The Belief in Angels (30 page)

I remember Moses’s funeral—or rather, the day of Moses’s funeral.

I remember that day clearly.

David and I begged to be able to go. We didn’t want to stay with a babysitter and miss going to the funeral, but Howard insisted it wouldn’t be good for us and Wendy agreed.

My grandfather wanted us to go. I remember he took David and me aside and told us he thought we should go, but he couldn’t convince Howard.

It was the first time my grandfather’s talked to us like we were grown-ups. I don’t know much about my grandfather’s life, but he seemed lonely. This was not the first funeral in the last few years we weren’t allowed to attend. First my Great-Uncle Mosher, then my Grandmother Yetta. My Great-Aunt Rose, a few months before Moses.

As bad as it got for me with Moses being gone, I knew my grandfather must feel even worse, even more alone. But he never shared this with us.

On the day of Moses’s funeral I felt closer to him than I ever have before. He sat with David and me and held our hands for a long time before they left for the funeral. Mostly we sat without saying anything.

I kissed him and told him I loved him and planned to try to persuade Wendy to bring us to visit more often. We’d been visiting less and less.

“I know you must be sad about Moses and there is nothing I can say to take away your sorrow,” he said to David and me.

We nodded.

“It’s important you remember him. Remember his goodness and the gift of time you shared with him. Remember how much you love him. He is still a part of your family. He will always be a part of you. You have a bit of him inside of you.
Remember this and he will never be gone. Now you must take good care of each other. This is most important.”

I remembered Hemingway and said, “You expect to be sad in the fall. But the cold rain has kept on and killed the spring and a young person has died for no reason.”

“Weird,” David said.

My grandfather hugged me hard.

Howard came up the stairs to my room where we were sitting. He told David he needed to go to his room if he chose to keep crying and he could come out when he finished. He said men don’t cry. My grandfather got angry at Howard and called him a fool, but David got sent to his room anyway. I guess crying is okay for girls, though, because he didn’t say anything to me. Or maybe I wasn’t crying? I can’t remember that part.

Howard made me stand behind the bar and mix cocktails for everyone after they came back from the funeral. I didn’t care. I still had the old mixology book from the Little Corporal and it gave me something to do.

The drunker everyone got, the more they talked to each other about the whole thing, which was great because no one would tell us anything directly. David didn’t come out of his room all day. I took him plates of food. He was still crying every time I went into his room.

Wendy told us my grandfather went to his apartment after the funeral to sit
shiva.
I didn’t know anything about the custom, but I remember wishing David and I had been allowed to go home with him.

Howard left that night after the funeral party. I remember this. I remember being relieved because he bossed everyone around all day and Wendy was angry with him for not calling to let us know he wasn’t going to show up the morning Moses went off fishing by himself. He hadn’t even gotten on the plane from California to fly into Boston that day.

Who knows if that would have changed anything? Who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t stayed at Leigh’s that morning? I know I should have made sure Moses waited for me to go fishing. Or I shouldn’t have told him I would go fishing with him so he didn’t get the idea in his head.

I should have been at the house. I knew he’d still be alive if I’d been there. I think I won’t ever be considered a good person ever again, even if I try hard to be one for the rest of my life. The rest of my life will be lived in a story about a girl whose brother died. I still can’t believe the girl in the story is me. I should have come back earlier and checked to see if Howard came. I would have gone with Moses. It wouldn’t have happened like it did. He wouldn’t have drowned.

I know it was my fault. Wendy told me it was my fault the day it happened.

That night, when David and I got back from the yacht club, we called around to find Wendy. She called the police and the Coast Guard. She screamed at me and told me it was my fault if something happened to him. I should have come back and waited with him for Howard. She told me I was rotten.

She was right. The biggest thing I was supposed to do was take care of my brothers. Even my grandfather told me this when I was younger. It was my job because I knew Wendy wouldn’t do it. Howard is gone. Jack is catatonic. David lives in a television set. My grandfather doesn’t know what’s going on. Moses died because I didn’t do the one most important thing I was supposed to do.

We waited up all night while everybody searched for him, but they didn’t find the boat until the next morning, and they didn’t find Moses until later that day.

The boat turned up about a mile out from the yacht club. Both life jackets were still in the boat. Moses hadn’t put his on. He couldn’t swim well. He should have been wearing it. Those were the rules.

His body washed up on the bay side of the island where the tides run.

We never saw him. They wouldn’t let us see him. They wouldn’t even talk to us about it. Everything we knew we overheard when they thought we weren’t listening, mostly at the funeral reception.

Howard treated us like little kids. He doesn’t know us anymore.

I wonder about Howard and what he’s been up to.

“So, what about Dad?” I ask David while I crunch my Raisin Bran.

“What about him?”

I’m not sure how I’m going to ask this now. “Are you mad at
him
?”

I know it’s a stupid question, but I figure it might give me information about where he lived and what’s going on with his situation.

“I don’t know. Aunt Doreen says he’s gonna stay in California this summer. I don’t think we’re gonna see him …”

His voice trails off and he seems maybe mad or sad or something, he doesn’t show much on his face.

“Good. It’s better when he’s gone. You know what I mean?”

David nods. I can tell he isn’t going to say either way.

A breeze blows through the kitchen window over the sink and its smell fills the space with the scent of lilacs. “So, I’m going to the library today. What are you gonna do?”

David stares at me funny.

“I don’t know, hang around with Joseph. Maybe go play tennis. Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I might bring a friend over later and I wanted to know if you were going to be here bothering us.”

“Who?” he asks. Now I’ve made him curious and he seems interested to know who it might be.

“Leigh.”

David has an odd look on his face. “So, you made up with her?” he asks. “I thought you guys were still in a fight.”

You had a fight with Leigh.

I scramble to come up with something as I rinse my bowl and spoon and put them in the dishwasher. “Yeah, but you know,” I say, and hope he doesn’t ask me any more about it.

David walks over and hands me his spoon and bowl to rinse. He stares hard at me, but he changes the subject.

“Hey Jules, we’re gonna be in the same school next year. It’ll be freaky-deaky, huh? We haven’t been in the same school since elementary. Oh, by the way,” he adds, “I saw that guy, Timothy Zand, drop your books off on the porch yesterday. He left before I could talk to him. How did he end up with your books?”

“I must have left them up at Stillton.”

Timothy. Who the heck is Timothy?

“You know, Timothy? The new kid who moved into one of the aluminum siding houses? He’s a freshman in high school and sometimes he takes the bus with me? Is he your new boyfriend?”

I’m flustered. Avoiding his eyes, I fill the dishwasher soap well and play with the machine’s buttons.

“What? No, I don’t even know him. No,” I say.

I wonder if I have a boyfriend now and I don’t even know it. Now that would be big news. A boyfriend.

“Then why did he have your books?”

“I don’t know. I forget.” The steam from the dishwasher starts to filter out the vents.

David doesn’t seem like he buys my story. I blush, even though I’m telling him the truth. I can’t remember. I decide to hightail it out of there.

“I gotta go. I’ll see you later. If Wendy calls will you tell her there’s no food in the freezer and if she can bring back dinner or go shopping, it’d be great?”

“Yeah, Burger King,” David says.

I smile at him. He smiles back.

“Are you gonna be nice now?”

“Have I really been a jerk?”

David hesitates and thinks about what to say. “Yup, you’ve been a real jerk. You’ve been ignoring everyone and going around slamming doors.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I’ll try not to be one from now on.”

“We’ll see,” he says and laughs.

I laugh too, and I slam the door hard when I leave.

Maybe I can trace my steps backwards from the library to remember everything that’s happened.

At the library I bring my books in and leave them on the table. I recognize the librarian, and the room smells familiar. Dust and Lemon Pledge. I’ve connected my past to the present. I remember everything about the library. I remember being there not long ago. I remember walking in and I remember walking out.

I can’t remember the librarians name though.

She seems happy to see me, and I realize we’re friends now. I mean, she’s as much of a friend as an adult can be. I can recall several conversations we’ve shared recently.

She asks me if I liked the books I borrowed and I tell her I did. I pause at the desk and wonder if I should ask her for books about memory loss, time travel, or even alien abductions. Maybe I should try and find them on my own.

Several other people whisper and mill around and I don’t want to be embarrassed. I walk to the young adult section and pretend to pick out books. When I hear the others shuffle away on the wood floors, I go back out to the desk.

“Can I help you find something?” she asks.

“Ummm, actually, I wondered if you have books on the subject of alien abductions?”

She smiles and says, “I think so. Let’s see.”

She leads me up the windy staircase to the adult section, a huge room I’ve never been in before. The shelves are lined closely and reach all the way up to the ceilings in here. The light filters dusty beams in through the tall, wavy-paned windows. She shows me bookcases stacked with books about psychic phenomena, witchcraft, and UFOs and lets me sort through them on my own.

I have a blast in there. One of the books tells a story about a guy being abducted and losing his memory. The guy in the story is sure about the aliens though. He can remember the UFO that picked him up and what it looked like from his car. He describes the aliens, too, but can’t remember what happened during the surgery they performed on him—except feeling lots of pain before he passed out—or how he got back in his car, which is where he woke up.

I can’t remember any spaceships or aliens. Only Moses disappearing that day.
Maybe Moses got taken by aliens. Maybe he didn’t drown like everybody thinks. Maybe he got abducted by aliens and they made it seem like a drowning. I don’t like the theory, but I’m not ruling anything out.

After I skim the book about UFOs I also leaf through a book about hypnotism. I wonder if someone put me into a trance.

Up at the main library desk I trace the edge of the desk with my index finger where it’s carved like a rose vine. I ask the librarian about hypnosis, if it can affect memory. She says it can and that she has another book for me to read I might find interesting.

When she leaves I look across the desk at the paperback she’s left open on her desk. I can hear her soft-soled shoes on the wooden floors above me. Flipping the book over to look at the cover, I can see it’s one of those books about the women who like men to rip their clothes off and “take them,” which has me worried about the choice she’s going to bring back for me.

She comes back with a book called
On Death and Dying,
by Elisabeth Kübler Ross.