Telling Lies

Chapter Eight

It was almost midnight when Flint and I drove up outside La Placita church. The sidewalk in front was like a carnival from hell. The usual neighborhood loonies, always joiners, were out in force. I saw sandwich boards promising everything from salvation to direct communication with our Martian cousins. There were a few mainstream groups represented as well: pro-life pickets marched in a tight circle with placards denouncing Emily’s work in a family health clinic that provided abortions. I’d had too much input during the day to feel properly offended.

I thought I understood why Emily had made arrangements with Father Hermilio for a private memorial mass for Marc. Marc’s funeral had been such a media fiasco that some of our family hadn’t been able to get inside the church. There had been so many issues vying for attention-Emily’s indictment, the death of young Tom Potts, the heated-up Peace Movement generally-that it seemed Marc had been forgotten about.

There was a second reason. Emily felt responsible for Marc’s death. He had been fragged by his own men the day the international edition of Time with Emily’s face on the cover hit the stands in Saigon. She had spent her life in atonement.

We parked in the Olvera Street lot across the street and made our way through the crowd. I carried a brown paper shopping bag, its contents requested by Uncle Max.

The sanctuary of La Placita church was ablaze with candles. Flowers and pine boughs banked the altar. Above it all, stretched across the ancient domed ceiling, was a hand-painted paper banner: HERMANO Y HERMANA. Brother and sister, it meant. Emily had been infused into Marc’s service; in fact, she had overpowered him again. The irony of the scene struck me. Whatever her intentions, Emily had managed to stage her own media fiasco.

Flint wedged us down the packed aisle toward the front. I passed many familiar faces, a Who’s Who collection of activists and politicians-a former governor, the mayor, the left flank of the City council-and a goodly number of neighborhood folks. There was also a smattering of men wearing bits of military garb: cunt caps, field jackets, khaki shirts, buttons that proclaimed, VETERANS FOR PEACE. What I sensed among the assembled crowd was an air of expectation, more celebrity-watching than grief. I worried about their motives.

The church is very old and not very large. Ordinarily the place has a certain historic charm. But I wasn’t seeing it. Everything about La Placita seemed heavy, the three-feet-thick adobe walls, dark oak beams, gaudy religious paintings, the overused air. It all began to press in around me. I tried to get a breath, but the smells repulsed me flowers, burning wax, mold, people who live without plumbing.

Uncle Max and Lucas Slaughter were sitting together on the front pew whispering. They looked up when Flint and I approached. I gave Max the bag he had asked me to bring, and squeezed in between Lucas and Flint. My parents had declined to come, preferring to stay with Emily. I was thinking I should be with them instead of here among so many strangers.

When we were settled, Flint nudged my arm. “You okay?”

“Yes.”

“Brought you something.” Out of his coat pocket he pulled Mrs. Lim’s starched napkin, the one I had blown my nose into earlier. He must have picked it up when we went back to Emily’s apartment for me to change into my red suit. He pressed the napkin into my hand. “Just in case.”

“Thanks.” I was very touched. I folded the napkin and held on to it. “It was nice of you to bring me.”

He shrugged. “I would have come anyway. This way, I get a front-row seat.”

“You’re some tough guy, Flint,” I managed before I started to choke up. I kept my eyes on my hands in my lap, to avoid having to speak to anyone. I didn’t look up again until I saw Rod Peebles’s freckled hand on my knee.

“God bless you, Maggie,” he said, bending over me solicitously. “Sit down, Assemblyman,” Lucas whispered. “They’ve all had time to see you.”

Rod glared quickly at Lucas and made his way down the front pew, giving everyone a back pat or a double-fisted handshake. Very sincere. The change in the nature of the service seemed to have changed his mind about coming-more politically correct. I didn’t see where he finally sat.

Father Hermilio entered the chancel in his robes. He offered prayers in both Spanish and English. I wasn’t listening very closely to what he said. Most of it was from the ritual and I could respond by rote.

“In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.” He made the sign of the cross; then he called on Uncle Max to join him. This was a surprise to me, though Max seemed prepared. He opened the bag I had brought and took out the khaki field jacket I had brought home from the hospital among Emily’s clothes. It was Marc’s jacket.

Max kissed me, hard, on the cheek as he rose. “I love you, Margot,” he whispered.

“Did Emily ask you to do this?” I asked.

He nodded. “We’ll be okay, kid.”

In the chancel, Father Hermilio embraced Max dramatically, then stepped to the side, leaving Max alone facing the congregation.

With a showy flourish, Max put on the field jacket. He was only a few feet away. I could see DUCHAMPS on the patch over the left pocket. There were Marine insignia on the breast and sergeant’s stripes on the collar. The jacket had been sent home from Vietnam with Marc’s few personal possessions.

The jacket had old dark stains and new mud. Stiff brown blood starched one side of the collar. I imagined I could smell it, and I nearly gagged.

Max squared his shoulders, but Marc’s jacket was still too big for him.

“This is my shroud,” he said in his clear, baritone voice. “The shroud worn by every one of you who ever loved my nephew, Marc Duchamps, who ever cherished my niece, Dr. Emily Duchamps Orozco, who ever lost innocence before its time.

“Marc was kind and good, and full of the spirit of life. Through him, we dwelt in hope for the future. Yet, twenty-two years ago on this day, our Marc was taken from us. It was unfair; he had not spent half his share of youth. That light he had shared with us was interred with him, forever, in his oblivious grave.

“Today, in full remembrance of that young life lost, Marc’s twin, our shining Emily, put on this jacket he had worn in that faraway Asian forest. She did this perhaps to feel closer to him, to lighten the shadow his loss cast across the remainder of her life.

“Wearing this shroud, Emily, also, was stolen from us.

“We have lost them both, hermano y hermana. Now the shadow on our hearts is double, a cold void in our arms where once we held them, at our table where we broke bread together, in the missing voices in the family chorus, in our plans for companionship in old age. To our sorrow, Emily and Marc will live only in our memory, forever brash and young. ‘The good Lord pity and pardon and help for the future those God has still left us.’”

Max got to that point before he was overcome. Father Hermilio bowed his head in prayer, but Lucas Slaughter rose to the chance to put his arms around Max. Lucas began singing “Amazing Grace.” A good portion of the congregation joined him, a capella.

I, too, was overcome, so many warring emotions flooding in at once. Among them was a rising anger. Here was a funeral, though Emily was not dead. What was the rush? Where was the prayer for her safety?

The congregation was standing, singing anthems from the old Peace Movement days. Many had joined hands and were leaning against each other, swaying as they sang. It was a scene straight out of 1969, except the faces were older, the clothes were better. They were contentedly bereaved, so many together once again after so many years. I didn’t like what I was feeling toward them.

I turned to Mike Flint and whispered, “Can we leave?”

He rose with me and we started down the aisle. Hands groped for me, tried to hold on to me or embrace me. It was frightening. They were for the most part strangers, yet they seemed to want from me some sort of absolution, or maybe intercession with the not-yet-departed, as if I were a conduit to Emily’s grace. I hated the idea of the martyrdom of Emily, Saint Emily. Even worse, Emily wasn’t going to her folk beatification alone: we were sending Marc in with her.

A man in a wheelchair with a Veterans for Peace button on his lapel pressed a crumpled American flag into my hand. “God bless you,” he said.

Pregnant women in dark shawls, like the one I had encountered on Emily’s front steps, reached out at me from the pews. They touched my clothes and placed in my hands religious medals or small silver milagros, miracle charms crudely shaped like eyes or women.

The crowd pressed so close they seemed to suck away all the air.

“Mike,” I pleaded, gripping his arm with both my hands. “Get me out.”

From out of the corner of my eye I caught a dark movement that rose from the crowd and came flying toward my head. I was hemmed in so closely I couldn’t have ducked even if there had been time.

The first blow fell on the back of my neck, fists clenched into a hammer. I got my arms up and took the next hit on my wrist. “She was a murderer!” I felt cold spit hit my face.

I fell back against the fluid mass of people as Mike released me to lunge into the attacker. When the flurry of arms and legs cleared, when the screaming stopped, the man was face down on the red tile with his hands cuffed behind him, pinned to the floor by Mike’s knee.

I didn’t recognize the man. He was older than middle-aged, better cared for than the local street loonies. He wore pressed Dockers, soft leather shoes, a clean windbreaker. Washed and ironed garb. Without the handcuffs, he would look like anyone’s nextdoor neighbor. He raised his head and strained to look up at me, his broken glasses hanging from one ear.

“She was no hero,” he sobbed. “Doesn’t anyone remember? She was a killer.”

“That’s enough,” Mike said, hauling the man to his feet. “Who are you?” I demanded.

“Potts.” The man dropped his head and began to sob with tragic anguish. “Emily Duchamps murdered my son.”