A Simple Case of Angels (9 page)

20

—

“
Lindsay's mother
phoned here, very worried. She said Lindsay had promised to be home by five, but it's quarter to six and completely dark. Then I was worried.”

“I'm sorry,” Nicola said, sitting across from Mina at the kitchen table with folded hands.

They had a Talk, only this time Nicola did the talking. She explained all the awful things that went on at Shady Oaks, how the food was so bad and how there was nothing to do.

“And so many rules! Anything that would make the place nicer, there's a rule against it. Also, there aren't enough nurses. They're overworked and it makes some of them grumpy.”

Mina said, “Sadly, Nicola, that sounds like a lot of those places. Someone at work? Her mother was in a home. She said it was hell.”

“Hell the metaphor?” Nicola asked.

“What?”

“Dad said hell was a metaphor, but I'm starting to think it's a real place, too.”

Jared came in the kitchen. June Bug lifted her head off her pillow and wagged, even though he hated her.

“When's dinner?”

“It's going to be late. Your sister needs to figure out her Consequences.”

“How about the guillotine? Where's Dad?”

“At swimming lessons with Jackson. Order pizza.”

Jared pumped his fist. “Yes!”

“And they give them pills that make them sleep all day,” Nicola said. “Or mix it in their food.”

“Are you sure? Old people sleep a lot.”

“They lock them in their rooms.”

“If they have dementia, they may wander, Nicola. You can't have those folks escaping in this climate. They wouldn't last ten minutes.”

“Escaping?” Nicola said.

“So what are your Consequences going to be for not coming home when you're supposed to?”

“Maybe we should write a letter to the government and tell them how bad the place is. That's what Lindsay wants to do.”

“Good idea,” Mina said, getting up from the table. “You two can do that on Monday. But this weekend, you're grounded. And no Shady Oaks.”

* * *

Since she couldn't tell her mother, she told her dog as they lay together on Nicola's bed.

“Mrs. Tanaka's room was dark. They leave them like that. Isn't it awful? Except it wasn't dark. It wasn't dark because, June Bug? This is the amazing part.
Mrs. Tanaka makes her own light
.”

June Bug repositioned Nicola's braid between her paws and chewed with gusto.

“It was a soft and silvery sort of light shining off her face. This part I'm sure about — the most beautiful feeling came over me when I saw her.”

June Bug tilted her head to the side. It was so cute the way that line divided her face down the middle, black on one side, the other white.

* * *

Nicola spent most of her weekend of Consequences in her room with June Bug, reading the books Lindsay had loaned her.

“What is an angel, June Bug? Good question. It's a being of pure spirit. Do angels have bodies? No. But they
can assume bodily form
. That means they appear to us like they do have bodies. In this book?”

Nicola lifted it so June Bug could see which one she meant. June Bug sniffed it.

“This book is full of stories about people who say they've been helped by angels. Mostly they leave signs to communicate with us. To each other, they sing. Sometimes they do seem to speak. Listen to this.”

Nicola found the passage. “
However their language sounds or seems, it is actually a direct communication into our minds.
That's like how you communicate with me. Sometimes you just look at me and I know what you mean.”

June Bug rolled over, wriggling and snorting on her back, communicating directly to Nicola that she was happy.

The most important thing Nicola read was that angels loved people. The books, combined with the beautiful and mysterious sight of Mrs. Tanaka glowing in her bed, made Nicola feel as if she, too, were glowing from the inside.

Sunday morning, getting ready to walk June Bug, she paused at the long window beside the front door, a window she had looked through a thousand times before. The pane was coated with ice, a feathery frost-drawn picture of what the world would look like if she could see it the way it truly was.

The sky traced with wings.

21

—

To: Patient Quality Care Office
From: Nicola Bream and Lindsay Feeler
Priority: HIGH!!

We are two grade five girls who have been visiting Shady Oaks Retirement Home. We're writing you now to complain about how the old people are treated there. The food is really terrible and nobody wants to eat it. There are no fun things to do and no decorations for Christmas or Hanukkah. Flowers aren't even allowed! And the old people are given sleeping pills in the day. Some are locked in their rooms. Will you please investigate and do something about this place as soon as possible? The patients should be smiling and laughing and not sleeping all the time. Also, one bath every month? How would you like that?

Please help them!

Nicola Bream and Lindsay Feeler

* * *

“This is what we know,” Nicola said, lying on the bed with June Bug while Lindsay sat at the foot. “Mr. Milton went into one of their rooms. Mrs. Tanaka's, or Mr. Fitzpatrick's, or Mrs. Michaels'. Or maybe all of them. He saw something that surprised him so much that he started to talk again. Now he's trying to get someone to let them out.”

“We know they're angels,” said Lindsay.

“Mrs. Tanaka seemed to glow,” Nicola agreed. “But why didn't we notice before?”

“Because the lights are so bright! And here's another thing about Shady Oaks. The TV is always blaring. Couldn't that be to drown out the sound of their singing?”

“I wonder about that Mr. Devon,” Nicola said. “I really do.”

“He gave me the creeps!”

June Bug stretched her muzzle along Nicola's thigh and sighed. Her white ear was turned inside out. Nicola flipped it back. “Say they
are
angels. What are they even doing there?”

Lindsay's face scrunched up. “They give off light, which we really need in winter, right?”

“Hey!” Nicola said. “Did you notice? Hardly anyone put up lights this year?”

Lindsay frowned. “I wondered why it didn't seem like a Christmassy Christmas. The lights are one of the nicest things.”

“There are all these holidays with lights. Hanukkah. Diwali,” Nicola said. “New Year's Eve fireworks. Except there weren't any fireworks this year, either.”

“So do they glow to put more light in the world?” Lindsay asked.

“Jackson has to have a night light,” Nicola said. “But what about this? When someone's smart, we say they're bright. Or brilliant. So maybe they glow to remind us to be smarter. To use our heads and think.”

“Ah!” Lindsay said, looking out the window. “I have to get home before dark. I should go.”

Nicola and June Bug walked her to the door. “I like talking about these things,” she told Lindsay. “It makes me believe in them a little bit more.”

“I totally believe in them,” said Lindsay.

“What I need,” Nicola told Lindsay, “is a sign.”

22

—

For a florist
, Valentine's Day starts at the end of January. Irene was decorating Feeler's Flowers and Lindsay asked Nicola if she wanted to help. For the next few days Nicola raced home after school to walk June Bug, then raced over to the shop.

The girls came up with good ideas, not just about decorating. One was to sell valentines, too, not just the little cards tucked in bouquets.

“Like, for kids.”

“That's a great idea,” Irene said. “But it's a bit late to order them.”

Lindsay took twenty dollars from the cash register. The girls marched next door to the dollar store and bought eighteen boxes of valentines. They used one box for decorating, stringing the valentines in the window with red and pink ribbon. Irene had rolls of every color ribbon in the back room where her workbench was.

“There's something else I don't understand about angels,” Nicola told Lindsay as they worked. “They want to help people, right?”

“If you ask for help, it will come,” Lindsay said. “You read that, right? Sometimes you don't realize you've been helped. Like when my mom and dad got divorced. I really wanted them to stay together because my mom was sad. And mad. But we moved and she bought the shop. Now, even though she's stressed about money, she's happier than she ever was. So the angels did help us. It just wasn't what I expected.”

“You asked angels to help you?” Nicola asked.

“Not exactly. I didn't know I could! But that's the wonderful thing about them. Hoping for something is the same as asking them for help.”

Nicola was hole-punching the valentines. She brushed the confetti into the greens bin.

“Oh, save that!” Lindsay said. “I can throw it at the next wedding.”

“You're the craziest friend I've ever had,” Nicola said, and Lindsay laughed.

“Okay,” Nicola went on. “Suppose what you say is true. Then why doesn't Mr. Milton ask the angels for help? They're all locked in together in Shady Oaks. And why don't the angels help each other? Or themselves?”

* * *

The next day Lindsay thought of candy.

“Boxes of chocolates,” she told Irene. “It would be convenient if people could get their flowers and chocolates in the same place on Valentine's Day.”

“And,” Nicola said, “you should offer dog treats!”

She explained how the world was divided. There were places that welcomed dogs, and those that didn't. Banks, yes. Bookstores, yes. Libraries, no. Grocery stores, no. It made no sense.

“June Bug pulls all the way to the bank because she knows she'll get a treat there.”

The next day Lindsay brought her 100 gel pens and she and Nicola made a
DOGS WELCOME
sign for the door of the shop.

Nicola got another idea when she looked into the greens bin. The flowers in the bin were too open to sell, or their leaves were tinged brown, but they were still nice. The girls pulled the petals off and scattered them on the sidewalk outside the shop, a pink and red and yellow carpet advertising what was inside.

Looking at them reminded Nicola of her first visit to Our Lady of Perpetual Help. How, tripping up the aisle to confess for June Bug, she had followed a flower petal trail. She'd assumed they'd fallen off the bride's bouquet.

All week they checked their email — Nicola in the morning before Jared got up, then later, with Lindsay, on the computer in the shop.

No reply came to their two-exclamation-point, High Priority letter.

On Friday, when they went back to Shady Oaks, Glenda was at the nursing station. She looked crosser than ever, like her ponytail was pulled too tight. She pointed silently to the unsilent lounge where the Shopping Channel was advertising Thermadore Thumbless Texting Mittens at full volume.

“Is Mr. Milton in his room?” the girls asked.

Glenda's face closed up. On the counter behind her was a box of tissues. She plucked one out, then stood for a minute with her back turned.

Crying?

She pulled herself together and turned around. “He's gone.”

“Really?” Nicola grinned. “Someone from the Patient Quality Care Office came?”

“The ambulance,” Glenda answered. “Two nights ago. It was too late.”

23

—

“
Sweetheart,” Mina
told Nicola that night. “I know it's sad. But it had nothing to do with you. It wasn't your fault.”

“Yes, it was!”

And now that Nicola had finally lifted her face out of the pillow, June Bug began kissing away her tears and snot. Nicola pushed her off.

“I should have written a letter the first day I went to Shady Oaks! Then they would have come in time to save him!”

“Who?”

“The Patient Quality Care Office!”

“Nicola, even if you had written them earlier, it can take ages and ages for anything to happen. Years, sometimes.”

“Years?”

Mina nodded. “And, sweetheart? The people at Shady Oaks? They're old. They're at the end of their lives. You cheered up Mr. Milton in his last days. You did a good deed. We're proud of you.”

It wasn't good enough. Not with the others still locked in there.

“Do you believe in angels, Mom?”

“In actual angels? No. But I believe in being good and helping others. Every time you do that, you're an angel.”

Nicola sat up cross-legged and flung back her braid. “You mean
I
could be an angel?”

“I think you already are one,” Mina said, gathering Nicola in her arms for a hug.

All at once Nicola understood why Mr. Milton kept asking if she was a stranger. If you entertained strangers, some of them might turn out to be angels. He was asking if Nicola was an angel come to help.

“Angels give off a sweet perfume when they're near,” Nicola said.

“You would too if you'd take a bath more often. Did you learn that in those books you were reading?”

“And from Lindsay. She did her project on angels. They leave signs for us to find so we know they're there. Most of the time, though, we don't notice the signs.”

“What kind of signs?” Mina asked.

“Like when I found Shady Oaks. I found it because someone had made a snow angel out front. That could be a sign, right?”

Mina half-nodded. “I guess it could. It would be lovely if it was.”

“I keep wanting just one more sign.” Nicola stroked the little dog in her lap. “I have to keep my eyes open. And I have to use my head
.
That's what they want us to do. That's why they glow.”

Terence tapped on the open door. He had Jackson by the hand. “Someone wants to say goodnight.”

Jackson came in and hugged Nicola, which he hadn't done for a long time. It felt good. Her father did the same, like every night. He said he was sorry for her loss.

And Mina smiled. “You could be an angel now, Nicola, and brush your teeth and go to sleep.”

Back in bed, Nicola lay for a long time with the light on, thinking about Mr. Milton. How his eyes were so blue under his spiky eyebrows. How the things he'd said only
seemed
crazy.

Get them out.
Not
him
.
Them
.

Nicola switched off the light and had a little cry again. In the middle of it, she sat up and turned the light back on.

There it was, where it had been since New Year's Eve, perched on the shade of her bedside lamp. The sign she'd been waiting for, unnoticed all this time.

A little angel-winged blob of wax.