The Belief in Angels (12 page)

After the age of five, any etiquette infraction got “corrected” by the swift poke of a fork tine, which, I’m certain, is definitely not Emily Post behavior.

I have tiny fork tine scars on my upper arms. Apparently, I’m a slow learner.

We eat silently, remembering the “children should be seen but never heard unless addressed” dinner rule from earlier days.

Paulina has prepared baked chicken with a can of mushroom soup, green beans, and homemade macaroni and cheese. A feast. It’s been a long time since we’ve eaten a dinner of something other than frozen or fast food. Or our staple, cereal.

“She’s broken bones in her neck? Won’t she need a surgery?” Paulina asks.

“She didn’t say.” He meets her eyes and motions toward us before he
continues. “We won’t know much more for a few days. In the meantime, let’s do the best we can to put this place back in shape and take care of you kids.”

My brothers and I glance at each other with faces reflecting a vocabulary of emotions. I know they are as confused about all of this as I am.

David asks, “If Mom isn’t better soon, will you be living here for a while?”

“Would you like that?”

David stares at his plate before he answers. “Well, I want my mom to get better.”

Paulina speaks. “Of course you do. This is a hard time. We’ll all do the best we can. Did you know I have two children? I have a boy and a girl. They live with their father now, but soon they’re going to come and live with your father and me.”

This sounds unusual to me. I wonder why she doesn’t have her kids with her. Isn’t that how it usually goes with a divorce? The kids live with the mother.

Paulina smiles at me. I ask, “Why don’t they live with you now?”

Paulina starts to answer, but my father interrupts, “Ix-nay on the explanation-ay.” Sometimes he speaks in Pig Latin, like we can’t understand what he’s saying. “Not your business,” he says to us.

We spend the rest of dinner in silence.

After dinner, Paulina asks me to help her with the dishes. I know we’ll have the kitchen to ourselves, and I’m curious to spend time alone with her. While we wash and dry, she tells me about her kids in Scituate and her life with my father in Florida. They live in a town called Destin.

“Where is Destin? I’ve never heard of it.” I’ve never done dishes like this, with someone else. I’m careful when I lift the warm, slippery dishes from her fingers. I dry them with the new pink dish towel she bought at the store and stack them in the new dish rack.

“It’s south of Niceville,” she says.

“Niceville?” I ask. “What part of the state is it in?” My nose is itchy. I can’t tell if it’s her “lemony scented rubbing alcohol perfume” or the dish soap. Wendy never buys this soap. I put the dishes into the automatic dishwasher with the Cascade.

“South. It’s in the southern part by the Gulf of Mexico. I’m not sure how I ended up down there. I grew up in Maine, but I love it down there. Florida’s kinda pretty.”

“I know,” I tell her. “My mother brought us to Key West this year for spring vacation.”

“Oh, I love Key West.”

“Yeah, I liked it too. My favorite is Ernest Hemingway’s house. I love that he left his money to his cats,” I say.

I think Paulina might have been to Hemingway’s.

“Ernest who?” Paulina asks me.

“Hemingway. The writer?”

She seems confused. I continue:
“For Whom the Bell Tolls?”

Her eyes get bigger and rounder.

What I didn’t understand at eight is that most people don’t enjoy reading as much as I do.

Wendy is an avid reader with a wide variety of interests. She’s had lots of time during these long New England winters to do nothing but party and read. She has also, as long as I can remember, taken sporadic college classes, mostly related to psychology. So the shelves are stacked two and three deep with everything from Chaucer and Freud to Erica Jong. I took full advantage of the books. Books are my antidepressants.

By the age of eight, I’d consumed a literary buffet including an assortment of Steinbeck, Thomas, Carroll, and several books of poetry. Ever since Key West, Hemingway has been my favorite.

“I’ve never heard of that book. I’m not much of a reader. I like movies though. Do you like to go to the movies?”

Ahhhh, movie friend. I love going to the movies. “Yes. Did you see
Dr. Zhivago?
It’s one of my favorite movies,” I say.

“Ummm,” Paulina looks confused again, “no, I didn’t. I loved
Airplane.
Did you see
Airplane?”

“No. What’s it about?” I ask.

“Ummm, well, you’ve got to see it. It’s so funny. It makes fun of other movies. It’s so funny.”

I’m beginning to wonder about our being movie buddies.

She asks, “Do you like to go bowling? I noticed there’s a bowling alley here in Withensea.”

I nod. “Yeah, I like to go bowling.”

The bowling alley, Withensea Shore Lanes, is one of the only year-round businesses where kids are allowed to hang out. Saturdays, after the leagues finish, anyone can play. Besides the bowling there are candy and pop machines—items that are not allowed in our diets. We use the money we get from our grandfather for treats like these.

“It’s ‘candlepin’ bowling. I read recently that candlepin bowling was invented in Massachusetts. Are you familiar with candlepin?”

Paulina shakes her head no.

“It’s similar to ten-pin bowling, but each player uses three balls per frame, the balls are much smaller and don’t have holes, the downed pins aren’t cleared away between balls during a player’s turn, and the pins are thinner and harder to knock down. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. I’ve never played ten-pin. Maybe we could go bowling this weekend?” I ask.

“Well, let’s see what your father says. On Sunday we’re gonna try to go visit my kids at their dad’s. They live in Scituate. Maybe we could go on Saturday if your father says it’s okay.”

I can tell she’s making a big effort to get me to like her, and I’m not going to stop her. It’s nice to have her falling all over me that way, but I wonder why. Is Wendy going to be in the hospital for a long time? Are we going to be able to stay with her when she gets out? I wonder about the hospital surgery my father doesn’t want us to know about. Everything’s shaky.

A few weeks later, after school, things get even shakier. Outside our house, my father’s car is gone. Inside, Paulina is sitting in a cigarette fog on the piano bench, mascara running down under her eyes. Beside her on the bench sits a pack of Pall Malls and a half bottle of Chivas Regal.

She’s flicking ashes from her cigarette into an ashtray on the piano.

It’s Wendy’s ass ashtray. When you press a plastic button on the side of the tray, which is shaped like a giant butt, it opens and the ashes go inside the ass crack. Paulina hasn’t figured out how to use it because the ashes sit on top of the butt in a huge pile, about to topple over onto the piano.

Her face is all wet with tears, but her eyes are blank like a doll’s.

“Hi Julianne.”

“Hi. What’s wrong?”

“Come over here. I’ve got something to tell you. I’ve got bad news.”

I steel myself and walk over to where she sits, clutching my school book bag against my side. “Where’s my father? What’s wrong?” I ask.

Paulina peers intensely at me, like she’s searching for an answer in my face. “Your father left. He went for a drive.”

I can tell she’s left something out that has nothing to do with what she’s about to tell me. So there are at least
two
bad things going on.

“It’s your mother,” she begins, but she stops and stares at her lap.

She’s not supposed to be telling me what she’s about to tell me. My heart pounds and I have a hard time finding the breath to speak. Tears start stinging my eyes. I squeeze them shut for a second to keep them from coming out.

“Is she dead?” I ask, staring at her face.

Paulina looks at me with the same blank stare. “No, she’s not dead, but she’s not doing real well. The doctors don’t think she’s going to live. So, she might die.”

My head zings with a million thoughts.

I don’t trust grown-ups to tell me the truth. Has Paulina told me something that’s going to happen soon, has already happened, or might happen sometime in the distant future? Grown-ups aren’t supposed to say scary things to kids, and this sounds scary. Here’s Paulina telling me my mother might die, so it must be true.

I wonder if she wants Wendy to die. Does she want to take care of us? What about her own kids? Is she going to be allowed to have her own kids come live with her if she has to take care of us, or are we going to go live with my grandparents? I still hold out hope that we’ll get to live with my grandparents, although Wendy laughs whenever I suggest it.

Worse, will we be sent to one of the orphanages Wendy threatened us with?

“So what’s going to happen?”

Paulina jumps right in as though she’s been waiting for me to ask. She seems excited, which is weird.

“If she dies, your father and I will stay here with you kids.”

“You won’t want to go back to Florida?”

“Florida? No, we haven’t lived in Florida for the last—” she stops to count on her fingers, “—six months. We’ve been staying at your Aunt Doreen’s.” I’m stunned.

They kept a secret.

My father has been living in the same town as us for six months without bothering to visit? We didn’t see my Aunt Doreen this past summer because supposedly my father was out of town, and we never visit his family without him.

They all knew he lived there and kept it secret.

“H-how come he didn’t come and see us?”

Paulina’s face turns magenta. I can tell she feels caught and doesn’t want to tell me the truth.

“Well, your father didn’t tell you he was here because he was afraid your mother would ask for the child support payments, and he doesn’t have a job yet.” She stops for a second. “There’s no money for that. I’m sorry, honey; I didn’t mean to make you sad. It’s … every spare dime has gone to the lawyer who’s working on bringing my kids back to me. You’re gonna like my kids a lot. My boy, William, is a year older than you and handsome. My girl, Lucy, is Moses’s age. Just think, you’ll have a sister!”