Angels of Destruction (32 page)

14

A
note and accompanying flyer had been sent home with the schoolchildren announcing, in rhetoric bordering on the hysteric, a case of head lice in the first grade. Precautions were spelled out in graphic detail, complete with a close-up illustration of a louse, so Margaret made Norah wash her hair, rinse and repeat, and sit under a strong light for a thorough combing and inspection of the girl's scalp. Norah knelt and fidgeted with her nails while the teeth glided through her still-wet hair. From the easy chair, Margaret concentrated on the simple task, taking care not to snag the comb on the tangles of split ends and marveling at the ragged lengths. With each stroke, the pain in her hands flared, but she persisted. “Who attacked you with the scissors, darling? This is all hacked and uneven back here.”

“I cut my own hair.”

“We'll get you a proper haircut.” She smoothed the girl's head with her free palm. “Maybe in time for Easter. When the weather gets warm, you won't be able to hide under a hood.”

“I never pay much attention, just snip and you're done.”

Margaret cupped her hand around the nape of the girl's neck and bent around to peer into her pale eyes. The bruise on her face was fading and had split in two. Barely touching a fingertip to the cheekbone, she traced the contours of the mark, remembering through the smoothness of her skin, remembering a girl through the whiteness in her eyes and the specked irises, remembering through the fineness of her hair, the delicate fretwork of bone and musculature. She was not resurrecting Erica, but lost in her own childhood, beholding her reflection. As a child, she had an ardent faith, said her prayers before every meal, before bedtime, prayers of thanksgiving or supplication. As a child, she readily believed in angels, guardians at her shoulder, Gabriel to Mary, avenging Michael, the angel of Exodus, sent ahead to protect the chosen people. But she had not thought about such things for decades, only the twisted version of Wiley Rinnick's delusions. And then, the one who visited her in her grief, the man in the fedora, who seemed at times to her an outcast from heaven, now that heaven had closed. Nothing left to believe, faint echoes of a forgotten faith until this girl, Norah, dropped from the sky. She was new and freshly scrubbed. The bottoms of her feet were puckered with ripples of loose skin. A scab on her ankle had fallen off in the tub and left a clear pink spot the size of a dime.

Margaret folded back the collar of the child's robe. “What do you say we go shopping soon? You could use some new clothes, and I'd like to take you downtown to Pittsburgh, maybe go to the zoo or the children's museum.” She pictured them holding hands as they crossed the street. “And maybe this summer, I can take you to the beach where I went when I was your age.”

Norah interrupted her reverie. “Where I come from, there was no one to cut my hair, so I just reached around with the scissors. I learned to take care of myself.”

“You certainly did, and you did a good job. But I'm here now, and I'd like you to feel at home, and if you need a haircut or want to get a proper dress for Easter, or maybe go somewhere for a special occasion, you just let me know.”

“Easter is a long way off.”

“Not so long at all. Spring will be here before you know it, and summer. Maybe we could ask your little friend along.”

“You have been very kind to me, Mrs. Quinn. I wish I could stay with you.”

“You must call me Gramma, like when my sister was here. All the time now. My home is your home.”

The child threw out her arms and hugged Margaret around the neck. The scent of baby shampoo filled the air. Margaret spoke cheek to cheek. “I want to tell you something, not because I expect any answer, but because sometimes you just need to say it, do you understand? I love you.”

The girl squeezed more tightly, nearly choking her, and said something that Margaret could not hear, she could not hear any sound but the pounding of her own heart, and the whisper of the oceans from the girl's lips into the shell of her ear.

15

T
hrough the tiny window, Erica watched the western mountains disappear as the airplane rose and floated over a sea of clouds. In every direction but up, the unbroken surface shone brilliant white, cleaner than snow, to the horizon where, well met by a deep and lasting blue, the universe became circumscribed by what could be seen through an oval porthole spidered with frost.

Over the course of a week, Maya, Erica, and Diane had worked out the details for traveling under an assumed name, for tending to Mary Gavin's life while its owner was away. Erica and Diane left Albuquerque for Washington two months to the day from Norahs sudden appearance. Diane would make the necessary phone calls, find out from Jackson whether anyone was still looking for the fugitive, whether she was still in trouble with the law, and then they planned to drive to Pennsylvania to see Margaret and the strange little girl who had invaded her life.

“Would you believe I've never been above the clouds?” she told her aunt, sitting beside her. “I always imagined heaven was here. Golden gates and angels. I met a girl named Una, and she lived in the middle of a dark forest in a magical cottage, and I got sick there. Sick enough to die. They fed me on a weak soup and a nightly dose of sleeping potion. I think she wanted me to stay because she knew the trouble ahead.”

“What happened to her?”

“Una's parents abandoned her. Took off for Canada instead of Vietnam. Ending up in hiding like me, I guess, or dead or lost. And they left the baby in the cabin in the woods. The grandmother thought we were her son and his wife come back for the little girl.”

“This is when you were with Wiley.”

“Wiley, yes.” She traced the circle on her fold-down tray. “Love makes you crazy. For the one and only time, I lived in a kind of trance, always wanting him—not just for the sex, though that was insane—but for his presence nearby, which somehow softened all else. He could be in the next room, or just outside the door, and I would feel better knowing he was close at hand. Have you ever been in love this way? Where you feel just uncorked, your mind and body and spirit open and you want to give back that same sensation to him? But he didn't want me, not that way. And the worst part is they can hurt you with impunity, refuse your very soul, yet part of you goes on loving.”

“Sounds like your mother.”

“My mom and my dad?”

“Your mother and you.”

“Right. I guess we've all broken hearts without intending to.”

Diane chuckled softly to herself and stared at the seats fanned out in front of her. A businessman sipped a black coffee and checked yesterday's stocks. A row of teenagers dealt another round of cards and laughed the time away. A young mother held an infant in her lap, the boy's eyes wide with curiosity, his fingers entwined in her hair. Lovingly she bent and kissed him on the forehead and turned the page of her novel. “Some people are quite capable of extraordinary forgiveness,” Diane said.

Erica pressed her skull against the cold window glass. “Maybe that's why she latched onto me and tried to keep me there. Una. What will my mother think when I come home? Why didn't you tell her you were coming to get me?”

Laying her hand upon her niece's arm, Diane pulled her to attention. “I had to do this on my own. If I make it, I earn her trust. I've never told another person this, not even your mother, but your uncle was, how can I put this, a skirt chaser. Flirting with waitresses and shopgirls right in front of me. But didn't I know about the affairs? What did he take me for? Once he even made a pass at your mother, down at the shore. You remember those summers? Who knows, too much sun, too many beers, and I was supposed to be asleep in the hammock in the shade, but I saw him, saw her, his big hairy hand sliding beneath the strap of her bathing suit as he leans over to nuzzle her neck, and she just hauls off and slaps him smack on the face. I can still picture him, his paw holding his cheek where she hit him, like he was stung by a jellyfish. A look of stupid wonder, how could she do such a thing? Of course, he never mentioned it to me, probably forgot about the whole incident. Man like him, not the first time he was refused, I'll bet. But your mother never said anything either, not a word, and you know, I was hurt at first and didn't completely trust her for some years after that, because you're supposed to tell your sister. But when you vanished and later when your father passed, I came to understand her nature better, the secrets and silences. She lives in a different world, Margaret does, a world of her own desire to live free from conflict. Joe was forgiven the moment she swatted him. She began to put things back in place when she pulled up her strap.”

“I can't picture Uncle Joe making a pass at my mother. I'm sorry for you, of course.”

“So hard to believe? But this isn't about Joe, his brains were in his pants. And it isn't even about being a good sister and confiding in the one person who loves you unconditionally. It's about secrets and your mother and your daughter—”

Erica glared at her.

“The one pretending to be your daughter, or, should I say, pretending to be her granddaughter. Margaret is using her to put her world back in order. She's concocted some ruse as a way of finding forgiveness.”

“But who must be forgiven?”

“All of us seek forgiveness.” The baby boy in the row ahead stood on his mother's lap and peered over the top of the seat. Searching the faces swirling in his ken, he locked onto Diane and smiled, attempting to elicit a smile in return. When he was rewarded with not one but two admiring looks, his face lit with joy, and he bounced and clapped and shouted his wordless hosanna. Diane turned to her niece. “You … for leaving, and your mother for letting you go.”

“And what does this Norah have to do with it? How did she know where to find me or find my mother? Where do you suppose she came from?”

The boy was squealing, cooing, begging for their attention. “I'm afraid to guess,” Diane said, and gave herself over to the happy child.

16

I
n later years, when the incidents passed into legend, the acts became known as the Week of the Miracles and the Seduction of the Innocents. Each school day, Norah told stories about angels and the afterlife, luring a small clot of children to the radiant sound of her words, the inspiration of her very breath. On a damp March morning, a cluster gathered round her on the sidewalk in front of the school ahead of the first bell.

“The time is at hand,” Norah said on Monday. “I will tell you all my secrets if you will believe. I will answer every question and show you the way.”

Five third graders were there: Sean Fallon, Mark Bellagio, Sharon Hopper, Dori Tilghman, and Lucas Ford. They huddled close, noses red from the cold, vapors exploding from their open mouths with every breath. Teachers and students streamed by this knot on the walk, too busy to take notice.

“First you must understand what eternity is. Calendars and clocks are modern inventions to track time. Long ago, people watched the moon to tell the month and week, and used sundials and followed the stars to mark the hours. But these are measurements of what you cannot measure. This day, March fourth, is just one of many days that stretch out behind and forward in a line. This minute is but a point on a line.”

Sharon yawned and covered her mouth with the back of her hand.

“You believe in the immortal soul, don't you, Sharon?”

“After you die,” she said, “your soul goes on forever in heaven. Or hell.”

“Forever stretches both ways. No beginning, and no end. If you are eternal, you have no end, or no beginning.”

Lucas asked, “What about your birthday? The day you were born?”

“I know,” Dori said. “You live in your mother's stomach for nine months before you are born.”

“Right,” Norah said. “But where were you before that?”

“Nowhere?” Lucas offered.

“If a line extends in two directions from a single point, and it is called eternity, there can be no beginning, if it has no end. It simply is. You is. Are. My first secret is that you have always existed and will continue to exist.”

The bell rang and they entered the school in a daze. The morning snailed by: Mrs. Patterson talking without saying a thing. Problems on the blackboard, the messy business of fractions, piled up one upon the next. At the break for lunch, the six children grabbed their paper bags and lunchboxes and went to their table in the corner of the cafeteria. Small talk accompanied sandwiches and chips. They waited for Norah to finish her cup of peaches and begin again. In the waxy film of the table-top, she pressed her fingertip to create a point and drew a line that ended in a final point. “Those who truly believe must conquer time. It's not the length of your life that matters if you will always be—”

“Conquer time? You can't stop time,” Dori said.

Sean looked down at the remains of his tunafish sandwich and felt ill.

“Don't be so stubborn,” Norah said. “Who is good at counting off the time?”

Sharon raised her hand. “Like counting to sixty seconds to make a minute?”

“You have to say Mississippi or you'll go too fast,” Sean said. “One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi … like that. My dad taught me how.” He blushed, and Norah patted him quickly on the hand.

In the center of a stage that ran the length of the cafeteria, a large clock ticked away the passing seconds. Norah pointed to the sweeping arm. “When the red hand gets to the top of the minute, start counting.”

Pushing their chairs from the table, they all faced the stage and concentrated on the dial, and at the moment she had instructed, they whispered the chant in unison. Five seconds in, Dori and Mark stopped counting and were afraid. Sharon and Lucas checked their own stilled wristwatches and did not get past ten. Only Sean counted off the full minute as the pointed hands remained frozen in position. Most of the children in the cafeteria took no notice, but three or four souls nearby, curious at their schoolmates’ rapt attention, were caught up in the failure of the clock. Nothing else happened. All around continued the din of slurping and chewing, the clink of silverware, bursts of laughter and shouts of recrimination. At sixty-Mississippi, the second hand jerked to a start and time began again.

T
HERE WERE SIX
further signs that week.

After school that Monday, they were joined by two more witnesses. Norah led them to the path through the woods, and there on the causeway between the street and the trees, she huddled the children around her and asked them to close their eyes. On her command, they looked and beheld her outstretched hand. Atop each splayed fingertip glowed a small white flame. She folded her fingers into a fist, extinguishing the fires as quickly as windblown candles. The children were astounded and burst into spontaneous applause. When the others headed home, Mark said to Sean that he hadn't seen such a cool trick since the time on
The Tonight Show
when a magician made a whole cage of doves disappear.

On Tuesday morning before they awoke, she appeared to the seven in their separate dreams, perched at the foot of their beds and passed judgment on the seven sins of their respective parents. When comparing stories at school throughout the day, each nine-year-old affirmed the details of the dream, and they were struck dumb by the similarities and the accuracy of her knowledge. Even those who only suspected their parents of greed or adultery acknowledged that their worst fears and most secret thoughts had been mined, that she somehow knew the struggles of their souls.

Three more children heard the rumors and joined the group for lunch on Wednesday and then followed her on the road that afternoon, listening to her stories of faith and foreboding. She led them on the path through the woods, and a plague of summertime midges rose up and swarmed around the group, a cloud so thick and sudden that the insects fouled the children's mouths and noses and sent them speeding home, hands flailing against their faces.

Thursday, she and now twelve followers snuck into St. Anne's Church, and in the dark and hushed nave, Norah raised a pencil, declaiming like Moses with the rod, and cracked it against the finial of a pew. Statues all around were seen to move: Saint Joseph flexed his fingers holding the crosier, a plaster angel blinked, baby Jesus squirmed in his mother's lap, and half the children fled frightened and in disbelief, not trusting their own witness. The others stayed to see Mary weep, the wounded Christ appear to bleed, and other visions of inexplicable terror and wonder.

Reports of these mysteries rekindled the talk in the hallways, and the phone calls from worried parents of the twelve and from those who received the gossip secondhand. Earlier claims had been dismissed as the fantasies of a troubled girl new to the school and the community, but now her tale bore the weight of the parents’ malice and exaggeration. The most ardent churchgoers protested the most loudly, and those who believed in nothing at all were their temporary allies. Fourteen messages awaited Principal Taylor upon his arrival on Friday, and another dozen complaints were transferred before nine o'clock. The non-Catholics scoffed at the weeping statues as some papist hocus-pocus, the literal Bible was invoked, and charges of blasphemy were bandied. The Catholics, though anxious to believe, were offended by the children's trespass. The agnostics and atheists wanted to know why such nonsense was allowed to continue at a public school. Several parents insisted that Norah Quinn was the problem, and one father thundered that he would bring in the American Civil Liberties Union if Taylor could not prevent the exposure of his daughter to this kind of religious talk.

Over the intercom, Mr. Taylor summoned Norah to his office, and she left the classroom during a discussion of prime numbers. Two dozen faces, fascinated by the spectacle of the condemned, watched her exit. Sean imagined her long walk down the corridors, mentally counted her steps past the second graders’ self-portraits hanging on the walls, the shamrocks and leprechauns taped to doors, past the music room and its shelves cluttered with recorders and timpani, past the quiet library and around the corner to the cafeteria. Then on to the principal's office she would tread softly and slowly. But before she arrived, the emergency alarm bells clanged. The students stirred with enthusiasm. Mrs. Patterson looked at the clock and sighed, arranged a single-file line at the door, and mustered them out to the schoolyard in the morning sunshine. By magic, Norah joined the group, smiling at her reprieve.

“Do you think it's just a fire drill?” Sean asked.

She did not answer. Unlike the rest, who stared at the empty building, she looked toward the faculty parking lot and seemed to be counting softly to herself, the numbers trailing down, seven-six-five, barely perceptible on her moving lips. Sean watched the countdown, three-two, his gaze shifting from her mouth to the object of her attention as she neared the end. At zero, a loud metallic explosion caught the crowd's attention in time to see the beginning of smoke curling from the front of a white sports car, and then with another bang, the flames forced open the hood.

“My baby!” Mr. Taylor shouted. He took two steps toward the beloved Mustang and then halted. The fire roared to life, and near the heart of the flames, a bird rose like a phoenix, a huge crow beating its broad wings and cawing madly as it escaped into the sky. Each of the disciples searched for fellow believers, exchanging looks that touched upon the central mystery of their nascent faith. When the firetrucks rolled up their hoses and the drama of fire and water ended, a dozen children encircled Norah, curious to affirm her role in the blaze.

“How did you do it?” Mark asked.

“There's no way,” Matt said. “You were miles from the car like the rest of us.”

Dori broke the ranks. “Funny way of getting out of having to go to the principal's.”

The children pressed closer, and Norah waved them back, creating an invisible boundary around her body. “Best not tick off an angel,” she said, with a wink and a grin.

“I don't believe you had anything to do with that fire,” Lucas said. “My mother says there's no such thing as angels and that you are a crackpot or some religious nut—”

“Don't you remember how I saved you? I see the hesitation in all your hearts, and so I will show you once more.” She lifted her eyes to the glassy sky, warm and foreshadowing spring. The others took notice too of the fine day, the greening of the grass and budding in the trees. “The wrath of angels falls upon a doubt-filled world.”

As the firemen cleaned up the mess, the teachers and students filed back into the building and did their best to restore normalcy to a Friday afternoon. During the final class of the day, the windows began to vibrate and hum. The wind began to blow and the tall trees outside swayed and bowed their crowns. Rolling clouds blackened the sky and cast shadows across the classroom. Bits of debris flew by—forgotten dry leaves, napkins, wrappers, lost homework, and mislaid notes. A jump rope skipped by like a downed telephone line. Returning to her desk from a stint at the blackboard, Sharon Hopper laid her palm against the window and withdrew when it burned, and then tentatively touched the glass again, stunned by its fragile coldness. Bigger objects lumbered about the grounds—trashcan lids, a soccer ball spinning madly, a lunchroom tray, a shattered maple branch. They expected a flying cow, a spinning farmhouse come to rest upon the striped feet of a witch. The hour darkened, near pitch, and in the windows, the children saw their worried reflections.

Stepping outside after dismissal, the children squealed and screamed when the cold wind hit them. Few were prepared for the fallen temperature, and jackets billowed, sweaters made tails as stiff as those of mockingbirds. They wrapped their arms across their chests, bent their heads against the gales, and struggled homeward. Those with the wind at their backs felt they could be airborne at any moment. A bird beat its wings against the rage, made no progress, and then pinwheeled back to a secure haven. Over the wind-whipped roar, the children hollered their goodbyes. Norahs followers clumped at the edge of the sidewalk, freezing, mystified, and afraid. Tendrils of hair swirled around Norahs face, and the air fogged her glasses, but she alone seemed oblivious to the storm. A handful of children walked with her like a band of explorers braving the open tundra as the wind howled in their faces.

The trees at the edge of the bike path home formed a break, and it was calmer, but the shush of branches and the restless waters of the creek denied any normal level of discussion. As she reached the fork, Norah stopped to confront them all. “So do you believe now?” she shouted.

Dori's black eyes were wet with tears. The boys sniffed runny noses and stared at the ground. At her side, Sean tugged her arm and shouted back, “Make it stop.”

“Meet me tomorrow,” she said above the wind. “At three o'clock, and I will show you even greater wonders.”

The apostles raised their hands farewell, nodded their assent. Norah and Sean split off from the others, traversing the path through the forest to the Quinns’ house. By the time they reached the fence, Sean noticed the winds had subsided, and when he finally made it to his own home, he realized that they had all but died.