Bereavements (34 page)

That settled to her satisfaction, she looked at Angel curiously. “Your face is pinched. Why are you so pale? Really you
must
have a fever. Your eyes are queer. Come upstairs with me; let’s find out . . .”

But no, he wouldn’t, and twisted out of her grasp, offending her, and was off to find Dori, who seemed to be the only one also concerned about Mrs. Evans. But the man was as helpless and useless as the others, “There’s nothing anyone can do. Just wait. Though I’ll tell you this—she’s busy on the phone quite a bit—mornings.”

“Then she
is
here—sometimes.”

Dori looked puzzled. “Where is ‘here?’ ”

“I mean—in the house.”

“Oh.” The delay was just a bit too long. “Yes. I’m sure she must be.”

Dori’s pause had been the information Angel sought. She probably wasn’t in the house at all. Or hardly ever. And there was only one other place she could go. He had seen her footprints in the snow.

But what could she do there?—except sit, and more sitting. And maybe prayers if she prayed. And crying and more crying, if she cried. And candles to light, if she lit them. Surely . . . Surely she didn’t look. Look at what? What was there to see after more than a year?

And Angel, with venom and glee, drying his face, choking back the mucus and tears that crowded his throat, pictured hollow cheeks, sunken eyes . . . ! Skin darkened, discolored, shriveled and cracked . . . ! Teeth bared and baring more each day, every hour as the ravaged mouth withered, shrank away to a gruesome grin . . .

Finally? Nothing: cobwebs, dust, dried, flesh-webbed bones, a frail white birdcage where the ribs should be. And a skull, with the hair aroun’ it so rotted and fine it would float away if you so much as breathed a breath.

Who would want to see that!?

Who could love it?!

A morning later, Mrs. Evans emerged from her seclusion: thinner, paler, tired, shadowed under the eyes, hungry, and (after she’d eaten) with a few serious things she wanted to discuss with Angel.

There was a peculiar calmness in her manner now, a sureness Angel hadn’t seen before, like a person with problems who’d thought things through and made decisions.

She didn’t say where she’d been, behaving initially quite as if she’d never been gone at all, with the usual fond small-talk. How
was
he? Had he been having
fun?
Did he
like
the country?
What
had he been up to?

Well . . . Skiing with Dori, for one thing—who’d taught him how. At least he was pretty good. He didn’t fall all the time. He could ride the small hills, even jump a little.

The sled? Oh, the sled was great, super: he was an expert at that, but, of course, he always
had
been. His father (a flash of sobriety on his face) had taught him years ago in Morningside Park. He paused, the mention of his father making him forget entirely what they had been talking about. Oh, yes—!

Anyways, he’d found a few neat hills, one a mountain, “a real mountain! with a drop like a gigantic roller coaster, an’ a twist at the end that goes right aroun’ the . . .”

He stopped, the sentence unfinished because the twist at the end went right around the tomb, a word no one seemed to use.

But Mrs. Evans had seen the sled tracks. And his footprints, too, which meant he had seen hers—the reason he hadn’t asked where she’d been. He knew.

With the word tomb, unspoken but palpable between them, the small-talk, the preamble was over, and during what followed, Mrs. Evans kept seeking his eyes, which were endlessly roving and restless.

“My first thought” (she said) “—it seems so long ago!—was that we’d go away together, the two of us; spend a year in Rio. After that—” (a slight shrug) “—I like to break the monotony of one place, so maybe a second year in Spain. There are a few towns on the coast that I like. Then, the third year—well, Paris perhaps. With only a few months left before your eighteenth birthday, we could finish our journey in Rome. Then—then!—” (smiling, throwing up her hands) “—we’d come home—you! a young
man,
even more handsome than the boy—grown up, grown strong; ready to be and do as he pleased. No father—” she hesitated “who would dare abuse him.”

She desired to rush on, but it seemed necessary to ask precisely the right questions and have them truthfully answered.

“Angel—Do you want to go back to your father?”

No reply: tight mouth, downcast eyes, but then a rapid emphatic shaking “no” of his head that would have merged into a spasmed tic if she hadn’t stopped it.

“If you go back . . .” She paused, started wordlessly again, paused—seeking what?—euphemisms?—at least strong, clear words, not offensive or vulgur, that would define things properly and leave no doubt.

“If you go back . . .”

But before she could continue, the storm broke: he, sprawled on his knees, head in her lap, passionate words so muffled and choked she missed some, and others could barely make out.

“He stops me from dyin’ . . . he stops me from being dead . . . you gotta know that. . . he wants me, an’ loves me. . . he ‘predates me a lot . . . he’d never hurt me . . . only teasing and in fun . . . he wouldn’t throw me out like . . . like some . . . like my mother would’ve and tried to all the time . . . screamin’ at me. . . lockin’ the door . . . like I was nobody, nothin’ . . . like some . . . some scrawny alley-cat y’brought home that died . . . an’ y’had to get rid of . . . takin’ it out at night, in the dark, mixed with the garbage, wrapped up . . . so’s the neighbors wouldn’t see what you’ve got . . . !”

These things said, she nevertheless knew, and he knew as well, that that kind of love, if he returned to his father and stayed, would finally kill the boy that he was, and the kind of man he could but would not become.

In the calm that followed the storm, Mrs. Evans continued to say what she’d planned. After all, the boy’s problems were his, and hers her own. They had both tried to help each other, and in some ways succeeded and in other ways failed.

“Life is so uncertain.” She winced because at important moments words were often boring, redundant and frail. “One can never . . . quite tell what one will do, or what will happen next. Isn’t is so, my darling. And that’s because—decisions, the real ones, those vital to our hearts, those that make us do what we
do
do, finally, you and I, and everyone—a kiss, or a knife in the heart—those decisions are beyond our control. They happen. We act, and then know why, not the other way around. So—what will I do—tomorrow, Angel? What will you do? A kiss? Or a knife in the heart.”

She waited, almost as if she expected an answer, but of course there was none, nor could there be.
“In potentia,”
she concluded, not explaining the strange word; “today is tomorrow: the sun that will rise, the thought we will think, the thing we will do . . .

“So—!” back from her moment’s reverie “—about going away, you and I. For reasons that don’t concern you, and which I can’t possibly explain, I had to change my mind. But there’s an alternative. I mean—about your father. Look at me, Angel. Please. And no more tears. We have cried enough as it is, both you and I. Hear me. You’re not to go back to him—ever. I’ve arranged it. Believe me.” And she joked: “Arranged it better than God, I assure you—who is not to be trusted at all.”

She kissed both his cheeks, looked for a long moment, then rose and moved to the door. “But no matter
what
happens, I promise you’ll have someone to look after you—besides Dori I mean, who adores you of course—someone to be with in a far better way than with your father; a doctor and a dear friend of mine whom you’ll meet in a few days, because I’m going to send for him. He’ll be here soon.”

She opened the door, then turned back to him with a strange stare, adding ambiguously: “You’ll have the law on your side. And power. And money. More money than you could possibly dream. Angel—” she smiled now, her eyes filled with longing, bright with tears “—you’ll be astonished at what money can do. Everything. Anything. In all my long life, I’ve found out there is only one thing money can’t buy: the one thing I wanted most. For that —” she paused “—I had to find another way.”

And with that she left him, quietly closing the door.

If she had written a note in black ink, letters capitalized and two inches high, reading, “I’m going to kill myself,” it couldn’t have been as clear to Angel as what she’d just said.