “I know,” she said. “Salvador and Esperanza are dead—and I haven’t visited their graves in so long. . . . My Son, I meant you; I do want you to be happy.”

  Why did she say that? What does she mean by it? Does it imply an awareness of the war?—the stakes in the war? —his life. In some clumsy way have the hideous man and his wife released— . . . ? Or is it only that she’s become aware of his declaration of war—his resistance earlier?—a war which she is announcing she will not fight. Is she attempting to end it that way, with that statement of her concern for him?

  “What, my Son?”

  Straining toward him, she asked him the familiar question, although he had said nothing. And does she now want an answer that will explain—end—the war?

  Still by his mother’s side, Miss Lucía says to her: “We’ll say a prayer, you follow me please. . . . Toda la enfermedad saldra de ésta casa— . . .”

  And his mother repeats in Spanish: “All illness will leave this house— . . .”

  “Floating out on those sacred currents of water in which Jesus waded when he was on his mission— . . .”

  “Floating out on those sacred currents— . . .”

  “The seven last words will be my salvation— . . .”

  “The seven last words— . . .”

  “I offer up a bouquet of prayers—carnations—to aid in my struggle.”

  “Two. Two wreaths of prayers— . . .”

  “I will offer two carnations for the good of the souls in purgatory.”

  “I will offer two carnations— . . .”

  “I will offer two more for— . . .”

  “. . . —two more for— . . .”

  “. . . and seven for the living— . . .”

  “. . . seven for the living— . . .”

  “Great and wondrous, the twelve truths! . . .”

  “. . . —the twelve truths! . . .”

  “Perfume of spring— . . .”

  “Spring. . . .”

  And their voices conjoined in a current, his mother’s becoming firm and vibrant and young; and Jim thought: Jesuschrist, it’s over—the spell’s over, she’s okay again—. . .

  Abruptly ending the prayer, Miss Lucía explained: “It includes the whole universe, all twenty-four planets. I made it up myself, Señora Girard. . . . I was preparing, long ago, to be a nun. In Mexico. . . . Now, please, won’t you eat?”

  But Mrs. Girard rejected the food. “All at once— . . . I feel— . . . so sick,” she said.

  Just as he quickly accepted that the oxygen tank had not worked, so Jim accepts this new regression. And so the war between mother and son continues. No victory for either: At best there had been a brief truce. Neither has relented.

  Miss Lucía asks the inevitable question: “What hurts you?”

  “I don’t know! Something! I’m just . . . very sick.”

  Afraid he’ll succumb critically to pity—and therefore to panic, and, so, surrender—Jim leaves the room quickly; he goes into his own bedroom.

  Suddenly he felt the enormous weight of the past months, the horror of his mother’s illness, the invisible weight of the terror in Los Angeles—the telephone which hasn’t rung to cancel the trial he will otherwise have to face. Felt it all, and he heard the rising wind threatening the windows. And remembered: a tumbleweed. When he was a child. Surrounding him, it had contained him. He felt like that now—as if all that was twisted in his life were assaulting him physically.

  He sees his mother’s photograph, his own reflection superimposed on the slanted glass pane covering it.

  He walks out of his room, out of the house, into the cold wind.

  Past the yellow flowers.

  YELLOW FLOWERS.

  Death.

  Not even feeling the cold on his coatless body—fleeing not only his mother’s darkness, but, too, the telephone’s silence—he walked to his car, got in, drove away. Tires screamed.

  As if speeding through a familiar dream, past familiar sights of this desert city now shrouded by the gray day; specter memories of his mother, riding with him. . . . Saint Joseph’s Church; she went to mass there. . . . Southwestern Hospital; he put her on a wheelchair, carried her out. In her velvet robe, she sat like a queen; going home. . . . Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe; on her latest saint’s day, she went to mass there. Coming out,
she lost her balance; he was waiting outside for her, his car double-parked; he rushed to her. “I feel faint, my Son.”

  Pursued by those memories as he always was when he was away, he wants suddenly to turn back. Physically distant now, his mother’s dark room summons him back.

  Deliberately to resist the onslaught of memories, he turns the radio on. Hard-rock acid sounds melting. He thinks of those in jail, without bail; and he feels guilty. Abruptly he turns the radio off. Remembers: To Roy Stuart: “What happens to the ones who don’t have bail?” Roy: “They just get lost.” Lost in the maze of courts.

  He drives into the mountains. McKelligon Canyon. Cactuses grayish yellow. Patina of green on the slopes, caves like dark mouths against them. A clutch of tumbleweeds trapped by the wind. Fierce electric gray, a cloud rips the sky like a giant scythe. The hidden sun floods the desert in eery light. A sudden flutter of birds—seduced by the unseasonal warmth earlier, now trapped by winter. . . . (His mother feeds them after a rain.)

  To the left, a dirt road leads to what must have once been a one-room stone house. Windows gutted, no ceiling, giving no hint of what its purpose might have been—a ruin now—it stands there improbably—defiantly—in the desert. Jim turns into that road; parks, gets out. He walks into the gutted abandoned room, the wind whispering shrilly. On peeled crumbling walls are scrawled sex messages, sex drawings—ubiquitous sex invitations, exhortations.

  Another car has driven into the canyon. Unexpectedly, it too enters the dirt road—and stops behind Jim’s car. The driver stares at Jim through closed windows.

  A cop! Following me! Jim thinks immediately. Why? Could Daniels’ vengeance be so great, to try to implicate him in— . . . What? An attempt to flee? But he left the state with knowledge of his attorney. (Maybe Alan just told me I could leave, anticipating no difficulty; and if Daniels found out, contacted a cop here in the city?—that tight fraternity— . . .) Cool it, man, he warns himself; that’s going too far; the guy’s just—. . .

  The man got out of his car. “Hi,” he approached Jim. “You must be freezing without a shirt— . . .” He laughs. “I mean, without a jacket.”

  Without a shirt— . . . ! Suddenly furious, surrendering to his suspicions not only that this man is a cop but that he has some relation to Daniels, knows something of that shirtless Los Angeles afternoon—Jim turns steely eyes on the stranger and hears himself ask:

  “What the hell do you want?”

  (His mind reverberates: “What the hell do you want?” Frightened eyes, an alley; a wallet; a hand; a red room. Crash! Naked figures.)

  The man retreats quickly: “Nothing—I was just trying to be friendly.”

  Seeing him drive away—and resenting the suspicions that ruled those wild moments: Is it even logical to think the man was a cop? Jim wonders now. He remembers: the fear in Daniels’ eyes, fear masked by bravado. Fear and—. . .

  Pools of clouds have settled on the mountains.

  He drives out of the canyon. Automatically toward home. Then he turns sharply in the opposite direction. But: A telephone booth. He stops the car, gets out, dials the number at home. Before it rings, he hangs up.

  The dime falls.

  He remembers: A penny. Jail. His name was called, the cop opened the barred door, he was being bailed out. Wadding the dollar bill he had kept, he threw it into the cell of the man across from him. Then: he, Steve, and two others: reclaiming their possessions. A cop punched a button behind the wired counter, a buzzer sounded, releasing an iron door through which they would leave. It was then that Jim dropped a penny on the slick floor. The door continued to buzz angrily. But suddenly the most important thing in the world to Jim had become to retrieve that fallen penny—a symbol of the cops’ having nothing of him. The buzzing ground on in his ears.

  Bzzzzzzzzzzz!

  Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

  Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

  Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

  Jim retrieved the penny. Standing up, he looked back at the cops and dropped the penny into his pocket.

  Shivering in his car now in El Paso, he speeds to Barbara’s house. Fridays she often gets home early. If she’s not there, he’ll wait. Suddenly he needs her. He imagines: Steve’s wife— . . . He blocks the image instantly. He sees Barbara’s car in front of the apartment building she lives in. He rushes in, knocks at her door, calls: “Barbara!”

  She looks even lovelier now. Her long hair is loose on her shoulders. “Hello,” she said warmly. Then quickly: “Jim, you’re not even wearing a shirt—I mean, sweater!”

  The same slip the man in the canyon made. . . . “I just walked out of the house,” he tells her.

  Inside the handsome apartment decorated with bright Mexican furniture: “How is your mother?” she asks him.

  “I don’t know, I just had to get out. I should call, I guess.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  Instantly resentful, “Why?” he challenges.

  “I mean, I’m sure she’s well,” Barbara says hurriedly. “I just called you—a strange lady answered, she told me you’d gone to the store—and that there’s a tree in your living room like the one in the Garden of Eden; she also told me snakes suffer too.”

  Jim laughs, relieved to be able to do so. “That’s Miss Lucía—she’s working for us—she’s strange, I’ll admit. She’ll be with us only a couple of days,” he adds.

  She sits next to him on the couch, and she reaches for his hand. Surprising himself, he rejects the familiar gesture, removes his hand quickly. He tries clumsily to explain: “My hands are real cold—I’d chill yours.” But he knows that wasn’t it; he reacted instinctively. “I’m going to Lloyd’s tonight,” he said, to dissipate the awkwardness, “and they asked me to bring you.”

  “Thanks—but I can’t go,” she said expectedly.

  “Maybe I should call home.” He tries to sound casual. “No, maybe I’ll wait. I think I will call.” This time he gets up, to finalize his decision. “I’m expecting a call,” he adds, attempting to disguise his anxiety over his mother. He walks into the bedroom, where the telephone is. (He’s stayed overnight often, telling his mother he’s driving to New Mexico for Lloyd. Those times he would watch her for a reaction of suspicion. There never was one.)

  He dials the number now. The phone rings once. Then again. (What if she got terribly sick, the doctor was called, they rushed her to the hospital, it was different this time.) Ring! (What if Miss Lucía left in a panic—and his mother tried to get up, couldn’t, fell— . . .) Ring!

  “Bueno?”

  “Miss Lucía, it’s Jim. How is my mother?”

  “She— . . .” Pause. A sigh.

  “How is she!” he almost yells.

  “The same,” Miss Lucía says with another heavy sigh. “She won’t get up. But then the body gets heavy with illness, you know. The mind has to sleep at times— . . .”

  Mother, Mother, his heart screams.

  “She asked where you were,” Miss Lucía has gone on. “I told her you went to the store. She asked for you several times. I think she wants you here.”

  She wants you here! Rage replaced the tenderness of moments earlier. “I’ll be over when I can!” he said sharply, his resistance strengthened by what he interprets as an indirect summons in what has become—he sees now —a crucial siege in the war. And this occurs: Jesus!—does she think by her illness she can keep me from going back to Los Angeles? Abruptly: “Has there been any call for me?”

  “Yes, a lovely young lady; she spoke Spanish with a pretty accent— . . . Other than that— . . . Wait, there was another call. I’m trying to remember— . . .”

  Jim wants to shout at her. Suddenly another second added to the long waiting seems unbearable.

  “Oh, my, of course,” Miss Lucía says. “It rang this time—now—when you called. That’s the only other time. I knew it had rung—but it was you calling. We have to help each other. The heart grows old too.”

  Suddenly: Unwelcome: Can anyone at this poin
t really stop the legalistic machinery? Do court proceedings assume a life of their own—are born with a charge, die with the execution of a sentence? . . . No; he rejects that. There won’t be a trial! Not guilty.

  “How is she?” Barbara asked him.

  “The same. It’s been the longest spell,” he said worriedly. “But then today I haven’t given in.” Then angrily: “And I’m not going to, the way she’d want.” He sits down, planting his feet firmly as if otherwise they might spring to his mother’s dark room. Surrender. The war ends. The terrible conquest is completed. A kind of death. Instead, the war rages: She’s battling from her bedroom. He imagines: the oxygen tank standing watch; the vaporizer steaming; the electric heater, wires glowing—the pills, the cane: the arsenal. And he’s battling her each moment he stays away. Stalemate in the siege! The war clearly undecided, it can go either way.

  “I suppose Miss Lucía thinks I’m cruel for not rushing back when my mother is sick,” Jim says, reminding himself of this: “But she doesn’t know the many, many times— . . .”

  “You’re not the least cruel, Jim,” Barbara tells him.

  He frowns, looks at her. Remembering the strange sexual rage which only she can control. He says quickly: “It occurred to me—just now—maybe she feels threatened by my going back and forth to Los Angeles— . . .” He stopped, instantly regretting he had said that much.

  Already Barbara is saying: “But she knows you’re going to lawschool in Austin in June; she hasn’t seemed to mind that.”

  “That’s different. When I’ve gone to Los Angeles—not these last times but those other years—it was to be away from her—just that—forcing myself to be away from her. From her love. And from my love of her too,” he adds. “Going to school— . . . She might even come to Austin with me. But Los Angeles— . . .” Abruptly: “This morning I got a strange feeling that her illness is really something between her and me. I mean, the doctors say they can’t find anything physical that causes these spells. If I could say, She’s sick of this and it’s being cured—well, that would be easier to take. As it is— . . . But the doctors can’t be sure. And she’s having more tests made next week. And what if there is something very physically wrong, and I’m— . . . ?” Battling her, his mind finishes though he couldn’t say the words then. “But, no,” he continues verbalizing the confusion of disturbing contradictions.