Angels of Destruction (2 page)

4

O
n his way to open the Rosa Rossa Flower Shop, her neighbor Mr. De-larosa stopped by and banged on the front door, interrupting her reverie. After struggling down the stairs, Margaret stopped at the mirror by the front door to fuss with her hair and cluck at the puffiness around her eyes. Pasquale Delarosa was the last of the old-timers in the neighborhood who remembered her husband and daughter, and once Margaret was widowed, he had volunteered to handle the outside chores—shoveling the walk, pruning the boxwood, raking the leaves—in an act of charity and kindness that she repaid with cherry pies in the summer and rum-soaked fruitcake each Christmas. But he rarely visited otherwise, and his demeanor on the front porch suggested some embarrassment and trepidation for having gotten her out of bed.

“Scusi,
Mrs. Quinn, so sorry to disturb you early in the morning, but I just wanted to check on you, see that everything is okay.”

Gathering a fold of cloth to her neck, she motioned for him to come inside.

“No, no, I've got to open the shop. Two funerals this week. But there was a noise last night, late, and I thought I'll just go check on Mrs. Quinn, see she's okay.”

The air chilled her bare ankles, and she gestured again to welcome him out of the cold.

“Round three this morning. My wife's dog was
pazza,
just bizarre, barking and chasing her tail, and you know she's old now and never gets up off of the bed, but something
boing
in her head set her off, and I say
‘Fate silenzio!’
and threw a shoe, but yip-yap-yap, and my wife looks out the window, says there's someone in Mrs. Quinn's yard, like a monster, but I don't see nothing. But I get up this morning, she says go check on your way to work Mrs. Quinn, and I came over, look around, nothing. Not even a footprint in the snow. Only your car, eh? Frost everywhere, but a clear circle on the windshield, like someone threw a pot of boiling water, but probably nothing, eh? You're okay?”

“I didn't hear a thing all night, Mr. Delarosa, and I slept like a baby.” She averted her gaze from his.

“You doing all right, then? I haven't seen you out on your walks so much.”

“It's been so cold.” Rubbing her arms, she pretended to shiver, and he took the hint, waving and saluting as he walked toward the street. Alone again, she smiled to herself and danced to the kitchen to ready a breakfast, dredging up from memory the distant recipe for pancakes. Halfway through stirring the batter, she realized there was no maple syrup in the house. Jam, perhaps, or powdered sugar. She wondered if the girl would mind.

U
PSTAIRS
, N
ORAH INSPECTED
the bedroom. The missing daughter had left behind a bureau of autumn clothes, long-sleeved shirts, jeans, a rainbow of sweaters. Atop a small dish, six smooth pebbles collected from the beach. A pinback button with a dove perched on the neck of a guitar. Another that read
McGovern ‘72.
From an open pack of Teaberry gum, Norah unwrapped the last stick to find it shattered into terra-cotta shards. Taped on the wall above the bed were watercolor paintings—the woods on a snowy day, a bridge crossing over a roiling river, and a boy with long cascading hair who looked like a teenage Jesus. A crucifix hung above the light switch. On the child's desk lay a ten-year-old issue of
Time
with a picture of a stern Patty Hearst under the stark banner: APPREHENDED. A pad of blank white paper. Holding it aslant to the morning light, Norah detected the impression of the letters LV on its surface. The only other objects on the desk were four textbooks in brown grocery bag covers on which someone had doodled
Wiley
over and over, the name interlaced with flowers, hearts, a cobra of many heads. And more carefully drawn, the cryptic logo AOD over a pair of outstretched wings.

Inside the shallow drawer of the desk lay colored pencils pocked in the middle with toothmarks. A bundle of artist's brushes in different sizes, the camel's hair tips hardened into spearpoints. Norah pressed the end of one on the surface of the desk until the tip collapsed, the old paint puffing a cloud of amber dust. Hidden beneath a tangle of rubber bands and paper clips, a pack of cigarettes and a crisp book of matches. She took one of the smokes and put it in her pocket. The side drawers contained an archive of school papers, drawings preserved from all ages, notes, letters, a stray family photograph. She stared at one image of the three of them together beneath an artificial silver Christmas tree: the girl seated in a caneback rocking chair, her mother and father resting a hand each along the top rail, the image torn in two at the father and then taped together again. Buried deep in the jumble was a tablet filled with sketches—faces juxtaposed over desert roads, a girl in a pinafore floating over the horizon, a boy confronting a leopard from his quilted bed. She hid the portfolio under her mattress, saving it for closer study.

The aroma of pancakes rose from downstairs, and an unfamiliar grumble sounded in her stomach. She imagined, below in the kitchen, the woman stirring the batter, setting the table, preparing herself. The time was right for her entrance. Standing on her toes, Norah could just reach the bottom of the mirror by the door. She wet her fingertips in her mouth and combed her tangled hair, straightened her glasses, and practiced smiling. The light was perfect now. She would descend.

As she turned to call for the girl, Margaret was surprised to see Norah already on the threshold, dressed in her runaway daughter's tartan nightgown. In the morning light, they lost their place in time, for just a moment.

“So,” Norah said, “you'll let me stay?”

5

S
ean Fallon waited until nearly all of the other children left Friendship Elementary School, some running in knots for the best seats on the buses, others clumping in pairs and trios to walk. Standing in an alcove, nearly hidden under his parka and scarf, he watched the tough older boys saunter around the corners and disappear. Once safe to move, he pulled up his hood like a spy, hunched his shoulders to settle the weight in his backpack, and commenced the long walk home. Teachers hurrying to their cars paid him little heed. Even the principal nearly ran him over. An elderly man tipped his old-fashioned hat as they passed on the sidewalk, leaving behind an icy wake that made the boy's nose run and snot freeze above his upper lip. The wind blew against his face and through his hair, for the stranger carried winter in his coattails. New snow covered the ragged patches on the ground, softened the dense plowlines at the curbs and corners and the old trails carved along the sidewalks. Sean stopped now and again to trace his name on the powdered hoods of neglected cars, to run his gloves along an iron fence, to gently push the toe or heel of a boot to crack the glassy ice collected in miniature culverts and depressions. There was no need to hurry. His mother would not return from work for a few hours longer, and his father never came home.

Since the beginning of the fall semester, Sean had taken to meandering after school, unwilling to face his empty house after his parents’ divorce. The desire for the comforts of nothing had become a habit of mind, and over the months, he cultivated his solitude. Alongside the woods, he allowed a measure of free imagination, enjoying the small discoveries of the natural world. Head bent to the ground as he walked, he had found the body of a flicker, the bright yellow wings neatly folded against the mottled gray torso and the band of red feathers. The shin-bone of a fox or small dog swarming with red ants. And treasures he could keep: the perfect spiral of a giant snail's shell, a dozen rocks that glistened with quartz facets. A glass bottle with the year 1903 embossed on its amber bottom, a baseball card of Roberto Clemente, hero of the 1971 Series, a five-dollar bill and eighty-nine cents in loose change. A hand-size Bible caked with dried mud. Eyes raised to the skies and worries sloughed from his soul, he watched the changes of season, the air filled with leaves and birds and clouds. Many autumn afternoons he had witnessed the old lady who lived by herself, walking alone as well, looking for something misplaced.

The way home required him to either scale or duck beneath a rail fence at one end of the old lady's yard, put his head down as he traversed the open lawn, hop another fence at the property line, and trot straight to the fronting street. He did not like the risk, but the shortcut meant a mile saved, and using it had become a matter of principle. Each time he crossed the boundary, he recited, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” not entirely sure what the words meant, which only reinforced their magic. From behind closed curtains, she spied, he was sure, waiting for the time when he might trip and fall, and she would come flying on a broomstick straight out the chimney top. Sean glanced at the kitchen window, bowed his head again, and then picked up the pace. Under his breath, he muttered another penitential prayer.

As he straddled the rail at the top of the second fence, Sean spotted the old woman and the little witch in glasses beside her. Hidden by the shadows, they lurked at the corner of the house. The lady stood stiffly wrapped in her greatcoat, a thick scarf wound around her throat, hair white as the moon, her face broken into angles dominated by a beaked nose. She watched his every move through merciless eyes. The ragged girl bounced on her toes, and when she saw his disadvantage she rushed forward.

“You're not supposed to cut through people's property.” She wagged her finger in his direction, then waited, hands on hips, for him to untangle his feet. Half of her face was in darkness and half blazed in the sun, her features coming slowly into focus. Unsure of the rules of the game, Sean did not know whether to climb down to meet her or to retreat in haste across his footprints or to wait eternally upon the rail. A mourning dove, startled by the girl's voice, whistled and flushed from a sugar maple, crying as it rowed across the pale sky. He swung his leg over and crept down rail by rail as Mrs. Quinn stepped forward to confront him.

“You realize this is my yard?”

Stunned to be approached, he nodded.
She would lure him with warm gingerbread and then pop him in the oven.

“What is your name, young man?”

“Sean Fallon, ma'am.”

“How old are you, Sean? What grade are you in at school?”

“I go to third grade, and I'm eight and a half.”

Norah sidled up to him, inspecting his face. “Ah, really? And when is your birthday?”

“August twenty-third.”

“You're not eight and a half. It's only January. You're just eight and a quarter.”

The boy blinked in the sunshine.
Or fatten him on bread and milk in a cage that hung from the ceiling.

Mrs. Quinn stepped between the children. “I see you cutting through here every day. Sometimes twice a day—once in the morning, once in the afternoon. On your way to and from school?”

He looked at the snow between his boots.
And grind his bones to make her bread.

“You'll take her with you from now on. And walk her home. She's in third grade just like you. Show up a few minutes early tomorrow, and take her to the principal's office. They can send me the paperwork to enroll her. Do you understand me, Sean Fallon?” With two fingers, she lifted his chin so that he could see her smile. Sean assented with a simple nod, and the two started to go back inside. Halfway there, she turned to the boy. “By the way, my name is—”

“Mrs. Quinn,” he said. “Everyone knows who you are. Everyone knows who lives in this house.”

Margaret pulled the girl to stand in front of her so that he might memorize her face. “And this is Norah.” The girl squirmed beneath her hands and stuck out the tip of her tongue at him. “Norah Quinn, my granddaughter.”

6

P
iece by piece, they unpacked the few clothes from Norahs valise. As Mrs. Quinn inspected each article against the light, the girl described its history and her sentimental attachments, and then it would be folded into one of two piles: those that could be washed and mended to wear again, and the clothing that must be discarded—thrown away, or better yet, taken out back and incinerated in the wire-mesh barrel. Occasionally, she let the girl plead and triumph. A doll's execution was commuted. A white sweater with browned stains at the wrists was spared. Socks fit to be darned. But mostly, the orphan's stale things were simply too wretched.

“How can you live like this?” Mrs. Quinn asked, holding up a dull gray pair of underwear peppered with holes.

Norah twirled once and flopped upon the bed. “I have been lucky. I've been blessed.”

“Let's find you something proper.” She went to the closet and tugged out the cedar chest, which had been gathering dust for the better part of a decade. “These are old. You don't mind old, do you? From when she was your age, twenty years ago. If Erica's things won't do, I'll go shopping while you're in school tomorrow.”

“Do I have to go to school? I'd rather stay here with you and help around the house.”

“No, you have to stick to the plan. If anyone found you hanging around here, they'd wonder why you weren't in school.”

“So why don't you take me?”

“I need to be invisible, at least for a while. Too many prying questions. The less they think about me, the better. If you're going to stay in my house, you must follow my rules. Tell them that I am a shut-in and cannot come into the school. Too many memories.” Margaret opened the hasp and eased the lid on its hinges, then knelt before an open casket.

“Well, I don't need no Sean Fallon—”

“Hush.” From the top of the treasures, she lifted out a prom gown and laid it gently on the bed. Thrilled by the taffeta, Norah leapt to the floor and peered over to see the inside of the trunk, balancing her small hand upon the woman's back. In the seven years since Paul had died, no one had touched Margaret so. Together they agreed upon a white blouse, a woolen skirt, a pair of Mary Janes, leather stiff. Near the bottom of the trunk, a thick embroidered poncho was draped atop the christening gown, pastel sleepers, and other relics of infancy. Mrs. Quinn ran her hands over the designs and smiled to herself, having nearly forgotten this prize. She displayed the patterns to the girl: two llamas stood on the hem, and behind them loomed the appliquéd Andes.

“My little sister brought that back from Peru one Christmas, and Erica wore it every winter's day when she was your age. You'd like Diane—she is as cunning as a crow, like you.”

“It's beautiful,” said the girl. Margaret flipped it over so the girl could see on the other side a stylized round red face surrounded by swirling wings or clouds. Norah's eyes widened. “Look, a seraph.”

“Whatever are you talking about? It is the sun, smiling on us all.”

“No, a seraph. You know, seraphim and cherubim.”

“Stop talking nonsense.” She gathered a pile of clothes in her arms. “Big day tomorrow, so time for bed.”

The girl finally fell asleep, and Margaret ran the washer and dryer late into the night and folded the fresh laundry while the eleven o'clock news unspooled. Her muscles stiffened and she felt short of breath but managed to bundle all of Norah's clothes into a neat package, impossibly small, like a doll's outfits, the edges and hems frayed with wear and soft with age. She smoothed the pile and laid the girl's things against the bedroom door, as her mother had long ago when Margaret and Diane were children. Two stacks for two girls, but she inevitably mixed the sisters’ clothes, and they would unjumble the socks and underwear while complaining to each other how poorly their mother knew her own daughters. Or else they'd steal one another's favorites without a word.

Diane would never understand why she had decided to keep the little visitor. Margaret barely knew her own reasons, responding more to the powerful pull the child exerted, as if she had been in her life all along. No one had come to the door despite ten years of prayer and pleading, and she would not refuse an answer, would not turn away the child. If it meant a few lies, she thought, so be it, though her sister would be shocked at the depths of her deception. From the hallway, ear tuned to closed door, she listened to Norahs steady breathing. She could still feel the warm impression on her back where the girl had touched her.