The Shrine at Altamira Read online

  THE

  SHRINE

  AT

  ALTAMIRA

  OTHER BOOKS BY JOHN L’HEUREUX

  Quick as Dandelions • Rubrics for a Revolution

  Picnic in Babylon • One Eye and a Measuring Rod

  No Place for Hiding • Tight White Collar

  The Clang Birds • Family Affairs • Jessica Fayer

  Desires • A Woman Run Mad • Comedians

  An Honorable Profession • The Handmaid of Desire

  Having Everything

  THE SHRINE AT ALTAMIRA

  JOHN

  L’HEUREUX

  Copyright © 1992 by John L’Heureux

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  First published in 1992 by Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin

  Books USA Inc.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  FIRST GROVE PRESS EDITION

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  L’Heureux, John.

  The shrine at Altamira / John L’Heureux.

  p. cm.

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4682-4

  I. Title.

  PS3562.H4S47 1999

  813’.54—dc21

  99-27591

  CIP

  Designed by Francesca Belanger

  Darwing on title page by Anita Kunz

  Grove Press

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  For Harriet Doerr

  … the enigma of cruelty is no more tantalizing than that of the simplest act of love.

  ANDRÉ MALRAUX

  … if you can’t imagine yourself an SS officer hustling the Jewish women and children to the gas chamber, you need to be more closely in touch with your buried self.

  PAUL FUSSELL

  … I am seeking the crucial region of the soul where absolute Evil is pitted against fraternity.

  ANDRÉ MALRAUX

  THE SHRINE

  In a cypress grove just beyond Point Reyes there is a shrine where for centuries survivors of shipwreck, fire, and earthquake have given thanks for their escape from death and, to commemorate their moment of salvation, have offered some token: a piece of driftwood that bore them to shore, the charred blanket that put the fire out, the fallen tile, the shattered glass, sometimes the riven stone itself.

  There are no crutches here to show the crippled have been made whole, no abandoned prostheses, no white canes and black glasses. This is not a shrine where miracles occur. It is a place where the faithful come to give thanks, to make vows, to honor life snatched somehow from certain death. There are empty liquor bottles, it is true, and syringes, but no one knows if these are tokens of the saved or the last hope of believers too far gone to pray.

  On the trees around the shrine, grateful clients of the Virgin have tacked up vows and letters and poems. As you would expect, they are badly written, often embarrassing and sentimental, and they hint at the secret horrors of lives undone by alcohol, disease, desire, love and lust, and by fate as harsh and impersonal as the winds that blow through Altamira. Without any doubt they are sincere, and all of them, in their way, give thanks. And all of them make promises. All except one. That one, on pale blue paper in a small, neat hand, simply asks a question: “Why?” It is signed Maria.

  This will be terrible; do not deceive yourself. We hear stories like this on television but we do not look, and when they turn up in newspapers, we glance away, because we know there are crazy people and people who are mad with love, but we refuse to know any more than that. We lead normal lives, careful lives, we are decent men and women.

  Still, these things happen.

  Still, people do such things.

  The shrine at Altamira is ancient, sacred once to gods we no longer recognize, but for the past three hundred years it has been dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Mother of Hope.

  ONE

  Maria saw Russell for the first time at the Halloween Hop, and she fell in love with him. She was in her junior year and he was a senior, a transfer student, so he didn’t know anybody. He was sitting alone, an Anglo, big, and very quiet, and his name was Russell Whitaker. Russell Whitaker, she said to herself. She repeated the name, Russell Whitaker, the sound of money. For fun, and because it was Halloween, she had brought a pair of joke glasses with her, the ones with fuzzy eyebrows and a false nose, and after a while she put on the glasses and went over and stood in front of him.

  “Russell Whitaker,” she said, “do you want to dance with me?”

  He looked up at her, smiled, and then blushed, and said, “I don’t dance.”

  She took off the glasses and stood there.

  “I don’t know how,” he said.

  “I could teach you,” she said. “Or I could just sit with you.”

  He looked away, and then he shrugged, so she sat down.

  His left hand was twisted a little, and the fingers were smooth and pinkish, as if they weren’t real. When he saw her staring, he covered his left hand with his right one.

  “My hand,” he said.

  He had pale blue eyes. Looking into them, she could see he must be very gentle. She leaned close to him. He was wearing Old Spice.

  She said nothing, but she was excited and happy.

  Until that moment Maria had wanted only one thing: to get away—from her mother and from the purple house and from the rotten neighborhood. To get away from being Mexican-American. To get away from being nobody. But that night at the Halloween Hop, she decided she wanted something else. She wanted Russell Whitaker—who knows why?—and she would get him. She would get away too, but first she would get Russell Whitaker. Everything else could wait.

  More than a year passed and they had been lovers for almost that whole time. She was eighteen now, a senior in high school, and Russell was a freshman at San Jose State. He was doing badly, he might flunk out, he was not as smart as she was. But if he flunked out, how would they get away? How would she get away? She thought about this all the time, though she wasn’t thinking about it now, because they had just made love and she was lying on her back, waiting for her heart to start beating again. She felt him move in the bed, felt his twisted hand lightly at her breast.

  “I’ve got a job,” he said. “I’m going to quit school.”

  He said, “We can get married.”

  “Maria?” he said. “What do you think?”

  She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “I’m breathing again,” she said.

  “So what do you think? We can get married now.”

  It was him she wanted, and she didn’t have him yet, not completely. He didn’t love her the way she loved him. So when he said again, “We can get married now,” she stretched beneath him—thinking Mrs. Russell Whitaker, Maria A. Whitaker—and she said, “Anything. Whatever you want. Only love me,” and she twisted her body from beneath his, kissing his shoulder, his neck, his chest.

  “Love me,” she said, and she fixed him with that look: she made h
er eyes a little wider as she thought, You are the only thing in the world I’ll ever love, and she kept on thinking it until her eyes grew soft and wet, and for that minute he was hers, complete.

  “Oh,” she said, loving his sudden pain, “love me.”

  Russell had been sent up to paint the dormer, but as soon as the foreman was out of sight, he scrambled to the top and stood on the peak of the roof, one hand on the chimney for balance. He wanted to get a look at where he was. All around, below him, were rich private homes, with pools and flower gardens and trees everywhere. At a distance, past the freeway and the foothills and the long ridge of mountains, somewhere out there, lay the steely blue of the Pacific Ocean. He stood on the roof, looking. It was another clear winter day in California. Turning a little, he could see the miles and miles of flat-roofed houses, all alike, stretching north and south along El Camino. And he could see the thick cluster of buildings that was San Jose State. He had quit a week ago. He had not waited to flunk out. He turned back to look at the Santa Cruz Mountains, imagining the ocean that lay beyond.

  So he was going to marry her. He would move out of the broken-down house he lived in with his father, that drunk, that lunatic, and he would get a little place somewhere that would be their own. He’d be married and have a job and they’d have a life together. They’d be in life instead of just watching it. They’d be a couple.

  There was something wrong, though, he knew that. He loved Maria, but she loved him more than he loved her. She said so herself. He did love her. He tried to. He just didn’t feel it the way he should. But she was almost beautiful, and she was sexy, and when she looked at him the way she did sometimes, he knew she was the right one for him. When she looked at him, he had a feeling that he was somebody. Was that the same as being in love? And who else would have him anyway?

  He took off his cap—a white painter’s cap, stiff, not yet shaped to his head—and wiped his forehead with it and then put it back on. He looked over at San Jose State.

  Maybe he should wait until he fell in love with somebody the way Maria was in love with him. Because, after all, what was the rush? He could go on living with his father; he wasn’t afraid of him anymore, and his father knew it. He didn’t have to worry about any crap from him. He could save money, and wait. It was scary to get married and have your own place to live and somebody to support. But he would never find anybody better than Maria. And he wanted something to happen.

  He wanted to make something happen.

  He looked out toward the mountains, but he was seeing her face beneath him as they made love. “Russell,” she said, like magic, like casting a spell. He repeated it now, standing on the roof, saying it the way she said it to him, in bed, in love. He saw her face. “Love me,” she said, adoring, sexy. “Love me.”

  “Hey, peckerhead,” the foreman shouted. “You’re supposed to be painting that dormer.”

  Russell waved at him and began edging down the slope of the roof to the dormer. It was his second week and he was still not comfortable with heights.

  “Sometime today!” the foreman yelled, and went to check on the others.

  Russell stood on the scaffolding now and stared into the bucket of paint. He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He hated the smell of paint.

  This was going to be his life from now on, for good.

  Between history and English periods Maria was standing at her locker, pretending to look for a book. Actually, she was thinking and didn’t want anybody to see her doing it. It had just struck her once again, at the end of history period, that sex and love and marriage were completely different things and the other kids didn’t seem to know it. She knew it, and she knew what she was getting into. She’d marry, which would be one kind of life, and then she’d finish high school and win a scholarship and go to college, which would be another kind of life, but she’d be Mrs. Whitaker by then, with a husband who was a housepainter, and this is where it got too complicated for her. She’d miss the fun of college, and dates, and late nights in the dorms. She’d miss being young and free like the others. Her life really wouldn’t be her own. But she loved Russell, she wanted him, she wanted to marry him. Why?

  She stopped thinking and leaned her head against the locker door.

  Why should she marry him? The question kept coming back to her, stupidly. She loved him, that’s why. She pulled herself up straight. She had to think.

  She stared into her locker, thinking.

  Somebody was standing behind her, but she didn’t turn to look. To hell with them. She bent over and searched through the books and crap on the floor of her locker as if she expected to find something she’d lost. She stood up. They were still there. She turned around to face whoever it was. She was ready with her fighting look.

  It was Marcy Sherman, whose father owned the Sherman department stores, and she gave Maria that thin smile of hers and said, “I was looking at your hair. You have the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen.”

  Maria stared hard at her and saw she wasn’t joking or being mean or putting her on.

  “Like silk,” Marcy said.

  Maria softened. She drew a strand of hair through her fingers, looking at it, and then she looked at Marcy. For that minute, she couldn’t speak. The bell rang. “Time for class,” Maria said, and tried to smile.

  But she did not go to English class. She went down the corridor to the girls’ room where she locked the stall door and, huddling against the back wall, she cried. She didn’t know why.

  For the hell of it, just playing a game, Maria told Russell she would not marry him. “I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “I can’t go through with it.”

  She had been doing this, off and on, for the entire month since he’d first asked her. She explained herself differently each time.

  A month ago she had said yes, she would marry him, but the circumstances were different then—they had just finished making love and his eyes were so soft and pleading that of course she had said yes—so it didn’t count. The next day she had decided not to marry him. She wanted more than he could give her, she said, she wanted out and up. She didn’t want to be a painter’s wife. Besides, she had taken the SATs and might get a scholarship. She couldn’t give up her future. She had to have a life too. Russell was crushed and for days he wandered around in a deep depression, attentive as always but saying almost nothing. Then one afternoon he showed up at her house and he was furious. He could barely speak, and he looked mad enough to strike her, so she gave him a glass of iced tea and told him to have a seat and calm down. He sat there at the kitchen table, staring, squeezing the glass, hard. There was a sudden popping sound as the tumbler shattered in his hand, a tinkle of glass, and then tea flooded the cloth and there was blood on his palm. So she said yes after all, she would marry him. She wanted him, more than anything in the world. She gave him that look. He was elated.

  A week later she said no, and once more he was depressed. But the next day she got her SAT scores, and they were very bad. She could forget about Stanford or Harvard or Yale, she could see that, and maybe about every other place as well. What if she couldn’t get in anywhere? What if she just didn’t have it? She burned the College Board letter and told her friends Michelle and Benni that her scores were 740 Verbal and 699 Math. She told Russell yes, she would marry him, yes, again. And again he was elated.

  A few days later, resentful that she was sacrificing college for marriage, she told him no, and watched while his dumb anger set in and he grew silent and furious and powerless, and then she said she was only teasing. Yes, she would marry him.

  She didn’t know why she did this, except that it was a wonderful game, wanting him and pretending not to want him—Russell Whitaker with his pale blue eyes. It was terrible to do this to him. She was simply terrible, she told her friend Michelle, the way she tortured him with her love.

  Mrs. Russell Whitaker, she thought. Maria A. Whitaker.

  Later, a full month since she first agreed to marry
him, Maria said for the last time, “I’ve made up my mind. I can’t do it.”

  There was silence for a moment, and then a remarkable thing happened. Something in Russell changed.

  Maria saw the change as it happened. She had just refused him, and she watched as his jaw went rigid and a red flush mounted from his neck to his ears, and his pale eyes narrowed in fury. Then slowly the blood drained from his face and she thought he was going to faint, but he only stared at her, speechless, white, his eyes nearly closed. This wasn’t like his usual anger; he looked sick; he looked like he might die. She put her hand on his arm. His skin was wet and cold. There was an acid smell to him. She wanted to run and hide, but she waited, her hand on his arm, and gradually his color returned. He opened his eyes. After a moment, he shook his head a little and smiled at her as if nothing had happened. He loved her, he said, he couldn’t live without her, he was crazy for her.

  She had no idea what had happened to him, or to them, but she decided she would not play that game anymore.

  Seven years from now, in jail awaiting sentence, Russell would think of this moment and smile bitterly, because he understood at last what had happened to him. He had fallen in love. The balance had shifted, and he loved Maria more than she loved him. At that moment he had loved her so badly he wanted to kill her.

  Sitting in his jail cell, waiting, Russell would think of her and smile, and sometimes he would laugh—a short, harsh bark with no pleasure in it. At these times his cellmate was moved to strike a match and toss the burning flame at him, halfheartedly, a reminder, just to keep him on his toes.

  It was a beautiful winter morning—not a hint of rain—and Ana Luisa was on her way to Blackberry Heights in Los Altos to clean house for the Jacobsons.

  Ana Luisa cleaned house for nine families in the San Jose area, one house in the morning and one in the afternoon, five days a week, with Friday afternoon off. She made a good living. The women she cleaned for thought she was the old-fashioned kind. And, mostly, she was. She wore a scarf on her head and tattered espadrilles on her feet, and she pretended to understand only a little English and to speak none at all. “Sí,” she answered, “sí, sí,” to whatever they asked her to do, and then she was free to ignore them or not, depending on how she felt. And what could they do about it? Cleaning women were not easy to find.