This Day's Death Read online

  In the amber light of the ornate iron-grilled pole lamp, she’s like a strange—gold—apparition. A smiling apparition frozen in icy gold light.

  Miss Lucía sits on the couch looking at her.

  “See, my Son,” his mother says to him, “I’ve come back!” And she smiles her most beautiful smile. “See how well I am now. Look!”

  And humming “The Blue Danube” softly, she begins to do a graceful waltz about the room. “This is how I used to dance when I was a girl,” she says coyly. She turns her head from side to side, her hands weaving lightly before her in rhythm to the hummed music.

  Jim watches incredulously. Only earlier she had lain gasping— . . .

  “I’m well now, your Mother’s come back,” she says in a near whisper.

  Still waltzing eerily like a ghost, she extends her hands out to him:

  “Come, my Son,” she sighs. “Come—dance with me!”

  JUDGE ARNOLD CORY ENTERS HIS COURTROOM.

  Everyone stands.

  Jim sees: a far from stern man, pink-faced, rotund, sixty or more years, obviously short despite the elevated bench on which he now sits; white, thinning crescent of hair. The kind of man one can easily imagine as a chubby child or as a kindly grandfather. Only the black robe invests him with the aura of legalistic ceremony.

  And so there had to be a trial: as if the rules of its own covert physics would not allow the machine to stop until its gears unwound fully in that ritual of judgment.

  Jim sits in back of the crowded courtroom, Roy and Steve flanking him. Behind the railing that separates them from the judge’s turf—a distinct boundary—other defiant-faced defendants stare at the man on the bench who will judge their whole lives on one moment of them. Where a jury would be, Alan Bryant and Frank Edmondson sit like arbiters between the two turfs. Daniels is on a front bench, alone. Jones, the other cop, is not here. Standing near Alan is a very short, terrible-looking little man. The district attorney. He has demented eyes—one of which crosses, the iris seems to float crazily out of control in its socket.

  Alan is motioning Jim and Steve to come forward.

  A signal of personal animosity—and a warning: Jim pauses beside Daniels. Waits.

  With his one steady eye, while the other circles the room madly, the district attorney—a deputy—peers at Jim and Steve. A twisted smile crowds his squeezed face.

  “Girard and Travis!”

  The judge looks first at Jim, then at Steve. There is no discernible meaning in that look.

  “Your honor, this will be a submission with additional testimony,” Alan is saying, “and we will request that the matter go over for that additional testimony.”

  Although Alan had already arranged for a photographer to take the films they would present at the trial, a steady drizzle—since Jim’s arrival in Los Angeles—had changed their plans. Rather than proceed without them—and this had been agreed to since early yesterday, despite Jim’s and Steve’s disappointment that it would still not end today—they would ask for a continuance for a few days—and hope the rain would stop.

  “I’ve read the transcript, and I’m ready to dispose of this case today, counsel,” Cory says firmly. An undistinguished, indistinguishable voice. “How much additional testimony will be needed? I would prefer to dispose of it today.”

  “An hour; perhaps more, your honor,” Alan says.

  The judge agrees to the continuance.

  The deputy district attorney stands on his toes as if to stretch his short body to match the authoritative tone of voice he will use to recite embalmed words: “The people offer the following stipulation—that this case be submitted to the court based on the transcript of the proceedings had at the preliminary hearing; that each side reserve the right to offer additional evidence; that all exhibits received at the preliminary hearing be deemed in evidence at these proceedings— . . .”

  The matter was set for next Wednesday, a week away.

  In the hall Edmondson was saying dourly to Steve as Alan and Jim walked by with Roy: “The judge was ready to dispose of the case today—you heard him. He— . . .”

  “Why was Edmondson so ominous about the judge wanting to . . . dispose” (he couldn’t use that clumsy word of implied contempt without hesitating) “of the case today?” Jim asked Alan when they were downstairs in the gray, rancid lobby like a railroad station.

  “Only that the judge had already read the transcript of the preliminary hearing.”

  “And made up his mind on the basis of the cop’s lies?”

  “So what?—we’ve got plenty of time to change that, and we will—even if it doesn’t stop raining before we can take the films.”

  Alan went to call his office. Jim motions to Steve, who’s getting out of the fat, cumbersome elevator. Obviously to avoid Steve, Roy goes to a water faucet. Jim asks Steve: “Where’ll I call you when it stops raining?”

  “Either at work or at home. My wife and kid aren’t here,” he explains. “It seemed a good time to suggest they go see her parents in San Francisco. And a bad time to afford it,” he tries to laugh. “I’ve already asked for a bank loan—Mr. Edmondson raised my fee—but if you need money, Jim— . . .”

  Jim thanks him awkwardly, assures him he won’t. They had agreed to split the cost of films, the photographer.

  In the drizzle, downtown Los Angeles is like the ghost of a city, steely buildings like carved icebergs.

  “You don’t like Steve, Roy—why?” Jim asks Roy bluntly in Roy’s car—he drove Jim to court today.

  “Look at the mess he got you into,” Roy answers quickly.

  “He didn’t get me into anything. Daniels— . . .”

  At the restaurant they went to, Jim sees a ferociously blond youngman of perhaps twenty sitting with a woman of about forty. Passing them, he overhears the youngman call the woman “mommy.” The woman is skinny, with hungry eyes—she looks like a harpy; her hands go through a constant repertory of motions, duplicated by her son. The son lights her cigarette eagerly, smiles anxiously at her. Yet there’s an almost palpable tension between them. Jim turns away.

  “Goddamn rain,” he says. “Each hour it goes on hurts us. We should have taken the movies immediately after the bust.”

  As if he had prepared the question long ago, many times, but withheld it till now, Roy asks abruptly: “Has Alan considered a lie detector test to prove the cop is lying?”

  “They’d ask other questions.”

  “And you were there.”

  “Yeah, you know that, man.”

  “ Why, Jim?”

  The girl with silver lips. The trance. Anarchy rushing into focus. Green. “I just was, man.”

  They order.

  “Someone told me—uh—last night—that Alan is supposed to be one of the best of the honest criminal attorneys here,” Roy tells Jim.

  “The bondsman said that, too.”

  “Have you . . . seen his friend since that night?” Roy asks slowly.

  Jim says quickly: “No.”

  Roy studies Jim carefully.

  Jim looks away—at the strange woman. Her son holds his cigarette exactly the way she does, throws his head back exactly like her—one hand at his throat, like hers, in imitation laughter.

  “What about the guy you said ran away that afternoon— . . .” Roy starts—again as if he had waited impatiently to form the question. “Maybe he and Steve— . . . And Daniels thought— . . .”

  “Man—you are still hung up!”

  “Look, I know cops are bastards; but why would he— . . . ?”

  “It was him earlier that day,” Jim says. “The motherfucker even warned me—he actually told me I was playing a dangerous game.”

  “You’re positive it was him?”

  “Yes. I mean, I wouldn't swear to it. But— . . .”

  “What about the car?”

  “It was old—that’s all I remember. . . . It was him. But— . . . I’m not sure.”

  The blond youngman lights another
cigarette for his mother. Now he’s staring at Jim. Not yet finished eating, Jim suddenly wants to leave.

  It’s still raining.

  Jim’s sister lives in one of those ubiquitous Southern California complexes built about a pool—six large units, more like houses than apartments—hugging the shimmering water, which at night shatters hidden pastel lights into colored crystals. Short, leafy palmtrees peek languorously into windows amid an atmosphere of imitation luxury.

  “My Son!” his mother says as Jim walks in. She and Miss Lucía were looking out the wide window at the rain. “You look so handsome in that jacket—like your father.”

  After the long day of dying which culminated in the unreal waltz, Mrs. Girard was well. In relief to see the spell broken Jim forgot that there would be tomorrow to be faced. The next day Mrs. Girard fulfilled the important morning’s ritual—the lighting of the candle to the saint, the prayers; and she made breakfast—while Miss Lucía, up before her, kept insisting, “Let me, let me, please, Señora Girard!” Like an intuitive fighter, had his mother known she had advanced too swiftly against his rebellion? Was this only a temporary retreat—a long truce? Another tomorrow came, and she was still well—she seemed to have forgotten the long day, its accusations. Soon the oxygen tank left—died, Jim thought; the vaporizer was stored—buried; the stream of medicines ebbed. Though she continued to go to Dr. del Valle (she and Miss Lucía in a cab—a little saga they went through), miraculously even that changed; the visits became rare. Gratefully, Jim asked the doctor to cancel the neurological examinations; his mother was well. She resumed “exercising”—walking about the house a certain number of times—without her cane, breathing deeply at the open door. Still, tomorrow might bring another verdict. In the evenings, the two women watched Mexican soap operas on television. Later—his mother in her bed, Miss Lucía sitting in the saffron chair—Miss Lucía read to her from the Spanish Bible, and then they prayed fervently. On Christmas, Mrs. Girard went to mass again, holding on to Miss Lucía’s arm.

  The one link unbroken, then, with the eternal day, Miss Lucía stayed on, becoming closer to Mrs. Girard. Fearing a regression in his mother’s condition, Jim allowed her to remain. She ingratiated herself with him too, with her strange flow of words, punctuated by fantasies (as she fled from dream to dream?) and irrelevancies (attaching words as if to erase the logic of her original statements?—she seemed to speak in unclosed parentheses)—irrelevancies which at times were crazy glimpses into her wanderer’s life. And Mrs. Girard seemed to understand it all—even the incoherent phrases. . . . That heavily painted, birdlike, miniature creature—forlornly pretty, exaggeratedly dressed—nestled in their home, roosted huddled in a roll-out bed placed nightly in the living room—where she could see the feathered palmtree the first thing in the morning—a bed Jim stumbled against when he came home late—but very soon he grew used to it and dodged it familiarly. Though she was usually cheerful—and always so with Mrs. Girard—there were times—moments—when her nerves seemed to come alive, when a blackness and silence throttled her. Her enormous eyes would sink in desolation. Then she announced to Jim: “I’ve stopped brooding, now I’ll sing—I studied to be a singer.” And she sang in a small but impressive voice, which had strains of imitation-drunk muriachi street singing.

  Jim had decided he would take his mother with him to Los Angeles. Estela was a good tonic for her. It was understood that Miss Lucía would leave when they departed immediately after New Year. But as that time approached, the two women stayed longer talking and praying in the evening; and often Miss Lucía would tell her own version of Bible stories or invent either a prayer or a song to the Virgin. Finally his mother asked him whether Miss Lucía might come with them. “She told me she doesn't care about wages—if she can come along; she has no one.” Jim agreed—of course he would continue to pay her as before. She would keep his mother company while Estela was at work. At least for this immediate time he had stopped considering expenses. On this trip, definitely, the nightmare would end.

  “Is your business finished, my Son?” his mother just asked Jim. They had been in Los Angeles five days—five rainy days.

  “Not yet, Mother.”

  She frowns.

  “Is Estela home?” he asks.

  “No, youngman,” Miss Lucía says. She’s wearing a brilliant glass bracelet on each wrist—she had bought them in a store in Arizona when they stopped to eat on the way to Los Angeles. She has a childish fascination with sparkling things. She keeps holding the bracelets to the light, creating prismatic reflections. “Time evaporates. The rain’s stopped.”

  The films! Too late today. Jim feels instantly exhilarated. The sky is clearing quickly—the reflection of the sun swims in the pool’s green water.

  “I wonder if it’s raining in the orchards,” Miss Lucía says absently.

  “Will it be much longer, my Son—your business?” his mother asks tensely.

  “One more week,” Jim tells her.

  She seems pleased at the fixed date of departure. “Oh, that will be a good visit with your sister. Then we’ll go home. I wish Estela would come back to live in El Paso—I keep praying for that.”

  Miss Lucía: “The Virgin sees everything, I picked grapes here in California—twice; they grow on vines, they produced the forbidden fruit, as you know, Señora Girard. The fatal apple was gold.”

  “You picked grapes?” Jim asks her.

  “Yes. Men brought us in trucks. There were angry people blocking our paths to the fields, throwing stones at us—and someone said to me, ‘You cried in your mother’s womb, why don’t you stop the stones?’—well, Judas was stoned, and so was Magdalene, and they stoned Christ—and they all cried in their mothers’ wombs; the good and the bad, both are stoned; in the orchards—another time, not then—I sat my mother in the shade, I propped her bones against a tree so I could watch her; they didn’t understand why I would bring an old frail woman with me. She died in a corner, but not there. And those angered men and women with signs—that later time—they didn’t want us to work, we didn’t know why, there were beautiful trees, we couldn’t even leave the barracks at night. All I saw of California was a garden with roses. And the grapes.”

  Jim realizes: She was used to break a strike of their own people—used as a scab without knowing it, without understanding any of it.

  “Well,” Miss Lucía is saying, “the trees— . . .” and smiled. “The Virgin Mary cried in her mother’s womb—the blessed St. Anne’s. Mary’s father, San Joaquin, listened— . . .”

  “You look so handsome, Jim!” It’s Estela, Jim’s beautiful sister. Once a model for a Los Angeles store, Estela is now secretary to the man she goes out with.

  “Oh, the glorious flowers!” Miss Lucía exclaims. “Like the bouquet the Virgin stamped on Juan Diego’s sarape to convince the skeptical priests.”

  Estela hands a bouquet of flowers to her mother.

  Mrs. Girard admires them profusely, and thanks her daughter.

  Not yet entirely at ease with Estela, Miss Lucía goes into the kitchen to prepare dinner.

  “She’s a treasure, that Miss Lucía,” Estela says to Jim in English. “Did you know that Adam and Eve were swallowed in an earthquake—in Mexico?”

  Jim laughs. “She asked me if you’re a movie star,” he tells his sister.

  Still admiring the bouquet, “Your father loved flowers,” Mrs. Girard says. “But not the yellow ones— . . .”

  Estela and Jim stop laughing.

  But their mother continues happily: “He loved flowers—which might seem strange to you.” The clearing afternoon, soft reflected sunlight entering the room—an afternoon conducive to tranquil memories, longings for them. “Oh, he even serenaded me on my saint’s day for years after we were married. He hired musicians to sing las Mañanitas at my window. It was dawn, I’d wake to the sweet sound. He was a very romantic man. He could waltz— . . . beautifully!”

  Her strange waltz.

  Jim and Estela
listen raptly, welcoming this rare glimpse of the man their father had been—so different from the man they feared. “How was he with Esperanza and Salvador?” Jim heard himself ask the question avoided for years.

  “He adored them, whatever they wanted they had, he had money then; but when he lost the ability to get his children, and me, all he wanted for us— . . .” As if, unwelcome, she had glimpsed the other, the angry, man, she staunchly erases that memory with this: “He was a very good husband, he gave me so much—and he was a very good father.” She pauses, as if to make sure she will not be challenged. “And I was a good wife. Even when he was dying, I wouldn’t let anyone else give him his insulin injections. Dr. del Valle sustained me in the hospital. I must give him the injections—not the nurses. And I slept on a cot in his room—until— . . . He was always a good husband.”

  Has she mercifully forgotten all the terror? Jim wonders in amazement.

  “I was the most popular girl in Chihuahua,” she goes on recalling gaily from happier times; she laughs charmingly, hints of the girl she was. “Oh, my dance list was instantly filled. Even my sisters were jealous of me—they were plain, I had all the attention; I never even hear from them. There was a doctor—oh, and a general, too; he said, ‘I’ve just seen the loveliest girl in Mexico.’ Who would believe now that he meant me?”

  “You’re still a great beauty,” Estela tells her, kissing her on the cheek.

  “And if that general saw you now, he’d say the same,” Jim assures her—and hugs her.

  Mrs. Girard smiles; her smile says, I know he would. “When I met your father, he tore my dance list in front of everyone; and he danced every dance with me. He was so handsome—like you, my Son; so romantic, so intelligent. But when he— . . .” She sighs—a judgment on the years that converted the romantic youngman into the bitter oldman of anger and iron silence? “Then your brother had to go into the army and he got married— . . .”