Little Bird of Heaven (46 page)

“…three years later, when it happened. Nobody knew what, exactly. Anton was in Buffalo meeting with some ‘investors’ and he ‘disappeared’—like that. It was a time he and some partner were buying up property on the Strip and he’d expanded the club and people were saying he’d made some enemies, and they had him killed. You hear these things. There was never any obituary of Anton Csaba in the local papers because there was never any body located but there were stories in the papers, on the front page of the
Journal—
‘Prominent Sparta Developer Missing Twelve Days’—that’s the one I cut out, and kept. Nobody could believe, in the paper it said that Anton was forty-nine, and he looked ten years older at least. It was a fact he’d been born in Budapest but he was ‘survived by’ a son living in New York, nobody had any idea that Anton had any family like a normal person. So Anton was gone, this was sometime in 1986. And he had to be dead, buried in concrete somewhere, or dumped in the Niagara River, was what you’d hear. Chet’s got sold, and turned into some ordinary strip joint, nothing classy about it now. So there was some kind of justice for poor Zoe—‘poetic justice’—and for her family though they could not appreciate it. For nobody knew about Anton Csaba and the ones who did, they kept quiet. Sometimes I’d see Delray out on the Strip, or Eddy Diehl, when he was back visiting Sparta, I’d have liked to explain to them, those poor bastards so harassed, but hell, how could I, there is nothing to be proved, in a case like this there is just nothing because it has been destroyed. If you don’t have the police taking in evidence, there can be nothing proved. Even after Anton was gone, years later there are friends of his in Sparta who’d hear if I said anything, this is a damn small town in certain circles!—like that cruel hypocrite and utter bastard Martineau, and his boss Schnagel. So I never said a word. Of this I am ashamed but I had not the strength, then. What I took solace in, Zoe forgave me. I knew this. Zoe was repentant of her life, at the end. She’d seen ‘both sides now.’ In time, I think it had to be Zoe who intervened with Jesus to flood my heart with rapture, when I had no wish
to continue living. I was in the Towaga place, couldn’t get out of bed for days, Zoe would come to me—‘Jacky? Thought it was you!’—she’d kind of tease, but gentle, the way Zoe teased you if she liked you, or loved you. Only if I was alone, and receptive to her, could I feel her presence like something shimmering in the air, and hear her voice that seemed to come out of the air, that sweet-sexy voice when Zoe sang her special songs. But I could not see Zoe! Except if my eyes were shut, sometimes. There’s a special kind of cocaine-high you can get, that isn’t so crazy, it’s like there is a ‘piercing’ of the sky, that’s inside your head, and sometimes then I could ‘see’ Zoe—like an angel, all light. And I would say to her, Oh Zoe why did you take so much money from that man? And those clothes? Didn’t you know who that man was, did you think he was someone just from Sparta, didn’t you know that he is the Devil, he is the Devil come to us on earth, if you take gifts from the Devil you are beholden to the Devil, if you laugh at the Devil the Devil will laugh at you, and pull you down to hell with him. It was the drugs Zoe took—or were given to Zoe, to take—when you are high you lose judgment, Zoe lost ‘proportion’ it was said. Zoe thought she could cast off Anton Csaba like some man she’d cast off in Sparta, like her husband, or a lover, and there would be no consequences. Zoe was going to Vegas with this ‘enter-prenner’ and Anton found out, asked me what did I know about him, when was Zoe planning on leaving, and I said, ‘Zoe wouldn’t stay away from Sparta for long, Zoe would miss her son too much,’ and Anton didn’t say a word just slapped me, hard across the mouth Anton slapped me and I cried saying, ‘Oh! Why did you do that—’ and Anton said because I was lying to him, and so I saw there was no hope, the Devil can see into our hearts if Jesus doesn’t dwell in them to protect us, so I said, ‘Yes Zoe is leaving tomorrow morning, with—’ His name was Scroon, I think. Some name like ‘Walter Scroon.’ This was what Zoe called him though afterward it would be like with ‘George Hardy’—there was no man with that name, the police could not locate any man with that name. So I told Anton all that I knew, because I was frightened he would hurt me worse than he had, I said that Zoe was leaving with ‘Walter Scroon’ who was a ‘music
producer’ and he was coming to pick her up in the morning, maybe around ten, they were driving to Albany to the airport. ‘But if you see Zoe, don’t tell her I told you’—those were my words to Anton Csaba. And Anton just laughed. And it was then Anton introduced me to ‘George Hardy’ to take me out—that weekend—to pay me one thousand dollars—we stayed at the ‘historic’ Inn at Chautauqua Falls—which is so special, and so expensive—and when I returned to Sparta and to West Ferry Street it was like something in a movie, all these vehicles in the street in front of our house, and the street blocked off, and the front door was wide open and cops inside and they told me my ‘roommate’ was dead—‘beaten and strangled in her bed’—and the looks in their faces, like this was some punishment Zoe deserved, that should have been mine, too. There was not a single woman there on the premises—just men—uniform-cops and detectives and emergency medical people—all men—looking at me like I was shit. I fainted, I guess—it was my time to enter ‘The Valley of the Shadow of Death’—where I would dwell for years, until…”

In short breathless gasps like stifled laughter Jacky had begun to cry. Her face crinkled like the face of an aged baby. The silver-wire wig was askew on her head at a rakish angle. Carefully I straightened it, and adjusted the blanket around her shoulders.

Aaron was somewhere behind me. He had ceased pacing and stood very still. Jacky’s eyes widened on him as if, for a moment, she’d forgotten who he was. In a pleading voice she said, to Aaron and to me:

“…please believe me, Kristine—Krista?—and Aaron—please believe me, Zoe was my closest friend. Zoe was my heart. Never would I have willingly injured her. Never would I have betrayed her. Only, those years before Jesus, I was so weak. The Devil could entice me to any thing with a look, a caress, a promise. Jealousy consumed my heart, too. And envy, and spite. And pride. I did not possess the courage to save my sister in Christ, that is the terrible fact I must live with. For a lie to Anton Csaba that would convince him—if there could be such a lie, from me—might have saved Zoe, but then the lie would have hurt me. If I had said, Zoe was not going away so soon the next morning—Zoe was not going to
Vegas for a few days. Then, Zoe would be gone from Sparta, and Anton Csaba would have to follow her to Vegas to hurt her, which he would not have done, I think. It was how angry Anton was, at that time. But then, the lie would have hurt me. This was my choice, and I was too weak to choose Zoe but only wished to save myself. For this sin I would descend into the dregs and ashes of humankind and I would be broken underfoot as the lowest scum and scorned by the righteous until at my darkest hour after being released penniless and sick from the detention house—this was the Women’s House of Detention—down behind the courthouse—it was the ‘psych ward’ they put me in, I cried so much—I tore my hair, and my face—why they’d arrested me, I never knew—maybe it was ‘possession of a control-substance’—maybe Martineau planted it in my room—when I was released I found my way to the Evangelical Unity Church and Reverend Myron Diggs and these wonderful Christians who did not judge their fallen sister Jacky but prayed for me and with me and at last, at prayer service one evening, when Reverend Diggs called for us to come forward, to welcome Jesus into our hearts, I felt such strength suddenly, like a current of electricity bearing me forward to the rail, and Jesus flooded my heart with His warmth and love and has not departed from that hour forward. For so it was, ‘Jacky DeLucca’ had truly repented of her sins and the terrible sin of ‘des-pair’—which Reverend Diggs says is not-caring if you live or die—my most joyful hour was when Jesus allowed me to know
You are forgiven, Jacky.
And that has been six years now. Six years! So I have been granted strength to endure my sickness, that is a test to my faith, washing over me in waves, now that the chemotherapy is finished, and ‘there is no more to be done.’ And Jesus gives me strength, and will be awaiting me. And so—I am opening my heart to you, that you will forgive me? And—you will bless me?”

I told Jacky yes of course. Yes we would “bless” her. I could not bring myself to look at Aaron Kruller behind me.

I held Jacky DeLucca sobbing in my arms. I held the hot quivering emaciated body. A numbness came over me, I think I was smiling. I was seeing us, Jacky DeLucca in the silver wire-wig, Krista Diehl with her pale
plaited hair, our faces shining with tears, a
pietà, a
cartoon sort of
pietà,
though who was the mother wasn’t certain, or in whom did God’s greatest grace abide. There was a roaring in my ears, I was close to fainting. My lips were dry as sandpaper. I thought
But I don’t have to kiss her do I? I am spared kissing her.

Just the two of us in the room—Jacky DeLucca, Krista Diehl. For the other, the man, Aaron Kruller, had walked out at some point. He’d left us, in disgust or in rage, or in a terrible sympathy for us, I would not know. In the confusion of our embrace the pot of gorgeous hydrangea had been knocked onto its side, now I righted it. Some of the blossoms had broken off. On the table beside Jacky’s shabby sofa-bed were several small bottles of pills, a scummy water glass. I saw now that the plasterboard walls of Jacky’s room were festooned with religious pictures that resembled enlarged Bible cards. The most striking of Jacky’s artifacts was a three-foot-high likeness of Jesus on a swath of black velvet stiffly holding out his pierced and bleeding hands, open-palmed: strikingly pale, with large dark eyes and a crimson mouth like a girl’s and on his forehead a crown of bloody thorns crudely painted in bright colors. Conspicuous in the lower left corner were the initials
J.D.

Jacky saw me staring at the painting. With a girlish shiver she said she’d painted it herself after a vision of Jesus, did I like it?

I said, “It’s beautiful, Jacky. Just the way He would look, if He were with us.”

“F
RESH AIR!
J
ESUS.
”

Aaron was waiting for me outside the room. Grabbed at my arm and pulled me impatiently out the rear door of the residence cursing
Fuck fuck fuck
under his breath.

Together we stumbled down steps. Crumbling concrete steps. The air was wetly cold. Tears sprang from my eyes and ran down my heated cheeks. I had not realized how, in Jacky DeLucca’s sickroom, the cloying-sweet smell of decay had been so pervasive, by instinct I’d been breathing
shallowly, taking in little oxygen. I was dazed, light-headed. The impact of the fresh chill air was profound as a slap to the face.

Aaron was disconcerted, furious. And frightened, like a man fleeing a collapsing building. I said:

“Aaron, you have to go back. To say good-bye to her. You can’t just run away, she’s a dying woman.”

“Fuck her. Fuck them all. They can die.”

I detached Aaron’s hand from my arm. He’d closed his fingers around my arm as if we were intimates—an older brother, an annoying sister—without seeming to know what he did, in his paroxysm of fury. He had the look of a man about to strike out with his fists, at any close target.

“Aaron, we can’t just leave like this. I won’t go with you.”

“Fuck you
will.
Come on!”

We were shoving at each other. Badly I wanted to strike at this stubborn man with my fists, that expression in his face, that expression of obstinacy, willful stupidity, he’d begun unexpectedly to laugh, sharp barking laughter, cruel and without mirth. Somehow I was following after Aaron who ignored my pleas, waved away my good-girl pleas with a wave of his hand, my sensitivity to the dying woman was utter bullshit to this man, unworthy of discussion.

Together we stumbled past an overflowing Dumpster. What a reek of raw garbage! I thought
The poor woman has already died. This is hell she is in, where we had to come for her.

For this near-deserted area of downtown Sparta there was an unusual amount of activity in the vicinity of the Central Sparta Evangelical Unity Church. The noise we’d been hearing in Jacky DeLucca’s room was a U-Haul rental truck being unloaded of shabby donated furniture, by volunteer workers. Close by, unrelated to the U-Haul effort, was a lengthy, straggling line of mostly men—with pulpy veined faces, rheumy eyes and body parts that looked mismatched—as many as forty men—among them a few women scarcely distinguishable from the men—eerily patient, resigned, like penitents, or perhaps they were beyond penitents, these were the damned, like Jacky DeLucca these were residents of Hell,
yet unprotesting of their damnation, stoic and contented, for it was a communal damnation, and you could be fed: they were shuffling through an entrance into what appeared to be a soup kitchen. Hot delicious smells wafted to our nostrils, at odds with the stink of the Dumpster. No one took the slightest notice of Aaron Kruller and me.

I thought
Someday I will return here. I will be a volunteer. When I am strong enough.

In a vast open windy lot partially heaped with rubble from demolished buildings we were walking to Aaron’s car. If I’d been brought to this place blindfolded and asked where I was, I could not have said. The ruins of an American city devastated by war, a post-industrial American city in upstate New York—but what exactly had happened here? There was a strange glaring broken beauty to the rubble-strewn lot as of the ruins of antiquity but these were not ruins to be named, let alone celebrated. These were ruins lacking all memory, identity.

What relief, to get to Aaron’s car! New-model, American-made, with sleek lines, four-wheel drive for our harsh upstate winters, satellite radio. Suddenly our hands fell on each other. I had hold of the man I’d been wanting to pummel just now, I was clutching and desperate. Aaron’s sheepskin jacket was open, I could smell his body. He’d reached inside my coat, opening my coat, dragging me against him. A wet wind rushed at us, smelling of the river. Jocular, teasing. Roughly Aaron shoved me against the side of the car, he’d taken hold of my head in both his hands and he kissed me open-mouthed. We were gnawing at each other’s mouth, a sexual frenzy seemed to sweep over us. You would think we’d narrowly escaped some terrible danger. You would think we were both drunk. Seeing us from the rear of the church residence, you’d have thought we were stumbling drunk, shameless-drunk, on a weekday in late morning.